In praise of the Midwest

And other stray thoughts from a vacationing me

Each morning I wake up and go to the beach¹, without crowds or sticky salt water. After a short swim, because I’m not much of a beach person, I leave for a ten mile walk on small shaded roads through forests and fields. Then in the afternoon I read in the McDonald’s, or in a park, or the library, and then at night I either go to a dive bar (I’ve got five excellent choices where I can get twenty five ounce drafts for five or less), or one of the six craft beer places nearby.

I’ve been resting for the last ten days before my long trip to Australia, and doing it in the Midwest — Northern Indiana, Michigan City to be exact — because it might be my favorite part of the US. It is certainly the most underrated one. I’ve written before about why I like the Midwest, so since I’m relaxing, I’ll quote myself,

I keep coming back to the Midwest because there is a relaxed contentment here that I find refreshing. The American Dream is largely working here again for both the front-row and back-row, after a rough couple of decades, at least relative to the rest of the U.S. I saw this in Michigan City, in South Chicago, in Duluth, and points in between.

There are respected jobs in the Midwest for the front-row who chose to stay, as well as the back-row—all of which you can get without long resumes built on lots of schooling and accumulated debt, and that makes all the difference. Housing is also far more affordable, and housing is probably the single biggest economic factor in the American Dream. You can’t believe in America if you can’t afford a ranch home with a two-car garage.

The result is a vibe here that is especially refreshing because of the contrast to the cynicism I find in a lot of the Northeast, where housing is less affordable and jobs less fulfilling for those not in the front-row.

The type of work available is important. Manufacturing is still a major employer in the Midwest and still respected. People build tangible things, and others understand and appreciate that, and so there is a dignity in that type of work here that is missing from places where front-row jobs dominate.

People here have careers that tether them to physical reality, which means a culture (thick and thin) can only drift so far. You can only get so many fancy (and absurd) notions about you, and your place in the world, and what it means to be happy, if you have one foot firmly on the earth.

The nasty and demeaning version of this is saying simple people need simple jobs, but that is front-row cope. Everyone, regardless of abilities and aspirations, is better served by being grounded, and the further you remove yourself from the consequences of your actions, the more likely you are to become supercilious, arrogant, and alone, and few escape that life without eventually crashing hard.

I’ve spent so much of my prior years writing about the decline of the American Dream, that my time here in the Midwest has been especially refreshing. It gives me hope that we’ve bottomed out and I can see the path forward—one where place is still a capital-G Good for most Americans, and a refined version of the American Dream unifies the country again. A just-industrialized-enough post-industrial America, where our shared thick culture binds us together.

Where people of all educational levels can find dignity in work, meaning in community, and home in the place where they were born. The Midwest shows it’s possible to recover. Let’s hope the rest of America catches up.

What strikes me this trip is besides being polite, people here are not performative. They aren’t navel-gazing self-aware, playing up a role, a stereotype they saw online, like Southerners and Hillbillies more and more do, as social media osmosis has made everyone influencer aligned. I’m not even sure what the Midwest stereotype is, beyond being polite and naively sincere, which is not really something you can play up.

There is no cloyingly saccharine politeness here, no nosy time-wasting grilling, rather it is a genuine hold the door, say hello, and then move on politeness, that only goes deeper if both want it, or if you are clearly in need of help.

Between jobs that ground them, and with few aspirations to act a part, people here are consequently comfortable in their own skin, and that makes for a very relaxing time. I’ve spent more evenings here in dive bars than I want to admit, and I’ve never yet seen anything close to a fight. No spats, no arguments over anything more intense than sports, and that is always done with humor².

That lack of confrontation extends to politics, and while this part of Northern Indiana might have the greatest density of US flags, I’ve seen no political signs, not from either side. Whatever people’s views on elections, they largely keep them to themselves, a marked contrast to the South, where its famous politeness ends when elections begin, and especially the North East, where politics is morality.

Labeling a people as “real” is abused to a point of meaninglessness, but if it is to have any value, it’s about a genuineness divorced from promotion, and bounded by proximity to the logistical necessities of life, and by that measure, the Midwest is the most “real” place in America, and why I would suggest to any foreigner wanting to “see the real America” they should focus on the Midwest first. It’s not that they are more American than any other region, but that you can view America more easily, more inexpensively, and comfortably.

