Jun 27

Clutier’s 1942 trophy needs new home

Posted on Monday, June 27, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


May 18, 2005: A closeup of the girls’ basketball display at the Iowa Hall of Pride shows the top of Clutier’s 1942 state championship trophy. The display case also included memorabilia from the 1968 Union-Whitten title team.

The Iowa Hall of Pride Museum is shutting its doors at the end of the month, the Des Moines Register reports.

The Iowa History Journal, in an undated piece, says:

The $13 million Iowa Hall of Pride, which opened in 2005, is the brainchild of Bernie Saggau, the former longtime executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association and it continues to operate as a program of the IHSAA. It attracts thousands of visitors each year from across Iowa and other states. …

Each year, tens of thousands of Iowa students visit the Iowa Hall of Pride on about 400 field trips and many participate in its Pride Outreach and mentoring programs.

The Register article says attendance was in the hundreds each month before the pandemic and has tanked since reopening.

According to a reliable source, the Hall of Pride’s championship rosters for athletics and state extracurriculars were never updated from their initial entries. For example, someone in 2017 could not see a 2007 All-State Speech appearance in the school-by-school roster. A key part of a museum with ongoing components is that those components need to be updated at least occasionally — especially when it’s as simple as supplementary data entry.

Two of the key pieces of memorabilia in the Hall of Pride are Clutier’s 1942 girls’ basketball state championship trophy and white basketball. The basketball had been in the Clutier library and former North Tama AD Tracy Sienknecht helped facilitate the transfer to the Hall of Pride.

If the trophy and ball aren’t going to be on display in Des Moines, I really think they need to be returned to Tama County. They were officially “on loan”, as the Courier article linked above says, so they could be coming home in the near future.

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Jun 24

Continued peasantry

Posted on Friday, June 24, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Stewart Mandel, in the Athletic, did his every-five-years ranking of the college football hierarchy. The landed gentry in Iowa City got even more landed, moving up to Baron. Ames? Well, there’s some lovely filth down here in peasantdom.

If I had to guess, the fan base I’m going to hear the most complaints from is Iowa State. Which, again: Beware recency bias. The past five years represent the best run in program history, but I’m not sure it’s completely erased a century of futility from the public consciousness.

He’s absolutely right. DO NOT GIVE IOWA STATE EXPECTATIONS. Iowa State with expectations is a recipe for disaster. 2021’s 7-6 with a Florida bowl is, all things considered, at least a top 20% all-time season for ISU. But too many people were anticipating the first 10-win season in Cyclones history, which, have you seen Iowa State football?

Recent circumstances notwithstanding, of course, as Mandel also said.

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Jun 22

Gladbrook school demolition in final stages

Posted on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


June 17, 2022: The southeast corner of the Gladbrook school building, as seen last week during Corn Carnival.

A piece of paper on one of the few remaining windows of Gladbrook’s school building announces the fitness center — the half-million-dollar fitness center from 2008 — is closed. Although the building contents were cleared out three years ago, one clock was still hanging on the wall. The sinks in the elementary classrooms remained.

This week, the home of the Gladbrook Panthers is no more. The demolition is the coda to an ending that started in 2015 with the building’s closure and included an attempt to dissolve the Gladbrook-Reinbeck school district.

The Sun Courier has a story about the demolition, along with a history of the building that I supplied source material for. The bad blood generated by the closure continues today:

The Sun Courier reached out to several individuals for comment on this story but most declined, citing how painful the demolition, the closure, and even the consolidation are to discuss, as well as conflicts of interest that prevent them from going on record.

More photos are available with the Sun Courier story.

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Jun 20

Meeting on I-380 expansion Tuesday

Posted on Monday, June 20, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Tomorrow night the Iowa DOT will hold an in-person information meeting in Cedar Rapids about six-laning part of I-380.

The meeting is at the DOT office near Kirkwood Community College at 5 PM. An “at your own pace” meeting will be available online after then. (And there better be PDFs.)

This project covers I-380 from near US 30 south to the Swisher/Shueyville exit, including the airport interchange. That interchange is going to be rebuilt into a diverging diamond, which would be the third in the Cedar Rapids area. I don’t think the project covers the US 30 interchange itself, which probably is going to have to be its own large project. Right now, there are only two lanes of traffic in each direction over 30, which would mean new bridges would have to be built.

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Jun 17

Seven days in June, 1972

Posted on Friday, June 17, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

June 17, 1972, is depicted in cinema, with the actual security guard playing himself:

June 23, 1972, saw President Nixon sign the Education Amendments of 1972, including Title IX, into federal law, enabling scenes like this:


January 29, 2012: Iowa State’s Chelsea Poppens (33) runs onto the court during player introductions at the last Big 12 conference game between Iowa State and Texas A&M in College Station, Texas.


March 26, 2012: Brittney Griner (42) and Baylor play Tennessee in a NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Sweet 16 game at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.


November 13, 2019: North Tama plays Le Mars Gehlen in a state volleyball tournament quarterfinal at the then-U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids.

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Jun 16

100th Corn Carnival is this weekend

Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 16, 2004: This corn float (?) appeared multiple years in the Corn Carnival parade, including Gladbrook’s 125th anniversary in 2005.

Gladbrook’s Corn Carnival is being held for the 100th time this weekend.

