My Iowa

May 5, 2016
© H. Newberry, 2016

Outside the boundary of Iowa’s 56,000 plus square miles there is another world.  Who knew?  Well, given my nomadic childhood, I did.  A willing transplant to the 29^th state to join the Union, I've learned a few other things as well. For instance, how we seem to those outside.  A multitude of eyes scan past our state, barely taking note of its delightfully, almost-square shape.  (Unless it's caucus season, but don't get me started on that nightmare.)  Those few who do see us on a map blink, pull from their vast and vitally-informative collection of televised commercials and shows, and move on to places deemed more interesting.

And what has TV taught them about the Hawkeye State, you might ask?  Well, when I’ve rambled beyond the rich, black soil and wide, blue sky I now call home, I’ve found most of the world believes Iowa is a farm trapped in a time warp.  One large, flat, furrowed field.  It's a place where pigs are grown, corn is manufactured and cheese is harvested.  (I thought that was Wisconsin, but I could be wrong since I get the majority of my information from books instead of television.)

Iowa - reported to be a farm.  One really big farm...

Interestingly enough, I've also found that apparently the natives of this stubbornly un-modern state are regarded as roughly 3 million clones of the same man.  I'm sure you've seen him.  Mid-thirties, sun-browned, sleeves rolled to the elbows and squinting  from under the curled bill of a cap as he surveys his labors.  (Depending on who you ask, of course, because he is also, at times, a knuckle-dragging, dull-eyed, unshaven Luddite with only three teeth.  Which is amazing considering somehow he manages to grip the ever-present hay stalk hanging out of his mouth.)

From outside we're all the same guy... Photo: © H. Newberry, 2013

Nor is this the most glaring misconception about Iowans.  It seems we all live in dirt-splattered overalls, mud-boots and ball-caps.  We wouldn’t know a book if it hit us in the face (unless it’s great-grandma’s bible which we read every night at the kitchen table by kerosene lamp).  Also, our preferred source for information about the outside world (which we really don't think about because we're genetically wired to vote strictly democrat) is a crumpled, three-day old newspaper due to the fact we are confounded by anything created after the turn of the century.  (Last century, that is.)

Mildred, the elusive female of the species

Our women (when it's been decided we have them) are all farm wives; plain and middle-aged, wearing baggy, hand-sewn dresses with of flour-dusted fingers and beaming, makeup-free faces. (They're also predisposed to an unnatural enthusiasm for home-cooking so the only room they exist in is the kitchen.)  Our children, of which there are many, (and who are trapped on a perpetual walk to the fishin' hole when not being worked to death on the family farm) are sunburned, freckle-faced and mindlessly obedient as they wander merrily down our endless dirt roads (as we have yet to discover the joys of asphalt).

More importantly, we are perceived to have “Mid-Western” values.  (Which seems to be a 'thing'.)  From what I can ferret out (on the upside) this means we believe in hard work, self-reliance, honesty, family, friendship and helping others.  We live simply.  We don’t just toss things out when they cease to function.  (This, of course, includes grandma and grandpa as well as entire fields of rusted, defunct cars and tractors.) We believe in commitment, marry young and stay together forever (no matter how miserable we are).  Since our pace of life is thought to be glacial and earth-centered, we're regarded as steady, stable and unwilling to veer off course into anything new or dangerous.  We all possess the deep, abiding wisdom of senior citizens, (when we're not complete morons) and are given to endless hours of quiet introspection as well as the dispensing of sage wisdoms while helping stranded travelers change flat tires or fix flooded carburetors.

Bacon.  Iowans eat bacon.

Still, it's all about perceptions and depending on who's doing the perceiving, there's also a downward take on all this.  Some have decided we are out of date, out of step and backwards.  Our dedication to farming sentences us as intentionally ignorant, refusing higher education for ourselves and our children in order to keep our families on the “farm” as free, slave labor.  (Oh, and our go-to parenting skill is a free-swinging belt.  Out behind the woodshed.)  Our willingness to trust each other labels us rubes, fools and easy targets. Because of our place in politics (What are those shifty Republicans up to now?) we’re thought to be staunch supporters of the Government – no matter how wrong it is - and it is supposed we all think “art” is a guy who works third shift at John Deere.  Though our main source of commerce rests on understanding the intricacies of farming and animal husbandry some think we can barely comprehend the usage of a microwave oven or Ziplock bag.  And the only reason our marriages last so long is because we demand our women be homely, broad-shouldered housemaids who bake bread all day and have no interest beyond canning the bounty of this year’s garden, piecing our old work clothes into a prize quilt for the state fair and striving to get the best deal on shortening in fifty gallon drums since we fry everything from green beans to shoelaces.

