Some things I know about Iowa

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Somebody wanted me to write a story about something that happened to me. This is what I came up with. Smith and Jones and Wilson are made up names, because I have no idea what the real ones are. The rest are real, because in at least one case it wouldn’t make any sense if I changed it, and otherwise I don’t guess anyone’s feelings will be hurt. If it turns out I am wrong, bite me. I just finished reading Frank McCourt’s opus, so some of his style is probably coming through via osmosis…I swear I wasn’t going for that.

Some things I know about Iowa

I started out to tell a story I have told many times, but never written. That is
the story of my worst job interview ever. But that interview story connects
to other places and times, and it is about more than the interview. I almost
called this “Everything I know about Iowa” but I realized I’d never be sure if
I had gotten it all. So this is just some of what I know about that state. I’ll
get to that interview in a bit, but first let me tell you why I even went:

I first heard of Iowa when I was very young, maybe five or seven years old. My
parents got me a puzzle where each piece was one of the United States, with Hawaii and
Alaska stuck in the corners, and Alaska shrunk down so it would fit and also (according to
Mom) so the Texans wouldn’t be mad. I liked Iowa best because I was just learning how to
read, and Iowa was really easy to read…just say the first two letters
and you are two thirds done! The puzzle piece had an ear of corn on it, and
Mom said that was because they grew corn in Iowa. She also told me that my
Dad had been born in Iowa, but moved when he was very small. So already I knew
that Iowa was very easy to read, and it is where corn and dads come from, and I
liked reading and corn and my Dad…Iowa was my favorite state!

Later on I learned that corn and dads come from lots of other places too, and Iowa
wasn’t really so special. In the fourth grade we had to learn the capitals of all the states.
I learned that the capital of Iowa is not at all easy to read. It is pronounced
Dee-Moyne, but spelled really funny. Bobby Hodges’ mom didn’t teach him that, so
I got to laugh and make fun of him in class when he said Dez-mo-in-us. I wasn’t
very kind at that age.

After making sport of Bobby in the fourth grade, years passed when I didn’t think
of Iowa much at all. Maybe when the Battleship was mentioned a few times when we
studied WW-II history (the gun turret explosion happend later) and of course whenever
Radar talked about home on MAS*H.

When I was finishing high school, my older cousin Barry started college at Ames,
learning how to be a language teacher. Now I had a reason to think of Iowa again.
It was where my favorite cousin was. A few years later, Barry went to study in
Paris. So then I knew that if you went to school at Ames, maybe you would get
to go to Paris and meet lots of hot French girls like Silvi and Carol (the Camia
sisters) I had met on the beach when I went to Mexico that one summer. Meeting exotic
girls frequently occupied my thoughts in those days, so Iowa got lots of good will
through this loose association.

2

Eventually I finished my engineering degree, and had to look for a job. In those days it was pretty easy for a graduating engineer to find a job. So easy, in fact, that it was more of a case that the jobs found you: the employers came to campus and recruited. If you did half-well at your on-campus interview, then they would fly you out for an on-site interview. I went on a half dozen such trips, and job offers came from all but one of those. The one with no offer? Well that is why I am writing about Iowa.
There were lots of big companies recruiting that everyone has heard of: IBM, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, etc. There was also a company from Marshalltown, Iowa called Fischer Controls. When I was in school, control systems were my favorite subject, and here was a company with controls right in the name. So I signed up for the campus interview, and was selected for an on-site. Mike Marshall called me to set it up. They’d take care of the flight, Hotel, and even have a limousine meet me at the Des Moines airport. Here’s my home number if you need to reach me. A limo! I was really feeling like a VIP!

“Iowa??” said my classmates, “Who wants to go to Iowa?”. Well, I thought, you know…dads, and corn and laughing at Bobby Hodges, and Radar was a really nice guy, house prices and the cost of living is really low and a limo!, and, and…French girls!

So I packed up my brand new interview suit (an early graduation present, thanks Sis!) and off I flew to Iowa. Well, eventually anyway…my flight out of Denver was delayed by a couple of hours. I called Mr. Marshall (collect!) so he could let the Limousine know I’d be late. Making long distance calls was a big deal in those days…this might have been the first collect call I ever made. Mrs. Marshall said she’d pass the word to her husband, since he was at work.

