I’m watching some stupid travel film on one of my local PBS stations – I thought it was going to be about trains – but it is about train routes – eek!!!!. Anyway, they are talking about Chicago. And, like all these idiotic things, they say, [you can put any number of things in place of this] “Chicago owes its greatness to the fact that it is in the very heart of the corn-belt” [I know; this one was particularly stupid].

It’s always something different- it’s beef, or it’s coal, or who knows what! Why can’t these idiots EVER get it right? Chicago owes not only its (somewhat questionable) greatness, BUT ITS VERY EXISTENCE to the fact that it is along the shortest portage route between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines River (and then on to the Mississippi). This should be elementary American history.