Recently we had the opportunity to work with Frank Hawk, a friend from my youth.  He began helping us last spring.  How he spent his time was varied.

Personally, I’ll miss him.

In the United States it is estimated that less than 4% of the original tall grass prairie remains.  80% of what remains lies in Kansas.  Most of it lies in Kansas’ Flint Hills region, carpeting hill after rolling hill.  Recently the Madison County Cattlemen sponsored a trip to that area for member families.  They met area ranchers, ate good food, and got to roll over a few of those hills in a tour bus.  One producer they met was Mike Collinge.

“The tall-grass prairie evolved because of fire and because of grazing.  Removing either changes it into something else,”  the Greenwood County rancher said.  “What we primarily use for grazing in the Flint Hills are ‘stocker cattle.’  These are calves weighing 550 pounds or so in April, and we will run them to mid-July.  During this time they will gain 150-275 pounds.

There are not many of the cow/calf operations you guys are familiar with in Iowa.  The reason is our grass.  When it is good it is really good, and when it is not it requires the supplementation of protein.  That cost is a challenge to carrying a cow year long here.”

He had cattle when the grass was fit for cattle, and when it wasn’t, he didn’t.

The calves in the Flint Hills are usually from the southeast region of the country.  Typically these cattle are considered “high risk” by the industry and sold at a discount.  Some of them will wind up here before they arrive in the feedyards of the north.  The role of the Hills is to add value back.

“We burn every spring if we can.  It’s good for the grass and keeps invasive species out.  If we didn’t continue this once natural process, deciduous trees would take over.  It is also good for the cattle.  Burning will create an additional 30 lbs per head.

It also maintains our diversity.  It may all look green out there, but there is a wide range of plants.  Maintaining that is like insurance.  Our weather is highly variable, and different plants excel for different climates.”

Collinge estimated that nearly 85% of the area is owned by absentee landowners.  Ranchers, like Collinge, might use their own ground, but lease additional acres from these landowners.  They function as caretakers, not just on behalf of the landowners, but also for the families that own the cattle they run.

“How we charge is all over the board,” Mike explained.  “Some of us charge per head, some by gain, some by hundred weight, and some per day.  Typically it would cost someone $90 to $110 dollars per head to run 550 pound steers from April to mid-July.

What it is really about, however, is relationships.  Relationships with landowners, relationships with the cattle owners, and relationships with where the cattle will wind up.  It needs to work for all of them in order for it to work for us.”

Several area producers had joined us at Collinge’s ranch, and continued on with us for the other stops on the morning’s tour.  As we looked out at a different land than we were accustomed to, with operations different in their makeup and structure, engaged in such a different part of the industry we share, we were reminded that in the end the cattle business is a people business.  And that’s the same as it always has been.

From the 34th floor of the Ruan Building, the day was drawing to a close.  34 floors wouldn’t be much in some places, but in Des Moines there would only be a few stories left.  Outside the clouds were moving in, and inside, at my table, talk momentarily centered on the clouds moving in elsewhere.

We were eating with a delegation of 49 from China.  I had got to tag along as a farmer.  Back home, in their country, the robust Chinese economy had caught a cold.  Here an agricultural economy, the likes of which we had never seen before, seems to be winding down to an uncertain future.

Sitting at my table was a member of one of the various commodity groups.  We had met earlier that day and had just concluded spending the afternoon together.  Unlike some, he had survived it.

“Agriculture is a place for optimists.  I’m one myself, and proud of it.  Even I am worried about what might lie ahead, however.”

Earlier on this floor in the mid-day sunshine, the delegation had been joined by an assortment of executives from the world’s major grain merchandisers.  Louis Dreyfus, Cargill, ADM, and others had filled the long table at the front of the room to sit side by side with their Chinese counterparts.  Together they signed contracts totaling 5.3 billion dollars and 13.8 million metric tons of soybeans.

If you are unfamiliar with the Chinese appetite for soy, you should know that one out of every three Iowa rows you drive past will ultimately make their way to feed it.  In fact to fill the contracts signed that afternoon, it would take nearly every Iowa soybean raised this year.

