What Cheer
Off of I-80 in Iowa going west to Des Moines is an exit labeled “192: What Cheer.” If you get off the exit, make a left and drive for 20 miles you will be in the heart of downtown What Cheer, Iowa, which is a real town in the real state of Iowa.♦
The name of the town of What Cheer is pronounced by the locals without acknowledgment to the plosive, which ends up sounding something like “Whacheer” or even “Whacher.” This is the kind of colloquial bastardization that seems to be common in small towns that are named after exclamations made by coal miners, which is the local legend as to why the town is called what it is.
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A long time ago, glaciers carved the Midwest out like a butcher carves out her meat.
We like to use euphemisms to talk about butchers. We say ‘meat’ instead of ‘cow’ because we like to think we are not eating animals when we eat meat.
We also use euphemisms to talk about mountains. We use words like ‘glacier’ and ‘carved out’ because it is sad to think that the Midwest had mountains once, like Colorado. The Midwest once had beautiful ice mountains that cleaned the world. ‘Thank you, giants in the prairie’ is the prayer we use in the Midwest when we talk about mountains.
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The Midwest is a romantic place if you want it to be, much like if you want to walk instead of driving a car in the Midwest, you absolutely cannot.
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In the Midwest, we are descendants of glaciers. We are shy like glaciers are shy. We are proud like glaciers are proud. We look to the sky and see cloud mountains that reminds us of glaciers and our parents. In the Midwest, we stand quietly and watch butterflies or swallows in the grass at our feet.
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And after spending some time with the butterflies and swallows you come home to a bathtub filled with mint. Plants from the porcelain. You wait for the wife to get home and plan to ask her about that. Until then, you sit at the window and watch the rest of the world conceive of itself. You are not terribly interested in dictionaries, but like that they exist. You sit at your window and look at the rain fall down and consider how strange it is that we say rain comes down in sheets. You consider of a bedsheet made of falling rain. You are waiting for the wife to come home so you seal up some envelopes to send to people on the other side of the country.
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The human heart is not a beautiful organ. It looks the way something necessary looks, the way that presents wrapped in a psych ward look, the way that emergency rooms are laid out. It looks visceral and ugly and congested and necessary. The heart symbol, the pinched red oval that shows up on valentines day cards, is our shorthand for the heart. But the heart symbol is not a heart. It is a picture of love, affection, care. The human heart is something different. It is something that is too important to show other people. It is the sun that we have swallowed, it is the secret that we have kept.
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Edward Arthur Thomas, born July 17, 1950, died June 24, 2009, was the high school football coach for Aplington-Parkersburg High School in Parkersburg, Iowa. On June 24, 2009, Thomas was shot and killed in the football team's weight room by Mark Becker, a 2004 Aplington-Parkersburg graduate and one of Thomas' former players. Thomas was airlifted to a Waterloo, Iowa hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa and raised in What Cheer, Iowa. He played football; his position was quarterback. Thomas was the oldest of 5, having 3 younger sisters and one younger brother.
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The sky is bigger in Iowa than most other places. The sky is at least three colors at all times. The sky sits still for four or five times of the day, but most of the time the sky has an appointment to make.
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I was born in Toledo, Ohio which is not in Iowa. Toledo is called the glass city because the city is never actually a solid, just a very, very slow liquid. You don’t throw stones in Toledo, Ohio. Ceilings are hard to see. Toledo, Ohio is not half empty or half full. Toledo is a member of the rust belt and as anyone in Toledo can tell you, you’ve never really lived until you’ve seen glass rust. There is rust on all of the tallest buildings in Toledo.
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Trees are the tallest building in Iowa. The tallest building in Illinois is the Sears Tower. The tallest building in Nebraska is a truck driving east. The tallest building in Kansas is the Epic Center in Wichita which is at least bigger than the tallest building in Maine. The tallest building in Michigan is the Upper Peninsula. The tallest building in Ohio is the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame or a mound built 3,000 years ago, depending on the day
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You are sealing envelopes. There is a river that is about a 20 minute drive from your house. Tomorrow you will drive to the river and put the envelopes gently into the current and wait for them to disappear. For today, though, you are sealing the envelopes and, again, you think about how strange it is that seal is both a verb and a sea creature. You think you hear a knock at the door. You quietly return to your seat near the window. After a moment of repose, you decide you will crush up some of the mint leaves in the bathtub and leave them on your bed as a gift for your wife. Yes. She will like that. You set to work.
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When paramedics are trying to save someone who has entered into cardiac arrest, the measure that they often use is that of pupil size. Dilation of the eyes is one of the symptoms of cardiac arrest, but when the pupil has enlarged to encompass that of the entire iris - when you can no longer see any color in the eyes - then the cause has been lost.
