I recently visited the nearby city of Ottumwa as part of a class project for Writing Literary Nonfiction. Located about twenty miles east of Fairfield, it's the nearest place that students go when they want to "get out of town," as it were. Having turned an objective eye on the place, I can honestly say that it was fascinating. Some of the things I learned visiting and researching this place included:
-Its nicknames include Little Chicago and "The Videogame Capital of the World." The latter nickname is because Twin Peaks, who co-published The Guinness Book of World Records: Gamers' Edition, set up an arcade in Ottumwa in the early nineteen eighties. The arcade is now defunct, but the name persists, if somewhat ironically.
-Spud's, a game and comic joint, has a pretty good selection of graphic novels, especially for Iowa (which seems to be slow to embrace the whole graphic novel "scene")
-The Canteen serves unspectacular food, but it gave me a completely unique dining experience for less than five dollars. I can't describe anymore without going into exhaustive detail, but The Canteen alone made the drive down from Fairfield worth it.
-Pollution is a bit of a problem in the local river
-Check all of your pockets before deciding that you left the camera in your other jacket.
-Just as Fairfield has more restaurants per capita than San Francisco, Market Street in Ottumwa has more bars than a small prison. But, according to Joe, a random pedestrian I talked to, there is no bar crawl in Ottumwa's night life scene. He waxed further on the subject, saying that Ottumwa has no night life at all, but that's really never true.
Anyway, I love filling in the blanks regarding the things around me. I plan to go back to Ottumwa to pick some stuff up at Spud's and maybe check out some of the local music scene at Flipside. I think it's really cool that this other, newly-mysterious town is just twenty miles outside of Fairfield, so definitely looking forward to going back.
it was Twin Galaxies
see www.twingalaxies.com
-Paul
Posted by: Paul Stokstad | April 20, 2009 at 12:12 AM