“You should come up and see Matt play football some Friday night” my brother Jack invited.  “Think he’d really appreciate it.”

In life, you have to learn to say no sometimes, but it is extremely hard saying no to a nephew.  Life is crazy, but you have to learn to make that time.

My nephew Mathew plays third grade flag football at the half time of high school footbacll games in the small town where my brother and sister-in-law live.  It is like one of hundreds of small towns around the country – and I’ve always believed the very model of Garrison Keilor’s hometown of Lake Wobegon.

Life tends to revolve family, community, church, and school.

Traffic out of the city was slow, a couple of accidents, and a couple of rain showers insured that, and I feared I wouldn’t make it in time for half time.  I traveled as legally and safely as prudent…more or less… and tried to enjoy the scenery as the transition from summer to fall continued.

By the time I made it off the interstate and onto the state highway, the sun was just dipping below the horizon, the fog was starting to form over the standing soybean fields and many lakes and sloughs, and every other town that I passed by had their football lights on – it was a Friday night.

I pulled into the little town with about ten minutes to spare.

Walking up to the ticket counter, the guy working it said, “We’ve already put the money box away, just make sure you buy something from the concession stand before you go.”

My sister-in-law and other nephew Nick were watching the game…well, my sister-in-law was watching the game, Nick, a Kindergartener, was playing football with other kids in the back of the end zone.  My Dad was there as well, sitting and watching the game.

It was a beautiful night for football.  The field was awash in the big lights that stood guard around the field and a big orange waning harvest moon hung in the deep blue sky.  The smell of corn drying in the fields mixed with the dampness of fall to make an aromatic scent, and last mosquito’s of summer were making their presence felt.

The third graders took the field as the players retired to the locker room and organized chaos ensued.  It was the maroon shirts versus the gold shirts and adults on either side were trying to keep these energetic young boys in line – like trying to make water go uphill.

But they played with spirit and gusto – and the fans appeared to be even more attentive to this younger crop of up and comers then they did to the high schoolers battling it out before and after this melee on the field.  In saying this, I mean no offense to the varsity team (though a score of 35-0 at the half will cause people to loose interest).  No, it was like people that liked to watch a train crash – part of it is just the wonder of the massive disorganization, part of it is just the morbid curiosity to see if anyone gets injured.  While it was a game of flag football, usually a tackle preceded the flag being ripped off the runner.

The two-minute warning was given, the third graders lined up to give the returning varsity players high-fives as they retook the field to their eventual defeat.

But it wasn’t a story of a small town high school football team being defeated that will stick in my mind, it is the story of the small town that was there cheering them on in spite of the loss.  It was the people cheering on the third grade football team at half time.  It was the sights and sounds of a piece of America that is still very much a live and well.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today)

As we whiz along the highways of Boone county, going from here to there, most of us are oblivious to what happens beyond the roadside.

In the spring and summer, the elegant, orderly rows of corn and soybeans are a pleasant, reassuring sight.  Their greenness reminds us that all is right again in the world that slept through a long winter.  As fall approaches, the browns and golds of dying crops add their hues to nature’s brilliant autumn display.  During the winter, bleak fields of stubbles do little to slow the biting wind and drifting snow.  We speed along behind icy windshields, wishing for the warmth of home.

Livestock populates the roadside, too.  One day we notice a herd of cattle grazing on an emerald hillside.  On another day we notice plump pigs shuffling along the fence of a hog lot, sniffing the wonderful scents of spring.  Later in the year, we see horses peeking from an open door to check winter’s chill air.

But Boone County’s fields are more than a changing backdrop to our daily comings and goings.  Those fields, barns, pastures and hog lots are the support of one of Boone’s oldest and most important industries.  Even as the first trains chugged out of the Des Moines River Valley, Boone’s County’s residents were farming, providing food for themselves and a growing nation.

How far have we come?

