Rain or shine, each morning you can find me walking my dog Tango, an energetic 50-pound chocolate labradoodle, around my hometown of Huxley, Iowa. We generally head east on Oak, swing south on Prairie View by the new houses, zigzag over to First Street by the duplexes where the trailer park used to be and take a right past the original Casey’s. We wait for a break in the traffic and then cross Highway 69 over to what I like to call “Old Huxley.”
When I was growing up here, most of the east side of town where we start our walk used to be cornfields. But now, new houses and apartments have expanded in every direction. The town is still surrounded by farmland, but the perimeter has spread.
After graduating from high school, I left Huxley for more than three decades, and then returned. There are still days when I shake my head, not sure how I got back here. I’ve changed, but in many ways I’m the same small-town farm girl. Similarly, Huxley has also transformed, yet parts of it are much like it was 30 years ago.
We moved to a farm outside of town when I was a kid. Back then, Huxley had a population of 500 or so. Long before we arrived, the neighboring towns of Slater, Cambridge and Kelly had consolidated with Huxley to form the Ballard School District. At that time, there were three churches, a Casey’s gas station, a few shops on Main Street, and the Ballard Plaza, which boasted a grocery store, post office, and stores that came and went. To the chagrin of the church ladies, the town was also renown for a strip joint called Big Jim’s, right off 69.
We lived in Huxley, but we weren’t natives. Huxley and the nearby towns were well- established, many of them with deep Scandinavian roots. Everyone was from here, and everyone was related, it seemed. My parents, on the other hand, had landed in Iowa via Iowa State University. My mom had grown up on a farm in southern Indiana and my dad on a cattle ranch in the desert of New Mexico. They bought the farm early in their marriage and started a cattle-breeding operation. We were related to no one here, but we planted our roots.
Other than at school and 4H, my family did not fit the Huxley mold. In an all-white town, our Latino father was confusing to many. Some were unsure if New Mexico was a foreign country; others questioned why he didn’t talk with an accent. We were Catholics in a sea of mostly Lutherans; in fact, one of my high school classmates confessed that I was her “first Catholic friend.”
I was a teen when the farm crisis of the 1980s hit. Maybe it was living through the uncertainty and turmoil of that time, or a desire to experience the world, but I didn’t see Iowa as the place for me, much less Huxley. After graduating Iowa State, I hightailed it out of the state with no plan to return.
For the decades that I was away, living in Dallas, Boston, and New York City, my mother kept me abreast of what was happening in Iowa and in the Ballard area. She sent me copies of the Tri-County Times or clippings that mentioned my classmates. When I came back home to visit, it seemed like Huxley was frozen in time.
But despite my vow to never return to Iowa, I did. Twice. A chain of events brought me back to the first time, but in reality, I came back for love. On a trip home, I had a chance meeting with a high school friend from Huxley and fell head over heels. The move was so cliched, so decidedly unfeminist, and so out of character that my family and friends wondered if I was right in the head. Having just lived through 9/11, a divorce and a job change, I admit I was not thinking logically at all. I simply followed my heart. I needed true love, fresh air, a lack of pretension, and gardening to calm my soul. “But Iowa?” my loved ones asked, my mother included. To an extent, I came back kicking and screaming. Still, I couldn’t stay away.
My sweetheart and I bought an acreage outside of Maxwell, close enough to pop over and see my mom on the farm. I flew back and forth between Iowa and New York City bi-monthly for the business. But even after we married in 2006, I did not think of myself as a truly resettled Iowan. Soon after my youngest step son graduated from Ballard, a plum job arose and we left for the Twin Cities.
When we came home to visit my mother, we could see that Huxley was growing. While other rural communities continued to decline, Huxley began to grow. As neighboring Ames and Ankeny expanded, fueled by economic development and rural flight, the small bedroom town located conveniently on 69 just west of Interstate 35 became an attractive and affordable place to live. We noticed the small industrial complex that seemed to be spreading on the south side of town and remarked on the second Casey’s, farther north on 69. “Did Huxley really need two Casey’s?!” we asked. We drove past the new high school, and commented on how enormous it was, sitting smack dab in the middle of cornfields.
Six years later, my husband was homesick. My mom was still on the farm, and we worried about being far away. Once again, Iowa beckoned. When a job appeared in Des Moines, I knew it was the right move for my family to return. But the same question persisted: was this really where I was supposed to be? In the Homeric journey of my life, I couldn’t help but feel like Odysseus—me—kept taking the wrong turn and ending up back at the starting line.
We landed in our hometown by accident. After looking unsuccessfully for property closer to Des Moines, the start date for my new job was looming and we had no place to live. As if by design, my mom ran into an old friend at the Hy-Vee in Ames. There, she learned the woman and her husband were moving out of their lovely property on the north side of Huxley, and my mother quickly brokered a deal over the fresh produce. In short order, we bought the house.
And there I was, back in Huxley, on the corner of Timberlane and Oak. Living in a house that used to be on the edge of town, but was now right in the heart of it. There I was, across the street from the house my first boyfriend had lived in. The house where the bus stopped, a mile from my mom’s farm. But now Timberlane was paved all the way past Centennial Park, past the soccer fields that had popped up. Housing developments now stood where the sheep pasture used to be.
