Speech to Toastmasters International club
Type of speech: special occasion
Venue: Meeting room
Audience: Members of the club and their guests
Speaker’s role: Member of the club
Length of speech: seven minutes
Title of speech: Letter from America
Until a few weeks ago, shortly before his death at the age of 95, on Radio 4 on Friday evenings at 8.45, or to get the repeat, on Sunday mornings at 8:45, you could hear Alastair Cooke’s letter from America.
He reported on political, economic and social events in a way that a British listener could understand. His reports were well researched, informative and often humorous. He did it for over 58 years. And I listened to him off and on for most of that time.
We can all point to factors and experiences that have shaped our lives. America has been a major a major influence on mine, fellow Toastmasters.
I first became interested in America when I was in primary school. It was during the war and convoys of American trucks would travel along the road beside the school. If we heard one coming and it was break time we would go out and shout, ’ Got any gum chum?’ Sometimes we were rewarded.
I had an aunt in California who used to send us presents at Christmas. I remember especially boxes of chocolates, See’s Old Time Candies.
Lovely white boxes with a picture on the padded lid of Mary See, a friendly looking old lady with her hair in a bun, that was full of large chocolates with nuts, nougat and toffee. When I went to the US much later, you could still buy them and in San Francisco there were shops that sold nothing else.
Chocolates were my first taste of America. When we went on a family holiday to Italy in 1949, I got my second, it was Coca Cola. Ice cold in those iconic trademark bottles. I still like it today. Not the diet type nor the Sidcup water. The regular Coke.
I got my first impressions of the country via a magazine, my father bought for many years, the Saturday Evening Post. It was a fairly glossy magazine for those days, with some interesting general feature articles, some current affairs matters, cartoons and of course lots of advertisements.
I used to read articles about boxers like Jersey Joe Walcott and Rocky Graziano. At Christmas time there were pictures of Christmas trees with smiling family members and lots of beautifully wrapped presents. It looked like Aladdin’s cave. In comparison with those lean times in postwar Britain, American seemed a land of plenty.
Then there were the covers of the magazines, one of their specialties. And the artist who did over 300 covers was a man called Norman Rockwell who did pictures of small town America.
I remember one of a boy practising the violin in the parlour. It could have been me as I was struggling with the instrument in those days. He had ear muffs over his ears, – they should probably have been over someone else’s.
Perhaps the strongest influence of the New World on the old is Hollywood, still. It made a great impact on me when I was young.
Those westerns like High Noon with Gary Cooper and Jean Simmons. Civil war movies like Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. And of course Bogart with Lauren Bacall in the Big Sleep. They were marvellous then and I still try and see them when I can.
Time passed and I went to university and by some good luck I got a summer job as a courier for a London travel agency that arranged European package tours for Americans.
Here was my opportunity to actually meet some Americans and what a rich variety I met. Nubile high school girls from North Carolina, tough as nails Jewish shopkeepers from East side Manhattan, glee club singers from Colgate University, Jehovah’s Witnesses from Chicago.
I had to cross the pond and see the place for myself.
I was not disappointed. I found it all immensely exhilarating.
As a student at one of the world’s top universities, teaching for a summer in a prestigious public school, travelling across the whole width of the country by Citroen DS along the great throughways, taking Greyhound buses, visiting national parks at Yosemite and Yellowstone.
I met lots of different people from a bible punching professor at MIT to a man I met on a bus who made his living from gambling. From many of them I absorbed a firm belief in social progress and personal dreams. But I didn’t marry the girl from North Carolina.
I came back and started work. But it wasn’t long before I left my first job and joined an American company with whom I made my career.
After some years they sent me to work in New York. That gave me a second chance to get to know the country. And I took it.
I got to buy a full size American car. One of those I had seen pictures of. A diesel Oldsmobile, 22 foot long. I could get it into my garage only by hanging a mirror on the far wall. When the badge disappeared I knew I was in. It was smooth, and luxurious, even though it was always breaking down.
And at last I got to Disney World in Florida. I thought it was magnificent. I recall my first sight of Cinderella’s castle. I was as excited as my children. For them it was a feast of innocent, tasteful fun. For their parents, a chance to regain their childhood for a day.
I remember thinking that this was what America really stood for. This was the product of a free society and the market economy. Worth protecting from Soviet Russia.
Rubbing shoulders with Americans I picked up some of their language and today, still say movies, gas, fall, subway and sidewalk.
In that time too I made a number of friends at work and at church. I see them from time to time and every Thanksgiving write them all a letter.
Americans are not great letter writers I find, and so I get great special pleasure when one of them writes back to me, a letter from America.
Madam Toastmaster