I heard this on NPR this weekend and fell in love.
If you live life in the middle and not on the edge
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
If a big Saturday means clipping the hedge
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
If you shop at Sears, drink a lot of iced tea
You like to dance the polka and watch TV
Well, then the jury is in, and the critics agree
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
Hopelessly Midwestern – corn fed boys and girls
Hopelessly Midwestern – square pegs in this big round world
Well, you can go from seas to shining sea
But right in the middle is the place to be
And if you like it like that, you’re a lot like me –
Hopelessly Midwestern
Now if you’re favorite stretch of highway is flat & straight
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
And if you still think sushi looks a lot like bait
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
You like your potatoes mashed and your chicken fried
Your green beans boiled and your apples pied
And home sweet home is a double-wide
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
Hopelessly Midwestern – corn fed boys and girls
Hopelessly Midwestern – square pegs in this big round world
Well you can go from seas to shining sea
But right in the middle is the place to be
And if you like it like that, you’re a lot like me –
Hopelessly Midwestern
You know, I travel all over the country in my line of work – singing songs and playing the guitar. Wherever I go I seem to find Midwesterners in the audience. I guess it’s the great Midwestern Diaspora.
Midwesterners all over the continent, taking with them their recipes for green bean casserole made with Campbell’s mushroom soup and Durkee fried onions – yeah, straight from the can. And for dessert – lime Jello mold – the kind with the little marshmallows and the pineapple chunks.
Now you can laugh at the Midwest all you want – we can take it. We’re a hardy breed. But there is a lot to be said for the flatlands in the middle of America – your so-called “fly over” country. Sure the weather’s tough and the winters are hard and the summers are harder. But, hey, we never have hurricanes. No tsunamis, volcanoes, or earthquakes to speak of. And with the thousands of miles of beachfront property in Michigan alone, not one shark attack. Nary a one.
So I sing this song wherever I go, for all the displaced misplaced Midwesterners and all those Midwestern wannabes out there. But you know sometimes I am taken aback.
I remember singing this song a few years ago in California. A festival in Mendocino County. Beautiful summer day out there among the giant redwoods and the lush vineyards, you know. I sang this song along with many others, and when my set was over, a young woman, I guess what you’d call a classic “California girl” came up to me. Beautiful young woman all decked out in tye dye – orange and purple swirls from head to foot. She had long blonde hair and those big blue kaleidoscope eyes.
And she looked up at me and said – “Well, I know Western. But what’s MID western?” Like it was the next big thing or somethin’ and she wanted to get in on it.
I said, “Well, that just means you are from – or of – one of the Midwestern states.”
And that didn’t mean anything to her at all.
So I said –“Well. You know, if like you were from Ohio. Or Indiana. Illinois. Michigan, Wisconsin. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri – Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota. The Midwest.”
And she said, “Wow, man! Do you know all the capitals, too?”
You know, this is a true story. And it was right then and there that I realized just how Midwestern I really was. Because I DID know all the capitals. But I didn’t go all the way to Mendocino County California just to show off my education.
Now, if Carl Sandburg is your kind of poet
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
And if you have an accent but you don’t know it
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
You got at least three Uncles named Jim or Bob
You love your home and you love your job
And “growin’ your own” means corn on the cob
You’re hopelessly Midwestern
Hopelessly Midwestern – corn fed boys and girls
Hopelessly Midwestern – square pegs in this big round world
Well you can go from seas to shining sea
But right in the middle is the place to be
And if you like it like that, you’re a lot like me
Hopelessly Midwestern
Hopelessly, impossibly, irreparably Midwestern. - Joel Mabus