I got to Des Moines, collected my luggage, and spotted the limo at the curb. As I was walking over to it, it drove away. I looked around for another limo, or anyone holding a paddle sign with my name on it. Eventually I spotted a little fellow in vest and visored cap with a clipboard. He was alternating between moving his lips while reading from the clipboard, and looking at his shoes. I wandered up behind him, and spotted my name on the clipboard. I got his attention after the second or third time I cleared my throat. “I’m Mr. Ferguson, are you looking for me?” more looking at the clipboard, then a big smile. “I was wondering how I was gonna find you, and here you are!” “I jus’ have t’ find this other fellow, Smith, now.” So I climbed on top of a bench, and shouted “Is Mr. Smith here?” and another new-grad that had been on the same flight from Denver came over. “Thanks” said the limo driver as we headed outside.

I was looking for the limo, and not seeing it. “We ov’ here.” said the driver, as he headed for a taxi. He opened the trunk for our luggage and said “I waz s’posed t’ bring the limo. It broke.” then pulled off the cap, and tossed it on top of our luggage. So we began our 60 mile drive in the not-limo from Des Moines to Marshalltown. 53mph the whole way, and only one car passed us. Smith and I made a few attempts to ask the driver about the area and so forth. These were met mostly just with an “ayup” or a “nope”. We soon fell into an awkward silence. After the flight delay, I was anxious to get dinner, get settled, and get some sleep. Tomorrow was a big day with an early start, and my body was on Mountain time. I’d just have to be patient. We’d get there eventually…at fifty. three. miles. per. hour. I hope the hotel has a restaurant, since I don’t have a car.
The Hotel was the ARMADA INN you could still see the sun bleaching on the brick where they had swapped the first two letters when it stopped being the RAMADA INN. When I got there at around 8PM, there was a message to call Mike. His wife said he was still at work, and gave me the number. Hmmm, still at work at 8? not a good sign. Mike wants to take me to dinner. He stayed at work because he was afraid he’d miss me if he left (nobody had cell phones back then). OK…dinner it is, good thing I packed an extra clean shirt. He’d called the restaurant, he’s a regular, and they were keeping the kitchen open late for us.

3

Dinner wasn’t to be relaxing. First Mike laid out the full-page itinerary for me for the next day. Then he started in with an interview. We ate at a little family owned Italian place. White table cloths and nice china. The teenaged waitress kept blushing and couldn’t meet my eye. I could hear whispers and giggling from around the corner. It was a pleasant distraction from the interview, I let the waitress be nervous for me. I’m sure I had fish. Salmon, I think, but I couldn’t tell you another thing about it. It probably had rosemary on it, because I always think back to that when I see rosemary on a piece of salmon, but I don’t actually remember eating or even seeing it. If you told me it was actually flounder with pesto, or cod with almonds, I wouldn’t argue. We were on the second floor, and there was a ramp for a viaduct over the rail yards right out the window. I remember thinking how weird it was to be seeing traffic at eye-level from the second floor. Finally dinner was over. I was to be up and packed in the morning, and he’d pick me up for breakfast. I also found out that Mike Marshall of Marshalltown was not a coincidence. He was the great grandnephew or some such of the town’s founder.

When I got back to the Hotel, I was pretty wound up from the high-stakes dinner, and a bit nervous about the next day. I decided I’d have a drink in the Hotel bar to help me sleep. I didn’t sit at the bar, because the people at the bar were smoking, and I wasn’t in the mood for company anyway. A stranger sitting alone attracted a lot of attention from the locals. Eventually they stopped stealing glances, and went back to their beers, their shots, and conversation which I mostly only caught bits and pieces of. One thing I heard clearly was “All I gotta do is walk into the Pyramid with my Fischer badge on, and I can get me any piece of tail in the place!”

It was starting to dawn on me what the giggling waitress and the stolen glances from the bar were about. Fischer was the only decent employer in the town. 25,000 official population counting wives, kids, and probably dogs, and around 5000 on the Fischer payroll. Mostly blue collar, but if I was wearing a coat and tie, then I was one of the big shots. I’d be a hunted man, and every still-single woman in town, as well as the less happily married ones would know who I was before I’d drawn my first paycheck, which they’d know the amount of. There’d be no need for me to wear my Fischer badge to the Pyramid. As a randy young man in my early 20’s, these thoughts held only a strangely small appeal. Part of it was the fact that I knew that I would have few secrets if I lived here. Part of it was not liking the idea as being seen as nothing more than a big paycheck or a ticket out of a small-town life. By tomorrow at noon, 100 people would be trying to figure out who that stranger in the hotel bar was, and twice that many would have the answer. If I listened closely, I thought maybe I could hear bits of Rod Serling’s narration in the distant background. I downed my scotch and headed for bed.

