Letter 14

Thursday, December 03, 2015               2:23 p.m.

Provo  Utah

My Dear Diesel;

So how was your Thanksgiving? Your mom tells me she spent much of it in bed, napping, with her cell phone off. Well, she needed it I’m sure. Your mother is the hardest working woman I have ever known, next to your Grandma Amy. I hope you get some of their hardworking genes. If you are unlucky enough to get some of mine you will probably wind up a slugabed or slowcoach!

I thought I would send you some photos of my Iowa days as a radio News Director.  I worked in Northwest Iowa for just about three years between 2004 and 2007. I originally got my first job in Spencer, Iowa, while I was working as the Publicity Director for the Culpepper & Merriweather Circus. The show came through Spencer and I went down to the radio station to set up some publicity and the manager turned out to be one of my old teachers from Brown Institute of Broadcasting in Minneapolis, Minnesota way back in 1981. He asked me if I wanted a news director job, since his station was looking for one; I said I did, once I heard what the salary was; and he hired me after I gave the show two weeks notice.

The first photo is just a highway sign reading “Fostoria”. You would think there is nothing special about it. But it was greatly prized as being the only road sign in the whole county with no bullet holes in it. Every other road sign was riddled with holes and dents put there by bored teenagers and drunk deer hunters. The sheriff’s office kept a deputy stationed by the sign every night, just to make sure it was never fired upon.

The next photo is of me, when I grew a beard at the station manager’s suggestion. The whole area is full of Dutch Reformed Church members, who are very conservative and patriarchal. They all wore beards, so it was thought I would get more news out of them if I wore one also. (It didn’t work – they were as silent and uncommunicative as bivalves.)

 Next is a peaceful scene at dawn at Elephant Hill. As you will notice, there is no hill and there ain’t any pachyderms. I always got different stories from each person I asked about why the area was called Elephant Hill. One person said a circus elephant had died there long ago and was buried under a hill of dirt. Someone else said they had found mastodon bones near the water. What I did find out was the pond at Elephant Hill was a great place to catch bullheads. Which I would then peel with a pair of pliers, fillet, and fry in butter. I served them with corn cob jelly, an Iowa specialty.

The last four photos are of an abandoned farmstead about a mile from the second radio station I worked at in Sheldon, Iowa; KIWA.

There are many of these places in Northwest Iowa, and they seem very haunted to me, because all around them are prosperous modern farms with fat, happy Dutch-descended families on them. What happened to these derelict places? Did the father die or leave? Was the mortgage too onerous?  Was there a terrible drought or crop failure?

The barns and the houses are weathered grey and slant off to the southwest, which is the way the wind constantly blows.  There are never any signs posted warning people to stay off, so I was quite bold strolling through the tall dry grass and peeking into the windows.

These would be great places for zombies or vampires to live. Or Donald Trump Republicans . . .

I asked our radio Farm Director once about these deserted farms. He said he didn’t know what had happened to them – usually they had been owned by Baptists, who seemed to want to leave suddenly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason (his words, not mine!)

I’m thinking back now to all the photographs I took while I lived in Iowa. Must have been over a thousand. Now they are all gone except for these handful. I don’t even remember what I did with them . . .

I used to drive around for hours when the weather was nice, looking for interesting places to photograph. I never really made any friends at all when I lived in Iowa so I had to find something to do with my spare time. I bet today not a single soul would remember me. And I don’t really remember them.

What I remember most are endless rows of corn and these decaying farmsteads. Murdered dreams slowly falling back into the earth.

Yer pal,