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Authors: Bill Bryson
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deviated from the correct line, leaving the capitol oddly off center, so that it looks as if it has been caught in the act of trying to escape. It is a peculiarity that some people treasure and others would rather not talk about. I for one never tired of striding into the downtown from the west and being confronted with a view so gloriously not right, so cherishably out of kilter, and pondering the fact that whole teams of men could build an important road without once evidently looking up to see where they were going.
For its first couple of blocks, downtown Des Moines had a slight but agreeably seedy air. Here there were dark bars, small hotels of doubtful repute, dingy offices, and shops that sold odd things like rubber stamps and trusses. I liked this area very much. There was always a chance of hearing a bitter argument through an upstairs window and the hope that this would lead to gunfire and someone falling out of the window onto an awning, as in the better Hollywood movies, or at least staggering out a door, hand on bloodied chest, and collapsing in the street.
Then fairly quickly downtown became more respectable and literally upstanding, more like a real downtown. This throbbing heart of the metropolis was of a fairly modest scale—only three or four blocks wide and four or five long—but it had a density of tallish brick buildings and it was full of people and life. The air was slightly dirty and blue. People walked with quicker steps and longer strides. It felt like a proper city.
Upon arriving downtown I had an unvarying routine. I would call first at Pinky’s, a joke and novelty store in the Bankers Trust Building, which contained a large stock of dusty gag items—plastic ice cubes with a fly inside, chattering teeth, rubber turds for every occasion—that no one ever bought. Pinky’s existed purely to give sailors, migrant workers, and small boys a place to go when they were at a loose end downtown. I have no idea how it managed to stay in business. I can only assume that somehow in the 1950s you didn’t have to sell much to remain solvent. *4
When I had looked at everything there, I would do a circuit or two of the mezzanine at Frankel’s, then check out any new Hardy Boys arrivals in the book department at Younkers. Generally I would call in at the long soda fountain at Woolworth’s for one of their celebrated Green Rivers, a refreshing concoction of syrupy green fizz that was the schoolboy aperitif of the 1950s, and finally head over to the R&T (for
Register
and
Tribune
), at Eighth and Locust. There I would always take a minute to look through the large plate-glass windows that ran along the building at street level and gave views of the capacious press room—a potentially excellent place to see a mangling, I always supposed—then proceed through the snappy revolving doors into the
Register
’s lobby, where I would devote a few respectful minutes to a large, slowly revolving globe which was housed behind glass (always interestingly warm to the touch) in a side room.
The
Register
was proud of this globe. It was, as I recall, one of the largest globes in the world: big globes aren’t easy to make apparently. This one was at least twice my size and beautifully manufactured and painted. It was tilted on its axis at a scientifically precise angle and spun at the same speed as Earth itself, completing one revolution in every twenty-four hours. It was, in short, a thing of wonder and grandeur—the finest technological marvel in Des Moines aside from the atomic toilets at Bishop’s cafeteria, which obviously were in a league of their own. Because it was so large and stately and real, it felt very much as if you were looking at the actual Earth, and I would walk around it imagining myself as God. Even now when I think of the nations of the Earth, I see them as they were on that big ball—as Tanganyika, Rhodesia, East and West Germany, the Friendly Islands. The globe may have had other fans besides
For its first couple of blocks, downtown Des Moines had a slight but agreeably seedy air. Here there were dark bars, small hotels of doubtful repute, dingy offices, and shops that sold odd things like rubber stamps and trusses. I liked this area very much. There was always a chance of hearing a bitter argument through an upstairs window and the hope that this would lead to gunfire and someone falling out of the window onto an awning, as in the better Hollywood movies, or at least staggering out a door, hand on bloodied chest, and collapsing in the street.
Then fairly quickly downtown became more respectable and literally upstanding, more like a real downtown. This throbbing heart of the metropolis was of a fairly modest scale—only three or four blocks wide and four or five long—but it had a density of tallish brick buildings and it was full of people and life. The air was slightly dirty and blue. People walked with quicker steps and longer strides. It felt like a proper city.
Upon arriving downtown I had an unvarying routine. I would call first at Pinky’s, a joke and novelty store in the Bankers Trust Building, which contained a large stock of dusty gag items—plastic ice cubes with a fly inside, chattering teeth, rubber turds for every occasion—that no one ever bought. Pinky’s existed purely to give sailors, migrant workers, and small boys a place to go when they were at a loose end downtown. I have no idea how it managed to stay in business. I can only assume that somehow in the 1950s you didn’t have to sell much to remain solvent. *4
When I had looked at everything there, I would do a circuit or two of the mezzanine at Frankel’s, then check out any new Hardy Boys arrivals in the book department at Younkers. Generally I would call in at the long soda fountain at Woolworth’s for one of their celebrated Green Rivers, a refreshing concoction of syrupy green fizz that was the schoolboy aperitif of the 1950s, and finally head over to the R&T (for
Register
and
Tribune
), at Eighth and Locust. There I would always take a minute to look through the large plate-glass windows that ran along the building at street level and gave views of the capacious press room—a potentially excellent place to see a mangling, I always supposed—then proceed through the snappy revolving doors into the
Register
’s lobby, where I would devote a few respectful minutes to a large, slowly revolving globe which was housed behind glass (always interestingly warm to the touch) in a side room.
The
Register
was proud of this globe. It was, as I recall, one of the largest globes in the world: big globes aren’t easy to make apparently. This one was at least twice my size and beautifully manufactured and painted. It was tilted on its axis at a scientifically precise angle and spun at the same speed as Earth itself, completing one revolution in every twenty-four hours. It was, in short, a thing of wonder and grandeur—the finest technological marvel in Des Moines aside from the atomic toilets at Bishop’s cafeteria, which obviously were in a league of their own. Because it was so large and stately and real, it felt very much as if you were looking at the actual Earth, and I would walk around it imagining myself as God. Even now when I think of the nations of the Earth, I see them as they were on that big ball—as Tanganyika, Rhodesia, East and West Germany, the Friendly Islands. The globe may have had other fans besides
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