photo by Hal Lum

The Iowa Waltz

Tamara Pavich

One of my favorite songs is “The Iowa Waltz.” It’s a simple tune by a folk singer from Iowa City named Greg Brown. Greg writes little songs—ditties, some people might call them—that repeat themselves in predictable patterns, like the seasons. He strums a twangy guitar, accompanied by the strains of a wavery old fiddle a little off key, reminiscent of a rusty hinge. His music is unadorned by the technology of the sound studio, and when you listen to his records and tapes, you imagine him picking his guitar on somebody’s front porch. You can almost smell the heavy evening scent of cut grass.

Greg Brown is a storyteller and a bluegrass philosopher. His gravelly voice is making conversation and his lyrics make no apologies for their slant rhymes or their failure to rhyme at all. He writes about train whistles, grain elevators, and red-winged blackbirds. He writes about small town cafes, with cups of black coffee lined up on the counter in front of the farmers with blackened fingernails, the seed corn caps all in a row. I don’t know anybody who has captured the essence of Iowa like Greg Brown. I was delighted by his music long before I ever thought of leaving.

I’m a July cornfield, far as you can see.
I’m a July cornfield, far as you can see.
And if you’re real careful, you can walk on top of me.
Out in the country, the gravel road ramble all around.
Out in the country, the gravel road ramble all around.
And the dust blow up ’til the cool rain tumble down.

There was a crooked little railroad that ran from my hometown of Council Bluffs, all the way to the Missouri border. Some historians say it was a part of the Mormon Trail and that Brigham Young was called by God in the little town of Dumphries to lead the Church west to Salt Lake. Others say it was a military supply road named the Fields Trace and dates back to 1819. That it was a railroad for the past hundred years, purchase and sold by one line and then another, is undisputed. From about 1900 to 1950 it was Wabash line and those fifty years constitute the longest period of time that it ever kept its name. It was sold again and again, because, in the words of an engineer who drove it daily, “it was just too dang crooked…you never could get up a good head of steam.”

Many of the tiny towns along the right-of-way have disappeared. Dumphries is gone, and so are Strahan, White Cloud and Coin. The old tracks wound through four counties like a broken bracelet with half its charms missing. Still, it passes the steeples of Mineola, the cafes of Silver City, the old storefronts of Malvern, and the brick streets of Shenandoah. The tiny town of Imogene dangles half a mile to the east. Over ten years ago it was abandoned for the last time by the Iowa Southern.

The weeds grew up through the rails and ties, hunters shot holes in all the mile-marker sign , and the edges of the bridges started to wash out. There followed quite a skirmish between the farmers and the preservationists. Some of the farm families produced ancient documents that stated the land would come back to them, all those little parcels that cut through their farms, if the railroad ever abandoned it. But the nature and history lovers claimed that it was a resource for the people of all four counties, that it was something to be preserved and treasured by everyone.

The naturalists pled the cases of the animal and bird species whose habitat would be destroyed if the right-of-way disappeared into farmland. Fitness lovers like me enthuse over the prospect of a 64-mile linear park for hiking and biking, slicing through woods and fields. And the local Chambers of Commerce climbed on board, rhapsodizing about tourism and full hotels.

In the end, the National Trails Act was invoked and the right-of-way was purchased by the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. My family and I joined a group of about a hundred citizens who pledged to maintain it, raise funds to develop it, and promote its use. It took most of ten years. We got creative with our fundraising, featuring Haunted Hayrack Rides every October, old-fashioned radio shows at KMA in Shenandoah, and dozens of bicycling events. I wrote brochures and produced a promotional videotape featuring “The Iowa Waltz” as background music. The old rails and tie were pulled out and a smooth limestone chip surface was spread over the entire 64 miles. Volunteers drove thousands of sixteen-penny nails until all of the 70 bridges were equipped with side rails and decked with donated lumber. I’d bet that my brother worked on half of those bridges. Our family name appears on one, between Silver City and Malvern.

Eagle Scouts replaced the mile-marker signs and the Rotary and Kiwanis sponsored wooden benches in the scenic spots. The saddle clubs brought out their chain saws and cleared a narrow bridle path, weaving back and forth across the trail among the trees. We labored over grant proposals to pay for sheltered picnic areas and restrooms along the route. There was resistance at first, a few acts of vandalism, but after a while even the farmers had to tender their respect for the sheer work of it. No livestock were harassed and the trail users picked up more litter than they left. Finally it was unanimous in Southwest Iowa: the Wabash Trace was a good thing for everybody.

