A Midwestern Farewell on Independence Day

There is a tiny town about twenty miles from here, and its welcome-to-town slogan meekly mentions to passers-through, “Pleasant Living in a Convenient Place.” Had I ever made a sound before that could be described as a yelp? I don’t know, but I recall a surprising laughter-sound emerging when I first saw the most Midwestern description of a town imaginable.

Today ends my Midwestern adventure of about two-and-a-half years. It has been pleasant to say the least, which is what Midwesterners tend to do, say the least that is, but I want to say more.

It took moving to Illinois to fully recognize my own roots since I grew up in Arkansas, which both sounds and feels like the Deep South. My mother was from a town named Strawberry in “the hills” of Arkansas—yes, you can think hillbillies—but my dad was from the Missouri bootheel, not so far away geographically, yet no one thinks Deep South when considering Missouri. I grew up in Arkansas, sure, but the northeastern tip and just a couple miles from the Missouri state line, and it took moving to Illinois to see that my dad’s family was Midwestern through and through, and that my heritage is both Southern and Midwestern.

It has been good to come home for a while to a place that I didn’t even know was home. And I will miss it in the way that you miss when leaving home.

I will miss many things. The people, of course. The understated lifestyle. Early morning runs in farm country. The train whistles. The towering corn stalks. Cardinal baseball on KMOX. The summer sno-cone stand. The transformation of autumn, and later, the peaceful beauty of snow. The local parades, and a favorite restaurant on the town square where the staff knows me and my favorite meal.

Two local churches let me preach sermons for them on many occasions, and the last time I did, as many people filed by and shared kind words, an old farmer-type stopped, looked me in the eye with a firm handshake and said with a sincerity that I cannot describe: “Thank you for relating to us.”

I surely won’t forget that.

Tomorrow, early, we will get in our cars, find the oft-traveled Mother Road, and head West until we reach the California ocean that we know very well. But tonight, we will attempt to sleep in a dark and empty house, listening to fireworks shatter the silence. I will know that the explosions are a centuries-old affront to old King George, while in reality simply an excuse for grown children to exercise a primal urge to blow things up. But me, I will imagine that bursts of extravagant colors fill the sky above where I sleep in an exquisite conspiracy by the entire Midwest to, for once at least, display its true beauty.