Cedar Rapids is the second-largest city in Iowa, after the capital. It’s a city that’s only relevant on leap years because Iowa is the first state to hold a caucus, the first step in the Byzantine process of electing someone to preside over our fractured congress.
Hundreds of people gather in high school gymnasiums that still smell like ozone lights and unwashed teenagers, arguing over their own echoes about which candidate they think is best. It’s an instant run-off election. When you can’t convince enough people to support Billy Rucksack, he gets kicked off the ballot, and the two people you could convince have to go and stand next to the pole for some other schmuck.
Hundreds of these gatherings occur all at once over the state until each little get together has come to an agreement and blown their colored smoke out through the decaying roof. Sometimes, like in 2016, there’s a tie, and we flip a coin and spend years debating whether or not the coin flips really mattered in the first place.
Iowa is first in this for two reasons: 1. they have a really complicated process. Complicated processes are slow, so they need more time to gether everyone into underfunded schools to yell about their favored horse. 2. The first time Iowa went first, Jimmy Carter unexpectedly won Iowa, and then the White House. They managed to cement themselves as important off of that trend (look! We predicted it! Start here every year!) so now, more than 50 years later, Iowa gets remembered once a cycle when the political ads inundate the airwaves hoping for those early Iowa votes.
Cedar Rapids has an airport, one big enough to land a jumbo jet, and it’s the center of two spots of blue in an otherwise red sea. For a long time Iowa was seen as a purple state (well, about twenty years, as long as “red” and “blue” have had their meaning, but it proudly calls itself a swing state because those pockets of blue are as densely packed as Iowa gets. 27% independent, 30% Democrat, and 31% Republican), so the politicians like to rub elbows before they too forget the corn state for 3 more years.
Cedar Rapids calls itself the city of five seasons. Officially, the fifth season is a sense of friendship, and time to enjoy the other four. Everyone knows that’s bunk. Locals will joke that the fifth season is construction, or instead refer to it as the city of five smells, referring to the sewage treatment plant off highway 30, and (more often), the factories downtown. Quaker Oats churns out cereal in Iowa’s second city, and locals can tell the batch with a twitch of their nose.
Fridays are the worst day, everyone says, because it’s Oatmeal Day, making the whole town smell like soggy burning paper. Tuesday is more popular, as it’s whatever the Quaker Oats version of Froot Loops is, making everything smell like sugar, syrup, and artificial sweeteners.
Politicians remember Cedar Rapids when presidential aspirations fill up their eyes like a cartoon cat seeing a fresh pie in a window, but the city is here all the time. Stop on by, say hi. We’re famously nice. Stay a while, and decide for yourself what the fifth season is.
But it’s best to do it on a Tuesday.