posted 2007/03/23 at 16:21
P.J. O'Rourke on Life in Toledo (NPR's All Things Considered)
(Originally aired on my birthday, funnily enough)
I'm not quite sure how to react to O'Rourke. Certainly I'm very critical about some aspects of Toledo, and I can't deny feeling the urge for a change of scenery after having lived here in my life, but at the same time there are things about Toledo that I do like, and I guess that as much as I've tried to shake it over the years, there are still tiny bits of "city pride" in me regarding Toledo. Not that O'Rourke was penning some scathing indictment of Toledo or anything like that, but for all that O'Rourke was adhering to the conventions of non-fiction narrative, I still don't think that he painted a picture of Toledo that sits all that well with me.
If I could pin down one thing that O'Rourke's piece seems to lack, it's historical context. As I've mentioned recently when writing about the local newspaper strike, Toledo has always been quite a strong union town, largely from our position on the Great Lakes just down from Detroit. Back when ships put the ship in shipping (say that ten times fast), Toledo grew as the automobile industry grew since ships going to and from Detroit would invariably stop here. However, this also meant that we were always playing second banana to Detroit, and even the city's most well-known export, glass, could be seen as just a small component of the horseless carriages the Motor City was churning out.
The important thing to remember, though, is that particularly in those early days of auto industry unionization, as financially liberal as the typical union member was, s/he was also likely to be very socially conservative, largely thanks to the religions that the burgeoning immigrant populations brought with them to America. When religion became a wedge with which American politicians differentiated the United States from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, religious conservatism took an even stronger hold in this country, and while that seemed to abate in cities like Detroit over the years, I don't feel like it ever abated that much here in Toledo. Even today, our representative to Washington, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, despite being one of the more fiscally liberal members of Congress, is also very fervently pro-life.
This is why I can't accept O'Rourke's portrayal of Toledoans as a happy, humble bunch. While I don't want to make Toledo out as being like a southern city in terms of religion and conservatism and all that, there is still a very strong undercurrent of old-time religion here that seems to make everyone kind of uptight. I don't think Toledoans manage their bad feelings all that well, either; I've already written about all the restuarants here (O'Rourke was right about the "48-inch waistbands" around here), and I'm sure that Toledo has the highest rate of cigarette smoking in Ohio, if not the entire United States. In addition, playing second fiddle to Detroit all this time has given Toledoans both an inferiority complex and a chip on their shoulder, which may serve to explain why Cleveland sports teams get more play in the local press than Detroit sports teams even though Detroit's much closer to us geographically. For that matter, I can think of lots of cities with smaller populations than Toledo that have their own professional sports teams, whereas we're pretty much stuck with the Mud Hens (and will always be identified with them thanks to Jamie Farr). Heck, one of the most recent enduring images of Toledo in the media was when our mayor went on The Daily Show and offered to let Hollywood blow up one of our old, decrepit buildings in exchange for filming here. (The same mayor who heard Gallagher's old 80's joke about giving houses near airports to deaf people and thought it would be good government policy.)
I don't mean to make Toledo out as this horrible place to live, but in all honesty I have to say it's pretty darn depressing up here, and I think that living here all my life has played a part in my mood problems. I have no doubt that I'll miss this place when I'm gone, but after the traveling I've done this past year, I can't help but feel like what I need most in my life right now is a fresh start someplace new. Toledo is hardly the "nowhere" that O'Rourke makes it out to be, but sometimes it feels like it'd be easier to be from "nowhere" than to be from Toledo.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon