Visiting Grandma in recent years, we drove from Kansas to Nebraska for Chinese food more than once. Why? Well, Grandma liked Chinese food, there was no Chinese place in town, and the Nebraska border was not all that far away. Made a change from driving 20 miles in another direction to find a Long John Silver’s or other fast food restaurant of choice. Plus, my grandmother had quit or mostly quit driving, so 20 mile drives for dinner gave her both more options for what to eat, more chances to see the countryside–corn, corn and more corn, oh and some soybeans, maybe a few cows, add a grain elevater or a water tower, corn. Plus, it was something to do.
I wouldn’t eat Bagels regularly (or Chinese food) if I had to drive 20 miles to get it, but in some ways it’s an improvement on visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in childhood, when we seemed to make a trip to Uncle Walter’s (better known as Wal-mart, and on the edge of town) every day. Mom admits now that part of that was to get us kids out of the house. And part of it was that we did often need new lightbulbs or batteries for the smoke detectors or various other things that were hard for my grandparents to maintain.
That’s amusing, because 20 years ago, you would have been able to get them in Ames. Back when I was at ISU (1981-86), a bagel/sandwich shop opened up in Campustown, and was a big hit. Obviously, though, it didn’t last in the long run. Such is the nature of Campustown businesses.
(Now that I’m back in the Midwest, I really do need to go back and check out Ames again. It will probably be all-but-unrecognizable to me. But if the Great Plains Sauce and Dough Company and Pizza Pit are still in business, all will be right with the world.)
I never thought Taraccino’s was too bad. But you have a point - the coffee house culture was slow to take root. Coffee’s something that’s brewed weak, so you can drink more cups and “visit”. Old farmer instinct.
Plz not to be comparing small liberal arts college town with Moo U. Apples vs. grapefruit, y’know.
Yay internet. Yay Ames. Places like it are fading fast, which makes it all the more precious.
Another Iowan checking in. For culture lovers we also boast one of the top rated Opera companies in the world and is the home to singer Simon Estes and the bands Slipknot and Stone Sour (mostly the same people including my dad’s ex-neighbor Corey Talyor)
Iowa State Univ. is also the birthplace of the computer.
Yeah, we’re definitely behind the trend line. I was seeing big hair and mullets long after they died out elsewhere. Piercing took longer to get here and is taking longer to die.
The only time I was in sync with fashion was Christmas, 1961 or 1962, a gift from an aunt who lived in Seattle. It was a blouse with no collar (anyone remember those?), and it was at least a year before anyone else had one.
Driving long distances for food and entertainment is common. I don’t do it, but I have friends who routinely shop or see a movie in Ames and Des Moines, which are 50 and 90 miles away. I drive 30 miles one way to get my hair done. And my little town doesn’t even have a grocery store, so it’s at least 8 miles when I need something.
Driving 20 miles for bagels? Distances don’t seem to be as much of a deal here in the midwest. I drive 40 miles each way, to get to work, and it’s not that uncommon. My SO and I think nothing of driving 30-60 miles, round trip, to go to dinner. A weekend visit starting with 150 miles to get there is nothing. We once drove 200 miles each way to spend the afternoon/ evening and to have pizza with some friends. Didn’t even stay the night. 10 miles to my favorite bakery. 15 to get a good haircut. That’s just where the things you want are.
I was in Ames from 1985 - 1990 and I went back a few years ago. Yep, lots of changes. Great Plains is still around, but it’s now downtown instead of campus town. Little Taipei is still in the old Great Plains location. Pizza Pit is still on Welch Ave too. We did rediscover why we all drank so much back then. 15 or so of us went out to Welch Avenue Station, and ordered import beers and mixed drinks. The entire bill came to less then $40.
Driving 20miles for bagels? Distances don’t seem to be as much of a deal here in the midwest
Ah, Great Plains. I miss that pizza. I always forget to pick up a pie when I’m in Ames (my folks live there).
Pizza Pit pizza is okay… but perhaps I’m biased because I worked there for a summer.
You’re right though, distances here are not a huge deal. Driving 40 miles to go shopping just isn’t seen as unusual around here. Central Iowa in particular has a lot of interstate coverage and none of the East Coast traffic, so it just doesn’t take that long, either. Everything is far apart - heck, look at Des Moines and its suburbs, it’s sprawled everywhere. I have to drive for 20 minutes each way just to get to the UPS junction and I live in the “city”!
