YA’LL COME BACK NOW

When you live 25 miles out in the country, you appreciate anyone who takes the trouble to come visit. We love sharing the beautiful sights out here, but we can’t tempt many visitors to make the drive.

I must confess––there is one kind of guest who is especially fun to entertain. That would be the person who is scared to death of anything that isn’t paved over.

Many people cling to the Atlantic or Pacific rims of our country, afraid to let go and venture to the heartland. When they are in first grade and have to recite the names of all the states, they say, “California, murble, mumble, murble, New York.” My brother-in-law was attending the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and for 3 years his father in L.A. sent his letters to Idaho. Occasionally one of these parochial coastal dwellers does appear in Iowa; they know they’re in some vowel state but not necessarily which one. In their honor, we have shirts here that say, “University of Iowa, Idaho City, Ohio.” 

You don’t have to do much to scare the city folks who do visit. If a coyote howls, we can only hope they aren’t sitting on our newly upholstered couch.

We often have University of Iowa students as house sitters. One sitter locked himself outside in his underwear. It’s not like we have a locksmith down at the next corner, and even if we did, it’s not like a locksmith is going to be tickled about a frantic guy in his underwear running up his driveway. I know I wouldn’t be.  The poor kid had to use a shovel to break through the steel door between the house and garage. That nicely offset what we were paying him to watch our dogs.

My husband invited his seminar students out for an end-of-semester supper and discussion. It was December and the roads weren’t terrific, but everyone arrived on time except for one. He was from New York City, so we were worried about how he was doing on our icy, twisty road. Finally he called on his cell phone. He had been in our driveway for some time, trying to decide whether it was better to freeze to death or be eaten by a wolf. Our dog, who was ¼ wolf and had silvery blue eyes, apparently had her nose pressed against the driver’s side window.

Underwear Guy and Wolf Guy were fun, but surely my most treasured citified guest visited on a beautiful summer night. My son and his rock band were spending the night at our home. One of these fellows had never stepped off the pavement before, and he was very nervous. His eyes kept darting at the window, checking out any movement.

We had a lovely dinner and a relaxing chat afterwards. We’re early-to-bed-and-rise folks, so we said our goodnights and went upstairs. The rockers went out to the screened porch. The worried guy was not too keen on this as it was pitch black out there. He was alarmed by the cicadas singing. When a woodpecker drummed on our roof, he put his hand on his cell phone.

Every so often throughout the evening and into the wee hours I’d hear my son’s friend ask,” What was that?” “What the hell was that?” And when a coyote let out a little yip, “What in the holy hell––?” He was very frightened of our Iowa hyena. He was not embracing our pastoral setting.

Even with our bedroom window closed, we could hear far more of their conversation than we cared to. By 2:00 a.m., the boys had been sampling Iowa’s finest brews for several hours, and they were getting a little raucous.

I like entertaining. I like sleep quite a bit more, so I stuck my head out the second-story window. The screened porch was right below me and a little to the right. I could see the bodies strewn over the porch chairs and hear discussions not rated for parental ears.

You know those Screaming Monkeys? It’s a stretchy, cloth monkey that functions like a slingshot. It can sail surprisingly long distances, and while it soars, it lets out a hateful, blood-curdling screech.

 The trajectory was perfect. It ripped by the screen porch just inches from where our vigilant visitor was sitting. Chairs and tables tipped over, bottles scattered, all four rock stars screamed, and two of them hit the deck. I have never heard so many foul words in such a short time and for such a long time.

So did I sleep after that? Of course not––I couldn’t stop laughing until well after they left the next day. And I’m pretty sure that if they slept at all, it was with one eye open.

For a demo of Screaming Monkeys:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOxHIDAbCIk&feature=related

PIPE DREAMS NIGHTMARES

From our home, the meadow drops down a long, steep hill into the wetlands. Long ago a levee was put in halfway down the hill to dam up a pond. For 25 years it’s been a big, beautiful body of water teeming with fish, water birds, dragonflies, and aquatic plants.

