Midwestern Manners

I'm sure Jack Blizzard is somewhere snickering in his sleeve. On my way home from town yesterday, I ran onto a patch of ice, and MiniPearl (my Toyota minivan) and I slid off the road into a snow-filled ditch. When something like this happens, it reminds me why I love living here in small-town mid-America: The people here are awesome.

My slide into the ditch was a beautiful, almost graceful movement that seemed, as the cliché goes, to happen in slow-mo (imagine Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G Minor wafting through the Universe as a soundtrack). Mini and I scuttled along the shoulder for a bit, then arced sideways (pirouette?), left the road, and drifted down, down, down until we settled, tipped sideways toward the passenger side, in about 3’ of snow and a good 6’ below the road. Amazing little ice-ballet that actually took only seconds.

Thank Skadi (Norse goddess of winter) there were no trees, fenceposts, road signs, or cows. Thank Skadi MiniPearl didn’t tilt sideways another foot or two and roll. Thank Skadi I was belted in and didn’t fly into the windshield. Thank Skadi that ditch was full of cushioning snow.

So there I was, sitting at an odd angle in Mini, eye-level with the road I’d just left, and bracing myself on the passenger armrest so I wouldn’t fall into the passenger door. I was chock full of adrenaline and too fight-or-flighty to reason out what to do. So, of course, I called Ray (in his car, driving home from work), who told me to call my daughter, who gave me the number of our Little Town tow guy. Thank Skadi for cell phones.

I knew it would take Tow Guy a while to get to me, so I took a quick inventory and made sure I wasn’t hurt. Then I just sorta settled in. It was actually a beautiful day out there. Except for the deep ditches, the landscape in that area is very flat and open. The wind was gusting west to east, toward me, and the gusts picked up snow from the open fields, blowing it along the ground in horizontal sheets (hence, the sudden ice on the road). But the sun was shining, turning the snow into brushstrokes of glitter. The sky was a subdued greyish-turquoise and mottled with clouds.

I thought maybe I’d meditate, both because I had the time and because it would ease the adrenaline rush, but then the miracle of prairie neighborliness began. Every car that passed me stopped to make sure I was okay, except one (I have your license plate number, pal, and I’ll be turning you in to the Midwestern Mandatory Hospitality Police). One man offered to make calls for me. One woman offered her husband’s tractor to try and pull me out. One woman offered her home, in case I wanted a warm place to wait for Tow Guy.

Tow Guy finally showed up, a white haired grandpa-ish guy in his 60’s or 70’s, in a light spring jacket, with no hat on. It took some time, some careful maneuvering of his truck (which slid at one point, and I thought, oh great…), hitching, unhitching, and re-hitching, but he finally got Mini up on the road again. When I said I didn’t have any cash, he asked if I drove to town every day. I said yes, and he said I could just stop by Monday and pay. No invoice, no I.O.U., no collateral…just stop by Monday. Then he said, “Drive slow.” I said, “Yes, sir.” That may be the first time I’ve ever addressed anyone as “sir,” that’s how brimming with gratitude I was (I am).

I’m a little stiff and sore today, maybe from the sudden pre-crash muscle lock, or from bracing myself for a half-hour while I waited for Tow Guy, but I know I got off easy. Mini’s undercarriage is packed with snow, ice, and mud, so her wheels don’t wanna turn right now, but I think a good car wash will fix her right up. I have no desire to go outside today. I have some good movies on DVR, a fresh pot of coffee, Advil, a heating pad, and some homemade minestrone soup. And maybe I’ll knit up a quick winter hat to take in on Monday when I stop to pay Tow Guy.

Mythbustin' Midwesterners

Imagine a head-on collision of Wild Kingdom, the Three Stooges, Meet the Press, and Ted Mac’s Amateur Hour. That’s my family. I always thought of my upbringing as perfectly normal until, as a young adult in the age of Homage to Dysfuntion, I realized how extraordinary my family was. Now, of course, I know there are no normal families. So when folks not familiar with the region muse that Midwesterners are all Leave-It-To-Beaver milktoast, I say, oh contrare.

My family, for example, is a bohemian blend of Bohemians—Czech on Dad’s side, English and French on Mom’s. Mom grew up in Omaha, where she worked as a medical assistant for my doctor-uncle for 35 years and, divorced when her youngest kid was five, raised us pretty much single-handedly, often while holding down an additional part-time job or two. She’s in her early 70’s now and lives in Vermillion, where her newest passion is performing at—and winning—poetry slam competitions.

My brothers and I grew up in a 17-room house (a family home that had been my great-great and my great-grandparents’ hotel) in Omaha, with Mom and our stay-at-home grandma—the aforementioned Presbyterian Pragmatist. In the pre-seatbelt days, Mom kept us from pummeling each other on car trips by forcing us to sing “White Coral Bells” and “All Things Shall Perish” in rounds. To this day, whenever I get in a moving vehicle, I break into song.

My oldest brother is the family’s suave intellectual, tanned South American Host-with-the-Most, and professed atheist (delightful fodder for lively family debates, which we all adore). He lives in Central America, where he’s a web editor and climbs trees with his cat (pictured, no small feat at 6’5” and 54 years old). He’s a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, plays guitar and sings in an acoustic duo (pictured), and he’s fairly blasé about jetting off to meetings in Ireland, Paris, Ecuador, etc. We don’t get to see him enough.

At 52, I’m the tree-hugging, tofu-eating panentheist of the bunch (pictured contemplating the nitrogen needs of timothy grass). I teach composition, literature, and creative writing to college undergrads. I’m quadrilingual—I can say “Hey baby, give me a kiss” in Czech, “We’re Americans and we want to dance” in Russian, and “Louise has a little cold” in Spanish. I herd peacocks. I’m a partner in a small business that makes anatomical jewelry – www.sacredbody.com and our stuff has been given away as prizes on Public Radio’s What’D’Ya Know show and made the brunt of jokes on The Tonight Show. I write poetry, I played rhythm guitar in a folksy rock band for a decade, and I sometimes get to be the chick singer in Ray’s band (Ray’s a brilliant drummer).

My younger brother (no pics...privacy concerns) is 50 this year and the most conservative (fiscally, at least) of the bunch. We call him the family Republican, but in spite of cracks about Hillary’s bluster or Daschle’s hair, we're pretty sure he secretly votes Dem. He's an ace network specialist. He’s also the family’s computer geek and financial go-to guy, which we desperately need, since most of us are completely flaky about such things. He would do absolutely anything for family, and he’s one of those guys who really does know something about everything, compared to the rest of us, who just talk like we do. He played in a band for a while, too.

My youngest brother is the sensitive, suffering artist of the family – www.joetheartist.com – living in Texas. He’s 45, has a couple of art degrees, and teaches college art classes. Peace & contentment give him the heebie-jeebies, he loves stirring up family chatter by sending cryptic emails, and he’s an extremely gifted & generous artist who makes his own and commissioned art (check the picture of him under his park gateway - those are pottery & copper birdhouses on top of the cement posts, the arch is iron). He’s currently teaching himself banjo and guitar.

Everybody knows milktoast is only good if you’re recovering from flu. Instead, toss jungle vines, granola, a safety deposit box, books of poems, a crossbow, broken guitar strings and a box of crayons in a pot, and you'll get our hearty family stew. And hey, a little grit in the stew makes for a strong constitution.