Farming — What MIght Have Been

I have indicated that Iowa farmland, particularly in the general area of Webster county, has about as productive a potential as any land elsewhere in the state, the country or the world. I don’t know whether it is because of the association with land and the growing of things (whether crops, garden produce, flowers, trees or what have you) that has been integral with my past, but I have an attachment for land and growing things that is almost transcendent in nature. This has manifested itself in various ways.

Early in my career at Shell (say in the middle 1940s) I considered, superficially at least, the possibility of moving back to Iowa, purchasing 40 acres (which I had sufficient savings at the time for doing) and living sort of a Thoreau-like existence. I didn’t of course do it, perhaps it would not have worked out at all. Certainly I would have been at odds with the religious climate of my family.

At the end of the war, I did put in for a transfer within Shell to the Wood River refinery but it never came through — perhaps my potential was evaluated by my superiors and it was decided that I had more value to Shell in research and design than in a manufacturing engineering position. One reason behind my request was of course that I would have been closer to agriculture and land with which I was familiar and could have pursued this bent as an auxiliary activity.

This affinity of mine for the possession of land has been satisfied for the most part by the events that have transpired since — first the purchase of the old Joe Johnson farm and later on acquiring half of my father’s farm. Although I decided against purchasing Vincent’s half of the Strand farm when he sold out, I still have a vestigial regret that we did not go ahead and acquire it also.

If we had been younger in years I suspect that we would have. As I’ve said in the past, and perhaps I’ve set this down in what I have written in this project, I would have been equally happy in work as a farmer or as an accountant as I was as an engineer — at least that is my opinion at this point. Farming had I drifted into it would have been a very satisfying way to spend my working years.