The Native Iowan

844am. It’s way too chilly out for this time of year. Glow Ball Warming!

Im sitting, old fart radio on, with my house open. A stiff breeze brings goose bumps to my skin. Im bare chested, the cup of coffee helps fend off the chill.

Woke up predawn yesterday. Ran the Pet Teen to the airport for his flight back to Solos. Got him checked in then left him. He was related (his mother’s side) to the guy at the counter and finagled an upgrade to business class. High class dude.

Have had a fair amount of rain this week. Have not gotten much work done. Outside, that is, The work on projects continues. Have my accountant, lawyer, engineer, et al lined up for a fair amount of work coming up. A lot on the burner thats getting hot.

Gut health, beans and the meaning of life… 

A big discussion: Our generation is going to live shorter live than our parents. This is unprecedented. 99% of it is due to diet.

We live in a toxic world. I think of my very big family in Iowa… we were raised with good food. Planted big gardens. Canned hundreds of jars of veggies and sauces and real food. Froze a-hundred-weight of fruit n veggies. We got fed very good, real food.

I admit my mother used a lot of salt an butter cooking. She’d take a big pile of fresh nice green beans, and cook them in a quarter pound of butter. They were real good. Not toxic tho, just very fattening. 

It’s funny to think back… some things were not expensive and there was a lot it in the house…. Bread (home baked), nice plain butter from the store (Land O Lakes), and cheese (Land o Lakes)… our common lunch taken to school was a cheese sandwich. We had a “creamery” in our town that produced for Land O Lakes. I worked there in high school. Turning milk into cheese and butter. Tons of it. Ware houses full of it. It was good, common and inexpensive. 

Meals at home were cooked “from scratch”. Large hunks of beast that came from family and friends with farms. Large pans of lasagna. Each pan weighing many lbs. Huge pots of stews and soups. Mom was a terrific cook.

“The family” would get together a couple times a year and kill a few beasts. Everyone would get what the wanted. It’d be stored at the local butcher, wrapped in paper with a stamp saying “Hemmer”. Mom would drive by the butcher shop once a week and a kid would run in with a list of what she wanted… 6lbs of hamburger, 1xroast, 4lbs of bacon, 5 packs of pork chops, etc… chickens came from the chicken lady south of town. We’d drive out there and she’d snatch the birds using a stick with a hook on it. Wring the bird’s neck and we’d all start cleaning and plucking. 

There were always a couple big freezers on the porch. A lot of fruit and veggies got frozen. Meals were always accompanied by a nice fruit pie, cherry, rhubarb, apple. I still really miss Mom’s rhubarb pie. (and her lasagna)

Mom would bake and then freeze. She’d to pull half a dozen loaves of bread out of the freezer at night, let them rise over night, bake early in the morn. 

She and my grandmother baked once a week, Thursdays. They’d bake up a storm. Freeze a lot, there would be large Tupperware bins filled with cookies… chocolate chip, peanut butter, snicker doodles, sugar cookies… her cinnamon rolls were the absolute best.

I was in college, the spring of ’79. Decided to hitchhike the 100miles north to the folks for the weekend. An easy hitch.

The entire way it was shitty weather. I remember it vividly… dark clouds, me on the side of the road with my BSA (Boy Scouts of America) back pack. Long hair. Nice enough clothes… I always dressed for the hitch. You look smelly you probably wont get a ride.

Normally I could to the hitch that run in, say3-4 rides. This day it was more like 6-7 rides. All short and annoying. I got dropped off in a couple places miles from shelter from the weather. If I got drenched my chances for a ride were slim.

I was a walking hitchhiker… I’d never just stand and wait. I’d take off down the road, play my harmonica, smile and sing at the sky. 

This day I hitch the morning through… it was getting late, on towards noon, I got dropped at a cross roads a few miles from Alta Vista, where the folks lived. I was “home” but it was seriously going to rain. I sang to the skies… “Blue skies… Beluueee Skiiess… “ I sang coaxing the skies to stay blue, for me to stay dry. 

I walked the final few miles, singing, tooting on my harp, keeping the rain and weather away with my melodious voice and virtuoso use of the mouth harp…

I got the house as the clouds clapped hard, gave a shot of voltage across the skies, and the rain came in a deluge. I trotted the last 100 meters to the front door, getting inside before I got really wet. 

And as I opened the door, as I reached shelter form the storm, the overpowering smell of baking hit me. The house was filed with the rich aromas of baked good, rising flour, yeast and heat. 

Still one of my favourite aromas.

It must have been Thursday.

Smiles