Out of Iowa
An inside look at the real American heartland.
View of farm fields, Johnson County, Iowa (2003)
Iowa is still dominated by the descendants of white European immigrants who showed up here in the 19th century and have farmed this land ever since. The state, however, is anything but a quaint picture postcard, and when presidential hopefuls descend every four years, glad-handing their way through a string of pancake breakfasts and highway diners with the national media in tow, they risk the ire of the very people they are trying to woo. And some pay the political price. Just ask Mitt Romney.
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On either side of old Highway 218 in far southeastern Iowa, rows of corn are broken to stubble and furrows are filled with ice. It's late December, just days to the caucuses, and the wind knifes across the prairie, so bitter cold that even red-tailed hawks, feathers fluffed for warmth, hunker atop speed limit signs. Granted, much of what you see here is what you'd expect: each town with its water tower and circumscribed cemetery, each small farm with its Harvestore silos and propane tanks huddled under leaf-bare oaks. These are the cliches of the Midwest and the Great Plains—what folks on the coasts call "the heartland" when they're feeling generous, "flyover country" when they're not—and like all cliches, there's some truth to them.
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Comments
Out of Iowa
Submitted by Hawkeye Cali Transplant (not verified) on Thu Jul. 9, 2009 9:18 AM PDT.
Two or three very beautiful photos here. The "drain" described has been going on for 30+ years., and the take on this well-worn story was not very illuminating. In fact, the whole thing was pretty dark and included way more guns and Amish than I remember as a former long-time Iowan. Seems like an East-Coast, vegetarian tourist's expose' most of the time. There is a lighter, more positive, and more progressive side to the state, which was almost completely missing. Looks more like the worst parts of Appalachia, not Iowa.
Completely agree. I've lived
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Aug. 19, 2009 9:29 AM PDT.
Completely agree. I've lived in Iowa my whole life, and the places I've lived could have been the scene of any Kevin Smith movie, without changing a word.
Except 'skeeball'.
I don't think anyone in Iowa has a clue what that could be.
After 40 years in the Desert
Submitted by mightymo on Thu Sep. 3, 2009 10:05 PM PDT.
...I moved back to the family farm in Iowa.
After 40 Years in Phoenix I left Boeing and came home... to be around family and the land, dramatic weather changes, the stillness as the wind dies down, the sweet smell of the air, the beauty of crops in the fields, the turning of fall into harvest time...and a wave and smile of a cousin as he roars by on a rebuilt Case 830 on his way to another chore on the horizon. I look up from brush-clearing or cleaning up around the windbreaks, I lean against my Oliver 1650 and take in the moment and wave back.
2 years now and I have never regreted for one second coming home. Oh yeah...I'm a woman, close to retirement, yet I feel back in charge of my life and loving it in IOWA!
Most of the photos above are far removed from the Iowa I live in!
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