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plinkoPart One of this story can be seen HERE.
I must preface this story by saying most wholeheartedly: If you are from Iowa, have friends or family in Iowa, or simply adore the state of Iowa for some reason or another, hey... Cool. This is just about MY experience with Iowa, at a certain time and place, and I'm sure that it's not like this all the time, man. At least, I hope it isn't.
We were going to Iowa for a barbecue cookoff. Iowa. That was a place which seemed very "north" to me, and I never really thought they made barbecue there. But, apparently, Iowa is the pig-raising capital of the USA. Or, it was at the time, and to celebrate, Des Moines decided to put on a huge pork-themed barbecue cookoff. And we were going.
I'd never been to Iowa. And, to tell the truth, I had absolutely no ideas about Iowa. At least if you think "California", you think "Wine! Hollywood! Migrant workers! Earthquakes!" And when you think of North Dakota you think, "Snow! Funny accents! Proximity to Canada!" But, I had no tidbits at all about Iowa. It was like a small cultural blank spot in the middle of the country. You never hear of anything, good or bad, that happens in Iowa.
We drove up from Texas, through the rocky-redness of Oklahoma. I always found Oklahoma a little spooky. The trees were taller there, which made you feel really enclosed as you drove down the highway. I had always thought we had "average sized trees" in Texas, but apparently not. Our trees are a little scrubby and short. I spent a lot of time gawking out the windows at this foreign state, slurping on Pepsi and listening to the adults talk.
The adults, for this story, were my Mom, and the barbecue-cookoff-team leader. I seem to recall that, pretty early on, we got separated from the rest of the cookoff team. We were driving the dually (big truck) and hauling the trailer which contained our bbq pit and supplies. If I recall correctly, everyone was in pretty decent spirits and looking forward to a fun few days of cooking meat.
MEAT!
I don't remember how the first accident occurred. I might have been inside some convenience store or restaurant. But, when I came back out, Mom and Joe were futzing with a dented drivers-side door. They got it closed, but once closed, it wouldn't open again. From then on, we'd have to all enter the truck from the driver's side.
No big deal.
We kept driving. North north north. Such a long trip required an overnight at a motel. Parking the dually/trailer was always an EVENT, which generally required a driver and everyone else yelling and gesturing. Even I was participating, relaying my mother's instructions through an open passenger door to Joe.
There was a lull. I thought the parking had been completed. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Joe's hat. At some point it had fallen onto the road and blown under the truck. Naturally, I bent down to pick it up.
The next parts happened in a blur. The truck moved. A blur that was my mother grabbed me and threw me down in a different direction. The hat got run over. The way my mother tells it, the open door almost took off my head. I think I was more worried about the possibility of my hand being run over, and the loss of Joe's hat. My mother was furious at Joe, though I don't think it was his fault particularly. And I wasn't hurt, due to my mother's diligence.
The motel was...motel-like. A noisy AC, and towels/sheets with doubtful levels of cleanliness. Can't really complain about that.
In the morning, we set out driving again. I don't really recall the second accident, either. It couldn't have been anything too damaging, because once again...it merely dented the remaining door, preventing us from opening it. This did pose somewhat of a problem, however. Now we couldn't get in from the driver's side OR the passenger's side. And if we went out through a window, there was no way to roll it back up once we were out (or roll it back down when we wanted to get IN).
The solution? The sliding window in the back. Oh, how we looked like hicks! Crawling up onto the dually's bed, then squirming ourselves through the small back window into the truck. First Joe. Then Mom. Then me. Everyone stared at these antics which were surely embarassing to Mom and Joe, and oddly fun to me.
It took some time, but we finally arrived in the state of our destination. Iowa. Let me tell you, if you (like me) have no particular notions about Iowa, it's a fair state of mind. Because there is nothing to have a notion about. The land is flat. Not Texas-rolling-hills flat. But utterly and completely without character flat. This would be fine, except you drive for miles, and miles, and miles...and see nothing but corn. I gawked at the perfectly straight rows of corn. After a while, the rhythm of corn rows became disturbingly hypnotic. I'd fall asleep. And wake up to...more rows of corn. I couldn't actually tell that we were getting anywhere, and for a while I wondered if this was some sort of Twilight Zone episode. Corn. Corn. It still haunts me...all that corn. At least in Texas you get some variation. Ranch. Oil wells. Cotton farm. Rusty shack. Billboard that says "THE RAPTURE IS COMING". But no. This...was just...corn. A hellish, endless, horror-movie, cornfield of doom.
Did you know the Iowa state motto is: "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"? Is this not the most bland motto ever? Who would say, "We don't prize our liberties, and we just let our rights go to shit."? Nobody! I am pretty sure they chose this motto because the only other thing you can say about Iowa is, "So much corn, you'll have corn-nightmares! All other vegetables are inferior!"
Finally, Des Moines. We'd become fairly adept at climbing in and out of the back window by then. Didn't change the fact that people pretty much stared at us with confused, dead, zombie eyes. I thought this might be because they didn't understand how such a thing could become necessary. But, no. I later found out -- they looked like that because they were from Iowa.
