If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall when a mostly rural person ventures into a large city, then you’re going to want to read an essay that recently published in the New York Times.
Written by children’s author Sarah Shey, who also happens to be the daughter of an Iowa veterinarian, the piece is light enough to make for good reading and detailed enough to provoke thought.
…For the first time, I was living among people who spent most of their lives indoors — in apartments, in offices, in gyms, in restaurants. I couldn’t get over that.
A repairman introduced me to this notion of urban insularity when he connected my telephone just days after I moved into my first apartment, on West 115th Street. I offered him something to drink, just as my mother would have; my mother did not discriminate with the coffeepot: Veterinarians, hired hands, cattle buyers, cleaning women — all drank coffee and ate toast at her table.
The repairman did a double take. “Where you from?” he asked. When I told him, his eyes betrayed what he was thinking: “You’ve got a lot to learn.” Aloud, he said: “This ain’t Iowa. Uh-uh-no. This is re-al-ity.” He did not elaborate…
To this day, I can always count on my southern family — many of whom reside in large cities like Dallas, Houston and Tulsa — to question my move to Iowa. Never mind that the move took place more than a decade ago. For them, even the few who have ventured north for a visit, Iowa holds a distinct mystery.
“It must be wonderful when all that snow falls,” my sister said with a distant gleam in her eye. Despite my attempts to inject harsh winter realities like snow plows and piles of brownish-black muck in parking lots, they still haven’t quite gotten the message.
On my latest visit, my brother-in-law asked me if there were any horse-drawn carriages that could be ridden in the snow. Although it risked perpetrating the romantic myth that Iowans sip brandy whilst watching big snow flakes land on barren fields all winter, I had to admit that there were carriages that visited our town during annual Christmas in the Park celebrations.
Since my sister has her heart set on such an excursion, I’ve little doubt that one of these winters they are going to trek to Iowa. I can only hope that they are fortunate enough to miss a real snow storm, otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it. Then again, such an experience might quickly dispel the romantic myth.
