78 Culture The Economist May 14th 2022
social media, which had two effects,
according to Adam Davis, boss of Tait
Towers. It showed there was a globalde
mand for these big shows—and provided
the ideal tool to market them.
“We’re making these moments that
people will remember for ever,” Mr Davis
says. He notes that promotion of these
events happens largely through pictures
on social media, so a dazzling production
is “almost a marketing expense”, whichal
lows for higher ticket prices. Tait Towers’
shows are designed to look as spectacular
to the Instagrammer in the back rowasto
the punters at the front. Simple human
vanity takes care of the rest. “I’ve spent
$1,000 to come to a soldout event.Next
thing I do is brag about the fact I was there,
right? And so I’m going to send youthis
incredible picture of me being amazing.”
Even if the music disappoints, Mr Davis
says, the photos will look wonderful.
Amish country turned out to be the
ideal location for businesses that arede
pendent on bespoke parts and custom
manufacturing, in which the local Amish
and Mennonite communities specialise.
When other commercial outfits have strug
gled to make the items that big shows
needed, say both Mr Clair and Mr Davis,
adaptable Amish craftsmen have doneso
with ease. One of Tait Towers’ regularsup
pliers has been a Mennoniterun company
that makes cattle grids: the precisionin
cutting metal is a transferable skill.
The Pennsylvania countryside has
another unanticipated advantage: because
it is more conducive to getting thingsdone
than distracting big cities, bands them
selves have descended on it, too. WhenThe
Economist visited, a stadium act was in
secret session in a giant rehearsal studio
(originally built to test shows beforethe
artists got involved). Musicians and crews
stay at the onsite hotel. Lititz may bethe
only small town where you might seeJus
tin Bieber or Ariana Grande popping outto
buy a toothbrush—and bumping intoan
Amish craftsman on the way.
Covid19 brought the livemusic indus
try to a halt. Now business is back,and
Rock Lititz is busier than ever. But rising
demand—up 30% on prepandemic levels,
estimate Mr Clair and Mr Davis—andvary
ing coronavirus protocols have brought
their own difficulties. Getting missing
parts from one side of the world to theoth
er overnight is harder than it was. Thereare
shortages of all the things tours need,from
trucks to screws. “Things as simpleasa
stock threequarterinch nut: the worldis
running out,” Mr Davis says.
But Rock Lititz rolls on. By the loading
docks of Clair Global’s factory, the flight
cases were piling up. When everythinghad
been tested, they were shipped out tothe
annual Coachella festival in California.
Rock just doesn’t happen without Lititz.nWorldina dishMade right for Iowa
T
hesandwichgoesbyseveralnames,
including “canteen”, “tavern” and,
most descriptively, “loose meat”. First sold
in Muscatine, Iowa, nearly a century ago, it
is now popular across the state. Like a
hamburger, a MaidRite—as the dish is
known at Dan’s Sandwich Shop in Newton,
Iowa—is made from ground beef. But
instead of a patty flipped off a grill, diners
get a scoop of loose, pebbly, welldone
meat dug out of a cooking trough and
dumped onto a bun, typically topped with
mustard, ketchup and pickles.
Mike Brown, the restaurant’s proprietor
since last year, proudly notes that he cuts
the beef fresh every day, adding nothing,
not even salt. (Before him Dan Holtcamp
ran the place for half a century with his
wife, Pam, and bequeathed it his name.) To
nonIowans, the sandwich can seem a
perplexingly austere creation. It offers
neither the compact, carfriendly conve
nience of a burger—the meat in a Maid
Rite, being loose, tends to spill out—nor
the saucy comfort of a Sloppy Joe. But it
says much about the charm and persis
tence of regional cuisine.
If a MaidRite were merely a disinte
grating, suboptimal burger, Iowans would
have long stopped eating them. They do
not lack for choice; like most small
American towns, Newton abounds in fa
miliar burgerslinging franchises. Yet Mr
Brown estimates that on most days, he cuts
and cooks up to 150 pounds (68kg) of beef,
enough for a few hundred sandwiches: not
bad for a town of 15,000 people.
Asked why the MaidRite has not founda widermarket,MrBrown says “the right
person” hasn’t come along to champion it.
That may not be the whole story; the sand
wich is probably too bland and beefy for an
increasingly multicultural America. But as
a general comment on regional foods that
are handed down through generations of
locals, his rationale stands.
They are as much the product of savvy
marketing, an affable restaurateur or
chance—“the right person” in the right
place and time—as of recipes or terroir.
Meat, bread and cheese are not unique to
Philadelphia, but the cheesesteak is.
Someone experimented, people liked it,
and a regional food was born. Other, less
serendipitous dishes perish with their cre
ators, not always because they are inferior.
If they endure, regional foods become
artefacts of habit and memory. When out
oftowners sit down at Dan’s lunch counter
and eat a MaidRite, as Barack Obama once
did (pictured), they indulge in something
new and exotic. They may find it delicious
or unremarkable, but unless they return to
rural Iowa, they may not eat another.
But a local who eats a MaidRite is not
just eating beef on bread. He is ordering
what he ate with his father after Little
League games, what his mother brought
home from work when she was too tired to
cook, or what he longed for in the army.
She is eating what she ate with her friends
after school or on prom night. Regional
food does not have to be superior or even
comprehensible to outsiders to help devo
tees, wherever they are, deepen theircon
nections to the past, and to themselves.nN EWTON
Unsung regional foods can contain multitudes of memories