ode to iowa
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When we call someone a traveler, what comes to mind? Intriguing trips to exotic places? Adventure? Long, transoceanic flights? Of course. All of that and more.
But there’s another kind of travel—trips that take us not so much to a different place, as to a familiar time, renewing ties to families and places of our fledgling years. Such was the nature of a recent trip to Eldora, Iowa. Although I grew up in Indiana, where I sank my roots, Iowa—where both of my parents grew up—was the destination of many a childhood road trip in the faithful family Nash. Since the mid-90’s, my Frazer cousins (my dad’s side of the family) have gathered for a long weekend every two or three years to renew bonds, catch up on each other’s lives, and share photos, both new and old ones newly discovered in attics or boxes packed away. We held our first few reunions in Colorado, but the altitude caught up with some of the lowlanders and we decided to move to a locale with a bit more natural oxygen—even though that oxygen comes loaded with a lot of natural humidity, too. Nine of us, some with spouses, some without, gathered this year in the lodge at Iowa’s Quaker Heights Camp, near the homes of two of our cousins, lifelong Iowans, whose families farm much of the land surrounding the tiny town of New Providence. While farming is a different endeavor altogether than what I saw as a child, it struck me that much that’s good about rural life remains: a thriving community breakfast every Monday morning, prepared and served by volunteers and supported by donations of those who partake; an annual “tractor ride” along the rural roads, held the weekend we were there, rain notwithstanding; simple tools, irons (one so heavy we decided the men must have done the ironing back in the day), horse drawn carriages, and other artifacts of an earlier time painstakingly preserved in the unassuming Hardin County Farm Museum. I couldn’t help but reflect on the difference between the environment in which my cousins’ offspring and grandchildren had grown up and the one in which my own children, city boys through and through, had been raised, and I’ll confess to a touch of envy. There’s something supremely solid about Iowa … and growing up with cousins nearby … and understanding first-hand our unbreakable connection to the land. While I love the sense of community I feel in a place like this, modern farming is almost incongruously high tech. Air-conditioned cabs sit atop gargantuan sprayers. In hog barns as long as football fields, animals are kept safe and reasonably comfortable by window coverings that go up and down automatically as temperatures shift. The father of my farming cousins, my beloved Uncle Maurice, who died in 1983, would be amazed. In 1850, the population of Iowa was 95% rural. As of 2000, with modern farming requiring so many fewer hands, that figure had fallen to 39%. That world is definitely changing. I can’t help but wonder how long those communities, holding the roots of generations, will survive. September 18, 2014 |
Undeterred by a steady rain, one of my cousins and his girlfriend embark on the annual Hardin County Tractor Ride.
One of the display rooms in the Hemken Collection, an amazing assortment of vintage cars in an unlikely location, Williams, Iowa, population 350, more or less. Included in the collection are 100 cars or so which are displayed on a rotating basis.(
Click on photo for a link to the Hemken Collection)
Scene at the weekly Monday morning breakfast prepared and served by volunteers in New Providence. The breakfast is a community tradition of many years duration.
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