| Len's uncle
Brainwashed in America
I was on the train, on my way to Cincinnati, Ohio. While we travelled, it was during daytime, I looked out of the window, interested in looking at the landscape, looking at nature, looking at the homes of America, various farms. And it was very interesting, very attractive. And what I saw on the way, though, just somehow even amazing, I couldn’t understand.
I saw big posters, practically about every two or three or five miles, in great big words. It said, “Pillsbury Flour. Eventually, why not now?” So, as I said, I saw it again and again and again, and I asked the conductor what it was. I said, “What is it that they keep on repeating. It must be something very important. He tells me it is customary here in America tha people advertise their wares or their merchandise, or whatever they have. And this is only flour. He told me, “These people make flour.” He told me, “Now,” he says, “you eat brod, you eat bread, so this is what they make bread from. And these people are very wealthy,” he told me, “and they advertise it.”
And what brainwashing meant I understood later, because for years and years I cared only for Pillsbury’s flour. Just like later on, it happened in Cincinnati, when I tasted a certain kind of an ice cream and it became a habit with me of buying that same ice cream.
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