Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 4
IN THE MORNING I crossed the Mississippi at Quincy; somehow it didn't look as big or
majestic as I had remembered it. It was stately. It was imposing. It took whole minutes to
cross. But it was also somehow flat and dull. This may have had something to do with the
weather, which was likewise flat and dull. Missouri looked precisely the same as Illinois,
which had looked precisely the same as Iowa. The only difference was that the car license
plates were a different color.
Near Palmyra, I stopped at a roadside cafe for breakfast and took a seat at the counter. At
this hour, just after eight in the morning, it was full of farmers. If there is one thing farmers
sure do love it is to drive into town and spend half a day (a whole day in winter) sitting at a
counterwithabunchofotherfarmersdrinkingcoffeeandteasingthewaitressinahalf-assed
sort of way. I had thought that this was the busiest time of their year, but they didn't seem
to be in any rush. Every once in a while one of them would put a quarter on the counter, get
up with the air of a man who has just loaded six gallons of coffee into his belly, tell Tammy
not to do anything he wouldn't do, and depart. A moment later we would hear the grip of
his pickup truck's wheels on the gravel drive, someone would say something candid abouT
him, provoking appreciative laughter, and the conversation would drift lazily back to hogs,
state politics, Big Eight football and-when Tammy was out of earshot-sexual predilections,
not least Tammy's.
The farmer next to me had only three fingers on his right hand. It is a little-noticed fact that
most farmers have parts missing off them. This used to trouble me when I was small. For
a long time I assumed that it was because of the hazards of farming life. After all, farmers
deal with lots of dangerous machinery. But when you think about it, a lot of people deal
with dangerous machinery, and only a tiny proportion of them ever suffer permanent injury.
Yet there is scarcely a farmer in the Midwest over the age of twenty who has not at some
time or other had a limb or digit yanked off and thrown into the next field by some noisy
farmyard implement. To tell you the absolute truth, I think farmers do it on purpose. I think
working day after day beside these massive threshers and balers with their grinding gears
and flapping fan belts and complex mechanisms they get a little hypnotized by all the noise
and motion. They stand there staring at the whirring machinery and they think, “I wonder
what would happen if I just stuck my finger in there a little bit.” I know that sounds crazy.
Butyouhavetorealize thatfarmersdon'thaveawholelotofsenseinthesematters because
they feel no pain. It's true. Every day in the Des Moines Register you can find a story about
a farmer who has inadvertently torn off an arm and then calmly walked six miles into the
nearest town to have it sewn back on. The stories always say, “Jones, clutching his severed
