Corn to Concrete

Welcome to Kanawha! Population 465. The two main roads intersected at a 90-degree angle at the center of town. The two schools in the east side were small, one “Christian” and the other public. I attended the Christian one on the left side if you were coming from in town. Our classes were small and it only went up to eighth grade. After that you had to drive to the next town unless you wanted to go to public. The drive home was about 15 minutes, depending on if it was planting or plowing season. If it was, then if could take up to 25 minutes because of the tractors. Everything was 25 minutes away unless you wanted to go to the mall, then you'd have to drive two hours aways. And that's how you measured distance. Munites, not miles. But the time never really bothered anyone. They all had places to be and things to do but nothing that couldn’t wait an extra ten minutes.
I remember driving by the fields every morning and afternoon, each containing precise rows of corn or soy beans that seemed to just keep going. If you looked closely, every once in a while you would see where the farmer had swerved just a bit before getting back on track. Silos and forgotten barns spotted the drive and after about 10 minutes you would pass a house occupied by another Iowan. The homes were seldom huge or fancy. Most were two stories, had chipping white paint, and sat on grass scorched by the heat.
My family lived another town away. Belmond was bigger than Kanawha and even had a movie theater. One picture showed every couple weeks for $1. We we’re allowed to actually go but that didn’t matter. What mattered was we lived by the town with the theater. And when I say we lived by Belmond, I mean we live about five miles out. We weren’t the type to live in the actual town, that would have been too crowded. So after leaving town and turning left after the bridge, you could go straight for a while and turn on the second gravel road to your right. If you make it to Jake’s house then you’ve gone too far. Then follow the gravel road a ways and to the left you’d find our ranch house. It’s the one with the silo behind the barn. That was how we gave directions. No one used road names or mile markers. Everything was associated with the landmarks everyone knew from living there for so long.
But all that didn’t matter anymore. I wouldn’t be telling anyone how to get to that house because we were moving. Not that I hadn’t moved before, this was the forth house I’d lived in. But this move was different. Before we had only moved a couple miles in one direction or another, and only because we needed a bigger house. This time we were moving to the city, a good 2 hours away.
My dad had taken the pastorate at a church there, a bigger church, full of city people; people who took the bus to school and had birds for pets. They didn’t know anything about pigs or horses or cows. And they kept their cats inside and fenced in their dogs. The closest thing they’d ever been to four-wheeling in the muddy fields was a go-kart on an asphalt track. These were the people my dad was making us be friends with.
Our house was still a ranch but it wasn’t the same. There were people living right next to us on either side of the house, the yard was incapable of holding a football game or even a baseball game. The stores were closer, the church was closer, the mall was closer; everything was closer. We were no longer living on a farm or even in what could be considered the country. We were living in the city of Des Moines. There were five movie theaters here. And each one had about ten movies playing at one time.
My first day at school was horrible. My fifth grade class was bigger than the whole student body at my old school, and I had to wear a skirt everyday. At recess the girls weren’t allowed to play football with the boys and on the way back to the classroom I took a wrong turn and couldn’t find the room. At my old school we only had one hallway. The kids weren’t all that bad, just different I guess. There were a lot more girls in this class; some were even wearing make-up. Before meeting them I hadn’t even thought about make-up.
At church a girl asked me to come over to her house for the afternoon and my dad said it would be a good idea for me to get to know her. I didn’t want to go, I already had friends and I didn’t want anymore, especially city friends; but I went anyway. It wasn’t terrible. They had a trampoline in their back yard and we got to ride bikes around the block. Then the next week they took us the swimming pool. It had a huge waterslide going right into the deep end! We didn’t have slides at our pool, the water wasn’t deep enough they always said. Then after we went to get ice cream at Mc Donald’s. There was even a playroom we could go in. In my town all we had was Hardies and there were only tables to sit at there. Moving to the city was something I never wanted to do when I was little. How could anything be better than the country? And though now I cannot say that I like the city better, I can say that moving was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Moving made see people as more then where they live. Not all people who live in the city hate animals and don’t know the difference between seed corn and sweet corn. And not all country people are like Aunt Bee.