4

The following day started out OK at breakfast. I’d hit it off OK with Mike the night before, and he just asked one or two questions. We drove to the plant, and then the interviews from hell started. 10 interviews with 8 people (two of them double-dipped). When I walked into the first one Wayne had my college transcript on his desk with my two lowest grades circled in red. He was hostile, and every question was pointed. While I was in one interview, the people from the last two interviews were discussing me with the people getting ready for the next two. Any question I artfully dodged once was sure to pop up again and again. I was in an interview, or being escorted every single second. The bathroom was my only time alone. After the third interview, I started requesting the toilet after every single interview just for the break. They had two technicians take me to lunch, to see if they thought they could work with me.

After lunch, they had a realtor, Mrs. Jones, take me on a tour of the town. Mr. Jones was a Fischer engineer. Mrs. Jones was a thinner, prettier, and more stylishly dressed version of Mike Meyers’ Church Lady. She showed me several of the newer housing developments, and every single church in town, told me what kind of hymns they sung, If the organ had real pipes or was just electric, and her view on exactly what sort of nice people went to each. She showed me the country club that Mr. and Mrs. Fischer started, and the various Fischer sites throughout town. We also passed the Pyramid club “where the young people go to drink their beer.” She finally ran out of churches to show me, and returned me for my next interview…after I used the bathroom yet again.

By late afternoon I’d had my fill of interviewing, and no longer cared what impression I was making. I just wanted it to be over. I knew I didn’t want to work for Fischer, and didn’t want to live in Marshalltown. Ever. I recall asking the personnel guy “What do people do in Marshalltown?” with far too much emphasis on the word “do”. His reply: “Well, since my wife and I moved here, we’ve gotten much closer to God!”. Oh, well, then maybe I do want this job after all…NOT!

When It was finally over, the limousine (no longer broke) met me and Mr. Wilson (Smith had a different flight home) and took us to the airport. The limo even had a TV…sitting right there on the seat propped up with a wood block so you could see it better. Since the limo was no longer broke, the driver (same fellow) kept his hat on when he drove. Wilson was impressed with Marshalltown and Fischer. He was hoping for an offer. I was just hoping to wake up and find out it this all been a bad dream. As I mentioned at the start, I soon got a letter expressing regret that Fischer would not be extending an offer of employment. Saved me the trouble of turning them down, that did.

5

About 10 years later the company I was working for started working on a project for Fischer. Mike and Wayne came out to Albuquerque, and never grocked that they had interviewed me. Fischer eventually dropped the project and screwed my company over some. They’d paid better scheisters, so contractually we had no recourse.
A few years after that PBS aired a documentary: “Sandwiches You Will Like” One of the featured restaurants was “Maid-Rite” of Marshalltown, Iowa. I was a little mad that my hosts had seen to my every meal and I didn’t get to try one of these sloppy-joe without the sauce creations.

Perhaps twenty years after that trip, I met a pretty blonde lady, Angie. I instantly had the feeling I knew her from somewhere. We had both been in Albuquerque a long time, but couldn’t come up with any place our paths might have crossed. Finally I decided maybe it was farther in the past, and asked her if she ever lived in Denver?
"No, I grew up in a little town in Iowa nobody’s ever heard of. It’s called Marshalltown. " So I started telling her about my interview from hell, and impressions of Marshalltown.
She started telling me about how her dad owned a restaurant. An Italian place, right next to the ramp where the street crossed over the rail yard. I couldn’t remember the face any more than the fish, but the date was exactly right and odds are excellent that she was the blushing teenaged waitress that had to work late because Mr. Marshall called her dad, and the hired waitress would have expected overtime.

I told her about Mrs. Jones showing me the Pyramid club “where the young people go to drink thier beer.” and she howled with laughter. She’d been arrested for underage drinking in the Pyramid club, and had to wait in jail until her dad could close the restaurant and come bail her out. Eventually I tried to stretch that conversation out too long, and scared her off. I was better looking when I first got out of college I guess.

One of these days I might find myself in Iowa. I’ll go out of my way, if needed, and try one of those sandwiches at the Marshalltown Maid-Rite. Then I will know about everything I need to know about Iowa.

6

looks like someone needs a livejournal account.

7

Maybe we should have a forum for mundane pointless stuff. I could share it there.

8

Nirvana: the state of perfect nothingness = Iowa.

9

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Well done.