In the junk food aisle of our little rural supermarket, somewhere between the Buffalo Ranch Doritos and the Chili Cheese Fritos, I won the longest running squabble in the history of my marriage.
The Blue Corn Snob Chips War.
It began like this.
My sister asked us to pick up chips for a family gathering and my wife unwittingly tossed an ordinary bag of tortilla chips into the grocery cart.
I informed her that ordinary was not worthy of my big city sister’s legendary guacamole dip. Only Blue Corn Tortilla Chips would do.
She did not take it well.
“I’m just a country girl…” she began, “and where I come from people don’t eat snob chips.”
Forgive me for stating the obvious but when my wife begins a sentence with “I’m just a country girl” what follows is not an expression of humility. For her, being “country” is the most virtuous of all virtues while being “city” is the viciest of all vices.
You would think our years together would have narrowed that cultural chasm, especially after we moved to her little Minnesota town – but it only made matters worse.
She insist on plain old while I (too often in her opinion) tilt toward snobby – which makes for some awkward situations.
For example, I enjoy craft beer and once made the mistake of serving a Guinness Stout to a neighbor. He spit it out, saying “It taste like the stuff I use to seal-coat my driveway.” The next time he came over I served his favorite beer, one that comes in a 24 pack and has less kick than tap water.
The same happens with coffee.
My rural guests complain that they can taste my coffee all the way until tomorrow. They prefer it weak, preferably with less caffeine than the FDA allows in baby formula.
So does that make me a snob?
My wife thinks so.
But who’s the snob here?
If someone likes blue corn chips, craft beer or strong coffee, who’s to say it’s wrong?
The world needs change – but yeah, some people take it too far. They change their morals and politics at the speed of Twitter.
The world sorely needs stability too. Someone has to anchor the culture, least we all drift away – but again some take it too far and haven’t changed their views since cars had fins.
There is enough vice and virtue to go all the way around and being the last to adopt a fad is just as virtuous as being the first.
It’s why I like being a Midwesterner. Ideas come to us from the coasts and by the time they get here, they are threadbare – so we can see right through the worst of them.
But things do get here eventually. Even things like Blue Corn Snob Chips which recently made it all the way to Almost Iowa and are now readily available on the shelf of our little rural supermarket – right between the Buffalo Ranch Doritos and the Chili Cheese Fritos.
Almost Iowa 
About the coffee thing, I’ll drink any coffee. When I was forced to travel for business, I would take a small jar of instant coffee and use hot tap water. I needed that while waiting for the coffee pot to do its job. Oh, I prefer the red chips.
The one bit of wisdom I have picked up in life about marriage: You don’t argue with the wife. I will be sitting watching a tv show and I see some poor smuck of a guy, getting out the shovel and starting to dig. He is so brainless, and let’s admit it, most of we males are brainless when it comes to wives. The poor smuck doesn’t no when to quit digging. By the way, that poor smuck is me. So I get this wisdom from experience.
My wife and I argue all the time but it is well understood who wins.
I can identify with your wife. I often said, “I’m just a country doctor…”
And humility follows? 🙂
I would have loved it if you were in my part of the country and were my doctor, John.
Want strong rough coffee, go to New York. My friends from there claim our Washington state coffee is dishwater. All the junk food gets here fast.
My coffee is strong enough to chew.
I find that my tastes are directly proportional to my income. Now I eat blue chips and drink fancy coffees. In college, it was Mac & Cheese and instant coffee. I have economically adaptable preferences…or snobbery.
In college I couldn’t afford to indulge in Mac & Cheese. I survived on Ramen Noodles. 🙂
But your point is spot on, much of what we consume beyond the basic necessities speaks more to status than taste.
This sentence, my friend, is genius: “Ideas come to us from the coasts and by the time they get here, they are threadbare so we can see right through the worst of them.”
And I prefer thick coffee and blue corn chips too.
It is genius but the genius is not me. I believe I got that from Saul Bellow. I couldn’t locate his quote to do proper attribution so I paraphrased it.
First time I’ve read it, I attribute it to you since I am the credit chairman.
🙂