Adventures of a Sun Seeker: Observations in Missouri

I spent a few days in Missouri on my way to Kansas this month but I didn't expect I'd be inspired to write one of my classic "culture curiosity blogs" without even having left the USA. But a few days in Missouri and I had plenty to describe. Much of it is the observations of Mr Soil Science and Mrs Sweet Mom who I was visiting there, my relocated friends from the wheat fields in Washington state when I was in grad school and a TA for Mr Soil. Grading 96 soil science midterms until 2am is a certain bonding experience and I paid these lovely people a visit (including their 7 year old son, Bouncy Philip) in their new home outside St Louis, MO.

Welcome to suburbia. Midwest suburbia of long commutes, large treeless grass yards, massive houses.

The parallels and little concomitant differences between myself and Mr Soil are remarkable. A career in soil science (me at a sustainable cropping systems lab at a land grant, him at Monsanto), being a niche kind of musician and applying it (me pipe Organist, him in the world-renowned barbershop group Ambassadors of Harmony), and a sense of travel adventure (me bike tripping in tropical places, him hiking the Appalachian trail). I'm a native plant geek, he's a weather station geek.

But then you have me without car, living alone in a hippy city in a rented apartment, a cat, walking or biking to work. And him with a big house and a family and two cars and a yard and a commute. Neither of us covet at all the other's life but we are indeed happy and satisfied in our very different circumstances.

I love this stuff, case studies in the ways of living, which you can only experience with a visit.

They both spoke of the differences in suburbia outside of St Louis compared with the small town in the wheat fields of Washington state. Like all cultural observations, I can only share what I observed or heard myself, and make no claim that this is the actual general reality. But I'd like to share my impressions, as disorganized as they may be.

1. No downtown in their community. There's a shopping plaza of all the big box stores but no central hang-out location. This made me feel very grateful for the Ithaca Commons.
2. In the world of young families, with stay at home moms, what constitutes your friend group is whoever is in your cul-de-sac. If your neighbors have a pool, that becomes the central point for all the neighborhood kids.
3. I was told about one mom in the neighborhood who would drive her kid 2 lots over to the bus stop. Not send him on his own, not walk him, but cart him there in the car.
4. Nobody recycles, instead its just those big industrial sized garbage totes out by the road. Mrs Mom once engaged with a neighbor to share aboht recycling, and the neighbor said it was too much of a hassle to rinse out containers.
5. Mrs Mom and Mr Soil are considered "too redneck" for the neighborhood, because they spend time at the shooting range and like hunting. Compared with WA, where many of the men and women hunted.
6. At a dinner party, one of the Monsanto guys was talking about the Lake of the Ozarks, and how just about every year there's a BillyJoe JimBob who electrocutes himself on his dock from trying to string up lights in the water or some such.
7. Fireworks are legal in MO, so I enjoyed a very nearby display from the neighborhood collection of about a thousand dollar's worth of colored explosives. The only stipulation is that you can't shoot them off after 11pm.
8. They never see their neighbors to the right outside. Big yard and porch and everything, but there's no activity at all. Mrs Mom and Mr Soil have a beautiful raised bed garden, with trellises and a fence, and their neighbors complained about having to look at it. I can't imagine anything more delighting and hopeful to look at than a tidy garden.
9. Mrs Mom has a replicated sample population, because she joined a Bunko group (people who come together to play a card game, much like a bridge club) in both WA and MO. A study of card game groups in two states. Snacks were brought, and the differences: in WA the majority of the snacks would be homemade (hummus and hand cut veggies for instance), in MO the majority were store-bought (crackers and cheese dip perhaps). Most of the members in the MO group were 10-20 pounds overweight. In the little WA town people passed the time with generally outdoor activities, hiking or gardening. In MO, it is indoor things like shopping or going to the movies that are leisure activities.
10. Interestingly, homeschooling is quite popular in MO with lots of support and curriculum fairs and such.

Basically, there seems to be a striking difference in value systems between suburbia Midwest and definitely where I live in Ithaca and where we used to live in wheat-field college town WA.

When I wasn't doing a cultural study, the rest of my visit was spent: happily spending money in the funky shopping district of St Louis (The Loop), padding warmly around the Missouri Botanical Garden ("you've smelled an orange flower recently, havent you" said Mr Soil, pointing out some pollen on my nose), shooting a gun for the first time at their shooting range, watching fire works, and eating elk meatballs from the other piece of the taxidermy on their wall. An enjoyable and fascinating visit indeed.