I’ve never seen the Sierra Nevada Mountains, except perhaps in drifting over them in my mind on a Sunday with my posterior in a church pew.  A long time ago I used to fight this drifting, but anymore I close my eyes and enjoy the ride without distraction amongst the ancient ritual of the Mass.  Or I should say no distraction most of the time. 

Once, when I lived in Guthrie Center, I had a guy while we were standing lean over and whisper in my ear, “You know, I had a horse that could sleep like you once.”

This past Sunday I had a pew to myself, and when I heard two people come in and sit behind me, I figured it was the nice couple, whose kids have left the nest, which always sit there.  When it came time for us to kneel, though, the time when my mind usually reaches wherever it’s going, I found I was wrong.

It was then that I heard the patter of two little feet on the seat of my pew.  “A mother giving her kid exercise,” I thought.  But the patter came closer.  Undeterred, I kept my eyes closed, and undaunted the feet came closer still.  Finally I felt a little hand on my shoulder.

I turned from snowy summits to look into the face of their 18 month old namesake, Sierra, with big eyes and a face with a perpetual smile.  I smiled too.  She smiled more.  I was bluffing.

Having no kids of my own, the presence of someone else’s can be intimidating.  Intimidating was a word this gal didn’t know.  Her glance alternated between me and my two year old nephew, Bowen, who was in the pew ahead.  I picked Bowen up, set him down in my pew, and figured the two could captivate each other’s interest eye to eye.  I missed a second time.

Bowen was at least as intimidated as I was, and much poorer in showing it.  I was standing now, and he retreated behind me grabbing my leg.  Sensing weakness, and seeing she had him cornered, our little tiger shark closed in for the kill.  At the last second, I scooped down, plucked Bowen to safety, and returned him to the pew ahead.  I think she scared the hell right out of him, and I don’t suppose he’ll need to go to Mass again.

The tiger shark

The goldfish

From his fortress Bowen watched his pursuer climb down and stand up on the kneeler to get closer to him.  Bowen feigned a loss of interest.  This I applaud him for, since women usually seize the opportunity to play hard to get first.  Sierra remained undaunted, however, and crept more and more onto the toes of her little black boots with her hand reaching out to seize her man.  I had to hand it to her.  This was a woman whom didn’t take “no” for an answer. 

All of the sudden her feet slipped out, her chinned dodged the back of the pew, and she did a twist worthy of the X Games in order that she might slam face down into the kneeler. 

If I remember my physics lesson correctly, it should have happened in about .4 seconds.  A lot can go through your mind in .4 seconds.  In the first tenth of it, I had removed all blame from myself.  I knew I would be no good at watching a child.  And her mother would have too, had she ever overheard me in the confessional.  I suspected she would have blushed, in fact.  After all, the priest does, and you would figure he had heard it all.  Perhaps he had never heard it all at once before.

(Now, in order not to overwhelm the man, I move around the divider and look at the priest face to face.  Once I begin, I continue until the priest looks embarrassed or looks at his watch.  Or embarrassingly looks at his watch.  Once we had a priest with the countenance of an angel, and the patience of Job.  The man would neither look embarrassed nor look at his watch.  I did find he would sweat profusely, however.  The next time the sacrament was offered, I came around the partition to find he had a sweat band on.  Seems he had been expecting me.  This was mortifying.  It was several years before I went back again.)

Unsure of what to do with a child in the first place, I was now positive I had broken one.  Expecting a wail from my feet at any moment, which would lead to lots of looks and unwanted attention, I quickly reached down to pick her up and get her back in her mother’s hands before Sierra uttered anything audible.  This way everyone would think her mother had done it.

But before I could, Sierra broke the silence with a loud “ugh.”  I suspect it was similar to the noise the skydiver made whose parachute failed to open but lived to tell about it.  She had taken the fall in stride, but I hadn’t got over the shock yet.  I grabbed her quickly to transfer her to her mother, but her mother was laughing so hard I was unable to complete the handoff.  I looked down into the same smiling face and big eyes I had seen before.  This time I offered no smile.  This kid was the Terminator.  Bowen could run, but he would never be able to hide.

To save him until he had developed some better motor skills, I held Sierra up by my shoulder, snuggly so she didn’t fall again. From this vantage she could look down on Bowen, and he timidly moved for protection behind the legs of his mother.

I suppose she’ll too have a horse like me someday.  Hopefully Bowen has a faster one.

Andrew Wheeler and I were making our way down the Grand Concourse at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. It was a little after 8:30 in the morning, on the second Thursday of the fair. There were several people about, but it was hardly a crowd by State Fair standards.

Our walk took us past a whole smorgasbord of culinary adventures.  Some fried, some on a stick, some fried on a stick. The vendors were already open and eagerly anticipating the crowd the late morning would surely bring. I was sure the crowd would bring their appetites, but I was without mine.

We were on our way to the Crystal Studio, which houses 1040 WHO Radio during the fair. At this time it was occupied by their popular morning show hosts, Van and Bonnie, and I was going to have to come up with something to say to them.  I was nervous.

It was a good thing Wheeler was with me. He’s particularly gifted in making smooth, easy conversation, and being able to engage in it made things better. Our talk made its way to the background of my mind, while it’s foreground searched for something else to occupy it other than being nervous.

I caught a sign for Dipping Dots. I decided I would try humor. The tagline for Dipping Dots is “the Ice Cream of the Future.” It’s been this way since I was a boy. I would have thought the future would have got here by now.

I felt nothing, so I tried to build some momentum with another one. The Fair this year featured an incredibly tall sculpture of the American Gothic.   A couple of days before, Sharon Bell had informed me that it was not the farmer’s wife that was sternly standing behind him, but his daughter. Reflecting on it during our walk, I had a series of epiphanies.

First, I realized what her father’s pitchfork was for: guys like me.  By the look of things, he’d been successful.

