In Ames, One Last Time?
We have come back, one last time, to this great Heart of the American Heartland — Ames, Iowa — the home of Iowa State University; Hickory Park, the best barbecue place anywhere in these grand United States; and Cafe Diem, surely one of the finest and most hospitable coffee places you’ve ever been in.
Yes, this is our last time to be here — unless, of course, it’s not. Everything depends on our finding just one special person, whose name we don’t know. That would be the person who decides, in a fit of pure insight, to purchase our lovely, completely refurbished condo in the heart of Old Town Ames. We bought this beauty a few years ago with every intention of spending at least the following five summers here, reveling in all that a fine old Midwestern university town can offer. And we really did renovate it.
Well, here it is, five years later, and we’ve somehow gotten five years older. And those five added years have made it more and more difficult for us to spend four (or five or six, as it has turned into) hectic days on our interstate highway system, stopping at night to stay in one-after-another “Save Money Here” inn, with its usual high-calorie (but tasty) breakfast to get us back on the road to yet another inn down the interstate.
All those previous days on the highways of our nation have been educational, to be sure. But they have started wearing on us. Each successive day seems to tire us earlier, and we find ourselves pulling off the interstate in the late afternoons, instead of our usual early-in-the-evening turn-ins.
So this time around, we went car-less. We flew from Fresno into Denver and then onto Des Moines. We arrived in the Midwest around 8:30 on a rainy Tuesday night — and I do mean rainy, as in “close to downpour.” We picked up our smallish rental SUV and slowly made our way (emphasis on “slowly”) up the I-35 to Ames. It took us much longer than usual, of course — the combination of darkness and all that wet stuff made progress difficult. But we made it.
Our condo looked great (did I mention that it is lovely and completely refurbished and is for sale at a really reasonable — in fact, ridiculously low — price?). We even had water — it started flowing through the faucets once I turned it on downstairs in our building’s basement — and the heater worked wonderfully. We had no cable TV because we had shut it off before we left last November — but the cable guy came a few days later and got us back in touch with all that TV has to offer.
We gave up our rental car on our first full day here, after using it to load up on food at Fareway, buy “stuff” at Target — and, of course, have lunch at Hickory Park. Not having a car is part of an experiment we’ve been wanting to undertake here in Ames: Can we survive without a vehicle in our small, little college town?
So far, so good. Sharon rides the bicycle she bought during the first year of our summer residency here — and I walk. Everywhere. I stroll through lovely Old Town, with its 1880-ish homes and their giant front lawns with ancient sycamore, maple, oak, walnut and even occasional elm trees. I’ve been reconnecting with all the rabbits and squirrels that populate Old Town — and though I have continuously attempted, over these years, to talk to them — they have, as of this writing, never responded. (If they did, I can be pretty sure I’m in one of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episodes, and that some completely unforeseen event is about to, well, be seen.)
We’ve already had numerous lunches and dinners with old friends — and it’s a good thing we’re bicycling and walking to those restaurants and to their homes, lest we start to put on so much weight from all that food that walking and biking become problematical.
Since we’ve owned our lovely and completely refurbished condo that is now for sale, we’ve usually spent several summer months here. But this time, we plan to leave Ames after just a month. For one thing, we have a new home that we’ve built in Madera County, back in California — and we like it. For another — we’re about to “inherit” Rocky the Cat — whom I’ve written about once or twice in this very column. Rocky has been temporarily staying — for years now — at our son’s condo in Fresno, but he’s moving away and can’t take Rocky with him.
So Rocky will become ours, again — and that entails certain responsibilities, such as not being away from our California home for months at a time. And, as I’ve said — going cross-country has become more challenging in recent years — so it’s time to fess up to ourselves and admit — we need to stay closer to home.
When we leave Ames this time, our plan is to rent a car and take one last, lingering trip back West. We’ll take eight nights, not the usual rushed, tiring, four or five — and visit some spots we’ve either driven past or want to see again. The Truman Library in Missouri. The lovely Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. The National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. Not to mention lunch in Wichita, one more time, with the best boss I ever had in television (and his wife). Al and Sally Buch are special.
Yes, this will be one last trip West to remember. Unless, of course, we have failed to find that one special person — the one who, in a fit of pure insight, has decided to buy our lovely, completely refurbished condo. If we can’t find — or haven’t found — that person, I guess we’ll fly back to Ames again next year — spend another few weeks — and plan our second “last trip” West. Life is like that, isn’t it? Completely unpredictable, I mean.