Grinnell vs. Manhattan, 2006, by Ann Kirschner

From MemoryArchive

Who: Ann Kirschner
What: Grinnell vs. Manhattan
When: 2006
Where: Grinnell, Iowa

When I looked up a number in the Manhattan directory the other day, I was reminded of an incident during my freshman orientation at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, population then about 8,000. A group of us had gathered around a piano in one of the residence hall lounges to sing old favorites, but the bench was too low for the pianist. Remembering that when I played the piano as a child in Stuyvesant Town, my mother would boost me up with a phone book, I suggested the same remedy. Everyone looked at me as if I had two heads. The Grinnell directory, this provincial New Yorker suddenly realized, was about half an inch thick.

Originally published in the New York Times, October 9, 2006.