Second, I gathered that in her suitcase at her feet lay tucked away a little black dress and a cute pair of sandals, a partial can of hair spray, and a tube of lipstick she hoped was holding up well in the heat. She knew he wouldn’t be able to stay up all night, and we he finally tired out, around 8:30, she was going to let her hair down and saunter around a bit.

Her head was wistfully turned towards one of the many establishments that serve beer. The scowl on her face tells me she had seen the $8 price tag, and the sculptor caught her vainly wishing that she would have tucked more away from the old miser.  She’s been isolated to such a degree, the thought never occurred to her that a boy might buy her one.

In the end, this also was to no avail. The closer we got, the more nervous I became.

I mentioned to Andrew, in an understated, conversational way, “I’m a little nervous.” This didn’t help either, but Andrew did his best.

“The way this works is that we will go in at the start of a commercial break. Van and Bonnie will make small talk with you, putting you at ease and giving them a chance to figure out what they are going to ask you. When we go on the air, they’ll pitch you some easy, ‘softball’ type questions, and it will be over before you know it.”

We were at the Depot, and I knew their kegs were still tapped. I thought about seeing if Wheeler wanted a cold one. Unlike the miser’s daughter, I was partially motivated to pay the $8. I also thought better of it. It might make me liable to swear.

Arriving at the studio, we stepped in the side door and were greeted by a man standing behind a counter. Andrew struck up a conversation with him as easily as he had with me. A second man stood silently by and listened. At some point he joined in, and I recognized the voice of Jan Mickelson, waiting his turn to take his show on the air. I thought of asking him if he wanted to go on a littler earlier than normal.

Through a clear door sat Van and Bonnie and their current guest. In no time flat, a commercial came on, the guest rose, the door opened, and someone mentioned for Andrew and myself to go in. I decided not to look nervous. Part of me thought looking nervous would be liable to make them swear.

Van and Bonnie could make conversation as easily as Wheeler, whom might have his own radio show someday. We talked about the weather, the fair, the people of the fair gazing right in the large picture windows across from us, and somehow we wound up talking about grocery shopping at Hy-Vee. By that time only the three of them were involved in the conversation. I was still stuck on the unnerving presence of the faces outside the window.

My internal clock had been ticking during the commercial break, and it told me my moment was quickly approaching. Sure enough, and without warning, Van launched into the weather or traffic or something. I looked over to Bonnie, and I found her looking squarely at me. She had found me out. The expression on her face said, “Shit, this one is nervous after all.”

Just then Van cracked a joke of some sort or other and made a slight raise of his index finger.  On cue Bonnie broke into that famous laugh of hers.  I fancied it was laced with a slight trace of profanity.

Van began, “Joining us in the studio this morning is Dan Hanrahan. How’s it going this morning, Dan?”

Dry, I thought.

Before I could think any further, my mouth opened and out came, “Wonderful, Van. And what a beautiful morning it is to be out here at the Iowa State Fairgrounds talking about agriculture. Thanks so much to the two of you for having me on.” And as my own voice pattered on, without hesitation, laying it on thick and heavy as it went, I wondered, who let this crazy bastard in?

A few more questions, a couple of minutes, and it was over. I had survived it without cursing. I wished I could have said the same for Bonnie. The next commercial had arrived, and Bonnie told us to take our pick from two pans of cinnamon rolls. My stomach, strained from the knot it had recently been in, declined. Perhaps if they were fried and on a stick, they might be liable to make me swear.

As we opened the door to leave the studio, another guy hurried in before I got it closed. There was something about him that made one wonder if he was really supposed to be in there or not. It was as though I had ran into myself. As it was, he didn’t seem the least bit nervous, and I was sure they would find something to talk about.

The most famous water works in Iowa is located in Des Moines. It sits on a campus of 50 or 60 acres or so, on an oxbow which juts into the course of the North Raccoon River. It was arguably made most famous by LD “The Flood Stud” McMullen. It has a different director now, whom may not have a nickname, but by now has had several t-shirts dedicated to him.

Why its the most famous I don’t know.  We have much larger ones in the state.  My home county of Madison has one thousands of acres in size, and it rarely gets any press. Perhaps it needs a spokesman with a more fanciful mane. Perhaps it needs its own t-shirt.  Showmanship has always been second nature to it, though.  What it does, it does quietly.

The Des Moines Water Works lies on piece of land resembling a thumb that’s laid on top of the North Raccoon. It makes for great drama.  In Madison County the situation isn’t nearly as dramatic.  We lie over the watershed like a blanket.

I get to witness this blanket in action.  Late June rains recently left the soil at home saturated, and on June 30^th, we received a couple of inches in 30-45 minutes or so. A couple of inches of rain is hardly a big event most times, but on this particular time it came with no place to go. When the rain ended, I set out with my camera, and found a few things to give it some press.

Two new terraces doing their job.

We were in the process of building some terraces over the summer, and had two completed off my back deck.  In agriculture we tend to take for granted that everyone knows what a terrace is, but I’ve found over the last year this isn’t the case.  A terrace simply stops water from running down a hillside, forcing to funnel out through a drainage pipe, letting go of the sediment it would have carried off the farm during its wait.

Drainage water being released slowly from an outlet.

Last year’s residue and this year’s crop.

Above the terraces lie other lines of defense for controlling erosion.  This field was no-tilled, leaving last year’s corn residue on top of the soil.  You can see the stalks still standing underneath this year’s bean crop.  Most ground is no-tilled in our area.

The additional residue helps slow down runoff, allowing the water extra time to try and soak in.  Here, on top of the ridge above our new terraces, were a good 2-3 inches of water still laying on top of the ground looking for someplace to go.  One of the basic ideas of any conservation effort is to encourage that water to take its time.

Farmers sometimes tile fields to help with the situation shown above.  In order to have runoff, you need to have excess water in the first place.  Tile works to increase infiltration of water into the soil, reducing the amount sitting on top, as well as reducing runoff and anything that runoff might carry.

