Voices from the Prairie Vol XI No. 3

Voices from the Prairie1

A publication of Humanities Iowa • Volume XI, No.3

voices from the


HI Board of Directors President Neil Nakadate, AmesVice President Fiona Valentine, Sioux CitySecretary Barb O’Hea, PeostaTreasurer Tim Johnson, WashingtonPast President Valentina Fominykh, Des MoinesDirectorsMichael Carey, FarragutJudy Combs, BloomfieldSue Cosner, PanoraThomas Dean, Iowa CityKate Gronstal, Council BluffsJanell Hansen, Elk HornJeff Heland, BurlingtonKen Lyftogt, Cedar FallsMoudy Nabulsi, Fort MadisonDick Ramsay, Spirit LakeSteve Siegel, OttumwaDorothy Simpson-Taylor, Iowa CityRalph Swain, Sioux CityRosemarie Ward, Des Moines

HI Staff Christopher Rossi, Executive DirectorCheryl Walsh, Grants DirectorHolly Hotchkiss, Fiscal/Administrative OfficerMichael Knock, Program Officer/Editor

Mission StatementThe mission of Humanities Iowa is to promote understanding and appreciation of the people, communities, cultures and stories of importance to Iowa and the nation.

Humanities Iowa is a non-profit organization funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

About the Cover In September 1959 the Cold War came to Iowa when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited his friend Roswell Garst at his farm near Coon Rapids. Here, Garst (front left) takes Khrushchev (front right) on a tour of his farm. The photo, which has been cropped to fit, is courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. WHS Image ID 11243.

Voices from the Prairie is published three times a year and distributed to the friends of Humanities Iowa and interested Iowans. To subscribe please contact us:

Humanities Iowa 100 Oakdale CampusN310 OH Iowa City, IA 52242-5000 phone: (319) 335-4153 fax: (319) 335-4154

Her story begins simply enough.

“It was a hot September afternoon in 1965 when I joined other writing students in our Quonset hut classroom at the University of Iowa. This was my second year of graduate work at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and I was torn between anger and anxiety about the new person who’d be teaching our fiction writing section this semester....” That “new person” was Kurt Vonnegut. Over time, his student, Loree Rackstraw, was to become his friend and his correspondent until his death in 2007.

The story of their friendship is the subject of Rackstraw’s new book, Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him. Rackstraw will discuss that book at the 10th Annual Iowa Writers’ Celebration: Voices from the Prairie in October in Clinton. The event is an opportunity for Iowans to meet authors firsthand and to learn something about the writing process.

With Rackstraw, it’s like meeting two writers at once. One critic described her book as giving the reader a “rich and complicated Vonnegut; a man who is at once funny and wounded, serious and playful; a man who, in living by his own adage, ‘We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you different,’ was able to do much more than just fart around.”

Join other Iowans and become a member of Humanities Iowa. We offer a variety of membership levels starting at just $45. Membership is tax-deductible. Humanities Iowa also accepts gifts of stock or securities. To become a member, make a donation or receive more information, please contact our office by phone or via our website: www.humanitiesiowa.org.

ContentsKhrushchev in Iowapage 3

Mary Swanderpage 4

“Where sun & shade, prairie & forest come together” by John T. Pricepage 6

Clinton to host Loree Rackstraw & 2009 Iowa Writers’ Celebration

Author Kurt Vonnegut with his friend and former

student Loree Rackstraw in 1993. Rackstraw will discuss

her new book about Vonnegut at HI’s 10th annual Iowa

Writers’ Celebration: Voices from the Prairie in October.

The event will be held in Clinton. Photo by Leslie Wilson

Volume XI Number 3 3

Liz Garst remembers the day well.

She remembers having the day off from school, and she remembers annoying television reporters by running back and forth in front of their cameras with her cousin. She remembers singing Adlai Stevenson’s campaign song as well as seeing a helicopter for the first time.

And she remembers getting into an argument with her mother.

“It was all about how I would be dressed,” Liz said. “She wanted me to wear white anklet socks and black patent leather shoes with ribbons in my hair. But I was a tomboy, and I wanted to be dressed in cut-off blue jeans.”

Liz’s mother won that argument. After all, it isn’t every day that one of the

two most powerful people in the world comes to your grandfather’s farm for a visit.

On Sept. 23, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev came to Coon Rapids, Iowa to visit his friend, seed corn salesman Roswell Garst, and to witness cutting-edge American agricultural technology. The event drew hundreds of reporters from around the world and thousands of local curiosity seekers eager to catch a glimpse of the world’s leading Communist.

“Cars lined the road for miles,” said Russ Gifford, who recently gave an HI-funded presentation, “Khrushchev in Iowa” at Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City. “Of course, Khrushchev never met a camera he didn’t try to impress.”

