ALBERT LEA, MN and IOWA THOUGHTS

June 25
We stayed overnight at a KOA in Albert Lea, Minnesota, my birthplace. My parents drove up and gave us a tour of the town, pointing out all the houses I lived in until we moved to Southern California when I was 5. We stopped at the lot where once stood the one-room house where my Mom grew up with her two sisters and their mom, during the depression. The house was really a shack, with no running water, no electricity and no heat except the coal burning stove. The lot is next to the railroad tracks, so the girls would pick up coal that fell off the trains. Hobos routinely knocked on the door asking for food, which my grandmother would provide. --Tom

So Iowa, as we have all heard, has corn. Lots of corn. Also soybeans. Also cows. All of this is on lots of farms, very tidy, with red barns, kitchen gardens, silos, white fences. Wide open spaces punctuated by low rolling hills. Green everywhere this time of year and much activity with hay mowing, moving cows around and other farm stuff I have no comprehension of.