Fly-Over

"What the hell is a lost Swede town anyway?"

I'm waiting for a friend at a downtown St. Paul bar, taking small sips out of a glass of stout and reading on my Kindle.

The gentleman next to me, wearing a suit and too obviously drunk for 5:00PM on a Tuesday, is trying to strike up a conversation. It takes me a moment to pull myself of out my nonfiction about Elizabethan espionage, to say "Excuse me?"

He gestures to my bag, a clutch that looks like the cover of The Great Gatsby. "I never liked that book."

I bristle. Visibly. 

There are a lot of things I find annoying about this guy in this moment. His drunkenness so early in the evening. The fact that he's talking to me. His suit, which signifies someone who works at Wells Fargo and thinks he's actually the Wolf of Wall Street. 

But what annoys me most is that his opening conversational salvo was a nasty comment about Scott Fitzgerald. 

If there is one place in the world where you don't rag on Fitzgerald it's in St. Paul. It is in St. Paul while sitting at a bar where, if you lean back a few inches, you have a direct line of sight out the windows to Rice Park where Fitzgerald has been memorialized in bronze. It's in a bar where you're less than a five block walk to the Fitzgerald Theater, where Scott's bust reigns aloofly in the hall as you stream into your seats. 

And if there's one girl in the world to whom you don't belittle F. Scott Fitzgerald, it's the one sitting at said bar, on the way to said theater, with a bag that looks like cover of The Great Gatsby.

I'm barely halfway through my beer and feeling more magnanimous than I usually might. I take a deep breath and remind myself that Fitzgerald himself, for all his literary gifts, was a drunk on a barstool annoying someone at some point. 

"I imagine he meant towns with names like Mora, Scandia, or Linstrom." I'm crisp enough that I think I've signaled that our conversation, thank you very much, has come its inevitable conclusion. You will not be buying me a drink. We will not be discussing the finer points of Elizabethan espionage or Midwestern writers. 

"Bah." He sways a little on his seat. "What would he know about the Midwest? He was from . . . New York." 

"New York?" The sharpness of my tone is enough to make the bartender, someone I went to college with, look up and move away. 

"Yeah. Or Paris. Or some place." 

When I suspect someone of intellectually sloppiness, my reaction is always the same. I suck my teeth. I take off my glasses. I recross my legs and lean in, and boy, you better brace yourself. 

My fury is always of the quiet "You may want to reconsider what you've just said" kind rather than the explosive kind. "Have you ever been to Rice Park?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. "Sure."

"That Rice Park, just down the block?" I'm pointing out the window.

"Yeah. So?"

"Ever, I don't know, seen a bronze statue of a man in a double-breasted suit there?"

"Yeah."

"You know who that is?"

He shakes his head.

I lied when I said my fury is always quiet. I start shouting. 

"It's F. Scott Fitzgerald. You asshole. He was from St. Paul. We have a theater four blocks from here with his portrait painted on the side and his name on the marquee. Anyone with an iota of historical or literary curiosity can do a walking tour of the neighborhood where he used to live. There's a building in Cathedral Hill where he used to walk to buy his cigarettes while writing his first novel. He knew how to write about the goddamn Midwest. He was one of us."

***

I've lived my entire life in fly-over country. 

I rarely think twice about it. Why would I? I live in a state with excellent education, taxes that feel reasonable, and amenities out the roof. My home is in a city where no one lives farther than six blocks from a park. At any point in time I can step out my door and run thirteen miles along the Mississippi, find locally sourced eggs or honey, catch an author reading, see a show. To that same end, I can drive an hour, an hour and a half north and see the Aurora, swim in a pristine lake, or be in the middle of the woods without a soul to talk to me. 

I love fly-over country. 

***

Thursday is the anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby. 

I have sort of a busy day on Thursday, but Friday I'm taking off of work early to do the Fitzgerald walking tour of the city. I'll start in Rice Park, with Scott's statue and then slowly wind my way up the hill, eventually ending at his various childhood homes and a certain old bar in Cathedral Hill with lots of original brickwork and a lovely patio. I'll sip my gin and reread my favorite passage from The Great Gatsby: 

“That's my Middle West-not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters [. . .]”

***

This winter did not to dispel the idea that many of my coastal friends have of the Upper Midwest (cold, flat, and lame). I received quite a few emails during the three Polar Vortexes and again when we had ten inches of snow the first week of April talking about how horrible it must be to be stuck inside all winter, and that there was something wrong in the minds of the people who choose to live like this, and why don't I come to one of the coasts, where the cities are proper cities, the weather is more temperate, there's a real literary scene, people are more scientifically minded. 

My replies were always the same. As I said, I've lived my entire life as a citizen of fly-over country. I can wield politeness and passive-aggression like a rapier. Thank you, but I managed to run twenty-miles outside last week despite the sub zero temperatures, and while it's not as good as the twenty-five I normally average, I'm still managing to get out. Part of the reason its been so chilly is because there's very little cloud cover, which means bone-aching cold, but it also means we've had an exceptional winter for star-gazing. And yes, there are moments when I've thought about moving to a larger city, but I'd really like to see the Aurora again at least once before I die, and St. Paul really does have a fine literary culture. Lots of small presses and interesting work being written by the people who live here.  So, thanks, but no thanks. I'm good where I am. 

The fact of the matter is that I've never seriously considered living anywhere else.

The Midwest has been good to me. Milwaukee is a city full of fellowship, good will, and living there is an exercise in loving things/people who will inevitably disappoint you (I'm looking at you, Milwaukee Brewers). Central Minnesota is place of deep, no-bullshit community and a love for the land that leaves you breathless. Duluth and those lost Swede towns on the Range are a testament to the ability to keep yourself occupied and engaged during long, hard winters. Northern Wisconsin is a guide to self-sufficiency and quiet pleasure in knowing that you built your own shed or caught and butchered your own dinner.

I am a part of that.

These are the secret things that keep me in fly-over country, the aspects of this part of the country that prevent me from considering living anywhere else. I am the games I played as a child (Duck, Duck, Goose instead of Duck, Duck, Grey Duck) and the linguistic ticks I've acquired (it's a bubbler, not a drinking fountain). I am the poems stamped into the St. Paul sidewalks. I am bluegrass on the North Shore and hiphop in Minneapolis.

And yes, as I'm walking through St. Paul on Friday afternoon, I'll think about F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and about this beautiful, complicated place and my equally complicated emotions surrounding it and the experiences I've had here. Because I am as much a part of them as I am anything else.