Calling the Plumber

When roots are replaced by cash transactions

The night before the Blizzard of 2024 we sprang a leak. I walked into a puddle on our kitchen floor. Briefly, I hoped it was snowballs from the defrosting Bernadoodle or a maybe stray ice cube. But no, the puddle led to the kitchen sink. I opened the cabinet to find more water. I pulled out the little bucket with sponges and cleaners, the fly swatters, the gallon jug of hand soap I bought during COVID as more and more water poured out.

We needed Wayne. He installed this plumbing. He’s a neighbor. He used to farm this land. His family’s name is on our land abstract. Wayne’s family has lived in this area for more than 100 years. Sometimes it can be a little intimidating.

Why? Because like more than 1 in 10 Americans, my husband and I are transplants. Our roots run shallow. Every time we move, we lose the ecosystem that had grown around us including friends, neighbors and yes, the letter carrier, the dog groomer and most importantly, tradesmen like Wayne who keep us safe and warm.

Our transplant status means that even though we’ve lived here 12 years and Wayne lives at the end of the road, I barely know the guy. Does he go to bed at 8? Is he up late watching the game?

Wayne and I grew up 1,000 miles from each other. When the growing up was over, he stayed and I left. He’s known as one of the nicest guys around, but the decision I made at 18 is why sadly, it’ll never be much more than a cash transaction between us.

I was living in Chicago when I bought this land 25 years ago with the dream of returning to the state I fell in love with in the 1980’s. I had hoped to find land closer to Iowa City where I’d gone to school. But what I could afford was 75 acres in an adjacent county a good 25 minute-drive away. The farmer I bought it from must have referred to me as “the lady from Chicago” to his pals and it stuck. My husband, who lived and taught in Iowa City for 25 years before moving to Pennsylvania for 15 will always be the “professor from Penn State.”

I don’t let it bother me so much anymore. We tore out our Iowa roots when we moved. Nobody here knows us from then and it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing we have is three or four generations deep. Our grandparents didn’t know anyone else’s grandparents. We’ll never be enough for some folks, and that means we may never be trusted.

My real estate agent Lyle, who also served as surrogate grandfather at the time, suggested I gain access from the gravel road into the south end. I’d need it someday. So I asked my new neighbor to the south for permission to use his culvert and 5 feet of his driveway, the same route the farmer had taken to get into that field for 30 years. He said no.

We looked up the landowner for the adjacent parcel and asked to buy an acre, because most of it was a ravine. He’d sell it at three times the going rate.

Lyle suggested I cut a deal with my seller/farmer. He’d buy the acre – probably at a much better price –and he could farm the ground he was selling me for another two years, no charge. We stood in a foot of snow between two pickup trucks, shook hands and sealed the deal.

Fifteen years later, when Paul and I could finally afford to move back to Iowa, we replanted ourselves on this land in rural Cedar County. We quickly learned that Iowa City wasn’t all that close.

In this rural, conservative county we were treated with the same polite disdain any transplant deserves, (and with compassion from the few other transplants.) This county doesn’t experience the churn that Iowa City’s metro area does with its big research university. We were far outnumbered by natives who don’t put much stock in non-natives. Non-natives haven’t evolved here. They might not even survive in this environment. They don’t know squat about this place. And sometimes they become invasive.

I often take the opportunity to tell people in passing that I grew up miles from a small town, in the woods of Upstate New York, on a septic and a well, with a fireplace keeping us as warm in an old drafty house. But I may always be the lady from Chicago.  

I hadn’t realized how deep that distrust ran until recently. Every year when I paid the taxes on the five parcels of my new land, I always chuckled about that one acre on the south end. The farmer had named it, which was weird in itself, “[His last name]’s Country Subdivision.” Then it finally sank in. He, and the neighbor who said no, and the guy who tried to rip me off were convinced I was going to build a housing development on that south end!

We planted thousands of native trees and bushes there instead.

The south end former cornfield where a road called “X County’s Subdivision” leads

There’s always going to be that distance between us and the people with deep roots. It doesn’t help, I guess, that we built a contemporary-style home and use a geodesic dome as a barn, or we replaced the corn with prairie and orchards. We’re just living our dream. Still, there’s not a lot of love between the familiar and the different, not a lot of trust when you’ve got no history.

Truth is, like most non-natives, we’re probably just a nuisance. Could be years, if ever, before we acclimate and get back to corn. Or after we die and our daughter sells it – probably to one of Wayne’s relatives – they could rip out the orchards, kill off the prairie and take it back to corn.

Or maybe succession will win out, like when trees take over prairie left unburned. Maybe more non-natives will move in (invade), this time paving over good farmland with McMansions, big lawns, tennis courts and swimming pools.

That’s the fear, I suppose, people like us or worse taking over the place, pushing out those who were here before. It’s well-founded. It’s not like there are any Native Americans living here anymore. Last year a new “rural residence” went up across the road from us. The one down the road is up for sale again, by an acreage dreamer who gave up on the commute to Iowa City.

They used to be farms, just like ours. Now they’re just good for growing a plumbing business, a cash transaction you can count on.

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Iowa makes No. 9 for low wages and small cities. This guy avoids politics, but these days there are many reasons why women of child-bearing age, families or most anyone would want to avoid Iowa. Some of us are working on making it welcoming place once again!