Growing up near a rural town in Iowa, one discovers the only other things more than a couple of stories tall besides the water tower are church steeples and grain elevator legs. When I was married in one of the former, I was working in one of the latter. The elevator is called BB&P, and sits on the north side of Winterset. In planning the slide show for the wedding, my wife to be came across a picture of me at the age of three, donning a seed cap and a bright red jacket, both with a checkerboard logo and the embroidered name of the elevator I would come to work for. “That’s so going in,” she said.

It was at this time that I began to wonder if I had been indoctrinated at an early age into a church of sorts with a grain leg for a bell tower. While some may think that sacrilege, my intent is not to offend.  I can only say upon reflection several similarities have emerged.

My earliest memory of the place was my sisters and I filing in the door to be greeted by one of the owners, Dean Molln. “You guys look thirsty,” he astutely observed and began to fish into his pocket to find the quarter the pop machine required. I might have been five or six at the time, and over the coming years this scene would be played out repeatedly. One would hear the click of the button, then the subsequent hum of the machine, and finally the loud “clunk” as the bottle came home.  Dean would pop the top off, give it to my youngest sister, and we would all pass it around.

The taste was wonderful; the bottle ice cold and dripping in what I now recognize as nostalgia itself. That, I suppose, was my baptism. Not by Holy Water, but instead by an ice cold Coca-Cola from a blue and white Pepsi baptismal font. All of it was much to the pleasure of our smiling parish priest of sorts, a priest could have taught the rest of them a thing or two about telling good jokes and cussing properly.

Inside the door today, as has been for decades, a long countertop nearly spans the length of the room. Across that countertop homilies are frequently offered on our current state of affairs, from political candidates and pending legislation to anything of note form the newspaper, TV, or radio. (Quieter ones are sometimes offered by patrons on more local affairs.) A solution to many of the world’s problems has likely been stumbled upon several times, but seeing how no one is in a position to implement it, it is left to be stumbled upon again.  The dead are eulogized, often more candidly than during the service. The crop is declared damned, then saved, and then damned and saved again, and rain is asked to come or go.

My first communion took place across this counter, just after I had pulled my shaky leg off the clutch pedal, having brought my first load of grain successfully into town. In doing so I crossed the scale, which leveled me with all others.  A couple of years later, at my confirmation, I was able to sell grain and make purchases on my own accord.

Incense was often part of the daily service here, before state law forbid it. On special occasions, like at the end of a long day, the completion of a hard job, or just before the undertaking of something no one wanted to do, it wasn’t uncommon to come in the back door and find Bob Rhodes with his pipe, and Jim Cook, Nick Beck, and Larry Molln (another owner) with their cigarettes. There was so much smoke in the air, it was impossible not to feel a sense of reverence as they were lost deep in the midst of their meditations.

Now off to the right of the main office, across the red and white checkerboard floor, is the mill room. In there one can find Mike Corkrean or Gary Dudney spinning the wheels, pushing the pedals, pulling the cables and turning the chains necessary to bring the hammer mill and mixer whirring to life. Many a boy has stood in there, as much in awe of the factory of motion and sound as though it were a grand pipe organ. I would suppose there are organists to which the whirr of the hammer mill is preferable, but none were ever coated in the residue their notes left behind.

In the back right corner is Paul Bruett’s office, the elevator’s agronomist. He handles seed sales, and does his best to exorcize any blight, deficiency, or petulance that afflicts the crop.

In the back left corner, down the hall, first door on you right is the accountant’s office. In it Pam McCullough sends out the monthly tithing request and takes in whatever offerings the congregation has for the moment.

The first door on your left is Bob and Peggy Casper’s office, also owners. While it is very much the working office, with mail coming in or going out, records kept on file, and situations being handled as they arise, it also has a secondary purpose. It’s where you come to confess your best laid plans did in fact go a rye. Your penance is nearly always another year of trying it again.

Finally, on the left of the counter is a small shop of sorts. There everything broken is mended. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lazarus himself steps out of it someday.

Marriages? Oh there are marriages. Some employees have never known another job, others had, but after finding this one have stuck with it for decades, Yes, over the years there have been a few divorces. Some were amicable, some not. Some quiet, and others filled with all sorts of fireworks.