The most recent issue of Iowa Agriculture Statistics, published by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the U.S. Department of Agriculture gives us some idea.  In 1989, 331,300 acres of Boone County were part of 1,010 “farms” that produced more than $1000 in income.  The average size of those farms were 328 acres.

During the same year, Boone County farmers planted 137,000 acres of corn that yielded an average of 130.5 bushels per acre for a total production of nearly 17.7 million bushels.  Those farmers also planted 117,000 acres of soybeans that yielded an average of 41.5 bushels per acre for a total of more than 4.8 million bushels.

Boone County farmers marketed 181,000 hogs, 15,000 head of cattle and 2,200 sheep in 1989.

Those numbers tell us that agriculture is big business in Boone County, just as it is almost everywhere else in Iowa.

Area farmers buy fertilizer, seed, fuel, equipment and repair parts here.  Those purchases pump money into the local economy.  The businesses that provide supplies and services to Boone County’s farmers provide jobs for more people here than you might expect.  Those businesses and their employees also help keep Boone County’s economy healthy.

Central Iowa has a distinctly urban atmosphere when you compare it to most of the rest of Iowa.  Consequently, more of us work in jobs that may not be related to agriculture.  That’s why this week, National Agriculture Week, is a good time to recognize the importance of those fields and farmsteads that we pass so often.  For those of us here in Boone County, agriculture is more than the food we eat, it’s our bread and butter, too.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in Fall, 1987)

I smell fall on the evening wind now.

As I walk in the darkness, I shiver for the first time in months.  There is a smell of frosts-to-come on the wind.

Boone is quieter at night now that school has started.  Only a few cars blink their lights and growl along on Story Street.  The stars glimmer overhead and the trees rustle their leaves.

That quiet wind in the darkness brings a flush to my cheeks.  Hands plunged deep in my pockets, I quicken my pace.

I smell plowed earth on the air- black and cold.  There is an aroma of dry leaves there too- dry and old.  It’s the odor of the land preparing for sleep.

Is that the wind?  Or is it a tractor and corn chopper singing a mournful evening song?  In that wind there’s a smell of tall corn chopped and piled where it heats and steams and rots.  It’s the smell of silage for the winter.

An odor of hot oil and diesel fuel floats on the wind.  It is smell of men and machines working too long for scant harvest.  Somewhere in the wind a combine crawls through a barren and ravaged bean field.  Brilliant headlights slice through the dark searching for scarce beans.  Grasshoppers and spider-mites were there first to smell autumn on the wind.

Elsewhere a tractor turns the dirt, destroying the remnants of this year’s destroyed crop with optimism for next year.

There is a smell of a dusty road.  In the darkness there, boys who are beginning to look like men grow cold as they sip cheap bear that grows warm.  The rustling of dry grass in dark ditches mimics young male voices boasting of things past and promising things to come.  Where does the wind find those voices tonight?

Can the wind see the furtive glances that look with equal panic for parents, patrol cars or girls who are beginning to look like women?   Can it see the shy glances flashed back and forth in the dim glow of the dashboard?  Or the first kiss exchanged between young cold lips in the dark along that dark dusty road?

In that evening wind there is a smell of warm Indian Summer days.  It is the smell of a hot sun on red and orange leaves.  It’s the smell of heavy white frost melting on brown grass.  And there is the odor of steam rising in the cold dawn from a lake that holds the remnants of August heat in its waters.

Roasting marshmallows, campfire smoke and burning leaves float on that cool wind.  The wind gently blows water onto the shore until its gurgling repeats the stories of small boys.  It repeats their talk of cowboys, Indians and astronauts and exploring the big woods around the streaming lake.

In that wind there is a chill of winter.  It carries a hint of deep snows and hard ice.  The wind smells of the cold that will cut my lungs soon.  There is an odor of winter sleep and cold deadly tranquility.  I enjoy the odors of the fall evening wind, but I am glad to reach my door.  I go inside to the constant aroma of indoor life.  There are odors of heat and light and life.

But I am better for having smelled the fall.