One of the morning speakers had offered investment advice to those in attendance.  I would paraphrase it here:

Pursue investments strategically.  If you are going to invest, be sure to convey the value and influence you offer as an investor.  Never quit verifying the assumptions you’ve made about your investment and its strategic fit into your portfolio.  Finally, always stay abreast of the synergies your investment might make available.

He delivered his remarks using dense, multi-syllable words delivered in a staccato that resembled plunging knife strokes to drive his point home.  He was a good speaker, and I suspect Americans, like me, took note of it.  I suspect the Chinese, here with a population of 1.3 billion people at home, had mastered it some time ago.

The afternoon featured a farm tour and another slate of speakers.  One presented the thought that if you are buying one out of every three rows, you’re not really a customer.  You are a partner.  Our partner, China, faces two hurdles.  First, it has an immense and growing population.  Second, that population has an evolving diet.

In order to continue to feed it, the case was once again made for GMOs.  80 percent of the soybeans grown worldwide are already genetically modified.  Almost all are in the US.  This has translated into more bushels per acre, but often lost is the yield to be gained in other areas.

High oleic soybeans are right around the corner.  These will have 0 trans fats and will create better oil, with higher protein contents, better antioxidants, and better lubrication.  Coming with this line are other lines generating significant bumps in oil and protein content.  Not only will beans yield more bushels, but the bushels they yield will go farther, requiring less land, less shipping, and less of an environmental footprint.

When dinner was getting underway, the dignitaries present were invited to speak.  One representative from the Chinese delegation joined them.  As he did, we put our ear pieces in to hear his remarks through the interpreter in the back of the room.

He described their visit, beginning with their initial stop in Seattle, Washington.  He shared his observations about what they had seen that day.  Then he said his only sentence in English:  “This is the last stop, but this is the most important stop.”

This farmer would concur, and finds himself back where we started.  There are still a few stories left.

“What can you tell me about Sam?” she asked.

There was a short pause, and he wondered if that had been a question or a demand.  It really didn’t matter.  He was quite taken by her.

“Sam is a unique personality,” he said.

Her brother was driving, and conversation had been mostly up to the two men until now.  Upon hearing the remark her brother laughed.

“That’s a hell of a description, Bob.  You couldn’t have said it any better any quicker.  Sam is a unique individual, Nicole.  Yes he is.”  He gave a low chuckle after the final line, amusing himself mostly, Bob a little, and his sister none.

She was all business most of the time.

To his credit, her brother had managed to get through the morning without drinking much, though mostly it was due to his having to see his sister.  Later he would drink a great deal.  That would be due to his having seen her and also having gone the morning without drinking much.

Their relationship was tainted in part by the bitterness she felt for her father having devoted the later part of his now spent life to the care of his son.  Wasted, she thought, on a lost cause.  Her brother wouldn’t have argued.  He was convinced he was a lost cause some time ago.  He never complained, though.  He drank instead.

Bob couldn’t help but like him.  He liked most people.  The brother’s drinking would probably kill him.  That was a goddamn shame, but the world is full of goddamn shames.  It would never notice the weight of this one.

Christ might, but He seemed quiet on the matter.

Bob couldn’t help but like him any more than he could help being taken by his sister.  That might have been a goddamn shame too.  The world was no heavier for it either.

“What else can you tell me about Sam?” she asked, ignoring her brother, and casting her eye across the fence to Sam’s property.  “I’m going to have to negotiate with him.  I’m looking for what I can use for leverage.”

She would let Bob into how her mind worked from time to time.  I suppose he was supposed to be impressed by it.  It seemed it worked in a way that was geared to getting others to do what she wanted.  She took pride in that.

In life she hadn’t always got the best end of the deal.  She trying to make amends for that, but in her line of work others had to do what she wanted.  Outside, in the real world, the weight of what we want others to do is of no consequence either.  That’s another goddamn shame.

What do I tell her about Sam? he wondered.

Once Bob and him had too much to drink.  Drinking had drowned the anxiety first, and the inhibition, and they had eventually got down to what we work so hard to cover up in our sobriety.  Sam had described slipping extra painkiller to a family member in hospice, after they had pleaded with him for days to simply let them die.

Sometimes people feel guilty about how all of that works.  It was never clear to Bob whether it was because of what we’ve done, or the fact that we have to work to cover it all back up again.  Later, when he was sober, Sam never appeared to mind.

