I saw these people in a train station one weekend about a year ago in America. Two different types, but ordinary in their different ways. They live in a small town along the Hudson River in New York State.
The energetic older man with the bicycle — let’s say he is an ex- insurance executive who moved up here from the city and became “actively retired” — he probably just got off the train, riding home for exercise.
He’s active in local affairs, a volunteer councilor for the town, talking to the mayor on his cell phone, on his way to a meeting to preserve the town’s vintage fire hydrants. He’s busy, confident, prosperous.
This pasty young woman with her little boy — probably her people have lived here for generations, but her husband is a Mexican immigrant who drives a gravel truck. She’s waiting for the next train out to visit cousins up the line.
Her husband left her at the station to go bowling with his friends — she wasn’t invited. She’ll spend the day watching TV and eating junk food. She’s not prosperous or confident, but she seems resigned to her situation in life.
There are a lot of Americans living here in Dumaguete. You see them all the time. Most obviously men, with their Filipina wives and girlfriends, but others, too. They all like living in Dumaguete, and they don’t need to work.
You see more of them here everyday. They have become part of the landscape. The natives of Dumaguete have wrongly come to see these people as “typical Americans” but in fact, they’re only typical of expatriates.
Typical Americans live in America — like the people in this picture. Rich or poor, it would never occur to them to live anywhere else. They may move north, south, east or west within the country, but never outside of it for long.
This man with the bicycle, this woman with the child — for them, the Philippines is just a dot on the map, a small tropical country somewhere down in the South Pacific. They have never heard of Dumaguete.
For better or worse, they are a permanent part of the American landscape. You’ll never see ordinary Americans like this here. Why would they come?
The Americans you see strolling along the boulevard in Dumaguete are not “typical Americans” at all — if they were, they wouldn’t be here.
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