Iowa around every corner

Both of my roommates are gone so I have the house to myself this weekend. Last night I powered up the stereo in the kitchen, cranked the local R&B station, and turned the bass as high as it could go. The wood floors vibrated.

I’m free to do what I want. I could sit around the house naked, lounging on the couch to read or write in my notebook at the dining room table. I want to do it just to say I did. It’s something I’ve never done before.

One thing I know I’m going to do, naked or clothed, is read the paper. One of my roommates subscribes to the San Jose Mercury News. It’s a very good newspaper, and its opinion pages are well designed (once an opinion editor, always an opinion editor). When I come home from work the pages are strewn across the table. I reorganize them to find whole sections missing. Where’s the front page? Where’s sports? Where’s A&E? It’s a mystery. But now I can enjoy the whole paper for three or four days without my roommates pilfering the news pages.

Before turning on the stereo last night I opened the paper and browsed the headlines. I skimmed the sports front page and read, “Bowlsby addresses Stanford’s 0-8 start.”

“Bowlsby,” I thought. “Bob Muthafuckin’ Bowlsby.”

Bob Muthafuckin’ Bowlsby is the new athletic director at Stanford University, up the road in Palo Alto. He was formally the AD at Iowa. He’s the mastermind who passed on resigning Tom Davis as men’s basketball coach. It lead to the hiring of Steve Alford. Do I need to say any more? Nonetheless, Bowlsby is a local Iowa and Iowa City connection.

A couple weeks ago I was in a bar where a TV was tuned to the Chargers game. Nate Kaeding was attempting a field goal. Kaeding played at Iowa and Iowa City West High. He played against City High when I was in high school.

At the bank one day the shift manager noticed my Iowa sweatshirt. She pointed at me and said, “Iowa! I’m from Cedar Rapids.”

“Sweet!” I said, even though Cedar Rapids is far from sweet. “I’m from Iowa City.”

A woman at work also saw my Iowa sweatshirt and stopped me in the hallway. She said she lived in Sheldon when her dad was serving in Vietnam.

The local writing group I joined was established by a pair of University of Iowa graduates, like me. My roommate’s mom, a minister, was recently in Iowa to see a friend become a certified preacher. This week I read a list of the best MFA programs and saw (surprise, surprise) The Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the top.

Iowa is every where. I don’t think I can escape it, naked or clothed. Whenever I turn on the TV, look through a magazine, or glance over my shoulder, Iowa is there. I can still feel the beat of the heartland on the Pacific coast. The lifeblood it pumps reaches the far corners of the country and the world. I’m sure wherever I go I’ll find an Iowa or Iowa City connection.

It’s odd to be far from home but recognize Iowa City and Iowa in the things around me. At the bar, as I watched Kaeding push his field goal attempt wide right, I remembered a game he played at Iowa. He blasted an extra point into the stands, missing the goal posts. The commentators laughed. I was sitting in the living room at my apartment on Burlington. It was midday and I was drunk. Ethan stood and screamed, “He fucking missed it!” Mike sat in The Blue Chair, eating one of the brats we grilled.

The pair of UI grads who started the Santa Cruz writing group probably sat in the same prison-like classrooms of the EPB as I did, and got copies of workshop stories from the same wooden shelves in the Dey House. And maybe they sat around their houses naked, reading and writing, when their roommates were away.

Perhaps Bob Bowlsby may keep making bonehead decisions at Stanford. Maybe he’ll even lure Steve Alford away from Iowa. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that Iowa connection to materialize.

Santa Cruz may be thousands of miles from Iowa City, but it still feels like home.

Comments

Popular Posts