In Iowa, Part 2: A prepositional tour of the heartland (READER CHALLENGE: Count the number of 80s song titles included in this ridiculous post)

I admit it...I'm just a small town girl. Listening to a long-haired guy outfitted in harlequin black and white spandex pants with chains belting out Journey covers for an entranced audience eager to recapture the eighties while slamming back Busch securely encased in personalized beer koozies. More of an REO fan, I was more enthralled by the concert cat who attended the performance. However, I just couldn't fight the feeling that it was somehow wrong to expose this sophisticated creature to the sappiest lyrics known to mankind.

Afraid that we would lose an eye to all the jerking hook'em horns gestures being thrust indiscriminately into the air, Savannah and I went on a quest to buy a blooming onion, standard fare at all small town carnivals. Brad and my mother-in-law, Linda tried to warn us that our favorite fair concession might not be available in the mid-west. We scoffed, of course. A blooming onion was universal. Along with questionably-assembled Ferris wheels and doomed gold fish swinging sacrificially in plastic bags, blooming onions practically defined small town fairs, festivals, and concerts.


Two desperate circuits later, Savannah was ready to resign herself to fried dough. "Don't stop

believing," I reassured my disappointed daughter as we circled the carnival for the third time. But it was true. We had uncovered Iowa's Achilles heel; its fatal flaw.  Fried dough it was. We flinched further when we were offered some sort of morbid fruit pie filling with which to desecrate our dessert. I snatched our purely powdered-sugar-pastry and handed it off to Savannah. "Take it on the run," I told her, placing myself between my daughter with our dessert and uncertain danger.

Safely back at our seats, I admired how the lead singer had undergone his fourth wardrobe change of the night; happy, though,  that the spandex and chain combination had remained in place. Brad commiserated as he ripped off a healthy hunk of fried dough. "No blooming onion, huh?" I dispassionately rolled my shoulders. "Sometimes you gotta roll with the changes," I conceded.