It’s over a year since I had been down to old Mesilla, New Mexico to visit some friends, check out my adobe and see how my tenants are doing. Besides, after a mild early January, winter looked to become more like we are accustomed in this frozen tundra. Obviously time to leave for a spell.

Longtime pal Tom from St. Paul said he was ready to leave the Minnesota tundra as well, and would meet me in Northwestern Iowa, near where his brother lives. So I toss some gear into my GMC and head west to Dubuque, cross the Mississippi, and continue west on U.S. 20. Temperature is below zero as I Ieave Monroe, climbing to zero at Dubuque. As I head west, snow flurries begin. My phone indicates that it is limited and, sure enough, as I reach Waterloo the snow ends. It is just a cold, drab day. But the roads are dry, making for easy traveling. The snow on the barren fields just barely covers the corn stalks poking through the snow. Iowa, the quintessential farm state that is misrepresented and certainly not understood, especially by east coast elites who write off Iowa and the Midwest as mere flyover country.

Whenever a work of fiction or a movie features a farm boy, he is always from Iowa. It’s as if there are no farm boys from Illinois, Wisconsin or Minnesota. They are always from Iowa. But that’s OK. There are indeed a lot of farm boys from Iowa, but beyond that, Iowa often gets a bad rap. Some folks are incensed that Iowa gets to weigh in early on presidential races. The Badgers battle the Hawkeyes on the football field; however, as a Badger I’m the first to defend our neighbor to the west.

For starters, Iowa knows how to prevent the congressional and legislative gerrymandering that characterizes Wisconsin and much of the rest of the nation. Iowa has no snakelike districts that make no sense other than to allow legislators to choose their constituents rather than vice versa. Politicians jealous of retaining their own power, and Supreme Court justices, insist that it is just too complicated to initiate a system that minimizes or eliminates gerrymandering. Supposedly intelligent people agonize over how it could be done. Such posturing is just plain idiocy. Iowa has successfully done it.

Some folks complain that Iowa is “too old, too white, and too rural” to properly represent the nation for candidates coming out of the gate to run for president. OK, so it is largely white, with a population that’s more rural and older than that of many states. But how is it that an “older, white, rural” population gave a young, urban, African American his big initial push for the presidency? People of Iowa obviously recognized competence when they saw it.

There is nothing wrong, and everything right, with a situation demanding candidates directly face people in local cafes, taverns and across kitchen tables. Citizens of Iowa take their responsibility seriously — let them continue to do it. 

Then there are the no-nothings, like that big-time Washington D.C. pundit — I forget his name — that appeared on one of those Sunday Morning exercises in idiocy, insisting that “Democrats should forget Iowa — it’s hopelessly Republican.” Doesn’t this halfwit posing as an “expert” even read the election reports? Three of the four Iowa congressional districts are represented by Democrats, two seats having flipped from Republican to Democratic in 2016. Sen. Chuck Grassley is an Iowa institution and will doubtlessly be there forever. But Joni Ernst, who replaced retiring liberal Democrat Tom Harkin, is in trouble.

Ernst is the Republican who gained national attention by informing us that as a farm kid, she castrated hogs. I should have thought of that during my run for public office in 2016. But coming from a farm boy it wouldn’t pack the same punch. Anyway, Joni can expect a tough race from whatever Democrat arises to challenge her.

Iowa has a fine public education system, ranging from elementary schools through higher education. The University of Iowa and Iowa State University are both top flight institutions. There is much that is good about Iowa, but it will doubtlessly continue to be tarred by coastal elites and media nitwits with the same brush as the rest of the Midwest.

These thoughts roll around as I continue to roll along U.S. 20. At Fort Dodge, I leave U.S. 20 and take U.S. 169 north to the small town of Algona. The temperature has now risen to the mid-20s. As I continue north, the sky starts to clear. It’s late afternoon and the sun, now low in the sky, casts a reddish glow on the snow and the corn stalks peeping about the snow. 

At Algona I turn west on U.S. 18. The setting sun leaves a reddish glow in the western sky. At Spencer, U.S. 18 turns north for a few miles, then west again. Rats, I missed the turn back to the west. But no matter, for if I keep heading north and west, I’ll eventually get to where I want to go. Sibley, in the northwest corner of Iowa. I take the first major road heading west, then north, to State Route 9. It will take me to the north side of Sibley instead of the south side that I had planned. But that’s no problem. With darkness, the temperature plummets and a strong northwest wind blows snow across the highway. I would sure hate to be stranded in this neck of the woods. 

I reach Sibley, and meet up with Tom at the Sibley Inn. No traffic jams in this neck of the woods. Tomorrow we’ll head south and west and leave this frozen tundra for a few days.

— John Waelti of Monroe can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.