Saturday night in Toledo

As many of you know, I'm from Toledo...Toledo, OH. For years I heard the cries and complaints from the Toledo Blade that we were the red-headed stepchild of the other major Ohio cities (the 3 C's -- Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati). But I've also noted another trend, on the national front, in which Toledo has become one of the towns used to represent "middle-of-nowhere-and-yet-everywhere middle-America."



(all photos courtesy of http://www.teresco.org/pics/signs/)

Here are some stand-outs:

Some recent examples:

--Sarah Vowell's July 20th, 2005 NYTimes editorial (i'm doing it again!):
"I can probably live with the fact that the Electoral College won't be abolished during this or any summer for the rest of this century. I can probably live with an increasing number of campaign updates from the (also maddeningly arbitrarily important) states of Iowa and New Hampshire - then Toledo, Toledo, Toledo in the coming months and years."

--Daniel Gross's July 27th Slate article on the recent payola crack-down:
"How, precisely, are consumers harmed if a radio station in Toledo played Celine Dion more than it otherwise would have in the absence of payments?"

--and finally an oldie but goodie - John Denver's song "Toledo" with lyrics such as:

"Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio, is like being nowhere at all
All through the day how the hours rush by
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die"

or

"You ask how I know of Toledo, Ohio
Well I spent a week there one day"

and the real kicker

"And here's to the dogs of Toledo, Ohio
Ladies, we bid you goodbye"

Thus Toledo joins the ranks of those mid-west bastions of nowhereness such as Peoria and the elusive yet ubiquitous Springfield.

I actually don't have problem with this. Growing up in Toledo and then leaving immediately after high school, I have the natural disdain for a place that never represented me and yet played a huge role in shaping my early perspective. Politicians often harken to their hometowns with a nostalgic tear in their left eye. Musicians and filmmakers pay homage to imaginary or real hometowns or regions. But a great number of folks leave and never look back. The kitsch value of Jamie Farr and the Mud Hens aside, I'm no fan of Toledo. But I did have a happy childhood (good-bye any powerful artistic statement I can blame on juvenile abuses and traumas) and I have to begrudgingly give credit to the suburbs of Toledo for that (oh yeah, and my family). And there's my appreciation (well, at least awareness) of the beauty of fishing for walleye, owning your own trailor on the lake, and a strawberry shortcake on a paper plate eaten in a church parking lot.

But then there's that gnawing feeling at the back of my neck (especially irritating when I go back) that the things people are commenting on when they use Toledo as an "everytown" reference, are the same things I had to work to overcome: cultural numbness, political apathy, social complacency, a mania for comfort, and a caustic pragmatism that still invades my brain whenever I aim to do anything spontaneous.

Sadly, even the act of escaping to NYC only continues the predictable and cliched trajectory. New York?! How unoriginal! LA, here I come!