Here from my somewhat trenchant vantage point of northern Indiana, you might say I’ve got something to say about all points of the Midwest. Ohioans are pretty funny but too obsessed with Skyline Chili, Hoosiers are funny but sometimes kind of slow, St. Louis is gross but funny, Illinois and Wisconsin people are well-dressed, skinny and skittish and Minnesotans are frozen solid until further notice.
As somebody lodged 10 miles from its border, though, I will say that there is no sense of humor on God’s green Earth like the Michigander. There’s a spirit that, you might say, comes as kind of a necessity, in the only state in the nation to decline in total population during the decade of 2010 through 2020. It’s a place that baptizes you under for fire maximizing your resources and developing the ability to laugh in the face of adversity.
A recent job in Buchanan had me pretty much surrounded by stupefyingly funny dudes — they had all these different nicknames for each other, and one dude, who went by three different names, depending on the circumstances, could in one instance be heard saying to a customer, “Hi, my name’s… uh… Chase.” As you might have guessed, this ignited an uproar of mocking laughter and ensuing ribbing from one of his co-workers, this overweight, hilarious dude who, per his report, was actually “ordained” to marry people under the religion which apparently pertains to the “The Dude” character in The Big Lebowski [1].
Anyway, up at Camp Eberhart, outside of Three Rivers, MI, I got further affirmation of the Michigan resident’s inherent knack for comedy. Some of the jokes were pretty gross, to be sure, but one that always keeps popping up as common and popular is the old “Shut up when I’m talking to you… you hear me… answer me!” And, of course, this one gets extra credibility for its association with Eminem, perhaps the funniest Michigander of them all.
Does it matter if we call jokes “traditionals,” the way we do with old folk songs like “El Paso” and “Clementine”? Of course not. But I thought it might give people some extra inspiration to tell them and to appreciate them, if the occasion is right. Plus, I thought it would be an interesting maneuver in sort of canonizing the egregiously undervalued blue-collar worker, who, during the course of an average day, very likely, has no choice but to swallow his or her pride and prompt a deviant chuckle or two. And as any of us who have been there will tell you, it is undoubtedly an “art,” in and of itself.
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[1] Let’s face it, though: it’s more akin to Zen Buddhism than not.
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[2] The precious, namby-pamby public art recently unveiled in South Bend would confirm this bias toward the lavish and aesthetically ostentatious, perhaps.
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