Maybe he wanted to be found out, Bob thought.  I wonder how any of that would work for leverage?

“You won’t have any trouble with Sam,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because at the end of the day, I’m sure you will be able to convince him of anything.”

She smiled.

A goddamn beautiful woman, he thought.  Probably doesn’t drink a drop.

Later, when her brother left, she asked him how he’d been.  She hardly ever asked that.

“I’ve been fine.  Doing well.”  Looking into her eyes he said, “I think about you.”

“I think about you too.” She said in an awkward way that made him think she was being open.  He wanted to move closer to her.  So he did.

They continued to speak until she got emotional.

“Damn it, Bob.  What is it with you?  Why do I get like this around you?”

“I don’t know.  Is it a bad thing?”

“No,” she smiled, wiping an eye.  “It’s not a bad thing.  It’s a good thing, but I am afraid I’ve got to go,” and she approached him opening her arms for a hug.

He placed the tips of his fingers in her back, holding her as tight as she held him.  He would have to let her go.  So he did.

As she walked away he wondered how long it would be before he saw her again.  Instinctively he grabbed her arm, pulled her back one more time, and raised her up with his fingers in her back again.  Spinning her around, he set her back on her feet, and slowly tried to kiss her.  She turned her head down slightly, and he settled for a cheek and her forehead.

Afterwards she would tell him it had been a long time since anyone had picked her up like that.  Later still he would get an email informing him she was seeing someone else.  It would be distant, even harsh.

Why she didn’t mention it in person, or in any of the months which preceded it, he didn’t know.  Nor did he know why she couldn’t have afforded just a bit of kindness.

In the end perhaps it was all about leverage and doing what she wanted him to do.

This August I attended the wedding of my first college roommate.  It was in Itasca, a Chicago suburb, and on a Sunday.  That morning I stopped to see a classmate, her spouse, and their two little girls at our hotel.

It had been a couple of years.  We hugged.  I said hello to her husband and shook his hand.  And then I looked down into the gaze of their oldest daughter, a third grader named Willa, who was holding her hand out for mine.

“Come here,” she said.  “I have something to show you.”

She led my cumbersome self across the hotel room to the window making up the opposite wall.  We sat on the heat register and looked down from seven stories to the pond behind the Westin and a family of geese and an assortment of ducks whom called it home.

“Do you see them down there?”

“I do,” I said.

“I’ve been watching them all morning.  They’re really something.”

I was watching them from seven stories.  Willa, I would bet, was right down there with them.

The next morning I was in the middle of downtown Chicago walking sidewalks crowded with a few early tourists and those headed to work.  I was waiting for the Chicago Institute of Art to open, and my killing time on Michigan Avenue placed me in front of my favorite building there.  On the sidewalk beneath it was a lowly pigeon, colored nearly the same as the structure was.

The building was crowned in gold, however.  Gold seems to be the color nature keeps out of nearly anything touchable.  As a consequence Man applies it liberally, and the Carbon and Carbide Building is crowned with the laurel God denied the pigeon.

I was looking down on yet another bird who rightly should have been looking down on me.

I reached downtown via a commuter train, where I had taken a perch on the upper level.  That Monday morning it was loaded with those who seemed to already carry the anxiety of the week ahead.  I had momentarily traded my mine in for a map.

Summer was drawing to a close.  School was around the corner.  I thought I could see the apprehension of these commuters’ children stretched out over the dwindling blue, still waters at the city pool we passed in Franklin Park.  I thought I could feel the family’s in the pent up, crowded houses of the living.

It was only broken by a green and open field, boasting acre after spacious acre and housing the dead insulated from all of it, still lying in the rows their loved ones had placed them in.

When the museum opened, amongst American Gothic, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jette, and Nighthawks, was one painting seemingly out of sight in a corner, as the mostly black attendants were from the mostly white portraits and the mostly white audience.

It was Aert de Gelder’s “Portrait of a Young Woman.”  The hook was the glassy, penetrating stare of her 325 year old eyes.  She looked neither up nor down to her observer.

I suppose Willa wouldn’t have either, were she taller.  Perhaps, were she 317 years older, Aert would have painted her picture instead.