Historians have hailed the visit as

the first thaw in the Cold War. For an eight-year-old Liz, however, the visit was just a lot of fun and excitement.

“In the days leading up to the visit, the father of a friend of mine said that everyone I saw around Coon Rapids wearing a tie who I didn’t know was a spy,” Liz said. “So, I spent a lot of time checking out the cool spies on Main Street.”

The Invitation

Liz said her grandfather was a man “who made the world very interesting.”

“He was the sort of guy who would write the pope letters or get on the train to yell at the secretary of agriculture,” Liz said. “He thought that what he said and believed could influence things.”

50 years ago Iowan Roswell Garst and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev initiated a

thaw in the Cold War to talk about corn, hogs and feeding hungry people

Continued on page 10

Liz Garst (the girl in the white dress at the right) smiles for the camera with her family and with Nina Khrushchev (black dress, center),

Liz’s grandfather Roswell Garst, her grandmother Elizabeth Garst, and Nikita Khrushchev (white suit, right).

Photo by Joe Munroe, courtesy of Liz Garst.

Khrushchev in Iowa


Photo by Mark Petrick

ary Swander, who lives in an 80-year-old one-room school house north of Kalona, is Iowa’s third poet laureate, following Marvin

Bell (2002-04) and Robert Dana (2004-08). On February 18, Governor Chet Culver appointed Mary poet laureate following the recommendation of a special committee of six poetry experts from around the state.

Mary teaches at Iowa State University. She was born in Manning, Iowa, a town in the west central part of the state. She is the author of three books of poetry and two critically-acclaimed memoirs, The Desert Pilgrim (Viking 2003) and Out of this World: A Journey of Healing (Penguin 1995; UI Press 2008). Her most recent book of poetry, The Girls on the Roof, was published by Wordprint Communications in April.

Humanities Iowa: How does someone from Manning, Iowa grow up wanting to become a poet?

Mary Swander: It’s very funny. We’ve got this

famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but it’s really not on the radar of a lot of kids. Back when I was in high school and we had career day, “poet” was not represented. I put down poetry, and they sent me to a printing class. They sent me to the print shop! That was as close as they could get.

But I was one of those kids who wanted to be a writer from the time I was very young. I can remember being three years old and thinking this is what I want to do when I grow up. It was just such a fortunate roll of the dice. My mother was an elementary school teacher, so she read to us all the time. She read great stuff...Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Caroll....It wasn’t like she was reading us these little throw-away books. She was reading us the classics.

HI: When did you officially begin to study poetry?

MS: I went to Georgetown as an undergraduate. One day, I went to my advisor and said, “I want to be a writer.” He was like, “We don’t do that in university.” It was sort of this attitude that to be a writer you had to get a beret and a cigarette holder and move to Paris.

Finally, he said, “We do have this one class in poetry writing. You have to submit a manuscript of 10 poems to get in, and I don’t know if you can do that because it’s due by 8 a.m. tomorrow.” I went home that night and wrote 10 horrible poems, but I got in, and the teacher was Roland Flint, who ended up being the poet laureate of Maryland. He was a great poet and a great teacher.

After I finished that class, I went to the dean and said “What do I do next?” He said, “You’ve got to go to Iowa,” and I was like, “What? I have to move back to Iowa?” I thought I had left forever. But I had a really great experience.

Mary Swander

“The thing

I like best

about poetry

is that it was

the first genre.

It contains

everything

else...drama...

fiction...and

it’s so elastic

that you can

have so many

different voices

and styles.”

The new face of Iowa poetry...

Poet Laureate

M


HI: So it was persistence? MS: I just kept plugging away. One of my students came in to talk to me once, and said, “I’m graduating. What should I do next?” I just said, “Keep writing.” Even at the workshop, there are people who were brilliant writers and we never heard from them again. Others just kept at it. Writing is just so full of rejection. You can’t let that get to you. You have to think, “Somebody is going to take this,” and keep going or figure out what you need to do or what you have to revise.

HI: Now that you are Iowa’s poet laureate, what are your plans?

MS: I already have this grant money for people with disabilities to take a creative writing class with one of my graduate students online. They don’t have to travel or pay registration money. They just have to contact me through my website. The project is called the Patient Voices Project and it started with Austin Bunn at the University of Iowa Hospital.

I also have a website under construction. It’s www.iowalit.com. Anybody can get on there and post poetry or a piece of writing and get feedback from other people. I want to eventually get a list of readings up from around the state too. It would be one central place where people can find out this information. And eventually I’d like to post videos of Iowa poets reading in their home environment. That way, you can see the backdrop...the landscape that influences their work.

I’d also like to find a way to get poetry back on the radio. There’s a lot going on around the state that could make some very interesting programming.

HI: How does Iowa inspire your writing?

