The Winter That (So Far) Wasn’t

I’ve been saving a particular topic for a while now. It’s something that is definitely cool in northeast Iowa. Downright frozen, in fact. I’m referring to the Iowa winters, which hold the record as the coldest winters I’ve ever gone through, and I’ve gone through northern Michigan winters. For those of you not accustomed to northern Michigan winters, you learn to get used to having three to four inches of snow dumped on you during the average snowfall, and temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit are pretty much a way of life until about April. I thought I knew all about cold and blowing and feeling as though you were lost in the Antarctic.

Then came Iowa, and Minnesota for that matter. Both places manage to get just as cold as northern Michigan, but northern Michigan has trees. You don’t know just how important trees are until you’re in a place where trees aren’t vast forests that spring up around you, but little clumps that occasionally appear on the horizon. Trees are the best windbreakers ever, and it’s only when you’re in an area with no trees do you realize how nice that is. Out here, windchill is a thing to be feared. I used to laugh when I would get email notices at my job telling us that schools were closed due to windchill, and then I tried walking from my apartment to the Cresco Fitness Center in the winter. I won’t say the decision almost killed me, but by the time I arrived at the gym I was praying that the weather would warm up at least a degree or two, or that the wind would stop blowing for five minutes. Admittedly, during the walk back the wind did stop blowing for a second or two, before starting right back up again. You may not believe me when I say the wind was consciously taunting me, and if you don’t you have never lived in Iowa.

Windchill takes a day which is only normally damned cold and turns it into weather you more commonly found in the Antarctic. It’s actually hazardous to go out when the windchill drops the temperature below -30, and after you’ve spent, say, five minutes having below freezing air cut through your lined pants as though they didn’t exist, you’ll develop an appreciation for the Great Indoors.

By itself the windchill would be bad enough, but then there are the blizzards. Northeastern Iowa attracts blizzards like cigarettes attract welfare queens, and once a blizzard comes through, all you can do is stay indoors. Granted, I say this as someone who has gone out during blizzards twice, and both times I’ve been confronted by snowdrifts that close off all but the middle of the road, miles of sheer ice and whiteout conditions that limit visibility to maybe ten feet in front of you if you are lucky. An Iowa blizzard can force pretty much all businesses to close for the day, and that includes fast food restaurants and gas stations.

So this winter, I was ready. I was going to document all the Iowa winter in its snow-filled, ice-coated business-closing glory. I was going to talk about the awful majesty nature can sometimes call forth, and how it makes me feel just a little less safe than I usually do, as though I’m at the mercy of what may be a capricious, random climate. I’m telling you all this information so that when I say that for the past month the weather has been absolutely beautiful you can get the full force of the irony. Most of the time, the weather has been in the 40s, which is positively balmy compared to your average winter. There has been some snow on the ground, which left the day after it came, and most people are out and about enjoying this weather.

If you were to ask most people how they feel about this weather, they’ll tell you they are relieved. Most people in Cresco look upon winter the same way Cinderella looked upon her evil stepmother—you have to live with her, but it’s always such a joy when she doesn’t show. On the other hand, people don’t seem to have altered their winter habits any, either. People are still cooped up inside, watching TV, and most people take care not to be outside for longer than they can help it. It’s like they’re on autopilot somehow. They know they don’t have to stay inside this winter, but they still do anyway. I have two theories about this.

The first theory is that everyone knows the weather is supposed to be colder and nastier, but no one really wants to come out and say so. We all know the weather’s doing all it can do to be winter around here, so why not just dress warmly and trundle to and from our cars everyday anyway? It’ll make the weather feel like it’s done its job.