All that is missing, I suppose, is the altar boys. I’m afraid even I can’t compare the guys at the shop to altar boys. I would admit, though, they could give them one hell of an education.

The door is nearly always open. The families of the men that work here sometime have Thanksgiving in the evening because the day was spent hauling anhydrous to the customers, or unloading grain. Employees work those days because the owners work those days, and you forget about what you’re sacrificing when you see the sacrifice of another. It’s not done to make every last dollar, but in order that customers may not know need. That has allowed the business to know a lot of customers.

One day I was getting lunch in town. The woman ahead of me, with her young son, turned and asked, “You work at BB&P, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

She continued, “This one’s first word was tractor,” pointing towards her son, “and his second word was BB&P. None of my family knew what the hell he was talking about, but my husband’s sure did.”

I smiled and thought of how another one had been brought into the fold.

So is it a religion then? Of course not. But it is something, I suppose.

Who was it that said the snow should fall upon the ground,
as it lay barren and lifeless in the winter time?

The ground does not mind the freeze.
It hurts it not, but breaks and heaves it,
so it might be softer in the spring.

Instead, over the tears of a cup of coffee,
Or the unvoiced fears of a friend,
In finding the lonely with all of their company,
And those finished before they start again,

Frozen, I think, we just get harder
and less receptive to the spring,
more unwilling to let establish
whatever might that season bring.

Let the ground lie cold and naked.
Our being hard is not a virtue;
let the snow blanket us instead.

Who was it that said the snow should fall upon the ground,
as it lay barren and lifeless in the winter time?

Sometime ago I started with the goal of trying to write once a week.  On occasion I do not, but generally I have been able to adhere to it.  This week I nearly missed.

The goal had a simple premise behind it:  we should spend our lives doing what we enjoy, that if we are not careful we won’t, and we will find it all slipped away.  Surely I could come up with something human to write about once a week, I thought.  Surely being human is a common experience.

It isn’t, though, and that’s the funny thing.  We tend to hide what most makes us human.  None of us hides it perfectly, and an observer sometimes finds a glance, or movement, or word from us which lets them slip in without our knowing.  These are the moments we try to capture in our photographs, and our writing, and our art.

In these instances the creator generally works to cover it back up again, leaving it to find for those with the eyes to see or ears to hear.  They avoid giving it away for nothing, and maintain respect for whatever it was someone was trying to hide in the first place.

When I wrote about fall in Northeast Iowa, for example, it was about my fear of my father’s declining health.  I tried to get death to subtly work its way in and out of the piece in the topics of divorce, and autumn, and the effigy mounds, not being able to get up the hill, etc.  I took the topics I couldn’t touch on with those closest to me and found a way to share them with anybody and their brother.

I never could quite get it right, but it still lays out there, to take up and edit again, and that’s the wonderful thing about writing.  Most of the words I have said failed when they left my mouth, and the ones I should have used always come to me after the moment has passed.  In the ones I write lie the hope that someday I’ll get ones in the right place at the right time.

A couple of days later, Dad was back up on his feet again, and I was off on other topics.  If I don’t watch it, the piece will get away from me, and Dad will too.

Now on occasion we run into people not playing the same game the rest of us are.  They feel no need to make it look like everything is under control.  Or if they feel that need for everyone else, for some strange reason they don’t feel they have to with you.  I ran into one this week.  The subtle hints were gone, and I was hit over the head with what it was like to be human.

In doing so it stripped away my own subtly, my dry wit and confidence and left in their wake the anxious little boy of my youth, naked and knobby kneed.  I was embarrassed and I was certain I’d be abandoned for it.  I wasn’t.  The boy I couldn’t accept, they accepted just fine.  I hope I had done the same for them.

It should be so rare in life, and if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have felt so remarkable.

Typically I write the words I’ve paid a price for.  But the only price for these was a little embarrassment, and what I got in return was far more valuable.  I had got the better end of the deal, and for that I owe.

It seems the only way to pay the debt is to do it for someone else, and that advice I offer freely to anybody and their brother.

“Life is messy,” they said.  Yes, and sometimes our maintaining it isn’t only makes it worse.  We miss out on all the good things that come from getting caught not having our shit together.