43 Hours In Waterloo Iowa

A couple of weeks ago I had to go to Waterloo, in Northeast Iowa, home base of most of my family, for my grandmother's 90th birthday. I hadn't been there since my grandmother's 85th birthday because I absolutely loathe the place. A shitty industrial town that offers no real positive asset to society, it's also full of members of my uneducated, white-trash, close-minded, gun-loving, backward-ass family. That would all be forgivable if they hadn't also treated me like shit growing up; making fun of anything I believed in, any music I listened to and generally acting as if they were superior to me and "city folk" in general. Yes, people with (at most) high school educations and 8-dollar-an-hour jobs at places like the local cabinet factory, who have never really been anywhere else in the world except maybe fishing in Canada, think they are better than everyone else, and many believe they know the answers to fix the world's ills. Because if you want to know how to fix the economy or bring peace to the Middle East, you should skip the economists and international relations experts and ask my uncle who worked his whole life on the John Deere assembly line or my cousin who stains wood at Bertch cabinet factory.

So I try to avoid going as much as I can.

But that is not always possible, at least while Grandma is still alive. I will certainly be done with the place after she's gone.

I decided for this trip to try to find the other side of Waterloo, if one existed. I would try to check out the local museum and even try to hit a live music club to see a local band maybe. And then I figured I might have material to write a "travel" post in the style of The New York Times' 36 Hours feature in the Sunday travel section. Maybe I could discover a cultural side to Waterloo that I never got to see as a kid.

It didn't really happen the way I hoped, and my weekend there basically went like this:

Friday
2:00pm - Cross the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa at the drawbridge in Fort Madison in the pickup truck borrowed from my friend Ray in Macomb, where I went to college. A large knot develops in my throat.

4:48pm - Reach the city limits of Waterloo. Begin hyperventilating.

5:03pm - Check-in to Comfort Inn. Begin paranoia about the locals staring at the "long-haired hippy freak" (me).

5:27pm - Call my sister's cell phone to find out where they are at. She and her family, along with my brother's family and my mother were just leaving the nursing home, where my grandmother lives, after her birthday party there (the family party was the following day).

6:00pm - Walk over to meet my family at a restaurant called Carlos O'Kelly's. Seriously, that's the name of a mini-chain of Mexican restaurants. It is to Mexican food what the Cheesecake Factory is to, well, all types of food. That's to say watered down, homogenized and generally un-ethnicized to be more palpable to your average middle-American. But it is also the kind of restaurant that is good at dealing with a table of 14 people, which includes six kids under the age of nine and about three unreasonably demanding adults in my mother, aunt and brother. The waitresses were complete troopers and dealt very well with the whole situation and kept their smiles. Everyone was happy with their mediocre Mexican food.

Sad fact is that this probably is the best Mexican restaurant in Waterloo.

Before eating, my brother, his wife, their kids, my grandmother, aunt and mother prayed. I continued talking to my brother-in-law and was shushed by my mother. I explained to her that just because she wants to pray, that doesn't mean I have to stop what I'm doing.

7:34pm - Walk back to hotel to pick up the truck.

7:43pm - Change in to my red "Godless Liberal" t-shirt. The decision to wear this was cemented by the prayer shushing.

7:59pm - Make an attempt to go to the Target to buy a straightening iron for my hair, since I couldn't take the one from home as my wife needed it. I have a panic attack when I see all the rednecks going inside and knowing what shirt I'm wearing. I skip it.

8:08pm - Stop at corner gas station and pick up a six pack of Budweiser, the best offering in the cooler.

8:16pm - Go to the hotel where my brother and sister are staying. My nieces and nephews are bouncing off the wall. My shirt is looked at but never mentioned by my Jesus-freak brother, sister-in-law and mother. It seems to make my brother-in-law smirk a little bit as we drink the beer. I hang out with him the rest of the night while all the craziness goes on around us.

Saturday
9:30am - Roll out of bed.

9:35am - Start freaking out about having to go out into Waterloo again.

10:00am - Walk across the street to the IHOP for breakfast. Sit at a corner table looking at all the fat people eating their "three meat combo" breakfasts. You always know what you're getting at IHOP, so it is a safe choice for breakfast. This may very well be the best restaurant in Waterloo.

10:33am - Go to Target and buy the straightening iron. I am surrounded by trailer trash.

10:51am - Back to hotel to shower.

11:30am - Sit and watch TV, still considering whether to actually go and see something interesting in Waterloo or just hide in my room until my grandmother's party.

12:15pm - Finally get up the nerve to drive to "downtown" and look for the art museum.

12:33pm - At the Waterloo Art Museum. They claim to have the largest collection of Haitian art in the U.S. so I was interested. The parking lot was not very full on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I waited as a couple of mothers with their kids were at the counter.

