Midwest work ethic

I've always wondered where the midwest work ethic comes from. Does it have to do with the historically agrarian lifestyle? Does it have to do with the density of German immigrants? Is it a rust belt thing? I am convinced it is none of that. It is winter. Shoveling snow it in particular. In order to survive, dwellers of the midwest have to go to their jobs like in every other part of the country. Here however, we must continue to wake up on winter mornings when in is dark until after you get to work, and dark when you return home at night. It will also be very cold, and not just outside. In order to keep a job, we have to keep forcing ourselves to get out of the warm bed, take a shower, and step out of that shower into a cold bathroom while wet. After drying off and getting dressed, you have to venture into the very cold outdoors to scrape the frost off of your windshield and warm your car for 5-10 minutes before you can go to work. On on those lovely mornings where it snows, we must wake early to shovel a path to the road in order to even begin your journey to your place of employment. Lesser men would give up and return to bed, but not the mighty midwesterner. And we still get to work an hour earlier than the folks living on the coast.

So why does this give us a great work ethic? For starters, shoveling snow gets the metabolism going first thing in the morning, setting one up for a day of good hard labor thereafter. Plus the morning routine of cold shocks and natural metaphors for all that is inconvenient in this world weeds out the less motivated who headed to warmer climates when the weather gets rough. Those of us who do not back down from a challenge think of winter as a test of their mettle. On top of that, many of us have ancestors who came here in the summer and lived in caves during the winter. The work ethic comes from the blood of people who chose to settle here in spite of the fact winter meant it was just you, the wilderness, and lots of cold and snow. Those people knew how survival meant dealing with the elements, which took a lot of extra labor. It was them or the wilderness, and they weren't about to go down. And that spirit to get through winter lives in the midwest yet today. I may curse winter now and then, but like a lot of things I grumble about putting up with, it makes me a better man.