Council Bluffs means always sitting at the cool table 5.18.01

Having moved back to my home town a couple months ago after living in Ames for three years, I have to tell you, C.B. is kind of refreshing. Ames is a very middle-class town filled with pampered college students and professors who all have an unrelenting sense of entitlement. The education level is scary high and you would be hard-pressed to know where blue-collar people work. Ames residents believe nothing is too good for them: No band, no public speaker, no presidential candidate. Who can wrap their heads around a city like that?
In comparison, Council Bluffs just makes some kind of sense to me - it always has. This is a working-class town filled with people who get up and go to work every day. They lift, clean, hammer and weld things. Push papers, pills and propositions. These things compute.
Try figuring out a college town. First you have students. They schedule classes so they never have to get up before 10 in the morning if they can help it. They work for maybe two hours a day, occasionally study, drink until 2 a.m. and then skip their first class the next day.
Professors are no easier. They have pretty cushy jobs compared to most human beings. They are either sitting, reading, writing, researching or pontificating. Once they get tenure, they can really relax. And they still complain about it.
Yes, Council Bluffs makes something in my head click. We work hard, take potshots from Nebraskans, avoid potholes and complain for GOOD reasons. That makes sense.
With Pride Week upon us, I thought now would be a good time to talk about what it means to be proud. Pride is a tricky concept and its discussion should not be limited to one week a year. I show my pride in Council Bluffs all year long the best way I know how: I spend my money here.
If I HAVE to buy something that can only be purchased in another town or in another state, I WILL buy it out of necessity. But when it comes to going out to dinner, frequenting lounges, buying CDs, clothes, cars, gas, groceries, books, organically grown medicinal herbs, medical care and other novelty items, I spend my dollars in C.B.
When friends come to visit me and want to go someplace cool for dinner I say, there is no place cooler than Pizza King, Sam's Italian Villa or Burgers on Broadway to name only three of many.
If friends want to go to a cool bar, we hit the Scott Street or Dirty Harry's or any of the many fine public houses in Iowa's leading edge.
If I want to cruise around a hip two-story bookstore with a cafe in it, I just don't and here's why. Most of the things we think we need to be cool, like nationally franchised theme restaurants, high-priced coffee bars and megalithic, corporate bookstores, we just don't need.
It's like when you were in high school and you always wanted to sit at the cool table, remember that? Sure, we all did once. Well, the trick to sitting at the cool table is not to get up the gumption to move over to the other table and get invited to sit. No sir, the real trick is to realize, believe and accept without doubt that the table you are sitting at IS the cool table. Because the only difference between your table and the cool table is the attitude of the people sitting at the table.
Since I have been back, I have heard more than a few people say they thought our new library was a little TOO nice for Council Bluffs. That's not possible. If we were paying the Pope to come and read Dr. Seuss books to kids once a month or giving away a car with each new library card, OK, that might be too good for us. But our library is everything a city library should be - no more and no less. It is a repository for books, art, music, in short, culture. It is the heart of any good city and the legacy we leave our children. Saying our library is too good for us is like saying our children do not deserve the best possible education or access to a world of ideas or, more importantly, a place where they can learn to affect that world of ideas.
The entire time I lived in Ames, I never once heard a native of that city say they thought their library was too good for them. I also never heard them say they thought their tap water doesn't taste bad enough or that their bus system was too efficient, clean and safe.
We are sitting at the cool table, Council Bluffs, do not question that, believe it, revel in it. In New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, people would kill to have our high quality of life and low crime rate. We are well-educated. We are avid readers. We are endowed with common sense and a work ethic from another time. We have history and character. We don't have pretension, inflated egos or callous disregard for human dignity. We help people when they need it. We have distinguished ourselves with valor, bravery and sacrifice in every war the United States has fought since the Civil War and will undoubtedly do it again.
In short, we rock like a hurricane. So when we people ask you if you will be celebrating Pride Week, you tell them you hit the ground running because you have pride all year long.