The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Author:Philip Roth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction.Historical, War
ISBN: 9780618509287
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6 May 1942-June 1942

Their Country

May 22, 1942

Dear Mr. Roth:

In compliance with a request from Homestead 42, Office of American Absorption, U.S. Department of the Interior, our company is offering relocation opportunities to senior employees like yourself, deemed qualified for inclusion in the OAA's bold new nationwide initiative.

It was exactly eighty years ago that the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, the famous legislation, unique to America, which granted 160 acres of unoccupied public land virtually free to farmers willing to pull up stakes and settle the new American West. Nothing comparable has been undertaken since then to provide adventurous Americans with exciting new opportunities to expand their horizons and to strengthen their country.

Metropolitan Life is proud to be among the very first group of major American corporations and financial institutions selected to be participants in the new Homestead program, which is designed to give emerging American families a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move their households, at government expense, in order to strike roots in an inspiring region of America previously inaccessible to them. Homestead 42 will provide a challenging environment steeped in our country's oldest traditions where parents and children can enrich their Americanness over the generations.

Upon receipt of this announcement you should immediately contact Mr. Wilfred Kurth, the Homestead 42 representative in our Madison Avenue office. He will personally answer all your questions and his staff will courteously assist you in every way they can.

Congratulations to you and your family for having been chosen from among numerous deserving candidates at Metropolitan Life to be among the company's first pioneering "homesteaders" of 1942.

Sincerely yours,

Homer L. Kasson

Vice President for Employee Affairs

Several days had to pass before my father could summon the composure to show the company's letter to my mother and to break the news that as of September 1, 1942, he was being transferred from the Metropolitan's Newark district to a district office opening in Danville, Kentucky. On a map of Kentucky that had been included in the Homestead 42 packet presented to him by Mr. Kurth, he located Danville for us. Then he read aloud from a page in a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet entitled The Blue Grass State. "'Danville is the county seat of rural Boyle County. It sits in beautiful Kentucky countryside about sixty miles south of Lexington, the state's second-biggest city after Louisville.'" He began flipping through the pamphlet to find still more interesting facts to read aloud that would somehow mitigate the senselessness of this turn of events. "'Daniel Boone helped to blaze "the Wilderness Road," which opened the way to the settlement of Kentucky ... In 1792, Kentucky became the first state west of the Appalachians to join the Union ... The population of Kentucky in 1940 was 2,845,627.' The population of Danville—let me get it here—Danville's population was 6,700."

"And how many Jews in Danville," my mother asked, "of the six thousand and seven hundred? How many in the whole state?"

"You already know, Bess. There are very few. All I can tell you is that it could be worse.

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