I don't know why I've been thinking about this lately, but I've been pondering my childhood and where I grew up. I guess it's inevitable as I make the slow lurch toward 40, but I'm pretty confident some of the reading I've been doing lately is part of the cause (see "Thoughts on the Midwest").
But when I think back to growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, one image that I come back to is going across the Cedar on the green 18th Street bridge most days when I would work at my Dad's grocery store--crossing over from the west side to the east side, the "bad part of town," a phrase that is so racially-tinged and socio-economically tangled that it deserves its own post or essay.
I made that trip over the Cedar all the time when I was much younger than working age when my Mom and I would stop in at my father's store to shop, and that was when Rath Packing Co. was still in business. When I was young, I remember it being huge--trailers stacked up waiting to unload pigs and cattle for the killing floors, the musky stench of death and dirt and diesel, the white water tower with the Rath logo on it-a red, rudimentary image of an Indian chief, the Packer's Inn bar across from the plant whetting the appetites of working folks.
Later on, once Rath went belly up in '85, the city was hurting. Bad. The 80s were not a good time to be in Waterloo with Rath closing and John Deere (the city's largest employer) with its multiple layoffs throughout the decade. Reagan espoused "Morning in America," and Waterloo's America exemplified job losses and hard times. The mornings were pretty damn dark.
While I can't describe my parents as white collar by any stretch of the imagination, I also think growing up in Waterloo gave me a certain blue collar mindset that usually serves me well but also creates crankiness since I work in academia, a place where sometimes being straightforward and at times blunt and also prone to being intolerant of bullshit are not prized characteristics.
But I'm still hung up on these questions: Why Rath? Why is that trip over the river and a now defunct packing plant so emblematic to me about my hometown? Maybe it's mere repetition because that's what I did since I made that trip across the bridge so often.
But the academic in me (damn you!) makes me think it means something more.
4 comments:
Oh wow! What a post. So much comes bubbling up to the surface for this fellow Waterloo native. Rath is a HUGE emblem for me, alongside Deere's. (Aside: my sister now lives near the Quad Cities and gets on our case for saying Deere's...apparently down there, they just say Deere...weird.) Anyway, I love this post and the reminder of those dark days in the 80's. I remember more of the rural connection, with farmers losing their farms and suicides rising.
However, the cherry of this post is:
"I also think growing up in Waterloo gave me a certain blue collar mindset that usually serves me well but also creates crankiness since I work in academia, a place where sometimes being straightforward and at times blunt and also prone to being intolerant of bullshit are not prized characteristics."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this!
I'm glad you enjoyed the post, Sandy.
When I would ask my mates at elementary school where their dads worked, the typical responses were "Deere" or "Deere's."
For the post, I wanted to find a photo of the water tower but I couldn't. I'm pretty sure the logo was red, but my recollection is hazy.
And thanks for the linkage from your own blog.
Having grown up in central Illinois, I've had a lot of these same experiences--just substitute Caterpillar for John Deere. My folks were most definitely blue collar, though, and I often wonder if that has shaped my attitude toward the academic institution--made me distrustful of its value or sincerity because it exists so far outside of the realm of what I knew as "work" when I was a kid.
Yep, Justin, I always have to check myself when I might start complaining about grading papers. We're lucky to have jobs that entail that kind of work.
I've enjoyed reading your blog, btw.
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