The Woodsides of Rural Iowa

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

Ross and lona Woodside last week were listening not only to the alarums of Gerald Ford on Indochina, but also to the first whispers of a tardy spring. It was clear that spring was more welcome. It will soon green the patch of Iowa prairie where they have lived and farmed for 64 years, bring the wild flowers to their slope of black soil with a quiet excitement that will dwarf Ford's perplexing insistence on more war in Southeast Asia.

He is one more President in their lives of 87 and 85 years, 67 of which they have been married. What Ford does will reach to their hillside as have the actions of the other 15 Presidents in their span. They will neither huzzah nor protest but go on about the enduring business of living, finding fulfillment in family, church and neighbors. They are not recluses or faddists. Their butter and soap come from the store. They worked the land, taught country school, and welcomed the automobile, hybrid corn and television. And what they had at any moment was always enough. The nearest interstate highway (30 miles) or urban shopping complex (80 miles) did not lure them away. They stayed--part of the enduring underpinning for the man on Pennsylvania Avenue.

She sang Nearer, My God, to Thee, and she carried the flag in her school when it paid tribute to the fallen William McKinley. The robust Teddy Roosevelt was part of her wedding, so to speak. At least he was in the White House. Ross did Wilson's bidding. One day in 1917 he harnessed up his team and climbed in the wagon and drove through the flooded Nodaway River to sign up for World War I conscription. They needed him more on the farm, it turned out.

Cal Coolidge was on his way to Washington when lona froze her heels riding to town in a bobsled. She did not hold it against him. "I liked Coolidge," she says. "He didn't waste money and didn't waste any words."

She does not feel the same about Herbert Hoover, her fellow lowan. "They are trying to put Hoover on a pedestal. He's not on my pedestal," she says. Hoover is still blamed for failing to help the farm economy. The Wood-sides held on--even through 1934 when the weather brutalized the prairies. Ross got no hay, no corn, sold his few cattle to the Government. There was almost nothing--but there was a new President.

"Roosevelt gave us electricity," says Mrs. Woodside. "It changed our lives. I'll never forget it." She and her husband quietly cheered Harry Truman but were offended by his language. Ike was a "dear old man," but not a very good President as viewed from the Woodside corner. John Kennedy they liked immensely. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon got a quick dismissal. So does Ford.

It is doubtful if Mrs. Woodside ever saw a real war protester, but she shares some of the same sentiment. Part of the reason is the war diary of her Uncle John. In it is a half-written letter. "It was full of joy and boyish hopes," she says. "He wrote about the letters he had got from girls, which girl he had chosen for his sweetheart. He never finished the letter. He was killed. Such a waste." That was in the Civil War. Her grandson was in Viet Nam.

Now Ford has had his say about the world and it sounds the same. The tragedy of people even so far away fills the Woodsides with profound sadness. But common sense possesses them too. The idea of more bombs, more guns, more killing sounds to them like putting off what is happening now to another day.

But the earth is warming. They will respond to that. Ross will cast a critical eye over the Angus cattle of his son. Up and down the road, families are doing things that lona is recording in her short items written in longhand and posted in the mailbox to the local paper once a week. She will watch the hills now like a hawk. Some of them never have been touched by a plow, and the native flowers and grasses will magically appear. She will flash the news when she spies trillium or bloodroot or pink sweet William pushing up beneath the scrub oak trees. The deeply satisfying drama of renewal will have begun.

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