The Family That Farms Together Seems to Stay Together

DES MOINES, Iowa — A 17-year-old in a formal gown pours her soul into a piano piece. (Years of practice! Hours of butterflies!) Her fingers are coaxing whispers from the keyboard when an extended aural blast washes over her like the amplified roar of 10,000 drunken fight fans.

A cloud of black exhaust descends on the outdoor stage as she bravely plays on.

Talent show versus tractor pull. Such are the Iowa State Fair’s temptations. How to decide?

For our family, the real temptation tug of war is between the livestock shows and the rickety midway rides. Given the mood of our kids, that’s like being pulled by a cow in one direction and a supercharged John Deere in the other.

I’m with the cow and I’ve got the cash. So, cattle barn, here we come.

My wife, Pam, and I and our three children are on the road this summer. Our mission is to gain insight into the American family, and as the season rolls on, we’ve had to make hard decisions about where to go and who to see.

We had planned to drop by Lincoln, Neb., for a talk with hyper-popular psychologist Mary Pipher, author of “Reviving Ophelia” (Ballantine, 1994) and “The Shelter of Each Other” (Grosset / Putnam, 1996). But somewhere up in Minnesota, we came to a realization: To make that appointment, we’d have to push our rented RV to 90 mph and drive all night, singing an increasingly giddy medley of Willie Nelson, Canned Heat and Mojo Nixon road tunes to stay awake.

So instead, we cranked a hard left for the state fair of all state fairs.

Still, the message of Pipher’s books--that American girls tend to go to hell in a handbasket when they hit their teens, that a cynical mass culture is steam-rolling American youth and families--lingers in my mind.

Which may explain why I’m fixated today on adolescence.

Our own preteens--12-year-old Ashley, 10-year-old Emily and 7-year-old Robert--were tired and bratty when they woke up this morning in a campground in northern Iowa.

They whined. They fought. Then they sunk into books and stayed there as Pam and I whooped at every passing glimpse into America’s soul: Look! Old men on tractors! Look! Kids bicycling around silos!

Now we’re hitting Des Moines, at precisely the same time as every farmer in the heartland. To escape fair-goer gridlock, we fork out $4 to park on someone’s lawn. (Does the man who takes our money own the property? Who knows?) We set out hiking.

Well before we reach the fairgrounds, a double Ferris wheel beckons, triggering the first chorus of “Please!” I hear a familiar voice inside me: “Lighten up! Let ‘em have some fun!” But my “world’s meanest daddy” side holds sway.

*

As it turns out, our kids are not as immune to the joys of vegetable competitions and butterfly collections as some Angelenos might assume, and the Iowans we meet are thrilled to learn that back home, smack in the middle of Smogville, these California kids belong to an active 4-H club. But their pet chicken isn’t on a par with Iowa-style agriculture.

And so, fueled by corn dogs and cotton candy, we wriggle through the crowd to see the real thing.

The cattle pavilion is a cacophony. A loudspeaker drones. Cows and steers low and stomp. In an aisle behind a row of big Angus, an extended family has clumped to chat. We slip in among them.

It was Russ and Don Jones’ great-grandfather who first took up farming in Iowa as a young immigrant from Wales. Today, the family’s grip on the farming life is strained but determined. Russ and his wife work at a nearby Amana factory. But their two-acre spread is a training ground for their children’s farming ventures. Don’s family works 200 acres of its own and “custom farms” 2,000 more belonging to lawyers, commodities brokers and the like--people who have the money to own land but lack the talent, time or inclination to make it productive.

As Ashley and Emily fidget in a way that hollers “MIDWAY!” Don’s son Phillip, 13, tells us about the premature calf he has bottle-fed round-the-clock since spring. “She’s like a friend to me,” he says.

I ask him if he plans to go into agriculture. “I’m hoping for a desk job,” he replies, drawing laughs from his family--none of whom takes his career preference as a sign that the lessons of farming have failed.

Indeed, mixed with the powerful scent of manure here is an air of satisfied exhaustion. Teenage boys and girls snooze atop padded crates and hang around on hay bales, flirting and gossiping. In one fenced stall, a young man sits on a folding chair, head nodding forward then jerking back as rhythmically as a cow’s tail swatting flies. We watch for a good minute before the kids start tugging.

The sheep barn is more frenetic. “Baaaaa!” squeal sheep and goats, their tongues lolling stupidly as young handlers struggle to constrain them. Here, suddenly, a bleating lamb slows our rush to the rides. Emily stops to stoke it. “It’s so cute!” Ashley joins her, and something in the touch of hand to wool electrifies. The sullenness is lifting.

A few stalls down, we meet 13-year-old Aimee Rueber and her champion ewe and ram. Aimee says she has been with the Future Farmers of America for as long as she can remember. A lot of her friends are in the FFA, she says, but those who aren’t “think it’s really weird, kind of a dumb thing to do.”

The confidence in her eyes tells our kids how little Aimee cares about that reaction, and by the time we reach the pig barn, the farm kids’ attitude is having an impact. I catch Ashley and Emily noting the collegial atmosphere in the barns: “Hey! How ya doing! Congratulations!” When I stop to talk to 14-year-old Sara McCallister and her 13-year-old friend Erin Ledger, Ashley and Emily crowd in to listen, farmers amid farmers.

I ask Sara why she raises hogs. She cracks a smart smile and her blue eyes flash.

“The money and the Dippin’ Dots,” she says, in reference to the $15-a-head profit she made on her 51 hogs and her taste for an ice cream confection she encounters on the show circuit.

*

But her parents, like all the parents we meet here, confide that what their daughter really gets from her effort is a sense of responsibility and commitment and the reward of seeing a project through to completion.

We finish our commitment to the fair by visiting dumpster-sized prize hogs and newborn piglets, the latter of which take our girls cooing back to the time when “Charlotte’s Web” was their passion.

Soon, though, the din of the pavilions merges with the screech of heavy metal music and the screams of Tilt-a-Whirl riders.

At last we find ourselves on the midway, surrounded by booths and trailers decorated with hard-edged carny graphics: busty, whip-wielding babes and lustful dudes with flowing hair and lots of leather.

Clusters of adolescents slump along, doing the mall rat shuffle. All but a few wear T-shirts tied to some television show, movie or rock band. I see a pair of teenage girls sitting on the asphalt, singing along to a mournful rock tune as a pimply barker sweet-talks them.

I think of Pleasure Island in Disney’s cartoon “Pinocchio,” a haunting realm that worked its way into a little boy’s subconscious and conscience, making him shudder at the easy, slothful life it represented. I remind myself that in this new era, Florida’s Disney World leeringly advertises a whole Pleasure Island complex.

Having fun may be what Americans do best these days, it seems. And Lord knows I’m not adverse to a share of pleasure.

With Pam contemplating how she’d fair as a childless widow, Ashley, Emily, Robert and I hand our tickets to a gaunt ride attendant who looks as if he’d rather be bar-brawling.

Squealing louder than the swine pavilion, the double Ferris wheel lifts us into the sky and spins, eager to hurl us into the Sno-Kone stands.

As we walk back to the RV, Ashley will say: “I kinda wish we’d left after seeing the animals.”

But now, as we circle over Iowa, I worry that society has lost its balance. I wonder if our lust for fun is overwhelming our other instincts, like jet-fueled tractors obliterating a piano solo.

I look up and down, trying to catch a glimpse of my daughters, but we’re in different cars, and they’re out of my sight.

ON THE WEB: Visit the Sipchens on the World Wide Web at https:// www.latimes.com/trip/ for maps, journals and sounds from the family’s trip.