Where Are You From?

The name of a mutual friend came up the other day during a conversation with a colleague on the morning ride to work. On an Instagram post, our friend wrote about her new job and added how happy she was to be "back home in Ohio." 

This got me wondering about the places where we come from, the place we identify as our home.

Our friend originates from a fairly small town, so it probably shouldn't be surprising that growing up, her day-to-day world existed beyond her own hamlet. That might be why people from small towns tend to identify at least as much with their home state as their hometown.

But I've noticed that particularly in Ohio, state identity extends beyond small towns and into decent sized cities like Toledo, Akron and Dayton, and even into the three major metropolises, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.

Consider this post coming from a Cleveland website celebrating the "20 best things about living in Ohio." The same site also published a piece listing the 12 things to hate about living in Ohio.  Interestingly, some of the same things appear on both lists!

It's not as if you wouldn't find a Chicago publication describing the state this city happens to be in. But it would be written in much the same way as if it had it been about Wisconsin, Indiana or Michigan, in other words, close-by places to spend your free time when you want to get out of the big city. In fact, I would venture to guess that Chicagoans spend far more of their free time visiting places in those three states than destinations in their own state.

My family certainly does.

The thing is this, with the exception of writing it on our return address or during tax time, most Chicagoans hardly ever think about Illinois, let alone identify with it.

It turns out, outsiders don't always identify Chicago with Illinois either. In what has become for better or worse, the unofficial anthem of this city, here is where the song's author, the great bluesman Robert Johnson places our fair city:

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Back to the land of California

to my sweet home, Chicago.

Don't we wish?  

Contemporary performers change the lyrics to be more geographically correct. Eric Clapton simply changed one word making the line read: "Back from the land of California." 

But the more common contemporary line is this: "back to the same ol' place.." 

How lame is that?

Anyway...

While we here in the Windy City identify more with our city than our state, our provincialism goes beyond that. Chicago is known as a city of neighborhoods and rightfully so. It is not uncommon, although much less so today than it used to be, for people to live in one neighborhood their entire life. And it goes still deeper than that. A great number of people who grew up in this city identify themselves not with the neighborhood in which they grew up, but with the Roman Catholic parish in which they lived, even if they weren't Catholic and never set foot in the parish church. 

So if you grew up on the South Side, you might say you were from St. Sabina's, Little Flower or Christ the King Parish, and folks, (South Siders that is), would immediately know where you were from. On the North Side you might say you were from Queen of Angels or St. Margaret Mary. Or on the West Side, from Our Lady of Sorrows, or Resurrection Parish which no longer exists today except in the hearts and minds of people who grew up there and still call it their place of origin. 

There is no East Side of Chicago, (that would be the lake), although there is a neighborhood called Eastside which happens to be just south of the neighborhood called South Chicago. And if you happen to be from there, you might say you were from St. Michael the Archangel Parish. Just don't confuse that with St. Michael's in Old Town, on the North Side.

That might raise a few eyebrows because Chicagoans if they identify with a parish or not, definitely identify with which side of town they're from, North Side or South Side. Then there's the West Side, a little harder to define, technically the part of the city west of the Chicago River, but in reality, it's the area west of the river that straddles the north/south border of the city, Madison Street by a few miles or so in either direction. West Siders sometimes identify themselves as either North or South Siders, unless of course like me, they don't. 

Perhaps the most tangible symbol of the two sides of Chicago are our two Major League baseball teams, the Cubs and the White Sox. Their ballparks are virtually equidistant from Madison Street. Home plate of Wrigley Field where the Cubs play, sits 36 blocks north of Madison and its counterpart at "new" Comiskey Park, (I refuse to call it by its corporate sponsor name), home of the White Sox, is 35 blocks south.

One of the first things you learn when you move to Chicago is that you can root for one team or the other, but not for both. I'd have to say White Sox fans hold more of a grudge, which is common for South Siders who often live with a chip on their shoulder. A White Sox fan will proudly tell you that his or her two favorite baseball teams are the Sox, and any team playing the Cubs. 

As I've said before in this space, it's kind of an unrequited hate. There are Cub fans who claim to feel the same about the Sox, but they really don't.

This is something people outside of Chicago just can't comprehend. I remember being in a bar in Savannah, Georgia during the baseball playoffs and quite surprisingly the Cubs were still playing ball. I struck up a conversation with a local at the joint who, knowing I was from Chicago, said I must be excited that the Cubs were in the playoffs. I told him no, not really because I'm a White Sox fan. 

The guy looked at me like I was from Mars. 

On that train ride mentioned above, my colleague theorized that states for which people have a strong affinity, are perhaps the ones with huge state universities with strong athletic programs, usually football. Ohio certainly is such as state, as is Georgia.

