An oasis of brown in the great white Iowa desert

As mentioned in my last post, Gaby is having loads of trouble finding places to update the blog while driving cross-country. She has not forgotten about this project, so don't fret! In fact, I can see that she is working on a draft of her experience in Niagara Falls, but unfortunately her hotels have not had internet access since the first night on the road, and although she keeps looking for public libraries as she drives across the prairies and mountains, there seems to be a regrettable paucity of these facilities along her route. The apparent distaste for book-larnin' across the vast middle of this country is upsetting, although it does go an awfully long way toward explaining why so many states there stubbornly continue to vote Republican.

Well anyway, at Gaby's request, I will now briefly relate the story of her run-in with the Indian couple that owned the hotel in Ames, IA, where she stayed. (For those who are interested in her exact coordinates now, she traveled from Ames across the rest of Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota (with a rest at Mount Rushmore) yesterday, stopping in Sundance, WY. Today's trek included most of Wyoming with sightseeing in Yellowstone, and she is overnighting in Bozeman, MT.)

When morning came yesterday and Gaby burst out of her hotel room, refreshed and chomping at the bit to hop back in the car and see more of this great land, or at least its cornfields, there was still the minor matter of checking out to get out of the way. As she approached the front desk, she noted approvingly that the two owners of the hotel who were there waiting for her, had a skin color akin to her own, although they originally hailed from the Indian subcontinent, half a world away from Japerunezuela. This may seem like a trifling matter, but Gaby had been growing increasingly aware of a clear lack of non-white people the deeper she had penetrated into the Midwest, and the sight of other racial minorities was a balm to her troubled mind. Apparently, it had a similar effect on the Indian couple, because they marveled at their guest as she approached, and looked somewhat relieved that brown people still existed somewhere out there (beyond the pale?).

But a long period of isolation among the Caucasians had dulled the senses of this unfortunate couple. After negotiating the return of the key and settling the bill, the couple looked hopefully at Gaby and inquired whether she was also Indian. Now there is certainly nothing wrong with being Indian, but that is a silly question. Gaby is very much not Indian, nor does she look anything like she is (and I do recognize how culturally and ethnically diverse South Asia is, but there isn't one feature on that girl that could have come from any of those peoples). Hell, Gaby doesn't even eat Indian food except for that one dish I made her try after assuring her that it wasn't spicy and that it did have meat in it.

"No," quoth Gaby with grace and cheer, while in her head she noted that of all people, actual Indians ought to be able to tell the difference. The hoteliers looked crestfallen. Whether their race radar had been blunted by long disuse, or whether they were blinded by hope that they had finally found someone familiar to cling to in an alien sea of whiteness, this couple's disappointment was now palpable. So it was that private laughter at their error gave way to sympathy and a kindred loneliness as Gaby sped away along the open road, while the foreignness of an Anglo-Saxon near-homogeneity unfolded for a thousand miles before her.