December 11 - I'm grateful I grew up in Aplington, Iowa. There I learned the value of community and the value of hard work. In fact, we had a survey in my department at work here in Oregon, and one of the questions was "Where would you have liked to have grown up?" The two of us from Iowa both listed Iowa. Here are two fantastic examples why.
When I was a freshman at Iowa State University, my dad sustained a head injury in a farm accident that put him in the hospital for nine days and out of farming shape for a bit longer. All this happened in the middle of harvest. After driving to Iowa City to visit my dad in the hospital after the accident, I headed to the farm outside of Aplington to take care of the 500 hogs he raised and figure out how to deal with the 220 acres of crops that needed to be combined soon. When I got there, I found dozens of friends, neighbors, and family members there. Three of them were out in the field with their combines, and there were so many tractors and wagons there that they had to wait in line for the three combines to give them a half a load to take to town. This all continued for the next few days while my uncle Paul and I took care of the livestock. There were also several ladies there cooking for all the men and keeping everybody full. By the time my dad got home from the hospital, all the crops were out of the field, which was a very good thing since he obviously needed to rest and recover. I'll never forget the sense of community I felt in those few days. Keep in mind that when all this started, my dad was in the hospital, my mom was with him, and I was away at school. Nobody asked for any help. Nobody asked for any praise. Everybody just knew what to do, and they showed up and got it done.
The next story has to do with Parkersburg, which is only four miles from Aplington. Parkersburg is where I went to church, I wrestled on their wrestling team (Aplington didn't have a team), and Parkersburg merged schools with Aplington shortly after I graduated. It's sort of a surrogate hometown for me. Last May a category 5 tornado ripped through Parkersburg and neighboring New Hartford. It destroyed 1/3 of the Parkersburg, including about 220 houses, the high school, and 2/3 of the businesses. The devastation was unbelievable. What happened next was even more unbelievable. The rest of the town of Parkersburg and surrounding communities wasted no time coming in to help pick up the pieces. People cam from all over the state to rake debris from the lawns of people they had never met. Students from rival high schools arrived by the busload from as far as 100 miles away and crawled on their hands and knees to pick up glass, wood, and metal shards that had been embedded into the football field. Football players from both Iowa and Iowa State came to help. The sense of community and hard work spread from the immediate area to the entire state. I was never more proud to be from Iowa as I was in the aftermath of that tornado.
December 12 - I'm grateful that I get to go back to a friends' party tonight after the kids go to bed. Thanks Janell! I'm also grateful that it's close enough to walk. :)
