I worked as news director at two different radio stations in Iowa a while back.
The state was ripe for a Trump takeover, long before the man even thought of a White House wassail.
The fact that Iowa is now facing financial Gotterdammerung like most other states does not surprise me -- nor does the fact that it never required most businesses to close down surprise me.
Iowans put dill pickle slices in their bottles of beer.
They eat something called an 'Iowa Chop,' which is so huge that it would feed a family of five in Oregon for a month of Sundays.
They dote on corncob jelly. I interviewed a passel of old farm wives for their secret recipes -- which basically were just corn cobs, sugar, pectin, and cinnamon sticks.
I ran a call-in show and got into big trouble by pooh poohing the idea that only one cob of corn grows on each stalk. It's true -- but it's one of those things, like something in a Twilight Zone episode, that shouldn't be.
Iowa farmers distill their corn into ethanal, then feed the leftover mash to their cows. The mash is still highly alcoholic, but because cows have three stomachs they never keel over or get the dt's. And their farts would float the Hindenburg.
A farmer once claimed to have dug up the skeleton of an elephant on his land; I went out to interview him and he showed me the skeleton of a horse while looking straight at me and saying it was a baby elephant.
For all these reasons, and many more, I regard Iowa as inhabiting another dimension that only dimly shadows our own -- so their economic woes will not affect them like any other state.
Iowa, in fact, will soon sign a trade agreement with the Republic of Upper Volta, trading corn for copra, and is going to vote solidly for Trump again -- then secede from the Union, kidnapping Trump and taking him with them to the South Pacific Garbage Patch.
And if they don't, my name isn't Ish Kabibble.