MS: It’s always been the source for my material. I’ve lived other places...in Chicago for three years...but I’m not an urban writer. I thought, “I don’t know what I’m going to write about if I keep living here.”

So, I moved back to Iowa and started doing the artist in the schools program. I did it for about seven years. Every time I’d go to a new town, I’d just ask people, “Is there anyone around here who is a good storyteller? Is there anyone who makes funky metal sculptures or does

something interesting like that?” Somebody would always say, “Oh yeah, you need to go talk to Herman down the road....”

Sometimes, I’d hang out in coffee shops and just listen to people. That’s provided me with a wealth of material. And living here has provided me with nonstop material too. If I don’t have anything else, I just read the Kalona News. It will give me all the plots I will ever need.

But I’m very interested in how people are imprinted by the landscape. I’ve been a host to many people from the coasts. They get really nervous. When I drive them around the area, they start to freak out if I take them down a gravel road. They also don’t like the fact that we don’t have any mountains or an ocean. I think all of those things are nice, but I like the open plains. As my grandmother used to tell me, “I’ve seen scenery.”

HI: Do you have any favorite natural places around the area?

MS: One of my favorite places is just off Highway 1 when you turn onto Sharon Center Road. It’s so beautiful. The hills are rolling. Especially if you come at dusk. The play of light on those hills from the setting sun...I don’t know how you can find anything more beautiful. It’s a subtle beauty, I guess.

And if you imagine it when it was a prairie. it must have been even more spectacular, even if our ancestors thought it was just a pile of weeds.

HI: Why do you think it is important for Iowa to have a poet laureate to celebrate poetry?

MS: I think the literary arts feed people’s imaginations and they provide cohesiveness and community. They create critical thinkers and they add an element of fun to life. When I am about to go nuts with the deluge of the bad news you get on the radio or in the newspaper, I take a few minutes to read a poem to get back my sanity.

I delight in the words on the page. I’ve always been in love with the sound of language. When I was three years old, my mother would read to me. I had no comprehension of what she was saying, but I liked the sound of the words.

And Billy Collins, the former poet laureate of the United States, said that poetry is the study of death. When I started to think about that, I realized that he was right. Poems constantly remind us of our mortality. It could be an elegy or a carpe diem poem. They tell you to live life to the fullest. Poetry tells us to engage in life and to enjoy it as much as we can.

HI: Who were your inspirations?

MS: I like a wide array of poets. When I was younger, I fell in love with Canterbury Tales. It shows a lot in my work...the narrative storytelling and the long journey poem. But I also like the dramatic monologue. I read a whole range of things now.

The thing I like best about poetry is that it was the first genre. It contains everything else...drama...fiction...and it’s so elastic that you can have so many different voices and styles. h


I am pleased and honored to have the opportunity to speak to this gathering tonight. While finishing graduate school at the U. of Iowa, I was a visiting scholar for Iowa Humanities, traveling to community libraries to facilitate discussions of literature and writing with Iowans ranging in age from nine to ninety-four. During that time, I saw first hand how the efforts of this organization have provided essential opportunities to inspire public interest in the arts, and to bridge the gap between words on the page and the lives of individuals and communities. That experience was inspiring for me, as well, solidifying my own vision of an art wedded to place, which has defined my life and writing ever since. So I want to take this opportunity to officially thank you for the positive ways you have influenced my life and the lives of so many others in this state and beyond.

I was asked to talk tonight about what it means to be an Iowa author, and I think tonight’s theme—“Where sun and shade, prairie and forest come together”—captures something essential about that experience as I have lived it. I’ve resided in this state my entire life. I was born and raised in Fort Dodge, attended the University of Iowa for all my degrees, and now live in Council Bluffs. I currently enjoy a kind of border existence, commuting weekly across the Missouri River to teach literature and creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. My students at UNO have frequently teased me about what they think IOWA stands for: “Idiots Out Wandering Around” or, more locally relevant, “In Omaha Without Authorization.” These abstractions and good humored stereotypes represent one way of imagining place—and I subscribed to many of them growing up in Fort Dodge, especially those focused on the nearby state of Minnesota. As we were told, over and over again, the Golden Gopher football team was forced to play on artificial turf because their homecoming queen kept eating the grass.

As a grown-up writer, however, I have been interested in a different way of imagining place, one that isn’t rooted in regional abstractions, but in the particulars of the natural world. This way of imagining home was a rather late acquisition for me, occurring in the summer of 1993, during the last major flooding in Iowa. I was still in graduate school and my wife Stephanie and I were living in the rural town of Belle Plaine. Every day during our commutes we witnessed incredible destruction, but also surprising natural beauty. Flooded cornfields were suddenly full of wild birds, and unmown ditches erupted with native prairie grasses and wildflowers. Iowa, as some of you know, is the most ecologically altered state in the union, with less than one-tenth of one-percent of its native habitats remaining. While growing up here, I had very little awareness of those native habitats and certainly no emotional attachment to them. It’s hard to care about what you’ve never seen or known. That

John T. Price is the author of two books, Man Killed by Pheasant And Other Kinships and Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the AmericanGrasslands.

