Get Herald RSSDuring spring break, we were driving through Crump, Tenn., and it was nearly lunchtime. There were five hungry people in the car, so when we saw an enormous, hand-painted, red-white-and-blue sign pointing toward a restaurant called United Steaks of America, we went for it like Hansel and Gretel for the gingerbread house. What awaited us was essentially a living diorama of the American "frontier capitalist" spirit.
United Steaks of America turned out to be more than a cheesesteak joint. It was a combination cheesesteak joint, tattoo parlor and custom chopper shop, all connected not only by a common workspace but by an umbrella organization called the First United Cycle Kompany. We were promptly greeted with thundering enthusiasm not by a coarse redneck or a polite southern charmer, but rather a fast-talking Philadelphian of Portugese extraction who came off as an amalgamation of Tony Robbins and Dustin Hoffman's character in "Midnight Cowboy."
Let's call him "Carlos." Carlos, who turned out to be the president of the United Steaks of America, didn't just take our orders and give us all vigorous "slap me some skin brother" high-fives, although he did do both of those things. He also launched into a detailed discussion about his life and times, without any prompting. And after establishing credibility by showing us an intimate camera-phone picture of his girlfriend, he sermonized sincerely about how we, too, might achieve personal and financial fulfillment through his particular strain of positive psychology. He was the embodiment of several American cultural archetypes: the immigrant, the confidence man, the traveling salesman, the success-turned-failure-turned-success and the irrepressible capitalist. He was one of the most surreal characters I have ever come across.
He showed us local newspaper clippings about how he prevailed against an influential local pastor who tried to get the town council to deny him a beer-selling license. (He then made a point of noting that he does not personally drink or do any type of drug despite frequent assumptions to the contrary - instead, he is motivated solely by money and females.) He explained how, while setting up the business in November, he struck shrewd bargains for the tiles on the floor, the paint on the walls and the wood on the deck. He originally wanted to motorize his massive roadside sign, so that it would rotate on its pole, but that would have been too expensive. So instead, he mounted it using a ball bearing, and now claims that it is the largest wind vane in Tennessee. I seriously doubt there is a larger one.
Don't get the idea that we were humoring him. He had us all rapt. His life story, however polished and mythologized, is a saga of perseverance and bootstrap resolve. And his store, however harebrained, is an unlikely success. It undoubtedly owes its fortunes to Carlos' concentrated blend of determination, confidence and snake oil: Any proprietor with such a prodigious ability to etch himself into customers' minds is bound to win repeat customers. Midway through a stump speech on his general attitude towards life, he pointed out the acronym formed by his First United Cycle Kompany, which apparently no one in this Bible Belt town has yet noticed.
Carlos fits these swashbuckling American archetypes because he left the places of his origin, where fortune turned against him, and exported his uncompromised, commoditized culture to the "frontier" of rural Tennessee. A focused individualist, he lives in his store to keep overhead costs minimal. His ambition is boundless - he says he is opening four more locations. He is an utterly unhumble self-promoter with the mannerisms of a motivational speaker.
After we finished our sandwiches, he resorted to a staple maneuver for people infected with the spirit of freewheeling capitalism: He asked us what our life goals were and how we planned on accomplishing them. He listened and nodded gravely, wishing us all the best. Then, he gathered us around in a hushed huddle and told us he had a surefire plan for us to get rich. He said he was sharing it because he liked us, and was too busy to do it himself. Naturally, I can't tell you exactly what it is, because I might need some money after graduation. Suffice it to say that it's a coffee-table book that would be easy to produce. If I described it to you, you would think it was either the stupidest or the greatest idea you have ever heard, depending entirely on my tone of voice.
Later, as we were driving off, I started thinking about the credit crisis. What is a credit crisis, semantically and philosophically, and what causes one? Does the idealized archetype of the ultra-confident American entrepreneur perhaps exacerbate credit crises? Might their be some hubris in our cultural DNA that causes us to link our financial fortunes to card-houses?
Then I thought of the tiny community of Crump, Tennessee, with its fiery clerics, its indifferent clientele and its irrepressible naked-emperor impresario. And I realized that I had found America.
Matt Prewitt '08 is a fiery cleric
