Art Cullen’s new book Storm Lake

A while back (a couple of years ago or so), I ran into Dolores Cullen at a local antique shop I haunt. I’m not sure why I did it, but I told her “Art ought to write a book. I love his writing”. I love writing in general, usually preferring fiction. Dolores responded, indicating to me that she’d heard the question before, “Do you think it should be essays or editorials?” I thought for a second and answered “both”.

Then he went and won that Pulitzer prize.

When I met Art, I didn’t know he was a newspaper guy and in fact, I didn’t know who he was. I was trying to keep my baby store alive after a series of setbacks-a bogus eviction from a spot by a guy who wanted to start a restaurant there, and a couple of other setbacks which would eventually include two break-ins that would finish the place off. It was a retail music store where I was trying to peddle record albums when there WEREN’T any record albums. He would visit me on Saturdays when I clerked my doomed second counter (the two stores were my hobby, not my “real job”). He wasn’t a big spender, which I now realize was because he had relatively empty pockets, but that was ok-I needed to care about sales because my partner was about ready to leave me and/or demand we close the store, but Art was a wonderful conversationalist and that was good enough for me. Good conversationalists are hard to find.

Eventually I discovered that he was a wild-eyed liberal newspaper guy. That was interesting to me because I liked to read some newspapers, mainly the Des Moines Register during the years that they ran Donald Kaul’s column and a newspaper in Spencer had given my son a job as a photographer (using my 35mm camera which I couldn’t seem to master) and my brother was a newspaper guy in Montana. In addition to being a newspaper guy, Art was a music fan and there’s no better kind of guy than that hanging at the counter of a music store of course.

At the time, I wasn’t from Storm Lake, so I wasn’t really cultivating social contacts or even reading Storm Lake news but I was happy to meet another music fan of his caliber. From my vantage point of two record stores, those were the only people I really met who held my interest.

Things evolved and happened, which could probably be a book of their own if I cared to step into the autobiographical or nonfiction world and I needed to take care of some “stuff” like a divorce, the collapse of that Storm Lake store, a near bankruptcy and the evaporation of my “real job”, as well as some personal adjustments I needed to make over my overusage of the world’s most dangerous drug, ethyl alcohol. All that took a few years. I eventually got back on my feet, and moved to Storm Lake, taking up residence with a woman who recently passed away and who should have inspired a book of her own, which is yet another tangent.

I grew up in Spencer, although I had spent a great deal of time in Storm Lake with grandparents and an eight year residence on Hickory Lane, where I was being assimilated into the family business as a third generation guy who might eventually ascend to piloting the ship if we just didn’t sell the place, which of course we eventually did do. In my lifetime, there was quite a Spencer-Storm Lake rivalry, due largely in part to a couple of really tall high school basketball players that Storm Lake had on their basketball team. The Spencer and Storm Lake factions of our business had a good-natured rivalry and until we combined those two branches at Spencer, I was happy to participate.

On the same day that Storm Lake’s Hygrade plant closed, we executed that consolidation and although I had a little trouble moving to Spencer due to insanely high interest rates, I did move to Royal in 1983, where housing was more affordable. With the exception of me stomping around Storm Lake handling sales duties as the Son Of A Bitch From The Home Office, that ended my Storm Lake affiliation for a while until I returned to launch music store number two.

Hygrade remained closed for a while, and IBP eventually came along and busted the union, and packing plants in Spencer and Estherville just vanished. Spencer wanted nothing more to do with that industry. Things began to change, and Storm Lake became what we call multi-cultural.

I like multi-cultural places; I’d always felt that I was suffocating in northwest Iowa and my only reprieve from that came with my four year stay in Iowa City from 1969 to 1973, where I damn near threw it all away chasing a raven-haired beauty in a bar. She was a waitress-we hadn’t changed that job description to server yet.

But it was a Spencer thing to do to point at Storm Lake and deride the town for going all to pot because suddenly it wasn’t homogeneous. That reminded me of how we had looked at Iowa City, although we also hated the place because of the large anti-war faction there. War is good for the economy you know.

My Spencer friends and many of the “old Storm Lake” people still do that. I usually cringe, but never was particularly vocal about my opposition to that kind of myopic thinking, because I was mostly into counter cultural stuff and the evil Left Coast scene.

