The Native Iowan

What is changing? Why is it that each time I return to the land of my birth I feel more and more like a foreigner, a stranger. Are things changing that fast? Am I finding that my ability to cope and adjust is moving at a slower pace than the changes I attempt to cope with?

What is changing? Is it me? Is it the fabric of society? Is it the mentality of the people who make up the community I once called home?

What is causing these changes? What external force is moving us faster than we can comprehend? Why do we agree with our world, it’s changes, good and bad, so readily? Why don’t more stand up and shout? Sheep to slaughter?

For the last many years I have lived outside the United States. In this period I have traveled back to visit my “home” several times. And each time I come “home” I get terrific shocks. I see the things that bad news is made of. I hear stories of prime time, sixty second, wacko type news items. And the most amazing thing of it all, the thing that really blows me away, is that it’s happening in Iowa. 

For some strange reason we can accept such news worthy occurrences if they happen in LA. A bunch of over zealous, gun toting Christians kinda’ makes sense in Texas. Hopped up, crack headed nine year olds with a record of violent crime may be OK, for New York.

But this is Iowa. The land of the conservative. Where we grew up baling hay and fishing in summer; shoveling snow and playing cards in winter. Where families still count and crime was always a bit uncommon. Where doors were left unlocked… all the time.

So like I said, what’s happening? Where is the Iowa of my youth. And not the nostalgic, once upon a time, when I was young, sort of Iowa. But the modern day Iowa of the potential I knew. Where are all the solid minded, straight backed people I grew up with?

Perhaps I’m getting off on the wrong foot. Being critical and getting aggressive like this. Perhaps I should take an approach with less shock treatment. Come on a little less angry. A little less hurt for the loss I feel when I come “home”.

In the late seventies I was driving from Waverly to Cedar Falls. Some where on highway 218 I picked up a hitch hiker. He was on his way to work at John Deere in Waterloo. As we talked the hitch hiker could do nothing but praise Iowa. He and his young family had just moved in from the West. Tired of the hassles and trouble there, wanting a nice, clean place to raise his kids. “As a native Iowan you could never appreciate what you have.” He said. “Go out and live else where.” “Try the West Coast, The East, any where.” “ Iowa,” he said, “was a place where a man could raise a family.”

That would have been 76 or 77. I was a young buck wasting my time at Wartburg College. We had had the same Governor for a zillion years, were trying out a Democratic President and watching land prices rise through the sky. I often wonder if that unknown, unnamed hitch hiker is still in Iowa. I wonder if he still feels Iowa is “a place a man can raise a family”.

I certainly hope so.