While excess nitrogen from the tile can be a concern, how we apply nitrogen, the use of cover crops, ways in which we outlet the tile, and managing when the tile operates can all work to reduce this while maintaining the above benefits.  Eliminating tile due to nitrates, eliminates it’s positive impact on all the other areas mentioned above.

Long established terraces the new ones compliment.

While the two terraces above are new, the practice goes back much farther.  A bordering field features terraces built in the early 80’s, still doing their job on the landscape.  These older conservation structures mark the conservation efforts of a previous generation, and are the foundation subsequent ones build on.

7 hours later.

At the end of the day, shortly before sunset, I took one last picture of the new terraces.  They were still 1/2 to 1/3 full.  Water which would have washed its way off the field in minutes was still being released after hours.

Conservation doesn’t make much noise, I guess.  It isn’t designed to.  If only it sported a more flamboyant mane.

If my grandfather had a way with stories, then it must be mentioned that my grandmother had a way with words.  At her command must have laid a whole army of them, but she never traipsed them about for a good showing, at least not as I recall.  Instead she would make an efficient sort of them and select the one most effective for a particular job.

Once selected, she would wield it effectively.  I don’t recall her being strict, mind you, but when she said a word like “no” it could run a circle around your entire childhood attention span and bring it focused on a single point.  She gave some certainty to it, I suppose, and it fell like a hammer blow.  Once spoken, with its full meaning comprehended, she could convey it in absolute silence with equal effect.  Perhaps this is the acquired skill of all grandmothers.

My aunt tells the story that she was staying with the two near the end of her father’s life, and one day a neighbor stopped to visit.  This wasn’t remarkable, it happened all the time, but what was remarkable that particular day was the story.  The subject of the reminiscing were the two’s younger years and a hell of a good time they’d had when one of their acquaintances had piled up his Model T on the way home from a dance in northern Iowa.  My aunt realized for the first time in her life that her father once drank.

So when my grandfather was poised to celebrate his next birthday, my aunt decided she would get him something special to remember it by.  She went into a liquor shop and inquired from the lady behind the counter on her recommendations for her aging father.  She was directed to a fine, Irish liquor which was then boxed and wrapped.

When the big day came, and the meal had been had, and the rest of the family had said their goodbyes, my aunt asked her father to sit still for one more gift.  She went down the hall and returned with a long, slender box wrapped and tied with a bow.  He was at the table, and had his back to his wife who was dislodging from the plates the final remnants of the party.  My grandmother took an interest, though, and from time to time would look over her shoulder to witness what was about to unfold.  Sliding the bow off one end and cutting the tape with a pocket knife, my grandfather made his way to the day’s final gift.  He pulled the lid off, folded back the packing, and his eyes glistened from the joy of seeing a long lost friend.

My grandmother took one look, raised one eyebrow, and fervently resumed her work.  My aunt was facing her, and her understanding of her disapproval was instant.  My grandfather had neither seen nor heard anything, yet he was perfect in his understanding as well.  He pushed the packing back over the bottle, carefully slid the lid back on the box, and pushed it back across to my aunt with a smile.  “Mary,” he said, “I appreciate the gift, but I cannot take it.  I made a promise to someone a long time ago now, and I intend to keep it.”

My aunt either felt like she’d diminished in size, or that the chair she sat in had grown to Edith Ann proportions.  What she didn’t know was that my grandmother was adamant in her belief that a man that drank wouldn’t amount to anything.  However it was she had that conversation with my grandfather, she had brought his full attention to the topic, his understanding was perfect, and there was no need to repeat it a second time.

But of all the words she rigorously selected, the most famous was in 1935 for a contest to name a new state park south of Indianola.  The Saux and Fox Indian tribes had once wintered in the area, and Grandmother submitted the name “Ahquabi” which was their word for “resting place.”  The committee set up by the local paper loved it, and awarded her first place and $35.

She was quite fond of the stories of the Native Americans, and there are still a box or two in my basement full of her numerous newspaper clippings, letters from the Department of the Interior concerning the old Indian Bureau, and knick knacks from early trips to pow wows in Tama.  Among the clippings is one she saved detailing the night of October 11, 1845.

At midnight that night, the Indian title to the lands in south central Iowa expired.  When it did, settlers could stake claim to 320 acre parcels.  The clipping states that “Precisely at twelve o’clock, the loud report of a gun at the agency announced that the empire of the red man had ended here forever, and that of his master race had begun.”  It goes on to say “civilization had now commenced her reign in Central Iowa.”

The rest of her clippings make it quite clear where my grandmother’s sympathy lied, and I suppose she preserved this in order to note the sentiment.  The early historian goes on to detail how Jacob Frederick and Jeremiah Church were without an ax to properly mark their claims near Fort Des Moines, so they carved their initials into trees to mark their boundaries.  Frederick evidently did it in the dark, but Chruch was aided by the light of an Indian wigwam he had set on fire.

While my grandmother was concerned of the plight of the Native Americans, I take some satisfaction that they never had to see the Food Court at Jordan Creek.  I’m sure they had their own doubts about the “master race” and their “commencement of civilization” on the territory, but I doubt even they could have imagined that.  I wouldn’t have had the heart to have broke it to them.

A year after my grandmother died, in 1986, they put up a small monument in the park to her.  It’s southwest of the trail as you come in the park’s east entrance.  As I recall they put four names of her’s on it, but nowhere appears the one I knew her as.

In her clippings I found the full meaning for Ahquabi.  “Resting place” only accounts for the first half, or the “Ahqua.”  The significance of “bi” seems to have been neglected.  “Bi” was Indian for “sitting around a campfire and telling lies.”  An activity which evidently joins the two empires.  And knowing that, perhaps we can understand its full significance, and not need to be told a second time.

