MOWING STRAIGHT ACROSS IOWA
LAURENS, IOWA, JUNE 1994 — When he opened the letter, the news was not good. Alvin Straight’s brother, Henry, had suffered a stroke. The brothers had not spoken for ten years, some falling out over. . . something.
Henry, 80, lived out across the Plains, across the Mississippi, in Wisconsin. Alvin, 73 and legally blind, had no driver’s license. He hated buses, hotels, pretty much anything that infringed on his freedom.
“Ordinary people would just hop on a bus or drive a car,” a local said, “but Alvin was not an ordinary person.”
The day after Independence Day, Alvin Straight set out for Wisconsin, 240 miles away. His mode of transport: a lawnmower.
It’s easy to romanticize Alvin Straight as a hometown hero, salt of the earth, a Prairie vagabond on a heroic odyssey. But the Straight story is anything but straight.
Born in Montana, Alvin Straight had lived and worked odd jobs all over the West and Midwest. Wyoming, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico. . . His first wife had passed on, leaving him seven surviving children.
In 1989, retiring from a life of labor, Alvin and his second wife moved to Laurens (pop. 1,550). In the town that bills itself as “the busiest town in Iowa,” few knew him. “He was quite reclusive,” the town librarian said, “and perhaps eccentric.” Perhaps.
So when Alvin lumbered out of town on his old lawnmower, there was no sendoff, no great concern. Just an old guy on a John Deere, eastbound.
“There’s an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of, but it’s really a heroic place.”
Across the sweeping prairie, past cornfields that stretched forever, along the shoulder of four-lane Route 15, Alvin lumbered on. Behind his mower, he towed a trailer stocked with gasoline, food, clothes, and a sleeping bag. He parked at roadsides, cooked on a camp stove, slept in the trailer.
“I didn’t stay in no damn motel, that’s for sure,” he later said, and “didn’t eat in no restaurants, either.”
But in West Bend, the lawnmower broke down. Some say Alvin went home and bought another tractor. Others say he paid $250 in repairs. Either way, he was back on the road.
Stubbornness, eccentricity, and lawnmowers ran in the Straight family. Just ask the folks in Blue River, Wisconsin about old Henry Straight. “Henry was a good-hearted fellow, but he did things his own way. Nobody could tell him otherwise."
Henry’s “own way” included feeding goats at his kitchen table and inviting neighbors in for a morning shot of Jack Daniels. And lawnmowers. Henry often rode his lawnmower to his favorite bar in Blue River. Sometimes his wife, June, rode beside him on a matching mower. Running out of gas was part of the fun.
But Henry had no idea his brother was headed for him on a John Deere. On Alvin went, week after week, mile after mile.
Reaching Charles City, 90 miles out, Alvin ran out of money. So he camped on the edge of town until his Social Security check reached his account. Onwards.
Anyone who has crossed the Plains knows the stage set. The big skies. The heat, the humidity, the boredom. But on Alvin went. He crossed the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien and mowed into Wisconsin. And now might be the time to mention Alvin’s diabetes, the arthritis that had him using two canes, the emphysema. . .
“Well, I can’t imagine anything good about being blind and lame at the same time,” Alvin says in Disney’s “The Straight Story.” “But still, at my age, I’ve seen about all that life has to dish out. I know to separate the wheat from the chaff and let the small stuff fall away.”
Six weeks into his journey, Alvin’s mower broke down again. He was just two miles from his brother. A local farmer helped him push the final stretch.
On August 15, 1994, June Straight looked down the country road in Blue River. She shouted to Henry: 'There's a lawn mower coming this way, and I think your brother Alvin is riding it.'"
Reconciled, Alvin and Henry spent a few weeks catching up. June didn’t mind. “Alvin was happy just as long as he had meat and potatoes for supper," she said. "He wasn't much trouble. He slept out in his trailer mostly."
That September, Henry’s son Dwayne drove Alvin and his lawnmower home. The Straight story was over, but it was just getting started. Alvin’s odyssey made news from South Africa to Australia. He was invited to be on Leno and Letterman. He refused.
“They offered to fly me or put me in a train,” he told one newspaper, “but they're not going to put me in a plane or a box car to go to California or New York.”
Back home, Alvin got itchy. The following April, he set out on his refurbished mower, this time westbound. Rolling through Marathon, Iowa, and Rembrandt and Larabee, his destination was Sun City, Idaho, 1200 miles away.
Alvin mowed down the road for 400 miles before wind and rain and sun stopped him. He never recovered, dying of heart failure that November.
Alvin Straight’s tractor is on display at the County Historical Society in Pocahontas, Iowa The tractor and a few memories remain. Whatever Alvin did, museum curator Patty Duffy said, “Usually it would be best to stay out of his way because the way for something to be done was his way.”
