When the sounds of dinnertime are punctuated by motorcycle thunder and ambulance wails As opposed to tornado sirens and trips to the basement with the family cat and radio
When the debate is whether to avert the murky swamp by switching on the air Versus cranking it at all times to freeze out the blast furnace blowing
When a parade of happenings crowding a calendar with reminders Makes the summer job “just for something to do” impossible
There’s a festival or a block party or an exhibition every weekend and every day here And there’s fireworks once and one summer concert tour a hundred miles drive away there
Here we have to wait seventeen years to be deafened by many minute cicadas There it’s a constant chorus of them, cranky joy-buzzers the size of hummingbirds
If we’re lucky, Chicago shares one day each of spring and fall, but winter and construction seasons are forever Kansas springs early, summers hot, dry and hard— its sun cracks soil and asphalt with equal mercilessness
In Chicago, one-way streets can send you in circles for days Whether designed to keep locals apart or confuse outsiders is anyone’s guess There’s a jigsaw puzzle of suburbs as you move away from the lake (and you always know where that is) Whose streets and addresses seem crafted deliberately to lose non-natives
In Kansas, there are two interstates, and the only traffic they’ve seen Occurs when a semi hits an antelope on the turnpike Or when a green sky pitches baseball size hail or Heralds something worse
Sure, the Dorothy jokes wear thin, But when your favorite Oz-obsessed local weather woman Slips on those ruby red shoes each Halloween, Then it’s all well worthwhile.
—Craig Bechtel may have grown up in Kansas, but he was actually born in Kentucky, something he’s quick to remind Illinoisans that he has in common with Abraham Lincoln
