Editor’s Note: Views expressed in guest columns and letters to the editor reflect the views of the author, not the views of The State News.
Saturday, I sat at the counter of Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., and ate an absurdly delicious chili dog and a side of fries. Ben’s is a quintessentially cliché destination on any D.C. tourist’s list of must-sees, and I knew I had to see it at some point while I worked for the summer in our nation’s capital.
Since about 1958, Ben’s has endured the dramatic changes of the past half century that erupted around it, but it has remained the same as the day it opened its doors. It endured the 1968 riots that engulfed its neighborhood in the wake of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, and has been a perpetual island of civility throughout its history. When I arrived at Ben’s, a family was posing and taking pictures in front of the façade in awe of actually being there.
Every community throughout the nation has its own version of Ben’s — a place that, despite the passage of time and circumstance, adheres to core values in the face of challenges to those beliefs. Walking into Ben’s, it takes little imagination to envision how it felt 10, 20 or 50 years ago. It safely can be said that it will feel the same as it is, and ever was, far into the future. The chili dog isn’t what makes Ben’s such a great place, the people inside who are sharing the experience is what makes it truly great.
Washington, D.C., is maligned, the metaphor for all that is wrong with our country — the politics and gridlock and bickering and ineffectualness. But actually experiencing the place shows many of the things that are so right with our country.
On any given Saturday, families walk through the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and rub elbows with families from different walks of life from thousands of miles away. Families make the American pilgrimage to the capital city, our own patriotic Hajj to the mecca that is the National Mall. We bask in our shared history as we experience the National Museum of American History, confronting our fraught past exemplified by the exhibit about Jefferson’s slaves at Monticello.
One man wore a T-shirt that read “100% American” as he walked through the halls of an exhibit that highlighted the tribulations of immigrant groups as they arrived on our shores. When you walk on the Mall, no matter where you are from, you are American.
To be American is derivative; the families visiting from out of the country, as many do, are American just as that man with the T-shirt is. When you visit America, you get to be American while you are here. Without that ethos, we wouldn’t be the country we are.
Later, after Ben’s, I went to the Lincoln Memorial after sundown. I found the Lincoln Memorial to be shockingly similar to Ben’s. If you swapped out the grease in the air for marble pillars, they could have been the same place.
At the memorial, several hours and three miles away from Ben’s, I saw the same family that was taking pictures in front of the neon-lit chili dog restaurant taking pictures on the steps of the memorial, with the godlike Lincoln looming in the background. Even at 10:30 p.m., the memorial was packed with people, all sharing the common experience of reverence, and nobody questioning anyone else’s right to be there.
When those people on the steps of the memorial go home and continue to live their lives, my hope is that they can remember the common experience they shared with the people from all walks of life who walked the Mall with them.
In isolation, it is too easy to become calcified in one’s own beliefs and biases. We have become very good at that lately as a nation. When people come to Washington, D.C., to experience our national treasures on the Mall, that isolation melts away. Although not everyone who walks in front of the White House agrees with one another on everything, it is important to note they all can agree on something, even if that something is their choice of a vacation destination. It’s a starting point, not an ending point.
When people drive outside the beltway toward their houses or board planes back to their hometowns, it’s important to remember that we have more in common with one another than not, and letting that distance and isolation from people with differing histories and opinions determine our view of the world is a mistake.
At Ben’s and on the Mall, the place isn’t what makes it great. What makes these places great is that people from everywhere can share the experience with one another. These experiences are free of judgment and distrust — experiences that we must continue to embrace as a nation.
Bobby Busley is a guest columnist at The State News and an urban and regional planning senior. Reach him at busleyro@msu.edu.
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