At first, my job was so busy that I simply came and went. I was a little too excited when Fareway moved into town, and I watched the houses and apartments come up. But mostly I got in my car in the morning, drove to work and back, and went to my mom’s. I had planted myself here, but hadn’t fully taken root.
And then, in the fall of 2019, we got a puppy: Tango. He immediately captured our hearts and promptly chewed up my Spanish-language version of Don Quixote. It was clear this ball of fur needed exercise to wear him out. So we walked.
There is something about walking a dog that changes the way one sees the world. You’re on the ground floor, so to speak; on the sidewalk, a pedestrian, an observer at eye level. One of the things I’d loved about Boston and New York was the walking, which somehow connects a person to their neighborhood in a more visceral way. And here I was with a curly-haired puppy with a fluffy tail pulling me right and left.
On foot, I see the world early in the morning or at the end of the day, with time to witness small details that I’d miss when passing by in a car: the framing of a house over a month’s time, the new porch the neighbor is building, kids in the yard, people fixing their cars or carrying groceries in and out of the house. I see the house decorations change over the seasons, and the toys left in the driveways. The flowers coming up, the trees turning.
Soon after Tango entered our lives, we discovered a park in Huxley. We would walk by houses on a certain block and I’d see a strange expanse of land behind their backyards. I started peeking here and there and sure enough, there was some sort of shelter, some playground equipment. I turned a few new corners, and found the obscure entrance. When I asked my mom about Berhow Park, she said, “yes, it had been there for about 30 years, part of that housing development. If you didn’t know it was there,” she said, “you’d never notice it.”
Berhow Park became part of our regular morning walk. We found two unmarked sidewalk entrances, and cut through frequently to walk the paved loop and check out the tiny prairie garden. We got to know other walkers and their dogs. We greet Julie and her three poodles, Kirby, Petey and Louie, the woman with Kilo (the Great Dane), and the guy with his best pal, a black hunting dog named Ace. I often see my old high school boyfriend working there—the one who used to live across the street from where I now live. Retired, he now works part-time for the City of Huxley. One day, when I complimented him on the recently planted hostas, he asked if I’d seen the book shadow boxes on the nature trails. I had no idea what he was talking about.
So the next weekend, Tango and I headed over to the old railroad tracks. Sure enough, just west of Highway 69, all along the strip by the old railroad bridge was a series of shadow boxes on stands, each with a page from a children’s book displayed under plexiglas. As we walked, the story unfolded.By the time we were at the other end of the trail, the book was done. The first book we read involved a little robin and a frog. At the last shadow box, a sign said the project was sponsored by the Huxley Library with support from local citizens. I recognized many of their names from growing up.
The library project is just one of many things I learned about Huxley by walking Tango around town. I know where the police live because their cars are parked out front. I know who is moving in and moving out. In the mornings, I often see people leaving for work. Especially in the new neighborhoods on the east side of town, I’ve noticed an influx of Latino and Black families. I hear Spanish spoken in driveways and in Fareway. Sometimes I stop and say hi.
There are now luxury homes on the north side of town, over by the old sheep meadow, nestled in beautiful lots where majestic trees used to stand. My mom frowns, pointing at the developments sitting on top of what was prime topsoil. My husband, a third-generation Huxley-ite, grumbles that the town has changed; he and his family used to know everyone, but now there are too many people.
I listen and take it all in. Walking. Watching, but from a different angle than before. The town keeps evolving. With a population just short of 4,000, we now have, in addition to the Fareway and two Casey’s, several banks, a new Kum & Go off I-35, a medical office, a handful of commercial businesses, three parks, several ballparks, a bar called Fenceline, and a new restaurant. There’s even a nail salon over by Dollar General, which has a new mural on the side that overlooks 69. When we got a Scooter's coffee drive-through last year, I could hardly contain my glee. It’s not the prettiest town, not like Indianola or Pella with their pristine squares, but throw in a good school system and low crime rate, and there’s a recipe for expansion.
Not long ago, one of my best friends from Ames suggested a walk. We frequently meet north of Ames at Ada Hayden Nature Preserve. I bring Tango along; when we’re done we often get a coffee somewhere. This time, I suggested that she come to Huxley instead.
I told her all about the new houses on the west side of town. I described the shadow box library project, and said we could see what book was being featured. “I’ll show you my path on the nature trail,” I said, noting we could even swing by and get a Scooter's coffee afterwards.
After all, this is my path now, where I’ve taken root. My hometown.
Very good work Suzanna.
Hi Suzanna, great tales, in both prose and verse, about your walks around Huxley! (Can we subscribers come go on walks with you & Tango?) I note you’ve got the hometown characteristic of describing locations by what USED to be there — classic! I do look forward to your future columns on the transformation we’re seeing in the heartland. You bring great perspective to that, from having grown up in small town Iowa, then lived in some major cities, and now returned. So help us figure out what we’ve got here, what we need to do with it, if anything, and what the future holds.