Iowa water levels are anything but static. We had a drought one summer, and the pond became a big puddle. We feared for the animals within. And then came the floods and suddenly we owned the sixth Great Lake. 

The pond is held back by the levee or back wall, and it’s a good sized levee––30 feet across in most places. There even used to be a little road on top of it (for the hunters) but we let it grow wild with trees and bushes. As the pond began to rise last summer, we worried that the levee would break through and our pond would drain. The thought of that insult to the landscape and wetlands and the dying fish and other animals was sickening.

The water continued to rise up the levee, pressing on it. It was now 15 feet deep.There is a built in feature to handle high water levels. About a yard down from the top of the levee is an overflow pipe. It’s a good-sized pipe, about 8 inches across. When the water gets that high, it flows into the pipe, through the levee and down into the wetlands below. We bought the land in 1993, year of the 500-year flood in Iowa. That pipe produced a surprisingly powerful waterfall for weeks on end. The wetlands

grew into a shallow lake.

Last summer, the 500-year flood came again, and the water rose well above the pipe. We were getting constant rain and very poor outflow. It was time to act. I took a few tools and headed to the hill down below our pond to check the far end of the drainage pipe.

Turns out, the pipe was nowhere to be seen. There was just a small trickle of water (I sincerely hoped it was water) bubbling up through the soil. I dug near the trickle, and it increased. Our pipe was buried somewhere in there.

I dug about a foot into the bank. The water was now coming from the left, so I dug in that direction. Soon I had a hole a St. Bernard could hide in.

The shovel finally hit metal. I unearthed the end of the pipe, but the water flow was still puny. Something was plugging up the system.  I could get a long branch to go in about a foot, and then it hit a hard blockage.

Hey––I’m a nurse; who better to undo a blockage? I went back to the house and fetched the long-handled extension pole I use to dust the beams. (see Feb. 6th entry)

To get good leverage, I positioned myself about a yard below the end of the pipe. The end of the pipe was now about at eye level. Behind me, the hill was covered with slippery mud where the water ran down to the swamp. The hill is so steep that it’s difficult to maintain footing even when it’s dry, but I had to straddle that mud river while also straddling the extension pole/ramrod.

I jammed the pole hard against that obstruction. Nothing moved. I whacked at it with all my strength. It did not budge. Periodically I had to grab an overhead branch when I’d start to slip down the hill.

And then, after one more jab, something gave. Just a titch. And ever so slowly, a brown object began to emerge from the pipe. It slid out about a foot, but I still could not identify it. The water flow was improving around it, so my feet were slipping around in moving, watery slop.

All of the above events took about an hour and a half. All of the events below took about 3 seconds.

The brown, hard cylinder turned out to be about a yard long. I found this out when it suddenly shot out of the pipe and ripped right through my legs. It sailed with the full force of a summer’s worth of caged up water behind it, freed at last. After passing underneath me, it hit the hillside, ripped about 50’ down to the wetlands, and disappeared underwater. 3 seconds. No more.

That object was a well-cured muskrat who had attempted to swim through our overflow pipe sometime in the last year and was now a mummified hairy spear. It could have turned me into a human donut had I not leaped up and grabbed the branch above me. After it passed through my legs, I hung on that branch with my feet running in place on the mud slick––much like Wiley Coyote before he gains traction. I hung on for dear life because the waterfall would have carried me swiftly down the hill and into wetlands history.

I don’t know how he manages it, but my husband always meanders home right after the party’s over. He stood on the deck and watched me limp up the hill with my extension pole, my hair, face, and clothing totally breaded in mud. Maybe he didn’t know what I was.

“Fixed the overflow,” I said, gasping. “Muskrat. Dead. Shot under me. Had to hang in the tree.”

“Well, that’s great,” he said. “It’s working, then. Want some tacos?”

