Delawhat?

Celebrating Delaware, the Small Wonder

BY KATE WORTECK

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Illustration by Rebecca Ryder Neipris
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It's a fail-proof conversation starter. Whenever I want to get people's attention at a party, I mention that I am from Delaware and am met with shock and awe. For most people, Delaware is a joke, the epitome of boring—not a place where real people choose to live their lives. In fact, this is often inconceivable for my fellow students: "What's that like?" "What do you do in Delaware, anyway? I mean, is there anything there?"

It's sort of cheating to say I'm from Delaware, since I've never actually lived there, but grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, a mere five-minute walk from the humblest of states. From the age of five, my parents ferried me across the state line to take advantage of Delaware's bargain basement private school tuitions, so throughout my formative years, I spent a good ten, maybe 12 hours a day in our nation's "small wonder," and therefore consider myself an authority. Only after starting college did I realize that my adopted home state was the much-maligned, red-headed stepchild of the rest of the U.S.

Our Grand Canyon Is Invisible

I can understand the misconception—it's a hard place to picture for people who haven't been there, largely because it lacks any landmarks or lucrative tourist attractions. Most other states have one or two trademarks they can cling to for recognition. Colorado has the Rockies, Florida has old people and palm trees—even South Dakota can claim Mount Rushmore. But think of Delaware, and what comes to mind? A couple of lines from Wayne's World? Your bank statement? Maybe you drove through it once on your way to DC, but if you're like most people, the name "Delaware" doesn't conjure up much.

When Homer and Marge of The Simpsons win a trip to Wilmington (our state's largest city, for those in the know), the only attraction to get excited about is a screen door factory. To residents of the other 49 states, we seem to be the very definition of mediocrity, weighing in as the second-smallest state in the union, and the 45th least populous. As a state, we never finish first, but we're never quite last either. As far as I can tell, Delaware has only one number-one spot to brag about: we were the first state to ratify the constitution in 1787, which doesn't exactly give us cool points in the 21st century. In fact, Delaware didn't even start out as an independent entity—in colonial times, we were just a clumsy offshoot of Pennsylvania that got lopped off for the sake of administrative efficiency.

In business circles, Delaware is informally acknowledged to be the headquarters of corporate America. Because of our relaxed regulations regarding corporate law, thousands of companies are technically based in Delaware, while actually maintaining their flagship offices in more upscale locations such as New York or D.C. Recent estimates suggest that there is one corporation for every household in our state. But before you write us off as a hive of corporate drones, understand that most companies are headquartered here in name only, and really have their swanky offices somewhere else. Unfortunately, this means that we get the stigma of being associated with lots of ethically questionable big-name corporations—AstraZeneca, Bank of America, MBNA, etc. without getting to enjoy many of the cushy benefits.

Groping With Gatsby And Crabundance

Sadly, Delaware hasn't done much to revamp its image lately. With the "fighting blue hen" as its mascot and milk as the state drink, the first state seems intent on setting the bar for bland. And with no mountain ranges, cliffs, caverns or whitewater rapids, there isn't much excitement in the climate either. While Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and DC are within an afternoon's drive, Delaware itself doesn't have any bustling cultural centers. Our contributions to pop culture are also scant and often miscredited—while a few celebrities got their start in Wilmington, nobody seems to make it big until they leave and cop the attitude of a hipper locale. The proto-punk pioneers of the band Television have roots in Delaware, as do Bob Marley and Johnny Damon, but these icons are now associated with New York, Jamaica and Boston, respectively. However, people do choose to live here, and 780,000 of them must have something to say for themselves.

