Grinnell vs. San Francisco, 1988, by Marshall Poe

From MemoryArchive

Who: Marshall Poe
What: Grinnell vs. San Francisco
When: 1988
Where: Grinnell, Iowa

In the late 1980s, a friend of mine on a cross country trip from SF to NYC decided to get off I-80 to see Grinnell. She knew I'd gone there, and was just curious. Bear in mind that this friend had spend her entire life in the Bay Area.

When she returned California, she told me (I was there in grad school) that she'd seen the strangest thing. Apparently, she said, everyone knew everyone else in Grinnell, and the locals even seem to know her. I ask her how she knew that. "Well," she said,"as we were walking around town everyone said 'hi' to us everywhere we went..."