Still haven't finished this story I meant to write back when we met Al and had fun with every moment in 2000. But I thought I'd put that little beginning I started a few weeks ago here. Love you.
Nancy had a new idea. "You guys, I've been thinking about what I want to do for my 21st birthday…" "Yeah?" Amy replied. "I want to go to Punxatawney."
These L.A. girls. As a Nebraskan, sometimes I wasn't sure about swimming in their league. When Nancy, Amy's friend from high school, moved to Iowa after a break-up with Sean, who she and Amy referred to as the Leprechaun because of his stature, she made waves in Iowa City, half an hour from where Amy and I were in our junior year of college in Mt. Vernon. Right away, Nancy permanently marked the Iowa phase her life. She got a tattoo on her lower back with a large rose and the slogan "Iowa You Make Me Smile."
Adorable Nancy with her tight, corkscrew blonde curls, had become more real to me on our drives to see Amy where she was practicing urban studies for a semester in Chicago. Always a bit unsure about what these California women thought of my native plains, I opened up to Nancy when she expressed her admiration of our huge skies. We listened to the Counting Crows on our drives and discovered our true love for foods that began with "ch": chicken, cheese, and chocolate. One time driving back to Iowa from Chicago, we drove through Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered a bucket of extra crispy chicken. After a couple of legs, we were sickened, and dramatically threw the remaining chicken out the window.
Nancy was in a new phase. Dr. Dre had just come out with his new CD, "Chronic 2000." Although I couldn't imagine picking this CD out on my own, listening to this stuff with Amy and Nancy was undeniably a good time. We were in our prime. It was Amy and I's senior year, and the three of us had spent New Year's Eve of the millennium in New York. We'd spent the summer together in Chicago with another friend from LA, Monique. And now Nancy was proposing that the three of us drive from Iowa to Pennsylvania in late January/early February. Didn't they know anything about the weather? I knew this wasn't responsible, but I couldn't pass up an adventure with these girls. Eventually I'd settle down and go to law school or something, but I had enough credits. I could easily take the block off. Amy decided she'd do an independent study on urban, hip hop music's appeal to rural white boys, and Nancy decided she should just miss a few days of class. We were going to celebrate Nancy's birthday, Groundhog's Day, in its home site: Punxatawney, Pennsylvania, wherever the hell that is.
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