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.