I love my family, and my family loves me.  But sometimes, especially when it comes to navigating the back roads around home, we just can’t seem to communicate.”That wheat field by the Hoffman place isn’t running very well this year,” Dad said.

“Where is that?”  I ask.

“You know, the old Hoffman place just down the road.”  He says mildly irritated.

“Oh, you mean across from the hayfield.”  I say.

“There hasn’t been hay in that field for 15 years.”  Dad says with disgust.

“Dad, the tornado took the Hoffman place back in ‘72, that was thirty-five years ago and three years before I was born.”

My older brother chimes in, “I think it was in ‘78 not ‘72 that the old Hoffman place blew away.”

“It was not.”  My Dad says, “The OLD Hoffman place was over on the other side of Highway 200.  We are talking about the NEW Hoffman place across from the hayfield.”

“When did the Hoffman’s live on the other side of Highway 200?”  My brother asks.

“They didn’t move to the new place until ‘42.” Dad says, “don’t you kids know anything?”

“Wait, I thought the place up on the Slette road (not the official road name) was the new Hoffman place.” I said.

“No, that is the old EC farm, that is where Hoffman moved too after the tornado took his farm.”  Dad said.

“Yeah, didn’t you even know that,” my brother says rolling his eyes at my lack of local geography.

“Sorry I don’t know the specific location of where every farm has been located for the last eighty years.”  I shoot back.

“A masters degree and the boy (i.e. me) doesn’t even know his geography” my Dad shakes his head.  “Don’t they teach you kids anything in school any more?”

“My master’s degree is in economics, not local history and geography.” I reply.

“Don’t get smart with Dad.”  My brother glares at me.

“One minute you guys say I need an education, the next you are saying don’t get smart.” I shoot back at my brother.

“How you kids ever made it off the farm with both of you having a lack of direction and landmarks I’ll never know.”  My Dad says sadly.

Saturday was the perfect fall day in Northwestern Minnesota.Following the meandering Wild Rice River from Mahnomen, through the little hamlet of Faith, on to Twin Valley - then veering south past the underground church in Syre, into Ulen, and finally the back roads into Hawley was at times like being transported into the middle of the stereotypical New England fall with country church spires reaching up through the verdant leaves of early autumn as the still green mixed with the reds, yellows and brown of autumn.

My timing isn’t usually this good.

It seems ages since I’ve seen this transition occur.  Some years my timing is just off and I’m unable to make it back into the home country for the turning of the colors.  Some years, a hard frost followed by a good stiff wind that the plains are famous for make the transition from summer to fall to winter all to brief.

But this year was different.  The colors were just about perfect, not quite their peak, but close enough.

As I drove through the country side taking in what could be the last warm days of the fall, looking at the ripening corn and soybeans still sitting in the field and the wheat stubble in various stages of tillage and regrowth, I reminded myself just how lucky I am.

My health is good and getting better.   My family is all doing well and I would be lucky enough to see the vast majority of them over the course of the short weekend.  Life, while extremely crazy with work and extracurricular activities were keeping me running sixteen hours a day, was fast, fun, but very rewarding.  I was off to see my eldest brother and his family for a short visit then to spend the evening with some very good friends, watching football, rehashing old memories, and finally watching another of my very good friends perform an acoustic musical show.

Sometimes, it is easy to lose perspective on life.  We get bogged down in the big things - economic collapse, frustrating jobs, people we have lost, the bills that need to be paid.  Or sometimes even the little things - the presentation at work, the gossip from the coffee shop, the slight from the friend.

Spending time with my brothers and my dad, teasing my nieces and nephews, talking with my friends from college - those are the things to hold on too, those are the things to remember, those are the things to remember and lift us onward and upwards.  Those are the things that matter.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today November 11, 1987)

My wife and I went up to Minnesota last week.  You know, home of the homer-domer and home of the World Champion Minnesota Twins.

In case you didn’t know, we are both natives of the Gopher State.  I don’t want sympathy or anything, but moving to the Tall Corn State has been pretty dramatic for us.

