To get to Independence, Iowa, you take the Northwest Tollway toward Rockford, connect with U.S. Highway 20 in Cherry Valley and then head west through Freeport, Eleroy, Woodbine, Galena. The rolling hills play on your emotions-from Chicago you feel relief, peace, depression, despair. At Dubuque you cross the Mississippi-it will look small-and from there you have a straight shot. This drops you deep into the Corn Belt, where Christian radio’s the only thing on the dial, where the gulping space makes you realize just how big America is. By Winthrop the houses look like props, randomly placed and exposed. You can drown in the emptiness out here–especially if you’re single, especially at night. People do.
Just north on Iowa Highway 150 though-past the abandoned barn, past the cemetery, past Blands and Norby’s Farm Fleet-is the Independence Falcon Civic Center, an awkward looking, cheaply raised building, and there the parking lot is full. Dennis Trumblee is in from Kansas. Mel Bridgewater, from Indiana. Rene Hudson even trucked in from Savannah, Ga. This Saturday is the “Singles in Agriculture Post Belated New Year’s Cowabungee Bash,” and Bill Malvin, president of the Iowa Chapter of Singles in Agriculture–SIA to those in the know–is greeting folks as they walk in.
“Looking for registration?” he calls to a 40ish man in a flannel shirt, eyes riveted to the floor as only a first-timer’s could be. “It’s right past them cow balloons.”
Malvin, 50ish, recently retired from dairy farming, turns and runs a hand through his hair. SIA prides itself on offering an “extended family atmosphere.” People do things like drive two hours each way on a Thursday night to spend three hours celebrating a birthday at a pricey restaurant in Peru, Ill. There’s an elemental quality to it-a human need to congregate and be known. Just now, in fact, in the Falcon Center, Malvin is greeting Ed and Mary, a married couple who met through SIA; saying hello to Pam Fgeld, head of the Illinois delegation; laughing to himself.
“Lemme tell you something. I got my suitcase locked in the car right now. Last year, I went home from one of these things to do some chores and when I came back my underwear was all tied up in knots.”
Back in the gym is a folding sign-in table where members, more than 200 at this point, pick up their name tags-red for newcomers, blue for regulars-and revel in the warmth of bodies until the festivities begin. Women arrive in everything from floor-length sequin dresses to jeans and cowboy boots. Men sport scars from cheek to jowl, too much cologne, bolo ties. It’s a crazed, illogical sight by city standards-all these adults in incoherent clothing, having driven two-, three-, four hundred miles to spend the weekend in, at best, an underwhelming place. But for Lisa Lincoln-a divorced mom, a former farm wife, a descendent of Abe–and Steve Menke, 33, never married, lone farmer of 800 acres, full-time job on the side–and for other rural singles like them–this driving, this organization, is a sensical, perhaps even heroic, response to the situation they face.
“It’s not so easy to meet people when you live out in the sticks,” Lincoln says, handing out Fabulous Four business cards that feature her name and the names of three other women, though at this point two have found boyfriends and been x-ed out. “Plus, I mean, we’re farmers. We’re weird. While the girls in town are listening to rock radio, we’re listening to WGN to hear the farm report.”
SIA, in a sense, is a group of misfits-rural people in an urban country, single folks in the quintessential family values site. The whole organization got its start from what through urban eyes looks like a failure to throw up self-protective walls. (In August 1984 Meg Gaige, a contributing editor at Farm Journal, wrote an article about bachelors in McLeod County, Minn., entitled “Finding a Mate Got You Buffaloed?,” ending the piece with an offer for single readers to send in a short descriptions of themselves.) But here in the heartland, in context, the group popped up from what can be described only as a pressing need. In response to her invitation, Gaige received over 3,000 bios in the mail. Some were scribbled on seed corn notepads, others, on hand-watercolored postcards. Somewhat reluctantly, Farm Journal published the Rural Singles Directory, a follow-up article full of happy endings (the first marriage was within a month) and then bowed out of the yeoman yenta business. Marcella Spindler of Stacyville, Iowa, however, took on the burden. She put out an offer to organize a singles’ weekend, and from that, SIA was born.
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“Food’s up!”
In the gym, after grace, there is dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, rolls, Pepsi, cherry cheesecake, like some bastardized Thanksgiving homecoming, which is exactly what it is. Fgeld fills a Styrofoam plate, seats herself near the center of one of the four basketball-court-length, plastic-covered tables. She starts cruising for old faces and eyeballing the new.
“You know,” she says, placing a fallen chocolate Hershey’s Hug back into one of the centerpiece’s plastic champagne cups, “I drove two guys drove down here in my car and in other crowds they just wouldn’t fit in.”
She winks at Steve Kolbert, who has attended 52 SIA events and missed only three in the past three years, and Gearhart Mohr, who is awkward but good-natured and always, always late.
“This group is so healing for so many people. A lot of these folks, before they find SIA, they’re in bondage.
“Steve Kolbert, once he came to an activity, it was like someone let him out of a cage; you couldn’t put him back in that cage. He couldn’t get enough of the social contact, the warmth. He could not stay home.”
Everyone eats quickly. Big cow-shaped balloons from the American Dairy Council hang overhead.
“Let me start with the good news first,” Malvin says, beginning the after-dinner announcements. “Those people who aren’t here tonight, I wonder why? A couple of engagements. . . .”
Barnyard noises erupt. The lucky couples stand for their applause. Next comes the series of state reps, inviting everyone to come on up to the mega mall in Minnesota, spend a few days at the “How to Beat Cabin Fever” weekend in Grundy Center, Iowa. After that, Fgeld makes a plea for the Waltz Across Texas National Convention in Galveston, closing with the caveat, “Guys, don’t let me sit in a chair tonight. I don’t like that.”
Still it’s Ed, a single guy a few seats down–youngish, tends 700 acres and 100 cows with his mom, a guy clearly on the make, though private like most everybody else–who lays the skinny out plain. There’s no drinking here tonight. No bed hopping, either.
Practical jokes are encouraged. A woman driving home from one of these events once got pulled over for a traffic violation; police found her in the company of an inflatable man doll.
But if you’ve only got a little practicality in you, save it for matters of the heart.
“Out here you gotta be pragmatic,” Ed says, starting to break down tables to make room for the evening’s dance. “Without Singles in Agriculture, there’s no chance of meeting people. My senior prom night, I was planting corn.”
Now, of course, Ed’s got the 10th Anniversary Farm Journal Directory–the magazine gave in to matchmaking pressure and in 1994 printed a second edition–as well as quarterly books of resumes, as Malvin calls them, printed by SIA. The resumes, like the group, are an eccentric olio of the forthright, childish and pioneer-esque. From a man in Dalton City: “5’7″, 150 lbs., bald. Divorced. Active farmer. 1,200 acres.” From a non-smoker with Christian values: “Occupation: farmer. Hobby: farming. Ha!” And from SWF, 44, OH: “Want a wife who would help your farm operation succeed? Would be a valuable asset–can cook, sew, patch, garden, preserve food as well as provide loyalty, physical and moral support, and most importantly, love. . . . Currently helping produce hybrid seed corn. Can relocate for the right man.”
From all corners you get this sense that being single is as much a liability as a marital status.
“Farming Is a Family Activity!” chirps Farm Bureau Facts, the country’s official organ. “If you live on a farm by yourself, you have only about half of what most people have,” kicks in Dennis Vercler, Illinois Farm Bureau director of information. To make matters worse, the midwest touts as many farmers over 70 as under 35, and SIA members can’t really count on luring new recruits. According to the latest Farm Census, 27.3 percent of Americans live in rural areas. A scant 1.9 percent live on farms. Illinois, the sixth largest farming state, has 77,610 farms (compared with 109,892 in 1977). And due to a 12.6 percent decrease between 1987 and 1992, that 1.9 percent population figure holds here as well. In terms of scale, the average Illinois farm is 772 acres. Finance-wise, that farm has $248,000 in liabilities, $165,931 in loans, a cash operating budget of $146,795, and $41,242 in net income. So, for the lonely hearts, the pickings are slim, and getting slimmer all the time.
