Farming in Mason "Fucking" City, Iowa

Farming is an art and best done by people born and raised on a farm. Not by this Jew from the Bronx, living in a small town where the people there hated me for my loud, aggressive, abrasive, belligerent voice and personality. But it was a fair trade, I didn't think a whole hell of a lot of them either.

In Mason Fucking City, Iowa the Catholics went with the Catholics, the Methodists with the Methodists, and the Jews with the Jews, etc. That was then broken down with the rich going with the rich, and the poor going with the poor. And never those lines to be crossed. As a result, you were relegated to a very small social circle. The only good thing about it was that I was able to piss everyone off but we were stuck with one another.

Sitting on a tractor going up an down rows plowing corn, milking cows, having chickens (those filthy little things), vaccinating hogs, driving a dyeing bull to Ames, going to livestock auctions where every one smelled as I did of horse shit and other farm smells, was both boring and annoying. Losing my ass was really boring, but it did keep me on edge. The only things that kept me going were my kids, my liquid protection (booze) and the growing white hot bond of anger between my wife and myself. My wife and I became so pissed off at one another that we got a ton of mileage out of the mutual anger. Additionally, I enjoyed telling the residents of that arm pit of America to suck eggs, fuck off and generally drop dead which allowed me to act like a New Yorker and enjoy myself. Between my wife making me take a shower before I could come into the house (she complained that I smelled really bad. Sadly it was true) and telling my father-in-law to stick his money up his ass, I was at least able to keep my blood boiling day and night and get some enjoyment out of life.

Ah, but the weather! Iowa is a place for weather masochists. In our first winter there, we never saw the sun from early November into February. The farmers say that "It makes for a long winter when the snow never leaves the ground"...every winter in Iowa was very long. Geez, I can't believe that I spent four tortuous long years there.