We have to fast forward to now, when Art wrote his book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. I had stormed the residence of the woman with whom I eventually lived for thirteen years and she lived at “the outlet” of the lake where I would see Art go by on his bicycle (he turned around at the outlet and rode back to town from there) but I left him alone when I saw him because by that time I knew he was a busy newspaper guy and was probably accosted too frequently by people who both agreed and disagreed with him about politics in particular. I was in the “agree” camp, but it was of no importance-I have no political credentials. I knew him as a music aficionado. From time to time he insisted that I had to visit a little bar in Pomeroy, Byron’s, the Iowa Deadhead capital (I’m a Deadhead). I didn’t go there because I couldn’t. I was living with a woman I didn’t feel I could leave alone very long, again, a story worthy of its own book, although I don’t really want to write that book. I want to write Catch-22, even though Joseph Heller already did.

The book came out three days ago and I finished it last night. I’ve seen several remarks that it’s a fast read, and it is. Somehow, he has written a book full of history that’s accessible by people who hate history, based on their high school experience with that subject. But it’s a lot more than that-it’s about Big Agriculture, running a newspaper which of course must produce revenue but without compromising principles, and most importantly, how Storm Lake became multicultural and why that’s a good thing. Not enough music commentary in my opinion, but maybe that’s book number two and anyway, the music commentary is about another town, an oasis in a sea of “rednecks”.

Due to a recent chain of events, I could very well return to Spencer in the coming months, but I will return as a witness of some incredibly powerful social experimentation which in my opinion is wildly successful.

Iowa doesn’t have to be mind-numbingly all-the-same, and it probably never was. While we bemoan the impact of immigration that we actually can’t understand, WE are the immigrants. Cullen has been careful to point that out and he’s specific about how we’ve raped our land and become loathsome ourselves, although he stops short of actually saying that loathsome part.

If you live in northwest Iowa, you should probably read this book. For me, it defines where I am, and I’ve always wondered about that part, particularly because many of my friends from more “interesting” parts of the country have always asked me what in the hell am I doing here. I have always said I’m trapped, but today I feel more like I belong here. It’s a bigger book than that though. It works for anyone who is anywhere in Iowa and it also works for anyone in our country who’s more than slightly interested in why the heartland is important and vital.

The book probably works internationally as well. After my forced retirements from slinging wholesale groceries and retail music (because distribution conglomerates good with spreadsheets took over and Main Street is broken) I moved my economic activity to the internet where roughly a third of my business is international. I’m sensitive about the ugly American stereotype, although you rarely hear that phrase any more, and again, Cullen has not used those words. I care about what many so-called conservatives condemn as globalism.

I care about being represented by racists, and I care about politics dominated by money. I’ve had money and I can tell you that chasing the stuff is a grave mistake.

Buy the book. It’s insightful, often self-deprecating, and entertaining, even when it names weeds. I wish I’d read it years ago, before it even existed.







Storm Lake High School Yearbook 1958 Breeze

Storm Lake Breeze 1958

Realized $19.99 9/18/10


1945 Storm Lake, Iowa Breeze high school yearbook

Storm Lake Breeze1945

Realized $22.49 9/18/10


Storm Lake Iowa Breeze 1941 High School Yearbook

1941 Breeze Yearbook

Realized $23.99 1/19/15


Storm Lake Iowa 1942 High School Breeze Yearbook

Breeze Yearbook 1942

Realized $23.99 8/22/15



1948 Storm Lake Iowa Breeze High School Yearbook

Storm Lake Breeze1948

Realized $20.99 9/18/10





Dave Williams’ organic eggs: Storm Lake Iowa

Story by Dolores Cullen, Storm Lake Times, reprinted with permission.

Storm Lake Times Newspaper

Chickens on the Dave and Norma Williams farm scratch in the dirt and walk wherever they please. They wander into a shed, peck at organic feed, then hop into a nest and lay brown, organic eggs.

And Williams is happy to report that the 100 or so eggs laid each day by the Black Beauties are barely keeping up with demand.

A big break for Williams happened a year ago when his eggs made it onto the shelves of the Storm Lake Fareway store. The brown eggs, obvious in their clear, plastic cartons, cost around $3 – twice as much as eggs produced in big laying facilities.

“People like to buy them because they’re locally grown and organic on top of it,” said Fareway Store Director Bryan Baumhover. The eggs always sell out, especially last winter when cold weather was slowing down the layers.

Other Storm Lake grocery stores carry organic and cage-free eggs which are produced elsewhere.

For two years, Williams has been selling his eggs to One Stop Meat Shop in Sioux City. Last Friday he had 43 dozen delivered to the business. He’s had inquiries from as far away as Minneapolis. One place tried to make arrangements to pick up three cases a week. It never materialized, but it assured Williams that consumers want organic eggs.

“I’ve gotten calls from people in Sioux City,” said Williams. (His phone number is on each carton.) They tell him they like the taste of the eggs and that regular eggs have no taste at all. They like the bright yellow yolks that don’t flatten into the frying pan like the regular eggs do.