Headed out from downtown, occasionally we would pass a train headed in.  On that train were people just like us, and I would try to catch a glimpse of them as we passed.  It was as though they were invisible.  I could only see through the other cars’ windows to the same cityscape I had seen before, crowned in untouchable golden sunlight, which rained down on the cheap, showy, and selective gold of man.

God, I do love Chicago.

When Charlie Arnot, the CEO for the Center for Food Integrity, began speaking, it was with the deep, rolling cadence of an auctioneer, and as he went on it never once gave way to a stutter or a stammer.  This, along with his short cropped haircut atop a near perfect posture, all served to suggest he had nothing to hide.  It was fitting.  He was addressing the 2015 Iowa Farm Bureau President’s Conference on the topic of transparency in food production.

His message was simple.  “In 5 years transparency will be where sustainability is today.  Transparency is no longer optional.”

The Center for Food Integrity has a mission:  “To build consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system by sharing accurate, balanced information, correcting misinformation, highlighting best practices that build trust and engaging stakeholders to address issues that are important to consumers.”  Its members range from Costco to Tyson, from Monsanto to the World Wildlife Fund.  In order for the group to realize their mission, Arnot argued it is essential that we recognize the shift that has occurred in how institutions are viewed over the last 45-50 years.

According to Arnot, confidence in our institutions has eroded since the social upheaval of the late 60s, partly due to frequent violations of the public’s trust.  Once authority was simply granted by office.  This isn’t so today.

Social consensus was primarily driven by white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men.  Now there is no single social consensus.  Instead we have tremendous diversity with many voices offering to guide us, and we are left to wonder which voices should.  Communication used to be done by mass means.  It was formal but indirect.  Everyone got the same paper and heard the same newscast.  Today we have masses of communicators, informal but direct, and we tend to listen to the ones who share our world view.

Arnot singled out one institution:  the US military.  Up to the Vietnam War the military was largely in control of its images and messages.  Television in the 1960s changed the conversation.  The military struggled to adapt, and initially worked even harder to try and maintain control.  Over the subsequent years it finally realized control was no longer possible.  It was then that they began to understand the importance of transparency.  Today they embed journalists with the troops themselves.

During this same period agriculture has seen increased industrialization, consolidation, and integration.  Arnot argued that today agriculture itself is seen as an institution, with social media now functioning as television once did.  While farmers still maintain great public trust, the consumer sees agriculture as becoming increasingly grey.

The consumer’s turn to social media is an effort to find transparency.  There, they find many voices, all begging for the consumer’s attention.  In agriculture we are largely unsure of how to handle this.  Frequently it makes us reactive and even less transparent, offering an opportunity for others (many with inaccurate information) to step in and fill the void.

We try to counter the misinformation with facts and expertise.  In doing so, we miss a key component of how trust is built.  While facts and expertise are certainly part of the equation, the foundation of trust rests on the concept of mutually shared values.  CFI has found that shared values are 3 to 5 times more important to us than facts or  expertise.

Herein lies the success of the Food Babe.  She offers few facts.  She offers little expertise.  Her success lies in the claim that she shares the same values as her followers.

According to Arnot when the consumer asks “Should we raise GMOs?”  We make our argument from a scientific and economic standpoint, as though they asked “Can we raise GMOs?”  Instead, what the consumer is really asking is “Do we share the same values?”  In missing the question agriculture gives up the moral high ground which is rightfully its own.

Instead of arguing GMOs are scientifically proven safe, that we need them to feed the world, or that they are crucial to maintaining our bottom line, what would happen if we said “We raise GMO crops because we have the same concerns as you.  We use GMOs to farm more sustainably, using less pesticides, and to help keep healthy food affordable.”  At the end of the day, what is there to hide in that?

Why does the fear of drowning exist only with water?  The earth has to have swallowed a million times more souls than the sea has ever dreamed of.  Perhaps our fear of water is nothing more than our fear of being the exception.

M.H. King was my grandmother’s grandfather.  He was a dirt man.  I seem to come from a long line of them.  There are two types of dirt men.  You’ve got the farmer, who scratches it in order to grow something from it, and you got the contractor, who moves and digs it by the yard for building.  History would show the diver and the swimmer are in equal danger of going under.  King would.

