This weekend I put some Merle Haggard in the stereo of my Eclipse and headed down the road toward my roots. I usually get some looks from the country club kids and retirees that live in my mom’s subdivision, but I guess that’s just the country boy meets yuppie lifestyle that I lead. Kid Rock sounds better on the high-wattage sound system, but I said I was country, not white trash.

As I exited the interstate, I got a whiff of some familiar smell: the mixture of livestock from a nearby dairy farm and Chicagoland’s garbage from our giant landfill. The garbage heap may be an eye and nose sore for the senses, but tax dollars pump out of that dump as fast as the methane.

Sadly, it’s a welcome reminder of the quality education it helped provide my classmates in our broken, unequal, state education system.

I thanked the passing garbage trucks for my Advanced Placement classes and continued on my way to Vial Farms in the heartland of real America.

The summer trek to the farm took me back to summers spent with my father in junior high and high school. Days passed with mowing, scouting crops, pulling fence and working on the never-ending maintenance of a working farm. I learned the lessons of hard work and joy from time spent outdoors and with family.

My summer swimming hole was an acre and a half pond rather than a backyard, in-ground pool, and I made friends with animals and Little League teammates rather than in online gaming chat rooms. Lessons learned during those heartland summers have served me well wherever I have gone.

Sundays don’t bring much variety, but like a sappy, modern country song, “that’s what I like about Sunday.” No sleeping in and late-morning trips to Starbucks. Instead, an early-morning greeting of friends at church, followed by a lunch of homegrown sweet corn and a dip in the pond, leave even the young folks ready for an afternoon nap. The only “work” done is a Sunday drive with my dad to show off this year’s bumper crop.

It’s hard to get psyched for the drives back to work or school after my nostalgic weekends in the country. It will be even harder to prepare for a permanent trip to whichever city flashes enough money to lure me away come graduation. But I have been enough of a realist to accept that a taste of city life in my 20-something years will benefit my career and expand my horizons.

I have done exactly what I said I wouldn’t do and written a column better suited for diversions than an opinions page. But this was my last summer, weekend trip home before the real world hits and I have taken some liberty with lowered, summer readership.

I’m blessed to have grown up in the heartland where values still hold some meaning, where we understand the importance of family and decency but also the ridiculousness of overused political correctness. I’m proud to be from God’s country and I’ll never forget that’s where I come from.