Observations From 21 Years of Iowa Life

The sun sets  over the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. Not a pig or cornstalk in sight.

In Iowa, I learned to speak Italian. In Iowa, I learned an appreciation for contemporary art because of a tremendous museum that specializes in it. In Iowa, I learned to play field hockey from Olympians.

But the most important thing I learned from living in Iowa for a big chunk of my adult life is this: Look beyond the stereotypes; nothing ever is what it seems.

This week, Atlantic magazine published a massive essay, the snappily titled "Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life,"  by a University of Iowa professor who conveniently is teaching in Michigan right now. Not a native Iowan, he felt compelled to explain this place to others since it plays such an important role in the political process. Its caucuses are the first-in-the-nation decision in an election year, a situation that pretty much ticks off the other 49 states.

Once the professor’s essay hit the Internet, the gloves were off. My friends, Iowans by birth and by choice, let their rage fly as did people throughout the state and nation. Snarky T-shirts are already on the market. The poor professor, whose $100,000-plus salary is paid for by the people he just characterized as meth-heads who love pig manure and are going to die alone, just doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

It takes thick skin to live in Iowa; it seems to be targeted for this kind of mockery more than similar rural states -- and there are many of them. It takes even thicker skin to not be from there and choose to stay there. People look at you as if you are insane.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. They have corn there. They have pigs there. There are no pro sports there, yadda yadda yadda.

Iowans know what’s there. What drove most of them so crazy by the Atlantic piece are the sweeping generalities with which the place was described.

“Elevators in rural America raise and lower grain, not people,” went one phrase.

Yes, when I went to the top of the 45-story Principal Financial Group's headquarters in Des Moines about 15 years ago, I remember cursing the fact that People Elevators had not yet come to our part of the world.

“Almost every Iowa house has a mudroom, so you don’t track mud or pig shit into the kitchen or living room,” went another well-turned phrase.

In 21 years, I had seven different residences and not one mudroom. Not even in the Victorian home I owned that was so beautiful a national magazine came in and did a photo shoot there.

I learned to love Iowa, but I left. Despite the joy I have with where I live now, leaving Des Moines is a decision I will question for the rest of my life. I didn’t dislike it, I think I just became restless the same way I had when I left the small town of my birth, another perfectly fine place that I just felt compelled to leave because that’s what life was telling me.

I left Iowa with friends I will keep forever and an understanding that every place is someone’s home. You live in Indiana? I'm not going to make fun. You're moving to Walla Walla, Wash.? I'm not going to snicker.

I came to love Iowa, to love Des Moines and they became my home. I learned that way too many people have a way of judging every place, and learned it’s irritating to be on the receiving end of it no matter where you are.

That knowledge served me well after I moved to a small town, my hometown no less. I see the quizzical looks of people who wonder why I wouldn’t want to be in a city, and then follow with a patronizing, “Oh, it’s where you grew up" comment, as if that means I didn’t have the nerve to leave.

These days, I think it takes nerve to stay. Some of the bravest people I know live here: gay couples who live their lives openly; people who open businesses on the faith the customers will come; volunteer firefighters and rescue workers who always know that the person they're pulling from a burning building or twisted wreckage could be a friend or neighbor.

Perhaps there's a reason I found my greatest happiness in the kinds of places most people disdain. Perhaps there’s a certain smugness to knowing you know what is good even if other people can’t figure it out. Sort of like digging that band no one else has heard of yet.

Maybe it’s a topic I’ll discuss with my Iowa friends the next time I visit. While we’re sitting in their mudroom, of course.

In Iowa, they have funky art. And tall buildings with elevators -- that carry people.