Dateline August 3, 2019, Iowa, Looking Back at 2018
No sooner had we crossed into Iowa than we passed the town of LeClaire, where we had stopped at the Pickers store the year before, and the memories came flooding back. We were rolling past one place after another from last summer's trip, and since the RV had given us so much grief in 2018 that the blog fell by the wayside, we decided to make up for it and tell those stories now.
One thing holds true whenever you take a detour in Iowa: you may find yourself driving between cornfields for a good long while.
Antique Archaeology, the Pickers. What a blast this was, like stepping onto the television. No one from the show was there, but it was great fun all the same. We poked through both stores and came away with a few coffee mugs.
It was a pleasure just to see everything they have gathered up and put out for sale, and many a time the old line proved true, that one person's junk is another's treasure. Watching the show, mind you, is still more fun.
The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. "Herbert Hoover, the only president from Iowa," read the sign out on the highway. We had a fine time at the library and learned a great deal about the man, and we wrote the whole of it up last year in our Herbert Hoover post. A great stop.
The Bridges of Madison County. The Clint Eastwood picture about the bridges of Madison County came from a fine book by Robert James Waller.
The story was made up, though they say it grew out of a rumored romance, and the real stars of the thing were the bridges themselves. The community has done a great deal over the years to look after them, and they are a pleasure to go and see. We enjoyed not just the bridges but the Madison County courthouse and the main street at Winterset besides.
John Wayne's birthplace. Like the bridges, another favorite son of Madison County is John Wayne.
We stopped to see his birthplace and museum, though it was a quick visit; most of it is a gift shop selling trinkets and trash, and they charged to tour the actual birthplace, which we did not see the value in. Still, growing up a fan of the Duke was a lot of fun, and those are the memories you carry with you. He was given the Congressional Gold Medal on May 26, 1979, and Robert Aldrich, then president of the Directors Guild, said something about him worth remembering. Aldrich made a point of noting that he was a registered Democrat who shared none of the Duke's politics, and then set all of that aside: for his courage and his dignity and his integrity, for his gifts as an actor and his strength as a leader and his plain warmth as a man over a long career, Wayne had earned a place all his own. He had paid his dues, Aldrich said, over and over again, and he was proud to call him a friend and glad to see the country honor him.
The Amana Colonies. Off we went to another unplanned stop, the Amana Colonies, seven villages spread across some twenty-six thousand acres.
The villages were built and settled by German Pietists who had been persecuted at home by the state and by the Lutheran Church. They came first to New York, near Buffalo, and then, wanting more room and more quiet, moved on to Iowa in 1856. They lived a communal life right up until 1932, when the hard times of the Depression finally broke the old arrangement. The best-known business to come out of the Amana Society is Amana Refrigeration, though in their day they also turned out woolens for the Army in the Second World War. We stayed at the Amana RV Park and played the Amana Golf Club, an excellent time all around, and we came away knowing a good deal more about this part of the country. From there it was over the border into Missouri, for a town Janice had circled on the map.
