A while ago I was driving through Williamsburg,KS and stopped just long enough to take few photos for my blog. I didn’t write anything especially mean or disparaging, just my usual semi-ironic travel remarks. Then I got a few comments like this:

Wow! Do you get your jollies by going around and finding the worst in every place you go? How sad! Did you bother to look at our new Library or the nice Community building or our school or the many nice houses or the new museum building? I pity you if all you see when you go through a community is the worst – and every community has some. We do have a great community – sure we’re struggling to stay alive – What small town isn’t. But we take care of each other, oh, why am I trying to explain anything to someone like you?

This is what I call a Podunk Effect. Every other town in this country has a library, a school and a great community. It’s the rest of the stuff that makes a place unique, even if it’s a rusty truck, broken-down gazebo or an old sign. Podunk Effect makes you want to prove that your town is much much better than some visiting idiot made it out to be, even though the visitor is long gone and will probably never be back. He didn’t do his research, didn’t shake hands, didn’t sign your museum’s guestbook, and now everyone will see your awesome town as a giant pile of rusted metal and construction trash. Podunk Effect makes you boil with anger and leave angry comments on the offender’s site to set him straight.

Recently an enormous case of Podunk Effect hit Kansas City, when a snarky article about the life of a vegetarian New-Yorker in Midwest was published in the New York Times.

But make no mistake: meat-loving is one stereotype that the region wears with pride. Lard still plays a starring role in many kitchens, bacon comes standard in salads, and perhaps the most important event on Kansas City social calendars is a barbecue contest.

– blasphemed the alleged heretic (none of it untrue) inadvertently creating a tsunami of righteous outrage.

“How dare he! What does he mean by “meat-loving stereotype”? Lettuce is a vegetable!”

One chef and refuter wrote:

My first reaction to the article was confusion. My second reaction was to laugh. My third reaction was anger.

My first reaction to her post was doubt – do people really have three separate reactions in a row?
My second reaction was to wonder – what was the length of time in which these three reactions occurred? Was it really fast like “I am confused! Ha-ha! Boo!” or did every stage take some time, maybe an hour or more?
My third reaction was amazement – did I just have three reactions in a row? Awesome!

The problem with the NYT article is not the lack of research, or the author taking an easy route of propagating old stereotypes instead of portraying Kansas City as an oasis of vegetarianism in Midwest. The problem is the Pavlovian defensive reaction the article prompted on twitter, blogs, Facebook and even in the local paper, reaction which  just like a hurricane in a glass of water is pretty irrelevant in the scheme of things.

Because I went to college I will use a Venn diagram to illustrate my point.

All the reactions, comments, blog posts and rebuttals are staying here, with an exception of maybe this short note on the New York Magazine’s site, where one succinct comment expressed how most New Yorkers feel about Kansas City.

Here is one headline you will never see in print: “New Yorkers are outraged about an unfair article about New York City published in the KC Star“. New Yorkers don’t need our or anyone else’s approval and acknowledgement, so why do we have to get hysterical and make everyone love us just like a podunk Williamsburg,KS? Until we drop small town mentality and just do our thing whether it’s eating meat or tofu, we will always suffer from the lack of self-respect as the city.
No one is flying in here for the local vegetarian smorgasbord, it exists mostly for the people who live here and their occasional meat-hating guest. And, to be fair, the meat-loving stereotype served this city well, financially as well as being known as the BBQ capital of the world in the rest of the world. Recently I watched a clip of a Russian show where a lady presented a host with several bottles of the Kansas City BBQ sauce (ironically with all-vegetarian ingredients). That’s not a bad thing to be famous for.
One thing this city needs to learn from New York: when you say or do something that a New Yorker doesn’t like, he will show you a finger and move on.

We just need to learn to move on. But not before showing the finger.

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I didn’t attend an advertising school, so I don’t know if they teach the rule about limiting the number of billboards using the word ridiculously to one per square mile. If they don’t, maybe it’s a good time to start.

