July 1, 2013
We pulled into the small Iowa town after packing up our tent. It was about 8 am. There was still a bag of our granola in the
van for our breakfast-on-the-go, but we needed some yogurt. I was hoping for a large bucket of plain
yogurt, because I love that stuff and usually eat it every day. I was craving a tart start to my day. But I had a feeling that small town Iowa would only offer me a
sweet, flavoured kind. Downtown consisted of six buildings, the biggest of which was a ramshackled green place labeled "Dance Classes Here". Ample angled parking was available in front of all six businesses. The grocery store was the
size of a single car garage, flat roof, with a bench in front of the store’s
only window. There were two older men
sitting there, smoking their pipes and chatting. It looked just like a scene from a good
story. As we approached the front door,
one of the men got up to follow us in and run the shop. This dear old man spoke slowly and without much change of pitch, but he obviously liked to talk. He started
telling Jon about his children; I wandered around the store. There was no yogurt that I could see, so I
joined in the conversation the men were having at the till. Photos were scattered across the counter as
the shop owner showed us various scenes of himself meeting famous people while
visiting his daughter in L.A. When I asked about yogurt, he shook his
head. “No,” he said. “I’ve tried to sell yogurt here, but it just
doesn’t go. A few years back the company
gave me some yogurt and put it at a really cheap price, so we can get these Iowa people to try
it. We had blueberry AND
strawberry. But not one of them
sold. We’re just too American over here,
I guess.” We stayed and chatted for a
few minutes more, bought a bottle of milk, and headed back to the roaring
highway.
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