CHAPTER ONE
April 1986
The phone rang in Bob Shelburne’s small, cluttered office. He sat slumped over a black metal desk, sorting through various stacks papers that half covered it. He absent-mindedly reached out his hand and picked up the telephone receiver. “Pecair Shoes,” he said. “This is Mr. Shelburne. May I help you?” After a moment of silence and a long sigh, a resonant voice rumbled from the receiver.
“This is Lieutenant Orrin Donaldson from the Iowa State Police. I need to talk with Mr. Robert Shelburne.”
“This is Mr. Shelburne,” Bob replied a bit impatiently. He waited for the other man to speak.
“Mr. Shelburne,” continued the voice over the telephone. “I am sorry to tell you there’s been an automobile accident involving two people we believe are your parents.”
Bob immediately focused on the telephone call. His stomach knotted, and he sat up straight on the small desk chair. “What happened?” Bob asked.
After some hesitation, the Lieutenant responded in a calm steady voice. “Apparently they were heading down the road returning from town when a pickup truck came around the sharp turn toward the crossroads. It skidded across the center line and hit the red pickup truck your parents were driving head-on.” There was another pause.
Bob realized that he had to speak. “Are they all right?” he asked.
Another pause, then, “I’m sorry, but both occupants of the red truck were killed instantly. Their identification says they were Richard and Jane Shelburne. Your mother’s purse contained your business card. That is how we knew where to look for you.” There was another lapse in their conversation. “ I apologize for having to tell you this over the telephone. I’m sorry for your loss.”
From what the State Police could piece together, His parents had been on a commonplace errand that morning, only going to the local hardware store to buy something they needed for repairing their rambling Victorian farmhouse. As they entered the final stretch of the ride home, a speeding truck coming from the other direction on the narrow, two-lane road crashed head-on into their truck. The investigators determined that the other driver had been drinking, that perhaps his attention wandered or he had gone to sleep. His tires had slipped off the pavement, and they concluded that he overcorrected his error, turning the wheel too hard. His truck crossed the double yellow line at the precise moment the Shelburnes’ truck was coming the other way.
The crash was nasty. The two Shelburnes and the driver of the other truck were killed instantly, the other driver messily decapitated when his head plunged through the windshield because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The Shelburnes were driving their antique 1953 truck, which had no seat belts, and were both ejected from their truck. The State Police lieutenant did not tell Bob the ugly details over the telephone.
Bob was heartsick. He finally said, “Thank you, Lieutenant, for your concern. What should I do now?” The Lieutenant told Bob what to do and whom to contact, then hung up. Bob sat in the chair in his cramped office, stunned. He simply didn’t know how to react. He continued to sit in shock. Bob looked around the office, and then after several moments, got to his feet and went to find one of the salesmen on the floor. Bob spoke to him, telling him that he had just received word of a family emergency, and that he would be leaving the store for a few days. He returned to his office and called the regional vice-president and his immediate boss, Sam Drury. Bob explained to Mr. Drury that he had to take immediate personal emergency leave and the reason why. Mr. Drury, who was focused on several business problems, finally realized that his employee was relating a personal tragedy. He offered his sympathy and gave permission to take company leave. With that, the conversation ended. Bob somewhat distractedly put on his coat and left the store. He trudged home, still in a daze. After arriving at his apartment, he changed his clothes, packed a few things and then sat down in the only easy chair in the apartment. The chair was a hand-me- down from his parents’ home in Iowa City, and he had sat in it as a teenager, across from his father, listening to him talk and sometimes arguing about sports with his grandfather. Bob realized that he had to take a dark suit, suitable clothes for a funeral. He thought about what he would need to take. After checking through his mental list several times, he took the clothing down to his car and started the two- hour drive to Iowa City.
Iowa City is almost due east from Des Moines. Since it was mid-afternoon, Bob had the sun to his back the entire way. He drove with care, but did not pay attention to the new green shoots beginning to come out in the fields in the early spring. He was still wrapped in the shock of his parents death. The drive was easy, and he mechanically drove to the old Victorian farmhouse that had been his only home during his childhood. The house had two stories. It had a peaked roof and dormer windows at the attic. The below-ground basement was not visible from outside. The house, like many old farm houses in that area was painted white. His mother had insisted that the trim be painted dark green. She had always loved that color.
Bob parked his car on the circular driveway directly in front of the stairs leading to the front door. He sat for a moment, looking out at the surrounding fields, just seeing the roofs of new houses on the horizon. He slowly opened the door of the car and got out. He gathered his things and went inside to an empty house. The house seemed cold and distant to him. He sighed and went to his room and put his clothes away. He realized that he was exhausted and went to bed, where he immediately fell asleep.
The next morning he contacted the local undertaker and made all the arrangements. They took care of the notices in the newspaper and scheduled the funeral to take place in two days. The undertaker, who had known his Bob’s father since they were boys, said he would contact all the people who should be informed. After he had taken care of the arrangements, Bob sat sitting in his Father’s chair, thinking about what to do next. Finally, he decided to do something that would give him solace: he would do Tai Chi.
He was an ardent Tai Chi practitioner. He had become fascinated with the Chinese martial art when he saw a television show about martial arts when he was about ten. His parents thought it would be good exercise for him, and bought him a book about it. Learning Tai Chi from a book is very difficult, since it is really a series of smooth flowing movements that don’t lend them selves to being learned from a static book. After some discussion, it was found that Tai Chi Chuan, the Long Slow Form, was taught at the local YMCA. It was inexpensive, and he was one of about fifteen people who met for the first session. Bob was the youngest person there by about forty years. The instructor was an old man, who looked to Bob as if he could barely walk, much less teach the intricate movements. When the class started, Bob had to listen closely to the old man talk because he did not speak English very well.
Bob paid close and careful attention to what the instructor showed them. He was surprised when his legs began to ache almost immediately. But the end of the first session, which was only an hour in length, Bob felt he could barely stand. The instructor looked at him, smiled, and said that if he practiced faithfully, he would get stronger. Bob did practice, and he did get stronger. The class became smaller, because the other students didn’t seem to like the endless practice and strict attention to detail. In only a few weeks, Bob had learned the first section. He also realized that his instructor was a “balanced” man. He not only was physically very fluid and strong, but also never lost his balance. He was always ready to defend himself. After a while, Bob began to understand that Tai Chi was not just a martial art; if practiced faithfully, it would transport him to another level of understanding. He began to notice this effect after several years of practice. His instructor thought he was a wonderful student.
Bob discovered that he became serene, calm, and in tune with his physical and emotional surroundings whenever he did Tai Chi. This skill increased with practice, and he practiced it every day. He went out on the porch and slowly went through the exercise, which took about twenty minutes. Then he did it again. After doing his exercises three more times, Bob felt that he was calm enough to deal with the shock of his parent’s death.
Bob spent the next two days awaiting the funeral walking aimlessly around the old Victorian farmhouse, a house that once sat far beyond the city limits, but whose family gradually began to see the lights of many, and continually increasing, neighbors. He tried to read several novels and generally remaining reclusive. He did Tai Chi both in the morning at dawn and in the evening at sunset. He didn’t call anyone. He ate whatever he could find in the refrigerator and freezer, but he wasn’t really hungry.
When the day of the funeral arrived, it wasn’t the right kind of day for a funeral—not when the sky was such a joyous blue. The early spring sun was warm and carried a hint of the summer yet to come. A soft, warm breeze caressed the mourners and gently rippled their clothes. The grass was beginning to display its soft, dark-green color, and the buds on the trees in the cemetery were ready to burst open as if to greet each mourner with their muted colors. As the chief mourner at this melancholy occasion, Bob was surprised that these mundane perceptions intruded into his grief, particularly when he was mentally comparing the gentle summer sky to a computer screen-saver. He felt that he should be oblivious to everything except the two bronze caskets suspended over their waiting graves. He thought that funerals should occur only on gray, rainy days when the skies would weep melodramatically with the friends and family of the newly dead. That this funeral should occur on such a beautiful spring day seemed grossly inappropriate. It was harder because the deaths of his parents had come came as a complete surprise, with no warning at all. They were in good health, and there was no expectation of anything other than full, rich lives that extended well into old age.
Their deaths, while completely unexpected, did not cause any legal problems. Because his grandmother had died the year before, Bob was the sole heir of the entire estate. There were no other living relatives. The large, ramshackle Victorian farmhouse that had been built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was their longtime family home. The house had sat empty for many years, then Jane’s parents, Bill and Mary Steinfeld, bought the house and forty acres of the land after they moved to Iowa City. Jane and her husband moved in with her parents after their marriage, and Bob was born in July of 1960. After Bob’s grandfather died, Mary, Jane, and Richard discussed what to do about their living arrangements and whether or not to sell the farm. After several weeks of careful, contemplative discussion, they decided to live together as before. Thus, Bob grew up with essentially three parents. He attended the same school where his mother taught, learned to play in farm fields, hunted with his father in the fall and winter, and was a modest success on his high-school basketball team. He was tall at six feet, two inches, and well built, a pleasant-looking, masculine young man with black hair and dark brown eyes.
He had the interests of a normal, well-adjusted teenage boy. His broad, engaging smiles caused more than a few of the girls in his high school to have a crush on him, but he never got seriously emotionally involved with any particular girl. Aside from Tai Chi, which he practiced daily and became more adept with each passing year, he had no particularly notable passions with one other exception. He was quite interested in photography. His father encouraged him, and the two of them equipped a small darkroom in their basement, just off the work room. Bob and his father had tried many different types of photography, and both became quite good in the darkroom. Bob had a wry sense of humor and enjoyed substantial give and take with his father at every chance.
No one had ever discussed an extended Steinfeld-Shelburne family because Jane was an only child and Richard was an orphan. Bob had no aunts and uncles or any other relatives that he knew of. Once, during the course of a family dinner, Richard remarked that he had met with some soldiers on business associated with the state’s Army National Guard.
“My brother, Ken, was a soldier, but he’s been dead for years,” remarked Mary.
Bob was surprised and asked, “Your brother? Why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
“Ken was only two years older than I, but we weren’t close. I hate to say this, but he was a meanspirited man. He caused my parents no end of grief.” Mary hesitated as if she would continue, but abruptly she stopped speaking. At the time, Bob was only fifteen. While the existence of an uncle he’d never heard of surprised and intrigued him, other important matters, such as cars and girls, continually occupied his teen-aged mind. He promptly forgot the incident. Bob’s life stayed on an even course. Because he had been raised with adults as his main companions, he was more mature than other boys his age. He did as he was expected and never put the family through the tumultuous throes of puberty to which many teenaged boys subject their families. After he graduated from high school, he attended the same university as his grandmother, mother, and father, and graduated with a degree in business.
After college he was ready to explore the world outside Iowa City, so he moved to Des Moines and to begin his own life. He was hired as the assistant manager of Pecair, a shoe-store chain. After two years, he seemed to have impressed his superiors at the regional office and the local manager. He was promoted and became the manager of another store in town. Things were going well for him. Several casual girlfriends insured that he wasn’t lonely, and several male friends regularly accompanied him on hunting trips. They also took “shooting” trips with cameras and traded information on their common interest in amateur photography.
In early 1985, Bob received the call that anyone who lives far away from home anticipates with dread: his mother called to tell him that his grandmother had died of complications from a heart attack. He hadn’t seen much of her or his parents for the past several years, although he returned home for the major holidays and called every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes he drove over to surprise them all, and his homecomings were happy occasions.
Bob returned to Iowa City for Mary’s funeral, visited with all the appropriate people, and said all the appropriate things. For the first time in his life, he felt estranged from the friends and acquaintances who were part of his life in Iowa City. They were beginning to marry and have children. Some were already divorced. Their interests were different from his, and he felt that in a few more years he would feel more like a stranger than part of the group. This unexpected development bothered him, but not to the extent that he wanted to make an effort to preserve these fading relationships. His closest friend for many years, George, was the one exception.
The business of his grandmother’s will brought no surprises. The house, the land, and all her possessions were left to his parents. He received a small bequest, which he put aside for some future business opportunity. Bob returned to Des Moines and renewed his efforts in the shoe business. He found that he wasn’t particularly ambitious and considered the possibility of getting married. He’d been dating several women but wasn’t serious about any of them. Marriage was a fine idea in theory, but he had no desire to spend the rest of his life with any of the women he knew. But, he was still searching. He sometimes fantasized about a dark-haired, exotic stunner, but usually wound up laughing at himself and his fantasy. He was more than ready to explore the world outside of Iowa, but he really didn’t know where to go or how to start.
