On Topic: What makes Eastern Iowa different

A few weeks ago, at about 11:30 p.m., I was reading in bed when I heard this loud thump from outside.

I dashed to the back door and turned on the light for deck. And there, waddling by as if it had all the time in the world, was a rather chunky, squat mammal of some kind.

I opened the door - but not too much - and informed it that it had no business back here and to try the deck next door, please. It ignored me, trundling along at its leisurely pace until it disappeared into the darkness.

The next morning I told my wife, who'd slept through the entire incident, about the sighting. She asked what kind of animal I'd seen.

Well, I replied after some consideration, it looked like an armadillo ... .

My wife contended it couldn't possibly have been an armadillo. There are no armadillos in Iowa, she insisted.

I was thinking about this strange possibility - of how an armadillo would have made its way here - while we planned where to take my parents for their very first visit to Eastern Iowa.

I wanted to show them things uniquely Iowa, or at least places and events that were different from their daily experiences in a former steel town in northeast Ohio - just as when they'd visited us in other states where we've lived.

(And I couldn't count on the armadillo's return right when I needed it.)

My parents already would have seen lots of corn as they drove across Interstate 80 to get to Cedar Rapids, more corn than they'd ever imagined, and a deep swath of blue sky.

So on their itinerary - and with guidance from helpful co-workers - I included the downtown farmers market (agribusiness), a stroll along the levee with a view to open land where a neighborhood had existed (history), glimpses of Quaker Oats, Penford and Cargill (industry), Czech Village (culture and baked goods), and an afternoon at Brucemore (architecture, landscaping and more history).

We even managed to squeeze in a quick stop at a Theisen's to see the aisles of deep-green John Deere toy tractors (local color).

For the most part, my goal was achieved: They had a pleasant visit and got the sense of being somewhere different. The corn was tall, and the people they met here were friendly and chatty.

This getting-a-sense-of-the-place also worked for me, too, after being here for almost a year and a half. Moving somewhere new is like a company startup: You don't really know how it'll turn out, but you hope for the best.

You seek out what's familiar and learn what's different. Which methods that had been successful elsewhere can be adopted here, and what requires a wholly new approach?

You get a sense of the place.

And sometimes different can be, well, merely different, after all.

Just before my parents had arrived, our phone line died. A technician, after rooting around, reported some wires in a junction box in the neighbor's yard had been chewed through.

Could that, I asked, have been done by an armadillo?