You can tell Midwesterners from other folks by the way they poke public fun at the Midwest. Iowa recently held a contest to find a state license-plate slogan, and the entry generating the most attention was “Iowa: Gateway to Nebraska.” North Dakota has erected a series of billboards along its highways, among them “Stay in North Dakota: Minnesota’s Closed” and “Stay in North Dakota: Custer Was Healthy When He Left.” Wall Drug signs, advertising the tiny South Dakota Badlands tourist meccas, stretch the length of red London double-decker buses.

The national nightly news carries no evidence of similar self-effacement in other parts of the country. Still, this is our public amusement (we are easily, desperately amused; bear in mind our endless winters). In private, each Midwesterner, if he considers himself a Midwesterner, is an awkward, taciturn immigrant, fresh off the ox-cart, determined to contend successfully with landscape and weather. Our pride has sweat behind it, although that sweat may simply be part of our childhood or racial memory (from our parents’ or grandparents’ stories) or of the collective unconscious (if we came here from Tijuana or the Bronx). The sweat of those who came before, and those who labor still, is passed on with the land. (Now that’s a conservative thought.)

 

On the other hand, while outsiders may snicker at us, Boston matrons looking for reliable live-in nannies advertise in the Rockford Register-Star and the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Pollsters turn to Omaha and Des Moines to learn who the next President will probably be. Radio announcers across the country try to “imitate” speech sound-patterns that don’t exist but are called “Midwestern.” Why?

I have no proof, but I think it might be the wind. It grazes over the Rockies before rampaging like a great ghostherd of buffalo across the plains, slowing over Iowa, nearly docile a state or two farther on. In between, there is literally nothing to stop it, and the days it lets up during a year, especially in the northernmost states, can be counted on the fingers of two hands. Through bone-shattering cold, blinding heat, and those subtle, brief, glorious, intermediate moments jokingly called “spring” and “fall” by the people who live here, the merciless wind scours from us most of what is unnecessary. (Another sure sign that someone is a Midwesterner is that he’ll bring up the weather when you’re not expecting it. He may gripe or affect resignation, but by God you can tell he enjoys matching wits with drought and blizzard!)

Mostly, though, Midwesterners are not pushy about the things they’d like to say. Oh, occasionally some Midwestern politician will rise to fame in the U.S. House or Senate, but by then, of course, he’s so far gone that he’s useless to us. And it’s not that we’d all like to say the same things; there is possibly more diversity in the Midwest than on either coast, where fashion carries a bigger stick than the average person’s independence of thought can easily withstand. It’s just that it’s very hard to claim fame or make your mark on the world in the Midwest, even—hold your hate mail—in Chicago or Kansas City or Minneapolis/St. Paul. Tom Brokaw can’t even spell them. Johnny Carson, Herbert Hoover, Jessica Lange, Walter Mondale, Peggy Lee—they all had to go somewhere else from here to make good. Midwesterners understand this fact of life and have learned not to make scenes: no one will be watching.

But some scenes are worth making, and when a national magazine like Chronicles of Culture, proudly situated in the Midwest, offers space so that these very nice folks settin’ out here on the steppe can have their day, that magazine’s pioneering spirit should not go unrewarded. A lifelong Midwesterner, I want those unfortunate enough to live elsewhere to understand, finally, what beats here in the heartland. We have our share of crazies (just fewer per square mile), but we are also a rich repository of what has always been best about this country: love of hard work; respect for human institutions; liberal acceptance of human foolishness and frailty, tempered with a stubborn Old World view of God, responsibility, and sin; and appreciation of the smallest good things in life. Fads take about two years to get here from their coastal hatcheries, and by then they’re nearly harmless. We like what we are and aim to stay that way—there is no regional angst to speak of—and that seems worth trying to illustrate.

My impudence in taking this task upon myself embarrasses me, until I remember that in my impudence I’m in pretty classy company with other writers from other regions over the centuries. I intend to examine many places and phenomena, and one of those places will be Plainfield (in Plainfield County), population, oh, let’s say 60,000, state capital, college town, where common sense is at least trying to prevail.

In case you’re not convinced yet: Zero Population Growth recently did a study of the most- and least-stressful U.S. cities, taking into account 11 criteria, including violent crime, individual and community economics, education, and pollution. Fargo, North Dakota, was found to be the least stressful city in the nation. (The group gave high points for a low birthrate, naturally, but the AP out of Washington said the Fargo climate, “marked by long and bitterly cold winters, was not taken into account.” When is someone going to investigate the disproportionate number of October births in Fargo?) Nine of the 13 cities ranked as worst were in California, Florida, and New Jersey, and ZPG found that the most stressful city in the country is Miami. What did I tell you? Those people could use some of what we in the Midwest call “weather.”