Writing and Wayfaring: April 2014

Woodstock Square in downtown Woodstock, Illinois

Groundhog Day-zero in Woodstock, Illinois

If you had to send a postcard addressed to "Happiness," and you had to send it to an actual physical place in the world, where would you choose to send it? What address would you put down? Would you send it to yourself? Would you send it to a small town in the American Midwest? Or do those very ideas--that happiness could be right where you're standing, or right in the middle of cornfield country--make you laugh, or even cry?

This is a travel blog, which means it's a blog kept by someone who clearly likes to go places away from where she currently is. And where she currently is is indeed a town in the Midwest. No, not a small town, and not an isolated one. Instead a suburb of Chicago, a very near outgrowth of a major American city with all the advantages that affords. But still, not in itself a town people know much about or brag about or come to visit on purpose. Not a tourist draw, unlike Chicago itself...and unlike many of the other places I've written about on this blog over the years. Where I live is no one's idea of a dream vacation spot. And while I'm sure there are plenty of people living here who rather like the town, it's probably not the kind of place most people envision when told to imagine their own, personal "happy place."

It's really unlikely anyone anywhere would pick any place in the Midwest as her "happy place." For most people, the American Midwest is synonymous with monotony and boredom. We have no mountains or ocean coasts here. The land is flat, and you can drive for hours and hours passing only cornfields and farmhouses with nothing to break up the monotony but billboards and the occasional turn-off to a fast-food-and-gas oasis. In the wintertime, when the sky is gray and the fields are empty of crops and cows, the landscape is especially bleak and dull. Of course, there are cities to see in the Midwest, some of them quite exciting and mighty (i.e., Chicago), some of them once mighty (i.e., Detroit). And there are some interesting small towns to see too, some quite quirky and some with important histories attached to them. But in comparison to what other, more spectacular parts of the country and world have to offer, the average tourist couldn't be bothered with quirk and cornfields. In fact, in my own world travels I've heard most folks equate the idea of a vacation anywhere in the Midwest as a punchline at best, a punishment at worst.

Breathtaking Midwestern scenery

Illinois. Or Iowa. Maybe Wisconsin--who can tell the difference?

Midwesterners aren't fools--they know how the rest of the country sees their home turf. And some of them would even agree. When you grow up Midwestern, the message impressed on you from the world beyond is that you should try to escape as soon as possible because you can't possibly be happy (or fulfilled or sane or cultured or even intelligent) "stuck" in "flyover country." Opportunity is elsewhere. Happiness is elsewhere. Away from the Midwest. Outside the borders of Illinois and Iowa and Kansas and all the rest of the heartland. Definitely. Just ask Dorothy.

Of course, by the end of The Wizard of Oz (a film and story that happen to be one of the greatest portraits of the Midwest, despite all the fantastical elements), Dorothy learns that life over the rainbow isn't necessarily happier or better than life down on the farm in Kansas. Prettier, maybe--but not happier. Happiness equals home to Dorothy; moreover, the ability to return home (i.e., to tap into her source of happiness) is a power she's had all along, as she learns at the story's end.

There's another American film with a Midwestern connection that offers a very similar message--though it's far less fantastical, far more mundane in setting and style, crowd-pleasingly clever and comical, and surprisingly wise and philosophical. The movie Groundhog Day, like The Wizard of Oz, is basically about an unhappy person discovering the happiness within himself, to the extent of even coming to appreciate the ordinary in this world. Like Dorothy, the hero of Groundhog Day, Phil Connors, comes to his appreciation and acceptance of the ordinary through an experience with the extraordinary--but whereas Dorothy's experience of the extraordinary involves being tossed into a new place of tremendous beauty, color, and adventure, Phil's experience involves being stuck in the same place and immersed in a hell of repetition, stagnation, and a perpetually crappy weather forecast.

OK, but what's the connection with the Midwest? Groundhog Day is set in Pennsylvania after all, in a town called Punxsutawney that's famous for its real-life annual Groundhog Day forecast. Well, it's set there but it wasn't filmed there. The town you see in the movie is really a small town in northern Illinois over an hour's drive from Chicago, called Woodstock. You can even see the town's name displayed, over and over again, in most of the "Ned scenes" of the movie, when Phil's annoying former high-school friend turned annoying insurance salesman Ned Ryerson spots Phil on the street and runs over to push his wares on Phil, with the blue storefront of Woodstock Jewelers serving as witness to the cringe-inducing scene (and Phil's torment) day in and day out.

Like the sign says...Ned's corner, in Woodstock, Illinois

Now, a word about the picture directly above--the plaque one. This is just one of many plaque shots I got on a recent visit to Woodstock. And all of 'em Groundhog Day affiliated. See for yourself:

Clearly, if you're an aficionado of plaques, you couldn't pick a better place to visit than Woodstock, Illinois. Seriously though, with little else to go on in terms of drawing tourists, Woodstock has milked its Hollywood connections for all they're worth. Along with the plaques everywhere reminding locals and visitors alike that they're essentially walking all over a former film set, the town hosts an annual Groundhog Day celebration, timed with the actual holiday, that features such activities as a walking tour of the movie sites, a screening of the movie, a dinner and dance, a bowling night, a pancake breakfast, a chili cook-off, some guy dressed up in a big groundhog costume, and an actual groundhog weather prognostication ceremony in the town square.

Some might find the idea of a town basing its whole tourism industry on its appearance in a single movie rather desperate and sad. But Woodstock is hardly the only place in the world to try to turn a rather tenuous connection to fame into a potential local money-maker. I've been to other towns with even shakier pop-culture connections--everything from being named after a game show to being name-dropped in an Eagles song--that have tried milking the famous-for-15-minutes cow even harder. Besides, Woodstock is genuinely a lovely little town, with an old town square largely free of chain stores and restaurants (the only one I saw on the square was a Starbucks) and instead filled with independently owned shops and restored to run-down historical buildings. Many of the homes in Woodstock are of the rambling old Victorian type, full of character and mystery. And quirk? You want quirk? Woodstock's got loads of it--numerous incongruous touches ranging from a combination sushi restaurant/mini-golf park to a Buddhist center founded by a Sri Lankan monk. After Groundhog Day rolls past, the town looks forward to other celebrations and events such as harvest festivals and farmers markets, a jazz fest, an annual Haitian Idol battle-of-the-bands contest that raises money for Haiti's earthquake recovery efforts, a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, a "Dick Tracy Days" thing that promotes the town's Chester Gould museum, and a Prohibition Era-themed pub crawl named after Orson Welles (who, like Chester Gould the cartoonist, lived in Woodstock for a time).

The Woodstock Opera House--the tower is where Bill Murray's character jumped from on one of his many Groundhog Days

Old-timey car in Woodstock town square

Old-timey cigarette butt snuffer

Old-timey storefronts

Working it

A lonely view from inside the former Tip-Top Cafe

The Tip-Top Cafe is now a Mexican taqueria

The alley where Bill Murray's old homeless friend dies. Nothing is overlooked on a Groundhog Day walking tour in this town...nothing.

Public service announcement in the homeless man's alley

Doors in space

Old-timey window dressing. Things A Woman Wants To Know...

The old courthouse in Woodstock, Illinois

I'm guessing they make an exception for groundhogs

Typical beautiful Woodstock home...and yes, this was the B&B in the movie

Let's live here...We'll rent to start

OK, so it's no Chicago. No place but Chicago is. And maybe you wouldn't want to live in Woodstock, even if you wouldn't mind an afternoon visit. Maybe the thought of spending eternity in Woodstock would drive you to a million suicide attempts, just like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. Well, guess what? There are people living in Chicago--and New York, and San Francisco, and London and Paris and Rome and Beijing and every other major city and glam spot on earth--who feel the same way about life in Chicago (and New York and Paris and so on) as Mr. Phil Connors does about Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and as Dorothy does about Kansas. There are people on the coasts as miserable as some people in flyover country. And there are people in small Midwestern towns as happy with their lives and fulfilled in their surroundings as people living in so-called paradises. Happiness is either somewhere inside you or it's nowhere.

You can take one of the makers of Groundhog Day as an example. The movie's director and co-writer, Harold Ramis, was himself a Midwesterner who found success and fame in Hollywood but chose to return to Illinois after 20 years of living on the west coast. Ramis was born and raised in Chicago, went to college in St. Louis, and returned to Chicago to start his comedy training and career at Second City. He got good enough at comedy writing to finally leave the Midwest and move to New York and then Los Angeles, where he hit the big-time with films like Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, and of course Groundhog Day. Some time after completing Groundhog Day, which many critics and fans consider to be his best work, he moved back to Chicago from L.A. In interviews he spoke of how "liberated" this decision left him feeling. A creative and successful person finding fulfillment and freedom in flyover country--who woulda thunk? Ramis passed away earlier this year in February (the month of the groundhog!) at the age of 69, in Chicago. The city mourned his death and plans a public memorial this spring--presumably when it's no longer cold and gray like it was every day for Phil Connors and like it was for every Midwesterner this entire long winter past.

But that line ("It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna last you the rest of your life") is Bill Murray's. Or rather, Danny Rubin's. To be accurate: Murray says it, Rubin wrote it. Either way, both have solid Midwestern connections and credentials. Murray was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, and like Ramis, he got his start at Second City before success in New York on Saturday Night Live and later in Hollywood in films. He has yet to return to live in Chicago, like Ramis did--and perhaps he never will. No bother--he's never lost his Chicago accent or his devotion to Chicago sports teams (it's probably fitting that both the star and director of Groundhog Day are/were Cubs fans, since the history of the team is as much like Phil Connors' day in the movie as anything can be--t hey lose game in, game out, year in, year out, for...oh, over 100 years now). Murray's face--scarred, crumpled, un-pretty, un-perfect--is the kind only the streets and stages of Chicago can produce. As for Danny Rubin, Groundhog Day's creator and screenwriter--Rubin grew up in Florida but studied TV, film, and radio at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and spent years working and writing in Chicago before heading out to L.A....where he says he could stand to live for only two years.

I have no idea how these men wound up in Woodstock, Illinois, to make their movie--why Woodstock was chosen for the filming rather than Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, itself or any other place on earth. But I do think that the choice of Woodstock was dead-on. And I do think the Midwestern connections of Ramis, Murray, and Rubin aren't irrelevant to the movie's success and genius. Groundhog Day offers the kind of message that only people usually dismissed as "flyover folks" can deliver with conviction and unpretentious wit and wisdom. I think only someone who's had to suffer through the kind of long, truly wretched winters of the Midwest, only to be relieved by an often deadly tornado season in the spring, surrounded by flat landscapes without a single mountain or palm tree grove or deep canyon or thick forest to soften the bleak view, can truly understand the necessity of locating happiness someplace inside yourself rather than someplace straight out of an upscale travel magazine spread. What those travel magazines sell anyway is not happiness, but paradise. And there's a big difference. Paradise you can buy. Happiness you can't. But if you're satisfied with that so-called ordinary spot where you're standing right now, you can probably rent to start. ;-)