For more on making a pond:

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/420/420-011/420-011.html

For more on muskrats:

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Ondatra_zibethicus.html

TOO MANY TROLLS, NOT ENOUGH BRIDGES

When you drive out of our lane, you have two choices. Turn right and go down a long, steep hill to the east or turn left and go down a long, steep hill to the west. Either way, you will need to cross a good-sized creek before you get to a main road. Imagine our surprise when both east and west bridges were designated unsafe and closed for repairs. We did have one option, a small road that goes north and adds 5 miles each way on every trip.

 After a few years of detouring, two neighbors and I paid a visit to the county supervisors. One of the neighbors drives a school bus, and one is a farmer. We wanted a progress report.

We stood before our elected officials––the County Board of Supervisors––and made our 10-minute presentation. The school bus had to take a dangerous detour, and the kids were on the bus far too long. The farmer couldn’t be making a 5-mile trip with a huge combine just to get to his south field. And when I was called out to a hospice patient’s home, I didn’t need extra time tacked onto my trip. “If it were your mother who needed a nurse, would you want to wait longer than necessary?” We were calm and factual as we made our case. Then we sat down.

One supervisor solemnly pointed out we weren’t the only ones who had road problems. He said, “There are dozens of bridges out in our county!” Since this Board is in charge of roads, I wasn’t sure why he was publicizing this fact.

When I raised my hand, they rolled all 6 of their eyes. “Yessssss, maam?”

“Could you explain to me how you decide which bridges to fix first? What criteria do you use to decide? Is it simply the order in which they crumbled and fell? Is it needs based?” Or is it how big your spread is and therefore how much property tax you pay to the Board of Supervisors? There sure weren’t many bridges out in the other corner of the county where the very well-off Amana Colonies are.

I was referred to the road engineer, but he was not present. His assistant was there and said he’d have to find that information for me. He couldn’t rightly give me an estimate on how long that would take. So far it’s been 13 years. He must be very tired of searching. I know my husband’s getting tired of keeping his calls short while I await that call back.

We left the meeting without much hope for our bridges. And yet, that very afternoon I received a phone call that lifted my spirits far higher than a new bridge would have.

There had been a small town reporter at that meeting, and she had accidentally left her tape recorder running after they adjourned. Seems our 3 public servants had had a little tête-à-tête after we left. They had a lively discussion about city people who move to the country and then expect the county to put in super-highways for them.

The reporter asked for my reaction. Since I hadn’t actually heard the taped comments, I said I’d defer until I saw her article and then respond to that.

The phone was hardly cradled before it rang again. It was the county supervisor who had spoken so eloquently off the record. He sounded physically ill. Contrition was dripping out of the phone onto my feet.

Turns out this poor fellow had been striving to develop the county, to bring in people and businesses. Any suggestion that outsiders weren’t welcome wasn’t exactly part of his business platform.

I asked if supervisor man was sorry about what he said or just sorry he got caught. (I didn’t raise 3 kids for nothing.) He apologized profusely and said he had a request for me: would I please tell the reporter not to print her story? Honest, he did.

I asked this gentleman if we had a right to passable roads? He said we sure did.  I asked if that right didn’t start the moment they cashed our first property-tax check, even if we were the only people in the county who weren’t 3 generations deep there. He completely concurred with that, too.

I reminded him we were not requesting a “fancy interstate­­,” just a bridge across an otherwise impassable creek bed. He fully understood. And did we have a right to petition our Board of Supervisors and be treated respectfully? Sure as shootin’ we did. 

“But,” he asked, “wouldn’t we all be happier if you called the paper and asked them not to print that story?”

He should have quit while he was ahead, and it had been a long time since he’d been ahead. “You know,” he said, “I think that reporter must have heard us wrong. We wouldn’t say anything like that. We welcome new people to this county. I think I’ll go back and check our  official tape of the meeting, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Wait right there,” I said, “I’ll come listen with you.”

Pause.

“You know,” he said, “it might take a while to locate that tape. I’d better call you when I find it.”

The reporter wrote her story, I wrote my response, and a crane magically appeared at the bottom of the hill before you could say Up for Re-election.