December - the days are short and the nights are long and dark. It's time for a break and a few days in New Mexico. Besides, I need to check on my adobe in romantic old Mesilla.
It's a typical not-so-nice cloudy winter day as I head west to Dubuque and across the Mississippi River. As I head southwest on U.S. 151 in Iowa, there appears to be less snow cover than in Wisconsin. The sun soon appears in the blue sky.
West of Anamosa, I take Iowa Route 1 through the small, scenic college town of Mt. Vernon. Then it's a few miles to I-80 and Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Another 100-mile stretch and I reach Des Moines where I take I-35 south.
Across the Iowa border a few miles into Missouri, I reach Bethany. I briefly leave I-35 to take my ritual drive around Bethany's dismal Courthouse Square, seat of Harrison County. Nothing has changed since my last tour around that depressing courthouse square. I do it mainly to remind myself of the contrast and relative vitality of our own Green County Courthouse Square.
I'm sure that before construction of I-35, downtown Bethany was the center of commercial activity. But now, aside from a couple of law offices convenient to the courthouse, there are only a few struggling businesses. Chief, and only, advantage of that location would be low rents.
There are still thriving businesses in Bethany but they are adjacent to I-35, and any significant profits would be going to corporate headquarters - not located in Bethany, of course.
That ritual completed, I resume my way south to Kansas City. It is past rush hour, so I easily get through it. Then it's the 100-mile stretch to Emporia, Kansas, home of the famous small town journalist, William Allen White. I catch a motel for the night.
Next morning I roll through Emporia, with a brief stop for breakfast. Then it's to U.S. 50, and a few miles down to Kansas Route 150, and west across the northern edge of the Flint Hills. The grass in that lush ranching area is now a brownish auburn color. There are usually herds of beef grazing there, even in winter. But today I don't see any.
The temperature is right around freezing, but no snow on the ground. A stiff wind is blowing from the north. Farther west, the sun breaks through. Once past the Flint Hills, the land is flat and this time of year the prairie is rather colorless except for the emerging winter wheat turning those fields a lush green.
I reach the prosperous looking town of McPherson. Along the main street in the middle of town, I spot a favorite coffee shop and stop for a break. It is a spacious room with books and gifts along with a display of pastries. It's mid-morning and the place is packed with people, mostly older, and mostly, but not exclusively, women. I can't explain why, but it looks to be a thoughtful bunch. It occurs to me that if there are any Democrats in this blood red state outside of the college town of Lawrence, they just might be here in McPherson's coffee shop.
I check the interesting looking pastries in that display case, including pumpkin pie and something that looks like quiche. Wasn't there a book some decades back entitled "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" or something to that effect?
It seems that according to tradition, only women eat quiche. But probably not hard-nosed genuine Republican women. Can you imagine Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter eating quiche? Or Donald Trump's princess and media darling, Kellyanne Conway? At least not in public anyway. That would be as damaging to her image is being caught with a bunch of liberals at a brie and Chablis cocktail party.
Forget my 3 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Heck, I never fit the tough guy image anyway. And I'm not a Republican.
So I order quiche.
I take some coffee to a table by a window as the waitress warms up a slice of quiche for me. I watch the Christmas shoppers stroll by. The street is crowded enough that I even had to park a block away, unusual for this town.
I pick up my phone and check the stock markets - I am an economist, after all. Markets are flirting with all-time highs, giving the media morons something about which to reveal their ignorance. It's the "Trump phenomenon," they bray into the wind. Renewed confidence in the economy, they echo - tax cuts for the wealthy and elimination of regulations, including those for the Wall Street bankers whose chicanery got us into the Great Bush Recession. Sure, just what we need, more supply-side economic snake oil.
Never mind that Barack Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And the S&P added a couple thousand points under the reign of Obama. According to the media nitwits, it's Trump and those last dozen or so points that deserve all the credit for record stock markets.
You don't have to be a Trumpite to hold the mainstream media in utter contempt.
I finish my coffee and quiche. As I pay the waitress I can't resist commenting, "Even in this blood red state, there must be a couple of Democrats here this morning."
With a wink and a bright smile, she replies "Yes, I'll bet there are."