I had never thought of that.

Basketball is the sport Indiana University is most famous for, and in that most state-conscious of states, the nickname of their team is also the nickname of the state, and also how its people proudly refer to themselves, Hoosiers. I can't think of any other state that has adopted an official nickname as enduring or widely accepted. Theories abound but like the term Yankee, no one really has a clue exactly what a Hoosier is or where the name came from, but it's been around since the early 19th century.

A group of Hoosier fans exhibiting their state/school pride on the Chicago L.

The most famous sporting event in the state of Indiana takes place in its capital and largest city, Indianapolis. In case you were wondering how much folks in that city relate to their state, the most poignant moment during the annual Indianapolis 500 motor race is the traditional rendition of the song: Back Home Again in Indiana.

Michigan has two major state universities with sports programs to match. While in Detroit several years ago, I was listening to local sports radio and the topic of conversation was "who do you hate more, Ohio State or Michigan State?" Judging by the response, obviously Detroiters, who have teams represented in all the major professional sports leagues, also love their collegiate Wolverines who play an hour down the road in Ann Arbor, but not Michigan teams in general.

Outside of the Motor City though, I've found that Michiganders, yes that's what they're called, are also very attached to their state, even to the big city. The words, "the corner of Trumbull and Michigan in Corktown" or shortened to just "The Corner", have a magic ring to any person from Michigan above a certain age as they evoke memories of the late, great Tiger Stadium which stood at that intersection in that neighborhood of Detroit. 

Ask someone from Michigan where he or she is from in the state, and I'll bet my first born they'll hold out their right palm, fingers closed together, which is roughly the same shape as the state of Michigan, (excluding the Upper Peninsula), and point on their hand where their town is located. 

Where's Kalamazoo you ask? Why it's right on the lifeline, toward the bottom of the hand. 

How about Traverse City? Around the point where the tip of the pinky meets the ring finger. 

Saginaw? Just below the base of the thumb.

And so on. 

Unlike Michiganders, Illinoisans outside of Chicago (known by us as "downstaters"), don't show much interest in their state's only metropolis but rather, return Chicago's indifference to them in spades. You're just as if not more likely to find St. Louis Cardinal fans in places like Springfield and Carbondale, than Cubs fans. Unfortunately, the territory of White Sox fandom doesn't extend far beyond the southern fringes of the Chicago metropolitan area, which could be one of the reasons Sox fans are perpetually crabby. By contrast, rooting for an out-of-state team in Ohio would practically be grounds for excommunication from membership in the state. 

Illinois is a reliably blue state, ONLY because of Chicago and its dominance over the state's population. Divorce the city from the state and a Democrat wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell to get elected to a statewide office in a Chicago-less Illinois. Obviously, the exact opposite is true up here where Republicans don't even bother to run for local offices. 

Sadly, in these days of extreme polarization in the realm of American politics, the rift between Chicago and Downstate Illinois grows by the minute.

Then there are the states that if independent from the U.S., would rate by themselves as sizable countries. I'm talking of course about Texas and California, places that have such a strong identity of their own that you couldn't help identifying with them, even if you're from a megalopolis like LA or Houston.

I won't even attempt to crack that egg.

Perhaps the most familiar image of state identification in popular culture is when Dorothy and her dog Toto travel from their completely black and white world and arrive in the magical Technicolor Land of Oz. As they step out of their time and space travel machine, otherwise known as their house, Dorothy famously says: "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." 

It's a great line, one I use all the time to describe any out-of-the ordinary situation.

Frank Baum, the author of the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which inspired the movie, paints a much bleaker image of Kansas and especially of Dorothy's caretaker aunt and uncle than the movie does, so much so, you wonder why on earth the girl is so anxious to get back home. 

Incidentally at the time he wrote the book, Baum called the neighborhood of Logan Square on the West Side of Chicago, just a stone's throw from Humboldt Park and in the parish of St. Sylvester, home.

Just as I did, sixty years later. 

My original home is where I'll wrap this thing up. The truth is, I identify with all those places just mentioned.

Whether you come from a small town, a big city neighborhood or an entire state, whether it's the local parish or a point on the palm of your hand you most identify with, there's still no place like home, even if you can't go there again.

So, where are you from?

High speed to nowhere?

The following is a comment and a response to that comment that I found following this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about the governors-elect of three states, including Wisconsin, promising to reject hundreds of millions of federal dollars earmarked for the creation of High Speed Rail systems in their states. Here is comment one:

Florida's governor seems opposed to HSR as well. He's talking about "privatizing" a rail system there. He may be on to something. Let's privatize roads! Let the markets decide, you know, that Ron Johnson "creative destruction" thing. Let's put rail up against roads in a competitive, free-market scrum and let capitalism decide who lives and dies. But it's got to be a fair fight -- with no socialist subsidies either way.