The second theory is that, for all its inconvenience and pain, there are a lot of great things to do when you’re cooped up indoors. You can catch up on DVD and TV watching, for instance, or you can read that book that you’ve just never had the time to pick up. Winter is perhaps the best season for forcing people to relax, and while we could all just go about doing things outdoors and trying to get all the projects on our ever-present to do list done, it’s nice to have a season that forces us to relax for a bit. No one really wants to give that up. So we’ll gladly go to our homes, dressed warmer than we need to, and then kick off our shoes, pull up a chair and just relax. Some people will turn on the TV and watch the game. Others will fire up that new video game. Still others will finally watch that movie they’ve been wanting to for years. Others may also surf the web for a few hours, grateful that for a few weeks they have an excuse for spending so much time on it.

The Caucus Comes to Town

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say Iowa is known for two things. One of them is corn. The other, of course, is the state’s position as first among the presidential caucuses. There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Iowa deserves this position, but currently if a man or woman wants to get elected president, they have to go through Iowa first.

Personally, I’m okay with this. I know many people to consider Iowa a “kingmaker” state, as it were, even though NPR spent almost the entire day explaining why having the first presidential caucus means absolutely nothing and no one should be attaching any sort of significance to this other than to say this is how people feel now. That was either the most ironic or most Zen thing I believe I will ever hear in 2012.

What the political experts don’t seem to realize is that they’re the only ones smart enough not to care  that the Iowa caucuses don’t mean anything. They also don’t realize that this is where it all starts. It’s like the beginning of a race. The debates and the pressing of the political flesh on cable television networks were practice laps, that’s all. It was a chance to get the kinks out of the presidential candidates’ positions and let everyone see whose views were right for them. Now the race begins, and everyone wants to see who pulls ahead of the pack early.

This was why I found myself heading for the northeast Iowa Community College outreach center in Cresco on Tuesday night. I’d driven twelve hours more or less straight the day before, going through hell and blizzard-like conditions to get from Michigan to Iowa, and I kind of wanted to just kick back and relax a bit. Massaging my aching accelerator foot sounded like a good idea, too.

To be fair, the Democratic Caucus was also going on, albeit in a small town about ten miles to the north, but that was kind of boring. We all know who they’re going to elect. I mean, it’s not like Al Sharpton is going to get the surprise nomination. But the Iowa Republican caucus? This was going to be fun, especially given how extreme some of the candidates’ views are. Who would lionize Rick Santorum, for instance? Who was going to get up and speak on behalf of Michele Bachmann? Would anyone speak up on behalf of Mitt Romney?

Before we go on, I want to give a brief overview of how the Iowa Republican Caucus works. First, everyone gathers in a room where they are given the names of the presidential candidates. Each presidential nominee then has someone speak on his or her behalf. Sometimes, these people are specially sent by the nominees. Other times, someone who fervently believes in the nominee stands and delivers a quick speech. I was told by my contact who informed me about these caucuses that some of these speeches could be very moving.

The first thing that struck me about the Iowa Republican Presidential Caucus crowd was that some of them either don’t know how to park, or are simply jerks when it comes to parking. Listen, if you are going to an event that will be popular and there is limited parking, PARK BETWEEN THE LINES. Don’t nudge your car or truck just over the yellow line a bit, and if someone does that, then the person on the other side of the parking space shouldn’t nudge their car just over the yellow line to create a parking space between them that is only suitable for someone whose vehicle is an anorexic snake.

The second thing that struck me is the caucus was a very polite crowd. In the small lecture hall, people were talking and laughing, and while I did see one or two presidential stickers, for the most part it was low key. There weren’t any signs or banners, and at no time did a chant break out for one of the candidates. I hate to make this comparison, but the banality of it all reminded me of the Shirley Jackson story, “The Lottery.” Small town folks were cheerily talking amongst themselves, and in minutes they would make a decision that could potentially affect the direction of the United States. Yet here they were, treating it as though it were an ice cream social. This comforted me. These people may hold different beliefs than I do, but underneath it all they were still people, and at the end of the night it was pretty likely everyone was going to cast their vote and go home friends with everyone else.

