I read someplace, a long time ago, that this phrase was once used by former General and President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in describing who an American was.

Ike is purported to have said something along the line that: “Americans are people who enjoy having a barbecue in their own backyard.”

It sounds a bit “hoaky,” but I can envision him saying it, and it really does say a lot about who we are.

We like our free time and are good at having fun doing it. Whether you are at a ball game, out on your boat on the lake, or sitting down in the backyard having a barbecue–Americans like to enjoy themselves.

It also carries the story that we live in a country where we can enjoy ourselves. The government doesn’t tell us that we have to have a barbecue…that is our decision. We like our freedom and enjoy exercising it.

The idea of having our “own” backyard also helps define who we are. Owning a home or having a place that we call “home” is part of the American dream.

We like to attend parades and patriotic events, like fireworks on the 4th of July, but we put family and friends on even a higher plane–so, “let’s have a barbecue in the backyard and invite some friends over!”

We are lucky in that our front yard (which is really our “back yard,”) faces the lake. The other night we were cooking out, corn-hole and ladder ball were being played on the lawn, a couple of kids were throwing a football, the sun was setting over the lake and the old man in the group, me, was cooking at the grill observing it all.

How does it get any better than that?!

I think that Eisenhower may have had a good thought going when he talked about having “a barbecue in the backyard.”

He also understood the importance of home when he was commanding American troops in Europe during the Second World War. He was giving orders that would take many of those young American boys to their graves.

He knew that they loved their country. He also knew that what motivated them most was getting the war over so that they could get back home…to that barbecue in the backyard.

Sometimes, it is the simplest things in life that can be the most motivating. Ike didn’t need to preach about what “home” meant to those troops…they already knew that.

And, a big part of Eisenhower’s own story is that had grown up in a small town in Kansas where he had been given the freedom to have a barbecue at his home, in his own backyard.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident