As a Midwestern transplant to the East Coast, it actually hasn't taken me that long to feel at home here in southern New Jersey. You see, just outside my future in-laws' cul-de-sac are corn and soybean fields. Being away from the plains of Iowa was actually harder than I knew it would be while in the Army.
Now some of you may be saying, "Seriously Russ, you were in Missouri, it was still the Midwest, surely there was corn". I'm sure there was...somewhere further north, but mostly around Fort Lost in the Woods, it was red dirt, rocks, yards full of garbage, trees, and Ozark "mountains". An area where you really start to hear that banjo from "Deliverance" if you go too far. I need a clear and level line of site for at least a mile before I feel comfortable.
I've been running about every other day since I've moved out here along the road with the fields and stopped to watch the farmers use a really old Case IH combine to harvest. Buy a new John Deere combine people (my baby bro Al works for JD and better get me royalties for that free advertisement). I may see at least five cars during a three/four mile run whereas in rural Iowa if you see that many going one direction you start to assume there's a fire or a party, maybe both.
But if I run a mile in a different direction, the fields are replaced with houses, gas stations where it is illegal to pump it yourself, restaurants, tanning salons, yoga studios, jug handles so you can turn left (illegal to turn left in some places), busy highways, and et cetera. Luckily, there is an Iowa State alumni group in the Philadelphia area and hopefully I'll get together with them to cheer the Clones to a win over the Squawkeyes in basketball soon.
I'm not asking for someone to clear out all the people, traffic or bulldoze any trees out here. I'm getting comfortable with the way it is. I'll still be able to visit the great plains of Iowa when I need to get away (see you all for the week of New Years Eve). You can take the boy out of Hanover but you can't take the Hanover out of him. Trying to take a few patience pages out of Papa Dwaine's book in an entirely new environment with just enough similarities to make it easier for a guy to feel at home. Still running through cornfields and learning as I go, just doing it in New Jersey now.
