It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, April 18
One final day in Iowa.
My hunch that me driving to Tipton from the hotel would be more convenient than Ray coming to pick me up proved to be correct because Ray was grateful for my offer…I was there promptly at 0900 and soon enuff we are off to that Field of Dreams baseball field that had a movie filmed at it…I’ve never seen the movie and, at first, I wasn’t all that enthused especially when yours truly bravely forked over the $20 suggested donation for admittance but it turned out to be a wonderful time.
The ball field, which apparently was cut out of a cornfield, needed some TLC but Ray and I, both former umpires, soon enuff found ourselves occupying spots commonly occupied by umpires while plying their trade, each boring the other with assorted umpiring tales and all in all it was a wonderful way to pass the morning.
I got a free shot of rye at the snack bar there, too…I am not making that up…We walked in to get our complimentary water and the girl manning the counter had the hots for yours truly from the time she first laid on me…Don’t doubt that, she did everything but disrobe when we walked in…It looked like a typical snack bar except for a small rack with four or five shelves that had some booze and wine bottles on them…I SWEAR I have some zero clue how we got on the subject but the next thing anybody knows she’s offering me a complimentary shot of rye…Well, OK…1130 is a bit early to start in on the day’s drinking, at least for ol’ Sparrow is; I’ve know people over the years for whom 1130 would have represented a slight delay in the start of the day’s drinking.
Anyway, when I don’t immediately say no, she gets out one of those red plastic shot cups and pours me a shot of rye, a drink I first started drinking after I’d turned 21 in the Navy because my hero Joe Friday ordered rye at a bar when he and Gannon were working undercover…I thought it tasted like gasoline and dumped it for three decades, until 2019 when I tried some at the hotel Christmas party…I’m hardly Mr Booze, but it’s pretty good.
After that, we went to Dubuque…Now, this name is familiar to some because Dubuque ham is pretty famous, and while you can still buy it, it is no longer processed in Dubuque, but in Illinois…On the way we passed an actual ski resort, I am not making that up…Well, “resort” wasn’t entirely accurate…I work in Ski Town USA and know a ski ‘resort’ when I don’t see one and this was merely a ski ‘area’, but it’s Iowa for Pete’s sake and not the Alps so I suppose you take what you can get when you’re an Iowa skier but there it was, at the top of a hill in a nice residential area: the top of a ski lift.
In Dubuque, there was a train that made the short trip up a very steep hill and the view at the top took in both Wisconsin and Illinois across the Mississippi River and after lunch Ray even drove a loop across the river to Wisconsin, south to Illinois and then back across to Iowa…This was at my (dull) request because this would be my only chance to get to Illinois on road trip, and I wanted to take advantage of it…I’d been there before (Pa Sparrow’s from there) but still, you want to take advantage of the chance to pad the stats when they present themselves.
Road trip is winding down…Sure, there are two thrilling days of spades with Lutheran women in Red Wing, Minnesota still to come, but it’ll be time to head home after that…There’s no reason to backtrack and there appear to be some options heading west out of Minnesota, but they’re all about 16.5 hours, so it will probably be a two-day drive because that’s a lot to drive in one day.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: With the return to somewhat normal sleeping hours, I suspect the Sleep log is a day ahead of itself and it will return tomorrow.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
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