Things I Don’t Often See Anymore…and Miss

How and why our world doesn’t look (or sound) the same.

By Peter Rose

[Image of a busy honey bee atop a flower by Derek Keats.]

---

People who make their living monitoring and forecasting changes in society, culture, our environment, and our habits must be awfully busy. Growing up in Iowa over the last half of the past century was a period many considered the “good old days” in America. They were for me, and full of natural beauty and milestones. 

My brother and I lived with my mom’s parents in Des Moines, far western suburbs, now called the inner city. Mom had been divorced when I was still in kindergarten. That took real courage back then. My dad was from Kentucky, served in Indochina countries during World War II, and after the war, he wasn’t suited for the factory jobs offered here. The war had changed lots of those who’d served in fierce combat. He was one. 

My imposing grandfather was building superintendent at the brand-new YMCA downtown by the river, recently torn down for being too old. My grandma was a 4’9” Swedish immigrant. Both had passed through Ellis Island, coming here to farm. They’d known horse-drawn wagons before ever seeing an automobile, and lived to watch man land on the moon. She always kept a spotless home, and baked the best crusted apple and rhubarb pies on Earth. They also imbued and demanded the best manners and respect from us boys, a lesson learned early after I once said a colorful word — resulting in the first and only time my mouth was ever washed out with soap.

My sweet mom worked very hard, was always frugal, and graduated from Drake University in education with a certificate to teach children in elementary school how to read, write and behave, which she did successfully for 40 years. Some years later, she proudly showed me her first annual contract for the sum of $2,100 and change. Back in those days, kids lived outdoors from sun up to sun down. There was no air conditioning or television yet, let alone video games or handheld telephones to burglarize our time. Activities were dictated by the seasons. Our neighbor kept a few chickens and the rooster crowed at dawn. You could always hear owls at night and birds chirping even before the sun rose. My grandma said it was because they had faith that it would, and I should learn to have some of my own. 

In the spring, I had garden duties. Seeding, weeding, and watering. After the chores, kids weren’t allowed to linger around the house. Ever. It was just as well, as you’d end up being assigned to sweep the driveway or pick up sticks. So every day was a learning lesson with nature, replete with examining the flowers, plants, thorny thistles, butterflies; identifying bugs and, very carefully, buzzing black-and-gold-striped bumble bees and honey bees that danced flower to flower. They stung.

Trips, falls, bumps, bites, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and discoveries of all the sights, smells, and sounds of chuckling squirrels filled our days. Occasionally, the ice cream vendor’s bell would ring, or the milkman on our route would leave a small carton of chocolate dairy treats in our milkbox. 

---

At my age, now retired, I’ve had time to recall those seasons. Mild spring days with sweet fragrances of hyacinth, lilacs, crabapple, and tulip trees. Even the smells after a brief rain shower. Then the sweltering summers would arrive, requiring mowing with our hand-push rotary antique, which created a cologne of freshly cut grass you could slice with your pocketknife. 

It was my job to pull endless patches of bright yellow dandelions, which seemed to then magically grow right back overnight. Summers had three holidays: July 4 fireworks, our family reunion on my uncle’s farm, and the State Fair. Fall started right after the fair, which meant three things: back to school, the baseball World Series, and leaves, lots of leaves. Back then, we walked to school in the mornings, walked home and back for lunch, then home again after the bell rang. A couple miles daily in any weather. Our parents always felt safe, and so did we.

Late autumn had two major events. Halloween was terrific back then. We usually dressed as a clown or a ghost, and I still remember actually bobbing for apples. The other was raking those leaves. Our large yard and the whole neighborhood were filled with majestic oak trees, and every one of their leaves would fall at the exact same time into our front and back yard. The raking of the leaves at our house was a family project exclusively delegated to me and my brother. We pulled our wire tools with freshly blistered hands over every inch of ground onto huge bedspreads, then hauled them onto a gigantic pile. It took days, and every night was a glorious burning ritual of sights and sounds and smells that filled the entire neighborhood. It felt and smelled like victory!

Winters consisted primarily of sledding, ice skating, shoveling snow to the point of frostbite, and Christmas tinsel, toys, and pastries. There was always snow at Christmas time. Not anymore, it seems. The most vivid memories that I have now, however, are things that I don’t ever see, or simply don’t even seem to exist anymore. 

Eminent domain to build the freeway took away our house and the neighborhood. There were always neighbor kids galore. 

Remember, we were the post–World War Boomer generation, and I was the son of a single school teacher. Unless you were wealthy, you wore hand-me-downs from older siblings, including but not limited to sweaters, shirts, shoes, mittens, rubber boots, and roller and ice skates. Everyone did, and no one ever made you feel poor or embarrassed — most of the time, anyway. We all shared everything, really, except our cat’s eye, purie, and steelie marbles, of course, along with your trusty slingshot or treasured baseball cards. You made trades or competed for those.

I don’t ever see kids playing catch in their yards or at playgrounds anymore. Or simply exploring. Now, their earbuds are plugged into cell phones, heads ducked down. I’m not judging, just wondering, do they ever hear the birds sing on Twitter? 

People’s finely manicured yards look like the grass is painted on, just like our golf courses, public and private, do. Don’t see many dandelions, nor the once-ubiquitous purple and white violets I used to pick for my mom and grandma on special days, either. 

My friends and I always combed the woods to see wildlife, especially birds. Redheaded woodpeckers, chickadees, nut hatches, tufted titmouse, nuthatches, warblers, finches, blue jays, bluebirds, and goldfinches, our official state bird. I see a lot more robins, starlings, blackbirds, sparrows, and some occasional cardinals now. 