The chairman of the Howard County Republican Party started things off. He got in a few digs at Barack Obama, which was to be expected and a lot less harsh than they could have been. He also welcomed everyone to the caucus, saying he was pleased to see such a large turnout. He also told the entirely Caucasian crowd that the Republican Party was a “Big Tent party,” with plenty of room for different beliefs and ideals. I think the irony escaped almost everyone in the room.

After that, he invited any designated representatives of the nominees to come up and speak. No one stood, and I have to admit I wasn’t that surprised. I have no idea how many votes Howard County is worth, but I suspect it’s not a lot. Besides, that meant that whoever got up to speak on behalf of the nominees would actually genuinely want them to be president!

I have to admit, I’ve followed the Republican debates and seen the rise and fall of pretty much every GOP nominee, followed by the same thoroughly predictable news story. From my point of view, I haven’t been impressed with the GOP candidates, and I’m worried that one or two of them might be certifiably insane. Then again, I don’t talk a lot about politics with people whose views are vastly different than mine. So this was not only a chance to see how presidential election politics worked, it was a chance to hear what the other side thought, so to speak.

So how were the speakers? All right. None of them were accomplished public speakers, except for the reverend who stumped for Rick Santorum. They all got to talk for about five minutes as to why they liked the candidate they liked, and all the candidates had someone willing to stand up for them except Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman. I was kind of expecting that Jon Huntsman wouldn’t be supported all that much, but Newt Gingrich not having anyone to support him? I almost wanted to raise my hand and volunteer, which was when it hit me—I could volunteer to speak for Newt Gingrich! I could volunteer to speak for Jon Huntsman! Not that I actually did. As much fun as it would have been to do five minutes of insulting Newt Gingrich, I’m pretty sure I would have gotten lynched. I’m also known to hold liberal views, so even doing a serious five-minute support speech would have drawn suspicion. Still, I could have done it if I had wanted to. That’s what really made me hold my tongue.  Imagine being able to get up and speak to a listening audience about why you feel someone should be elected President of the United States! That kind of power, accessible by anyone, deserves some respect.

During the speeches, I learned one or two interesting things, the most interesting of which was that Rick Santorum had visited the Cresco restaurant Su-Z-Q’s during his tour of the state. Personally, I think that’s a political gaffe that puts the whole Herman Cain adultery scandal to shame. If a man is so lost and lacking in judgment that he visits Su-Z-Q’s when he’s feeling hungry, then I don’t think he can possibly make a good president.

Finally, the speechifying was done, and it was time to vote. As I walked out of the caucus, I thought about what I’d seen. This is what the millions of dollars poured into presidential campaigns come to—a bunch of people sitting down and trying to make up their own minds. Some of them are smart, some of them are stupid, some are rich, some are poor, but all of them get a say and all of them get a vote. A flash of pride surged though me. As I drove home I passed Su-Z-Q’s. I thought I saw Rick Santorum in there, but I couldn’t be sure.

Presidential Candidates and House Fires

So. There wasn’t much to write about this week. In all honesty, this is in large part my fault for not getting out and doing some exploring. However, I journeyed down to Cedar Falls this Saturday, went to Rochester to practice kendo on Sunday, and the one interesting thing that happened, a visit from Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann, happened while I was at work. Seriously, she scheduled her visit from 3:30 to 4:00 pm. Now, I know that Michele Bachmann is a very busy woman. However, I also know that she holds fast to the idea of people who like to work for a living and disdains those who are unemployed or, worse yet, on welfare. Even though I’m not a political consultant, I would like to offer this one piece of advice to Ms. Bachmann—if you schedule a campaign stop after noon and before five, you’re going to get a LOT of people who quite frankly don’t have anything better to do, because most of us are working. Granted, you may also get a few people who run their own business so they can afford to take the time off, but in Cresco? I think you can count those on one hand. Maybe two hands if the Decorah Tea Party regiment came, but I’m reasonably sure most of those people couldn’t get any time off.