Director O’Connor has received word that the Grundy Center band has been selected for the Gladbrook Corn Carnival which will be held in Gladbrook Sept. 30th and Oct. 1st, two weeks from yesterday and today.
— Grundy Republican, September 17, 1914

Corn Carnival to be held at Gladbrook
TRAER, Sept. 24 — Gladbrook’s annual corn carnival comes next Monday and Tuesday. The business men of Gladbrook have raised $1,000 to finance the enterprise.
— Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, September 24, 1920

Those clips are over 100 years old, but the answer to this discrepancy is in the 1987 Tama County History book: “The Corn Carnival was first held in 1913, discontinued for two years during WWI, and after being revived was again discontinued in the late 1920s.” The first reappearance of Corn Carnival in both the Traer Star-Clipper and Marshalltown Times-Republican (the nearest papers available online) is 1933, when it was held August 23-24 “until everyone is tired and ready for bed on Thursday night” (TSC, 8/4/33).

The Mesquakie Powwow started in 1915. The Star-Clipper in 1916 said “So great was the success of the second powwow that it is to be made an annual event.” The 2021 powwow was billed as the 106th following the 105th in 2019, the gap being for the obvious reason. So Corn Carnival is “one of the oldest town celebrations in Central Iowa” (T-R, 8/11/52), but the powwow has more occurrences.

Corn Carnival has moved up the calendar in the past century, going from the end of September to mid-August to mid-July to its present spot in the third weekend of June (which, unfortunately, is too early to have Iowa corn at the event).

One of the bragging points of the festival is that the Friday night parade has never been rained out. There have been some very close calls, including in 1952, when “Friday afternoon’s heavy shower halted long enough for the Tama County town to hold its parade at 6:30 p.m. before a sizable crowd that crowded into the two-block-long Main Street.” (T-R, 8/16/52) Then as now, the parade will be at 6:30 on Friday night.

The parade, but nothing else, happened in 2020, and it is treated as the event’s continuation. My blog post about the festival being cancelled that year has been amended.

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Jun 13

Cascade business route rerouted

Posted on Monday, June 13, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

At the fall 2021 meeting of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Iowa submitted an application to change the route of Business US 151 in Cascade. The application starts on page 4 in this large PDF.

The change makes the business route begin and end on interchanges with US 151, and removes it entirely from Jones County. It also makes the “northbound” business route start by heading southeast on IA 136. The route becomes much shorter, but more than half of the eliminated segment is rural.

The existing BGSs on northbound US 151 — or at least those up in August — are large enough that “Business 151” signage could be pasted on without replacing the sign. That would be really convenient. However, I’ve been told that business route signage is local jurisdictions’ responsibility, so I don’t know what the protocol is here.

At the same meeting, AASHTO gave conditional approval to a new two-digit interstate, but it’s entirely within one state and not entirely built. Interstate 42 will run in the US 70 corridor in eastern North Carolina, from I-40 southeast of Raleigh to Morehead City on the Atlantic coast. Technically it’s “north” of I-40, because I-40 east of Raleigh practically runs north-south to Wilmington. There are many crimes against interstate numbering that AASHTO is letting North Carolina get away with (among them: I-73 is never going to be a thing, stop trying to make it a thing), but this isn’t one of them.

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Jun 10

Ankeny’s growth makes Alleman nervous

Posted on Friday, June 10, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Currently, NE 126th Avenue in Polk County between Elkhart and just north of Polk City is a paved but rural drive, and the I-35 interchange is undeveloped. That could change soon if Ankeny has its way.

Ankeny, which just passed West Des Moines as Des Moines’ largest suburb, approved an annexation plan on its far north side, including the west side of the Elkhart exit, the Register reported this week. It’s so far north that the area has Alleman addresses and is in the North Polk school district (the boundary is NE 118th Avenue, a mile south of NE 126th).

And Alleman is getting nervous. It has an annexation plan that directly conflicts with Ankeny’s, in an attempt to keep the latter at arm’s length. Alleman is so tiny that it doesn’t have the tax base to keep up with the infrastructure pressures. The Register says there could be dueling annexation plans going to the City Development Board, which is in charge of approving them.

Unlike in Nebraska (RIP Elkhorn*), Alleman is not at risk of being swallowed up by Ankeny — legally, anyway. But it is at risk of unwanted, uncontrollable growth too close for comfort.

There’s plenty of land Ankeny could annex that wouldn’t interfere with other incorporated communities, but it’s already full of homes and businesses, and 80% of any selected area would have to favor annexation. Saylorville is a Census Designated Place, but that has no meaning except to the Census Bureau.

So the finger of NW 16th Street that includes Ankeny First United Methodist Church is less at risk of being added to Ankeny than farmland that as little as 20 years ago was miles away from the city.

*The linked column says Des Moines is “hemmed in”. That’s literally true on three of four sides, but on the fourth only from a certain point of view. It can annex north of Aurora Avenue … if it can get 80% of landowners to believe that being part of the city has benefits over being “rural Polk County”.

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Jun 08

Luana school converted to rec center

Posted on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Luana school, part of MFL-MarMac, closed in 2001. According to the March 21, 2001, North Iowa Times, closing the building would save the district $100,000. Opposition to the plan was less about closing Luana and more about busing young students from McGregor to Monona.

For the last decade, a couple has been operating part of the Luana building as a recreation center. It’s featured in a short story from KCRG (no embed available).

(I was a year off in the school timeline; it’s been corrected.)

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Jun 06

Rebuilding Cylinder (sort of)

Posted on Monday, June 6, 2022, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

It’s not matchsticks, but still very impressive. From KCAU:

Since completing the depot in 2018, Joyce has replicated 19 of the town of Cylinder’s original business buildings. He uses the town’s centennial book as a guide.

“Here’s the livery and stables that I built. Martini gas station, I built. There’s First Bank, the original bank. Tilford Egland has come up with a lot of images,” said Joyce. “Most of these buildings I’ll get them done in a week or a week and a half.”

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