Seldom do I do requests.  This sounds better than it is.  Seldom do I get them.  I did have a former classmate, Scott Greif, ask me to write a story about baseball.  It was a fine compliment, for Scott would know the considerable talent I lacked in regards to the game.  I figured he thought I could lie well enough to make up for it, and that my vanity would dictate that I would do exactly that.

Our little league team was the Churchville Red Sox, and the first word in our name came from the small, unincorporated community where the field was located.  Its name came from the fact that it did have a church.  In fact it once had two.  The second was moved to Martensdale, bell and all.  How they got it over the hills, I don’t know, save that the move was a joint effort.  The Lutherans were eager to go.  The Catholics were eager to help them.

The world is small when you are in little league, and in that little world we took some pride that we were quite good.  So good, I suppose, we figured God Himself was taking note of it.  Baseball had a long tradition in Churchville.  My Grandfather played for them in the early turn of the century.  If God took note of them, I’m not sure, but His mother was reported to be the third baseman.

In those days there was neither a full-fledged field, nor enough players to field two full teams most of the time.  So Mary, the concrete Virgin which stood watch at the Church of the Assumption, became the designated 3rd baseman.  Having no glove of her own, the rules were simple:  if the ball hit her before the base runner did, they were out.  As to the length of her career, or the chips she took for the team, I cannot say, but she’d had lost her nose with a silent resiliency that was bound to have a profound effect on the rest of the team.

Churchville’s most famous son, Adam Walsh, was born in 1901 and went on to one of the more illustrious sporting careers of any Iowan.  He was the team captain for the 1924 Notre Dame Football squad.  There he played center of the “Seven Mules,” the line that blocked for the famed “Four Horsemen.”  During their undefeated season of 1924, in a game against Army, Walsh is said to have broken both his hands while playing every minute football, never fumbling a snap and defensively making a key interception late in the game.  Their famed coach, Knute Rockne, regarded the effort as the greatest game he’d ever seen a center play.  Walsh is still listed as the center on the All-Time Notre Dame Team, and after his career he coached the Cleveland Browns to the 1945 NFL Championship.

Now if this isn’t remarkable enough, consider the fact that he left Churchville at the age of 6.  Had he a chance to further develop under the Virgin’s tutelage, I suspect there would have been no stopping him.   Those that remained eventually found a field to play on, and a third baseman with a glove.

My grandfather’s favorite story about playing ball in Churchville was that one day an all-black traveling team called the Tennessee Rats came through on the train.  The traveled from town to town, setting up exhibition games against the town teams.  They made a living by charging a gate for their pay.  This was a step up.  In the early days the Rats were a traveling minstrel show.  They added baseball in the early 1900s, with a game in the afternoon and a show at night.  It was all baseball by the ’20s.

The Rats’ full team took the field the first inning.  Only their infield came out in the second.  The rest of the game was finished with their spectacular pitcher and his catcher.  When he finally got a chance to play, my grandfather got the team’s lone hit that day.  He confessed later that it took him a full ten years to realize he had gotten the hit because the pitcher had simply taken sympathy on him, the youngest member of the team.

Family tradition always said the pitcher was the great Satchel Paige, but a little bit of recent research says this is impossible.  Paige never barnstormed across Iowa until my grandfather would have been approaching 40.  If it wasn’t Paige, then who was it?  Had it even happened at all?  Then I came across a semi pro all-black team called W.A. Brown’s Tennessee Rats, and a historian who had become interested in them.

The Rats travelled all across Iowa and Missouri, into the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.  For a time they featured two tremendous black pitchers, who were simply too old by the time the color barrier was broken.  John Wesley Donaldson, “The Greatest Pitcher You’ve Never Heard Of,” played for them in 1911, and in 1914 William “Plunk” Drake threw from the mound.  Perhaps it was the latter, whom my grandfather faced.

When the railroad line had finally been tore up, but before the bike trail had been laid down, we got our chance to be part of Churchville’s baseball lore. The teams we played were from the exotic localities of Milo, Truro, and St. Charles.  Following in my grandfather’s footsteps, I too would see action late in these games, but my age had nothing to do with it.

When I was in fifth grade, we played Milo.  They had a pitcher named Keeney, who should have been in the seventh grade but had been held back a year.  He looked six foot tall, and we suspected that he shaved.  Earlier that year, in a game at St. Mary’s, he hit a kid in the head so hard that it split his helmet right down the seam, with each half symmetrically falling at his ankles.  Kenney should have done it sooner in his career.  The story gave him something few our age were in possession of, a reputation.  It was one he had to have found great value in.

When they came to town, Coach Parker sent our own hard thrower to the mound, Ryan Lull.  Ryan was our shortstop.  As far as I know, he had never pitched.  This was likely due to worry that he could very well kill someone.  We were hoping it was Kenney in the first inning.  During his warm up, as the Milo team watched from the dugout, he sent a fast ball crashing into the backstop a good six feet right of the plate.  This had a level of theatrics W.A. Brown would have been proud of.  Things got pretty quiet.

Tom Lull, Ryan’s dad, pleaded with our coach to reconsider.  He wasn’t sure the family had enough insurance to cover whatever Ryan might do.  I imagine the Milo team could hear the pleas as well as we could.  Someone should have been charging gate.

Coach Parker knew that personal experience trumps a second hand story any old day of the week.  Whatever fear we had of Keeney now paled in comparisson to the fear they had of Lull.

We must have worked up a fair lead in the game, because at some point coach made his way down the bench to tell me I was going in.  He was a kind man, and always wore an expression that he was sorry he’d waited so long to get me in the game.  I always wore one that said it was quite all right, and he really needn’t bother in finding me.  I would have been just as content to sit on the bleachers, but it would have looked odd being the only one there with a uniform on and all.