Life here in the Midwest is very good, at the material and spiritual level, and I’m surprised more people haven’t figured that out. Maybe it’s the harsh winters, maybe the stigma of the de-industrialized past, but whatever the reason, it still feels as if moving to the Midwest, or staying here for your life, is seen as consolation prize, a lesser thing that you have to explain. That is silly, because as I keep discovering, it’s a great place to build a fulfilling life, with good jobs, cities with a plethora of the diversions citizens now expect, while not being too taxing, or stressful, and so I would bet on its image rebounding. And, as I’m embarrassed to say I only just realized, it also has great beaches!

I’ve got the best job, and all you readers are the reason, and I’m thankful for that, but there are times when I want to go for a walk without thinking about what I can take away from it, can sit in a bar and talk with whoever without thinking “wonder what I can write about this?” This last ten days have been like that, and I’ve kept my camera in my backpack, and tried to empty my mind of looking for content. To be part of the Midwest, down to the attitude of being happy to exist, without constantly trying to find the self promotion angle.

So, in that vein, I’ll end this short essay here, because Culver’s is about to open, and I want a ButterBurger and Concrete mixer. If you know me, you know how hard it is to stop me from going to McDonald’s, and Culver’s has accomplished that. Well, at least for dinner.

---

Why is it all the same?

There is a nagging feeling you can get when you travel, that it is all the same. It’s an especially depressing thing for someone who travels as much as me to believe. It’s not that just buildings start looking alike, that downtowns take on the same form, but landscape as well. Everything becomes one, and you start to think of yourself as a widget moving along a conveyor belt, jostled along from factory to factory.

I get it often, especially when I’m jet-lagged, on a bus heading from an airport, after the first few moments of excitement of being somewhere new evaporates, and look out the window, at the side of the road and see the same trees, the same fields of pines, or green overgrowth, the strip along the road cluttered with the same litter, the guardrails of the same material, with the same dingy dirt color to them, their pylons stuck in the same concrete, the cars around you doing the same long commute, or pulling the same logistics of life.

It’s an insidious thought to have as a travel writer, because there’s no point in putting yourself through the maze of flying twenty-seven hours to not find enchantment.

Yet, while I do have these thoughts more often than I would like to admit, they always drift away because I eventually meet people, get out among the crowds, and am reminded that culture isn’t physical — that’s only the backdrop — but it’s social.

This vacation I’ve been reading “The Adventures of Augie March”, by Saul Bellow, which seemed appropriate to the Midwest, a “great American novel” set in Chicago. I’ve enjoyed it, despite its often unnecessarily opaque prose, that serves little purpose, especially since he doesn’t have the lyricism of Melville.

Then I found this excerpt, where the hero (Augie) is riding around Chicago on the elevated, and becomes depressed by the uniformity, the sameness of everything (highlights mine),

“so going around the city on the spidery cars, rides lasting hours, made you stupid as a stove-side cat because of the closeness inside; and there was something fuddling besides in the mass piled up of uniform things, the likeness of small parts, the type of newspaper columns and the bricks of buildings. To sit and be trundled, while you see: there’s a danger in that of being a bobbin for endless thread or bolt for yard goods; if there’s not much purpose anyway in the ride. And if there’s some amount of sun in the dusty weep marks of the window, it can be even worse for the brain than those iron-deep clouds, just plain brutal and not mitigated. There haven’t been civilizations without cities. But what about cities without civilizations? An inhuman thing, if possible, to have so many people together who beget nothing on one another. No, but it is not possible, and the dreary begets its own fire, and so this never happens.”

Again, Bellow is in my view unnecessarily complex, but he’s right here. Yes, everything does look the same, a result that the physical world imposes on us (there are only so many ways to make a working life), but that dreariness “begets its own fire” because it’s impossible for humans to not be social, to not create something in, or with others.

You cannot have cities without civilizations, or at least without enchantments. Even in my worst trips (Phoenix, Dakar) I’ve found plenty of beauty, the sublime, and humor.

