Letter to Monticello

Abstract

Letter to Monticello Bernard Quetchenbach (bio) Dear Mr. President Thomas Jefferson, It may seem presumptuous to disturb your rest, but I guess you know that the obligations of a founding father are co-extant with the full lifetime of the republic. I'm not expecting a reply. Oh, and please pardon the necessary anachronisms—the distance between us is measured in centuries. It might surprise you to know that this Great West is still Corps of Discovery country. Everything from colleges to breweries is named for your illustrious emissaries. Even here in Billings, where it was just Clark's half of the crew—Lewis was off harassing the Blackfeet farther north—we have a Lewis and Clark Middle School, on Lewis Avenue, a block over from Clark. All through the Yellowstone Valley, roadside markers follow the expedition's route, silhouetted explorers gesturing heroically toward whatever happens to be in front of them—"Look, Lewis, a Motel 6! A school named after us!" Downriver at Hysham, modern-day travelers are snagged by a signboard plea to exit the interstate highway for "STATUES!" And statues there are—full-color effigies of eagles, buffalo, even (Caribbean, not Barbary) pirates! The star of this municipal extravaganza is a colosal Captain Clark, accompanied by a somewhat less colossal figure known only as "The Hunter" and a merely oversized Sacagawea, accompanied by her son, Pompey. In keeping with racial stereotype and her role as guide, Sacagawea stoically points the way toward the Yucca Theatre, the burg's most impressive edifice. The party doesn't seem to notice the monumental woolly mammoth looming even larger than Clark, testifying, perhaps, to your alleged faith that such creatures still roamed somewhere in the vast lands beyond the settlements. As a resident of your Louisiana Purchase, I suppose my presence here is partly your doing. So you can see, Mr. President, why you'd be on my mind. I thought you might want to know that we haven't forgotten your undaunted trailblazers around these parts. I have to admit, though, that national expansion has been easier for your republic than fulfilling another of your aspirations. If you'll kindly indulge me, I have a story to tell. I may not be George Washington, but you have my word it's true. May 1983, two hundred years after you declared that "all men are created equal." The leaky Nova (I know you don't know what that is, but please bear with me) I've been coaxing through a section of your Purchase we call Oklahoma has blown its head gasket. The locals have [End Page 93] been kind, towing my friends and me through a bucolic landscape—young corn in the fields, kingbirds spaced on wires—to a vintage mid-century (twentieth, that is) garage. We know the news will be bad, but we make the most of our unplanned respite from the interstate, stretching our legs in the quiet shade of a rural American crossroads peopled by the honest, competent yeomen you envisioned spreading throughout the land. So it seems, anyway, until commotion leads us around a corner, where the young proprietor we've been waiting for faces off against an equally young black couple with, as I recall, three children, one of whom is in the bathroom. While waiting, someone has fooled around with a set of barbells. That's enough to make the owner call for his gun. He points it squarely at the unarmed father while the family huddles, collects their missing child, and backs into their car. I was moving northwest from the general vicinity of New Orleans to start a new life, as we Americans do, in a new place. Over the next few days, I would see for the first time the gradual opening of snow-swept prairies sprinkled with the antelope and elk described in your Captains' journals. The next year, I would get married in Utah (Mexico, in your day). A year later, my son would be born in the redwood country of California's North Coast. We were poor at times, but it was all beautifully mobile and hopeful, as we expected from an American life in those younger...