2004-03-24 - 3:28 a.m.
I Am Cedar Rapids
I was founded on the banks of the Cedar River in the 1800�s. Since then, I have grown into a manufacturing and communications center for the heartland of America. I am a town, but I am the Midwest. Commonly known as the �City of Five Smells,� on a humid day you can drive from North to South to East to West and smell them all, including Captain Crunch Crunchberries, Dog Food, Refined Corn Syrup, Copper Smelting, and the five hundred pound Carp rotting at the bottom of my dam. The smells vary by neighborhood and may be more potent in the Meth corridor known as Rompot or the downtown area populated by MCI�s baby�s daddies, machine smoke and tarnished gold trim. I give you cobblestones for kitsch; I give you big-city-bright lights for the dull.
120,758 of you inhabit me, grow in me, mow on me, fuck in me, breed in me, live in me. I�ve given you attractions, or have you give me attractions? I can boast sports teams. Hey hey Kernels. Go go RoughRiders. You even painted that picture of the half cocked HawkEye�s head on your barn last year. It�s faded and bitten now, but we�re the salt of the earth you and I. I watch you working those jobs: factory hours, shift kings and queens, Hardees hoodrats, Lynch�s grease monkeys. Baggage checker boy, did you really think that was an opportunity to see the world?
�I get to meet all kinds of famous people, working here!� you told a stranger. �Just last week I met Tom Arnold, and the week before that? Huey Lewis and the News, dude. Huey motherfuckin� Lewis, dude.�
So 120,758 of you are farm or field or graveled or suburbaned. Your children cruise my Ave and know where to find the right action. They�re a hydraulic lift at the Fast and Furious Speed Shop. They�re a pack of Pall Mall 100 Extra Lights at the Kum and Go. They�re a bottle of Night Train bought on your food stamps. They�re the two-toned Iroc-Z t-top at Taco Bell on First Avenue at 2 in the morning. They�re Ground Effex and a liter of Mountain Dew. They�re the mullet in the stone washed jeans. They�re an underage drink at Shag Nasty�s and they�re a 100.7 Fox Classic Hits party at Buck�s. That�s you, Generation X�r � already trapped, already stuck.
You�re either: �I totally went to high school with Ashton Kutcher, you know, that kid from That 70�s Show?�
Or you�re: �I knew that Ashton Kutcher kid, what a fag. I�d totally kick his ass if he showed up in this town again.�
Who else is going to give you a place to drink beer and do your laundry at the same time? I�ve given you Dancers, The Happy Hour Spa, The Adult Shop. I know your dirty laundry better than you know arithmetic. I�ve felt your rage and your guns and dirt and grit on my superfluous shores of silt and lime. Your tires have peeled out and your kids have been packed up from my beaches. Oh, that choppy water replete with pollution leaks and the biggest dead Catfish you ever saw, simultaneously floating and rotting.
�Mommy, my skin is burning!�
Only here with me, can you see Bald Eagle road-kill. You were worried that one day, when you flipped open the Yellow Book and saw my nuclear power plant holding station. I heard your sigh of relief when you saw your northwest side missed the area of activation with red ink. You�re impenetrable. You�re the McLeod compound. You, are the parents, my product. My roads feel the brunt of the salting and sugaring and I give you this with repair taxes and black ice. I�ve seen you pop tires and tail gate at the 7am rush in your business-casual aspirations, cell phoned and SUV�d on me. I�m a one-town highway. It doesn�t matter how far removed from me you think you might be during that 8-5 routine. I�m still the food-day at the office. I�m still the pickle wraps. I�m still a casserole. I�m still shit on a shingle.
�You�re from Cedar Rapids?� that man from New York asked you on the phone.
�Honey, I lived here my whole GD life, know what I mean? I am Cedar Rapids, sugar,� you told him.
It�s uncomfortable at your family reunions. You have one of those families whose roots can be traced to back to Mayflower sperm. You�re the only one wearing panty hose at that spread on the farm, but you can still make a pie like Gram used to. Uncle Denny wants to talk to you about his gallbladder and Jesus Christ. Aunt Mary wants you to feel the quilt she spent an entire summer knitting. Your sister doesn�t marvel at the lemonade that is too sugary, because she�s jealous of your career. Your husband is making eyes at one of your cousins, some bleached job in stretchy denim and red leather ankle boots. My unemployment is at an all time high, something you never get tired of talking about. You�re the prize in the family, the one that graduated high school and holds a steady job where no uniform is required.
�Long as I got my TV and my car,� you told them.
�And Jesus, honey, never forget our Savior,� Gram reminded you.
�Amen,� they all said.
Your church put on that protest last year, marched down my streets. You held up a sign, too. Cars honked at you in agreement. Nobody saw your eyes glaze and shift, but I remembered the abortion you drove to Iowa City for when you were seventeen. I�ve seen your receipts, your deceits, transfusing and rotting deep inside me. I�ve seen the pregnancy tests floating around my trash dump. I gave you Coon Rod wrecking anyway. Every scrap of paper becomes mine eventually. What�s next, you think. Gay marriages? Here? In my town?
You�ve become me. Half of 120,758 of you are me already. You remembered a time where your feet burned to leave me. Some of you left for Arizona. What is the beck and call of Arizona about, anyway? Don�t enlighten me. Manifest destiny isn�t something you could talk about anyway. But you know the safe streets, you know my ghetto. Six whole blocks of ghetto. Six whole blocks of roaches and gunshots and drug deals with cars packed and parked so tightly. I�m still a dead old lonely lady in a low-rent apartment, stinking up the place so bad that it never hits the evening news.
You and I, we�ll walk this road together, because this is how it was meant to be. Yes I can give you culture, high school theatre products of Fiddler on the Roof, yearly rodeos, tractor pulls� Accomplishment isn�t found in a double wide, I�m afraid. Worldliness doesn�t exist in drug rehab. Love isn�t four different fathers for your babies.
�It�s a good place to raise kids,� you say.
You�re wrong. 120,758 of you, wrong. Your kid can sing and dance his way to the University of Iowa, but they�ll only come running back to me, fists full of dollars and chiropractic offices featuring massage therapy. Small dreams only make small towns.
�It�s safe here,� you think.
I was founded on the banks of the Cedar River in the 1800�s. Since then, I have grown into a manufacturing and communications center for the heartland of America. I am a town, but I am the Midwest. I am the Midwest, and I am the center of the earth. I am the conglomeration of complacency, ignorance, and apathy. You�ll think of things fondly here, when you grow up. Musk melons. Cicadas. Fireflies. Train tracks. Teenaged fumblings. Boone�s Farm Strawberry wine. The Amanas. Listen to me children, when I tell you with the passion of stone tears and sink pits and paved roads� Put on the Nikes you bought at the Footlocker in Linn Mall and run as fast and as far as your legs can take you. I am not the end-all be-all. I am nothing without you, but you are everything without me.