For his first contracting job he had to come up with some money to operate with.  He got it by mortgaging his house.  Over time the contracts grew, his business grew, and so did his houses.  He worked on numerous street projects around the city of Des Moines, moved 50,000 yards of dirt excavating and grading the site of the present Iowa State Capitol, moved 700,000 yards building 17 miles of levee near Burlington, but his main specialty would be railroads.

He used a mule drawn scraper, which raised and deposited dirt in trip-bottom carts also pulled by mules.  He became well known for his innovative process and rail companies sought him out to work in many of the surrounding states.  Eventually he would be one of a handful of contractors the Union Pacific selected to bring out to Portland, Oregon to see about building a railroad to Seattle.

When his mules were idle, he housed them right south of downtown.  While they were idle, he was busy serving as the longtime alderman of Des Moines’ then 6th Ward.  He was often rumored to run for Mayor.  He never did.  Any other spare time was devoted to civic projects, such as being one of the founders of present day Mercy Hospital.  In it all he gained both admirers and detractors, and several political cartoons of the day featured King and his famous mules.  Some papers were fond of him.  Some, like the Register, he seemed to battle.

Before his death he had the city’s first steam shovel, which was estimated to displace the work of 50 men.  The papers noted he kept it guarded at all times for fear of sabotage.  At his death the same papers noted he had been the city’s largest employer.  After his death they noted the complaint of a laborer, lamenting that everyone had always had work when old Mike King was around.

King flirted with disaster twice.  The first time a railroad went defunct while he was in the middle of a large project for them.  Eventually the court would make sure the wealthy individuals behind the project paid.  Years later a second railroad would go defunct.  Evidently this time the individuals which had been backing it were no longer wealthy either.

King mortgaged the family home in order to pay his help.  On Memorial Day of 1902 he died.  The bank subsequently foreclosed on the property, and the family eventually moved over to 31st street.

On giving notice of his death, one paper concluded by saying, “He was generous to a fault and had he been as good to himself as he was kind to his friends he would have attained to a comfortable competence.”  A more friendly one concluded he died “leaving no heritage to his family but….a public spirited citizen, a friend of the poor, an honest, well spent life.”

My grandmother’s mother was the only one of four girls to have married.  She had one child.  It would seem M.H’s meager heritage grew smaller, but not without his daughters’ best efforts.  During their lifetime they concerned themselves with their father’s legacy, and some managed to carve out their own.

Someone else’s legacy can be an ocean we lose ourselves into, trying to lay claim on the exception we fear to be, before we too someday drown in the dirt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmVNswlLDgc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hxc6Vnph4E

Jim sat at the counter, with his blue, pin-striped overalls on.  They were immaculate.  In the breast pocket was a ball point pen clipped neatly next to the horizontal spiral atop the bright yellow cover of a now defunct feed company.  His hat was sponsored by a seed corn company now next to the feed company in defunctness.  It’s bright yellow bill and large badge sat ahead of the white mesh that brought up the rear.  All of them laid over the well-groomed, grey hair trimmed only a couple of days ago.

He had got up early to get to the counter and hear the reports of last night’s rain as they came in.  His furrowed hand produced a thumb and middle finger which held the handle of a white porcelain coffee cup.  The index finger tapped the top intermittently, as though he would think of the line of a song and then think of another.  He stared at the line the contents made on the inside of the mug.

It was then he glanced to the side and caught Ted, walking with the knees of a hog farmer up to the counter’s end to pay the bill his breakfast had left.

“Did you get any rain last night, Ted?”

“Oh, we got just a skosh, you know.  The gauge had five inches in it this morning.”

“I had around five and a quarter at my place.”

“Well, the devil always did take care of his own,” said Ted with the same smile Jim returned.

Some would say Jim had told a little lie, but he could argue there had been profit in it, and surely the profit made it excusable.  Jim would say he told no lie at all.  He only suggested he got around five and a quarter.  In truth he had, within a quarter of it.  For Jim it was the its status as a suggested quarter that made it defensible, and it yielded to him the same advantage an actual quarter would have.

The line in the mug dropped lower.  The songs changed several times.  Finally, Jim glanced to the side and caught the bow-legged gait of the mustached horseman called Russ.

“I got around 5 and a quarter,” said Jim, now with some confidence, blinking his eyes as he spoke.  “What’d you get?”

