WHY NOT HERE? Bettendorf city-hopper pursues adventure

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By Aaron Ruffcorn | Thursday, December 28, 2006 5:12 PM CST | () comments

Aaron Ruffcorn

Aaron Ruffcorn heads to another city.

In Iowa, when you get out there in the fields, you can see for miles. This is good, if knowing what’s coming suits you. I’ve always been more enamored with the mystery of what’s over that next hill. I like to feel I’m on the cutting edge of time, and right now, I don’t feel like Iowa is it. That’s not to say that someday it might not represent the perfect place to come back to.

I lived the first 24 years of my life in Iowa. I’ve spent the past six city-hopping — living in Los Angeles, Columbus and Chicago. Milwaukee is next, for a brief stint with my girl Caroline, and then we’re off to somewhere out east. I like it that way. Sure, it’s a nomadic madness, but there’s method to it, and that method is purely adventurous.

Such wayfaring has led me through London, Lyon, Dublin, Milan, to Amsterdam, Budapest, Helsinki, Abaeron, even to the city once called Leningrad and beyond.

Not to mention Hollywood.

It’s led me into chance encounters with Pierce Brosnan, Owen Wilson, Claire Danes, and even to within two parsecs of Anakin Skywalker — to a huge “Star Wars” fan, this is two parsecs too many! But still close enough to get excited about.

I owed it all to the employ of filmmaker Jon Avnet, and these memories stand out with clarity.

Jon Voight wanted an especially hard-to-find variety of muffin, complete with a deadline. Cary Elwes needed help in the parking ramp, and Elizabeth Shue spoke kindly on the other end of the line, despite my bumblings. Best of all, the hilariously hard-of-hearing Sid Caesar berated me, and asked repeatedly, mistaking me for a telemarketer, “Whooo eees theees?”

There’s something intangibly magnetic in certain individuals, such potent charisma, and I’d be lying if I said I had no interest in pursuing acquaintance with such likable fellows. Perhaps most importantly, these people are very often direct contact points to their respective realms of fiction, and that makes them magical.

To be honest, I’ve never questioned why I left Iowa; moving out to California was simply a natural progression. Perhaps a lifelong love of movies was influential or being raised by parents who travel a lot. I never felt I was leaving some undesirable place, quite the contrary, but I had such an unquestionably strong longing to see the world. California was just a logical first step, or perhaps the most clichéd?

To refer to L.A. as the center of adventure is silly, and I don’t want to give the impression that I fall into the shallow end of the pool. After all, I only lived out there for a little more than a year. I’m still an Iowan.

To me, the ultimate point is that the world is so grand, in both scope and essence, and there is simply no substitute for seeing it firsthand. Television, magazines, even movies are mere interpretations.

So, in short, that is why I left dear old Iowa — to see the world firsthand.

I’m afraid age is the only thing that could bring me back to stay, and I do say that with a sincere and sweet nostalgic melancholy. Iowa is the best, and my being is saturated with it. Iowa is my heart.

For now though, the adventure must continue.

Aaron Ruffcorn is a 1995 graduate of Bettendorf High School. He lives in the Chicago suburbs where he keeps his secret identity as a musician and writer hidden behind an Aflac logo and laptop computer.

Add your story about the reasons you moved from or to the Quad-Cities.

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