Matt Frei - Only in America

The many fears that stalk America these days are the flip side of the enormous successes and the social mobility the country has experienced in recent years. The booming town of Culpeper, about eighty miles south-west of Washington, is a case in point. I got to know the place at the end of 2007 because the BBC chose to adopt the town as a way of measuring the political pulse of America in the run-up to the 2008 election. Finding a representative patient in a country as vast and complex as this might seem absurd, but Culpeper embodied many of the changes yanking America in different directions. It was located in the middle of Virginia. A traditionally conservative state that had voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, it had turned against the Republican Party because of a combination of factors: the unpopular war in Iraq, the President’s advocacy of immigration reform, the declining economy and a general, queasy feeling that America had lost its way. Virginia had become a bellwether state. It could swing either way during the election. Its traditional certainties had been undermined by new anxieties and it found itself in mid-transition from rural backwater to expanding exurb.

The town’s population had doubled in the last seven years. Half the new arrivals were migrant workers from Latin America, who spoke barely any English, had snuck across the border with Mexico – 1500 miles from Culpeper – and had come there in search of a job. Most of them had been employed by the construction companies turning the rolling hills of Virginia into what resembled a sprawling set for Desperate Housewives . These new, gated communities might as well be called Wisteria Lane. The houses look as real as cardboard façades in Hollywood and about as sturdy. Having ignored the town for decades, the Amtrak train to Washington, DC, now stops here to pick up a swelling number of commuters. There are now two Italian restaurants and a Thai on Main Street. At the coffee shop on Grant Street it is no longer good enough to opt for coffee with or without cream. You now have to choose between tall lattes, double-shot decaf frappuccinos and a grilled/toasted/baked panino with a bewildering choice of exotic hams and cheeses. The nineteenth-century façades of the houses in the ‘historic centre’ have been scrubbed clean and given a new lick of paint. Shops that were shuttered or empty a few years ago are now selling smart kitchen utensils, Italian designer furniture, Vietnamese throw cushions and pot-pourri. Home makeover fever has struck Culpeper, the surest sign of all that the town is booming. And yet our sample of citizens were vexed by the changes. The overriding fear was that the property prices that had shot up in recent years were now beginning to tumble. Culpeper’s new citizens were being hit on two fronts. The rise in petrol prices had made their long commute to the capital far more costly. At the same time the fall in property prices no longer allowed them to think of themselves as wealthy. The number of foreclosures had doubled to about a hundred in three months and dozens of the large newly built houses – called McMansions in the United States – remained empty and unsold. The universal fears about property helped to trigger some very particular anxieties.

Steve Jenkins, the burly football-coach-turned-town-councillor, describes himself as a son of ‘old Culpeper’. One of his ancestors was the town’s first soldier to enlist on the Confederate side. What fuels Steve’s passion today is America’s new war against illegal migration. ‘I don’t hate Mexicans,’ he explains in the last remaining diner on Main Street. (‘I don’t like that fancy cappuccino stuff.’) ‘But I can’t stand the fact that they sneak across the border illegally and then expect to be welcomed like real citizens. They don’t pay taxes and yet they fill the schools and use our hospitals.’ As he vents the muscles and veins on his oxen neck bulge and pulsate to the drumbeat of growing anger. He grinds his fists together. I am glad I have a legitimate visa, I think to myself. Steve is adamant that his anger stems from the fact that much of this migration is illegal. But it also becomes clear that, like millions of others, he’s afraid that America’s soul is being warped. ‘The illegal ones should all be deported,’ he says, thumping the counter and causing a few drops of pure American filter coffee to spill onto the stainless steel. ‘The rest need to learn English. Real good!’ Steve blamed the migrants for a whole host of ills, from a rise in the rate of burglaries to an increase in road rage. ‘The traffic is terrible here now. People used to stop for you when you crossed the street. Now they just plough through.’ On Grant Street I saw two cars driving so slowly they might have been kerb-crawling. The driving etiquette of Culpeper seemed to be a lot courtlier than anything I had encountered in Washington, let alone New York. But for Steve it was a matter of comparison with a lost era of perfect road manners, when Culpeper was smaller, poorer and everyone spoke English.

Betsy Smith, a former businesswoman turned Baptist preacher, is much less afraid of the new wave of migration. She has met quite a few Mexicans at her church. ‘They tend to be hard-working, God-fearing and law-abiding. They’re against abortion and the ones I have met are good Christians.’ What keeps Betsy up at night are the declining morals of the society that surrounds her. The first time we met her was at Halloween, clutching her five-year-old daughter who was dressed as an angel. But we didn’t find them at the traditional Halloween parade on Main Street. ‘That kind of Halloween is a celebration of evil. We don’t go in for that.’ Instead Betsy helped to organize an alternative parade, where members of her church were handing out leaflets on the Ten Commandments and Bible studies with the candy. The usual witch’s cavern and cauldron had been transformed into a crib and a manger. The fact that we were in a car park, marooned in the middle of a shopping mall next to a gun shop, didn’t seem to bother Betsy and her friends. They had carved out an alternative niche for themselves. Even in a small town like Culpeper they found the space to create their own social bubble, unbothered by the heathens around them who were themselves largely oblivious to the alternative sin-free Fall Festival Parade taking place in the church car park.

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