Sadly – or proudly - having lived in many different cultures and places in my life, I can say, in some ways, it’s all true.  (Well, in all honesty, I have never seen anyone buy a fifty gallon drum of shortening, but I can’t be everywhere all the time.)  Just as with every society, city, or place where human beings collect, Iowan’s cover the spectrum.  We have, and are, all those things and more.

We've been fortunate enough to birth or cultivate amazing artists in every genre including writers, painters, actors and musicians.  Yet we also have methamphetamine manufacturers, techno-phobes, and miscreants inside our borders.  Those of us who vote tick across the board (it's rumored that we have a fairly decent share of independent voters here.  Who knew!?).  There really are miles and miles of dirt roads but there are vast stretches of paved, modern highways as well.  Which actually do handle everything from horse-drawn  buggies and bouncing, meandering tractors to a veritable flood of MINI-Coopers, hybrids and shiny, new SUVs.  Our colleges and universities number around 60 state-wide and are some of the best (and worst as far as "get-your-party-on" schools go) in the nation.  We’ve got high school drop outs and MIT graduates counted among our citizenry.  There's vandals and valedictorians everywhere here.  Our cities are filled with high rollin’, money makin’, Wall Street types and earth-conscious, social reformers who live right beside economically-depressed families and homeless folks.  Iowa's rural areas really do have loads of farms but they also contain sprawling, state parks, Native American territories, factories, laboratories and natural wonders.  Our sky unfolds over towering, modern skyscrapers and ancient, crumbling silos.  And, yes, we do have corporate-run agriculture who spray copious amounts of toxins on Mother Earth in an effort to make even more money, but we are also one of the last bastions of the small, family farm as well as ranking 5th in the nation in the number of organic farmers who call us home.

Assumed mode of transportation.  In Iowa.

For the most part, Iowa is just like any other place.  It has it all.  An odd, yet feasible mix of contradictions, it's home to people of just about every shade, shape, ethnicity, background, education, and morality imagined by God and man.  Inside its boundaries you will find hard-work and entitlement, honesty and lies, morality and immorality, acceptance and prejudice, intelligence and ignorance.  And somehow this works for us, because for all the things we are, our children are among those actively sought to join the military.  Our workers are in demand by small and large businesses world-wide because of something called the Iowa Work Ethic.  We have consistently been on the forefront of human rights issues including the struggles for civil and gay rights and, time after time, Iowa ranks high in studies assessing the most peaceful and/or safest places to live.  Folks educated in our schools and colleges are counted among the most progressive and accomplished in their chosen fields and a glance at our educational history shows that we constantly break ground in new, astounding ways.  The worlds of art, music, architecture, medicine, politics and just about everything else has grown and benefited from those shaped and molded within the boundaries of our state.  Oh, and we’re in up to our bare, sun-browned elbows when it comes to feeding the rest of the world.  (Not bad when you consider all we have to overcome to get there.)

So to those outside our rolling hills, busy, city streets, long, stretched rural by-ways and cultivated fields who see us as an intriguing, outside-the-mainstream place rooted in striving to meet ideals which make us a valuable contributor to the identity and progression of our nation, I say thank you.  There's a welcome waiting for you at the Iowa State Fair in Des Monies (where we really do fry everything) and a place for you at our long, heavy-laden tables (home-grown fruits and veggies for all!).  Because open-minded people like you would fit right in with what we're trying to accomplish here.

What we're trying to accomplish here...  © H. Newberry, 2015

And to the others - those Prime-Time-educated minions who dismiss us as backwards, out of touch and ignorant - please, keep right on moving down the map.  There's nothing to see here...