Small Town, USA

[kuan]

On my Iowa trip, I managed to find myself at a small diner in Small Town USA. Here are some observations:

1) Pulling up in a German car will get you many stares.

2) Being Asian will get you many stares.

3) Combining the above will... 'nuff said.

4) Bread, is by definition, white.

5) Asking to be moved to a non-smoking section means having the ashtray removed from your table.

6) Half the town is in one coffeeshop when it rains. The other half is in the other coffeeshop.

7) A good tip is a nickel on the dollar.

8) The coffee in Smalltown Mid-America is clear as the water, and this is not because you stir in eggwhites and shells.

And THAT, is what I learned this week

Kuan

[kokopuffs]

You musta' really felt isolated or out of place? How did the breakfast turn out in smalltown USA? Myself, I really like them southern smalltowns. Great breakfasts even though Peet's is missing.

[Svadhisthana]

I moved to my DH's small town and I must say-any newbie will get a lot of stares. I'm quite happy that we only lived there a few months.

[chrose]

So Kuan, what you're saying is that I should be glad I didn't get that job with Cuisine Magazine (in Des Moines, Ia.)?

[kuan]

Haha! No, actually it's like this in much of Midwest rural America. You're in the heartland baby! There's an obvious culture in the heartland and I'm kinda used to it. I love travelling and stopping in these little towns. The only problem is food ingredients may be hard to come by. Like I said, bread is, by definition, white!

Kuan

[chiffonade]

ROFLMAO! That is a perfect description of the town our family just left in S.W. Colorado - or as I refer to it - the Land of Jethro. It's so good to be in a big enough place to again have... anonymity! Yeah! No one here knows my business...and what's more, no one cares that they don't know my business. Give me more of that. Christopher Kimball's world where everyone knows everyone else is OK if everyone marches in formation and no one strays from the line. Doesn't sound too much like real life to me.

Glad you were able to escape unscathed.

[Suzanne]

So Chiff -- you've completed the move to Florida???

[shroomgirl]

1980 I married and moved from Memphis to DeRidder, La. (10,000) people, 2 stop lights, sheep in the middle of the street, dry county, one second run movie played one time a week, 45 miles away from a Chinese restaurant. I had worked(Mfs) in a French restaurant, worked in an ad agency and was getting a degree in early childhood ed......The local paper talked about who visited whom....everyone new everyone else and found it totally bizarre that I would go gaga over granny smith apples in the grocery store 1 1/2 hours away. CULTURE shock. Within 3 years I learned to can, make bread, play Mah Jong, cook chinese (without a Cuisinart), cook cajun, find phenominal festivals.....still an anomoly, kinda bizarre that the locals didn't get into checking out their own backyard. The bakery had the most incredible Greman rye bread on Sat. am.....the baker stayed after the NO World's Fair. Though the women wore beehive dos and skirts.

I traveled the state with a bunch of Legislators and birkenstocks with Blue Fish art dresses are not small MO town fashion statements. And iceberg lettuce was the salad of choice....still.

[coolJ]

Kuan, I hear you on the no smoking section, when I went across Canada this summer to go to the CT weekend in Montreal, I went via Greyhound, and I'll always remember the bus stop in Brandon MB, the non smoking area was 6 tables in the middle of the "dining room" with about a dozen tables around the edge of the room, which were smoking tables.

[kuan]

Originally posted by shroomgirl
iceberg lettuce was the salad of choice....still.

Well what other kind IS there?

Kuan

[shroomgirl]

1000 island has been displaced by ranch....I think there were still purple cabbage bits and carrot bits in the "salad"....I was on a fact seeking mission with the Dept of Ag, who wanted to know why small Mo farmers are going out of biz and I kept saying there are NO Mo farmers that raise iceberg guys.....DUH.....If you wanna keep local farmers in biz you need to buy from them...and this was the DEPT of AG....guess they only have commodities on the brain. Our tax dollars at work. No slack baby I hate incompetance that is feined for the almighty buck, it totally disgusts me that they are supporting (by setting up tax breaks and angles to get around legislation) industrial containment farms, Monsanto row crops, etc... and funding school programs that feature the brown and neon foods, "Because some friggin' RD says we need to feed kids what they'll eat"...guess that is why our babies are drinking soda starting in elementary school...cus it raises monies for the extra curricular programs. Did I say that I was working on a solution.....????Later, gotta go to work.

[Shimmer]

Ah, the midwest. Where "vegetarian" means it contains vegetables (and meat too!)- where the people don't like to go to Subway "because they put salad on the sandwiches" and you will NEVER find strawberries that taste fresh or ripe.

A lot of diners don't even have salad at all. Potatoes are vegetables, gosh darn it.

Its almost as bad as when we drove across the country to MOVE to Indiana, and I asked a lady at a gas station in Wyoming if there were any coffee shops around. She glared at me and said "We've got coffee!" And didn't know what espresso was. I could never live in Wyoming.

~~Shimmer~~

[kokopuffs]

Them's fightin' words.