This is a reprint of the talk he gave at the 2008 Iowa Writers’ Celebration

“Where sun & shade, prairie & forest, come together” by John T. Price

Photo by Stephanie Strine Price


summer, however, I got a brief glimpse of what Iowa used to be: a rich ecology of wetlands and prairies and savannas, of wild surprises both profound and absurd—which is one way to define wilderness. Having spent most of my life wanting to leave the Midwest, in part because of what I considered to be its “ordinary” landscape, I found myself longing for a deeper relationship to what remains of wildness here, a new sense of kinship with place.

This experience transformed my relationship to writing, as well. I was in my twenties at the time and pursuing my doctorate in American literature at the University of Iowa, which seemed the safest, surest way to land a job in a city far from home. In the years immediately following the floods, however, I took several extended journeys across the Midwest and Great Plains, visiting a few of the largest remaining prairies, exploring my family’s history in the region, visiting with other writers dedicated to healing those endangered places, and participating in that healing myself through prairie restoration. That transformative experience would later become the subject of my first nonfiction book, Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2004.

Ever since that flooded summer of 1993, I have been aware of looking at the landscapes of home with a kind of double vision: seeing what is here and, at the same time, what is not here. Not Just Any Land is mostly about seeing what is not here, the prairies, and the effort to recover them from the brink of extinction. Even today, when I see a cedar encrusted slope in the Loess Hills, my first thought is that someone should chop them all down and let the true, prairie identity of those hills re-assert itself. This kind of thinking has led some of my nature-loving friends to accuse me of being a “prairie snob” and even a “tree hater.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and I want to take the opportunity tonight to publicly proclaim, once and for all, my love for the tree. Any appreciation of Iowa’s natural history must include an appreciation of not just the prairies, but also the forests and oak savannas and the woody river bottoms. Much of Iowa’s ecological identity is indeed defined by the meeting places between sun and shade, prairie and forest.

Trees have also played an important role in my development as a writer of place. While tracing

the childhood and adolescent sources of my relationship to nature, as I did in my second book, an Iowa memoir entitled Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships, published by Da Capo Press last spring, I found that although those sources are largely empty of prairie, they are full of trees. In this book, I wrote about how the woods surrounding Okoboji Lake contributed to my childhood notions of God and faith. I wrote about how, during adolescence, a small, non-descript tract of trees near our house in Fort Dodge (generously called the North Woods) provided a much needed escape from the perils of adolescence, a place where “solitude became a kind of freedom.” I wrote about how, as an undergraduate studying pre-medicine at the University of Iowa, my primary awakening to the power of literature occurred while reading Tolstoy under an oak tree in a small neighborhood park. It became clear to me while writing this book that, in the absence of prairies, trees were the major stewards of my relationship to the environment. They kept alive in me a love of, and dependence on, local nature that would find new meaning and purpose later in my life, when I awoke to the history and plight of the grasslands.

Tonight, in honor of that debt, I’d like to tell yet another story about a tree from my childhood, during a time period not all that different from our own. For me, this memory offers another possible source of my relationship to place and writing about place. In my essays and memoirs about Iowa, I have tried to make the case that there is no separation between our relationship to nature and our relationship to each other, whether that be in friendships or families or communities or states or nations. It is all part of the same circle of kinship, and the appreciation of that circle is no more intense than in childhood, especially during the more difficult stretches in our lives and in the lives of our families.

The date was August 9, 1974, the evening President Nixon resigned. I was eight years old and an hour before his speech, I knew something major was happening. I knew it the moment my mother stood on her toes, reached for the top shelf of the cupboard, brought down the cans of Jolly Green Giant to the counter-top, and began to make her famous five-can casserole. I was, by then, practiced at reading the tilt of the world by the kind of dinner my mother was serving. I knew that crock pot turkey with stuffing meant it was a holiday or that Mom was pregnant. Pork cutlets, skillet-fried with pepper gravy and instant potatoes was meant to speak, with more or less success, to one of my father’s moods. Creamed beef on toast was neutral, a yawner. Five-can casserole, however, was reserved for the worst in our lives, like in April, just after my baby brother, James, had been still born. We’d been served a lot of it back then.


So when I saw my mother slam those cans, one by one, up into the snaggletooth of the electric opener where they dangled and jerked until the jagged tops of their skulls popped off, it felt as if the room got smaller.

