Why
time began on Memorial Day (or, how I plan to make you care about Hannibal,
Missouri)
How a ‘69 Chevy can make a kid feel like John Steinbeck
What you do when it’s 55 below zero and you live in the most maligned town in America
Why I learned to read at age 23
What I have in common with a 46-year-old, third-shift machinist
How I know God exhales over the Idaho sky
Where my heart skipped a beat: in the desert
How dipping my feet in Lake Erie scared me back to the sixth grade
What my oldest chum and my first love taught me about fashion and friendship
What mushroom soup says about my independence
Why a computer geek
likes to pump his water from a well
A horse is a horse, but can a barn make a Hoosier?
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Buy a beat-up pickup, feel like John Steinbeck. |
Downstate Illinois, as those of you who have lived here will know, is a place entirely different from Chicago. Politically, more than 85 percent of the state’s counties delivered for George W. Bush in November, yet Al Gore carried the electors by winning Chicago and its collar counties. And while few would argue that a pragmatic, puritanical social conservatism prevails in much of the state, I believe those feelings stem as much from anti-Chicagoism as they do from political, economic or religious values.
En route to Springfield, then,
I was feeling hungry. Even on the interstate there aren’t many towns
in which to stop, so after some time I decided the next exit, no matter
where it was, would have to do. It was Paw Paw, which gave me good cheer:
Six years ago, two high school friends and I set out on our bicycles to
conquer the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which winds along the nearly-200-mile
length of the Potomac River. There was all manner of conflict and cooperation
from folks in sleepy Civil War-era river-valley towns along the way, but
no place had charmed us like Paw Paw, W.Va. Accompanied by those memories,
I cruised into this Paw Paw, with a population, like its West Virginia
sister, of several hundred.
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Photo gallery: Dyersville, Iowa |
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Photo gallery: Iowa City, Iowa |
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Photo gallery: LaSalle-Peru, Illinois |
After a stop at the filling
station (there is only one) and the hardware store (one), I crossed the
street to root around at a variety store. Inside, I found myself knee-deep
in a life-sized tackle box full of yo-yos, matchbooks, Boy Scout pins,
Dr. Pepper bottles, Nancy Drew mysteries and color photos of Tonto and
the Lone Ranger. I could have lost myself forever, brushing past the memories
of my own childhood — but more than that, I was a voyeur into so
many other ordinary lives. Bureaus and chairs and lamps that recalled
decades past... Life magazines and vinyl LPs people listened to in their
sitting rooms... that place was anyone’s past. I wonder how many
hours of playtime were attached to all the nick-nacks. A hundred years,
I suppose.
Next door, damn near every
man, woman and child in Paw Paw was crammed into the café (only
one of those, too). Women (smoking) quietly socialized in the back and
maintained a sort of pseudo-daycare, while the men (gambling on cards
and gently ribbing at each other) ordered beer after beer. The muffled
droning of conversation and the occasional flat, empty ding of silverware-against-plate
hung in the air along with a thin veneer of smoke. Of course, as an outsider,
I felt out of place. But I suppose the whole scene was all right, mostly.
I mean, these weren’t the kind of career women I’d hope my wife
to be, or perhaps the political sophisticates I seek as my pals, but they
seemed to all be having a time of it there in Paw Paw. They were friends,
they were families and they were together.
PAW PAW IS THE
KIND of place we’ve all run into. We don’t fit in,
of course — but we want to. And why? What is it about Paw Paw, Illinois,
that we want in our lives? I think I have an idea: It’s simplicity.
We’re over-TV’d, we’re over-phoned, we’re over-fed
and we’re over-stimulated at work and at play. And something about
Main Street USA attracts us because it’s an escape to a simpler time,
a time when Dr. Pepper satisfied our cravings, when our heroes were as
reliable as the Lone Ranger and when Nancy Drew had all the uncertainty
well in-hand.
Since I began my job 16 months ago, I have spent a grand total of six
weekends in Rockford. That’s more than a year now, and only about
a month’s worth of weekends at home! Over all those weekends on the
road, I have come to pass through big cities and small towns and everything
in between. But every seven days, almost entirely without fail, I have
felt the exhilaration of travel, of eavesdropping on everyday lives, of
conducting cultural anthropology everywhere I go.
So this summer I have taken to the open roads in quest of the real Midwest.
I have bought a vintage pickup truck, read Travels With Charlie,
and, by any objective account, completely lost my mind. Under 350 cc’s
of V8 power, I have more-or-less canvassed the Midwest, seeking nothing
but the ordinary.
So in the back of my truck (though I don’t have a dog), I have ambled
my way from strawberry festival to year-round haunted house to cock fight
to biggest-ball-of-string. The big cities and conventional tourist attractions
are less fun — everyone knows about Jazz Fest in Grant Park or Oktoberfest
in Milwaukee. But have they been to the yearly Mark Twain festival in
Hannibal, Missouri? I will yet take them there. And if I can’t show
friends the the possibilities by writing about these adventures, at the
very least I’ll liberate myself by moving forward into the fall emulating
the likes of John Steinbeck or Charles Kuralt.
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most maligned town in America