Adjectives usually precede and modify nouns where they can influence our perspective, our behavior and ultimately our way of life, especially if we are American.

When I started studying history in second grade, I was fascinated by the American melting pot analogy. So I set out to study it outside of school.

My quest for people's nationality was rebuffed by the proud reply "I am American."

There was no adjective to identify their genetic origin. I expected replies like "Scotch American," Swedish or even Hungarian. Even at 7, I understood why no one would say they were German, Italian or Japanese American. We were at war with the Axis powers, but why was everyone I met giving me the same answer? Recommendations by me based upon their skin color, accent or last name were not acknowledged. What I got was a more emphatic "I am an American!"

Even a local cobbler, who I often heard tell his customers that when he saved enough he would return to the "old country," boasted of being American.

Often I received a lecture, explaining that though their parents may have came from Ireland or Poland, they were American and proud of it. They were not Irish or Polish in their minds.

It made me proud, too, to see the American melting pot I was learning about in school, work.

In my mind's eye, the pot was producing a castle made of enduring material. Has that pot now cooled? Is America becoming a pile of unmortared rocks? Made up of individual composition where adjectives now are more important than the noun?

I believe it was this pride in being an unhyphenated American and belief in what America stood for on the idealistic level that enabled the U.S. to win World War II and become a great nation.

Only Americans can keep it so.

Herbert Porter

Bradley Beach