I walked over to the counter and mounted one of the tall, soda fountain chairs between my two younger sisters, Carrie Anne and Susan. We peered down into the family room, at my father stretched out in the plush swivel chair, staring at the television set. He was thirty-six, younger than I am now. Mom slopped casserole into our bowls, and then set up TV trays for her and Dad. When President Nixon’s face appeared my parents put down their spoons and stared space-eyed at the screen. The President looked tired, like everybody else back then, and talked in a language even I could understand about not being a quitter and about healing and “God Bless America.” My mouth fell open.

“Is President Nixon quitting?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mother calmly replied.

I would’ve asked her why, but I already knew that it was my fault. I had often heard grown-ups say that Nixon was a bad president, that he had lied, and so I had come to believe it and wished him to go away, just as I had wished a lot of the problems of the time to go away. Problems that, despite our parents best efforts, leaked into our lives through the television news and their casual conversations. I’d often heard, for instance, the word “Viet Nam” on television, usually around suppertime, though I’d never asked my parents about it. I never asked them about anything I heard on TV during that hour. The evening news brought down an iron lid of silence on our home. During the week,

Dad requested that the television be turned to Walter Cronkite when he got home from work. No matter what my sisters and I were watching, we instantly switched to Walter when we heard the front door rattle open around five-thirty. As Dad walked into the family room, we’d walk out, leaving behind the bouncy, tail-end theme from I Dream of Jeannie.

Back then, during the news hour, our

parents attended to the television as if it were a fourth child. Mom, preparing dinner, would sometimes step towards the family room, wooden spoon in hand, to watch. Tight-lipped, she’d step back to give the mashed potatoes another stir. When we sat down at the table, the TV was out of sight but still blaring. Sometimes in the middle of our conversations, Dad would hold up his finger, push back his chair, stand and stare down at the images on the screen—usually rough, shaky

shadows of people tearing through jungles or city streets carrying guns or signs or babies. People always seemed to be running then, the camera never still. Dad would sit back down and stare into his food, as if he’d been shushed.

This atmosphere of silence stood in stark contrast to the one I enjoyed with my childhood friends. Prior to Nixon’s resignation, those friends and I had talked openly and loudly about the problems of the world, about what our parents and other grown-ups were saying about the president and taxes (whatever they were) and the war and those they knew who had died in the war and a lot of other significant issues they didn’t know we were paying attention to. We talked about what should be done about these problems—and something must be done, that much was certain. Wrongs had apparently been committed and they must be corrected. Like most children, we had yet to appreciate the tragic gap between aspiration and reality, which is to say we had not yet relinquished courage and hope. How exactly we should act on that courage and hope was another question altogether. Luckily, we had among us boys whose elder siblings had been involved in a number of public protests and were more than happy to offer us advice. Their suggestions included sign-making and playing hookie and streaking, all of which we’d tried out, with mixed success.

Earlier that summer, for instance, we’d set up our annual lemonade stand at the corner of 8th Avenue and 21st Street, near the bushes where our parents couldn’t watch us. Along with the usual sign advertising a nickel a cup, we’d posted a sign that, on the advice of someone’s older sister, read: Impeach Nixon! I wasn’t sure what this meant. Perhaps “impeaching” referred to some kind of canning process. I pictured President Nixon being stuffed into a green Atlas jar like a freshly sliced peach—his knees scrunched up around his ears, his eyes bugged-out and bloodshot—and left to sit in someone’s damp basement for a year. I thought this image was funny, until someone driving by threw a piece of real fruit at our sign.

The goals of streaking were similarly unclear. A friend explained that his college-age sister and her friends had done it a lot to protest the war and had even gotten their names in the paper. I wasn’t sure world peace was worth that kind of sacrifice. Besides, how would anyone know

“I have tried to make

the case that there is no

separation between our

relationship to nature and

our relationship to each

other, whether that be in

friendships or families or

communities or states or

nations.”


what you were protesting? It wasn’t like you were wearing signs. I was assured that people would know. That lots of people streak and everybody knows what it means. When a few of us actually tried it out, however, this did not seem to be the case. As we ran down busy 10th Avenue cars honked and passengers jerked their heads over their shoulders. High school football players, practicing on the stadium field, hooted and hollered as we ran by. During the final stretch toward home, a couple of dogs gave chase, barking and causing enough racket to bring several familiar mothers to their front doors. The look on their faces did not suggest we were inspiring them to call their senators. What they did do is call our mothers.

On the eve of President Nixon’s resignation, however, it appeared my friends and the older siblings had been right: We had made a difference. We’d charged headfirst against the rules of society, against our own fears, and now the President, who all our parents had criticized, was quitting. It seemed safe to assume that the end of the war would quickly follow. Our parents, however, did not seem to be in a celebratory mood. The way some of my friends had talked, getting rid of President Nixon would have everyone dancing in the streets and singing and tossing confetti. Maybe that was going on in their homes, but not in mine. My parents seemed sad and sunken, as if the bones were crumbling inside them. Even my sisters sensed it. We lowered our spoons and made for the door.

