As American as...

We were out having dinner the other night at our favorite pizza joint. There was plenty of pizza and garlic rolls for all. While we were there chomping away, I couldn't help but hear part of a conversation at one of the nearby tables.

This guy was talking about the pizza and he was saying that it was good, but it wasn't real Italian pizza. If you want real Italian pizza you have to go to this other place that he knew about. I had a very hard time keeping my mouth shut and not getting into an argument with this fellow.

For starters where we were is literally my favorite place to go out and get a pizza. It is the only pizza-rant that I have gone to more than once in the last twenty years. And second, pizza isn't Italian. The real origins of pizza would have to be either from the Indians, Persians, Greeks or Egyptians. And while yes, it was popularized here in America, by the Italians, pizza in the form that we know of it today, the pizza that is sold by places like Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's and many other lesser known family owned restaurants is 100% American. "Real" Italian pizza exists. It just isn't typically what gets eaten here in America.

This got me thinking. The pizza thing was a claim to something being Italian. But what about other things that people like to claim are American?What about apple pie? That's American right? Nope not at all. I mean it may be pretty common in a lot of American households at a lot of different functions but there weren't apples here until the Europeans brought them. Once the colonists did have apples, they quickly became a part of their everyday breakfast routine, but as apple cider, not pie.  An officially American pie would have to be something like strawberry or blueberry since both of those are native to the U.S.

As American as Rock & Roll. Rock and Roll is an American invention. It sprung up out of the jazz and blues music that we had at the end of the forties and early fifties. Others heard what we had, added their own flavor to it and played it back to us. We liked what they were doing and were inspired to tweak and twist it even more. There is no doubt that creativity and innovation led to many other countries contributing greatly to rock music. But Rock & Roll started here.

As American as baseball. Now that's kind of a tricky one because just like with pizza there are many different games that could be called the progenitor of baseball, many similar games from many different countries. However, the game that we all recognize today had its rules written in 1845 by a man named Alexander Cartwright. He wrote the rules for a New York City "base ball" club called the Knickerbockers

We take a lot of these phrases for granted. We just accept that x or y thing is American simply  because there is an American version of it. Or just because a few million people before us claimed that these things are American. The truth is seldom cut and dried. Its not black and white. For a lot of these things there is an American way of doing it and then there are the ways that others do it.

For example football is an American sport. It is similar to soccer, but different. Is it an evolved form of the same game? Or a different game entirely? People on the whole tend to be arrogant. They each believe that the version of a thing that they are familiar with, the one they grew up with, the one they prefer, is the right or real version. All others are wrong or fake.

Who is right and who is not?