In defense of my adopted home state, I sought out the unseen advantages of living in, as Lisa Simpson so eloquently put it, "the place where JC Penney sends their damaged merchandise." Is Delaware really deserving of all the ridicule it endures (mostly as a product of ignorance), or has it in fact earned its nickname: "the small wonder"? I'd always taken it for granted, but I realized that there must be qualities that distinguish Delaware as something more than an amorphous landmass separating Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The next time you're driving through Delaware on your way to somewhere more important, stop and look out the window. It's actually kind of pretty out there, mild but not muggy, verdant. And while our state does have its fair share of decaying strip malls and shabby condos, it's also the home of one of the nation's richest families—the DuPonts. While the name isn't as recognizable as, say, Rockefeller or Carnegie, the DuPont family has created a centuries-old chemical empire in the very heart of Delaware. Most of the major synthetic materials invented in the past century—nylon, teflon and all of their cousins—were whipped up in DuPont laboratories. The family owns about half of the state and is notoriously inbred and eccentric (the two probably go hand-in-hand). There aren't many of them left these days, but in their heyday they were famous for their enormous and opulent countryside estates, all of which had formal gardens and names that evoked the British gentry—Longwood, Winterthur and Gibraltar are just a few. Some of these have since been turned into museums, but just as many have been left empty in recent years and have become informal lover's lanes for local high-schoolers. So while most teenage sweethearts are relegated to groping in the backs of Honda civics, Delawareans get to sneak off to abandoned mansions to canoodle in carriage houses and splash about in reflecting pools. These estates are completely overlooked by out-of-staters but lend a touch of Gatsby-esque glamour to our daily life.

Our humble state also boasts many of the attractions that make Maryland and South Jersey famous—namely casinos, racetracks, beaches and delicious, delicious crab cakes. But since nobody ever wants to slum it in Delaware for vacation, we have miles of coastline and heaps of seafood all to ourselves. Let our neighbors to the north and south fight it out for spots on the beach. We get to live the good life of the mid-Atlantic without having to deal with the hassles caused by an influx of tourists. In fact, we're laughing at them from across the bay while lounging in beach chairs that cost six to eight percent less, because our state has no sales tax. This also means that we never have to waste our time doing mental math in the checkout line—no scrounging in our pockets for an extra 20 cents to pay the tax on our bag of chips.

Delaware is diverse despite its size; it, like any other state, also has its share of in-state rivalries. The Mason-Dixon line (the traditional demarcation between America's North and South) runs along the entire length of our state, and it's become a microcosm of the eastern seaboard. One region tends to melt into another somewhere south of the Delaware and Chesapeake canal, which cuts across half of our state. People from Delaware's upper county (known as "above the canal") are stereotyped as typical Northerners: uptight, snooty and overeducated. In contrast, residents of the Southern regions have noticeable accents and are typecast as uncivilized hicks from the "slower lower" part of the state.

We Chunk As One

It's not as though we Delawareans aren't aware of our underdog status—in fact, lots of local events celebrate it in a subtly tongue-in-cheek way. For example, one of the state's most enthusiastically attended events is Punkin' Chunkin: a festival the weekend after Halloween in which competitors round up all of the leftover pumpkins they can find and fashion hydraulic-powered contraptions to see who can fling these beleaguered vegetables the farthest. In other states, this might only attract the science fair crowd, but in Delaware it's arguably the biggest tailgating event of the year. Only here can you find crowds of tipsy adults cheering as eight-to-ten pound chunks of squash hurtle through the air at the speed of sound. In recent years, the festival has expanded to include a chili cook-off, as well as offering scholarships to the state's most promising young chunkers.

There's also something charming about living in a state that's small enough to fit in Texas' pocket. It might seem claustrophobic to some people, but living in such a small and sparsely populated state is more like having one huge hometown. You can go to any town in the state and run into someone you know or competed against in high school field hockey games. And speaking of sports, it's easy to appear ridiculously accomplished in Delaware. There's so little competition that any halfway decent athlete, debater or science nerd can compete in state-level competitions on a regular basis. This means that any competent person can finish their education with a trunk full of medals and trophies and a closet crammed with "State Champs 2002" apparel. As long as your t-shirts and varsity jackets don't mention that the state is Delaware, they're actually somewhat impressive.

So go on, make fun of our state. You'll notice that native Delawareans might smile at your ignorance, but we'll rarely argue. Why? Because if you knew how awesome Delaware really was, you'd be mucking up our beaches and snatching up our trophies and tax-free goods. So please, ignore us. Drive though us on your way to DC or Philly and don't bother to stop. We're a diamond in the rough, and we like it that way.

Kate Worteck B'07 is the Charcoal Pit milkshake to my hamburger heart.

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