From the front steps, we sized up the evening. The air was heavy and damp, the sunlight dripping like honey from every surface. Cicadas droned in the ash tree and robins warbled in the hawthorn. There was no wind. We headed for the giant, ancient red maple, my favorite among the trees in our yard. I considered it a personal refuge, a ready-made fort where I’d often retreated for privacy or extended meditation or simply to achieve a larger view of the world. I’d gone there after the death of my brother, as well, to work through things in my own way. I knew every inch of it: the winding stair case of its branches, the various resting spots and their advantages, the faded initials—“JB”—carved into one of the upper branches. Who was this JB? I often wondered. A boy like me? A delinquent? Someone from another century, now dead and gone? Whoever he or she was, all that was left were these two letters and it impressed me they could hold so much mystery. A year later, on

my ninth birthday, I would get stuck in one of the top branches of that maple and have to be rescued by the Fort Dodge Fire Department, but that did little to dampen my worshipful enthusiasm.

And I wasn’t alone. The maple was a frequent gathering place for private conversations with friends or my sisters or for neighborhood committee meetings where we plotted our next adventure or protest. It was, for the children of my neighborhood, a kind of witness tree and it retained that function among other neighborhood children well after we had all grown up. Until only a few years ago, actually, when it was struck by lightening and my parents finally had to remove it. That evening back in 1974, however, it was still the dominating presence in our yard, our neighborhood, and it didn’t take long before other kids started trickling in to sit with us in the grass beneath its branches, chased out of their homes, I assume, by the same silence that had chased us out of ours. Eventually, almost half the kids in the neighborhood were there, beneath the tree, in that almost Iowa savannah, sitting in the rough circle that was the custom of our tribe. Our kinship with one another was beyond question, forged as it had been by shared dreams and tragedies. There was Matthew, who had lost his older brother to a respiratory disease. There was Andy, my best friend, whose pilot father, in just a few days, would be lost in a crop-dusting accident. We all had or would have more than one reason to see what is missing in the world around us, and long to restore it. Where that longing has taken them in the years since, only they could tell you, but I wonder sometimes if isn’t part of what drew me to writing about the endangered prairies. What drew me, finally, to commit to staying home, here in Iowa, my native ground.

Whatever the case may be, I think I can safely say that on the night President Nixon resigned we were not focused on what was missing in our lives, but on what was already present. We had the tree, the grass, the twilight—that meeting place of sun and shadow that still holds the origins of not only our place, but our species. And we had each other. There, in my front yard, beneath the maple, at the tail end of the millennium, we talked and took in the last sweet breaths of summer, drawing into ourselves all that we had seen and done and might do together, holding off any fears of the future.

We remained there past dusk when the lights of the televisions could be seen all around, through the living room windows, flickering in sync. No one was calling to us. It was if we’d been completely forgotten, which could be a beautiful thing back then. We sat together a while longer, on the cooling earth, until stars could be seen among the darkening branches. Then we pulled ourselves up and returned to the blue campfires that were our homes. h

“The maple was a frequent

gathering place for private

conversations with friends

or my sisters or for

neighborhood committee

meetings where we plotted our next adventure

or protest. It was, for the

children of my neighborhood,

a kind of witness tree.”


“Both men loved to gab. Khrushchev relished Garst’s cantankerousness, especially when it justified his own, such as when Garst bawled out Soviet farmers for not fertilizing the soil.”

Garst returned to the Soviet Union twice more in 1956 and 1958. His wife, Elizabeth, accompanied him on these trips. Rachel Garst said her grandmother doesn’t get enough credit for the role she played in Roswell’s citizen diplomacy.

“She was a lady – a lot smoother than Roswell, and had better manners,” Rachel said. “She was the one who actually extended the invitation to the Khrushchevs.”

The invitation stirred some controversy, especially after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Some Americans criticized Garst for trading with the enemy, and some claimed he was a Communist, himself. Liz said her grandfather was simply a good capitalist who was doing what was right for business.

“Some people didn’t want to buy from someone who they considered a commie sympathizer,” Liz said. “But he always did what he thought was right and not what he thought was popular. In the long run, he made the brand name famous.”

The Visit

The Khrushchevs landed in the United States on September 15, 1959. Their 12-day trip included stops in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Camp David, where the Premier met with President Eisenhower.

They came to Iowa on September 22 and toured Iowa State University, the Deere & Co. plant in Ankeny, and the Bookey Packing Plant in Des Moines. The next day, Khrushchev and his wife came to Coon Rapids.

