SHB Explores

For anyone who has never spent time in the Midwest, it might be easy to overlook the differences between states and group them all into “fly-over country.” I get it. As a central Iowan for the majority of my life, I was accustomed to the jokes. No, we’re not the potato state. Yes, we have more than pigs and cornfields. No, not everyone cares about the Iowa vs. Iowa State rivalry. Insert puns about corn here. The list goes on.

As a kid, I loved day trips to my grandparents’ farm west of Des Moines. My grandpa raised cattle and, if I was lucky, would have a calf or two I could assist with bottle feeding. There always seemed to be a farm cat or two hanging around the front porch that I could spend hours unsuccessfully trying to lure close enough to pet, or a climbing expedition through the hay mow calling my name. To this day, the sweet scent of alfalfa and clover evokes feelings of freedom and the unbridled joy of childhood adventure. It also makes me sneeze.

I wasn’t immune to the reality of cattle farming; in fact, in elementary school, I briefly explored vegetarianism due to my love of animals. Unfortunately, my lack of love for vegetables as a youth eventually won out and I reverted back to my omnivorous roots. Living in the city, it was easy enough to distance myself from the circle of life- and the horrors of meat processing- and not to think about the future of those sweet, large-eyed calves with milk dripping messily down their chins. It wasn’t until years later that my mom told the story of Curly, the bull she befriended as a child and regularly helped care for. Curly had been missing for a while when one night at dinner, my mother innocently asked “Where’s Curly?” Chewing stopped mid-bite and my grandpa looked down at his plate which, in the fashion of typical Midwestern farm cuisine, contained meat and potatoes. Specifically, beef and potatoes. More specifically… Curly and potatoes. Farm life is not for the weak of heart.

Given my “urban with a twist of rural” Iowa upbringing, it came as a surprise when my first encounter with a meat raffle occurred in Minnesota rather than Iowa. I can tell there are readers out there who have just stopped and re-read that sentence, trying to make sense of those two seemingly incongruous words: Meat? Raffle? That’s right. The home of tater tot hotdish, wild rice, and the common loon has introduced yet another cultural gem into my life: the meat raffle.

As fate should have it, my first meat raffle experience was not as an observer or participant; I was a co-host. For ten rounds, I traveled the room with a tray of little red raffle tickets priced $1 each and cajoled the audience into participation. Not only did participants have the opportunity to shape the future of today’s youth through their contributions (the proceeds benefited the local youth baseball association), but they had a 1 in 20 chance each round of walking away with MEAT generously donated by a local butcher shop and smokehouse. Bacon, brats, beef sticks… we had it all- or at least a selection of meats beginning with the letter B, which seemed adequate for a first-time meat raffler like me. It’s impossible to describe the satisfaction on a winner’s face as they walk back to their seat holding a package of frozen bacon- not so much because I don’t have the words, but because it’s far more fun to leave it to your imagination.

I’ve never been much of a gambler. Once during childhood on vacation in South Dakota, my brother really wanted my dad to try a slot machine. To teach us a very important lesson about the wastefulness of gambling, Dad took out a quarter, slid it through the coin slot, pulled the lever… and that was the end of that quarter. Later, he would admit that he had no idea how he would have made his point if that single quarter was a jackpot winner. Perhaps I would be writing this post from my million-dollar yacht had an interest in gambling been piqued. We never really know, do we?

Speaking of jackpots, I learned that meat raffles are not all created equal. A friend asked me what the prize was for the raffle winner at “my” meat raffle. When I explained there were prizes each round, she informed me that some raffles have a single grand-prize round. “I won a meat raffle once and walked away with 60-70 pounds of meat in a big blue nylon duffel bag,” she reflected. “My husband still uses that duffel bag, as a matter of fact.”

And with that, I’m left to imagine the wind blowing through my hair, aboard the million-dollar yacht called “Jackpot,” all of my belongings in this world stuffed into a duffel bag that once contained Cletus, or Curly, or whatever the young farmgirl with a particularly strong attachment to a future rump roast named her favorite cow.