With my stomach in a knot, I begrudgingly headed to the plate and tried to get as ready as I could for the pitch.  I finally found a spot where I was comfortable when the umpire stopped the game.  It seems I had set up shop a good two feet outside of the batter’s box.  Beyond that I don’t recall anymore particulars of the at bat.  I could offer a solid guess, though.

Having survived it at least, I now needed to take the field, and Coach sent me out to right.  I was hoping for a quick inning, but it was not to be.  The first two runners reached, standing on first and second.  I was fairly deep in right, mainly so I could let any ball drop in front of me.  The third batter nearly hit it to me, and I had to stand around for a while to make up for the fact that I hadn’t been back farther.

When it came down I charged it with great abandon, in case a local sports writer was there.  In case he wasn’t, I was writing the story for him in my mind.  While trying to find the right phrasing for the monumental events about to unfold, I passed the ball as it passed me.  Now I had to change both direction and the story line.  The key play would now be a dramatic throw to the plate, and when I finally caught up to the ball I snagged it and threw it with all my might.  After that I opened my eyes.

At the top of my view was the ball, hurtling straight ahead, and straight ahead was the side profile of the center fielder watching the runners go home.

“Eric, Eric,” I shouted, scared to death I was about to bean him.  He casually glanced my way, and with reflexes much faster than my own, caught the ball just before it nailed him.  This was to be a relay throw unlike any other, but I have lost all heart in writing about it.

Right across the road was the Church of the Assumption, and beside it was Mary still standing watch.  Meanwhile in the outfield, the heavens open and I had an assumption of my own.  I was no ball player.  Mary had suffered enough on my account, and I would make her suffer no more.  Once my 5th grade season had ended, I refrained from going out for the sixth.  Unlike the Virgin, I at least got to keep my nose.

The following started as a bunch of thoughts revolving around in my mind. Their revolution is simply part of being human, and we all turn them, again and again, hoping to make some sense of them and to whittle away what isn’t important and to turn it down to what is. Sometimes, for each of us, a door opens, and we briefly peer into a room that has been beyond us. Why this happens, I don’t know, but it does. It happens to storytellers, husbands and wives, parents and children, and anyone else with a pulse.

For my own part, I would give twenty years of my life to stay in the place where that door is open forever, but it is not to be. The same flash of white hot lightning which opened it, closes it on the return stroke. Like a dream which explained everything and evaporates as we awake.

Left to abide in the hope that someday it will happen again, and that someday we will be present in it always.

A long time ago now was a family which I often likened to the Brady Bunch. In this family was never a quarrel between husband and wife or their children. It was this family I compared all others to.
One day I, visiting with a woman much brighter than I, I spoke of this family.
“How many families do you know like that?” she asked me.
I thought for a while and said, “Only them.”
“Well then, what does that tell you about the family your gauging normalcy by?”
She smiled. I smiled. A door had opened for me, and I tried with all I could to get my ass through before it closed. Conflict is normal.
I believe it changed my life, and will continue to do so as long as I live. I managed to get my shoulders through, but my ass got stuck, and so I alternate between my old life and the new one.
In her estimation, it was conflict that was normal. The thought that it wasn’t, was a sham. The time I spent thinking otherwise was wasted.
Throughout our history there have been people dedicated to finding peace here. I admire their efforts a great deal and respect their calling. But to find peace here they have had to remove themselves from the world. Some have done this physically in the form of communities and communes. Some have done it in their minds. For to remain here in both mind and ass, leaves us with conflict. Perhaps we should figure out what to do about it; perhaps there is no better use of our time.
I suppose it is around the age of eight or ten, when we first get some idea of the liberties that are available for the taking when we are in a different place than our parents. Raids on the candy in the cupboard or cookies in the freezer soon give way to increasingly wild expeditions beginning with the onset of sleep overs, driver licenses, finding love, and moving out on our own. At some point in our life a regression begins, our outings become less wild, and we again find simple satisfaction in the raids which once kept us content as children. For me they have regressed so much so that at thirty seven I am resigned to the simple liberty of writing a story while my parents are on vacation.
A few weeks ago a wicked little storm moved through the area, dumping a couple inches of rain in half an hour with a hard wind driving it. We lost power for a day, but damage was minimal. The neighboring town of Bevington wasn’t so fortunate. There, damage was what one would have expected from a small tornado, but no one knows if they saw one or not. As far as I know the tornado was never really sure whether Bevington, population of 70, was actually a town.
Within twenty minutes or so of its passing my mother came home from there, and I went over to get a damage report. At the end, she asked what I was about to do now.
“I was going to go over to the south pasture and see if any trees fell on the fences. Want to come along?”
“Well there is no power and nothing to do here,” she said. “Sure.”
“Fine. I’ll go out and make sure there is gas in the Mule, then bring it around.” I rounded their house to her coming off the back deck in flip flops. Their sole was half an inch thick. The mud was three to four inches deep, but I kept this to myself.
The seat was a little dirty. She asked me if she needed to get a towel. “I think it will be all right,” I said. “Besides, your jeans have holes in them.”
“They are supposed to have holes in them; that’s how they are made.” Thus a conversation I always thought I might have with a child of my own someday, I ended up having with my mother. I kept this to myself too.
To get to the pasture we had to cross North River, and when we got to it, we found it already lying across the road ahead of us. My mother was expecting me to stop.
“You’re going through there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that is a good idea?”
“Probably.”
“How can you tell how deep it is?”
“By how far it gets up on the tires when we get there.”
Her hand reached up for the ‘oh shit handle’ welded onto the roll cage just above her. I left mine alone. I knew the Mule wouldn’t float, and had no desire to have a death grip on an oversized boat anchor. Besides, there is nothing more calming than seeing someone else get nervous before you do.
We crossed the river and rounded the corner. There a tree had taken the power line and stretched it as tight as a bow string. It had broken the pole off, but was unable to take it to the ground. Thus the line hung eight feet off the road, with most of the weight of the tree and all of the weight of the pole still on it.
“You are not going under that are you?”
“Yes.”
“Will we make it?”
“Probably.”
“How do you know?”
“We just did.” Emerson said, ‘In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.’ The same is true with downed power lines.
Pulling the long hill out of the valley and stopping at the pasture gate, I got out to open it.
“We aren’t going in there are we?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think the fence looks fine.”
The pasture is 240 acres, divided into 40 acre lots, and snakes its way back a mile and a half, through ditches, over ridges, and among numerous large oak. By my count there is over five miles of fence on it. From our vantage we could see not quite a third of it. Most of the third we saw at a distance of half a mile or better. I don’t want to doubt my mother, but I was envious of her eye sight. I kept this to myself too.
Most of the cows were in the forty the furthest back, and gingerly in the mud we made our way back to them.
“Are we going to get stuck? I’m not walking. I have flip flops on. We aren’t going to get stuck are we?”
“I haven’t got this stuck yet.”
I left the trail and drove along in the tall, un-grazed grass.
“How can you tell where we are going? I can’t see anything. Can you see what is ahead of us? Watch out for that big rock.”
The rock in question was not as big as a greyhound bus, but possibly larger than a Yugo. Obviously my own eye sight she was not envious of.
“I don’t think much of this excursion. We are not going to get stuck are we? I really don’t think much of this excursion. How much further are they? I don’t think much of this excursion.” The pauses between all of the sentences were removed by me, because it sounds the same all together as it did all spread out.
The final crossing had washed out, leaving a four foot gap where the culvert should have been. I continued along the ditch until I had climbed a steep, bare knob. Below we looked down on the silver and slippery ribbon that was a muddy pond dam, which was our only way back to the cows. On the pond side the storm water laid in a silent stillness, waiting its chance to roar on through the overflow pipe and be off again.
“You’re not going across that are you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can you tread water?”
“No. Why?”
“Well I was just wondering what you were going to do when we slid off into the pond.”
“Jump before we get there.” It would have been easier for me to jump. On my side was the long incline of the backside of the dam. My mother’s side was less forgiving. Had I jumped, I would have came back. My own mother had taught me that.
Once Mom and Dad left my sisters and I along the side of the road. When they came back and got us, we were all thankful. Had I jumped and left her, I doubt she would have had the same gratitude we did.
Finally we made it back to the 40 the cows were in.
“Will they come out when you open the gate?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
As I stepped out to get the gate, Mom finally released her death grip of the ‘oh shit handle,’ only to look at her feet and utter, “shit.”
“Mud too,” I reassured her.
As it happened, no trees were down and all the cows were in. Leaving the back 40, after I closed the gate, my mother asked what we were going to do now.
“I’ll get you home,” I said.
“Don’t you have more cows in here?”
“Yes. This year there is twenty head of first calf heifers clear over on the other side.”
“We probably ought to go check them, don’t you think?”
Seems I had made a convert out of her.

