i lived all over eastern iowa at one time or another, in lisbon, in mt. vernon, in frytown, near wellman, near solon, near west branch, in ivanhoe along the cedar river, on the highway near the dingleberry quarries, outside of north liberty, i even lived in cedar rapids for a while. in iowa city i lived on the north side, the old czech part of town, on the east side and once on the hollowed-out south side, down by the tracks and the old a & p where i heard stories of the irish railroad workers who came through building the railroad & decided to stay. if you were catholic, they said, you either went to st. pats if you were irish, st. wenceslaus if you were czech or st. mary's if you were german. each had a school, each had a culture, and all had a rivalry. they told me this actually because our restaurant was in the back of the old st. mary's school - but i assured them i had no particular loyalty. down by those tracks was where alandoni had his bookstore, where i'd hang around and bring my daughter- see picture below...later i'd visit her & she lived by those same tracks & we'd hear the trains going back & forth & clanging against each other - like old ghosts. st. mary's had had a scandal when the priests that ran our building turned out to be gay - but nothing like st. wence, where some priest collected $30,000 for a trip to the holy land and blew it all on some bad coke deal in chicago. this is all hearsay of course, & i probably heard it on the south side, where of course nothing like that could happen at st. pats.

but a tornado came through last night, wiped out a sorority, and blew the roof off of st. pats. i of course don't know the whole story...even my daughter is in minneapolis now - and most of the rest is just a memory, a lumpa coal on the tracks, a shiny rock in the groove where the tracks cross the brick road.