Iowa was very tolerable back then... it may have been a source of humor for coastal elites, but it was one damn fine place to call home. Small towns were more than bedroom communities, school board members were generally conservatives with a sense of propriety (and not made up of the NEA's personal picks), railroad branch lines were reasonably viable, the suits in Des Moines did not control the rest of the state, etc. etc.
Now that we have fewer (but larger) nominally "family" corporate agribusinesses who increasingly resemble pre-WWI Silesian junkers, the stenches emanating from the state are not just literal.
Mr. niteowl77
“Iowa was very tolerable back then... it may have been a source of humor for coastal elites, but it was one damn fine place to call home.”
The social policies for the last 30+ years have been driving companies and jobs out of small town America into big cities. Makes people easier to control.