Was that what home was here? Not the place, not the local, but the culture, the general?

When my mother went to school, her textbooks described Norway as one of the poorest countries in Europe. Her father’s brother Magnus immigrated to the U.S., like many others from that area and that time: Between 1825 and 1928, roughly 800,000 Norwegians came to America, nearly all of them to get away from poverty, cramped living conditions and unemployment. They adopted the new culture in different ways. Some gave their new towns Norwegian names, celebrated Norwegian feast days and maintained all of the Norwegian traditions. Others became Americans the moment they set foot on American soil. My grandfather’s older brother was one of the latter; he met a Norwegian girl on the boat, they fell in love and when they parted ways — she settled in Chicago and found work as a domestic servant for a wealthy family, while he picked up odd jobs farther north, in and around Grafton, N. D. — they wrote letters to each other in English. When they got back together, married and had children, they never spoke Norwegian to them, only English. Those kids were going to be Americans.

Magnus waited more than 40 years before he went back to the Old Country. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have feelings for his place of birth. In a letter he sent from Grafton to his family in Norway, in December 1928, he wrote:

This Saturday evening I went to the Cinematograph and saw the Norwegian motion picture “The Bridal Procession in Hardanger.” When I saw Bergen and Bygstad, Flatråker, etc., I felt such a powerful longing that I could not hold my tears back. There were many people crying at the Strand Theatre that night. . . . No one knows what Salbu and Åfjorden are like and what they are worth, until they are thousands of miles away. I have so many memories of home and the life of our village that I sometimes weep for joy when I think ahead to the day when we shall meet again.

I met Magnus only once, almost 60 years after he wrote that letter. He was visiting his brother, my grandfather, at my grandfather’s little farm back in Norway. They looked very much alike, both were talkative and merry, but at the same time, there was a gap between them. Magnus spoke with an American accent, and when I saw him sitting alone on the bench outside the house one evening, overlooking the fields, he looked like a stranger. It must have been Grafton he was longing for then.

Peter had done some research and found a bowling alley where they served food and also put on concerts. During dinner, we decided to leave Detroit the next morning and head for Minnesota. “We could drive up along the lake, that’s supposed to be a very scenic route,” Peter said. I was rather uplifted by the prospect. I was supposed to write about America for an American newspaper, and the last thing I wanted was to seem like an introverted European complaining about how awful everything was here. I wanted to see something magical, I wanted to see something beautiful; I wanted to write about being blown away by the power and freedom of this country.

I might even experience something representative this very evening. Three bands were playing, and what better place was there to experience American music than Detroit, the birthplace of Motown and home of Iggy Pop and the Stooges?

When the first band came on stage, I realized that it wasn’t going to happen. They played some kind of blues rock, with reference to the sound of early 1970s, Grateful Dead-ish, but in a high-school-graduation-party kind of way. The band knew how to play, but they knew how to play the way 14- and 15-year-olds know how to play.

Was this for real?

Weren’t we in Detroit?

After the show, we crossed the snowy street with our heads down and got into the car. As Peter pushed the ignition, I hoped he wasn’t as drunk as I was. On the other hand, it was just a couple of blocks over to the hotel. But apparently we weren’t going there; he continued down the road, looking for a liquor store. I stayed in the car and sat there smiling while he shopped.