Roots Tours

Ever since Alex Haley’s famous book and miniseries “Roots,” people have said they were going on their own “Roots tour.”¹  Not just African-Americans going to Africa, but people going to Italy or England or countries in Scandinavia.  They want to see where their ancestors came from.  Sometimes they try to find long-lost relatives who stayed behind in the “old country.”  They look for customs or approaches to life from those countries.  For a while, it was “hygge” from Denmark.  Now, some people are talking about “lagom” from Sweden.

We have never gone on a trip like that.²  In fact, when people say they are going on a Roots tour, I respond that we have gone on a Roots tour – to Cooperstown.  To the Hall of Fame.  While that is a bit of a joke, it is also sort of true.³ 

Because my roots don’t come from Germany or Denmark, Sweden or England, Ireland or Northern Ireland (the places my ancestors came from).  My roots come from the United States.  This is the place I live.  This is where I get my customs from.⁴  This is where I get my values from.  From the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  From people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln – and Ernie Banks.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like traveling to other countries.  It has been great to see Chartres Cathedral, the Brandenburg Gate, and Big Ben.  But in some ways, it is better to see Avenue du Général Eisenhower in Paris, the American embassy rebuilt right next to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the statue of Abraham Lincoln on Parliament Square in London.

Because my roots aren’t in any of the countries I listed above.  My roots are here.  I take trips to see other countries.  But if I want to find my roots, I just look around me.  I don’t need to go someplace else to find my roots – except maybe Cooperstown.
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¹ Obviously, people went on tours like this before the “Roots” phenomenon, but they probably weren’t called that back then, and there are lots more of them now (perhaps because we are a lot richer now).
² The closest we have come to doing this was this past summer when we visited a second cousin who lives in Denmark.   But we found out about her not because we went looking for relatives in Denmark.  Rather, she had been looking for relatives who had come to America and had visited here in 2015.  In other words, seeing her, which was wonderful, wasn’t because we looked for where our ancestors came from.  Rather, it was is because my cousin went looking for where her relatives went.
³ We first went to Cooperstown as a family in 1993, as part of our first big “road trip.”  The Roots tour aspect may have been even more true in 2012, when we all returned to Cooperstown to see Ron Santo inducted into the Hall of Fame.
⁴ While I love German potato salad, the recipe my wife uses it make it comes from our Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

Comments

[Susan Allen]

Yes, Cooperstown is definately your "roots."