Mar 30

An unfortunate closing in the nick of time

Posted on Saturday, March 30, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

In 1978, as enrollment in the South Page school district was falling*, the district closed its attendance centers in both Braddyville and Coin. It was a far cry from the optimism of just over a decade earlier, when voters approved a bond issue for construction at all sites including the high school in College Springs. The district sold the buildings that summer.

On March 29, 1979, a F4 tornado plowed through Braddyville, and the former school was among the total devastation in the tiny community at the Missouri state line.

This sentence from the April 2, 1979, Clarinda Herald-Journal is pure in its Iowa-ness: “South Page juniors and seniors were supposed to go to Braddyville this Monday to help with the cleanup, but all activities were cancelled due to the snow Sunday.”

That’s right — 65 hours after a tornado struck Page County, the area got four inches of snow.

I have pushed the school district timeline back a few years, now to 1977-78, to get these closures in and also Center Junction, following an earlier post on Midland.

(Information from Clarinda Herald-Journal archives.)

*It’s still falling. 🙁

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Mar 28

See the Apollo 11 documentary, if it’s not too late

Posted on Thursday, March 28, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Do you like history?

Do you like space?

Do you like watching great Americans do great things?

Do you like watching ordinary Americans do great things?

Do you want to see a nation that believes in itself pushing the boundaries of technology and exploration?

If any of those are true, try to get to a showing of the “Apollo 11” documentary, a 90-minute compilation of recently discovered footage covering the first moon landing in 1969 from launch to splashdown. THEY HAD GIANT COLOR FILM SITTING IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT.

This plug may be a little late, unfortunately. It’s only playing in a few theaters, and it’s possible that Collins Road Theatres in Marion is the only place in Iowa you can see it after today. Or, when the DVD comes out, go get it — but it won’t be the same as on the big screen.

(And phooey on this putz at the New Yorker who spoiled a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)

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Mar 27

Ottumwa inflicting roundabouts on Business 34

Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

June 11, 2007: Almost all the signs for Business 34 in Ottumwa are like this. It’s very weird. This is facing east on Albia Road as Business 34 turns onto Ferry Street, an intersection that’s being turned into a roundabout.

Business US 34 in Ottumwa has an awkward route. The city’s grid on the side northeast of the Des Moines River has streets that parallel the river, while the other side has true north-south streets except for a part that’s aligned to an oxbow lake that wasn’t cut off until the 1960s. This results in six turns along the route, two of which — Richmond Avenue to Ferry Street to Albia Road — are right in succession. The second turn wasn’t as sharp until after Wapello Street was built across the land inside the oxbow to intersect Albia and Ferry.

Now Ottumwa is doing something about the issue by making it even more complicated — with not one roundabout, but two, in immediate succession, at a cost of a million dollars.

The first one, officially a mini-roundabout at Richmond and Ferry, opened last June, according to this KTVO story that won’t let me embed properly. The second one, one block north (site of the photo above), has Phase II of construction starting this week. That’s where Wapello and Ferry become the other street name depending on which direction you’re going. A diagram from Ottumwa Radio shows a grotesque path for what had been a simple left turn, in part to create space from the other roundabout and possibly in part because the turn from Wapello Street to Albia Road is more important than Business 34 here.

The better solution would have been to connect Richmond Avenue and Albia Road directly, but that can’t be done because it would take out three businesses, including a relatively new Papa John’s. A closed Wendy’s could have been beneficial for land but is on the wrong side.

Ottumwa’s first roundabout was at the south US 34/63 junction, somewhat justifiable because it had been a tri-point intersection with some odd ramps. But these make following Business 34 a trying situation.

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Mar 26

‘Orville’ production design drops the ball

Posted on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

It’s probably understandable that a 25th-century spaceship crew doesn’t know what a newspaper is. It’s not understandable that a 21st-century production design and/or prop team can’t be accurate.

In last week’s episode of “The Orville” (a show I have fangirled about here before), one of the crew falls in love with a 21st-century woman after resurrecting her iPhone from a 2015 time capsule. (It is reminiscent of not only the Star Trek TNG episode “The Booby Trap,” but also “11001001” where Riker falls in love with a hologram.) Also in the time capsule was a copy of USA Today, but an entirely wrong one.

