10 Things That Instantly Give Away an Iowa Transplant Anywhere Else in the Country

To Americans who didn’t grow up in Iowa, Casey’s is just another gas station.

To Iowans, it’s the unofficial pizza standard.

These are the small signs that give an Iowa transplant away, no matter where they land in the United States.

1. Bragging About Corn

An Iowa transplant brings up corn within the first five minutes of any conversation about home, whether anyone asked or not.

Iowa farmers grow around 2.4 billion bushels of corn a year on 12.9 million acres, and the Iowa Corn Growers Association says that haul has kept the state on top for almost two decades.

Corn comes out of Nebraska and Illinois too, in serious volume.

An Iowa transplant will still correct anyone who calls either state the country’s corn capital, usually before the appetizers arrive.

2. Measuring a Tenderloin’s Overhang

The word “tenderloin” means something different once an Iowa transplant leaves the state.

Elsewhere, it’s usually a thin cutlet that barely covers the bun.

Not even close in Iowa.

Iowans treat the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich like a competitive category.

The Iowa Pork Producers Association has crowned a statewide winner every year since 2003, judging thousands of nominations from restaurants across the state.

An Iowa transplant eats the disappointing version anyway.

3. Judging Pizza Against Casey’s

Gas-station pizza becomes its own food group for an Iowa transplant, and Casey’s set that bar.

No exceptions.

The chain opened its first store in Boone, Iowa, in 1968 and added its own scratch-made pizza in 1984, a menu item that’s since helped grow Casey’s into one of the largest pizza chains in the country by location count.

None of that history travels with the transplant.

Just the standard, and every gas-station slice outside Iowa fails to meet it.

4. Waving at the Wrong Stadium

Turning to wave at the end of the first quarter is a reflex an Iowa transplant can’t switch off, Hawkeyes on the field or not.

It happens whether the home team is anywhere nearby or not.

The habit comes from Kinnick Stadium, where fans have turned to wave at kids watching from the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital after every first quarter since 2017, a tradition that started with a fan’s post on Facebook.

An Iowa transplant can’t help it, even three states away and rooting for someone else entirely.

5. Explaining RAGBRAI to Blank Stares

RAGBRAI comes up fast whenever an Iowa transplant starts talking about biking across an entire state in a week.

The name stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, a ride two Des Moines Register writers started in 1973 that now pulls thousands of riders from the Missouri River to the Mississippi every summer.

Coworkers assume they’re joking.

They’re not, and they usually still own the T-shirt.

6. Defending the Maid-Rite Name

Maid-Rite pride runs deep enough in an Iowa transplant to correct anyone who calls a loose-meat sandwich a sloppy joe.

There’s no sauce.

That’s the whole point.

Muscatine, Iowa, is where a butcher named Fred Angell opened the first Maid-Rite in 1926, seasoning loose ground beef and steaming it onto a bun with nothing but mustard, onion, and a pickle.

A sloppy joe swims in tomato sauce.

Maid-Rite doesn’t, and an Iowa transplant will explain the difference whether anyone asked or not.

7. Hunting for a Butter Cow

An Iowa transplant walks another state’s fair looking for a life-size cow carved out of butter, and comes up empty almost everywhere outside Iowa and Ohio.

Not many bother.

Ohio’s fair has run its own butter cow since 1903, eight years before Iowa’s first butter cow.

The Iowa State Fair has sculpted a butter cow almost every year since 1911, skipping only in years the fair itself was called off, including 2020.

Just five sculptors have held the job in over a century, passing the technique down from mentor to apprentice each time.

An Iowa transplant notices the moment a fair skips the cow.

8. Measuring Storms Against the Derecho

One date sets an Iowa transplant’s yardstick for every bad windstorm since.

That date was August 10, 2020.

A derecho tore across Iowa that day with gusts estimated as high as 140 mph, knocked out power across Cedar Rapids for weeks, and stripped away more than 60% of the city’s tree canopy.

Nothing since has measured up, at least in the retelling.

An Iowa transplant will say so, whether the new storm was an actual derecho or just a bad Tuesday.

9. Detouring to a Baseball Diamond

No matter which state an Iowa transplant calls home now, a field outside Dyersville is worth hours of extra driving any time a trip brings them close.

Distance doesn’t matter.

The ballpark from the 1989 film Field of Dreams still stands there, still open to visitors, and Major League Baseball will play a game there again on August 13, with the Minnesota Twins hosting the Philadelphia Phillies.

It’s not a replica.

Cornstalks still stand where the outfield wall would be, on the same diamond, and an Iowa transplant treats a detour there as non-negotiable, wherever they’ve settled since.

10. Missing a Grocery Store

An Iowa transplant gets homesick for a grocery store before they get homesick for almost anything else.

Hy-Vee opened its first store in Beaconsfield, Iowa, in 1930 and has run on an employee-owned model since the 1960s, with workers holding a stake in the company they clock into.

That’s rare.

Kroger and Albertsons answer to shareholders on Wall Street, not to the employee bagging groceries.