I recently wrote to a correspondent who lives in the Bay Area that I am a Midwesterner by temperament.  He wrote back asking what that means, and “how to recognize one.”

That set me back a notch, because I realized I couldn’t define my terms; I couldn’t put into words just what it means to feel like a Midwesterner.  So I have been surveying friends who have lived both here and elsewhere, and I think I now have some insights:

Midwesterners are the base of the pyramid, the rock-solid foundation that holds steady in times of volatility. 

We are the original back-to-the-basics folks, and we don’t much hold with some of that foolishness out there.

We are exasperatingly provincial.

While few of us work the land any more, even those of us living in the cities are seldom more than one degree of separation from those who do.  Big-city dwellers near the coasts may know where there is a sheep farm to see lambs in the spring, or a pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins in the fall, but I know the sheep farmer and the pumpkin patch owner by name.

Whatever frivolous trends may show up far east and west of us, you can be sure that by the time it gets here it will be passé wherever it originated, and whatever version of it we choose to adopt will be pretty tame.  After all, we’re not going to toss it out just because some durn-fool designer says it’s no longer fashionable.

Visiting family on the west coast a year or two ago, I was told that, no matter what my age or my weight, out there I would be expected to wear form-fitting clothes; and, if I insisted on wearing overblouses that loosely cover my stomach and my rear end, everyone who looked at me would know I was from Kansas.  It was not said unkindly, but I wish I had spoken up and said that I don’t consider being obviously from Kansas a bad thing.

The fact is, around here you’re expected to know when you shouldn’t dress like that any more.  You’re expected to be aware, when the combination of your age and weight has passed some critical point, that it’s time to cover up a little more.  If I wore form-fitting clothes around here, people would ask each other if I had looked in the mirror before I walked out the door.  And my good friends would ask me if I were okay.

So in answer to your question, my more sophisticated friend, you can spot a Midwesterner because she’ll be wearing Sarah Palin glasses long after Sarah herself has quit wearing them, modest clothing if she’s no longer a youngster, and may have just a slight scent of pumpkin patch about her.

But, I guarantee you, you can depend on her.

Posted by Sharon under Observations | No Comments »