It’s now been about ten years since I wrote Dignity, and someone asked me what about it I would update now, and it’s the lack of humor in the book. Even in the most dire circumstances people still laugh, and make others laugh. It might be dark humor, but it is humor.

I’ve speculated before about why Anthony Bourdain killed himself, and it’s entirely speculation, but there is something about the setting that’s so familiar for me. A hotel room, another stop in endless wanderings that are supposed to be magical, but at some point you have begun to find oppressive. If you let that happen to yourself, and you don’t stop (and you should stop at that point), then in Bellow’s words, you have become a “bobbin for endless thread”, spinning around the globe as a vehicle for fame/fortune/(insert another external good), while stuck in the same mental place.

The antidote I’ve found is to become a regular at an unremarkable place. An Izakaya you choose randomly, an old mans bar, a restaurant without hype — and after a few days you will see that while every place might look the same, at least materially, each has its own unique warmth, its own sense of place, and its own culture.

As I wrote before,

That’s one of my biggest travel tips — don’t stress too much about trying to maximize your experience. Give yourself room to let things develop naturally, and don’t feel you’re missing out if you fall into a rut. If you really like a restaurant, bar, or cafe, then go back!

When I look back on past trips, what I remember most are those moments that happened serendipitously, and you can maximize serendipity — primarily by walking a lot, with a healthy curiosity, which allows you to experience a city on all levels.

---

My upcoming Australia trip

Only Kangaroo I saw

I leave for Australia this Sunday,³ where I will be for five weeks, and hopefully this time I will see a Kangaroo. Last year, in five weeks, I didn’t manage to see a single one, not even during a twenty-seven hour bus ride from Townsville to Alice Springs. Dead or alive.

I arrive in Perth on Tuesday, where I will be for a week, before I’ll attempt to set off to Darwin via buses (and a single flight). Below is my current itinerary, although I can’t be certain I will be able to pull it off.

Bus to Newman (Leaves Tuesday 10 pm, arrives Wednesday 2 pm)

Fly to Port Hedland (Friday 12 pm flight, arrive 1 pm, then leave again at midnight)

Bus to Broome (get on at midnight Friday, arrive Saturday morning),

Bus to Kununurra (get on 6 am Tuesday, arrive 7 pm Tuesday)

Bus to Darwin (get on at 8 pm Thursday, arrive 8 am Friday)

Bus to Alice Springs (every week day, leave at 10 am, get in 7 am next day)

Then, somehow, make it to Sydney where I will spend the last several days

As usual, if you are around, please reach out, and we can go for a walk together, or just chat over a pint.

Until next week, be good!

1. Lake Michigan. I grew up in Florida, with Gulf coast beaches, and while they are some of the best in the world, I have to say, the beaches of the great lakes are vastly under-rated. I used to feel sorry for Midwesterners so far away from the ocean, but they have it figured out. They have their own ocean, but one without that gross sticky salt water.

I‘ve written about it many times before, but the US is so phenomenally naturally gifted. Smack dab in the middle of this huge continent that has every resource you might need, with plains for grain and herds, is this network of lakes, so large, so interconnected, that you might call them great, and that you can travel on, with only a few canals, shipping stuff from Duluth/Chicago/Detroit to the Atlantic, or to New Orleans and the Gulf.

Then, like another perk thrown in because why not, we have bolted on to the west coast our own little Mediterranean climate, to grow grapes, nuts, fruits, and other wonderful things.

2. When I was driving across the US in 1988 with my now wife, then girlfriend, we pulled over to spend the night in Elkhart Indiana. As we were sitting at a stop light, our windows rolled down, a beat up car pulls up next to us with about eight teen boys, smoking, giggling, radio blaring. One of them looked over at me, and yelled, “Hey goofy. Why you look so goofy”, before speeding away laughing as the light turned green. That’s about the height of Midwestern mean.

3. I’ve done some long flights, but this one is going to be epic. Six hours to LA, then five hour layover, then sixteen hours to Sydney, then another five hour layover, before my six hour flight to Perth, before whatever it takes to get through customs, into the city.

Given I rarely sleep on planes, I’m going to need a lot of good content to pass that time. Thankfully, I got the rest of Augie March to read, and I’ve downloaded season three of Detectorists. Other suggestions for good TV series appreciated.