The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of our young nation. Here is the last in a series of articles reporting, state by state, what the Louisiana Purchase represents today.
There was this slave named Ralph.
He was born in Virginia, about 1795, and reared there and in Kentucky. He was sold among members of the Montgomery family - from a landowner to his brother and then to the brother's son - and he ended up in Missouri. In 1834, the son, hard-pressed for cash, contracted to sell Ralph his freedom. The price was $500, on the installment plan.
Ralph moved north to the Iowa territory, to the lead mines around Dubuque. He worked hard, but he never saved enough money to pay off Montgomery. In fact, he made no payments at all, and in 1839 Montgomery sent some bounty hunters to Iowa to return him.
They found Ralph, and they got an order from a justice of the peace enabling them to grab him.
A neighboring farmer - described, later, and redundantly, as a "noble-hearted Irishman" - saw all this and went to another neighbor, a judge, to tell him about it. The judge, one of three on the Iowa Supreme Court, decided it was a matter for the court.
So Ralph was spared, for the moment, and the court met. It quickly decided, unanimously, that Ralph was a free man, that he could not be returned to Missouri, that slavery cannot, and must not, exist in Iowa.
What makes this all the more wonderful is that this was the very first decision of the Iowa Supreme Court. It was handed down on July 4, 1839, seven years before Iowa became a state.
Equal rights and a 45-ton bull
And that set the tone for what became the nation's 29th state, a state that now has about 2,926,320 people spread roomily (but not lazily) over 56,276 square miles. The land rolls through 99 counties that are home to 950 towns and cities and 92,500 farms.
Since its very beginnings, Iowa has been a state of open spaces and open people, clean air and clean government, fairness and friendliness and equality for all. Indeed, Iowa can be summed up by its motto:
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain."
In 1868, Iowa's highest court told a little girl named Susan Clark that, of course, she could go to the neighborhood school, and it mattered not that she was black. That was 86 years before the Supreme Court of the United States came to the same conclusion for all of America.
In 1901, the Iowa court ruled, in a famous libel case, that there's no such thing as a false opinion - more than 50 years before the Supreme Court ruled the same way.
And in the 1970s, when no state wanted to bring in a tide of Southeast Asian refugees who were fleeing together, then-Gov. Robert D. Ray opened the state and Iowans opened their arms to all of them. Iowa is a place of bedrock values.
It's also a place that's a little quirky.
There is, in Audubon, a 45-ton, 30-foot-tall statue of a bull named Albert. In Adair, there's a big smiley face painted on the town's yellow water tower.
In Stanton, the hometown of the actor who portrayed Folgers Coffee's "Mrs. Olson" in TV commercials, the 96-foot-tall water tower is shaped like a coffee cup. (The Steel Plate Manufacturers Association named it the "tank of the year" in 2000.)
The town of Nevada is pronounced Nuh-VAY-da. The nearby town of Madrid is pronounced MAD-rid, and Tripoli is Tri-POLE-a.
It is a state where it is quite an honor for a teenage girl to be elected her county's pork queen. A state where the annual girls basketball tournament almost outdraws the boys tourney. And a state where, until his recent death, the erudite public radio expert on literature and classical music brought equal erudition to his role as broadcaster of the state high-school wrestling tournament.
Chintz curtains in hell
And it is a state where, a generation ago, an Iowa Poll discovered that 5 percent of Iowans believed they would go to hell when they died, but 10 percent believed their next-door neighbor would go to hell. Upon learning this, the late Bob Hullihan wrote a wry article for the Des Moines Register explaining what hell would be like when Iowans arrived with all those potluck suppers and chintz curtains.
There are six pigs and 15 chickens for every person in Iowa. The chickens lay an estimated 10-billion eggs a year - more, Iowans will proudly tell you, than the chickens in any other state. Iowa also leads the nation in the production of pork, corn and soybeans.
And there is a state rock: the geode. Perhaps in respect to the state rock, it is against the law in the city of Ames to attach a sign to any rock. The law is enforced.
If you're in Ames, incidentally, you might want to drive out dusty Billy Sunday Drive to a little cemetery where Depression-era evangelist Billy Sunday's mother is buried. Billy Sunday was raised in nearby Nevada - Nuh-VAY-da - where, it is rumored, he loaded a blank charge into the courthouse canon one Fourth of July and fired a mighty blast that shook every window in town. This was before he got religion.
Sunday, for the record, is buried in suburban Chicago, near the town the song says he couldn't shut down.
Iowa has given the world John Wayne and Johnny Carson; you can visit their boyhood homes, if you'd like. Iowan Phil Stong wrote State Fair about the Iowa State Fair, and the book became a movie and Broadway play, though Iowans are miffed that the location was moved to Texas.
Iowan Meredith Willson wrote The Music Man, in which he wrote, accurately, that we Iowans are so "by-God stubborn we could stand touchin' noses for a week at a time and never see eye to eye." ("But,"the song adds, "We'll give you our shirt, and a back to go with it, if your crops should happen to die.")
And Iowan Richard Bissell gave Broadway The Pajama Game and gave the rest of us some wonderful books about the Mississippi River.
I say "Iowan" because most Iowans, asked where they are from, mention their home state, not their hometown. Except for those who are embarrassed at being Iowans. When asked where they are from, they say "outside Chicago."
Values shaped by the land
Iowa has everything that God and a longtime member of Congress named Neal Smith could provide. Contrary to popular belief, Iowa is a state of stunning beauty and of hills - as 10,000 to 20,000 people discover each year when they take a week off to ride their bikes across the state in a somewhat-organized event called Ragbrai - the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. This has been going on for more than 30 years.
But it is the land that has shaped Iowa and Iowans. The land is among the richest in the world, and still today nearly 90 percent of that land is in farms. The farms are getting bigger and fewer - the 92,500 farms average 352 acres - but many have been in the same families for more than a century.
It is this heritage that has bred into Iowans the values they so cherish and the characteristics that so distinguish them. The characteristics that Meredith Willson captures in The Music Man ("Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you, when we treat you, which we may not do at all.")
And the values embodied in the greatest Iowans of them all - Herbert Hoover, who all but saved Europe after World War I; Henry Wallace, who invented hybrid corn and offered that science throughout the world; and 90-year-old Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for spreading the "green revolution" to Asia, Africa and Latin America, preventing the starvation of millions.
Hoover, Wallace and Borlaug all had or have strong beliefs, but none ever let those beliefs stand in the way of saving lives of those who differed or of those in nations whose leaders differed.
"Twenty-million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they must be fed!" Hoover responded to a critic who thought his humanitarian work was aiding Bolshevism.
Hoover was an engineer, Wallace was a scientist and writer, and Borlaug - still traipsing throughout the world - is a farm boy who became a scientist and who has, by many accounts, saved more lives than any human being in history.
All would give you their shirt - and a back to go with it - if your crops should happen to die.
They are Iowans.
And that is Iowa.
- Michael Gartner, a native Iowan, is principal owner of the Iowa Cubs, a baseball team. Over the years, he has been editor of newspapers large and small and is a former president of NBC News. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
The top two annual festivals
here is nothing like the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. It is not the oldest - although it is celebrating its 150th anniversary this summer - or the largest, but it is the most famous. And the best. You could spend - and I have spent - a week watching the sheep shearers, the old-time fiddlers, the 4-H youths with their prize animals. You can eat your fill of corn dogs and pork sandwiches, have your weight guessed, and win a teddy bear. It's great fun.
This year's dates are Aug. 12-22. For more information, call 515 262-3111 or go to www.iowastatefair.com The tulip festival in Pella is pretty neat, too. Pella is a prosperous Dutch community - the home of the Pella Windows in your house - where tulips bloom in every yard, every park, every window. The downtown, with its working windmill and nifty canal, is a great place to stroll. The bakeries make something called Pella Letters that are so delicious they're close to sinful.
Iowa is a legendary place, but I know of no real, or phony, legends.
Three must-see places:
You must see the Field of Dreams in person, even if you've seen the movie 20 times. The Field is in northeast Iowa, the most beautiful part of the state, and visiting it has become almost a pilgrimage for many fans of the movie. There's just something about it.
The Field of Dreams movie site is in Dyersville, about 25 miles west of Dubuque and approximately 200 miles west of Chicago. It is open April to November. For more information, call toll-free 1-888-875-8404 or go to www.fieldofdreamsmoviesite.com/distance.html .
You must see the Law Library in the State Capitol in Des Moines. It's several levels high, with stacks of books surrounding a huge atrium. The curved, wrought-iron stairs, the railings, the mounds of books - I've always thought it would be a perfect place to film an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
The Law Library is generally open every day of the week, year-round, but is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. For more information, go to www.law.uiowa.edu/library/hours.php
You must see the New Melleray Abbey. It, too, is in northeast Iowa near Dubuque, and it is the home of Trappist monks. Its buildings and grounds are the most peaceful sites in the state, maybe anywhere, and there's no better place to sit and think, or just to sit.
These days, even Trappist monasteries have Web sites, and you can see and read about New Melleray at newmelleray.org. Or you can call (563) 588.2319.
Three places to avoid:
Interstate 35, running north from Des Moines to Minnesota, is boring.
Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino (slots only) in Des Moines is depressing.
Kinnick Stadium at the University of Iowa is crowded.
The best place to taste regional cooking:
The Amana Colonies, a communelike area of seven villages in eastern Iowa, has some great restaurants with wonderful German food. But if you want the best ice-cream in the state, drop by the old-fashioned soda fountain at Bauder's Pharmacy in Des Moines, where the proprietor makes the ice cream in the basement.
For more on the Amana Colonies, go to www.amanacolonies.com/welcome Bauder's is at 3802 Ingersoll Ave. Call 515 255-1124.
A famous native son or daughter:
As noted above, Herbert Hoover, Henry Wallace and Norman Borlaug are the greatest Iowans of all time. But at the moment, Ashton Kutcher is probably the most famous.
A sports fan might choose Bob Feller, an artist Grant Wood, a musician Glenn Miller or Bix Beiderbecke, a journalist Harry Reasoner, a librarian MacKinlay Kantor, a novelist Jane Smiley (well, she has moved on to California, but she won the Pulitzer Prize while teaching at Iowa State University). I'll stick with Hoover, Wallace and Borlaug.
A major problem residents face:
The brain drain is taking too many Iowans. They get great educations at Iowa's colleges and universities, but too many leave for places with mountains or oceans. It is probably not practical to put mountains or oceans in Iowa, but the state needs to build - and, in fact, is building - trails, lakes, arenas and other places to give the young people places to go and things to do.
The best joke we tell on ourselves or on our rival state:
An Iowa farmer won $10-million in the state lottery. The next day, a reporter asked him what he planned to do with the money. "Well," he replied, "the missus and I talked it over last night, and we agreed we'll just keep on farming till it's gone."
On the Web
Readers can find the articles in our series on the Louisiana Purchase, which ends this month, by going to the Web site www.sptimes.com/lapurchase There are links to the installments and interactive features.