And the response:

I love it. Since we have had roads and cars shoved down our throat for so so so long it is easy to forget that oil companies make billions because they do not pay for the roads that people use. Car companies also do not pay for the roads. It appears that when you get the federal government to subsidize something it forces the population to use something they might not otherwise use because they are already paying for it. The goal of transportation is to foster economic growth and profit indirectly not directly. Roads do not turn a profit.

These two folks bring up a fact that is so often neglected in the debate over public subsidies for transportation. Namely that few of us ever factor in what it costs to build and maintain the tremendous infrastructure necessary to enable us to drive our cars. We do calculate the steep cost of owning a car, payments, gas and insurance, because that comes directly out of our pockets. Yet it would be impossible to use those cars without the roads, highways and bridges that are built and maintained by the government at the local, state and federal levels. In the winter they are plowed, in the summer the potholes are filled. Government provides police and safety workers that help prevent us from killing each other and when accidents do happen, someone comes along to take care of the victims and someone else comes along to clean up the mess, all on the government's payroll. And after the roads and bridges have served their useful purpose, the government steps in and re-builds them. We take our roads and highways so much for granted that it is inconceivable that one day they will not be there for us.

If roads were privatized as the first commenter suggested, and it were up to us to pay directly out of our pockets every time we used them, and I'm not referring to the token amount we pay on tolls, gas taxes and license fees, I mean really pay for them without any government subsidies, we would not be having this conversation about whether or not we should encourage the development of high speed rail. It would be a done deal.

Of course passenger rail service today is subsidized as well, but not nearly to the extent that driving is. The cost of a rail ticket is comparable to an airline ticket (whose industry also benefits from government subsidies). Since the current system of public transportation in this country, both long and short distance, is for the most part, expensive, slow, and woefully inadequate for serving most people's needs, the vast majority of Americans, myself included, feel compelled to own a car. The choice between traveling long distance by rail or by car is unfortunately a rather simple one.

Governors-elect Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, all Republicans fulfilling campaign promises, have taken action to stop the creation of High Speed Rail systems in their states by announcing that they will reject federal money that has already been set aside for their states. The argument of the politicians is that the money should go into repairing highway infrastructure rather then into some government "boondoggle" to build a train that "no one will use." It fit right into their "let's cut spending and lower taxes" song and dance, music to the ears of the constituents who voted for them, most of whom are probably married to their cars and would never conceive of taking a train in the first place.

"Let's just privatize passenger rail" is the mantra of those against government subsidies for High Speed Rail, knowing full well that it will not succeed as passenger rail has never succeeded in making money. True there once were the glory days of passenger rail, back when railroads were thriving businesses and traveling by rail was still glamorous. But even then a railroad was lucky if it could turn a marginal profit off of passengers. It was always transporting freight that made the railroads their money, passenger service existed almost entirely for advertising and public relations. The Interstate System of highways built under the Eisenhower administration marked the beginning of end for most of the railroads, as the trucking industry took over much of the long distance freight business and the automobile began to reign supreme as the cross country transport of choice for most Americans.

As the two commenters above pointed out, roads do not turn a profit either. But roads and highways are seen in this country as a necessity while passenger rail is seen as a nice thing to have but something we can live without. This is not so in other parts of the world.

Americans have witnessed in the first decade of the 21st Century that driving and air travel both have their downsides. We saw what happened after the tragedy of September 11, 2001 with the complete shut down of air travel in the U.S. for several days, and the economic blows the airlines took in the subsequent years. And while we have for many decades been the beneficiaries of cheap gas, we all know that the oil market is capricious, and that the days of inexpensive fuel, both in terms of cost at the gas pump and cost to the environment, are numbered. Alternative transportation systems benefit all of us, now and in the future. Without them, one day we may wake up to find that the once most mobile of nations has become paralyzed. Not only will HSR benefit the economy, but it will also play a critical role in national security. I believe that not supporting it is both short-sighted and foolish.

The future governors rightly claim that HSR will cost the states money in operating costs, perhaps in the low tens of millions per year, certainly not chump change. On the flip side there is this: once they reject the HUNDREDS of millions of dollars of federal money, it will be gone from them forever along with opportunities for new support industries, jobs and tax revenue. The money will be freed up and made available to other states to further along their own development of HSR. States such as Illinois are chomping at the bit to get it and the opportunities that it will provide.

Governors-elect, Walker, Kasich and Scott however are sticking to their guns, hell bent it seems to leave their states behind in the dust.