“Let me put it this way,” says Vercler. “Right now we can now get all the farmers in Illinois into Memorial Stadium (69,000 capacity) in Champaign. Soon we’ll be able to get them all into Assembly Hall (16,000).”
At 8 sharp, without lowering the lights, the dancing starts in. Deejay Variety Pak, who will spin five hours without a break, cues up Frank Sinatra’s “Kansas City,” and out glide the waltzes, fox trots, polkas, two-steps. Strung lights loop from the wrestling mats hung on the walls. Mistletoe bobbles from the basketball nets above. Never mind that the atmosphere is part roller rink, part high school dance. “This is what we came for,” says La Verne, winking on the outside turn. A terrycloth towel dangles from his left pocket of his jeans. Three dry shirts wait in his car.
Ever embracing of newcomers, the dancers do not let me sit at ease. Gearhart pulls me out for a polka shuffle. Mel Tyne stumbles me through the barn dance. Next, mercifully, Lincoln grabs my elbow and tips me off to standard practice. “Here is where you ask them where they’re from. Here is where you ask them if they’re divorced. Here is where you ask them if they have kids,” she says turning me in small, slow circles near a table that offers cookies, chips, dip and punch.
Quickly, though, I learn that Lincoln’s protocol is subject to change. Sometime near 10, Craig takes me for a few tight spins and says, blankly, “I need a mother for my kids.” Then, near 11, a man whose name tag reads D L D D B-indicating that he has splurged for Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, dinner and dance and Sunday breakfast (he’s a big spender)–walks up and says, “Can you drive a tractor?”
I shake my head. He says, “If you’d said yes, I woulda married ya.”
The night wears on. Everybody does the Waterfall, the Broom Dance, the Chicken, the macarena, and then to Clarence Carter’s “Strokin”‘ we do the Sleazy Slide. At some point Malvin emerges wearing black-and-white face paint and an all-too-realistic-looking cow costume, complete with protruding pink udders. Wayne, a first timer, meets and holds on to a local girl in a red shirt. Menke dishes out ag tips–“Wind’s from the east; it’s going to rain within 24 hours; blowing from the northwest, the cold front’s already come through,” he says. And then, getting towards midnight, Merlin Guthrie, an impish man with broken teeth, plants himself in the metal chair on my right. Last night, it seems, Guthrie won a trip by selling over 500 acres’ worth of seed corn. Now he’s not sure whom to take along.
“Right now I got one in Kansas, one in Nebraska, one in New York,” he says, drumming on his paper cup, the word “Merlin” written on it for safe keeping. “All I ever wanted was a nice, Christian girl who wasn’t so good-lookin’ she would run off with the neighbor and wasn’t so high class she couldn’t appreciate the smell of a farm. This is an embarrassment.”
Later this evening there will be a party in Room 204 of the Super 8 Motel, where Bill Malvin has rented quarters with a whirlpool bath and a king-sized bed. Tomorrow morning the weekend will end with an egg-and-sausage breakfast, a rendition of “Amazing Grace” and the SIA tradition of everybody hugging everybody else in the room. What happens is the entire group forms a circle. The men step forward, face the women; each man presses close to the woman in front. The inner circle turns clockwise, the outer moves counter. And the embraces go on like that for a good 20 minutes, until the arm muscles tire and lose their grasp, until people feel ready for the long trek home.
But that’s all in the morning, a dream-world away. For now, the vinyl is still spinning, people are still dancing, gliding across the scuffed gym floor in the improbable disco-ball light. Near the deejay, Lincoln makes her slow turns, this time stopping to show the snapshots of her kids. Near the exit, a cattle man, a widower of 10 years, waltzes with a bookkeeper in a red velour dress. But the real story here is over in the corner. A gray-bunned woman in blue chiffon is pinning on a cardboard tiara, and for a moment, a weekend, at least in a certain light, she looks like the belle of the ball.