April 1986
The phone rang in Bob Shelburne’s small, cluttered office. He sat slumped over a black metal desk, sorting through various stacks papers that half covered it. He absent-mindedly reached out his hand and picked up the telephone receiver. “Pecair Shoes,” he said. “This is Mr. Shelburne. May I help you?” After a moment of silence and a long sigh, a resonant voice rumbled from the receiver.
“This is Lieutenant Orrin Donaldson from the Iowa State Police. I need to talk with Mr. Robert Shelburne.”
“This is Mr. Shelburne,” Bob replied a bit impatiently. He waited for the other man to speak.
“Mr. Shelburne,” continued the voice over the telephone. “I am sorry to tell you there’s been an automobile accident involving two people we believe are your parents.”
Bob immediately focused on the telephone call. His stomach knotted, and he sat up straight on the small desk chair. “What happened?” Bob asked.
After some hesitation, the Lieutenant responded in a calm steady voice. “Apparently they were heading down the road returning from town when a pickup truck came around the sharp turn toward the crossroads. It skidded across the center line and hit the red pickup truck your parents were driving head-on.” There was another pause.
Bob realized that he had to speak. “Are they all right?” he asked.
Another pause, then, “I’m sorry, but both occupants of the red truck were killed instantly. Their identification says they were Richard and Jane Shelburne. Your mother’s purse contained your business card. That is how we knew where to look for you.” There was another lapse in their conversation. “ I apologize for having to tell you this over the telephone. I’m sorry for your loss.”
From what the State Police could piece together, His parents had been on a commonplace errand that morning, only going to the local hardware store to buy something they needed for repairing their rambling Victorian farmhouse. As they entered the final stretch of the ride home, a speeding truck coming from the other direction on the narrow, two-lane road crashed head-on into their truck. The investigators determined that the other driver had been drinking, that perhaps his attention wandered or he had gone to sleep. His tires had slipped off the pavement, and they concluded that he overcorrected his error, turning the wheel too hard. His truck crossed the double yellow line at the precise moment the Shelburnes’ truck was coming the other way.
The crash was nasty. The two Shelburnes and the driver of the other truck were killed instantly, the other driver messily decapitated when his head plunged through the windshield because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The Shelburnes were driving their antique 1953 truck, which had no seat belts, and were both ejected from their truck. The State Police lieutenant did not tell Bob the ugly details over the telephone.
Bob was heartsick. He finally said, “Thank you, Lieutenant, for your concern. What should I do now?” The Lieutenant told Bob what to do and whom to contact, then hung up. Bob sat in the chair in his cramped office, stunned. He simply didn’t know how to react. He continued to sit in shock. Bob looked around the office, and then after several moments, got to his feet and went to find one of the salesmen on the floor. Bob spoke to him, telling him that he had just received word of a family emergency, and that he would be leaving the store for a few days. He returned to his office and called the regional vice-president and his immediate boss, Sam Drury. Bob explained to Mr. Drury that he had to take immediate personal emergency leave and the reason why. Mr. Drury, who was focused on several business problems, finally realized that his employee was relating a personal tragedy. He offered his sympathy and gave permission to take company leave. With that, the conversation ended. Bob somewhat distractedly put on his coat and left the store. He trudged home, still in a daze. After arriving at his apartment, he changed his clothes, packed a few things and then sat down in the only easy chair in the apartment. The chair was a hand-me- down from his parents’ home in Iowa City, and he had sat in it as a teenager, across from his father, listening to him talk and sometimes arguing about sports with his grandfather. Bob realized that he had to take a dark suit, suitable clothes for a funeral. He thought about what he would need to take. After checking through his mental list several times, he took the clothing down to his car and started the two- hour drive to Iowa City.
Iowa City is almost due east from Des Moines. Since it was mid-afternoon, Bob had the sun to his back the entire way. He drove with care, but did not pay attention to the new green shoots beginning to come out in the fields in the early spring. He was still wrapped in the shock of his parents death. The drive was easy, and he mechanically drove to the old Victorian farmhouse that had been his only home during his childhood. The house had two stories. It had a peaked roof and dormer windows at the attic. The below-ground basement was not visible from outside. The house, like many old farm houses in that area was painted white. His mother had insisted that the trim be painted dark green. She had always loved that color.