When it was my turn I just said "one please" and she told me $5 and handed me a wristband. She then said that when I get inside I should make my presence known to an employee since I didn't have a kid and would need to be monitored.

What the fuck was she talking about?

I told her I just wanted to look at the art and asked where the Haitian collection was. After a little bit of trying to understand each other, she asked if I wanted to go in the Kids' Pavilion and I said I just wanted to see the museum. She gave me my five bucks back, because only the kids' thing cost money, and pointed me to the museum. I couldn't figure out why she was so confused over someone going to a museum to look at the art.

I walked around looking at really shitty art for a while, feeling like I was being watched. Not by an actual museum security person mind you. There weren't any guards there to protect the art. I'm guessing no one wants to steal the crap that's on the walls there and no one actually ever goes there anyway. I was the only person in the galleries the whole ten minutes or so I was there. At one point an employee even asked me if I needed any help, you know, in the way that people ask that when they really mean is "who the fuck are you and why are you here?"

I tried. I really tried to give "culture" in Waterloo a chance. And I was treated like a freak (and a pedophile) for wanting to actually go in the local museum on a Saturday.

2:00pm - Time for Grandma's party. I sat in the truck for about 15 minutes, breathing heavy and considering bolting. After working up the courage I make my way in, wearing my traditional Vietnamese shirt I bought when Lisa and I were there in November. The party was in the basement of my grandmother's church. Refreshments consisted of ham on store-bought dinner rolls, a pickle tray and soda. Sorry, I mean pop. We are in the Midwest after all.

Lots of uncomfortable conversations with the relatives that recognize my existence ensue. These conversations usually involve a good amount of disbelief about what I do with my life or where I'm living at that moment. Saying you live in New York City is about the same as saying you live on Mars to these people. I always feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose when I go to family gatherings.

The ones who do not recognize my existence continued to ignore me as they always do at these gatherings. These are mostly my cousins who are my uncle Veryl's kids (yes that's his real name). I could be standing next to them on fire and they would not acknowledge me. In their heads they are better than me in every way, with their double-digit IQs and such jobs as assistant manager of of the Country Kitchen.

I do learn that maybe I am finally growing up a little, as I approach 38. My aunt's alcoholic dumbfuck husband tried to start a political discussion, stating with disbelief that anyone can be a Democrat. I just got up and walked away. I knew the conversation would just end with me saying, "Yes Jerry, the world would be such a better place if it were run by uneducated, white-trash, fat drunks like you."

I walked away instead. Anyone who knows me is shocked by this development.

4:26pm - I drive around looking at places I used to know in Waterloo. I'm checking to see what is still there and if I even remember where they are. It is not some sort of nostalgic trip down memory lane like a bad Meatloaf video. Just curiosity.

5:32pm - Head over to my family's hotel and see my brother-in-law coming through the parking lot. He had been at the Lone Star having a beer hoping I would show up. I parked and we headed back over. Yet another of those theme restaurants with no soul, Lone Star is pretty much what you think it might be, a Texas-styled steak house. But it is Texan about as much as George Bush is a Texan.

I sit with my bro-in-law drinking beer until my sister calls him to say we are going to dinner. They are really my saving grace at these family gatherings, my sister and her husband. They are the only other ones who aren't off-the-deep-end Jesus freaks.

6:30pm - Dinner at Pizza Hut. Is there really anything I can say about that? Pizza Hut is the same wherever you go. Shitty.

10:00pm - I had planned to go to check out a music club this night, but I would have had to go all the way over to Cedar Falls to get to one. And after my attempt at a museum trip, I'm not sure I wanted to be adventurous again. Instead I went with my mother, and my brother-in-law to the local casino that has opened in town since the last time I was there. Yet another attempt to prop up the hopeless economy in Waterloo, the last one being the ridiculous and cruel greyhound racetrack that went bust after the novelty wore off.

Sat with my bro-in-law at the bar playing video poker, enduring one of the most god-awful cover bands ever while doing so. After losing twenty bucks each we just sat at a table drinking beer until my mother was done losing her money.

Sunday
10:00am - Shocked to find a Starbucks in Waterloo, I stop and grab a cup of coffee with soy milk on my way to the family's hotel.

11:00am - Hanging out at my grandmother's nursing home. Not a bad place, but I'd still rather die suddenly in my own bed than waste away at a home.

11:45am - Leave Waterloo

1:00pm - I get to Iowa City and find a vegan organic restaurant that I read about on Happy Cow called Red Avocado. I sat at an outside table listening to a saxophonist preforming for the brunch crowd. I had a breakfast burrito with sides of sesame potatoes and vegan chorizo, washed down by an organic micro brew.

I felt normal again.

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