Photographs from the day show Khrushchev examining pigs and corn. Others show the Garsts and the Khrushchevs walking across the lawn or talking politely.

The only snag on the visit came when Roswell, fed up with the throng of reporters, was photographed throwing corn silage at some of the journalists. The photo later ran in newspapers nationwide. Liz said her grandmother was horrified.

“My grandmother sat down with my brother, my cousin and me, and she yelled at us,” Liz remembered. “She told us, “‘This is not funny. Don’t you ever throw corn silage at anyone. It’s not polite.’”

The Legacy

So, what did Khrushchev’s visit to the Garst farm accomplish? Did Garst’s work in citizen diplomacy accomplish anything? Rachel Garst said that’s hard to judge.

The same could be said of Khrushchev, a man who led a country that was struggling to feed itself. Khrushchev argued that what the Soviet Union needed was an Iowa corn belt.

Lauren Soth, the editor of the Des Moines Register, read Khrushchev’s words. In 1955 Soth wrote an editorial inviting the Soviets to come to Iowa to learn how to better feed their people. “We promise to hide none of our ‘secrets,’” Soth wrote. “Let the Russians see how we do it.”

Bill Friedricks, the author of the book Covering Iowa: The History of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Company, 1849-1985, said Soth did not expect his editorial to lead to anything. He was surprised when both the Soviets and President Eisenhower responded favorably to the idea of an exchange.

The first of these exchanges occurred in 1955, and that’s when Roswell Garst got involved. He showed the head of one Soviet delegation his farm and seed company in Coon Rapids, and in return was asked to visit the Soviet Union. He and Khrushchev hit it off at once.

“Not only did Khrushchev learn much from Garst about growing corn, he liked him no end as a person,” said William Taubman, the author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era.

Khrushchev in IowaContinued from page 3

Continued on page 11

“[Roswell] was the sort

of guy who would write

the pope letters or get

on the train to yell at the

secretary of agriculture.

He thought that what he

said and believed could

influence things.”


“What I can’t figure out is whether Roswell played a role in helping to prevent nuclear disaster on any level,” Rachel said. “Were his personal connections with Khrushchev deep enough to make a difference? There’s no answer to that.”

It is known, however, that press coverage of the trip stirred excitement among the Soviet people including Humanities Iowa board past president Valentina Fominykh.

“Even growing up in Kazakhstan, I was very aware of the history in the making,” Fominykh said. “The coverage of the trip in the press was detailed.... The pictures of the Iowa corn fields were spectacular.”

As an adult, she came to Iowa in May of 1990 as a part of the USSR Parliament and the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences delegation. While here, she met John Chrystal, Roswell’s nephew.

“Because of the Khrushchev-Garst connection, Iowa not only wanted to talk about perestroika, but they wanted to do something practical,” Fominykh said. “So an agreement to start a new type of economic relationship, form joint ventures and revive agribusiness connections between Iowa and the USSR was signed. I returned to Iowa in January 1991 to help ‘get the project off the ground.’”

And what about Iowa? Did that day in September 1959 have any impact on the Hawkeye state? Friedricks thinks so.

“Soth’s editorial and later the Khrushchev visit are certainly high points in our state’s history,” Friedricks said. “They put Iowa on center stage during a troubling time and helped encourage a more international perspective among Iowans. This outlook promoted an even greater interest in international trade among Iowa farmers, seed companies and equipment manufacturers.”

Perhaps a greater legacy is the power of the individual to make a difference.

“Roswell represented the first thaw in the Cold War,” Liz said. “He did it through the force of his will. We’re hoping that focusing on this anniversary this year will help young people to hear that message.” h

JulySunday, July 19 - Saturday, July 25

Team Archaeology rides RAGBRAI

A celebration of Iowa Archaeology Month with a series of informal talks

about important archaeological sites along the 2009 RAGBRAI route

AugustThursday, August 27 at 7 p.m.

AViD (Authors Visiting in Des Moines)/Khrushchev in Iowa

A talk by Khrushchev biographer William Taubman

Sheslow Auditorium

2507 University Ave.

Des Moines, Iowa

Friday, August 28

Khrushchev in Iowa Conference and Banquet

Hotel Fort Des Moines

1000 Walnut St.

Des Moines, Iowa

Saturday, August 29

Agricultural Progress Festival (held in conjunction with the Khrushchev

in Iowa celebration)

The day-long celebration includes a ceremony at the historic Garst

Farm (now home of the Whiterock Conservancy), film clips, a theater

production, a farm machinery parade, speeches on Main Street,

plantings of corn from different eras, agribusiness displays, family-fun

activities and music

Coon Rapids, Iowa (70 miles northwest of Des Moines)

For a more information check out www.creatinggp.com

SeptemberA History of the Civil Rights Movement in Davenport

Putnam Museum

1717 W. 12th St.

Davenport, Iowa

For more information, call 563-324-1933

Khrushchev Continued from page 10

Above: The Office of the State Archaeologist, with help from

Humanities Iowa, will celebrate Iowa Archaeology Month by riding

RAGBRAI. Image courtesy of the Office of the State Archaeologist.