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The tallest building in Ohio might be a mound built 3,000 years ago in the shape of a snake. If you didn’t know any better, you might say that that is the first expression of catholic guilt in the Midwest.
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The churches in What Cheer, Iowa sit off of Barnes Street. Barnes Street is the main street in What Cheer and is really the only street in What Cheer. Lined up along Barnes is a collection of old, decrepit buildings. What Cheer used to be a coal town, but now it looks like pictures of places that used to be a coal towns. There are a handful of buildings still in use on Barnes Street - The City Hall, The Opera House, The What Cheer Flowers and Gifts store, but not a whole lot else. The rest of the buildings are abandoned and forgotten, not even worth the effort of tearing them down.
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An hour into crushing mint leaves you start wondering about home. You grew up three states over and you wonder about the old house - if the carpet is still the same color, if the shed is still in the backyard, if the windows are still where they always were and if the same people sat in those same windows. You make a note to yourself to call your parents and see how the house is. They moved away years ago but they will probably know more than you. The cuts on your hands are starting to really hurt from the mint. But it really smells great, so you don’t stop.
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Edward Arthur Thomas, born July 17, 1950, died June 24, 2009, was the high school football coach for Aplington-Parkersburg High School in Parkersburg, Iowa. On June 24, 2009, Thomas was shot and killed in the football team's weight room by Mark Becker, a 2004 Aplington-Parkersburg graduate and one of Thomas' former players. He was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa and raised in What Cheer, Iowa. He played football; his position was quarterback. Thomas was the oldest of 5, having 3 younger sisters and one younger brother.
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Ed Thomas founded the city of What Cheer, Iowa in 1950 after being born in Oskaloosa. He told everyone about football and God. He said the open field was a lot like God, if you thought about it. In 1951 he opened the general store and in 1952 the general store closed and if you look inside the windows today, you can still see the old grandfather clock’s pendulum moving side-to-side. The weight moves like water in a bucket. If you move the bucket right the water never spills.
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The glaciers that came to clean the Midwest a long time ago left us lakes and rivers as a way to for us to remember them. They liked the state of Michigan best, so left them the biggest lakes. Their next favorite states were Chicago, then Minnesota. The glaciers were not particularly fond of Kansas.
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Two hours in to crushing mint leaves, you start to think about Anna Thorpe. Anna Thorpe, who you had a crush on in third grade. Anna Thorpe was a nice Midwestern girl who had long hair that went down to her knees. You’ve never told anyone this, but a few years back you had a dream where Anna Thorpe’s hair had wrapped itself around you and you didn’t know what to do. You liked the feeling of being surrounded in her hair, but you weren’t sure if you were overstepping personal boundaries by being so intimate with it. You walked around a boardwalk made entirely of rose pedals. You liked the feeling of roses and hair. You could get used to it. You weren’t sure if this was the future you had planned or wanted but at the moment, you were content. You worried a little about if she conditioned her hair and if it could stand up to your walking pace. You worried a little about having to look at Anna at some point in the future and tell her it was time to move on and that her hair, while lovely, just wasn’t a good fit for all seasons.
You hadn’t seen or thought about Anna Thorpe in fifteen years before that dream.
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Griffin Park is the only park within city limits of What Cheer. It comprises maybe about a quarter of the town. There is no discernible entrance to Griffin Park. The only way that you know that it is a park is from either one of two scenarios:
A. The leap of logic that any large collection of trees within the state of Iowa is probably a sanctioned park space or
B. By consulting a map.
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Ed Thomas was born in Oskaloosa and raised in What Cheer. He was a nationally acclaimed high school football coach. He loved God. He helped in the aftermath of tornadoes. He was shot and killed by a former student. On his gravestone is written:
ED THOMAS
BORN JULY 17, 1950
DIED JUNE 24, 2009
A BELOVED SON, FATHER, HUSBAND, COACH
IN THE RIGHT LIGHT
PENDULUMS CAN MOVE LIKE BUTTERFLIES
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The tree cover in Griffin Park is dense and lush. Coal Creek, the small traveling path of water that moves through the town, travels through the park. On the northeast corner of the park sits a fenced off portion of land with signs that read
“WATER POLLUTION CONTROL LAGOON.
CITY OF WHAT CHEER.
NO TRESPASSING.”
You can see two small collections of water and a large family of geese from the perimeter of the fence.
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The human heart is about the size of a clenched fist. A fun exercise in existentialism is to look at a clenched fist and imagine that it is the one, singular reason you are still breathing.