Here’s where someone missed the boat twice over. First, the paper is close to accurate on font and design for early 21st-century editions of USA Today until September 2012, when the paper got an entirely new design for its 30th anniversary. I guess the “Cool Balls” aren’t cool enough to stick in people’s minds, or the people in charge of wrangling/creating that prop hadn’t seen a copy since then. As much as I hate periods being used in date stylings, the current design of the paper would’ve provided a clear scene-setting beacon.

Now the other part: You’re doing a science fiction show … referencing a newspaper … from 2015. The most blindingly obvious Easter egg is sitting there for the taking — use the actual USA Today from October 21, 2015. For the record, here’s what the top of the front page looked like that day. Or, if that’s too subtle, use the paper from October 22, which referenced the sci-fi significance of the previous day.

A newspaper in a time capsule probably would had to have been vacuum-sealed to even attempt to be white and non-brittle after 400 years. (It’s not shown on screen that way, but the handling of the capsule’s contents is portrayed incredibly sloppily by everyone including Trek alumnus Tim Russ.) Here’s what a copy of the Des Moines Register looked like after 50.

But the fake USA Today had other facets of weirdness, too, referring to a “Port Authority” with a picture of the U.S. Capitol, headlines with the capitalization style very few papers have used for decades, and a sports promo for “gridiron picks for the cup.”

Based on the comments on the recap linked above, the writers/continuity team also flubbed an area code that wasn’t around until 2017. Getting the immediate past right is hard, I guess.

Finally, if a three-week hiatus is baked into the schedule, why in the world do you not start it on opening day of the NCAA Tournament?

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Mar 25

Shopko is toast

Posted on Monday, March 25, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The deep bleeding that was already coming out earlier this year is complete, as the Shopko retail chain filed for bankruptcy and liquidation last week.

The remaining dozen stores in Iowa that had escaped the earlier closures — based on this bankruptcy filing — will wind down by the end of June.

Mason City’s Shopko opened July 14, 1985, as a Shopko, but all the Shopko Hometowns in the smaller communities used to be Pamidas. Allamakee, Franklin, and Montgomery are among the counties that will lose all chain retail except for Dollar General.

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Mar 23

Worst. Basketball. Day. Ever.

Posted on Saturday, March 23, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Drake_Missouri_WBBMarch 22, 2019: Drake’s Becca Hittner (arms up) turns after being whistled for a foul in the closing second of overtime against Missouri in Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City.

Yes, I watched basketball in person Friday. No, Iowa State wasn’t involved. Yes, I saw one conference player of the year carry the team on her back against a feisty 15-seed — and another conference player of the year give it all she had against a 7-seed. No, I did not hear the end of the Iowa men’s game much past when Gary Dolphin’s substitute said “the good guys” had the lead. Yes, Drake’s Becca Hittner needs a hug after the end of that game. No, I will not be rooting for anything in black and gold on Sunday. Yes, I consider this another “loss” for me against Carver-Hawkeye Arena. No, I am not telling the side story that makes me look like more of an idiot than usual.

Yes, I very much feared that this season’s ISU men’s team was too much like the 2014-15 team, capable of both going deep and falling flat. No, flaming out in the second-to-last tipoff of the first round feels just as bad as flaming out in the second-to-first tipoff of the first round, except this time I watched Thursday’s games.

Yes, the ISU women play today (with a conference player of the year BTW). No, I can’t go.

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Mar 22

A Fennelly year ending in 9

Posted on Friday, March 22, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Bill Fennelly has never been Big 12 Coach of the Year. It’s almost always given to the coach of the first-place team. The one time Iowa State was top seed in the conference tournament (2000), the award went to Oklahoma’s Sherri Coale, because ISU shared the regular-season championship with the Sooners.

But with one of the best Iowa State women’s basketball teams we’ve had in a while — including, and this is a good thing, being the only Big 12 team that didn’t lose to Baylor by more than 20 this season — the time is right for an Elite Eight run.

