True North

Take I-380 north to Cedar Rapids. Take Exit 28. Turn north at the four-way stop towards Alburnett. Take the last right and there'll be some signs saying AG Expo. Follow those signs. So said Larry Jons, the farmer from Central City, Iowa, whom I was trying to locate with GPS-like ability...not.

I bet those directions sound comprehesive to some people. Unfortunately, they weren't sufficient for me. For one thing, I discovered that there needed to be supplementary directions before the four-way stop. Also, I have no idea where north is. I mean, where I come from, people would say, "Turn right at the gas station, take a left at the sign post that says 'Best Satay Outside of Kajang' and stop when you see the blue-and-white house at the top of the hill."

I tried to figure out where north was by looking at the 2 p.m. sun and realized, after trying all three other ways at the four-way stop, that roads that say they're going north don't necessarily do that, especially just off of Exit 28s.

So, after squandering almost 1/4-tank of gas and being half an hour late, I find myself sitting in front of the Alburnett Veterinary Practice. Flies buzzed into the car from the window I'd rolled down. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for my escort in his electric-blue minivan to come get me.

I open a copy of "Lost in America" by Bill Bryson, as intrigued farms-people drive by in their machines. They look at me, sitting in my rusted-through 1989 Toyota Corolla, the only Asian I could see for miles around, and I look back at them, driving by in a green and black tractor towing some funny thing I can only guess is a hopper.

Bryson is/was? an Iowan who gave up America for England, only to come back years later after his father died, trying to relive the journeys he took with his dad. His words leapt out of the page at me--not the least because I'm trying to swat an errant fly with the book.

"Directions are very important to [Midwesterners]. They have an innate need to be oriented, even in their anecdotes."....

"This geographical obsession probably has something to do with the absence of landmarks throughout Middle America. I had forgotten just how flat and empty it is. Stand on two phone books almost anywhere in Iowa and you get a view. From where I was now I could look out on a sweep of landscape about the size of Belgium, but there was nothing on it except for a few widely separated farms, some scattered stands of trees and two water towers, brilliant silver glints signifying distant, unseen towns."

The prose paints all Midwesterners the same shade of grey but it was creepy how accurate some of this was. And I was darn sure I was lost until I saw the big water tower with the name Alburnett on it.

When Larry finally escorted me to the site of the AG Expo, I knew that even the US Geographical Information Service wouldn't have gotten me there. First off, I had to find this dirt track between farms, and turn down a mowed down strip of grass between grain silos. And I had to drive beyond that, flanked by rows of soybean on my left and corn on my right. My destination was a white tent at the end of that grass catwalk.

In case you're wondering, I'm writing a series of stories of Iowa for my master's project. But I'm writing things here that I wouldn't write there.

One of those things is how farmers are insanely comfortable with their self-image. I was in the middle of an interview with Larry, tape recorder running, notebook in hand, when a farmer walked up to where he and I were seated, and said very simply, "I think I have to go home and change. Split one of these this morning," he said, looking down at his pants.

"S'right," said Jons, "I did that this morning," as a ragged seam flapped in the breeze. I wish I could walk around with a gaping seam like that. Instead, I sat there, ensconced in my sports shades, Skecher sneakers and Adidast t-shirt, unsure of how to react.

That day, I learned more about BT corn--a genetically modified breed of corn, how an "event" in bioscience crops does not refer to harvesting or the hoe-down dance after, but to a modification in a plant's genes. I learned that farmers weren't all that I thought they were. I had images of farmers only fertilizing with what their barnyard animals (John David Sutter--oink, oink!) left behind and that they spent their entire days toiling in the fields.

What I learned was that 280 acres wasn't as big a swarth of land as I thought it was if you have farm machinery. And even though that's the size of Larry's farm, he only spent 2 months of year being a farmer. The rest was spent being a spokesperson for bioscience crops and promoting it all over the world (the guy has met Castro!).

As I crunched my way back to the car, rumbled out of the test field, and looked at the dust storm my car was kicking up behind me, I wondered, how on earth did I get here? And, I still don't know where north is.