by Terry L. Besser
Assistant Professor and Extension Sociologist
Iowa State University
*Calling someone a farmer is a compliment.
*Most people know the names of the children in their neighborhood, the names of their parents and grandparents, the names of the children's first cousins, the names of the children's mothers' third cousins...
*Pickups are more common than foreign cars.
*The tallest building in town is the grain elevator (the second is a church).
*Every conversation begins with a discussion of the weather.
*News broadcasts contain the current prices of corn and beans.
*Potlucks and high school football games a re major social events.
*You can run a tab at the grocery store.
*The cashier in the grocery store holds your baby while you write a check.
*Everyone in town knows who bought a new car, how much he or she paid for it, how much was allowed on the trade-in of the old car and which salesperson sold it.
*Every salad starts with a package of Jell-O
*People leave their cars running outside Casey's while they go inside to buy milk... and their cars are still there when they come out.
*Diversity means having a mixture of people of German and Norwegian descent.
*People don't just talk about the importance of education. (Iowa consistently ranks in the top five states in high school graduation rates, ACT scores and adult literacy rates.)
Many of the unique features about Iowa, mentioned above, are really not so unusual. They are common in small towns throughout much of the United States. The reason most Iowans can identify with them is that the majority of Iowans still live in or around small towns. Almost 75 percent of Iowans live in small or medium sized towns (less than 50,000 people), on farms, or in rural areas. However, as young people leave small towns for opportunities elsewhere, as the downtown businesses, churches and schools close, as the surrounding farms consolidate into larger and larger farms, small towns are in danger. Some have already died, or are very close to death.
Others have changed into bedroom communities that look like ghost towns during the day since many residents drive 10 to 60 miles to a larger town for work. Yet, often people prefer to live in their hometown and commute long distances to work because they want to give their children a small town upbringing, or they need to care for aging family members, or they can only afford the cheaper local housing.
Regardless o the valiant efforts of the commuters to persevere what they remember as good about small town life, they have little time or energy to participate in the community or even to neighbor with the people who live next to them. It is much more convenient for them to buy gas, groceries, a new faucet for the bathroom sink, and clothes for the kids in their worktown rather than in their hometown.
After awhile, there is little choice about which town to shop in, since the hometown merchants cannot sustain themselves on the profit from an occasional emergency purchase of a bathroom washer, or a gallon of milk and close their businesses. The ghost town image becomes more real as empty stores dot the downtown, and the remaining businesses have little money for renovation or even maintenance. Some give up any hope of making much money and stay open as long as they can as a service to the community.
According to Dr. Willis Goudy, Iowa State University sociologist, the majority of counties in Iowa continue to lose population even after the farm crisis of the mid 1980's. These counties and many of the towns in these counties have not enjoyed the prosperity of the 1990s that some parts of Iowa have experienced.
It is possible to maintain, or rebuild, the quality of life most of us associate with Iowa and small towns. Change is inevitable an often beneficial, so I am not recommending that we return to some 1950s nostalgic image (often erroneous) of the way we think towns used to be. Towns are growing, vital communities of people, not museum pieces.
There is a great deal of research and practical knowledge about how communities, neighborhoods, and towns can take charge of their future. Some of the knowledge comes from communities in Iowa, and across the country, which have successfully dealt with their problems and turned ghost towns (or could-have-been ghost towns) in to vibrant energetic places where things are happening.
Iowa State University Extension to Communities will present regular information about communities in general, and about Iowa communities in particular, in the columns which appear under the Community Connection heading. We are modeling Community Connection after the successful gardening and nutrition articles written by ISU Extension staff. Using these articles, we hope to translate research information about communities and their revitalization efforts into a useful form and in the process, stimulate discussion about community life in general.
Contacts:
Terry L. Besser, ISU
Extension Sociology, (515) 294-6508
Del Marks, ISU Extension
Communication Systems, (515) 294-9807
