Nashua
Nashua
I’ve been home now for a few weeks, long enough that Europe and Africa seem fairly distant already. I spent some of the time with my family before Laura moved to Denver and visited my dad’s mom in Davenport, but I also spent quite a bit of time with my mom’s parents in Nashua. Just a few days after I’d gotten back from Spain, my grandpa went to the emergency room to have a pacemaker installed. So during his recovery I stayed at their farm in Nashua with my grandma, helping with her with meals and errands and spending the nights. We had a lot of time to catch up and I had a lot of time to reflect on my return home and mull over what’s next for me. It was also pleasant to relax in the place I’d spent so much time growing up, especially during these last best days of summer weather.
So I chatted with Grandma, visited Grandpa in recovery, spent time in Waverly with friends and my parents, sketched a little, napped a little, read a little, tried some bread recipes with my birthday breadmaker, picked the tomatoes, made tomato sauce and tomato soup and tomato sandwiches. I went to the Big Four Fair and experienced a glimpse of rural Iowa life, I visited the grand opening of an Iowa State experimental farm building just a couple miles from my grandparents’ farm, I bought postcards in the Nashua Pharmacy, I ordered a malt from the little ice cream parlor, and I made a couple trips to the nearby town of Charles City for a cappuccino at the coffee shop there, Aroma. I’m not ready to move to a small town farm, but I always enjoy my time visiting this particular corner of Iowa at least.
And now Grandpa is back home with Grandma at the farm and things are more or less as they were. So I went home for a few days before getting ready to leave for Denver. I spent the time exhuming my old resume and trying to breathe new life into it, as well as beginning to pore over and reorganize my project portfolio, all to begin preparing for a yet unplanned trip back to Portland.
That brings me to today, when I drove with my parents to Des Moines to see Wicked at the Civic Auditorium. They took ample liberties with the book’s storyline of course, but the music and artistry were great and we really enjoyed the show. Afterwards we took a walk to a nearby French restaurant called Django, one of the few places open Sunday downtown. It was a good choice, and I had one of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve ordered in Iowa, a spinach and mushroom crepes.
Before leaving town we strolled through the Gateway sculptural park that had just opened that afternoon, an impressive collection of outdoor art. Then we drove by the river and through the lively East Village neighborhood and past the Capitol. And now I’m on the California Zephyr Amtrak train heading west to Denver. My parents drove me the hour or so south of Des Moines to Osceola, a small town that happens to be one of the few Amtrak stops in Iowa. I’d boarded there once before, but it was early in college and I’d forgotten what a throw-back the train depot is. I walked in with my folks and we were greeted by a dark paneled room with long rows of empty wooden benches. The attendant was sitting quietly behind a large gated conductor’s counter and there was a western movie running on a TV in the waiting area. A photo isn’t even necessary, because it’s exactly how one would imagine it 40, 60, 80 years ago, perhaps with the exception of the television. Just as we came in the attendant walked slowly to the arrival board and rearranged the letters to indicate the train was twenty minutes late. Yes it’s a far cry from the high speed trains of France or Spain and their bustling stations, but at least our rail system still has its charms!
