River City Girls Never Get Over It

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Crossing the Mississippi
Black Iowa soil gives green pastures, gently rolling hills covered with black and brown cows. The train cuts across the land, only rarely parallel to the highway.   Trails of trees tinged with spring green testify to the abundance of creeks, which back in Colorado are called rivers.    The trees  line the tracks, screening the little towns and cemeteries as we pass by, glimpses of children running in a farmyard, horses near red barns, men in coveralls on their green tractors lured by the black soil.

High Bridge across the Mississippi
After a brief stop in Osceola, Iowa, near Des Moines, I felt a pang of homesickness.  Jesse said, “This land is so open and free, like you could breathe here.  The farms are not crammed up together like in Colorado.  That’s what I would love, all this open space.  It kind of takes you back in time—that’s the way it used to be in Colorado when I was a kid.  I loved it.  Now Colorado is mostly houses and houses.  Now if people have 200 acres they think they are blest.  If I were 50 years younger and I was going to farm, I think this is where I would have loved to farm.”  It is possible to be homesick for a place you might have lived.

 A passenger asked me if we would cross the Mississippi before we reached Chicago.  I laughed a little to myself and said, "You can't get from Iowa to Chicago without crossing the Mississippi."

View of Burlington, Iowa from Illinois
My father's parents and my mother's mother lived in Burlington throughout my childhood.  Mom's sister Aunt Mary and her family  lived in West Burlington. We frequently drove the 60 miles down river from Muscatine to visit of a Sunday.

The River called my name with boats, docks, seagulls and high bridges. We river city girls never quite get over it.

 The California Zephyr stopped across the river in Galesburg to let off passengers.  Train companions said the biggest advantage Iowa has over Illinois is the absence of the burden of Chicago.
 
Nevertheless, to Chicago we are heading.
Location: Burlington, IA, USA