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When my Mom asked me what I am doing on Saturday night and I replied that I was baking pumpkin rolls, she thought it was a sad way to spend a night off. In reality, baking with real pumpkin is lot like having sex: there is a lot of foreplay and then there is an intense but short-lived moment of pleasure, followed by desire to do it again and a feeling of being too worn out to start over. As a matter of fact, I feel completely beat and sleepy after wrestling with this for nearly 3 hours, my kitchen is a mess and if I had a cigarette I would’ve lit it up just about now.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMdMDW_C_nk

I think the second most vicious food crime against the American people after the invention of the sliced bread was the proliferation of canned pumpkin. Nearly every American family buys one or more pumpkins every year, pokes some holes in them and leaves them out to rot on the front porch, just to turn around and go to the grocery store to procure baby-stool-like substance, both in color and consistency, to use in various disgusting recipes. The sad thing is that this stuff really doesn’t taste like pumpkin but since no one knows what the real pumpkin tastes like, everyone identifies it as a pumpkin taste. Well, it’s not. Pumpkin is normally bright orange and sweet-tasting, not medium brown and spiced. Some information on edible pumpkins can be found here and here.

Some notes on the pumpkin handling: it’s not easy. You have to have a decent knife and be careful not to hurt yourself. Don’t  pour  blood all over your keyboard typing me an angry letter, because I warned you. After trying to separate the flesh from the skin cantaloupe-style I had much better luck turning it over and just peeling the skin off. I also found out that shredding the pumpkin with a grater is a long and tedious process much better handled by a food processor. Other than that you don’t have any excuse to trade a sweet pumpkin orgasm for a can of brown crap.

For this recipe you’ll need:

5 egg yolks;
1 3/4 sticks of margarine or butter;
1.5 cups of sugar;
5 tbsp of non-fragrant oil i.e. – corn oil;
1 8oz package of sour cream;
1 tsp vanilla;
1/2 tsp of baking soda and some vinegar;
5+ cups of all-purpose flour;
pinch of salt;
1 average pie pumpkin shredded and a little bit of sugar to sweeten;

Melt the margarine and combine with egg yolks, sour cream, vanilla, sugar and oil. Over the flour place 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda in a larger spoon and pour a small amount of vinegar so it reacts. Make sure that all of the soda is gone in the reaction and combine the flour with liquid mixture. Add salt. Start lightly kneading the dough adding flour as needed until the oily sheen is gone and the dough springs back if you push it with the finger. Cut into six parts. Roll out each part into elliptical shape, add sweetened pumpkin and roll over several times. When adding pumpkin, squeeze it lightly to leave most of the juice out. Bake at 350F for 30-50 minutes until golden brown.

*Note: this is what I wrote down when my Mom gave me the recipe. Since it didn’t come out the way I expected, I took a roll to her for troubleshooting. Apparently I was kneading too hard and didn’t add enough flour. As you can see, my dough was still shiny but I was afraid I used too much flour and lost patience. My Mom confirmed that the recipe was correct and in my defense it tastes great, just slightly heavier than I expected since it didn’t roll out thin enough. Try at your own risk. I am pretty sure that my Mom doesn’t own measuring spoons or cups, so I was using regular drinking cups and table spoons for this recipe.
The important thing is that the great pumpkin taste I remembered from my childhood was there and that’s what I wanted to achieve in the first place.

If you are feeling lonely on a Saturday night, get yourself a pumpkin, it will wear you out but you will feel good about it in the morning.

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Some toys end up at the mass grave at the Community Yard Sale:



This is one morbid-looking doll:

Sturdy Play Suit – made for hard play (if you know what I mean):

A pin from a lot more innocent times:

Naked golf balls no more:

Other toys get to live in the museum:

Jewel Secrets Ken – draw your own conclusions:

In the hindsight it might have been inappropriate to write “my arms and legs are pauseable”, “ages 3 and up”, and “no batteries required” on a Pee-Wee Herman doll. If you own an Ernest talking doll, you might be a redneck:

Some PEZ dispensers:



Lastly, you may have seen these “urban toys” before:

I guess these peope got their inspiration from the “Bag O’ Glass”, “Bag O’ Vipers”, “Bag O’ Sulfuric Acid”, etc.

Where would these end up in 20 years – the dump or in the museum? Time will tell.

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A full-blown winter storm in March? Check!
An incorrect, rapidly changing weather forecast? Check!
Scary drive home? Check!
Making it home alive to write about it – priceless!

If you don’t feel like getting out, I shot a little clip for you.

And the rest of my photos:

By the way I still think weather forecasters should be arrested for the incorrect predictions.
UPDATE: I mentioned in comments what the weather forecast used to look like in my childhood and here is a video from November 2, 1977. This is for the whole country;they just list general areas, conditions and temperature ranges (in C°).

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