I feel like after the wrap up of this season's The Bachelor, we may have gotten a bit of a bad rap. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of wide, open space, that fills slowly with growing crops. You can enjoy the aroma of money in spring while passing by fields freshly sprayed with manure. You will also frequently pass by a large steel building located in the middle of nowhere, and wonder what the stench wafting in your windows is. (For the non-Iowan, that's called a hog confinement.)
Contrary to what you may have viewed on the whoring yourself out for money show, Iowan's DO know how to form a complete sentence. There are also some of us who can sing. We even find things to do other than go to bars for pizza, and visit Post Offices. Not every major event in our lives takes place in a barn.
That being said, I feel I must admit to a few small things about living in rural Iowa.
During Lent, the aroma of dirty grease fryers fills the air. Every bar and tavern within three miles of a cornfield is frying up fish that will lube up your intestines better than a box of Ex Lax. If you should happen to live next to one of these grease pits (as I do), the warm spring day will seem like a curse as you open a window and realize your entire house now smells like a vat of rancid lard. You will also race home after work, hoping against all hope that the endless constipated people needing to take a shit after eating grease soaked fish have not parked in your yard. You will then remember the piles of mud that have appeared after a quick thaw of snow, and keep your fingers crossed it will work as a moat and keep people from parking near your home. However, that does not solve the problem of the people parking at the mud free curb in front of your house, where you will spend the following morning picking up beer cans left behind by tee totalling fish revelers. Typically, it's a Busch Light can, occasionally, a to go cup with the remnants of liquor, and every once in a while, a dirty diaper. Just because they are Catholic does not mean they aren't swine.
Holidays such as St. Patrick's Day are celebrated with a parade. But what that really means is we will put on a parade to make it look like we're keeping a holiday family friendly, but once the sun goes down, that parade is forgotten and it's bar time. If you have no wish to dance on a table or throw up in a dirty bathroom, it's just common knowledge that you don't enter that particular town on St. Patrick's Day. But hey, there's a parade.
When the weather begins to warm (and here in Iowa, that means anything above 45 degrees), it's time to get out the motorcycle. And put your small child on the back. Without a helmet. You also open all your car windows and turn the cassette player up really really loud. Usually playing Iron Maiden. Because the entire downtown wants to hear it through your home stereo-turned-subwoofer in your trunk. Which usually means muffled music heard through trunk rattling.
When warm weather arrives, people start complaining about it being cold. While wearing no jackets. They are the same people who whined through the entire winter. Because living in Iowa your entire life does not prepare you for the normal winter weather we have every year, apparently. These same people will complain, once again, when summer arrives, but will instantly move on to saying it's too hot. While wearing their jackets.
As a rural Iowan, you can also peruse the pages of your local shopper for jobs, things for sale, and entertainment in the area. Basically, a paper of nothing but advertisements and announcements. Along with finding out where all your greasy fish is being cooked, you can decide whether or not you want to attend the male strip show at the county fairgrounds, or better yet, the 1st annual Testicle Festival. Don't ask me what is actually happening at a Testicle Festival, but being from rural Iowa, I can guarantee it includes the deep frying of some sort of animal balls. Typically, the standard fried nut comes from a pig, but hey, it's a festival, so who knows what kind of testicle buffet they will have going on. Perhaps they will even have games and a testicle parade for the kiddos.
That being said, rural Iowa IS a fantastic place to live. Once you get used to the various aromas of the land, you can send your kids off to play in the local creek all day, build a huge bonfire in your yard, engage in a little target practice in a field, and shoot off fireworks without worrying about a trip to jail. Even when you tend to keep to yourself as I do, there is a sense of community and coming together when emergency or tragedy strikes.
You just have to acquire a "taste" for it. Remember, though there may be the aroma of pig shit, the frying of pig nuts, there's also an endless supply of bacon. And that's enough right there.
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