for the dark of a movie theater or better yet a bedroom.
Plus who gives a shit what Gallup says?

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Wilbur Harrison had a hit with KANSAS CITY. My schoolmate, Joe Fielder, traveled to the Paris of the Plains in 1965. The police caught him in St. Louis. He escaped through the bathroom window and my 14 year-old friend reached KC the next day, where he ordered a steak and then rode a Greyhound back to Boston. His parents were relieved by his return and asked why he had runaway to Kansas City.

"Because they got some crazy little women there and I'm going to get me some." Joe quoted from the song. His parents grounded him for the summer. Later at school Joe told me that KChad no crazy little women, but he couldn't think of anything else to tell his mother and father.

"They were no pretty women."

"It was all a lie." Joe shrugged like he knew all the answers to every question about girls.

Three years ago I drove through Kansas City with Brock Dundee. The Scot was filming a movie about a sculptor close to death. We drove through the Power and Light District at dusk.

"I don't see any pretty women." Brock was a fan of the song KANSAS CITY.

"Some things don't change." The song was as much a lie in 2009 as in 1965.

Most of the cities of the Midwest are hollow shells, but not so Iowa City. This small town on the Iowa River hosted the campus of Iowa U. My