“We got six.”

“You don’t say?”  His confidence deflated, but opportunity seized the moment.  “Is that the most you’ve heard of?”

“I thought I heard them say behind me that the Meadows boy got 7 south of town.”

If the suggested is every bit as good as the actual, having gotten the most rain is every bit as good as having found out who did.  Yes sir, it had been a productive morning in deed, and the tapping began for the rhythm of several happy tunes.  The young waitress walked by, and Jim opted for one more cup.  Waiting for it, he caught sight of the confident walk of a young man who looked but vaguely familiar.

“Did you get much rain last night?”

“Five and a half,” Jim replied, “but the Meadows boy was in this morning and he told me he thought he had over seven.”

“You don’t say?”

“Yep.  That’s what he told me.”

“Well I thought I heard that too,” said the Meadows boy who was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Now John had sat there, long and tall as ever, taking it all in as the egg yolks got cold in his hash browns.  He too would pass Jim on the way to the register.

“I suppose you got us all beat,” were the words that came from the down turned eyes underneath the yellow bill.

“I suppose I do,” said John.

“How much did you get?”

“We got enough that last night the bar in Bevington was the driest spot in town.”

Yes, Jim thought, it had been a very productive morning, and he laid down a two dollar tip for the gal who had been filling his cup.

I suppose it was a combination of my own dumb luck and others’ busy schedules that had Justine Stevenson with the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association contacting me to see if I would be interested in participating in a rural town hall meeting with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.  I had just broke down my recently repaired tile machine half way up a pastured hillside.  20 acres of late oats needed mowed to boot.  Still, I said yes.  Someday the phone won’t ring, but I’ll taste every grape on the vine I get offered until then.

The meeting was to be held at the Stine Barn in West Des Moines.  I had never been.  It’s quite a place in the middle of town, and I was in awe as I parked my car on the grass ridge above it.  A man in a golf cart was right behind me, waiting to give me a ride back down.

“A healthy young man like you I ought to let walk,” he smiled.  He knew how to bullshit.  We would get along fine.

“What’s your name?” I asked extending my hand.

“Johnny Rodgers”

“I’m Dan Hanrahan.  Beautiful day isn’t it?”

“It better be for a Husker to be in Iowa.”

“I went to Iowa and Iowa State, so I got you covered either way,” I laughed.

“We tied Iowa State in my last season.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say you played for the Huskers?”

“Yea.  I played for them.  I was also the first one of them to win the Heisman Trophy.”  With that he raised his right hand, and it was then I noticed the ring.

“So what are you doing in Iowa?” I asked.

“I’m working with RFD-TV now.”  With that Nebraska’s Player of the Century dropped me off, but not before I shook his hand again and shared one more smile.

RFD-TV and Mediacom were sponsoring the day’s town hall.  It was to be the first of ten or so, featuring many of the Democratic and the Republican candidates for President.  It is hoped this series will bring light to the issues rural America is facing concerning agriculture and beyond, not only for the candidates themselves but also for our urban counterparts.

Several groups were invited to participate in the meeting and submit questions to the candidate.  The Des Moines Register was there, there was a group representing rural hospitals, youth from FFA and 4H, Farm Bureau, the Soybean Association, the Pork Producers, the Corn Growers, and the Renewable Fuels Association to name a few.

The town hall was to be an hour long, and we were seated somewhat in order of the questions we would ask.  Most of the seats were taken, when I looked up to see Craig Hill with the Iowa Farm Bureau beside me.  I suggested to him that perhaps one of us would get to sit on the horse over in the corner.

Craig smiled as large as Johnny Rodgers had.  “That would be quite a seat.”

The horse, Trigger, had belonged to a different Rodgers.  That one was Roy.   In front of Trigger was none other than Roy’s dog, Bullet.  It wouldn’t have surprised me to find Roy himself behind a door somewhere.

After instruction on how to ask our question, we remained silently seated while we waited for the Governor to show up.  While I waited I wondered how much of rural America would really be represented here.  How long would it take for this candidate to seek cover by wrapping himself in the flag or wandering off into the topics of Iraq, Iran, John McCain, or all our gods?

