It's always good to go back to Iowa, even if my reason to go basically is to fine-tune my cochlear implants in the UI Hospitals. They want to do research on people like me so they buy me a hotel room and I stay an extra day.

I arrived in my hotel room, seven floors above Coralville, just as a storm was rolling in. I opened the curtains wide and watched the lightning cross the sky; it was very dramatic. The television had little ticker-tape warnings below the picture that mentioned all the counties that had tornado watches; in the eastern part of the state, most of them.

The dark Back to the Future (second one) was on, but it just wasn't holding my attention. Instead I looked at the storm and down at the hugely busy First Street Coralville. I'd worked here almost fifty years ago delivering newspapers up and down road. In those days people still read newspapers and they even paid money for. them; I would put a slug quarter in the machine, pull out old one, and put in new ones. I did all starting at abouut three-thirty a m. I would also wrap papers in bundles, tie them in twine, and drop the bundles on street corners.

One night a policeman pulled me over out in the neighborhoods. We were in the habit of driving all over the road out there because it was four the morning. But that morning maybe I'd jumped a curb or done something stupid, not intentional. As usual he suspected alcohol even if he'd seen that same old Suburban out there for many years, and after all he'd never met me, though he'd seen me enough times. So he met me, decided I wasn't drunk, and sent me on my way. Just checking, he said.

Last night, after about five minutes I got tired even froom watching the storm - I was very tired - and just fell asleep on their wonderful bed, no shower no nothing. That was tired! Partly it was just from reliving my Iowa City/Coralville. days.

But at three thirty a m I woke suddenly, wide awake. I don't know why - it. wasn't a bad dream - but now I realized again, that I was back in Coralville where I dropped all those bundles so many years back. At three-thirty I would just be taking a shower or going to work. So I took a shower.

Now I looked out on First Avenue again; just a single truck rolled down the street. Some things don't change, or change slowly. It was my street again, empty, and now I went back to sleep, no problem.