Hitting The Road

The open road beckons -
Who am I to say no?
It's where I'm from; who I am

So - to Iowa I go...

-SRP

"I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines."

Jack Kerouac
On the Road

"[In Star Trek, Captain] Kirk is eating pizza in a joint in San Francisco with a woman whose help he will need, when he decides to fess up about who he is and where he has come from. The camera circles the room, then homes in on Kirk and his companion as she bursts out with, 'You mean you’re from outer space?' 'No,' says Kirk, 'I’m from Iowa. I just work in outer space.'"

Marvin Bell

Iowa’s first Poet Laureate in A Marvin Bell Reader


"I had forgotten how flat and empty it is. Stand on two phone books almost anywhere in Iowa and you get a view."

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent


"When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever."

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent


"I have a weakness for Iowa. Iowa is different from the others."

Gertrude Stein

in a letter to Carl Van Vechten


"Talking about a scenic route in southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances."

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent