My Men are My Heroes Read Online Free PDF

winding gulches. You can walk across town in 10 minutes. The Kasal farm rests on a hill overlooking a landscape of more rugged hills subdivided by fences full of hedge apples, junipers, old oaks, and an occasional walnut tree. Go a few miles in any direction and the terrain modulates to the gently rolling prairie and rich ground Iowa is best known for.
    In the spring and summer the land around Afton renews itself. Redbuds and dogwoods and early spring flowers bloom. When the crops burst forth, the land turns dark green. When it gets warm, residents plant their sparse yards with bright annuals thatcompete with the occasional clump of perennials waving in the wind. Many Aftonians keep dogs and cats, cars and boats, and all manner of contraptions in their driveways and yards, adding both clutter and life to the place. The town’s northwestern boundary is marked by an imposing row of raw concrete grain elevators; toward the center of town a diamond-shape water tower punctuates the otherwise uninterrupted horizon.
    From the stand of ragged oaks on Highway 34 near the optimistically named Grand River, Afton doesn’t look like a place where legends are born. Except for the occasional train that pounds along the old Burlington-Northern tracks, the town looks relaxed, an easy spot to spend a quiet life. On hot sunny days the turkey buzzards circle overhead waiting for something to die, and red-tailed hawks and an occasional eagle glide lazily by looking for something to kill. Not much else moves.
FROM BOOM TO BUST
    Many Iowa families came to the state from somewhere else. So it was with the Kasal family. Brad’s father, Gerald Kasal, is the descendant of a barely remembered Czechoslovakian immigrant that family legend says arrived in Chicago with a new wife to find a new life. After learning English and gaining his bearings, he moved to Iowa before the turn of the 20th century and bought a farm, and then another and another, until he was a respected and prosperous Iowan who raised grain, pigs, cattle, and strong, hardworking sons with equal success.
    If you were lucky enough to know Gerald Kasal before he died in late April 2006, you could have asked him what kind of farmer he was. He would probably laugh and answer, “Apparently not good enough.”
    By the time Brad came along in 1966, the economic worm had turned. Like many small farmers, Gerald Kasal found himself farming almost 400 acres in a race with an unkind fate. Prices wereperpetually down while costs were always rising. Over time the elder Kasal tried raising hogs, beef, milk cows, and grain to stay ahead in the agricultural game, but the luck and prosperity that had blessed his ancestors eroded away almost as fast as the land he farmed.
    Soon after Brad joined the Corps, Gerald gave up farming. Sometime later, Brad’s mother, Myrna, and Gerald split. Gerald referred to those unhappy events only as ancient history that he didn’t want to discuss. Family business is private business in their households, and they expect others to respect that.
    Nosy reporters won’t learn much more by asking the locals. Aftonians prefer to brag about how Brad Kasal put their humble town on the map. Gossip in Afton is confined to friends who share over morning coffee at kitchen tables and the local convenience store. Only snippets are offered to strangers. They will say Gerald Kasal worked as hard as anyone to keep his farm, but small farmers didn’t yet know how to compete with corporations. It didn’t matter what kind of farmer he was. The heyday for small farmers had passed in Iowa, and they went under liked jumped checkers.
    By the time Brad was in junior high school, he was old enough to understand that his father and friends lived to work and worked to live off waning fortunes. Even to a kid, it was evident that Brad’s father was pouring his life into the earth so he could coax another crop out of the ground before the bank foreclosed and drove