Someday, I suppose, when we have completely regressed, we will gladly trade all the liberties we took in their absence for their presence once again. We will realize this as lightning opens its door once more, and we stand on the outside, looking in.

I often wonder how it is that as adults we are content to believe the most preposterous lies that even our children won’t take up. I was reminded of one just this week, having finished a beer, and waiting for the second half of a concert to begin at Des Moines’ Hoyt Sherman Place.

“You know if you are sitting out there in the audience, and you’ve never taken the time to travel across this great country of ours in a way that lets you appreciate the vastness of it, you really ought to. David and I are lucky in that we drive ourselves, and over the years we’ve crisscrossed this country so many times. I still haven’t loss my sense of awe at it all. The climates, the people, and the cultures are so varied, yet here we are, all in the same place,” so uttered Gillian Welch having taken the stage after intermission.

The comment brought lots of applause. Some was from a ghost fluttering around backstage somewhere. Hoyt, onto the side of his stately home this auditorium was built, was surely pleased with Gillian’s call for cross country travel. His famous brother, William Tecumseh Sherman, had the same idea some time ago. He went across Georgia, cutting a swath sixty miles wide.

I have no problem with the wonders of travel, only the subsequent smugness of those whom thought they already had.  What better way to appreciate its vastness than to realize its vastness is beyond our comprehension? Here lies the sense of awe. What more stands in the way of that than to believe one already has?

Every child understands that real places aren’t found on maps. As adults we become convinced of the opposite. The crap that wouldn’t fool a child fools us daily.

At the concert’s start, my father struck up a conversation with the couple ahead of us. He spoke with the wife first, whom had a sense of culture about her. When she mentioned Chicago, Dad naturally asked if that was where they were from.

“Oh goodness, no,” she said. “I’m from Fort Madison, and my husband is from just south of here, Madison County, where the bridges are. He’s from a little town you’ve probably never heard of. We live here in Des Moines.”

They were in their 70s, and if the wife possessed an air of graceful sophistication, her husband, short and thin, bespectacled, and with time having turned his shoulders and back slightly in, was an unassuming man and endearing. He turned and offered a smile as he was brought into the conversation.

“We’d be a little familiar with Madison County,” Dad replied. “We’re from there.”

“You don’t say?” said the man rather excitedly. “Where about?”

“A few miles north of Bevington.”

The smile grew larger, “I was once one of nine in a graduating class from Patterson.”

“Do the two of you come here often?” his wife asked.

“This year we have. It’s our third time. Most recently the two of us saw Lyle Lovett.”

The husband’s smile now gave way to a giddy laugh. “He’s my absolute favorite. I’ve seen him many times. The thing is he always has such good musicians with him, and he’s always such a gentleman on stage, both to the audience and to the band.” He almost seemed embarrassed that he had went on so to strangers, that he had momentarily left the map.

The lights went dim. Gillian and Dave came on, and as they brought their guitars into tune, our man from Patterson laid the backside of his hand on his wife’s knee and she laid her hand in his.

When intermission arrived I went to get a beer, and found the same couple ahead of me.

