Ah, the Midwest. The enduring heartland, the center of our collective consciousness, the bowels of western civilization. This amorphous blob of space, plopped down in the middle of our country like an obese man confined to a living room couch, has come to represent different things to so many different people.
Despite being afflicted with a perpetual wanderlust, my sojourns to this vast region have been limited. Until two years ago, I had never even set foot in any central state beyond airport layovers and mindless reruns of "Highway to Heaven" (an '80s TV drama that told the gripping tale of an angel and a cop driving around the country doing the blessed Lord's bidding).
Then I made my inaugural trip to northeastern Wisconsin and was immediately awakened to the true majesty of the land and people that inhabit it. The same could easily happen to even the staunchest sea-boarder. Once you go flat, you never go back.
Since then I have come to know the Midwest like a second home. I have swam in the cool, green-tinted waters of Lake Michigan, avoided rapidly funneling gusts of wind outside of Omaha and eaten unnecessary second helpings of greasy Chinese buffet food in Iowa. Having just returned from a friend's wedding in Indiana, I can proudly say that I have driven through at least half the central states, sometimes even stopping for food or gas or the occasional Pony Express monument, all of which categorically make me the leading academic scholar on the region, its history and its inhabitants. I now present you with the major findings from my travels, in the hope that they might stimulate the public to grow to appreciate the oft-misunderstood Hoosiers, Okies and Cornhuskers of the world (or at least give them someone to blame if the upcoming elections go horribly wrong again).
While most people think of it as being visually uninteresting, thousands of millennia ago the area now known as the Midwest was once covered by mountains and pristine, glacier-fed lakes. Then the despotic herds of Mongol Buffalo came and ravaged the land, eroding the hills and slurping up all the water and natural resources to be found. When encountering this, the first brave settlers to the region (mainly the ones too feeble or lazy to keep trudging along through cold and starvation to the West) sought revenge against these oppressors of the Earth and justly killed them all, as well as their allies, the equally autocratic Native Americans. This was the first ever Axis of Evil, and its glorious destruction still provides us with a basis for our international policy.
This is hardly the only contribution to emerge from the Midwest. There have been scientific breakthroughs as well. Before the last buffalo was smothered and used for luxury wagon seats, prairie scientists spliced its DNA with that of a horse. The result was a llama, and with its useless creation came the new discipline of genetic engineering. Llamas are still farmed extensively throughout the region for their saliva and are often shown like horses in equestrian type events that, despite their affiliation with the ever wholesome 4-H, inevitably break down into ugly llama melees full of spitting and head-butting.
The gastronomy of the area shouldn't be overlooked either. First and foremost, this is casserole country. If you can stick it in a pan, put something crunchy on top and bake it, you'll certainly find it immersed in the cheesy center of a 'role. When it's time to eat out, the place to be for fine dining is Fazoli's, an Italian fast food chain serving up authentic dishes like Pizza Baked Spaghetti and Six Layer Lasagna as only a Neapolitan could. For late night snacks, Steak and Shake's chili-splattered arms are always open, although you are on your own to find the post-cheese fry toilet.
Even with all these flashy accomplishments and accolades, the true beauty of the Midwest lies in its population. The folks there are genuinely sweet, utterly kind and completely courteous. Experts suppose this is because Midwesterners just assume everyone living around them is Christian, so they have no reason not to get along with each other. But I believe it's the little patchwork quilts hanging all over the Midwest, the ones with hopelessly cheerful quotations extolling the virtues of weird things like love, friendship and family. Like I always say, home is where the heartland is.