Regardless, the event came and went with very little fanfare. I was actually impressed with how little fanfare there was. I had to find out about the visit through the little billboard on the corner of Highway 9 and Main Street, which struck me as a little undignified, since the item right after Michele Bachmann’s visit was a pancake breakfast on Wednesday at the VFW hall. Such is life in the small town.

This afternoon, though, there was a big event in Cresco, and I was an eyewitness to it. I was out taking some photographs, and as I was refilling my car, I saw plumes of smoke erupting from downtown Cresco. They were black, nasty plumes, and I’ve seen them in person before only once—it’s the smoke you see when a building is on fire. I jumped into my car and peeled off, trying to find out what was going on and maybe do something to help. When I parked my car, though, I realized two things—one, there was already a police officer and a lone firefighter on hand, and some good Samaritans were looking over a man who appeared to be in shock. Down a sidestreet that was more of an alley, the kind of street name that you’d think of as being “145 ½ Street.” The first building down, a professional garage, was on fire.

It’s possible you’ve never seen a building that’s on fire before. I have once, and maybe twice, but this time brought home just how hazardous a burning building can be. One of the garage doors was open, and fire encircled the top beam of the garage door. Inside, I could see the walls were on fire, and the borders of a far window I could see through the garage door were on fire. It seemed surreal, as though this were the set of a movie and it couldn’t really hurt anyone.

The sense of unreality was broken as I watched the fire truck pull up, loaded with firemen. They all dismounted with what seemed like no sense of urgency, and then went straight to their tasks, which was when I realized that they were urgent about what they were doing, they just weren’t hurrying the way you see firefighters on television or in the movies. Real life firefighters all have a job that needs doing before they can start extinguishing the fire, and they all mean to do their jobs right the first time. This means being thorough, and if you’re dashing around, letting your sense of urgency guide you, you might miss something that will make your teammate’s job very hard.

Even without the Hollywood hustle, the firefighters had their hoses blasting the garage with water in a touch less than a minute. I wasn’t exactly measuring their time with a stopwatch at this point, but I was impressed with how quickly the process seemed to flow.

Maybe thirty seconds after the firetruck had arrived an Ambulance did, complete with an EMT who, again, did not dash over to the man sitting down across the street, but walked fast and with great purpose. I don’t know who the man was, although I suspect he was the owner of the garage. I watched as the EMT gave the man some oxygen and tried to get a response from him, although he was having no luck at first. It seemed like the man was either in a state of shock or had simply shut down in a horrible organic version of Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death. I could sympathize.

The thing about accidents is that the bystanders and people who read about it in the news simply assume that, unless permanent bodily harm was suffered, the person will be able to get back on with his or her life, and that’s simply not the case. If the man was smart and had fire insurance, he’ll probably have to go through a labyrinth of paperwork and some investigation courtesy of the insurance company, who will want to make sure it is not being defrauded and doesn’t have to pay out the money unless it absolutely has to. While this is a good business practice, the wait can be excruciating. Not to mention his premiums are almost guaranteed to go up from now on, and if the man is a small business owner, his main source of revenue has just been obliterated. I hope that man has friends, I really do. I hope that the people who know him can see fit to all find a spare ten dollars or so and help him out. I have no idea who the man is, and I’m heading home in two days instead of tracking him down and trying to offer some assistance. I don’t know what that says about me as a human being.

I’ll end this entry by saying it’s been a pretty interesting ride. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely, and I hope my readers have too. I’ll be taking a week or so off while I go visit my family in northern Michigan, so don’t expect any entries until early January, 2012.

Happy Holidays!

Winter in Cresco

One of the big things about living in northeast Iowa, and I think I have mentioned this before, is that the winters can be brutally cold. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “brutally cold,” I am talking temperatures that regularly fall past ten below zero, measured in Fahrenheit. Add in some windchill unimpeded by trees, and you have temperatures comparable to what you might find in Antarctica.

