SPEAKING OF IOWA . . .

There’s a well-known country song by Mac Davis with lyrics proclaiming “I thought happiness was Lubbock, Texas in my rearview mirror . . .” I have to be careful about singing along with it, though, as my in-laws live in Lubbock, and I wouldn’t want to give them the wrong impression . . .

But I have to admit that those lyrics were echoing in my head last Tuesday as my wife and our two younger daughters and I pulled onto I-80 after what may well be our final visit to Grinnell, Iowa, following our daughter’s graduation the day before from Grinnell College. I wrote about my first visit to the Hawkeye State four years ago in a piece that I still like: check it out! My second visit, in 2008, was disconcerting in a different way, as motoring from Davenport* (where I was attending a conference) to Grinnell, I had a weird almost-out-of-body experience when I realized that never—not even in my wildest of dreams—would I have pictured myself driving alone across Iowa to visit my daughter. Unlike I-80, life has some funny twists and turns that you could never predict. I was actually a bit rattled by the “revelation”—it was like I was watching my life from above . . . but it didn’t seem like it could really be my life. . . .

Since then I’ve been back to Grinnell two more times, both in the past month. The cornfield landscape of Iowa has grown on me a little bit, and I continue to find the town of Grinnell “interesting,” with the double-wide streets of its small downtown giving it the feel of an old west movie set. But notwithstanding the wonderful experience—educational and much more—that my daughter had at Grinnell College, I am still affected my first night in Grinnell, in August of 2006. As soon as our daughter was accepted at Grinnell College we booked accommodations at the Day’s Inn there, requesting for the first night a rollaway cot as well as the usual two double beds to accommodate the five in our traveling party. My wife’s email confirmation recorded that request, as did the hotel’s own record of our reservation. But there was no cot in the room. When I asked at the front desk, I was told by the rather crusty night clerk (an older woman) that they do not have rollaway cots. When I raised an eyebrow about that, she went on to explain that 3-4 years earlier a construction crew staying on the 2nd floor had attacked the owner-manager by throwing rollaway cots down the stairs at him—so he had gotten rid of all the cots in the hotel! (As if such lightning would strike twice.) I said, “That’s nutty.” She didn’t disagree, but that didn’t solve our problem. After a bit of prodding, she said, “Well, we might still have one cot in the room that the night crew at the hotel uses as their lounge.” But with the influx of families dropping off students, they had rented out that room. Still, she called the room and asked the people there if they had a rollaway cot. They seemed not to know what one even looked like! As it turns out, they did not have one—but they said they had a La-Z-Boy recliner . . . which the clerk offered to me! I declined. (Declined to recline—that’s a good one.) At which point, an odd-looking hunch-backed fellow on the couch in the lobby (I think he was waiting to go on duty as the post-midnight desk clerk) offered me the cushions off the couch. At which point the woman said, “Or you could sleep out here in the lobby on the couch . . . though I would have to leave the lights on as I need to do the books tonight.” I declined. Another woman working at the desk suggested that I go to Wal-Mart and buy an inflatable bed. I declined. They also suggested that I take a second room, at the Budget Inn across the road—owned by the same person who owns the Day’s Inn: but she said she would have to charge me for that additional room. . . . Finally, they gave me some sheets and blankets and what looked like a tightly-rolled mattress pad in a sealed plastic bag: “That’s the best we can do.” So I took those back to the room. . . . But imagine our surprise when we opened the bag and discovered that the “mattress” was merely an oversized pillow! As my middle daughter said, “I may be short, but even I am not short enough to curl up on that!” (This was the same daughter who, growing tired of her older sister’s double mantra about Grinnell College being referred to as “the Harvard of the Midwest” and about its exceptional “one of everything” diversity, finally said, “more like the Harvard Square of the Midwest”: another good one!) Well, me made do . . . but these past two visits we’ve given the Day’s Inn the proverbial wide berth, staying at the Country Inn and Suites instead.

Anyway . . . as my oldest daughter likes to sigh, “Oh, Grinnell . . .” And after all, even that Mac Davis song ends up casting Lubbock in a positive light!

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*Davenport is another story altogether . . . but I was reminded of that story when, hightailing it from Grinnell to Chicago to catch our flight back to Boston, we made the mistake of making a pit stop in Davenport in search of a Starbucks. More than an hour later . . . Still, driving around and around the heart of Davenport, I inevitably recalled how a friend shared with me an architect friend’s description of that city as being like a mouth full of cavities and missing teeth. I recalled how on my previous visit to the city, I was immediately disconcerted by the ghost town effect—those midwestern double-wide streets . . . with no traffic and no people. Some interesting architecture—but mostly empty buildings. What pleased me most was the neon sign around the corner from the hotel announcing an Arthur Murray Dance Studio: that detail evoked for me a romantic vision of the 1930s or ’40s! But one morning I had a bit of a breakthrough when I went looking—unsuccessfully—for coffee around 7:30 a.m. I walked a block or two further than I had previously—still nothing but a ghost town, but something about the architecture and the streetscapes began to appeal to me. A block or two from the hotel there was a little green building angled onto a corner lot—the Musicians Local. Across the street was a place with a lit-up neon “Open” sign (truth in advertising was obviously not a concern) called Sergeant Pepper Auto Repair. . . . Although three damp hours on a Mississippi riverboat a couple of nights earlier (the aquatic equivalent of seeing the backyards of America from an Amtrak window) did not add much to my experience of Davenport and environs, I did feel some of the aura of “the mighty Mississippi” when, on that early morning perambulation, I ended up riverside for a few contemplative minutes.

