What Happened to Midwest Hospitality?

I graduated from high school in the eighties and like many of my fellow grads left the Midwest to conquer the world. I went to college in San Diego and split fifteen years of professional life between Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The entire time I was gone I had an inkling that I left something behind. I’d like to think it was a memory of a fairer, gentler place that somehow would always be with me. You know a place where you can leave your windows open at night and everyone has a smile and a kind word.

So when my wife and I decided to move back home, we looked at our options and eventually settled close to where we both grew up. We did what anyone would do coming back home for the first time in almost two decades. We hit all of our old favorites to find that they had mostly replaced by suburban sprawl.

The first blow came when we found out the pizza joint where we used to hang out was no more. What a travesty. That was the site of my first kiss among other things. Where are all of those horny teenagers supposed to go on a Friday night? Where else could you go to watch your neighbor’s big brother tossing pizzas through a plexi glass window or old Charlie Chaplin movies that you wouldn’t give the time of day to at home but for some reason were cool as hell as long as you were surrounded by a hundred strangers stuffing pizza into their face. Let’s not forget about those breadsticks and the warm nacho cheese sauce. You should know that not only were they quite tasty but they had a medicinal purpose as well. The bread had an uncanny way of absorbing the effects of teenage drinking and if that weren’t enough the nacho cheese dip could mask the smell of alcohol even at close distances with your mother.

I’ll have you know the pizza joint was not the only victim. All of the great places we used to go are no more including the ice cream shop where my wife and I had our first date back in ’83. The prospect of our past and all of those pristine memories we so dearly cherished having been replaced by one suburban chain after the next was unfathomable. It took some time for us to get over such a setback but we were determined to find the Midwest that we had known and that’s when it occurred to us. The landscape may have changed but we could always count on that good old Midwest hospitality to really make us feel at home. So we jumped into the car and headed for the center of Midwestern life, the grocery store. Sure enough we walked in and we were greeted by one ear to ear smile after the next exclaiming a variety of gleeful greetings and enough God bless you’s to ensure you a spot in heaven.

Now, I know we should have been satisfied but we weren’t and not because we didn’t get what we were looking for. No, we got it alright but somehow it was different and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Don’t fault me for not trying. I did, but everyone one of those greeting was like nails on chalkboard. I thought about it for months and couldn’t figure out why. At first, I thought maybe it’s us. Maybe we had been changed by the big city. Maybe what they say is true about becoming jaded by the fast pace of it all but then one day while I was making my way through the Target Superstore, which by the way used to be the local bowling alley where I defeated Don H. in the world bowling championships, it hit me and it hit me hard.

You see those greetings used to mean something. They weren’t just something you said because it was printed on the first page of the new employee handbook. You didn’t say it because customer service was one of the three guiding principles of your company’s mission statement or because your pastor says you should. You said it because you meant it. “Good morning” or “good afternoon” weren’t just words you were required to say. They were an invitation to a conversation, an opportunity to share with one another and the cornerstone to having a relationship with that person. Yes, believe it or not, we used to have relationships with each other.

If you think that Midwestern hospitality is still alive and kicking then next time someone asks you how you are actually answer them. After the initial shock subsides, you’ll notice something peculiar. Their entire body will stiffen, their eyes will glass over, they’ll pull back and without saying a single word you’ll know with every ounce of your being that they could care less. The fact is that hospitality has died along with the pizza joint, my favorite little dog food shop and that ice cream store where my wife and I had our first date. Now I’m sure there’s some economics professor at the local university could explain that these social changes are part of a broader context which is primarily driven by the shift from a rural to urban lifestyle and supported further by drivers such as globalization and an in flux of outsiders. You can believe that if you like but I happen to think it’s something much more basic and I have my old childhood friend Bobby G. to thank for figuring this out.

I think I must have been just about seventeen on one of those long summer nights with nothing to do but drive around with group of good friends listening to music while a hot breeze blew through my hair. It was me, Bobbie G., Frank, Stevie and Jack -- the usual cast of characters on any given night. We started that night just like we started about every night of our adolescences with a stop at a liquor store in the shady side of town. Of course none of us were able to buy alcohol at the time legally but if you throw a pair of reading glasses on Jack, he’d pass for twenty-five easily. At least that’s what we all thought. It could have been that the old man that ran the place either didn’t care or remembered what a pain in the ass it could be to be part boy and part man so he sold Jack a case of long neck Budweisers like he had done since the end of our sophomore year.

We had two cars so it really wasn’t an option for us to sit outside the liquor store, drink and shoot the bull which we had done before on many other occasions. Now I can’t remember who the braniac was that evening. I’m guessing Stevie but I couldn’t say for sure but the idea was that we’d go over to this local private school, get on the roof, bring a jam box and the case a beer and hang out for the night. I know the whole idea is raising some read flags for you but several members of the group had gone to this school and on some level that an adult would never understand it was truly more of a tribute to a fondly remembered alma mater than the desperate act of some delinquent teenagers. Of course that’s not how the head master and the three police cars that showed up saw it.

To make a long story short, we quickly descended from the roof with the beer of course and were faced with a decision of what to do. Frank and I had quickly come to the conclusion that running wasn’t an option for us. Not because we were brave or stand up guys or anything like that but because we were stupid enough to have parked our cars in the lot which was now being staked out by the local Sheriff’s department. So, we decided that we’d turn ourselves in. Bobby G., who had recently moved out to the far suburbs, said “there’s no reason for us all to burn”. Without the slightest hesitation he turned and already in the process of making a run for it, looks at Stevie and Jack. Stevie nodded and away the two went running through the woods that butted up against the back of the school leaving me, Frank and Jack just standing there.

The thing is Jack could have run and quite frankly he lived the closest just a few blocks away. If it made sense for anyone to run, it made sense for him but he didn’t. I remember how calm and determined his face was when he said “let’s go”. I stopped and said “you don’t have to do this”. He said “I want to”. The three of us walked shoulder to shoulder to the front of the school and turned ourselves in. Jack chose the hard road not because it was easy and if you knew Jack’s parents you’d understand that was certainly not the case but he did it because it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t about to let Frank and I take the fall for something he had been a part of.

When I used to think back on that night I’d remember the feeling of close friendships, how we used to laugh our ass off at the stupidest little things and most importantly how we could spend a whole night just talking. Ever since I’ve been back home and trying to reconcile the place that it is now to what it had been, I’ve been thinking about it a little differently. Now, I think mostly about Jack and Bobbie G. and wonder if that night would foretell of things to come. I wonder now if the world or at least our little piece of it was changing right before our very eyes and whether Jack represented our past and Bobbie G. our future.

I can’t help but feel that somewhere along the line what is easy, convenient and meets our selfish needs became more important than what is kind, courteous, just and serves the interest of our community. It just seems to me that growing up here there were so many Jacks and now it seems like all that are left are the Bobbie G’s. I know it’s a cliché but we used to build barns together for God’s sake. Can you imagine people in your neighborhood giving up a Saturday to help one of your neighbors raise a barn? Please! I’m not asking you to bring back my favorite pizza joint or the dog food shop or the ice cream store (although I wouldn’t mind a canasta cake from the recently debunk local bakery) but let’s not forget where we came from and what made small towns a great place to grow up not just another soulless place filled with suburban zombies feeding off the local Walmart. So the next time you say “good morning” or “good afternoon”, stop, look the person in the eyes and really mean it.