Folks outside Iowa learned this weekend about the charms of smalltown life. Greenfield was pictured on the cover of this week’s “Life” Magazine. Ginny Kuhfus is the executive director of Greenfield’s chamber and Main Street organization. She says it began when a Life magazine photographer was driving through the area last summer. She says he stopped and talked with some local folks, including young ones who seemed to really impress him. He shot pictures of the town square and courthouse, then called back later to say an editor was sending him back, “to see what small-town America is all about.” This month, the photographer returned. Kuhfus says he saw stereotypical small-town life, right down to kids with a red wagon. She wonders in how many towns today you can just “let your kids run around on the square in a wagon.” She says he was impressed to realize that everybody knew whose little kids they were. Kuhfus says the whole town came together over the weekend for a community photograph at the courthouse.They all gathered on the Adair County courthouse steps for the “photo op.” Life Magazine is no longer a stand-alone publication, but appears in newspapers across the country including the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Life does not currently come with any Iowa newspapers.