“So what do you know of where I grew up?” the old man asked.

“Well whenever I think of Patterson, I think of a story my Grandfather was said to have often told. His mother had a poor heart, and in 36’ it was so hot he was afraid the heat would kill her. They say there were 28 days where the high was never below 100. You couldn’t stand to sleep in the house, so they slept in the yard, but the ground would be so hot you’d have to let it cool off.  While they were waiting, he’d get her in their car and they would drive with the windows down, trying to relieve the stress.

There were still salesmen traveling through the area, and some moved from town to town putting on a show. One night there was a fellow in Patterson, so they drove to see him and beat the heat. When he came onto his impromptu stage he related to the crowd the following story:

Folks, I had the most God awful dream last night. I dreamt last night not only that I had died, my friends, but much worse than that. I dreamt I had died and went to Hell. There Lucifer gave me the job of shoveling folks into the fire. God I hated to do it, but he forced me to do it, and so I did.

The first group that came along was a group from right down the road here, in Martensdale. Oh I tell you…they were such nice people. But the Devil bade me to shovel them in, and so I did. And the next group, oh, they were closer still. They were from Bevington, and they were even nicer than the folks from Martensdale. I especially hated to throw them into the fire, but the Devil bade me once more, and I did. But ladies and gentlemen, little did I know that the worst of it was yet to come. Why the third group was a group from right here in Patterson. And they were just as nice as all of you. I cried. I begged, but the Devil spoke, ‘Shovel em in,” and with tears running down my cheeks I did.

But I’ll be damned if those folks from Patterson weren’t too green to burn.”

The husband had found his laugh once again, extended his hand, and told me his name.  “Last nam is ‘Camp,'” he said.  I told him mine.

“It was a real pleasure in meeting you.”

“Very much likewise,” said I.

The most famous story of Patterson, that of Jesse Russell Salsbury and his buddy from Illinois, Joseph Downs, we never got to. The pair met in the Iowa National Guard in 1917. Later that year, preparing to leave for France, they erected a flag pole in the Salsbury yard in Patterson. In the wet concrete they both inscribed their names, below which they wrote “Shot in France.” On May 27^th, 1918 the pair was killed there in a gas attack on their trench.

In 1923, the town stood the slab on end and made a monument of it, and you could crisscross this country a thousand times and never see it once. The story is only a local one, and there are no signs directing you to it from nearby Highway 92.

I often thought someday, in an effort to raise funds, they will set another flag pole in the Salsbury front yard and raffle chances to leave an inscription on it. Were I to buy that winning ticket, I’d write, “Dan Hanrahan–Died peacefully in his sleep.” And then, when the crowd had left, but before the concrete dried, I’ll pull from my pocket a list of a few other names with manners of death much more exotic.

I stopped by it this evening, on my home from Creston. Beside the monument is a wreath that has nearly withered away. Above it is an enclosed case, detailing the story. Alongside the story are pinned a few photos, all bleached and faded beyond description. All but one. The lone picture that survives is of J. Russell Salsbury and his friend Downs. Wherever they are standing, it isn’t found on any map, and is as real now as it was then.

My mother went to an all-girls Catholic school in Des Moines. It was called St. Joseph’s. How St. Joseph made his way into an all-girls Catholic school, I don’t know. I’m sure area boys were jealous of him.   It is unlikely any of them were saints.

She once told me that when she was young a nun had asked them if any of them knew why time went faster as we got older. No one offered any guesses. My bet is that they weren’t old enough to notice yet. It was no matter, their teacher had, and they were going to have to hear about it anyway. This is the process we refer to as education.

“Time goes faster as we get older, because every year a single year becomes less and less significant. When you are five a year represents 20% of your life, but when you are 40 it is but a fraction of it.” The nun was obviously 70 and depressed. She kept a calendar on the wall, not for the dates on it, but rather for the breeze generated as they passed by.

It could have been worse, of course. St. Joseph was well beyond 70 and approaching 2000. Ordinarily he would have been pleased to have had a girls school named after him, but he sneezed and missed it entirely. By the time God said, “I bless you,” it had merged with the boys at Dowling.

My mother related this story to me when I was young, and it sat unchallenged in some recess of my mind for many years. That is until one day when I heard a man describe his 40 year marriage as having only been like five minutes. After a brief pause he simply added, “under water.” It seems he and the nun had a different perspective. Hers had been heavenly, the husband’s something lower. It would appear for him that life was taking forever. Perhaps it was the Devil’s sister he was married to. Either that or he was simply a wise ass, and life was taking forever for her.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he had met her when he was 12, and she was attending an all-girls Catholic school. Perhaps the real lesson of life is to be found there, for it’s the only thing that suggests how we ought to be spending our time, regardless of how fast it moves. We should spend it in pursuit of the dreams we have.

Yes, it’s true: our dreams will never go how we thought they would. They are always going to cost more, pay less, take longer, last shorter than we ever imagined. To pursue a dream is to kill it in a way. But it’s only in pursuing it, it’s only in this killing, that our dreams ever truly live.

Some might think it macabre, this talk of killing a dream, but think of life, think of us, think of those times that we made all the right pursuits only to be left disillusioned when the dream was more expensive, or yielded less, or took longer, or lasted shorter than we thought it should. We took every step except the one that mattered most: letting it be what it is. Instead the dream was traded for the fantasy of what it was supposed to be but wasn’t.

If you are a 12 year old boy, there’s hardly a better dream to have than a cute brunette at an all-girls Catholic school. In fact I would suggest a cute brunette is a damn good dream any old time. It is worth pursuing, and it is worth letting it be what it is.

We tell our kids they should dream, as though that will make them creative, but the fact is it won’t. They could dream the same dream their whole lives, but in order to create something, in order to give it life, they will eventually have to pursue it. Even if in its pursuit life seemingly takes forever, chances are they will love every minute of it. She might too.

