The Kindness of Broken Strangers

Five days on the road. Four in Iowa, accidentallyadventurously.
We hopped a train out of St. Louis that was bound for Minneapolis. However, it split in two in Quincy, Missouri, leaving us sleeping in a car bound for… Quincy Missouri. So we woke, walked to the nearest gas station, to find not only had we slept through our engine’s departure, we had also slept through a tornado.
That evening we hung our hats at Ian and Andrew’s farm in Coal City, Iowa. We sat in the barn and drank a few beers, Ian and Andrew played a few songs on their saxophone and ukulele. They put us to work chasing chickens and clipping their wings. Then Leanne milked the goats with Andrew while Ian cooked dinner. I read cookbooks and tried to stay awake enough to eat the farm-fresh frittata he was rhythmically throwing together. It was absolutely delicious, and after eating I immediately fell asleep on a couch in the attic.

Then came 28 hours in Nahant Marsh, in Davenport, Iowa, waiting on a train that was coming, but bearing no cars we could ride. We slept on some picnic tables outside the Nahant Marsh Educational Center and woke covered in thick, warm dew. The sun was rising and I watched it through the trees, from the dock over the nearest pond.

So we had to hitchhike cause the train was apparently getting us nowhere. And we got rides, we did. Fico, a Bosnian man with a son named Elvis, took us to Des Moines, one of the most broken spots of the Midwest I’ve ever spent a minute in. A couple of men who lived in the woods across from our truck stop gave us some beers for the road. It was sweet of them, busted and beaten as they were, they were not defeated at heart.
We shared the ramp with a woman who was escaping her husband. She disappeared off into the woods with our beer-suppliers, however, which seemed like a pretty bad idea. Bad ideas are vices like anything else that’s bad for you, I suppose.
The guy working at the truckstop gave me a large cup of coffee when I strolled through all casually mentioning I’d sweep the floor to feed my caffeine addiction. Turns out I got lucky – it was his birthday! Lucky cause I didn’t have to sweep the floor, and lucky cause I got to make him a birthday card on receipt paper, which he found much more worthy of coffee than 89 cents, thank you.
So we got to Minneapolis via a nu-metal fan named Clay from my most familiar suburb, St. Charles, Missouri. He sorta ditched us in Fairbault, MN, but regardless, we’re in Minneapolis now, eating free lunch at the Seward Café every day and currently staying with our good friend, Smelly Kelley, who lives directly across from my good ol’ bud Andy Peterson. I have cleaned their kitchen to a sparkle, as has Leanne with the bathroom. Tonight I’m going swimming in the Mississippi for the first time ever. It’s cleaner here. We’re happy.



Pictures will come as soon as I get the means to post them.