Hi Friends! This is the second installment of the tale of my journey to Iowa.

You know, if I remember correctly, the hottest place I’ve ever been is Las Vegas in July. It was 115 in the shade and I felt the seared air being sucked from my lungs the minute I opened the car door. Maybe even worse than that was Houston in August. That was a treat too. Not only hot, but humidity so high that you never saw people outside at all… just hapless folks sprinting from their air conditioned car to their air conditioned home.  Once in a while, you’d see someone not make it that far. How pitiful to watch them collapse on their lawns within sight of their front doors — flopping on the ground, struggling to breathe like a fish out of water.  

However, when it comes to extreme weather, I was not prepared for January in Iowa and I even grew up there! I thought I knew what it would be like.  And in all fairness, I remember having a conversation with my mom about her funeral over a year ago. She liked talking about funerals and stuff (hey, she was Irish, she couldn’t help it.)  I was concerned about the weather factor because our family seems to have a penchant for dying in winter — two uncles, my grandma and grandpa (on different sides, ) my sister, and mom’s second husband.  It’s as if losing a family member isn’t bad enough, it just wouldn’t be a funeral if the temperature was above -10 F and all the attendees didn’t turn into cryogenic mutants.  So, as I said, I was talking to mom about it and trying to get her off topic. I warned her.  I said, “Mom, don’t talk about it yet. Besides, if you go in the winter, I’m not coming! I’m not doing another Iowa funeral in January.”

Oh, yeah, kid? We’ll see about that.  It seems mom had the last laugh on me. There we were, January 4th, chugging along in the train bound for the midwest.

Tuesday morning… how many days have I been awake now? (If you haven’t read the first posting of this story the other day, it might help to read it first.) I told my brother there’s a good reason why so many of those old B&W murder mysteries were set on trains. You get cranky after 24 hours on one! Murder probably didn’t seem all that harsh after a while — maybe more like a traffic violation. 

“They found the train conductor crumpled at the bottom of the steep, winding staircase. Some said accident, some said murder! Most blamed the curse of the train itself…or the middle-aged lady trapped in the bathroom downstairs.”

We stepped onto the platform in Omaha, NE, and instantly felt the extreme reverse of that moment of opening the car door in Las Vegas. The air was again sucked out of my lungs and filled with something that felt like dry ice. I couldn’t speak and could only make choking noises.  It was -17 F with a windchill factor that no longer registered on any scale known to man. It’s a humid cold there that freezes your nostrils with your first breath. You can’t blink because your eyelashes have frosted over. It freezes your kneecaps, for crying out loud! Without being able to bend our legs, there was suddenly a long line of us getting off the train doing Herman Munster impersonations as we staggered down to the station. It seemed so far, but it was actually no more than six or seven miles tops. Again, we were in the last car in the line and those suitcases weren’t going to drag themselves down there. Let’s get cracking or die trying!

The sad thing was we passed the old Union Pacific train station along the way that they’ve stopped using. Oh, I remember that place! That’s when train stations looked like cathedrals — marble floors, towering ceilings, huge wooden benches, and nice little shops. You only see them in the movies anymore.  Instead we finally made it to the newer Gulag, I mean train station, where my cousin picked us up.

We crossed the Missouri River into Iowa. Wow, it’s always neat to be home (just don’t make me get out of the car, ok? Please? Please?) We drove up I-29 toward Sioux City and started noticing the aftermath of the most recent Arctic storm to hit the area — the decorative placement of cars in ditches and the highway median. Some even had the extra touch of being arranged upside down. Oh, and it wouldn’t be the same without black ice and patches of fog. Welcome home, everybody! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

Join me next time as I explain my theory of time and all about “darks.”