TIM HORTON'S DONUTS + BORDER CROSSINGS

So . . . last week at my daughter’s graduation from a small college deep in the heart of Iowa, I met a fellow Canadian Maritimer—originally from Pictou County, Nova Scotia but now a transplant to the Quad Cities area of Iowa/Illinois. His daughter was also graduating. After all the usual “small world” connections were made—he had gone to medical school with about a half-dozen louts who had made my life miserable in high school—we got down to talking about certain matters of importance to Canadians: hockey . . . and donuts. (It was a bit early in the day to talk about beer, which would have completed the conversational hat trick for Canucks.) The hockey part was obvious: the NHL playoffs are in full swing, so we naturally exchanged some thoughts on how they were shaping up. . . . I guess the donut part was prompted by our admiring the two largest boxes (pallets might be the more precise word) of the largest donuts we had ever seen—some unknown saint had brought them to the graduation brunch we found ourselves at. . . .

Anyway, we got talking about donuts and I was inevitably reminded of a little episode I was involved in at a Tim Horton’s donut shop in Salisbury, New Brunswick a few years ago. We stopped there for lunch on our way back to Boston from our annual summer vacation on PEI (which, by the way, must have the highest number of Tim Horton’s donut shops per capita in the world: I think there are at least 9 in my hometown of Charlottetown alone). Standing in the long lunchtime line wondering seriously to myself if we had enough Canadian cash left to pay for our soup and sandwich combos, I wondered aloud (I love to see my wife and our three daughters cringe in public) whether Tim Horton’s would be willing to barter. I then dug into my pocket to see what I might have. First I pulled out a golf tee. Then I pulled out a guitar pick (red). Then I pulled out a ball marker from the Glen Eagle golf course I had played (miserably) a couple of days earlier. I said to my wife and daughters: “All of these should be worth something.” They were not particularly amused, but the woman in the line in front of us seemed to be (unless, of course, her smile was a pitying one, directed toward my traveling companions). . . . As it turns out, Tim Horton’s gave an exchange rate on American dollars, so we were okay. As we sat eating lunch, I commented (tongue only lightly in cheek): “Isn’t this just the perfect meal—a ham and cheese sandwich, a cup of coffee and a donut?” A trucker at the next table overheard me and leaned over to say, “I have this meal every day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . .” And then, to complete the lunchtime trifecta, a woman a couple of tables over asked me what I had said after my daughters all gave me high fives for my response to my middle daughter’s questioning whether my sister “was cool in high school.” I replied that I didn’t know my sister when she was in high school (she was two grades behind me). Then my daughter asked whether I was cool in high school. I replied, “I was always cool”—then added “except when you were in middle school” . . . Ah well. Maybe you had to be there. . . .

Anyway . . . about two hours later my wife was driving when we crossed the border from Canada back to the U.S. Noticing that the last name on her passport was different from the rest of ours, the border guard asked, “How do you all know each other?” My wife replied: “We met at a Tim Horton’s in Salisbury.”

Actually she didn’t say that—but she should have! (I would have . . .)

But that reminds me of another time we crossed that same border from Canada to the U.S. and encountered that same guard. (In the interests of national security, I will resist identifying him too specifically—but just let me say that his surname is a slight variation on the name of the Welsh soldier in Shakespeare’s Henry V. I’ll also resist mentioning his wife’s family’s name, but I will say that I’ve crossed through his checkpoint and chatted with him enough times to learn that she is from New Dominion, PEI . . . and that our families have spent summer vacations less than a mile apart on the same south shore beach. But I digress . . .) So . . . we were crossing one time in a Dodge Caravan with darkly tinted windows. I was driving. Peering through the driver’s window, the guard nodded toward the back of the van and asked: “What have you got there?” I replied: “Three daughters and a dog.” He then asked: “Any weapons?” I replied: “No.” Then it was his turn again: “You should have,” he said, smiling grimly and waving us on.

NOW . . . WHERE WAS I?

Now . . . where was I? That’s a really good question in light of my failure to post even a single blog entry in almost four months. I guess that one way to answer it is to take the question literally and borrow the reply that the missus and I have become accustomed to using when asked how we dealt with “empty nest syndrome” this year with all three of our daughters away at college. Framing the “where” between a visit to our youngest daughter in Pennsylvania last October and a trip to Iowa this past weekend for our oldest daughter’s graduation from college (we also visited her about a month ago), we cheerfully respond: “London . . . Paris . . . New York . . . Santa Fe . . . Exuma (in the Bahamas).” Not a bad answer . . .

But it’s not the complete answer—and thus not a fully accurate answer—as all of those travels should have provoked any number of blog posts . . . and they may yet. The no-less-literal but far-less-romantic answer to the question is: “I was at a committee meeting.” Seriously, the past three or months have been my worst nightmare: just one meeting after another after another . . . which made the whole semester feel like one long meeting. I hate meetings . . . and by association I hate anyone and everyone I have to have a meeting with . . . which means I end up hating pretty much everyone in my small world. Not good . . . My spirit was just drained right out of me . . . and so were my words.

But now that the semester is pretty much all wrapped up—just the proverbial crossing of a few i’s and dotting of a few t’s left—I plan to return to musing regularly in this blog spot on matters literary, musical, and otherwise. I also have a trip to Dublin in the works—if that doesn’t generate a few blog posts then maybe there’s something more wrong with my life than a surfeit of meetings!

So stay tuned . . .

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PS: I am also reactivating my other blog, Irish Matters, which I haven't added to for a full year. In fact, it has a new post, a little piece on Seamus Heaney’s “bog poems,” scheduled to be launched at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 1st. Check it out!