Chapter 2
Monolingual in the Heartland:
The Personal Story of the Language Guy®
© 2007, 2008, 2009  Mark A. Frobose

It’s not the years of your life that count ....  
                                                                    It’s the life in your years.
                                                                                           Abraham Lincoln
                                                           



The Midwest
   I was born in 1954 in what people in Hollywood would call ‘the fly-over country’.  This is the
same area of the United States that produced such figures as Abraham Lincoln, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, Tom Brokaw, George Will,  Dick Van Dyke, and Gene Hackman.
   It is the region where you have to be at least 10 times as good at something as someone from New
York, Los Angeles or Washington to get one third the attention.  In the 50’s it was and in many ways
remains a place of stability, unlocked doors, Little League Baseball games, homemade pie and jam,
church and Jesus.  It was a place where the little Boomers could run and play ball and Monopoly all
day, ride bikes, fish, camp in the back yard, and scream to their hearts’ content.   
   I was born in a place and time of no bike helmets, no curfews, and little crime.  
   Small town Middle America in the late 50’s and 60’s was a joy to grow up in.  Imagine riding a
bike that weighed at least 70 pounds with balloon tires.  When you fell down and busted one side of
your body, you got up, dug the gravel out of your skin and continued to ride.  The neighbor ladies
would give you home-made cookies.
   You would spend your summer nights sleeping out in the backyard with your buddies, waiting for
your chance to steal cherries out of Mrs. Stucky’s cherry tree or apples from  Mrs. McCosh’s
backyard.  If you were really lucky, someone would even bring a can of beer from Dad’s stash in the
refrigerator and you would choke on it with your friends while pretending to enjoy it.  
   The one piece of good fortune that I would not trade for anything in the world, is that I was born
and  raised in the Midwest.  It was and remains a source of stability in the midst of chaos, a place
that changes little when everything else changes much.  It is an island of America’s ideals which
have been preserved through the ravages of time, anachronistic, lovely, and until recently, English
only.