Iowa

Sweet corn, humidity, farmers with overalls and seed company hats, cold winters and hotter than hell summers. Pigs and corn, corn and pigs. Rows of both that you can see or smell for miles around.
Sometimes you see both at once; the corn on one side of the road and the pigs on the other, inside some semi as their ears flap in the wind hanging out the holes in the truck. On their way to become bacon most likely.
People get stuck here. They grow up here and they might leave for awhile, but in the end as they get older they always come back. Like some dilapidated rubber band that doesn't quite snap anymore. They slowly make their way back here. They stay in one of the thousand nursing homes this state has and they die, but they always come back.
It's not just because we have one of the best education systems, although that's what people will tell you. And it's not because Iowa has any special claim to financial fortune or big time business.

Some say it's because of the people.

The ones that everyone else would call naïve on the surface because they would rather think that the whole world still believes as they do.
My father is one of these people. He knows what men are really like. But he prefers to assume they're just like him until they prove him wrong.
He has an affliction. My mother and I call it "never met a stranger." He can walk up to any person on the street and have a full conversation with them without ever knowing their name or anything about them until that point. Not only can he do this, he does do this.
It used to bother me. It doesn't any more. Maybe that's because Iowa is finally starting to affect me as well. Or maybe it's because the older I get the more I realize that I'm interested in other people. No matter who you go up to on the street and start talking to they always have at least one interesting story. And people are more than happy to talk about themselves. More so in Iowa than anywhere else and especially those people who have been here forever. They have the best stories, and they're always willing to tell them because at sometime in their experiences they have learned that there is information we need to know that only they can impart to us. It therefore becomes our duty to listen to whatever choice tidbit of information about Iowa in the good ole' days.
As they're telling you this crucial piece of the puzzle of life you come to one of the most important realizations about Iowa. It never changes.
Sure the towns grow and shrink and new people move in. But as a whole, Iowa stays as unmoved by today’s society as it has always been.
And maybe that, more than anything, is the reason why people stay.

Dobak

There is no real way to describe the feelining of sweat dripping down into the small of your back right above the waistline of your dobak. The puddle that forms along the elastic spreads out until it is absorbed by the small part of the fabric that is not yet soaked. At the end of practice you peel off the now see-through garment and drop it into a pool on the floor swearing you could squeeze a cup of water from it.
The fan in the locker room sends chills down your spine as it cools the sweat on your bare back. You tarry not wanting to dress until you've cooled down more and you envy those with enough time to shower before future obligations.
crisp white cotton, wrinkled and soaked with sweat. Time to buy some bleach...