Sunday Scribbling - "Where are you from?" - 3/21/09

I have traveled to quite a large portion of the world and met a lot of people. One of the first things I am asked when I meet someone new is “where are you from?” When someone asks that, I don’t respond immediately. I hesitate in order to assess whether they can relate to a response of “near Spokane” or “west of Missoula”. Sometimes it is enough to say, "out west."

Most people take pride in where they come from: “Don’t Mess with Texas.” Those from a complete shithole like Oklahoma beam with pleasure at the mention of their home state. It was even celebrated In a fantastic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. No one is more fiercely loyal to their home than a New Yorker. "Forget about it." Even the most inbred proclaim their pride in being from Tenne-damn-see or West-by God-Virginia. North and South Carolina combine to become the Carolinas. Carolina is revered in many great songs. A Carolinian radiates with pride when they tell you where they are from. They could be living in a camp trailer and dining on roadkill, but they love Carolina. I cannot conjure up that feeling for my home state of Idaho. The only song I know about Idaho is “And Here we have Idaho.” The chorus is:

And here we have Idaho
Winning her way to fame.
Silver and gold in the sunlight blaze,
and romance lies in her name.

It sounds like it was written as a fifth grade class project. It is a dreadful song. Idaho evokes neither fame nor romance. Idaho has no native sons like James Taylor or Charlie Daniel to glorify it. I think I have found a song more representative of Idaho. Here it is. If you listen closely, it is supportive of Idaho, trying to keep the developers out. Perhaps there will be a grass roots movement to adopt this as the state song.

I try to avoid claiming Idaho, as one of two things occurs when I have slipped up and admitted my association: If they are familiar with Idaho, their first response is “oh potatoes”. That is infuriating to anyone from the part of Idaho that I grew up in. To me it is no less offensive than someone saying they are from Nevada and the response is “oh whorehouses.” Potatoes are not grown in northern Idaho. In fact the part of Idaho that I grew up in, nothing grew, not even grass. But I have already talked about that in a previous post. The second common response (particularly by the aforementioned inbreds) is a blank look while they call up images of the Midwest, where all of the other “I” states are located. I just noticed this: check this out
How sad to be from Iowa that is so obscure it doesn’t even get recognized as a state by the source of all knowledge, wiki.answers.

Idaho has become a punch line. I remember when Al Bundy said that they should send all pregnant women to a state no one cares about and call it Pregaho. The only notoriety it received was from an excellent documentary on Idaho life called Napoleon Dynamite. Any national news article about Idaho is always about the capture of some miscreant, white supremacy group, serial murderer, a senator performing reach-arounds in public toilets, or some other negative imagery.

I have recently reconnected with several of my classmates from high school through Facebook. I have found very few who still live in Idaho. It is a good place to be from. Far from.

Jeff, I am not implying that everyone in Tennessee is inbred, but some of them are.