Fireflies, or lightning bugs, used to be a nightly feast for the eyes. We would punch holes in mason jar lids and run around catching more than you could count, even occasionally rare green ones, I swear! 

Where did they go? Mosquitos at night, even in the city, were like a moving fog, hungry and itching to bite you. Des Moines was a city even back then, yet the night sky was still filled with stars so visible I learned more constellations than just the Big and Little Dippers. 

We explored ponds and small streams, too. You could hear a loud symphony of baritone bullfrogs nightly, kind of like that old Budweiser commercial. Sometimes we’d uncover a salamander, or catch crawfish or small carp by hand in Walnut Creek. 

I’ve taken walks now in those places that yield only gnats or scratching crickets, and I wouldn’t ever care to put my feet or hands in the murky brown water. We have a nice multispecies flower garden at the condo community where I reside, and I’ll maybe see a real honeybee twice a year. Wasps, yes. Bees, no.

---

Everything has a season. An apple tree doesn’t blossom in the fall, and hens don’t lay many eggs in the winter. I understand light pollution from increasing population and businesses prevents me from seeing those constellations shooting stars and meteor showers, but the sounds and sights of living things from my youth are mostly gone. 

I see and read a lot about Roundup, the weedkiller herbicides used by people spraying their property and golf courses to produce those perfect lawns, but they’re also causing all sorts of serious health problems in people and other living creatures. I’m concerned that those fogger spray trucks driving through neighborhoods at night spewing insecticides to kill mosquitos aren’t so good for lightning bugs, butterflies, violets, and people, either. This year they decided to do only aerial spraying due to budget cuts. Pesticide rain. 

Perhaps the supercharged leaf blowers’ constant roar like jets on a runway is causing some of the absenteeism by birds and animals, as well. All the light and sound pollution comes with community growth. But the chemicals are a different problem, so much that I’ve been looking into it more closely, trying to determine if it’s my imagination, nostalgia for my youth, or a very real danger.

What I’ve learned shocks and frightens me, which is unusual because I remember when companies told us smoking cigarettes weren’t only sophisticated and cool — they were healthy for you, too. I never thought bicycle helmets and seatbelts would last, either. 

Multiple research studies on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, shows it can accumulate in the kidneys, liver, colon and brain. It’s now been found in human breast milk, indicating it doesn’t simply get passed through your body, like its makers claim. A recent two-year study found that exposure to Roundup caused organ damage and increased incidences of tumors, especially in women. 

And juries have ruled it is a causative agent in non-Hodgkin lymphoma. More of it is used in Iowa and the Midwest than nearly anywhere in the world, and we’re the only state with a rising cancer rate. 

It gets worse. Forty-eight percent of America’s honey bee colonies collapsed over the past year. In one year. I had to check that several times. The world’s most widely used class of insecticides, called neonics, is a key factor in the colonies collapsing and the bees dying. In fact, some of the neonics are five to 10,000 times more toxic to honeybees than DDT. Sure doesn’t sound encouraging for birds. I remember Rachel Carson’s pivotal, Earth-changing book, Silent Spring, which stimulated widespread concern and led to the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a cancelation order for DDT as a probable human carcinogen that also adversely affects wildlife. 

It, too, was initially touted as a big success, but led to the development of resistance by the pest species it was intended to control.

---

Bees pollinate 70 of the 100 major crops on Earth, which means the rhubarb that filled Grandma’s pies, along with vegetables, potatoes, melons, peaches, blueberries, zucchini; to almonds, bananas, cotton, and coffee are all likely being contaminated and impaired — basically, every major food group we survive on. 

The world’s largest producer of Roundup and neonicotinoid, or “neonic,” pesticides is Bayer, the German chemical giant. They have 40 subsidiary companies, which employ over 100,000 people; 20,000 with over 170 facilities in the United States alone. They produce hundreds of products. They make the aspirin we take for headaches, One A Day and Flintstone vitamins, Alka Seltzer, MiraLAX, and milk of magnesia, to name just a few. The neonic insecticides Bayer invented in 1985 topped over $1 billion in sales last year alone. 

The European Union banned the outdoor use of neonic pesticides seven years ago. Worldwide, 33 countries have banned glyphosates, the key ingredient in Roundup, because of their unacceptable risks to people, the water we drink, and the food we eat. But not here in Iowa, where we use more of it than any state except Illinois, sometimes. In the last year, Bayer started purchasing full-page newspaper advertisements thanking individual Iowa majority leaders and legislators by their personal names for their continuing support to sell glyphosate products and protect them from lawsuits in 2020. More than 100,000 people have already accused them of causing cancer. Bayer has paid more than $11 billion in settlements with no admission of wrongdoing. 

You know those things I don’t often see anymore and miss? They may never come back. But I think it’s time we talk to our elected officials and neighbors about the legislation they’re being thanked for supporting. It’s time we asked politicians, the CEO of Bayer, their board of directors and stockholders what they think they’re doing to us, the things they don’t often see anymore, and what they may be missing, too.

---

Peter Rose is Iowa born and his career has spanned professional market research and financial services, directing multiple state and rural economic community development programs, corporate marketing and long-term health care products management. He has served as guest instructor at the American Institute of Business, Iowa Association of Business and Industry, the Iowa Utility Association, marketing consultant for the Iowa CareGivers’ Association, Children and Families of Iowa, Golden Chapter, Alzheimer's Association, and the Governor’s Annual Conference on Aging. For the past year, he has provided political commentary for KSVY public radio in Sonoma, Cali., and currently specializes in government and environmental issues facing Iowa and the nation.