Iowa refuses to be someplace richer

Republicans yammer on the TV that you wouldn’t want to see Iowa become Minnesota, Illinois or California.

You wouldn’t want 10,000 lakes getting in the way of corn or tech bros buying up all the property in Truesdale. Chicago may have the Magnificent Mile, but we have Sioux City.

None of the people I know from California plan to move to Iowa, especially native Iowans. Despite earthquakes, wildfires and traffic jams they cling to the Hollywood Hills. So many of our expatriates flocked to Long Beach during the Dust Bowl they called it “Iowa by the Sea.”

They went out there to make money, something that eluded them here. Minnesota was birthed from the Iowa Territory and took Cargill with it. They make a lot more money up there. Terry Branstad used to hate on Illinois because it sucked so many people out of Iowa with fatter pay and real action. You can make money in Chicago. You can make hay in Hayfield.

We used to be ahead of Minnesota in education. We were Number One. Now we’re Number 20. Minnesota is ranked 11th by US News and World Report, and Illinois is 14th. Nebraska is ahead of us, for crying out loud.

We remain Number One in hogs and hog manure. And eggs. And corn. And polluted rivers. And farm bankruptcies.

California is Number One in agriculture overall. It is also tops along with Hawaii for surfers. We do not rank well for surfing or skiing. We eat a lot. We drink as much cheap lite beer as anyplace.

So why trash talk these blue states? Why would we not want Silicon Valley, Navy Pier or even the Minnesota Vikings?

Because it is code for: If you’re queer, steer clear; if you are Black, step back.

People in LA, Chicago and Minneapolis stood up to Trump’s goon squads. Iowa has not been put to the test because it has been so red and because food prices already are too high to be catching meat cutters in dragnets.

They’re selling a rural-urban divide as if Iowa can gain from it.

If we wall ourselves off, we can pile the manure even higher. What do we preserve by refusing to aspire to something better?

The myth-makers have it wrong.

Iowa is Iowa. Lovely but unassuming. Hard-working. Lacking pretense, we like to think. Neighborly.

Most of us expect our schools to be world-class. We really don’t want to see those Latino kids down the block end up in a detention camp. We know we can have clean rivers and lakes. We treat people with respect, and protect civil rights. Degrading people is not our style.

We don’t get what we want because fear of the other is what the Republicans are busy selling, and they run things around here with majority support.

The view at Principal Park is better than at Wrigley Field but it’s all part of the same team, bro. John Deere pays well in Iowa with headquarters in Illinois. I am fortunate to get world-class treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, thanks to Medicare.

Driving home from Rochester, I was overwhelmed by the subtle but glimmering beauty of spring wetlands in Winnebago County from Leland to Forest City. That stretch of Hwy. 69, dedicated to Gov. Branstad in his home turf, is in bad shape. You roll on down the Plum Creek Road from Burt to Algona and think again that this is just about the prettiest place in the world of green rolling plains in the Des Moines River valley. No place can beat it.

No car dealer in Whittemore anymore. West Bend looks beleaguered. There used to be a ballroom and a school at Rolfe. They tried to give away lots during the Farm Crisis to no avail. It hangs on in suburban Pocahontas County without much help from the chattering class. Hwy. 15 is in terrible shape. California roads are better.

Rolfe could use some of that Golden State money. If Minnesota has some spare change, we would appreciate a tip down yonder for hatching their eggs and taking the stench. What we really want out here, way off the Dan Ryan Expressway and without commercial flights and not even a Greyhound bus, is good old Iowa: out of the mud with the best schools anywhere, where everybody pays their fair share and you can breathe that spring air without catching a bad case of lung cancer, where a Mexican can feel Willkommen among the Albert City Swedes. That is not what they are peddling on TV. No law says we have to swallow the myth.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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