Bob parked his car on the circular driveway directly in front of the stairs leading to the front door. He sat for a moment, looking out at the surrounding fields, just seeing the roofs of new houses on the horizon. He slowly opened the door of the car and got out. He gathered his things and went inside to an empty house. The house seemed cold and distant to him. He sighed and went to his room and put his clothes away. He realized that he was exhausted and went to bed, where he immediately fell asleep.
The next morning he contacted the local undertaker and made all the arrangements. They took care of the notices in the newspaper and scheduled the funeral to take place in two days. The undertaker, who had known his Bob’s father since they were boys, said he would contact all the people who should be informed. After he had taken care of the arrangements, Bob sat sitting in his Father’s chair, thinking about what to do next. Finally, he decided to do something that would give him solace: he would do Tai Chi.
He was an ardent Tai Chi practitioner. He had become fascinated with the Chinese martial art when he saw a television show about martial arts when he was about ten. His parents thought it would be good exercise for him, and bought him a book about it. Learning Tai Chi from a book is very difficult, since it is really a series of smooth flowing movements that don’t lend them selves to being learned from a static book. After some discussion, it was found that Tai Chi Chuan, the Long Slow Form, was taught at the local YMCA. It was inexpensive, and he was one of about fifteen people who met for the first session. Bob was the youngest person there by about forty years. The instructor was an old man, who looked to Bob as if he could barely walk, much less teach the intricate movements. When the class started, Bob had to listen closely to the old man talk because he did not speak English very well.
Bob paid close and careful attention to what the instructor showed them. He was surprised when his legs began to ache almost immediately. But the end of the first session, which was only an hour in length, Bob felt he could barely stand. The instructor looked at him, smiled, and said that if he practiced faithfully, he would get stronger. Bob did practice, and he did get stronger. The class became smaller, because the other students didn’t seem to like the endless practice and strict attention to detail. In only a few weeks, Bob had learned the first section. He also realized that his instructor was a “balanced” man. He not only was physically very fluid and strong, but also never lost his balance. He was always ready to defend himself. After a while, Bob began to understand that Tai Chi was not just a martial art; if practiced faithfully, it would transport him to another level of understanding. He began to notice this effect after several years of practice. His instructor thought he was a wonderful student.
Bob discovered that he became serene, calm, and in tune with his physical and emotional surroundings whenever he did Tai Chi. This skill increased with practice, and he practiced it every day. He went out on the porch and slowly went through the exercise, which took about twenty minutes. Then he did it again. After doing his exercises three more times, Bob felt that he was calm enough to deal with the shock of his parent’s death.
Bob spent the next two days awaiting the funeral walking aimlessly around the old Victorian farmhouse, a house that once sat far beyond the city limits, but whose family gradually began to see the lights of many, and continually increasing, neighbors. He tried to read several novels and generally remaining reclusive. He did Tai Chi both in the morning at dawn and in the evening at sunset. He didn’t call anyone. He ate whatever he could find in the refrigerator and freezer, but he wasn’t really hungry.
When the day of the funeral arrived, it wasn’t the right kind of day for a funeral—not when the sky was such a joyous blue. The early spring sun was warm and carried a hint of the summer yet to come. A soft, warm breeze caressed the mourners and gently rippled their clothes. The grass was beginning to display its soft, dark-green color, and the buds on the trees in the cemetery were ready to burst open as if to greet each mourner with their muted colors. As the chief mourner at this melancholy occasion, Bob was surprised that these mundane perceptions intruded into his grief, particularly when he was mentally comparing the gentle summer sky to a computer screen-saver. He felt that he should be oblivious to everything except the two bronze caskets suspended over their waiting graves. He thought that funerals should occur only on gray, rainy days when the skies would weep melodramatically with the friends and family of the newly dead. That this funeral should occur on such a beautiful spring day seemed grossly inappropriate. It was harder because the deaths of his parents had come came as a complete surprise, with no warning at all. They were in good health, and there was no expectation of anything other than full, rich lives that extended well into old age.
