Paying homage to the Iowa wave

For some years now, Iowans have been 'Iowa Nice.” This feels good, but the fact is people in our neighboring states seem awfully nice to me, too. In the past two football seasons, however, there has been a new response that originated in and was uniquely Iowan. I'm talking about the wave at the University of Iowa football games.

Perhaps the new slogan could be 'Iowa - Waveland” and we could build our state's reputation around it.

Now we might have to make some changes. For instance, we could use the wave to aid in our traffic situations. In merging traffic or for pedestrians trying to cross the street, we could just 'give ‘em the wave” and let them go right on ahead. In special classes at area community colleges, area farmers could teach all of the city folk how to give the 'farmer's wave,” the one finger on the steering wheel wave that says, 'how are you doing?”

I'm on a roll! In singing our beautiful national anthem at sports events, at the very end we Iowans could proudly sing, 'land of the free, and the home of the wave.” Those last words always seem to get overpowered by the roar of the crowd anyway.

Hey, why not even change the name of our state to Iowave. I think that has a nice ring to it. And, if we are going that far, we could even change our state capital from Des Moines to … you know, Waverly.

Paul Juhl

Iowa City