Sunday, June 29, 2003
Notes on a geographic detour. I'm back from one of the so-called American heartlands, Des Moines, Iowa with my little guy getting registered and oriented at Drake University. Sheeesh. I'd forgotten that midwestern dietary mindset. Chicken fried steak was a popular offering for lunch on campus. No blue cheese dressing unless you want to pay 75 cents extra cuz it's exotic. "Fresh" Jello at our Saturday night "banquet." A couple that sat with us at the banquet has a daughter who is the first one in both their families to go to a university.
Mother and father work making Amana fridges for $14.75/hr. in a factory in rural Iowa and are worried with good reason about being able to sustain her tuition if the plant gets moved to Mexico.
Over dinner the dad described in gruesome and somewhat oddly touching detail how he'd shot a deer with an arrow and it wouldn't die and kept leaving its entrails on the path and fences as he tried to track it to finish it off. Perfectly appetizing conversation.
Bunking in a dorm for two nights was a flashback, both to college and military pasts. Communal showers, toilets, etc. sent me into a Wayback Machine tailspin. Spent some times wrapped up in a towel and breathing quietly in the restroom. However, I violated all the drinking and smoking in dorms rules with impunity...cuz I'm a 50-year-old rebel wrapped in an arrested development 15-year-old mindset and cuz it was a physical pain in the hip and ass to go downstairs two flights and outside for a smoke. Plus I was in the official "RA" room. I HAD THE POWER, should I'd have cared to use it
Mother and father work making Amana fridges for $14.75/hr. in a factory in rural Iowa and are worried with good reason about being able to sustain her tuition if the plant gets moved to Mexico.
Over dinner the dad described in gruesome and somewhat oddly touching detail how he'd shot a deer with an arrow and it wouldn't die and kept leaving its entrails on the path and fences as he tried to track it to finish it off. Perfectly appetizing conversation.
Bunking in a dorm for two nights was a flashback, both to college and military pasts. Communal showers, toilets, etc. sent me into a Wayback Machine tailspin. Spent some times wrapped up in a towel and breathing quietly in the restroom. However, I violated all the drinking and smoking in dorms rules with impunity...cuz I'm a 50-year-old rebel wrapped in an arrested development 15-year-old mindset and cuz it was a physical pain in the hip and ass to go downstairs two flights and outside for a smoke. Plus I was in the official "RA" room. I HAD THE POWER, should I'd have cared to use it
# posted by Justin @ 8:19 PM 
