Worst city in Iowa?

AuH2O

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Sep 7, 2013
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I'll see you on all of those and raise you southeast Ohio.
My family and I drove through there last summer. Stopped to eat in Jackson, OH, close to WV. The people were so over the top friendly, courteous and nice it was creepy. Like everybody stopping in the road when they have the right of way to let you turn left, all waving to you, holding the door for people, letting you go ahead of them in line to get food. It was like nothing I've ever seen.

People were so nice it seemed like the start of a horror movie. Like there is no reason people would be this friendly if we weren't going to be part of some sacrifice.

Every now and then one of my kids will be like, "remember that place in Ohio where everybody was so nice, but in a creepy way?"
 

SEIOWA CLONE

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Dec 19, 2018
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Mt. Pleasant is a nice community.
Mt. Pleasant was hurt when they lost the Blue Bird bus company that was located there 15 years ago or so. Lot of good paying jobs were sent down south. They lost the state minor detention center or most of it and now the college is closing. The town has gone through a lot of financial hits the last decade or so.
Good thing, you are right on the Avenue of the Saints, easy 40-minute drive to Iowa City, 4 lane all the way to Burlington, and the river. If you have a white-collar type of job, MP would be a nice medium sized town to live and raise a family.
 

Kinch

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Sep 19, 2021
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Mt. Pleasant was hurt when they lost the Blue Bird bus company that was located there 15 years ago or so. Lot of good paying jobs were sent down south. They lost the state minor detention center or most of it and now the college is closing. The town has gone through a lot of financial hits the last decade or so.
Good thing, you are right on the Avenue of the Saints, easy 40-minute drive to Iowa City, 4 lane all the way to Burlington, and the river. If you have a white-collar type of job, MP would be a nice medium sized town to live and raise a family.
I've been told that they have the most bank deposits of any community in SE Iowa. We absolutely love Old Threshers. And they are putting a lot of money in their industrial center by the Avenue of Saints. Very nice school building.
 
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Kinch

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I recently learned of the existence of a place by the name of Vedic City. Please enlighten me unless this is a forbidden topic.
North of Faifield. Meditator community. A little different. I don't think it has any commercial buildings. At one time the co-owner of the Boston Red Sox lived there.
Near Vedic City, a Meditator got hold of 1,000 Hurricane Katrina trailers (meant for temporary housing after the Hurricane), brought them to Vedic City and put a barbed wire fence around the trailers. They got several hundred, maybe 1,000 people from India and paid them to chant all day. Some of them broke out and others started a small riot. Authorities were called and I don't know if the trailers were still there.
 

SEIOWA CLONE

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Dec 19, 2018
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I recently learned of the existence of a place by the name of Vedic City. Please enlighten me unless this is a forbidden topic.
The start of Vedic City was the downfall of Fairfield, once all these people started to leave Fairfield to build homes out there, the price of homes dropped overnight.
Fairfield was always a very elicit town, lot of wealthy easterners that came out to study at the university and with it they brought that middle eastern/Indian culture with it. Some of it is still there, the locals think they are weird but harmless.
 
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2forISU

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Oct 8, 2008
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North of Faifield. Meditator community. A little different. I don't think it has any commercial buildings. At one time the co-owner of the Boston Red Sox lived there.
Near Vedic City, a Meditator got hold of 1,000 Hurricane Katrina trailers (meant for temporary housing after the Hurricane), brought them to Vedic City and put a barbed wire fence around the trailers. They got several hundred, maybe 1,000 people from India and paid them to chant all day. Some of them broke out and others started a small riot. Authorities were called and I don't know if the trailers were still there.
We have a fair amount of family in Richland/Fairfield area and the stories like this just blow me away. A fair amount of celebrities' have spent time in the area: Oprah and Jim Carey have been multiple times
 
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Kinch

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Vedic City is actually interesting to drive through. It has mostly meandering gravel roads with fairly nice homes, if I remember. At one time they had their own money, the RAM.
 

Kinch

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The Meditator community is very entrepreneurial. They might go bankrupt on 10 business ventures and then the 11th would make them a millionaire several times over.
 

jcyclonee

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Apr 12, 2006
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I was curious. My daughter works for an eye clinic. She helped treat a patient from Vedic City. Evidently, he said something like, "I could probably heal myself but my family kept insisting that I come here."
 

KidSilverhair

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Dec 18, 2010
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Rapids of the Cedar
www.kegofglory.blogspot.com
The start of Vedic City was the downfall of Fairfield, once all these people started to leave Fairfield to build homes out there, the price of homes dropped overnight.
Fairfield was always a very elicit town, lot of wealthy easterners that came out to study at the university and with it they brought that middle eastern/Indian culture with it. Some of it is still there, the locals think they are weird but harmless.

I remember when Maharishi International University started up, taking over the old Parsons College campus. Some people I knew went to work on construction jobs for the new campus, even though some of their conservative church-going friends told them they were losing their souls if they helped out that anti-Christian meditation-hooey “religion,” lol.

MIU brought a lot of coastal folks with money to the Fairfield area, and really propped up their economy for a while. Fairfield still has a wider range of eclectic restaurants/businesses than you’d expect for a small city in southeast Iowa.

”Weird but harmless” sums it up pretty well, I think. My parents still shop in Fairfield a lot of the time (I think they prefer it to Ottumwa).
 

Kinch

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Sep 19, 2021
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I was curious. My daughter works for an eye clinic. She helped treat a patient from Vedic City. Evidently, he said something like, "I could probably heal myself but my family kept insisting that I come here."
One local Fairfield business made a ton of money on a Meditator person there who didn't realize that cars ran on gas. When the gas ran out he called the tow company to get it and fix it. He would take it back to his shop, fill it with gas and then drove it back to the guy. He told me that customer was his cash cow.
 
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