One September night, my friend Trudy and I were caught without lights fifteen miles out on the Trace. We had cycled out to Silver City, and just short of our turnaround point, the battery failed. Her bicycle was equipped with such a powerful light that we could both ride by it. But when it went out, we were blind as bats under the heavy canopy of trees.

There was nothing to do but ride on. We slowed way down and listened for each other. Sometimes we could make out the edges of the trail and it was easier to stay on track. But most of the time it was black as pitch and we talked to each other as we pedaled slowly. My eyes strained to make out her form just ahead of me. Low branches caught us in the face and the bumps and dips took us by surprise. We learned to relax our arms and shoulders and roll gently over whatever flowed under our wheels. Like nocturnal creatures, our ears, nostrils, and our very skin began to perceive what our eyes could not.

Our tires made a soughing sound as they rolled over the chippings. A south breeze came up behind us, moving the branches with its breath and causing the dry leaves to whisper like tiny wings. We heard waves of twiggy fingers tossing lightly on either side. Our eyes widened and filled with black. We became our shadows blending into the night, flowing forward under the care of those trees, their limbs softly shooing us on between them.

Before long, we made out a glimmer of white. Far ahead, the moonlight was illuminating the limestone surface of the trail. We focused our eyes on that vague glow and aimed our bars straight for it. We came gliding out from under the trees, out under that big harvest moon. In the huge open space, we were miniatures of ourselves out elongated shadows leaning out across the trail and the ghostly grasses beyond. We laughed and talked until the trees plunged us into blackness again. In and out of the light we pedaled, all the way back to the trailhead park. I have ridden my bicycle in many beautiful places, in other states and faraway countries, and none of it can compare to that Iowa night, those fifteen miles of intermittent darkness.

Greg Brown wrote a song about his grandmother and her summer canning of garden fruits and vegetables. She had magic in her, he said. “She put the sun and the rain in with her beans.”

She cans the pickles, sweet and dill,
And the songs of the whippoorwill,
And the morning dew and the evening moon,
I’ve really got to go down and see her soon,
‘Cause the canned goods that you buy at the store
Ain’t got the summer in ‘em anymore.
You bet Grandma, sure as you’re born
I’ll take some more potatoes and a thunderstorm.
Peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin,
Supper’s ready, everybody come on in,
Taste a little of the summer,
Grandma put it all in jars.

My husband has lived most of his life here in Honolulu, but when he heard that song he remembered his own Hawaiian grandmother, with whom he lived from the age of 12. He was summoned home from UCLA when she died, but he said he couldn’t feel any emotion at her funeral. Later in the summer he opened a cupboard and there were the jars, in rows of purple, red, yellow and green, her canned fruits and chutney. It was then that the loss overtook him.

I know how he felt. Once when I was walking across the Punahou campus, I found myself standing next to a fence covered in vines with trumpet flowers. It was so much like the Morning Glory that covered the picket fence in my Iowa back yard that I literally felt a blow to my chest, a sudden crippling pain. Some mornings upon waking, and before I open my eyes, I believe that my dog is asleep beside the bed. I think I’ll have to be careful to step over her when I get up, as I did for six years of Iowa mornings. One day in Kapiolani Park when they had just mowed the grass, the scent was exactly like the evenings when they’d mowed the weeds along the Wabash Trace. Instead of palm trees and sand, I could see the limestone far ahead, glowing under a heavy yellow moon.

Home in the midst of the corn,
In the middle of the USA
Is where I was born
Is here I’m going to stay.
Iowa, Iowa,
Winter, spring, summer, and fall.
Come and see, come dance with me,
To the beautiful Iowa Waltz.

I go back and forth between Iowa and Hawaii. I do my own Iowa waltz, one step east, two steps west. This new life can be blinding: learning to be a wife, learning to be a haole, living in a condominium, living without seasons. Sometimes I get on a plane an go back. Some days I stay here in our dark living room and wonder, where is home? Where is my path? I can no longer see it under my feet. On those days, I close my yes and try to relax my arms and shoulders. I listen for the rasp of dry leaves an the soughing of branches. I turn on the scratchy voice of Greg Brown. Eventually I come out into the light.