The term “range fed”

Callers often ask what range fed means. “I tell them it means that I open the door every morning and if they want to come out, they can.” To call his chickens range fed, he’s required to allow a certain number of square feet per chicken. They wander all over the driveway and up to the north side of the house, but seldom do they get out on the road. They eat bugs. (Dave said they never have crickets in the house.) They eat worms and he’s seen one eat a mouse.

“Chickens are dirty animals,” Williams said, comparing them to a white kitten who wanders among the flock.

“But animals are meant to be free,” says Williams. He doesn’t like the idea that most laying hens spend their entire lives crammed into small cages. In confinements, young chickens have to be debeaked to keep from cannibalizing eachother. For that reason, many of his customers pay the higher price for eggs from range fed hens.

And each evening at twilight, the chickens know enough to go back into the barn and shed outfitted for them.

“You have to be committed”

Williams’ farm, located a mile northeast of Storm Lake’s gateway lighthouse, is certified organic, and the green and white “USDA Organic” sticker on each egg carton represents years of hard work and persistence without much profit.

It takes three years of chemical-free farming to earn the certification. Williams puts up signs to keep the county from spraying his ditches. He has to see that spray planes keep their distance. Transitional ground at least 25 feet wide must be maintained between his land and his neighbors’. Last year he planted trees on his 30-foot buffer strip, but they all died. He’ll replant them again this year.

Keeping the weeds under control is the big challenge. Weeds have to be managed mechanically. He’s not afraid to try new things. This year he’s raising a few goats to help keep the weeds down. He uses chicken manure for fertilizer.

“You have to be committed to it,” says Williams of organic farming. “There’s other people that tried it. They see the weeds come up and spray ‘em and quit.”

He knows of at least two other successful organic farmers in the area though. One whose corn and soybean yields are as good or better than farmers who use chemicals.

A premium product

Williams believes that chemicals feed the plant, but rob the soil. “Organic feeds the soil, which in turns feeds the plant, which feeds humans and animals.”

Last year he raised corn, flax, field peas, oats and spring wheat. These grains are mixed with organic pre-mix and fed to his chickens. The flax makes the eggs lower in cholesterol, he says.

The field peas and flax didn’t grow too well, but in the future, he will buy these grains elsewhere and focus on his crops that are successful.

A system of paperwork goes with the organic label so he can produce a paper trail for anyone who is skeptical that he’s organic. An inspector comes to his farm yearly to check that he is following the specified requirements. Even with oversight, much is left to the honor system, which Williams says he takes seriously.

Confident that the market for organic eggs exists and that he’s virtually the only producer in the area, Williams plans to increase his flock this summer. Currently he has about 200 chickens. He may add another hundred.
He’s required to buy the chicks at two days old and start them on their organic regimen. He’s glad the winter is over. The cold weather reduced the daily egg output to only 40. The deep snow made it more than a chore to go out and collect the eggs, which he tries to do four times a day.
Old five-gallon buckets on their sides make do for nests. He cares for the chickens much like his grandmother did a generation ago. Williams washes and grades the eggs in his kitchen. They are refrigerated in his basement. It’s nothing fancy.

Williams also raises organic grass fed cattle. Customers pay $5 for his hamburger at the Sioux City meat shop. Others come to the farm and purchase halves or quarters, as they do eggs –straight from Williams.
“It’s a premium product,” he says, considering the fruits of his labor. “I’m doing people a service and that is a joy in itself.”

Sunset Over The Lake Memorial Weekend 2010

Memorial Weekend 2010

This was out our back door last night.


Vintage metal Rain Gauge Witt Sales Storm Lake Iowa 5″ x 6″, with glass tube

Witt Rain Gage 1

Witt Rain Gage 2


Stuff From My Previous Life

Description Of The Thing:
Metal “Rain Gage”, blue and white paint, about 5″ x 6″, with glass tube (3/4″ diameter), instructions, original plain box, “Witt Sales, Storm Lake, Iowa, Phone RE2-4692, Box 464”. Witt Sales distributed wholesale candy and tobacco and food service items throughout northwest Iowa from 1938 to 1981 from the Storm Lake location.

Condition Of The Thing:

Perfect, new, no flaws, stored for years, never distributed.

Shipping & Fiddling Info:
Gross shipping weight is ten ounces.

Realized $19.99 ppd 10/22/11
Realized $22.05 ppd 9/17/11
Realized $13.96 8/5/8
Realized $14.99 2/21/8
Realized $13.98 12/30/7
Realized $13.98 12/1/7
Realized $16.95 6/23/6
Realized $19.94 9/3/6
Realized $14.97 2/9/6
Realized $9.99 11/13/5