There is the animosity toward the University of Minnesota Gophers.  And most Iowans seem to think the temperature drops 25 degrees as you cross the Minnesota-Iowa border.

There is also the misconception held by Iowans that Minnesotans have a lower level of intelligence.

Given all of that, no wonder my wife and I have developed a Minnesota complex.  We found ourselves denying our birth land.  “We are going north for the weekend,”we would say.  “Minnesota?” folks would ask in disbelief.  “No,….Boxholm.”

Then along came the Twins.  As is typical of Iowans, no one really thought the Twins would do too well.  I admit their past performances certainly didn’t give any indication of greatness.  Nobody thought they could win anything this year.  Folks called them the “twinkies.”

Then, all of a sudden, the Twins were in the pennant race.  Almost magically, Minnesota Twins fans were popping out of cornfields allover here.  Some of the very same people who ridiculed us were walking around saying, “How about those Twins!”

We thought it was some kind of trick.

Then the Twins were in the World Series and practically everybody we knew was rooting for the Twins or the Cardinals.  Even the people who had earlier admitted that they wouldn’t be caught dead in Minnesota were chanting, “Win Twins.”

We were suddenly greatly confused.  Confused, but happy that people were suddenly recognizing Minnesota as a state and not just a state of confusion.

Still, we thought, this must be some kind of trick.  Folks from Boone rooting for the Minnesota Twins.  Naw.  Can’t be.  It was kind of nice though.

We realize that some of you out there probably were Twins fans even when they were in last place.  And some you probably haven’t told a Minnesota joke…. ever, but you are the minority.

Now we’re waiting for all the hubbub to die down.  We know that sooner or later it’s not going to be OK to be from Minnesota anymore.  All you native Iowans will go back to your nasty little Minnesota jokes and we’ll have to fold up our homer hankies and put them away so that we are not conspicuous.

Maybe we should organize a Minnesota transplant support group.  There must be others out there who are feeling downtrodden and persecuted.

Aside from all that, Iowa’s all right.  But did you hear the one about two Iowans who were walking down a country road…..

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the fall of 1988)

Although it’s no fault of my own, my wife hates me.

I can see it burning in her eyes and I can sense it when she talks.  It’s kind of fun.

Don’t misunderstand.  We’re not in divorce court or anything like that.  Most of the time she loves me and I love her.  But sometimes I drive her crazy without even trying.

When we go shopping around town together, I’m invariably recognized by people who have seen the photograph that accompanies this column in the paper each week.  “Say, you’re the guy that writes for the paper.  What a pleasure to meet you,” an attractive young female will say with a coy but dazzling smile.  Of course I have to chat for time.  I wouldn’t want to disappoint my fans.

“Say, we can’t go anywhere without you being recognized, ” my wife will growl sarcastically with a not-so-coy, but frightening scowl.

Earlier this summer I went to the doctor for my annual physical.  It’s the first annual physical I’ve had since 1982 so Mary and I were both a little curious about what the doctor was going to say.  He told me I was doing OK, except for the spare tire I beginning to develop.  “Just do a little more exercise.” He said and sent me on my way.

Mary and I were both satisfied with that.  Then I mentioned the cholesterol test.  We were to receive the results in the mail in a week or so.

“Aha!”  Mary said victoriously at the news.   “Now you’re going to get it.  All those French fries.  All those greasy hamburgers.  All those dairy products you eat.  They’re going to come back to haunt you now,” she gloated.  “Your cholesterol level is going to be so high they’re going to need an elevator to read it!  The doctor’s going to put you on a diet so strict you won’t know what hit you!”  She said gleefully.

After three or four days of her dire predictions, I began to get worried.  I began wolfing down eggs and fatty meat in anticipation of the impending diet.  Then the test results arrived.

My cholesterol level was below normal.  “Keep up the good dietary habits!” Was penciled in across the bottom of the page of test results.

