From an Iowa Funeral
April 21, 2011, By Craig J. Heimbuch 10 comments
I had been looking forward to this meal for 450 miles. I had memories of it, the last time I came through. My wife, sons and I stopping on our way to visit relatives in North Iowa. It had been a long day in the van. The kids were being good, but restless. With more than three hours left to drive, we couldn't face another back-lit drive-thru. We couldn't handle any more crinkling bags. We stopped not on any recommendation or prior knowledge, but on intuition. Gramma's Kitchen, across the road from Iowa 80—the World's Largest Truck Stop—about 50 miles from Iowa City and our turn north to my dad's hometown. The meal was excellent—broasted chicken and real mashed potatoes. Iced tea and water served in Bell jars, a salad bar so fresh we thought it might have been plucked, picked and dug up from a garden out back. It instantly became family lore.
I remembered the chicken, the potatoes, the iced tea in the homey jars. I had been remembering that meal all the way across Indiana and Illinois, over the miles and through the previous two days; the days since I heard the news that my uncle had died suddenly at home, ever since I had decided to drive to Iowa by myself for the funeral. It seemed somehow important that I stop there. I had told my uncle last summer about our favorite meal and he knew Gramma's Kitchen. He was a fan. He recommended next time I come through to stop again and make sure I try pork tenderloin. That was the way he was. The guy who stopped at every roadside Mom and Pop, the guy who talked to waitresses until he knew their life story and until he had taught them something—anything, from local history to the mechanics of a Minneapolis Moline tractor.
He was just that way.
The oldest of the nine children on my dad's side, my uncle was the patriarch after my grandfather died. I was only eight then, so my uncle filled in the places in my memory where grandpas usually roam. He was always the first to great me when I came town. After I chose journalism as a career path, he would constantly goad me to come take over some small, dusty weekly in Iowa that was looking for an editor. He knew about them. He searched them out for the express purpose of goading me. Even though I was born in Wisconsin and lived in Ohio, I was too eastern. The country would do me some good—make a man out of me.
I thought about that as I peeled the meat off the crispy, broasted chicken breast. Tenderloin wasn't on the menu. I thought about the times he'd tell me about a distant relative and how they learned to speak English or about the time he slept in the cab of a pick-up truck for four days in Minnesota so that he could apply agricultural chemicals to a distant soybean field. I thought about the first time I came out to Iowa on my own, with my wife and oldest son. He was already at another uncle's house—where we were staying. The meal was already prepared. After everyone else greeted us, he stood up and said, cryptically:
"Well?"
"Yes, thank you. And you?" I asked.
"No, well, what does you think?"
"Um," I demured. "I think it's nice to be here."
"What do you smell?"
There were ribs on the grill, the smoke wafting into the mid-summer air thick with moisture, heat and black Iowa soil.
"Smoke?" I ventured.
"What kind?"
"Hot?" Weak, I know.
"It's applewood," he said with a 'city boys don't know anything' dismissal. Then he shook my hand and hugged my wife.
He was just that way.
I thought about that when contemplating pie. I thought about how he probably knew the waitress. He certainly knew which county I was in, the county seat and at least five people with farms in a ten-mile radius. In the semi-urban, Malcolm Gladwell world in which I live, my uncle would be considered a 'connector.' But he was just a curious man. Interested in anything he came across. An historian, a craftsman, an artist, a country chef and storyteller. He was also a teacher, physicist and businessman. You could call him Renaissance, but he'd resent it. You could call him a lot of pretty names, but he'd wave them all off, dismiss them. He was just who he was.
I told my aunt, his wife, about my dinner thoughts the next day at the funeral home. She said, yes, he probably would have known the waitress, would have known her life story. I hugged her, tears breaking from my eyes.
"You've always been so good to me," I told her. "I don't think I've ever thanked you for that."
"It's easy to be good to good people," she said, her eyes dry, her grace evident. "We've always believed in loving good people, honorable people, with all our heart."
I realized there were people waiting to talk to her and for the first time turned around to look at the line, the procession, of people waiting to pay their respects. It wrapped around the parlor, through the lobby and out into the crisp spring air. It would stay that way—long and unyielding—for more than three hours. Hundreds upon hundreds of people come to say goodbye to my uncle. They all have similar stories, memories of a way he'd touched their lives.
My sister put her arm around me. She put her head on my shoulder as we watched our cousins—similar in age, close in childhood to us—say their goodbyes. "It's a shame," she said, "that he didn't get to see this. It's a shame that, when you die, you don't get to see all the people who loved you."
She's right. It is a shame. But then, with my Uncle Don, he saw it his whole life. He saw how good people can be, not as a rosy optimist, but as a connector, a person present in every moment in his life that left an impression on the lives of others. The next day, a late April snowstorm blanketed the fields and rolling hills and I knew it was him, telling us all not to be too sad, not to feel a loss, but to take time and appreciate the small things.
As I drove back home, I stopped again at Gramma's Kitchen. Only this time, I didn't focus on my memories of Don. I focused on his legacy. I talked to the waitress. Her name was Kathy, with a K.
I asked her to tell me her story.
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