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One of my cousins raises wheat, milo and cattle on several sections of Lane County, Kansas. When he visited last month, he talked about his work.
A lot of people think I must be bored out of my mind
when I'm out plowing,
he said.
Well, aren't you?
I asked ignorantly.
Of course not,
he explained. The tractor cab
is air-conditioned and comfortable. I've got the tape
player cranked up with some heavy metal. I look for places
that might have arrowheads or fossils, where I get out and
poke around for a while. It's a nice break.
Rolling to heavy metal while searching for fossils isn't exactly how I had thought that Kansas wheat farmers spent their workdays. He made me realize how prejudiced most of us are -- especially when it comes to making assumptions about people based on where they live.
For instance, during this presidential campaign, you often hear talk, especially from Dan Quayle, about how wholesome people in small towns are.
Whoever thinks that has never lived in a little town.
Nothing stays secret in these places. You know a great deal
more than you should about most of your neighbors: affairs,
benders, peccadilloes, arrests, addictions, etc. This
knowledge may confirm a religious belief in Original Sin,
but it does not make you think that the people you know are
devout practitioners of traditional family values. After
all, Peyton Place
was not about a large city.
You also hear how patriotic the South is. The South once
levied war against the United States, and many Southerners
remain damn proud of that rebellion. Levying war
against the United States is one constitutional definition
of treason. Hasn't anyone figured out that treason and
patriotism are mutually exclusive?
The Midwest is usually the Conservative Midwest.
Never mind that one of the most liberal U.S. senators of
modern times, George McGovern, came from South Dakota, and
another, Hubert Humphrey, hailed from Minnesota.
Go further back, and the Midwest contributed much to American radicalism: Eugene Debs, Robert La Follette, William Jennings Bryan, Sockless Jerry Simpson, Mary Ellen Lease, just to name a few. And there were scores of utopian socialist colonies sprinkled through the Midwest.
But despite past and present, in defiance of all known
facts, it remains the Conservative Midwest,
right up
there in the national lexicon with the Patriotic
South,
the Wholesome Folks of Norman Rockwell
Towns
and the stolid Kansas farmer.
Curing my prejudiced view of Kansas farmers was simple -- I talked to one. Some history and thought will demonstrate the idiocy of other geographic stereotypes. But few people apparently bother, and so we have a political geography that bears no resemblance to the truth.
This probably explains something, but I can't figure out what. Instead, I keep day-dreaming about how much fun it would be to be out plowing a Kansas field.
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