Mary only scowled at the good news.  She didn’t say a civil word to me for about a week.

Early one morning not long ago, I was nabbed for speeding by one of Boone’s finest.   The officer had me cold.  I was doing 45 in a 30-mile-per-hour zone.  There was no denying my guilt.

“Serves you right!” Mary said upon hearing the news.  “Maybe you’ll learn to slow down one of these days.  How much is this going to cost us?  $25? $35? $40?” She demanded.

“Nothing,” I said with a grin.  “But he did give me a very stern warning.”

That really flustered her.  Her eyes were flashing with anger.  Her face was red.  She could hardly speak.  “Oh!” She finally muttered.  “Oh, You’re such a scum!”  She fumed as she stomped off.

It’s so nice to be loved.  And she’s so darn cute when she fumes.

Life is a bit of a blur.  It seems like the more you expect life to start slowing down, the more it speeds up.  The last three weeks, there has been a meeting, appointment, or gathering with friends every night - and more often then not, two functions a night and a couple of mad dashes home or across town to see the new nephew.Life has been crazy.

Last Thursday, I rushed from work to a meeting, stopped at home for a quick bit to eat, changed clothes and was rushing out the door for the next one when a smell stopped me in my tracks.

I don’t think it was there when I walked inside only an hour before, but it was very familiar.

I did a quick check list in my head:

            Natural Gas? Nope.

            Skunk? Nope.

            Grill? Nope.

            Wood fire? Nope.

            Manure? Nope.

I sat on my step, the smell was so familiar and yet so unusual, it stopped me in my tracks.  It was like a friend that you hadn’t seen in a while and were really happy to see…but couldn’t quite place her name.

I sat there for a minute or two breathing in that wonderful smell.

Then it hit me - fall had arrived.  It was that musty, earthy smell of drying leaves, settling dust, and ripening crops.  The outward signs weren’t there yet - the grass still shown green, the trees still had on their summer coats, the flowers still bloomed, but there was no mistaking it, fall announced its arrival.  The smell was back and the rest would follow.

On Friday as I drove north to my Dad’s farm, the sumac on the sides of the road was already turning.  The farther north that I drove, the more the trees were showing the unmistakable signs of turning, the corn and beans were rushing towards ripeness, and the fallow ground that only a month before held wheat standing in the hot August sun was giving off the earthy smell of fallow ground and fall.

Saturday and Sunday were marked with a cold but persistent rain…a good fall soaking…and while the temperatures are up in the 70’s this week, the bright harvest moon is shining on us every night, the trees are showing us their brighter hues, the geese are singing to us as the pass us heading south to warmer climates, and natures slow but beautiful shuffle to fall continues unabated.

Welcome Fall, we hope you stick around a spell before Old Man Winter pushes you out of the way.

I am a punctual person.Growing up, if we were not at least half an hour early, our family would consider ourselves late.  To church, ball games, civic meetings, luncheons, helping neighbors, anything we were not thirty minutes early we considered a black mark against our character that would reflect on ourselves, our parents and at least ten generations on both sides of the family tree.

That is why I was horrified by the unthinkable on Tuesday night…I missed an appointment.

I am becoming citified and joined a health club.  Part of the services are nutrition coaching.  The nutritionalist that I’m seeing is fantastic - she has a great attitude and a realistic sense of what is possible (for a single guy that likes his meat and beer).

Horror of horrors, a meeting that I had on my calendar for Thursday was really suppose to be Tuesday and I missed it.

How can you apologize to someone for completely missing a meeting, making your relatives roll over in their graves, and jepaordize my good name?

A top ten list of course….

Top Ten Reasons I missed my appointment with the nutritionalist on Tuesday night:

10. We all have to do our part to make “The Local” the number one purveyor of Jameson Whiskey in the world.

9. Was worried about all the security now that my nutritionalist is a board certified.

8. Wanted to see if nutritionalist really meant it when she said “You better not quit now ‘or else.’”

7.  With the stock market crash, I was hovering on a ledge, ready to jump, when neighbor pointed out ledge was only a two foot retaining wall.