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The sky in Iowa is like mountains, in that from far away you can see the whole sky and you think that it is a conceivable object but from up close the sky is too big to fit into your field of vision. It is so big it cannot hold itself. It is so big that mountains do not compare. Or at least this is what we tell ourselves. If you were to hang from the edge of the world and look up at a 45 degree angle to the sky, then it might be like a mountain again. The sky in Iowa is like mountains.
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Ed Thomas was born in Oskaloosa and raised in What Cheer.
He was a nationally acclaimed high school football coach.
He loved God. He helped in the aftermath of tornadoes.
He was shot and killed by a former student.
None of this makes him a bad person.
Bad things happen to good people.
Bad people are not bad people.
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Three hours into mint crushing, you think about your bookshelf. It is a beautiful color. You think about happiness and how ‘happiness’ is a word you find difficult to define and hard to apply to your life. You are not unhappy, you think. You think hammers are useful and important things. You think mints and onions might be more related that you had previously thought, on account of the tears currently pooling in your eyes.
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The lack of punctuation in the name What Cheer is perhaps the most confusing thing about it, if you disregard the whole pronunciation thing. One is never quite sure if the name is a question or an exclamation. Although those two things might not be as different as they seem.
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When I went to What Cheer, Iowa, I saw a bird and it said something that sounded like my name.
I walked down to Griffin Park and I saw Coal Creek. Its water was black. I noticed a trail of ants leading into the brush. I followed them into the woods and they lead me to a gigantic anthill, some twenty feet at its highest point, made entirely of pieces of crumbled soap. Moving to the hill, ants with tiny pieces of green, yellow, white. Moving away, black dust, some sort of bizarre cloud. I stared at the anthill and thought that this might be the tallest building in What Cheer. I stayed in the park until dark and then found my way out to the dimly lit street. I tried my best not to step on any ants, but in the darkness I couldn’t be sure.
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Ed Thomas was born in Oskaloosa and raised in What Cheer.
He was a nationally acclaimed high school football coach.
He loved God. He helped in the aftermath of tornadoes.
He wore a dress and was afraid to walk alone in the nighttime.
He felt uncomfortable and wanted to die.
He was shot and killed by a former student.
He was going to be brilliant, he really was.
None of this makes him a bad person.
Ed Thomas, before he was shot and killed, stared at his attacker’s left hand, clenched into a tight fist. In the right light, you could almost see it slowly beating.
Ed Thomas was born in Oskaloosa and raised in What Cheer.
In the Midwest, we are confused and lonely like glaciers are confused and lonely.
We are not bad people like glaciers are not bad people.
We pray like glaciers pray: slowly and with closed eyes.
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On the fourth hour of mint crushing, you have enough mint to completely cover your bedroom and also build a small microphone out of the rest, so you stop. Your mint microphone is small, but looks just like a real microphone and if you speak into it, you can almost hear your voice carry itself across the room. You speak slowly into the mint microphone and look out the window as you wait for your wife to come home. You might be here for a while, but you find the smell of the mint and the presence of the microphone and the view outside to be comforting and complex and interesting and historical, even. You are waiting and you are speaking to the past through this sweet mint leaf microphone and you can hear the echoes of your voice bounce off of the wall into themselves. Your company is yourself and this room. You feel content. Happy, even.
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There are not mountains in What Cheer.
There are not glaciers in What Cheer, Iowa, but it follows that at one point there probably were.
Words don’t stay in What Cheer like they do in other places.
They smell like mint and float away.
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I was born in Toledo, Ohio. The first thing I saw was the rust on the window.
I do not know when my parents will die, but there will be rust on our window when it comes.
I will organize the funeral. I will call the relatives. We will pack up our cars in Toledo and we will drive west. We will not stop. We will drive from Toledo and we will take Exit 192 on I-80 to What Cheer. We will descend from our cars on Barnes Street and we will walk down the hill to Griffin Park. We will go to Coal Creek. We will bathe in the water. We will say the water reminds us of their pupils, but we will not use their names. We will use the soap that is still there on the land and we will clean ourselves. We will be ants and we will bring soap to flood the creek, flood the park, flood the town.
What Cheer, we will say, the city of mint and time.
What Cheer, What Cheer, the city of soap and pupils.
What Cheer, What Cheer, What Cheer, the city of swallows, the city of our birth.
What Cheer, What Cheer, What Cheer.
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In the Midwest, our parents are glaciers. And that is why we are shy like glaciers are shy.
Proud like glaciers are proud. Cold like glaciers are cold.
We are slow water.
We hold our hearts in our fists.
We hold the sky in our mouth.
We look at the clouds and we pray:
Thank you giants in the prairie. Thank you.