Their deaths, while completely unexpected, did not cause any legal problems. Because his grandmother had died the year before, Bob was the sole heir of the entire estate. There were no other living relatives. The large, ramshackle Victorian farmhouse that had been built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was their longtime family home. The house had sat empty for many years, then Jane’s parents, Bill and Mary Steinfeld, bought the house and forty acres of the land after they moved to Iowa City. Jane and her husband moved in with her parents after their marriage, and Bob was born in July of 1960. After Bob’s grandfather died, Mary, Jane, and Richard discussed what to do about their living arrangements and whether or not to sell the farm. After several weeks of careful, contemplative discussion, they decided to live together as before. Thus, Bob grew up with essentially three parents. He attended the same school where his mother taught, learned to play in farm fields, hunted with his father in the fall and winter, and was a modest success on his high-school basketball team. He was tall at six feet, two inches, and well built, a pleasant-looking, masculine young man with black hair and dark brown eyes.
He had the interests of a normal, well-adjusted teenage boy. His broad, engaging smiles caused more than a few of the girls in his high school to have a crush on him, but he never got seriously emotionally involved with any particular girl. Aside from Tai Chi, which he practiced daily and became more adept with each passing year, he had no particularly notable passions with one other exception. He was quite interested in photography. His father encouraged him, and the two of them equipped a small darkroom in their basement, just off the work room. Bob and his father had tried many different types of photography, and both became quite good in the darkroom. Bob had a wry sense of humor and enjoyed substantial give and take with his father at every chance.
No one had ever discussed an extended Steinfeld-Shelburne family because Jane was an only child and Richard was an orphan. Bob had no aunts and uncles or any other relatives that he knew of. Once, during the course of a family dinner, Richard remarked that he had met with some soldiers on business associated with the state’s Army National Guard.
“My brother, Ken, was a soldier, but he’s been dead for years,” remarked Mary.
Bob was surprised and asked, “Your brother? Why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
“Ken was only two years older than I, but we weren’t close. I hate to say this, but he was a meanspirited man. He caused my parents no end of grief.” Mary hesitated as if she would continue, but abruptly she stopped speaking. At the time, Bob was only fifteen. While the existence of an uncle he’d never heard of surprised and intrigued him, other important matters, such as cars and girls, continually occupied his teen-aged mind. He promptly forgot the incident. Bob’s life stayed on an even course. Because he had been raised with adults as his main companions, he was more mature than other boys his age. He did as he was expected and never put the family through the tumultuous throes of puberty to which many teenaged boys subject their families. After he graduated from high school, he attended the same university as his grandmother, mother, and father, and graduated with a degree in business.
After college he was ready to explore the world outside Iowa City, so he moved to Des Moines and to begin his own life. He was hired as the assistant manager of Pecair, a shoe-store chain. After two years, he seemed to have impressed his superiors at the regional office and the local manager. He was promoted and became the manager of another store in town. Things were going well for him. Several casual girlfriends insured that he wasn’t lonely, and several male friends regularly accompanied him on hunting trips. They also took “shooting” trips with cameras and traded information on their common interest in amateur photography.
In early 1985, Bob received the call that anyone who lives far away from home anticipates with dread: his mother called to tell him that his grandmother had died of complications from a heart attack. He hadn’t seen much of her or his parents for the past several years, although he returned home for the major holidays and called every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes he drove over to surprise them all, and his homecomings were happy occasions.
Bob returned to Iowa City for Mary’s funeral, visited with all the appropriate people, and said all the appropriate things. For the first time in his life, he felt estranged from the friends and acquaintances who were part of his life in Iowa City. They were beginning to marry and have children. Some were already divorced. Their interests were different from his, and he felt that in a few more years he would feel more like a stranger than part of the group. This unexpected development bothered him, but not to the extent that he wanted to make an effort to preserve these fading relationships. His closest friend for many years, George, was the one exception.
The business of his grandmother’s will brought no surprises. The house, the land, and all her possessions were left to his parents. He received a small bequest, which he put aside for some future business opportunity. Bob returned to Des Moines and renewed his efforts in the shoe business. He found that he wasn’t particularly ambitious and considered the possibility of getting married. He’d been dating several women but wasn’t serious about any of them. Marriage was a fine idea in theory, but he had no desire to spend the rest of his life with any of the women he knew. But, he was still searching. He sometimes fantasized about a dark-haired, exotic stunner, but usually wound up laughing at himself and his fantasy. He was more than ready to explore the world outside of Iowa, but he really didn’t know where to go or how to start.