Grinnell, Iowa

It’s only with the Iowa border that the driver’s road atlas of “America’s Heartland” begins. That’s just as well, because its tangle of multicolored snakes means next to nothing for the driver. As for the hitchhiker, he enjoyed spotting the odd names of small towns for approximately thirty second before growing tired of the game. He was ready to toss it out the window when a sudden vision of the contents of the policeman’s head exploding out its rear came to mind. He threw it back on the floor, where he had originally found it.

In this part of America, one can normally find a highway running east-west and ride it clear through at least two states, often more. That’s the case with the route the driver and the hitchhiker now find themselves on, Number 6. The atlas shows it terminating with a farm tractor over Toledo, Ohio. That map is really good for finding out which produce and manufactured goods come from which part of the country. Other than that, they might as well have used a picture book.

The driver wants to stop in Grinnell. It’s definitely not to go sightseeing: the town consists of a few agricultural banks, insurance offices, and the rest is warehouses for moving freight on to the rail junction. Even in Des Moines, the largest city in western Iowa, the buildings would only impress someone who’s never been to either coast of the United States. Looking around, the driver surmises that is probably the case for most Iowans. Des Moines major shopping district took all of five minutes to traverse. The windows of their finest shops consisted mostly of plain-looking flower print dresses. As for men’s wear, the flashiest item to be found was the straw-woven top hat, which is apparently a local innovation.

The driver pulls into a country kitchen –which means the converted front room of an old couple’s house- on the pretense of making a phone call. “Converted” may be stretching the point. The place looks just like the home of a cooped-up grandmother, except with more doilied chairs pushed up to a few long tables, covered with vases and embroidery.