Whaddaya know. Even in Kansas.
- John Waelti of Monroe can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
It's a typical not-so-nice cloudy winter day as I head west to Dubuque and across the Mississippi River. As I head southwest on U.S. 151 in Iowa, there appears to be less snow cover than in Wisconsin. The sun soon appears in the blue sky.
West of Anamosa, I take Iowa Route 1 through the small, scenic college town of Mt. Vernon. Then it's a few miles to I-80 and Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Another 100-mile stretch and I reach Des Moines where I take I-35 south.
Across the Iowa border a few miles into Missouri, I reach Bethany. I briefly leave I-35 to take my ritual drive around Bethany's dismal Courthouse Square, seat of Harrison County. Nothing has changed since my last tour around that depressing courthouse square. I do it mainly to remind myself of the contrast and relative vitality of our own Green County Courthouse Square.
I'm sure that before construction of I-35, downtown Bethany was the center of commercial activity. But now, aside from a couple of law offices convenient to the courthouse, there are only a few struggling businesses. Chief, and only, advantage of that location would be low rents.
There are still thriving businesses in Bethany but they are adjacent to I-35, and any significant profits would be going to corporate headquarters - not located in Bethany, of course.
That ritual completed, I resume my way south to Kansas City. It is past rush hour, so I easily get through it. Then it's the 100-mile stretch to Emporia, Kansas, home of the famous small town journalist, William Allen White. I catch a motel for the night.
Next morning I roll through Emporia, with a brief stop for breakfast. Then it's to U.S. 50, and a few miles down to Kansas Route 150, and west across the northern edge of the Flint Hills. The grass in that lush ranching area is now a brownish auburn color. There are usually herds of beef grazing there, even in winter. But today I don't see any.
The temperature is right around freezing, but no snow on the ground. A stiff wind is blowing from the north. Farther west, the sun breaks through. Once past the Flint Hills, the land is flat and this time of year the prairie is rather colorless except for the emerging winter wheat turning those fields a lush green.
I reach the prosperous looking town of McPherson. Along the main street in the middle of town, I spot a favorite coffee shop and stop for a break. It is a spacious room with books and gifts along with a display of pastries. It's mid-morning and the place is packed with people, mostly older, and mostly, but not exclusively, women. I can't explain why, but it looks to be a thoughtful bunch. It occurs to me that if there are any Democrats in this blood red state outside of the college town of Lawrence, they just might be here in McPherson's coffee shop.
I check the interesting looking pastries in that display case, including pumpkin pie and something that looks like quiche. Wasn't there a book some decades back entitled "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" or something to that effect?
It seems that according to tradition, only women eat quiche. But probably not hard-nosed genuine Republican women. Can you imagine Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter eating quiche? Or Donald Trump's princess and media darling, Kellyanne Conway? At least not in public anyway. That would be as damaging to her image is being caught with a bunch of liberals at a brie and Chablis cocktail party.
Forget my 3 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Heck, I never fit the tough guy image anyway. And I'm not a Republican.
So I order quiche.
I take some coffee to a table by a window as the waitress warms up a slice of quiche for me. I watch the Christmas shoppers stroll by. The street is crowded enough that I even had to park a block away, unusual for this town.
I pick up my phone and check the stock markets - I am an economist, after all. Markets are flirting with all-time highs, giving the media morons something about which to reveal their ignorance. It's the "Trump phenomenon," they bray into the wind. Renewed confidence in the economy, they echo - tax cuts for the wealthy and elimination of regulations, including those for the Wall Street bankers whose chicanery got us into the Great Bush Recession. Sure, just what we need, more supply-side economic snake oil.
Never mind that Barack Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And the S&P added a couple thousand points under the reign of Obama. According to the media nitwits, it's Trump and those last dozen or so points that deserve all the credit for record stock markets.
You don't have to be a Trumpite to hold the mainstream media in utter contempt.
I finish my coffee and quiche. As I pay the waitress I can't resist commenting, "Even in this blood red state, there must be a couple of Democrats here this morning."
With a wink and a bright smile, she replies "Yes, I'll bet there are."
Whaddaya know. Even in Kansas.
- John Waelti of Monroe can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
