November 27, 2002: The King Tower Cafe on the east edge of Tama.
The Indian head sign/icon/logo outside the King Tower Cafe is being restored. The Tama-Toledo News website reports that Berleen Wobeter is finishing her work this month. You can kind of see the neon on the sign in the picture above, but that is not part of the restoration.
“It was an elaborate sign for its day, with the various colored tubes and an electric transformer for each,” said a 1991 story in the Cedar Rapids Gazette about lighting up the neon on that sign. The story said it was put up around 1950, which would be the right time period for the convergence of roadside cafe, neon and Indian imagery exemplified here.
The King Tower is a part of Tama County/Iowa/Lincoln Highway history, with a strange convergence: It opened the same week in October 1937 that the Belle Plaine cutoff of US 30 opened.