If you look to the west halfway between the Bevington and Cumming exits on Interstate 35 south of Des Moines, you will see St Patrick’s Church on the ridge above you.  The area used to be called Irish Settlement.  Someday it will be called West Des Moines.  It’s true it could be called West Cumming or North Bevington, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

On this site stood a Catholic church before there was ever one in Des Moines.  In fact, when Fr. Timothy Mullen made Irish Settlement his base in 1852, the next closest priest was in Ottumwa, giving Mullen, and in effect the Parish, an area the size of the current Des Moines Diocese to cover.

Much of the history of the place is owed to one single account of James Gillaspie, a Civil War Veteran, who wrote his recollections down in an article for the Madison County Historical meeting held on March 19, 1907.  He was 77 years old at the time.  He came to the area in 1856 with his parents at the age of 26.  Whether he had much of a memory or gave much an account, no one knows.  He waited to start talking until he was the last one left, however, and this is astute.

His written account was in the process of being lost, I suppose, when in 1956, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Parish, Fr. John Hart began to put together a more formal history of the place and used Gillaspie’s article as a starting point.  As he branched out to other archives and histories, he found they were celebrating the 100^th a few years too late.  Fr. Hart’s history and, thanks to him, Gillaspie’s are still in circulation today.

In his account Fr. Hart makes no mention of his own name, neither as the account’s author, nor even as the Parish’s current priest.  He’s pays particular attention to the facts, and makes a great effort to demonstrate why those facts are so.  This all serves to make it a good account, but not a very Irish one.  I will retell the story of the founding here, in a more Irish fashion at times, with no malice towards the work of Fr. Hart.

Irish settlers had begun to arrive in the area in the late 1840s.  Hardly any of them were from Ireland directly.  Instead they hailed from New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Canada.  The settlement was hardly planned.  The first people probably stopped because North River and its timber made the area particularly attractive.  The later ones stopped because their children kept asking ‘are we there yet?’, and mom and dad decided they had heard enough of that so they were.

The settlement laid on both sides of the river, which led to them being at odds with one another when they finally took up the task of building a church.  Each wanted it on their side. The south siders were motivated by pride, the north siders were motivated by condescension. It wasn’t uncommon for a home on the south side to have a wagon out back, sitting up on blocks.  The common wagon of the period was a Camaro.  The south siders took pride in this.  The north siders were disgusted.

They reached an agreement which said the church would be built on whatever side of the river started a cemetery first.  The south siders, to their credit, were patient to wait.  The north siders looked for volunteers but couldn’t find any.

Anyhow the story goes that early in 1852, a government surveyor was returning from farther west.  He was ill and stopped at the house of Patrick Walsh, who lived on the south side.   Not long after stopping he died, and Mr. Walsh and a few of his neighbors set out to find a suitable place on their side of the river to bury him.

In their efforts they dallied, the exact cause of this is unknown.  There are no Walshes in the area any longer, and that fact gives us ample room to speculate.  Generally, just a little room to speculate is more than plenty for the Irish.  Let us speculate together.

After having relieved the former surveyor of the whiskey bottle the men found in his satchel, and having properly lamented the loss of their quite recent, but dear, old bosom friend, they then set out to find the suitable spot previously mentioned.  It was a matter of stumbling mostly.  Most of the whiskey had still been in the bottle when they found it.

(While we are in the process of speculating, then, it would be an interesting aside to note the difference between German and Irish settlement of the state.  Germans had it all planned out beforehand.  They saw the ridge, placed the town on the ridge, and placed the buildings in the town before there was a building or settler even there.  The Irish sense of planning was considerably more immediate.

At Irish Settlement the number of Catholic families dwarfed the number to be found in Des Moines.  Mullen found only 8 on his first visit to the town, but they were 8 German families, and they went on to help produce a state capital.  The Irish were sprawled out all over the country side, never once thought of building a town, and still haven’t today.  Had it not been for figuring out what to do with our late surveyor, they might not have ever got around to building a church.)

The one thing the Irish could do, however, was spread a story, and the death of the surveyor was a hot topic.  So hot, that enough on the north side found out about it in time to organize, cross the river, and relieve Walsh of the surveyor while his party was still out stumbling through the countryside.  They brought him back and buried him on the first ridge they came to.  The debate ended, and a church of logs was built there that summer.  This last paragraph is not speculation, it’s part of an oral history that was first written down by none other than Gillaspie himself.

The log church they built stood in the middle of what is today the cemetery at St. Patrick’s.  As was their custom, the Irish tended to bury their dead right outside the door.  Probably because the pallbearers got tired of other pallbearers asking, ‘are we there yet?’

The early graves were marked with plain wooden crosses and with no good accounting.  A few years later an effort was to be made to better identify the grave sites.  The night before this was to begin a fire swept through the cemetery, and the markers were lost.

Many thought they would be able to locate the graves of their loved ones, but found the blackened landscape held little resemblance to that which had existed prior.  Only some of the most recent graves were found, and today the earliest marked grave in the cemetery bears the date of 1857.

So it came to pass the oldest grave, which was of one who found and founded, now lies lost.

In 1868 Fr. Brazill decided the parish was in need of a new, larger church, and began construction on the one which still stands today.  Evidently unimpressed with the Irish craftsmanship on display in the log church, he hired carpenters out of Des Moines to build it.  They were going to use milled lumber in its construction at which the locals scoffed.  They maintained logs were the only proper way to build anything, and that milled lumber was a fad.  During construction, with the new walls in place, a storm came up and knocked them flat.  I feel bad for the carpenters, for it’s a dangerous thing to have the Irish proven right on anything.  It only encourages them.  I’m sure from that point forward the locals’ advice moved way past the realms of construction, and broadened in scope to the point where even philosophy was breathless.

Still the carpenters continued on, and St. Patrick’s has seen a lot of storms since.  Evidently, they were German.