Despite my occasional claims to the contrary, I grew up in the midwest. Six-plus years in Kansas, three in Missouri, five in eastern New Mexico (on the high plains, which is close enough) and five years of college at the University of Missouri--I guess I have to admit to a midwestern identity, even if I was born in Rochester, N.Y. and spent most of the first three years of my life in New York and Maryland.

Thing is, I have no deep-seated desire to "go home" to the midwest. And sometimes I wonder just why I was there in the first place.

About a month ago, my wife Barbara asked me what I wanted for my birthday. As both of us were hanging out at home with our newborn son Max, I figured a road trip would be a good idea. And the only road trip I could envision was to Kalamazoo, Mich., home of the best beer in the world. Bell's.

We discovered Bell's during a year-long sojourn in Battle Creek. Larry Bell was just beginning to gear up his brewery, but he'd already perfected his famous Amber Ale. Sometime back in the winter of 1993-94, I tasted a six-pack from his second small batch of Cherry Stout. The ingredients of this beer are hops, malt, yeast and cherry juice. Thick and tart, it is. Unforgettable is another good word.

Back then, you could find Bell's in a few spots across southern Michigan. These days, it's widely available from Missouri to Ohio. The midwest. Where I spent so much time as a lad.

Driving out to Kalamazoo wasn't so bad. We drove up I-77 to see some friends in Cleveland, passing through some very pretty mountains in West Virginia before landing in Ohio. Soon enough, though, we were on the banks of Lake Erie, which is not a bad place to be if you must be in Ohio.

After a night's stay in Bay Village (a few miles east of Cleveland), we headed over to Detroit. Well, Farmington. Me, I kinda like the Detroit part of Detroit, but my friends who live in the not-Detroit parts of Detroit think I'm crazy. It's definitely a possibility.

Our friends Becky and Jeff own and run a bakery in Farmington. Jeff brews his own beer and has constructed a shed in his back yard to house and serve said beer. He runs four taps continuously. At least, that's how it worked when we were there. When not stuffing ourselves full of bread and pastries, we were hitting the taps hard. A pleasant two-day warm up for the main event in Kalamazoo.

Which was almost anti-climactic. When we told the bartender that we'd come all the way from North Carolina for some beer, he yawned--as if to say "You're not gonna impress me unless you come from another continent." I guess Larry Bell's reputation has spread a wee bit since last I was in Kalamazoo. Oh well. We enjoyed a few beers in the bar, took a couple of pictures of Max and his "first beer" and headed off to the general store to buy some beer in bottles.

Five cases, three shirts, two glasses and a bumper sticker later, we loaded the trunk and headed off to Indiana, on our way to Barbara's parents's home in Nashville. It took a long time to drive through Indiana. Too long, if you ask me.

Back where I was grew up, "hoosier" was an epithet. A hoosier was a hick, some dumbass redneck who didn't have the sense to pull the hayseed out of his mouth when trying to pick up some city girl.

Before all you people in Indiana take offense, let me remind you that only in Indiana does every freeway on-ramp come complete with a "no left turn" sign just before the merge.

No left turn when zipping onto the Interstate? Duh.

Then there were the two seat-belt checkpoints and multitudes of speed traps (I lost count of them, to be honest). At one in particular, a state trooper was actually standing in a lane of traffic, holding out the radar gun in a two-fisted T.J. Hooker stance. Okay, maybe some of this excessive force was in place because of the Indy 500. I just hope that some trucker wiped that stupid grin off the face of the trooper with the radar gun. I don't care how anxious you are to write a ticket; it's never a good idea to simply stand in a lane of traffic and force drivers to swerve around you at 70 mph.

Did I mention I hate Indiana? Right. You might think I would temper this attack by saying I know some nice people from Indiana and that I'm just joking, etc. Not gonna happen. I do have some friends who lived in Indiana at one time, but that doesn't matter. As irrational as it may be, I have a real antipathy for Indiana. And I'm not very positive about non-Chicago Illinois. Or most of Iowa or Nebraska, either. I could keep naming states, but I think you get the gist. My problem isn't with the people, exactly, or the land or even the generally backward politicians. It's more a combination of everything.

And as much as I like Kansas City, I don't think I could live there again. Barbara and I have a short list of places we would like to move. New York. San Francisco. Baltimore. D.C. Philadelphia. Portland. The first two are predicated on one of us becoming independently wealthy (highly unlikely considering our trades), leaving four realistic destinations in the mix. You'll note that none of them are in the midwest. This is no accident.

Our beer run reinforced to me the reasons why I'm much happier back east. In a city. Perceptive observers of the last presidential election may have noticed that Al Gore took all the cities and George W. Bush took the rest. I may be a white male of reasonable means, but I prefer to hang out with folks from all sorts of backgrounds who like to talk about something other than the stock market or how pissed off they are that the damned feminists (or blacks, or gays, or atheists or all of the above) are ruining America. I know, there are places in the midwest where I could find such havens. My "ancestral" home of Kansas City, for example. Chicago, certainly. St. Louis--in pockets. A few college towns here and there. But really, the action for me is on the coasts. I've often thought about where I would like to live, but I haven't often delineated the reasons why I've lived in the eastern time zone for all but one of the years after I graduated from college.

One drive down the spine of Indiana with a trunk full of beer can be quite enlightening that way.

Jon Worley plans to spend a few years slowly draining his stash of Bell's beer.