Felt the love of the Midwest
We left Chicago at 6 p.m. on a Friday night with plans to make the eight-hour drive to Vermillion, South Dakota. After hundreds of miles down the desolate highways of northern Illinois, we paid a visit to the I-80 World’s Largest Truck Stop. After being served a soup bowl filled with BBQ sauce and reflecting on all the summers I spent at this truck stop as a child, we decided we would not be making it another five hours to South Dakota. We fell asleep in a Quality Inn in Des Moines, Iowa. It felt like something really bad should’ve happened to us there, but there was something kind of comforting about it.
Made it to Vermillion for Little Pour on the Prairie and had the most beautiful time casting iron. It’s the people in this community that embody Midwestern love. I spent years declaring questionable drinking habits and football games as the great pillars of the Midwestern nightmare. I’ve now realized I don’t need to love the Midwest satirically or because it feels like a proper diagnosis. I love it because its people love it without irony. It was always there, but now it feels like a kind of faith I accidentally inherited- a peaceful, absurd hope that keeps this region and its people alive.
The morning after the pour, we were meant to continue our Midwestern tour to Wyoming (which is not in the Midwest, I know, but humor me). After a night of drinking Fireball (scared) and (#?) Modelos over a bonfire that I later found out had a couch in it, we decided to stay for the day. The plan was to swim in the Missouri River and punch fish. Swim we did- fish punching didn’t happen, but that’s probably for the better since some of yall like to go PETA on me.
We left Vermillion at sunset, soaking wet, covered in river sediment, with a Modelo box filled with clay foraged from the riverbed. The goal was to make it another 8.5-hour drive to north-central Wyoming. We very quickly realized that was not happening and booked a hotel in Rapid City. The Foothills Inn became home that night. Payton fell asleep fully clothed with her sunglasses on.
I know I just spent the past three paragraphs hyping up the Midwest, but I would not wish going 90 mph down I-90 at 3 a.m. on my worst enemy. Truly a haunting drive. But that’s what being 22 is all about, or at least that’s how I justify it.
Anyway, 10/10 for the Foothills Inn: the bathtub was baby blue, and the view of the Black Hills from the room was beautifully garnished with a massive parking lot in the foreground. The maid did try to break into our room well before checkout, but I’ll forgive her, the vibe was unbeatable otherwise.
We finally made it to Wyoming and had the most peaceful three days. Spent every night sitting out with my grandparents, hoping to see the stars, just for clouds to roll in after the moonrise. But it’s okay, all that matters to me is sitting on that porch with my grandparents just as I have my entire life. It is a blessing to not hear anything at all. We harvested wild sage from the top of the mountain to bring home; it conveniently covered the smell of the river clay that sat soaking through the Modelo box in the trunk.
Wyoming wasn’t the last stop on our Midwestern world tour. We left Wyoming at 6 a.m. to drive to Decorah, Iowa, to stay on a friend and mentor, Kelly Ludeking’s, family farm. This time we actually planned for our treacherous drive — made it in a clean fifteen hours. We even bought a vape in Minnesota after spending a perfectly timed 30-minute break in Wall, South Dakota, at Wall Drug to buy a rabbit pelt, bobcat tail, fudge, and seven sticks of palo santo.
Anyway — the farm.
That place is truly an upside-down world in the best way possible.
Kelly and Diane Ludeking have been hosting an annual iron pour on their farm for the past 20 years. Now they’re looking to transform the farm Kelly grew up on into a residency of sorts, an oasis for artists to create their work, with the American heartland as their backdrop.
We got to town and went straight to the dive bar (duh). Within an hour, it felt like we’d met half the town. The brewmaster from the local brewery was there with the woman who owns the pie shop... like something out of make-believe Disney movie. Played pool and lost, but it’s okay- I’ll win one day.
It’s the thing about the Midwest that keeps me here: people don’t need to know you long to treat you like family, even if that means distant cousin. They’ll give you a tutorial on how to beat someone up, file your taxes, and designate themselves the driver (while still drinking) in a single sentence. I forget that kind of care still exists until I’m in a dive bar with it again.
The next few days, we went around town, met the rest of the people we missed at the bar the night before. It was like Kirk in Gilmore Girls... everyone seemed to work at every establishment and knew exactly what everyone was up to. Small-town omniscience.
One afternoon, Kelly took us to meet a friend, an artist in his sixties whose entire life’s work lives in his yard. Ten-foot sculptures rusting back into the grass. He showed us his book collection and said the only rule was that every book had to teach you something, regardless of whether he agreed with the content. It’s the same reason I consume the media I do, what’s the point of consuming things you already agree with? If I wanted to feed my ego, Id consider myself a political activist.
The next morning, in the barn, we were 20 feet up on the scaffolding, handing boards to Kelly, suspended another 10 feet above us from a harness, screwing the boards to the barn’s frame.
That shit did not feel like real life. I never thought I’d be able to do something like this- not only literally, but to work on something that is so significant in someone’s history. It’s easy to forget that these places still exist beyond the backdrop of a cross-country road trip. That there are people fighting to keep their family farms, to hold onto the land that raised them.
It’s the people who keep showing up, who fix what breaks, who stay even when it’s easier to leave.
The American family farm is dying. You can feel it in the silence of these towns, in the empty barns collapsing a little more with every season, in the kids who move away and never come back- or worse, the ones who never leave. The Midwest isn’t disappearing; it’s eroding. A quiet extinction.
Kelly and Diane are preventing that, and I’m forever grateful that I get to help them.
They’re proof that something still matters out here.
The Midwest never fails to survive, because that’s what love looks like here. It’s slow, hard, dirty work. Sometimes it feels like the apocalypse, but that’s more reason to find utopias within it. They’re all around; you just have to be willing to work to keep them alive long enough to find.
Im finishing this post as Payton and I drive back to Decorah to help with the barn for the weekend.
Lucky to be midwestern. Lucky to have this community around me.
With Love FAME
PS
Check out Kelly, Diane and the Barn
https://downonthefarmironpour.com/legacy-program
