City View

This past weekend, my family decided to take a trip to St. Joseph for some rest and relaxation before school starts up again. With it being tax-free weekend we were also able to get our last minute school supplies, and in my case last minute dorm supplies.

Shopping aside, St. Joe is an interesting little place. While there is a definite metropolitan feel, you can tell the city’s roots lie in its rich history, much of that history being agricultural.

Photo by Patrick King, from http://www.city-data.com/picfilesv/picv1977.php

One place that exemplifies this is the St. Joseph Stockyards, which opened in 1887. While St. Joe is better known as the birthplace of the Pony Express or the deathplace of Jesse James, the stockyards have played an important role in shaping the city. As we drove through the area, now pretty quiet though livestock auctions still take place, I could just imagine how it must have looked back in its heyday. History came alive as Dad explained what it was like when he came down here to sell hogs and cattle.

Just across the road from the old Exchange Building on the stockyards grounds was our first eating destination, and with one look at The Hoof and Horn Steakhouse I knew this history lesson wasn’t over. From the antique knick-knacks everywhere to the old bar in the back, the place looked interesting and had an old-timey atmosphere. Of course, any place that serves up good home cooking is a winner to me. Obviously others thought so too. The restaurant was packed with people laughing and enjoying good food with good company.

The country roots continued to follow me as we got deeper into the city. Pulling into the parking lot of Target I could hear a country music station blaring out of someone’s car. In another neighborhood, a man did the traditional drive-by hand wave from his car as we passed by, and gardens of sweet corn and tomatoes lined the road. Even in a more urbanized part of town we saw a man selling cantaloupes on the side of the street just like the people selling produce on the corner in my own town.

For a city with two Walmarts, a mall, and countless other businesses, there were elements of this place that reminded me of home- just in an overgrown kind of way. This trip was a testament to how deep agriculture goes. I was glad to see a reminder of just how diverse agriculture really is; it’s not just production, but also processing, packaging, and distributing, and it’s not confined to rural regions. No matter where you live or what you do, you are connected to agriculture. Sometimes these connections are obvious, sometimes not, but these connections are what make the welfare of the agricultural community so important to everyone. We all, agriculturalist or not, are dependent on one another.