Beside me was a reporter from the Des Moines Register.  She’d been covering the Jindal campaign, and she was to ask a question the paper had submitted.  The paper had several people present in the small, invited audience, and I would guess it was a member of the Register Editorial Board that came over to visit with her as we sat.

“Do you think I can modify this question?” the reporter asked.

“No.  Ask it as it is written.  There is supposed to be a follow-up which will hit on the other topic we are interested in.”

As I wondered if even the audience would play ball, Jindal stepped in.  He’s short, skinny as a rail, and didn’t even have time to say ‘Hello,’ before the crew started the whole thing rolling.  There he stood, patient as Job, at the back of a room of strangers, waiting for the cue to hop on stage.

The audience stuck to their questions, and Jindal stuck to the topics they asked, never veering from them.  I’d only seen a few television ads of his and was surprised in the soft way he spoke.  He had an engaging sense of humor and used it to discuss the items in both a length and depth that left me impressed with his substance.  He gave some answers that might be a tough sell in Iowa, but it is my view that as the first one out of the gate, he set the bar high.

Substance, I should think, could be an appealing alternative when the feeling good of ‘hope’ or the faded feeling of fear leaves one busted flat (in Baton Rouge or elsewhere).  Still, perhaps substance is overrated anymore.  The hides of Trigger and Bullet are sure to get air time during the broadcast at 9 central Thursday evening.  I bet you don’t see Johnny Rodgers once.

For what it is worth, Jindal might be in this race for awhile.  (Edit:  He wasn’t.)

Where do the daydreams of little boys go when they become men? Some speculate they get left behind with other childhood things as we age. I wonder if we ever truly leave anything behind. At best we cover it up, and inadvertently drag it around with us when we think we left it behind. If not you, me then.

Perhaps one site in Iowa would invoke boyhood daydreams beyond all others. It sits near the town of Adair, a mile south of Interstate 80. Tomorrow, July 21st, is the anniversary of the 1873 day that gave it significance.

That year the town of Adair was celebrating it’s first birthday. Previously the site had been known as Summit Cut, a name it received by being the Iowa high point of the Rock Island Line. It sits on the Iowa Divide, leaving each raindrop in apprehension as to whether it would be going to the mighty Mississippi or the muddy, and less prestigious, Missouri.

All those drops will eventually end up in the Gulf of Mexico, but even when we know the destination, we have to fret on how we are going to get there.

Some speculate the town’s setting on the ridge was one of the reasons Jesse James and his brother, Frank, selected the area as the site of the first train robbery in the west and the first moving train robbery of all time. The theory is that the train would be going slower as it approached the ridge. In reality they selected the site in the belief that the engineer would be preoccupied gawking at the wind turbines.

If you find it curious that “the west” includes Iowa, you’re probably not alone. The site doesn’t even muster a sign on the interstate, where daydreaming boys and the fathers that supplanted them drive by in droves. It is as though most consider the event an accident of history, which should have happened elsewhere, and they are doing their best to pretend it did.

The train was to have $75,000 in its safe, the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars today. The gang camped outside of town, then bought pies from the wife of the section foreman of the railroad, while others raided an outbuilding in the backyard for the tools they would use to loosen a rail. Once the rail was loose, they tied a rope to it, and pulled it out of place when the engine approached.

The wreck killed the train’s engineer, John Rafferty, and would go on to kill its fireman, Dennis Foley. The guard, John Burgess, was forced to open the safe and hand over its contents: $2337.

No doubt the gang was disappointed. Burgess was likely pleased. He had achieved the fame of Rafferty and Foley, and he would get to tell others about it.

Trying to bolster the loot, the gang passed the hat and managed to eek out another $700 from the passengers. In all my life I never knew the James’ were Catholic, but where else would they have got the idea for a second collection?

Burgess ran to Adair to raise the alarm, only to find the town hadn’t got around to putting it up yet. Local hero, Levi Clay, would run (since Adair was a one horse town, and that horse was out at the moment) to the neighboring town of Casey.

There he sent a telegraph, which should be reaching your smart phone one of these days. My best guess is that it will be between 3 and 4 am.

The James’ got away, but of course they had the advantage. Which ever direction they went was downhill, with the wind from the turbines pushing them along. Running along behind them was what they had hoped to leave behind. It would catch up to them, just as it always does.