I grew up a Hawkeye, but could’ve been a Razorback just as easily.
Mom and her boyfriend, Tom, a photographer and Peace Corp alum, decided to leave Brooklyn and the Northeast conurbation behind and find a new home away from the depressing life of metropolitan life. My siblings and I stayed with Dad and our maternal grandmother while they took a three-week drive to find our new home.
They selected Arkansas as their primary choice, but after arriving decided it was too rural, too underpopulated, too underdeveloped, too uneducated, too poor, too something else. I don’t which area of Arkansas, but either Mom or Tom commented how you would drive miles without seeing anyone and the distant between towns. Rural eastern Iowa was a supposed improvement, though I sometimes wonder how. They returned to Brooklyn, packed, and off we went. We arrived in Iowa just before I started second grade.
[As my parents were not yet divorced when we moved, it astounds me that she just packed us up and left, the discussions with my father and both sets of grandparents could not have been pleasant. There is no doubt that today that wouldn’t occur, but obviously times were different.]
What Mom did not investigate was across-the-Missippi Illinois: the Savanna Army Depot, a supposed first-strike nuclear target of the Soviet Union, was directly across the Mississippi River approximately five miles away! Of course the lack of online maps or resources required additional effort to learn the details of the surrounding area, but I would have expected a military base to have caught their attention.
Similarly, Mom was not comfortable when interviewing for a job in London, England during The Troubles. At one interview the interviewer pointed out the Baltic Exchange around the corner which had been bombed eight months prior; subsequently, the building in which I was interviewed was adjacent to the London Bridge bombing. I did eventually get a job in England, but it was in Sutton, Surrey and (likely) not at risk for a bombing. Whenever the subject came up, my rebuttal would be Savanna Army Depot and she would agree (usually) that perhaps her move to Iowa missed a few steps.
Fortunately, and obviously, we were both spared any attacks in either London or Savanna.
