Middle Western

In his final report to the chief of the Motor Transport Corps, Eisenhower reflected that “extended trips by trucks through the middle western part of the United States are impracticable until the roads are improved.”

Her story is already part of American legend — Middle Western madcap goes east, dances with Martha Graham, returns to Grand Rapids, coordinates fashions for a department store, leads conga lines, marries a diabetic salesman, divorces him after five years.

Harry S. Truman was different again, and yet in his own way he represented the country, in its Middle Western, small-business, common-sensical strain.

In the article, headlined “Middle Western Woman a Better Person Than She’s Painted, Says Dagmar Leggett,” Carlson called out writers such as Sinclair Lewis for being critical of women.

How to make something quintessentially American, Graham mused, without evoking “a mural in a Middle Western railway station”? How to convey “gentleness without sentimentality” and “the simplicities of a telescoped day,” from morning to nightfall?