Y’see this is the advantage of living in a teensy little island like the UK.
I can walk, yes walk, to my nearest supermarket and it’ll take me 10 minutes. My local Indian/Chinese/Thai/ Italian restaurants are no more than a 20 min stroll away.
If I wanted a pizza (which I don’t like) again I’ve only a 10 min walk.
The local bakery is just over 2 miles away and believe it or not it is open on a Sunday.
All this said I have to confess that I love the US, not as much as Merrie England of course, I would move but all that driving would send me doolally
It would take days on a bicycle to reach a supermarket or Wal-Mart in many areas of Iowa. A typical tiny town here has a church and a Casey’s gas station/convenience store.
We have a cafe that serves breakfast and lunch, a tavern that’s so dirty and stinky even the smokers stay away, a co-op grain elevator, a post office, two churches, and a John Deere dealership.
I was born and raised in Ottumwa and now I go to ISU in Ames.
There isn’t really much to do in Ottumwa besides boozing. However, you may overhear people say that they have come into town (from who knows where) for a day of shopping. Pity those people. You will probably see a Loony Toons character, most likely Taz or Tweety, in a sort of defiant, arm-crossed “baditude” pose worn unironically on a leather jacket or as a tattoo. Since the combination pool-house, bar, and laundromat known as Clean Shot closed down, the number of local stabbings has decreased significantly. But there are still plenty of nice areas, with good school districts. My neighborhood was full of friendly people with jobs and taste. It’s just not a homogeneous town.
Jesus, this sounds like the village I grew up in. Of course, that sounds like just about every small town in the Midwest, dotted at approximately twelve mile intervals along the landscape.
chowder, you know how you’re used to getting curry and Thai food pretty much anywhere you go, like it’s a native cuisine? There are people in the Midwest who haven’t even heard of curry. Deep-fried “Chinese” and Velveeta Mexican are what pass for ethnic, and as for riding a bicycle, I used to ride my bike about five miles one way to the nearest town with a beat-up grocery store that got fresh produce once a week until I got tired of being harassed by teenagers and power plant workers coming off-shift, and this is not to mention about the one-third of the time that conditions would prohibit this. The scale of things is just not imaginable to people who live in urban areas or in even supposedly rural parts of Europe, and when some mass transit enthusiast starts talking about how everybody should use public transit I have to laugh; the nearest bus stop was thirty miles away from where I lived.
And as for being a great place to raise children, I have to say that my experience growing up differs from that. Maybe Iowa has a better overall education system, but my opportunities were limited (why have a calculus course when only five students will enroll?) and with nothing to do but watch t.v., vandalize bridges, and smoke pot (unless you played football, in which case you reserved the former activites for after practice) it didn’t leave much of an opportunity for intellectual stimulation. I read out the local library (again, next town over) by about age 11, and monthly trips the main branch were long-awaited for events when I’d stockpile books. Personally, I’d have rather grown up someplace a little more challenging, and with a lot more opportunities to see and try new things. (I wouldn’t eat vegetables until I started cooking professionally, when I discovered that not all vegetables come out of cans and are drained of all taste and crispness whatsoever.) I guess it’s an okay place to raise children if you expect them to stay there the rest of their lives, but I found small town life so provencial and limiting I wouldn’t curse some child to be raise there.
This might be true in some areas, but simply is no longer the case in many parts of the state. The Des Moines area has many Thai, Indian/Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, and “Mongolian grill” choices, most of which are independent and many of which are awesome. While most Mexican restaurants aren’t authentic, they are pervasive. Note that Ottumwa (among other places) has a sizeable Mexican population and so ethnic restaurants tend to pop up. Not only that, but we have many ethnic groceries including at least three Eastern European groceries, two Indian groceries, and countless Asian groceries. Even Ames has a huge immigrant population associated with the college and has plenty of ethnic cuisine. If anyone needs recommendations, let me know, I’m a huge foodie.
This wasn’t true not too long ago, but again, things have changed a lot out here. I do lament the utter lack of by-the-slice New York style pizzarias, but you don’t see a lot of those west of Pennsylvania.
Sure, you will find local yokels, but we’re really, really not all like that. You can even get quite decent sushi here now (and not-so-decent sushi - it’s present in every Hy-Vee grocery I’ve been to as well as the Wal-Marts).
Granted, it’s not the same as the UK where curry is practically a national dish, but,
all of Iowa is not as white bread as many people in the non-“flyover states” seem to believe.
