Nothing But the Dead and Dying Back in My Little Town

Though I’ve lived on the outskirts of Chicago for going on five years now, I spent the first 30 or so years of my life in Des Moines, Iowa. Most people don’t know much about Des Moines (pronounced “duh-MOYN”), so I’m going to tell you about it as it may feature prominently in future stories of my misspent youth.

Des Moines is the capital city of Iowa, with population just under 200,000, 500,000 counting the suburbs. Not huge, but not exactly tiny either. They are the largest city in Iowa, an urban area sprouting in the middle of endless corn fields. Their contributions to society include Slipknot, Cloris Leachman, and that’s about it. The best burger in Des Moines is from B-Bops, the best taco is from Tasty Tacos. And aside from having family and friends there, in my opinion B-Bops and Tasty Tacos are the only things Des Moines has going for it.

I left Des Moines for a reason, or technically for many reasons. It’s actually an old tradition for Iowa to hemorrhage young people. Even my 75 year-old retired mother wants out. People only stay because they’re stuck there. Everybody I know who has had the opportunity to get out has taken it. My wife and I refer to Des Moines as “the joy vortex”, because once you enter its borders, the overwhelming despair of the residents settles on you like thick smog, suffocating you and draining every ounce of joy from your being.

I think the biggest problem is simply that the town is dead. Dead Moines they call it. Seriously, there is not a god-damned thing to do if you’re too young to drink, and if you’re old enough to drink, well, you can drink. There are movie theaters I guess, but there was even a few years in the 90’s when there weren’t any of those. 90% of the theaters in the town were owned by one company, they didn’t make enough money and got the fuck out of Dodge. It took some time for anybody else to come in. Can you imagine? This is a town that wasn’t even able to keep an arena football franchise. How shitty do you have to be to not even have an arena football team?

So, for entertainment in Des Moines, what you do is if you’re old enough you drink in bars. If you’re not old enough, you drink and drive around in circles downtown. Since the downtown area virtually shuts completely down at 5pm, it’s not too big a deal to have drunken teenagers circling every weekend. And while doing either of these activities, there’s a higher-than-average likelihood that someone will try to start a fist fight with you for no real reason.

And in addition to the deadness, the town is completely fucking uptight. More than one friend has compared it to the town in Footloose. Here’s a city where when rave parties were all the rage, they passed an ordinance banning all-night dancing. When the local heavy metal station wanted to put on a concert in the park, the city refused them a license to sell beer, saying something along the lines of “if these here kids wanna have fun, why do they gotta be so noisy about it?” And don’t even get me started on the cops, who are absolute fucking cocksuckers. Christ, I’ve got six or seven stories on those bastards alone. It wasn’t until I left that I realized that not all cops are assholes. Imagine my surprise.

To make matters worse, in the 90’s crystal meth took the city by storm. No tank of anhydrous amonia was safe. As far as I know, nothing has changed in that regard. Nothing makes a dead, uptight town more livable than a bunch of pissed-off trailer-trash tweeker scumbags everywhere you go. I once worked in a restaurant where I was the only person on the kitchen staff who didn’t crank it up nightly. It worked well for me though, because in an effort to keep themselves occupied, they’d clean the whole kitchen and I wouldn’t have to.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all to get a bunch of angry email from residents of Des Moines about this post. That’s because many of them live in a profound state of denial. It’s not uncommon for people to say how friendly people are in Des Moines. Well, that’s bullshit, and I imagine that the people who say that have, like many of the people there, never been anywhere else. I’ve had more strangers on the street start conversations with me in Chicago than ever did in Des Moines. The way I remember it, in Des Moines the rule is “avoid eye contact lest ye be snarled at”. I’ve never seen some random asshole try to start a fight since I left. There it was a regular occurrence. Guess meth makes you violent or something. The other one I heard all my life was “Des Moines has the best schools in the nation!” Well, having been through the schools there, I can tell you that that’s bullshit too. Every fucking town in every fucking state says they have the best schools in the nation. I hear it here all the time too, only I’m more inclined to believe it.

But you know, shitty a place as it is, it is where I grew up and I do still have friends and family there, and I’ve probably made it seem worse than it really is. Despite the lack of anything going on there, my friends and I were able to make our own fun, though we weren’t ever able to do so within the rule of law.

The title of this post comes from the Simon and Garfunkel song “My Little Town”, which my wife is sure was written about Des Moines. It also says:

And after it rains there’s a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It’s not that the colors aren’t there
It’s just imagination they lack

While I know Paul Simon isn’t a native of Des Moines, when I hear those lyrics I think he must have at least visited it.