6.  In memory of grandfather who fought in World War One, I was attacking a German…chocolate cake…

5.  Really meant to show up, but forgot in the drunken stupor.

4. Meet with nutritionalist OR have Murray’s Silver Butterknife Steak - 28 oz. Strip Sirloin that you can cut with a spoon, done medium rare, smoothered in butter, with mash potatoes and creamed corn and a big side of cardiac arrest (http://www.murraysrestaurant.com/home.html)

3. Stuck in time warp like in the movie Ground Hog Day - missed appointment, but can now play piano.

2.  Duties as the newest Godfather in the largest Czechoslovakia crime family in Mahnomen County where too overwhelming.  Even though family is the only Czechoslovakian family in Mahnomen County.  And we don’t really do crime. 

1. I whiffed and thought the appointment was on Thursday night.

My family may not for give or forget this misconduct…but at least if missing the appointment doesn’t scandalize them, the poor sense of humor surely will.

If you walk into the St. Michael’s Church and go to the second to the last pew, you can inspect the wood.  You will see a spot that has been worn down by a single thumb print.  Week after week, month after month, year after year, the same thumb, the same spot.  Standing up, sitting down, the same hand grasped the end of the pew in front and left that thumb print.  Not on purpose, but the slow gradualness of time has slowly worn down the finish and the wood underneath.My father has attended services at St. Michael’s for most of his seventy-nine years.  He had a couple of years in the army and a couple of years living and working in the city.  But since 1963, almost every Sunday, you could find him in that second to the last pew.

For most of his seventy-nine years, my father has also served as one of the ushers.  Even he has lost count, but he knows it is more then sixty, and he is pretty sure it is darn close to sixty-five.

Every week, taking up collection, walking with the baskets up and down the aisles, taking gifts up when no families were selected, handing out bulletins at the back of church, greeting people as they filed out each week, cleaning up the pews after the service, and finally - on Easter and Christmas especially, finding a place for people to sit when the church was too packed.

With no pay, no recognition, and only the satisfaction of a job well done serving neighbors, his church, and his faith, Dad did his job with a quiet sense of joy.

But all that changed - whickered, errr….whisked away by a change in the baskets.

The old baskets were just that, old.  In use since probably the 1970’s (or earlier) they were the standard church collection baskets - wicker basket with a long wicker handle.  For the traditional church (with sometimes sparse attendance especially during the early service or during some of the special Masses), they worked exceptionally well.

But with a new minister came new ideas and one of them was new collection baskets.  With no handles, these baskets had to be passed down the rows.

My Dad really likes the new minister and most of the changes he has made.  While my Dad is old fashioned, he is really a common sense, level headed guy. 

Which is why he hates the new baskets.

“What happens when there is only one person sitting in a pew?  What happens when there are two are three or ten empty rows?  When happens when someone is sitting in the middle of the pew with no one around them?”  He’ll say.

Then he comes and visits his children and their varied parishes “They still use the baskets with the handles in Ohio.  They still use the baskets with the handles at that big Basilica in Minneapolis.  They still use the baskets with the handles in the little country church east of town.  Why can’t they use them at St. Mike’s?”  He’ll ask.

Dad loves his church, loves the priest, but was waging a quiet guerrilla campaign against the new baskets.

Going to church with Dad this last weekend, he decided enough was enough.  He gave up his normal pew for one half way up to the front.

“They won’t come this far up to get me to usher this week.”  He said, “Plus my emphazema is bothering me.”

Oh, but they came…but not for Dad…

I felt a tap on my shoulder, “We need you to help take up the collection,” one of the ushers quietly whispered in my ear.

So away I went.

I took up the collection, took up the gifts, handed out bulletins, and help clean up church afterwards.

As we got into the car after church, I said to Dad, “Well, your plan didn’t work so well today.”

“What are you talking about?” He said with a smile, “I didn’t have to usher.”