According to Bill Nye (always the most reliable source,) the Dakotas have a saying: "There's nothing between you and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence—and that blew down yesterday." The Midwest, fortunately, is not forced to deal with that, or anything more onerous than "lake effect" snow dumping three feet overnight.

By the way, I would offer comment on your latest travel thread if I could think of anything worth saying about West Texas. I notice even moondog has not been able to muster any defence of his childhood haunts. I will say the zip code thing is fairly new; I had only begun having to deal with it in a VERY few places in Austin before I left, though it was a constant plague when visiting Houston. Um... maybe something on cockroaches tomorrow; living on the coast means I have forgotten more about cockroaches than ANYONE wants to know.