I am flying back to the small town of Woodbine, Iowa. In one week from now I will be joining the class of ‘73 for their 50-year graduation celebration.
This will be my seventh trip back to a small farming community that stole a piece of my heart.
1973 was an eventful year. Palestinian terrorists scaled a wall that was never intended to keep out evil in the early morning hours in the Munich Olympic Village and took 15 Israeli athletes hostage.
The world was not prepared for such an act, much less the German police force who failed badly in a bungled operation that resulted in the deaths of 15 athletes.
The Vietnam War was raging, President Nixon was reelected in a landslide victory and four men were arrested entering the Democrat operations centre, which was to become the start of the Watergate saga.
The United States of America was the undisputed superpower of the world and its people walked with a confident swagger and a general ignorance of most countries outside its borders. So self-centred that they called their own domestic baseball competition the ‘World Series’.
We self-deprecating Aussies, just breaking free from our own inferiority complex, could only smirk at the overblown national ego of the Americans.
Heading to the US heartland
The farming community I lived in for one year was nothing like that. Yes they still had a swagger and an unshakeable belief that all things American were the best, but overall they were a hard-working, down-to-earth people who generously opened their hearts to this young ‘ossie’.
The rich Missouri valley is one of the prime farming regions in the world. Corn and soya beans combined with fat cattle and hogs.
Woodbine (population 1,100) with a crushed brick athletic track and state-of-the-art indoor basketball complex had better sporting facilities at the community school than Sydney at the time.
Over the years many, including Americans, have asked incredulously ‘why in Earth’s name are you going to Omaha?’ (that city being the closest notable city).
Iowa is the heartland of the United States and not just because both John Wayne and Radar were born there. In Woodbine the people respect and work with each other and have built a community that ‘bats well above its weight’ on the sports field but also has a great pride in keeping a well maintained lawn which tells you something about the pride those who live there have in the town.
View to the future
In those days it was more evenly split between Republicans and Democrats (now 80 per cent Republican).
There are still many Trump sympathisers, even after his litany of lies split a deep divide in the nation, that have many suspecting it may lead to civil war, a thought that until recently was never a remote consideration.
Woodbine was, and largely still is, a community that can join together socially regardless of political persuasion.
It doesn’t demonstrate the deep divide that is evident in some other parts of the county. The welcome sign and traditional American hospitality is alive and well.
We Aussies shake our heads in dismay and disbelief as lies and deception appear to gain the upper hand on the world stage.
As Abraham Lincoln said: ‘To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes a coward out of men. America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’
In my lifetime Australia has always followed closely in the footsteps of America and Lincoln sends all of us a prophetic warning.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