(To Be Continued.)
I must preface this story by saying most wholeheartedly: If you are from Iowa, have friends or family in Iowa, or simply adore the state of Iowa for some reason or another, hey... Cool. This is just about MY experience with Iowa, at a certain time and place, and I'm sure that it's not like this all the time, man. At least, I hope it isn't.
We were going to Iowa for a barbecue cookoff. Iowa. That was a place which seemed very "north" to me, and I never really thought they made barbecue there. But, apparently, Iowa is the pig-raising capital of the USA. Or, it was at the time, and to celebrate, Des Moines decided to put on a huge pork-themed barbecue cookoff. And we were going.
I'd never been to Iowa. And, to tell the truth, I had absolutely no ideas about Iowa. At least if you think "California", you think "Wine! Hollywood! Migrant workers! Earthquakes!" And when you think of North Dakota you think, "Snow! Funny accents! Proximity to Canada!" But, I had no tidbits at all about Iowa. It was like a small cultural blank spot in the middle of the country. You never hear of anything, good or bad, that happens in Iowa.
We drove up from Texas, through the rocky-redness of Oklahoma. I always found Oklahoma a little spooky. The trees were taller there, which made you feel really enclosed as you drove down the highway. I had always thought we had "average sized trees" in Texas, but apparently not. Our trees are a little scrubby and short. I spent a lot of time gawking out the windows at this foreign state, slurping on Pepsi and listening to the adults talk.
The adults, for this story, were my Mom, and the barbecue-cookoff-team leader. I seem to recall that, pretty early on, we got separated from the rest of the cookoff team. We were driving the dually (big truck) and hauling the trailer which contained our bbq pit and supplies. If I recall correctly, everyone was in pretty decent spirits and looking forward to a fun few days of cooking meat.
MEAT!
I don't remember how the first accident occurred. I might have been inside some convenience store or restaurant. But, when I came back out, Mom and Joe were futzing with a dented drivers-side door. They got it closed, but once closed, it wouldn't open again. From then on, we'd have to all enter the truck from the driver's side.
No big deal.
We kept driving. North north north. Such a long trip required an overnight at a motel. Parking the dually/trailer was always an EVENT, which generally required a driver and everyone else yelling and gesturing. Even I was participating, relaying my mother's instructions through an open passenger door to Joe.
There was a lull. I thought the parking had been completed. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Joe's hat. At some point it had fallen onto the road and blown under the truck. Naturally, I bent down to pick it up.
The next parts happened in a blur. The truck moved. A blur that was my mother grabbed me and threw me down in a different direction. The hat got run over. The way my mother tells it, the open door almost took off my head. I think I was more worried about the possibility of my hand being run over, and the loss of Joe's hat. My mother was furious at Joe, though I don't think it was his fault particularly. And I wasn't hurt, due to my mother's diligence.
The motel was...motel-like. A noisy AC, and towels/sheets with doubtful levels of cleanliness. Can't really complain about that.
In the morning, we set out driving again. I don't really recall the second accident, either. It couldn't have been anything too damaging, because once again...it merely dented the remaining door, preventing us from opening it. This did pose somewhat of a problem, however. Now we couldn't get in from the driver's side OR the passenger's side. And if we went out through a window, there was no way to roll it back up once we were out (or roll it back down when we wanted to get IN).
The solution? The sliding window in the back. Oh, how we looked like hicks! Crawling up onto the dually's bed, then squirming ourselves through the small back window into the truck. First Joe. Then Mom. Then me. Everyone stared at these antics which were surely embarassing to Mom and Joe, and oddly fun to me.
It took some time, but we finally arrived in the state of our destination. Iowa. Let me tell you, if you (like me) have no particular notions about Iowa, it's a fair state of mind. Because there is nothing to have a notion about. The land is flat. Not Texas-rolling-hills flat. But utterly and completely without character flat. This would be fine, except you drive for miles, and miles, and miles...and see nothing but corn. I gawked at the perfectly straight rows of corn. After a while, the rhythm of corn rows became disturbingly hypnotic. I'd fall asleep. And wake up to...more rows of corn. I couldn't actually tell that we were getting anywhere, and for a while I wondered if this was some sort of Twilight Zone episode. Corn. Corn. It still haunts me...all that corn. At least in Texas you get some variation. Ranch. Oil wells. Cotton farm. Rusty shack. Billboard that says "THE RAPTURE IS COMING". But no. This...was just...corn. A hellish, endless, horror-movie, cornfield of doom.
Did you know the Iowa state motto is: "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"? Is this not the most bland motto ever? Who would say, "We don't prize our liberties, and we just let our rights go to shit."? Nobody! I am pretty sure they chose this motto because the only other thing you can say about Iowa is, "So much corn, you'll have corn-nightmares! All other vegetables are inferior!"
Finally, Des Moines. We'd become fairly adept at climbing in and out of the back window by then. Didn't change the fact that people pretty much stared at us with confused, dead, zombie eyes. I thought this might be because they didn't understand how such a thing could become necessary. But, no. I later found out -- they looked like that because they were from Iowa.
(To Be Continued.)