HI Calendar of Events

AViD will help kick off the celebration of “Khrushchev in Iowa” with a talk by Khrushchev

biographer, William Taubman. For more details, and for a full schedule of anniversary events,

see the calendar on the left side of this page. AViD logo design by Toni Sarcone.


AmesRecipient: Iowa State UniversityAmount: $15,000 (Major)Project: Eco-Voices

Baraboo, Wisc.Recipient: Aldo Leopold

FoundationAmount: $15,000 (Major)Project: Green Fire: The Life &

Legacy of Aldo Leopold

CarrollRecipient: Missouri &

Mississippi Divide RC&DAmount: $11,665 (Major)Project: Lincoln Highway

Automobile Revolution

Cedar RapidsRecipient: Kirkwood

Community CollegeAmount: $1,000 (Mini)Project: Diversity in Iowa

Recipient: Usher’s FerryAmount: $500 (Mini)Project: Fresh Threads of

Connection: Mother Nature and British Women Writers

ClintonRecipient: Paul B. Sharar

Foundation of Clinton Community College

Amount: $500 (Mini)

Project: Mary Swander, Artist in Residence Program

Coon RapidsRecipient: Creating Great PlacesAmount: $12,000 (Major)Project: Khrushchev in Iowa

Recipient: Whiterock Conservancy

Amount: $3,000 (Mini)Project: Khrushchev Visit

Signage Project

Council BluffsRecipient: Council Bluffs Public

LibraryAmount: $10,000 (Major)Project: Bluffs Author Series

DavenportRecipient: German American

Heritage CenterAmount: $15,000 (Major)Project: Development of

Interactive Historical Exhibits

Recipient: Smart Intermediate School

Amount: $500 (Mini)Project: Carol Gorman: Using

Stumptown Kid to Examine Iowa in the 1950s

Des MoinesRecipient: Drake University

Amount: $7,500 (Major)Project: Citizens Arise! From

the Founding of a Nation to the Crisis of a Union

Recipient: Senior College of Greater Des Moines, Inc.

Amount: $5,000 (Major)Project: Senior College of

Greater Des Moines, 2009-10

Recipient: Iowa Architecture Foundation

Amount: $500 (Mini)Project: A Century of Iowa

Architecture

Recipient: World Food PrizeAmount: $3,000 (Mini)Project: Hoover-Wallace

Dinner Archiving Project

FairfieldRecipient: Maasdam Barn

Preservation CommitteeAmount: $10,000 (Major)Project: Maasdam Barns

Historic Welcome Center & Barns Exhibit

GrimesRecipient: World of DifferenceAmount: $5,000 (Major)Project: Cultural Encounters

Iowa CityRecipient: U of I LibrariesAmount: $5,000 (Major)Project: Iowa City Book Festival

Recipient: Hancher Auditorium

Amount: $2,900 (Mini)Project: Dan Zanes Reading

and Music Project

Recipient: Iowa United Nations Association

Amount: $2,000 (Mini)Project: Meet Eleanor

Roosevelt

JohnstonRecipient: Iowa Public TV

FoundationAmount: $2,000 (Mini)Project: Poetry of Place

New York, NYRecipient: The Moving ImageAmount: $15,000 (Major)Project: The Lady with All the

Answers

Omaha, Neb.Recipient: University of

Nebraska at OmahaAmount: $6,200 (Major)Project: Through the Eyes

of Chris & Yin Soentpiet: Immigrants and the

Transcontinental Railroad

Rockwell CityRecipient: Friends of the

Rockwell City Public LibraryAmount: $1,300 (Mini)Project: Let’s Talk About It

StuartRecipient: Project Restore

FoundationAmount: $7,500 (Major)Project: Learning Museum for

Religious Tolerance

WapelloRecipient: Tri-Rivers

Conservation FoundationAmount: $7,000 (Major)Project: Reflections of Louisa

Resource Area Outreach

WaterlooRecipient: Bosnian Cultural

Foundation, Inc.Amount: $8,171 (Major)Project: Commemorating 15

Years of Bosnian Settlement in the Cedar Valley

West LibertyRecipient: Eulenspiegel Puppet

Theatre Co.Amount: $1,695 (Mini)Project: Immigrant Stew at the

Chat ‘n Chew

Major & Mini Grants through June 2009

Humanities Iowa 100 Oakdale CampusN310 OH Iowa City, IA 52242-5000

Documents

Voices from the Prairie Vol XI No. 3