At this point, some snow has fallen, but it’s not the kind of snowfall that really signifies winter is here. It’s more the accumulation of one or two light snowfalls, coupled with the kind of ice that a few alternating temperatures above and below the freezing point can produce. It’s unusual, because by the time the middle of December starts coming up, at least one blizzard, with white-out conditions and enough snow to literally shut down the town has arrived. It’s an adventure when this happens, but it’s not exactly something to look forward to. I’ve ventured out in two blizzards so far, once because I had to get to work and once because I severely underestimated the strength of the snowstorm, and both times have been two driving experiences I am not anxious to repeat. As much as I’d like to regale you with double-fisted stories of what driving in a blizzard is like, there’s not much to tell. Mostly you drive along at speeds under 25 mph, and sometimes even that can feel much too fast when the snow reduces visibility to maybe five feet in front of you. You grip the steering wheel until the blood drains from your fingers, and you feel your car slide along the highway as you fight to keep it in your lane.

On the other hand, if you are a farmer, this why you probably have at least two vehicles that are equally at home plowing through the snow or being used as a mobile base of operations in Afghanistan. It’s easy to tell who the farmers are in Iowa because of their utter nonchalance in winter weather. Worrying about the roads is for people who have vehicles that need to travel on them. I think the only kind of weather that might stop a farmer is a hurricane, and I have to be honest, I can’t really see a farmer worrying that a tornado will pick up one of those monster tractors and move it any appreciable distance. In fact, I can see farmers making safety plans if a tornado does approach. “Get into the tractor!” they’d say, and then practice drills for which child works the accelerator and the brake.

One of the nice parts about winter in Cresco is that the Catholic church has started playing Christmas Carols. It sounds like they are being played on a carillion, and while I suspect that’s probably not true, they’re definitely being played live. It’s one of the all-time greatest things about living where I live. There’s nothing like listening to Christmas carols echoing throughout the town at night. It makes everything seem very, very peaceful.

Now that the crops have been harvested, the deer are a lot more visible. For you hunters reading this, apparently the state of Iowa frowns on the use of high-powered rifles in northeastern Iowa. The firearm of choice is shotgun slugs, which seems to be missing the point to me. After all, you’re hunting for meat, and I would think a shotgun slug would damage quite a bit more of it. Then again, I can see why Iowa doesn’t approve of hunting with a high-powered rifle and scope when you can see a deer coming literally over the horizon. I’ve never hunted with shotgun slugs, but those who I’ve talked with say that it’s like throwing a baseball—you have to take into account the drop in height the further away your target is. Depth perception is a crucial skill when hunting in Iowa.

So that’s winter in Cresco, at least initially. I’ll be honest, I was hoping to have a nice blizzard to talk about, and perhaps get some shots of people wading through the sidewalks up to their knees. On the other hand, if you think for one second I’m going to bemoan the fact that six inches of snow hasn’t made moving outdoors all but impossible, you’re crazy.

Smoke Houses and Head Cheese

 

If you were to ask me what perks I get for working at my job, I would be able to answer that sentence in two words: free turkey. That’s right, every year around Thanksgiving, all the employees at my workplace get a free turkey. I have no idea how this tradition got started.

I usually take this turkey to my family for Thanksgiving, where we cook eat, eat it, and have turkey sandwiches for the next couple days afterward. This year, though, was a little different. For some reason and through no fault of my own, I had an unexpected attack of common sense where I realized I didn’t have to drive thirteen some-odd hours back to Michigan if I didn’t have to. This resulted in the purchase of one plane ticket, which meant that for the first time in a while, I had to pay attention to what I packed when I came home. I could have still probably gotten the turkey on board in my luggage, but this would have meant hauling with me around the airports, hoping that the ice wouldn’t get on my pajamas. There was also the very real possibility that it might attract the attention of the TSA, and then I would have to explain why I was trying to get a turkey on board a flight to Michigan, and in the process of doing so find myself shipped off to Guantanamo Bay for questioning and reeducation.

