From Out East

I visited a slew of mechanics today, with each one being more inclined to not work on my car than the one before. It was disheartening, but not without some redeeming quality. Namely, the moment when one of the mechanics said to the other:

He said it as if I wasn’t exactly there, or from a different country and proceeded to pronounce Illinois with the hard “S.” In my mind I saw a satellite image of the US and realized once again just how far away from home I stood. During my time here it’s been easy to forget what 2000 ish miles look and feels like, especially when a phone call can evaporate seemingly any distance in minutes.

In the land back out East we salt the roads, which in turn rusts out vital components of our cars, and the people out West either don’t know how to work around that, or simply refuse to. And as someone with little to no automotive expertise, I then try to explain why my area code doesn’t match up, how I ended up here, and why.

Midwesterners are prone to feeling like we have to explain ourselves, because quite frankly there’s a lot to explain. Exactly where is the Midwest? Where does it begin or end? Do we consider Ohio part of the Midwest? What do you do out there? etc. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you look at a map, and maybe we don’t identify with it the way people out West do with PNW bumper stickers (you know the one with the crossed arrows and generic pine tree) but like any region, it’s a home and sometimes that’s the only answer necessary. It’s just there.

Which is not unlike my answer to the previous question of:

Because it was there.

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