2017
Dad has already asked a couple of times if we're doing anything for my 40th birthday, and if so, what? I tell him Dad, I don't know, it's still six weeks away, and who knows anyway, if Sonia's planning anything or whatever and she's not even here, she had to stay in Iowa City for work. Right now I just want to spend a few days in God's Country, Sheldon, hometown to superheroes like me. That's what I always tell Niko and Orlando. My dad always tells them that he's in the Baseball Hall of Fame and that he won the Heisman Trophy. Niko and Orlando are starting to figure out that Grandpa's a liar and maybe Dad is, too.
Dad's house is always super relaxing. He and his wife Deb moved into the house on 9th and 9th when they got married in 2012. It's exactly six blocks from my boyhood home at 6th and 6th. At least once every time I'm back I like to walk by there with the kids. They ooh and aah about how big it is. Sonia does too when she makes it up here. And it is. It's one of the biggest houses in town. I suppose it doesn't seem quite as big now that I'm grown up, but I have to admit, it's still quite a house. It's a Victorian.
It's even right across from the City Park, although to be honest this part of Sheldon seems a little, I don't know...yesteryearish? True, U.S. Highway 18 still runs on the north side of the park, but ever since they built the bypass for State Highway 60 on the east side of town everything's just kind of moved that way. The corner where 18 and 60 intercepted, just a couple blocks west of the park, used to be a big deal; but now it's just Old Highway 60, 2nd Avenue really, just another road intersecting with Highway 18. It wouldn't even surprise me if they took out the four-way stop in the near future, that's how non-big-time Old Highway 60 is.
The bypass runs about three miles east of there. Highway 60's kind of a big deal up here because it's the main route between Sioux City and Worthington, MN, and thereby the Twin Cities. It's not even really correct to say the bypass was constructed "on the east side"; it was constructed just plain east of Sheldon. When I was a kid Sheldon more or less ended well before Country Club Road. We called it "Million Dollar Road" 'cause the houses there were supposedly really fancy, although looking back I think that may have been more class envy than anything else. Today, though, Country Club Road is well within mainstream Sheldon and past there you have Fareway, Hy-Vee, Pizza Ranch, Taco Johns, McDonalds, Neal Chase Lumber Company, even Sheldon's new "Events Center". When I was a kid Pizza Ranch and all thing Municipal were downtown, around 3rd and 9th; Neal Chase Lumber Company was smack on Highway 60 and 9th Street; Taco Johns was on the hot intersection of 18 and 60 along with Hardees, A&W, and Godfather's Pizza; Hy-Vee was right across Highway 18 from the City Park. We didn't even have Fareway or McDonalds! Nowadays, on this visit, it seems that just about anytime we go anywhere with Dad it's East, and we have to drive, 'cause it's a little ways to get out there.
Anyway, it's not like I'm blind to reality or anything. Things change. People change. Towns change. At least Sheldon's not like my mom's hometown Centerville, which has really hit hard times lately, or one of those towns that has just a bar and a church and a Slow Pitch Softball Tournament once a year. Still, though. Take the City Park. When I was a kid there were something like 18 Mens' League teams and 10 Womens' League teams, not to mention Coed, and the junior high baseball and softball teams played all their games there. There was pretty much something going 4,5,6 days a week. Now I hear they only play one or two nights a week, and all the kids' ballgames are played (where else?) on the East Side near the new Middle School.
No, if you live west of say, 6th Avenue, where I grew up, there just ain't a whole hell of a lot of anything going on anymore.
But that's just the way it is. Things change. When Mom died, in 1996, Dad decided to move 'cause that big house at 6th and 6th was just too big now. He moved east of Washington Avenue, East 8th Street, where my sisters finished their high school. And he live there for 15 years. almost as long as he lived in the big house, 'till him and Deb tied the knot and moved into the house on 9th and 9th. Behind every major demographic movement are hundreds, thousands, millions of decisions made on the micro level which then produce the macro effect. Although, to be fair, a macro decision (like building a bypass a mile east of town) can certainly fuel those micro-level decisions, thus creating a cycle, benevolent or vicious, depending on where you're at....
Aah! Too much thinking. I'm here to relax. And the house at 9th and 9th is great for relaxing. With Niko and Orlando sleeping upstairs I have the whole basement to myself, like a college student or something. I stay up late playing Strat baseball and reading cheap paperbacks and being self-important on my blog. And then I go to bed, and I'm so relaxed up here in this quiet little Northwest Iowa town, that I only use half a sleeping pill to fall asleep.
To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment