Thoughts of LoWriter

I Hate Iowa

I have made an important life decision after this weekend's adventures. I will never ever go to grad school in Iowa.

Why was I even in Iowa? Well, to make a long story short, my sister had to be moved there for grad school, and my parents couldn't do it alone after a couple of falls and injuries. And I had to miss a wedding because of it, and I was very sad about that, but nothing could be done.

So, I drove many many hours to Iowa City with the fam in tow to discover that I hate everything about Iowa in every possible way.

To begin with, all the stores have funny names, even though they are the same store. For instance, Yonkers there is the same as Herbergers here. Why does it need a different name? I don't know. Because it's Iowa.

The rental properties are disgusting in Iowa City because they can be. There's more students than properties, so they can afford to be gross because people have to live there. Case in point: They told my sister the apartment had been cleaned and the rug shampooed; however, all of our feet were filthy after working in there. And we had to rescrub everything. Walls, floors, everything. And I'm not talking the cursory go-over you do because you're moving into a place that you aren't familiar with, I'm talking Mr. Clean and elbow grease scrubbing because there were nasty food stains on the walls, etc.

Then, every single solitary person I met in Iowa was mean. After staying in Iowa for about 24 hours, I can see why. If I had to live in Iowa with all those other mean people, I'd be incurrably mean, too. Seriously, I almost punched the maintenance man in the throat after he told my father that he didn't know where the circuit breaker was but it was that metal box with circuits inside it probably on the wall somewhere. Jackass.

Next, I saw a person arrested for the first time ever (as far as I can remember)on Saturday night. Probably for some sort of alcohol related offense as the whole town seemed to turn into one big drunken block party after 9 PM.

Then comes possibly the strangest part of the entire trip. Sunday morning, we get to the sister's apartment, and there's a guy digging in a dumpster. As he was not college aged, I assumed he was homeless. Then, I saw that he was coming out with cans and bottles. OK, fine, strange, but still probably homeless. Then he gets into a car with a woman (still carrying the bottles) and they drive down to the next dumpster and start doing the same thing. We go upstairs and tell my sister and she says, "Oh I know, I've been watching him all morning." Then, while we're putting together furniture, another person pulls up and starts digging in the dumpster but has to leave empty handed because clearly the man already took all the cans and bottles. Then we decide to go to Target to get some cleaning supplies, etc., and there is yet another woman digging in the dumpster while her car idles who has to leave because she can't find anymore bottles and cans. Apparently there is a 5 cent deposit on bottles and cans in Iowa, and this is what people do on Sunday morning after the drunken Saturday night block party because this was going on all over as we drove through town.

Also, not only did the entire drive there and back smell like pigs, but also the entire town smelled like pigs. Now how you get a city that size smelling like pigs, I don't know, but it did.

Additionally one of the key reasons for my dragging my feet about applying to grad school there in the first place was the corn, which was also still there.

I did have to add ten to Iowa's total score because they had Dipping Dots at the mall, but Iowa was so far in the negative by this point that it didn't matter anymore.

So basically, I hate Iowa because it's weird, it smells like pigs, the people are pigs, the rental properties are maintained by pigs, and in order to feed all the pigs, you have to have lots of corn.

If you need any more reasons/proof that Iowa is weird, here you go.

Posted by LoWriter at August 1, 2005 08:13 AM