Mallory's Camera

Jump: Tripoli, IA → Allison, IA – Butler Co. Fairgrounds: 40 miles
LEFT out of the park where we came in… arrows back to HWY 93 WEST
LEFT onto HWY 63 SOUTH
RIGHT onto HWY 3 WEST to Allison… arrows to lot
Shows at 2pm/4:30pm

Iowa public libraries aren’t open on Sundays so I headed off to the Big City which in these parts is called Waterloo/Cedar Falls, population: 68,000. Black people live here! Also Bosnians!

Waterloo’s downtown narrowly avoided annihilation in a massive flood last year. Cedar Falls wasn’t so lucky. I did a brief drive-by through the former and then headed off to the mall where yes, Virginia there is a Starbucks. And a Barnes and Noble!

I was sitting there putting the very last touches on Chapter 5 when I heard a siren. I thought maybe it was the lunchtime reminder at the local John Deere factory.

Then the assistant manager came running up to my table. “Ma’am? Ma’am? There’s a tornado warning in effect; please come away from the window.”

###

When a natural disaster is trying to kill you, is it better to have a warning or to be taken unawares? I was strolling down Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in 1988. What I remember is that all of a sudden for no apparent reason my legs just buckled, I began to stagger – it was hard to keep purchase on the sidewalk. This went on for 30 seconds or so and then it stopped.

It never dawned on me that I’d just lived through a massive seismic event until I climbed the stairs to the bioethics consulting firm where I was doing my public policy internship and found all my co-workers cowering under the table.

If I’d known, say, ten minutes in advance the Big One was coming, I’m pretty sure I would have gotten in my car and tried to drive away. And then when the quake hit, I would have been on the very part of the freeway that fell apart. A massive girder would have fallen on my car, crushing it and me. Assuming I even survived, my legs would have had to be amputated at the waist without morphine before I could be removed from the car!

So you see, it’s better not to know…

###

The assistant manager did know – a tornado touching down not 20 miles away from here (Parkersburg) killed 10 people not three months ago. She herded us into the very back of the store far away from the plate glass windows. “If it hits, get down on the floor away from anything that could fly off a shelf and hit you!” she advised. (That’s very difficult to do in a Barnes and Noble.) “First the sky will turn green. Then you’ll hear a sound like a freight train.”

The sky did turn a little more aquamarine-ish than usual but it wasn’t anything I’d call green.

And then the warning expired. Turned out a megacyclone had been sighted, not a tornado.

Damn, I thought. There goes my trip to Oz.

###

As I say, I finally finished Chapter 5.

Took me two and a half months to complete – I usually write much faster than that.

Why did it take so long? Well, for one thing, on the road, it’s almost impossible to go into the Zone. In the Zone, stuff writes itself. I tell myself this is a discipline issue and maybe it is. How To Write Good books are a minor publishing industry but the truth is writing’s never more difficult than sitting down in front of a keyboard and doing it. Of course it’s a lot more fun if you can do it in an altered state of consciousness. The Zone is definitely that.

And, too – though I’d be the first to admit this could just be another rationalization – Chapter 5 is the background info dump chapter. It deals with some very personal stuff. These days I'm mostly ashamed when I think about my life. God, what a train wreck, I think. It was hard writing that stuff down.

Finally – and this is an odd thing – I’m living in something of a sensory deprivation environment right now. Turns out circus people are excruciatingly dull and there’s little to distinguish the days from one another. Ben was right: it’s irrelevant whether the inhabitants of Today’s Town call it Tripoli or Allison – its real name is Today’s Town.

This isn’t an entirely bad thing – I’ve been sleeping really, really well for the past two and a half months which is something I hadn’t been doing for years. My life may be in shambles but I don’t give a fuck – The Little Store was just a Today’s Town where I got stuck for five years.

But I’m kind of a magpie writer – I reflect my environment. When nothing’s really stimulating me, it’s almost impossible to write things that sparkle. Hence the preponderance over the last three months of droning, geographically-inspired essays herein.

However it should be smooth sailing from here on. All I have to do now is plagiarize my own journal