The Way to Gut a Deer Is to Cut From Groin to Neck

Every year, tens of thousands of American high school students and college undergraduates participate in exchange programs that take them to all corners of the globe for new experiences. The idea behind these journeys is simple. Familiarity breeds tolerance -- sometimes even acceptance.

That’s what Americans need now after our bitter presidential election, blue states accepting red and vice versa. How better to achieve that than a cultural exchange program between the two. Coast dwellers should spend some quality time in the “fly-over” states.

Residents of rural red America are more likely to have visited the big blue cities than the other way around. Many have vacationed in Los Angeles or New York. They’ve walked down Hollywood Boulevard or taken in the view from the Empire State Building. More than a few have family members living on the coasts. Though they may not love us, red staters tend to know more about us than we blue staters know about them.

Two days after the election, I began a weeklong journey through the rural Midwest. In a rented Lincoln Towncar, I drove 900 miles through farmland and small towns, striking up conversations with strangers, all of whom talked back. Along the way, I stocked up on 1970s country-rock CDs, courtesy of several Walgreens.

My blueness apparently showed. In Holstein, Iowa, a town of 2,400 souls, where the motorist is greeted by a sign that says “Wilkommen Freunde,” a middle-aged woman told me that she first thought I was a New Yorker, then she summed up the major difference between red and blue states. In red America, “people are honest.”

I’ll be honest and say that some aspects of life in the big red will require getting used to. In a small Nebraska college town, students can check in their shotguns with campus police and retrieve them whenever the hunting bug bites. I had never imagined that heartlanders took access to their guns so much for granted. Nor were they shy about imparting the details of hunting. For example, the best way to gut a deer is to cut from groin to neck.

What struck me most, however, is that red really isn’t a solid color. Although it sits on the edge of the Bible Belt, the Midwest is not the South. And much to my surprise, Nebraskans have all sorts of nasty things to say about Iowa, which they say stands for “Idiots Out Wandering About.”

Even within small counties and towns, not everyone shares the same worldview. On a quiet weekend morning in Sac City, Iowa, I bumped into a former soldier who began telling me of the racist underbelly of his town’s history. Mind you, I hadn’t asked.

On the previous evening at karaoke night at Riley’s Pub in Wayne, Neb., population 5,583, a resident who had lived in Texas dedicated a song to me, the visitor from the “outside world.” She didn’t choose a country ballad by Faith Hill or Tim McGraw. No, it was a rousing, soulful rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee,” a Kris Kristofferson song made famous by Janis Joplin -- you know, that 1960s conservative cultural icon.

The moment made me wonder whether there wasn’t a little bit of blue and red in all of us. That’s the mark of a successful cultural exchange program.