This photo was taken on Arvid Huisman’s fourth birthday when the family lived on a farm on the southern side of the Iowa-Minnesota state line. Posing outdoors without a coat in January that close to Minnesota, he shows his early resilience to winter, something lost in his adult years. Photo courtesy of Arvid Huisman
March/April 2024 (Volume 16, Issue 2)
By Arvid Huisman
Have you ever known someone who was a lovely person but who had one annoying trait that truly tested your patience? That’s how I feel about Iowa.
I love Iowa, her people and her beauty. I take pride in the fact that my native state is considered the breadbasket of the world. I am proud of the contributions she has made to the world and of her famous sons and daughters — Herbert Hoover, Henry Wallace, Robert Schuller, Mamie Eisenhower and Donna Reed, to name just a few.
But I don’t like Iowa’s winters.
Winter was okay when I was a kid. Sledding, snow forts, snow days, earning money shoveling neighbors’ walks; it was all good. Then I became an adult and had to drive on snow and ice-covered roads, start a stubborn engine on below-zero mornings, clear several inches of snow from sidewalks and driveways and freeze my heinie when I did so. Now that I’m older, just walking outside in the winter can be dangerous.
“Oh,” but some folks say, “Iowa’s winters are so pretty!” Let Minnesota have “pretty!” I want warm! I want baby calves romping in green pastures. I want song birds and gentle waves lazily lapping up against a lake shore. I want acres of corn spreading across the rolling landscape like a giant green corduroy blanket. I want the aroma of freshly mown hay.
Alas, Iowa is Iowa and like a good friend with an annoying fault, I must accept this state I love with all her flaws.
Truth be told, I have winter roots. The first four years of my life I lived in Kossuth County, near Minnesota. The year I was four-years-old we lived on the Iowa side of the state line. Our mailing address was Frost, Minnesota.
Growing up in rural Iowa some 70 years ago we didn’t have all the conveniences of 2024 but I do have good memories of those winters. While I didn’t walk two miles to school (uphill both ways) I do remember drafty old wood frame farm houses heated with a cook stove in the kitchen and an oil burner in the living room. And I survived it! I guess when you don’t know any better, it doesn’t seem so bad.
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