This is why I didn’t protest much when my Dad called the day before Thanksgiving and said he had already gotten a turkey that was thawing as we spoke. Still, it left me with a problem—what does one do with a frozen turkey? Cooking the bird was an option, but it would have required a lot of time and effort that would result in leftover turkey sandwiches for the next year. I could also have kept it frozen until Christmas, and simply tried to work around the turkey as it lay in my freezer, edging out the frozen veggies. That was just too inconvenient.

Then I heard about the smokehouse. Several co-workers go hunting, and quite a few took their deer to the smoke house, which is also a butcher and all-around meat processor. For about $30, these guys would turn your deer into steaks, hamburgers, jerky, smoked sausage and pretty much anything you can think of having to do with meat. That was when I started thinking of what smoked turkey would taste like, and about five seconds after that I was on the phone with the Poleshek Meat Locker.

Poleshek’s is located in Protivin, which is another very small town like Spillville. According to the Wikipedia article, 317 people live there. Judging from my drive through Protivin to get to the meat locker, this is about enough for one main street and about two side roads on each side. I have to be honest, I’m not sure what people in these towns do with themselves. I find Cresco a bit stifling on the weekends, and it has 5,000 people. So a town that has only 300 people kind of blows my mind. The only towns I’ve seen crazier than that was when my family vacationed out west. Sometimes, as we were driving through the desert, we would see a gas station and party store stuck out in the middle of nowhere, as though it had been dropped there by a child. Next to it there would be a small house. If the town was considered big, it might have a dirt side road that extended maybe 100 yards, with two sparse houses built on either side of the road. The population couldn’t have been double digits, and as we drove on I found myself wondering what these people DID out there. It didn’t seem like they were farmers, and even if they were I wondered how I would react to having to face the same two families every single day as long as I was in that town. I come from a small town myself, and one of the driving forces in me wanting to be in a city was so that there would be a lot more people to meet, and just as importantly I could get away from people when I didn’t get along with them. People in Protivin don’t seem to have that problem, though, which is probably just as well.

The main point here is that Poleshek’s is located on Main Street, and as soon as I walked in I could not for the life of me understand why the place is not packed each and every day. Admittedly, the décor isn’t great—think warehouse meets mobile home meets temporary office kind of atmosphere—but up front they do have at least six walk-in coolers and one butcher display counter, which contain all the items they have for sale. I can’t list everything, but what I can tell you is that their selection would make several upscale New York delis, not to mention countless supermarket chains, green with envy. I wish the store wasn’t a good twenty minutes away, because I think it would be an excellent place to pick up steaks. As it was, after I deposited my turkey with the owners, I bought some smoked cheddar and halapeno jack cheese, and sampled a couple of the meats they had out for tasting.

The first, some venison snack meat, was absolutely wonderful. The second meat was head cheese. For those of you unaware of what head cheese is, it is essentially a jelly-like substance that holds in place meat from the head of a cow or pig. This usually, and I stress usually, doesn’t include the brain, eyes or ears, although I’d heard that brains were common. Regardless, I’d heard things about head cheese, and that as a meat it was in the same category as beef tongue and tripe. Still, I was feeling adventurous, and when would I get another chance to try out some head cheese?

So I tried it. I would like to say that I am glad I tried it, but I sincerely think that anyone who eats head cheese any time more than once is clinically insane. This is NOT a good-tasting meat. If you take the worst tasting components of dill pickle juice, vinegar and onions, you have a pretty good idea of how head cheese tastes. I sincerely think this meat should be donated to the Catholic church and doled out as penance. I think if Bernie Madoff is truly sorry for his crimes, then he should eat a slice of head cheese for every meal, although I think that might be considered cruel and unusual punishment, if not a violation of the Geneva Convention. If you happen to like head cheese, I would urge you to get to the nearest psychiatrist as soon as possible. If you actually like the flavor of head cheese, there might be other delusions from which you are suffering.

Still, I was very impressed with Poleshek’s. I’ll be getting the turkey back this weekend, and I’ll let people know how it tastes. If you’re ever in Protivin, come on by. I’m sure they’d love to have you as a customer.