Midwest Deception
(First published in my syndicated column, The Nature of Things)
Appearances really can be deceiving—don’t ever let anyone tell you different.
Case in point: On my drive to Chadron the other day, I was following a big duelly pickup truck. From behind, it looked as though there was no driver. No head was visible above the head rest as the monster truck rumbled along—just an empty-looking cab. Empty, except for the furry little face of the terrier reflected back to me from the mirror on the driver’s side door of the pickup. By all appearances, I swear, it looked like the dog was driving.
In the re-telling, I realize it was one of those “you had to be there” moments, but it was funny at the time.
As traffic slowed and I changed lanes for my turn, I pulled up next to the pickup to find a very small, elderly woman peering over the steering wheel with the dog perched authoritatively on her lap. Not so unusual a spectacle, after all—Granny in a duelly—not for this part of the country, anyway.
For those who might believe one of the drawbacks to living in the Midwest is our supposed “lack of culture,” I beg to differ. I endured that accusation, along with a few others, in my years on the Pacific Coast.
Fresh from the farm, one of the first jobs I found in California was with the State Parks Department as an official deputy of Parks and Recreation (an important-sounding name for someone who spends most of their day picking up trash). One rainy day, lunch break found my crew lingering in the lunchroom, hoping the curtains of torrential rain would subside. Out of boredom, I began folding my lunch sack in a crude attempt at origami.
“Winters must get pret-ty long out in Nebraska,” one co-worker commented, eyeing my creation skeptically. And others soon followed suit with other Nebraska jokes. It was all good-natured humor, but a joke is only funny so long as there’s a spark of truth to it.
Like the joke about the farmer who goes to an attorney because he wants a divorce.
The attorney said, “Do you have any grounds?”
And the farmer said, “Yep, I got 640 acres.”
“No, I mean, do you have a case?”
And the farmer said, “Nope, I got me a John Deere.”
The attorney said, “No, I mean do you have a suit?”
“Yes sir, I wear it to church ever Sun-dy.”
Then finally, exasperated, the attorney said, “Well sir, does your wife beat you up or anything?”
And the farmer said, “No sir, we both get up at 4:30, sharp. But what’s any of this got to do with me wantin’ a dee-vorce?”
Most people around here get a chuckle out of that one. Anywhere else, it can fall pretty flat. (Huh? I don’t get it.)
It may be a long drive to attend an opera, and you might have to visit the Twin Cities to see an exhibit of live nudes contorted in gravity-defying positions in the name of art, but we do have culture here—just… different culture.
It’s not that Midwestern culture is lacking in artistic creativity—far from it. It’s just that most of what’s created tends to be of a more practical nature. (We’re big on re-purposing.)
Where else can one find the Virgin Mary enshrined in an up-ended bathtub? Barn sides turned into personal billboards: “God Bless America” and, “Fence Posts, Raw Honey And Fainting Goats Sold Here.” Where else do old tires get recycled into flower planters, swings for kids, No Trespassing signs and salt block feeders?
And “Car Henge”? I rest my case.
California culture includes people driving new, always-clean cars with bumper stickers like, “Caution: Baby on Board” (like that’s gonna deter an accident), and who spend ridiculous amounts of money for topiary sculptures on perfectly manicured yards that they never set foot on.
People there used to say, “You’re from Nebraska? I drove through there once. There’s like, nothing there, man. It’s all like, flat and nothing but, like, corn for miles and miles.”
What people not from here don’t know about the Midwest is a lot.
I just smile and give my standard answer.
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