1999:

2009:

It’s simple math, right?

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Mar 21

Marking the Marathon to Marathon

Posted on Thursday, March 21, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 23, 2009: Welcome sign for Marathon at the south end of former IA 390. Nearly a decade later, the paint on the church sign had noticeably faded.

It’s 16 years to the day since I set foot in Marathon in the first of now four visits. The first time, I wasn’t sure where the exact end of IA 390 was, two more were pass-throughs while I traveled IA 10 and M54 nearby, and the most recent was last year, after I knew for sure the endpoint and also wanted to photograph the school (now the community center). As it turned out, I had the endpoint guessed correctly earlier, but the key shot was out of focus, hence a surprisingly high number of visits to a map dot in northwest Iowa.

This post is about the giant sign at the junction with IA 10. For years it gave the date of the next Marathon to Marathon, a 26.2-mile run from Storm Lake. But that event has been discontinued with a phrase to strike fear into the hearts of small towns everywhere: “We have run out of volunteers.”

Rather than let the date of the last marathon sit at the bottom, falling increasingly in the past, here’s a suggestion to keep the spirit alive: Place the years of the run, “1996-2017”, there instead. It would be a fitting reminder of the event. And then, if it ever starts up again, there will be a sign waiting for it.

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Mar 20

When Clear Creek was rural

Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

(An unintended companion piece to yesterday’s blog post.)

During the 1980s, the Clear Creek school district was in dire straits. They couldn’t get money for nothin’.

In 1989, Clear Creek cancelled its football season a week before it began, leaving the Eastern Iowa Hawkeye Conference in the lurch. The Cedar Rapids Gazette said there were 141 students in the entire high school.

The district stretching from the west edge of Iowa City, and Jones Boulevard in North Liberty, over to the Johnson/Iowa county line had aging facilities in Oxford, Tiffin, and even Cosgrove, a map dot 11 miles due west of Kinnick Stadium.

Voters shot down four bond issue proposals in three years. A stripped-down, $800,000 addition in Oxford that did not close the existing school finally made it across the finish line in 1985.

A bit later in time, the Amana school district was looking for a partner. Geographically, Williamsburg would have been a better fit. But Amana Superintendent Gary Pittman told the Gazette, “We found that the only school interested in sending students back to Amana was Clear Creek.”

Clear Creek and Amana began sharing in 1990, with a combined enrollment a shade under 1000 students. The school in Cosgrove closed.

About five years later, word came that a giant mall was being proposed for the outskirts of Coralville. The western third of the mall fell inside the recently reorganized Clear Creek Amana School District.

Clear Creek Amana has a different bond issue problem now: Voters can’t approve them fast enough. The most recent is for $36 million, 45 times the amount that scraped through in Clear Creek 30-plus years ago. Another planned for 2022 is for replacement of the high school built in 2009, which then would be used for lower grades. An additional 1040 students (80 kids x 13 grades), as are expected over the next five years, would itself constitute the 110th-largest district in the state, enough for a Class 2A football team.

By percentage, Tiffin is the fastest-growing city in Iowa.

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Mar 19

Clay Central-Everly losing high school, junior high

Posted on Tuesday, March 19, 2019, at 10:10 AM by Jeff


October 3, 2016: The welcome sign for Royal, pop. 446, former end of IA 240 and soon-to-be-former football field for Clay Central-Everly.

For the tenth time this decade, an Iowa district is closing its high school without getting any students in return.

The Clay Central-Everly school board on March 11 voted to “tuition out” students in grades 7 through 12. (Stories: KIWA, Spencer Daily Reporter, KTIV.) As mentioned here earlier, the district has been considering its options. The more recent stories show a split among the district’s residents about which school to join with. That means that there won’t be any formal whole-grade sharing deal, at least for 2019-20. (The only quasi-similar situation right now is Hamburg, which is “tuitioning out” its students to Sidney but doesn’t have a whole-grade-sharing agreement.) The survey also showed that only about three-fifths of students would be coming back.

The four-way preference split reflects a problem shrinking districts are going to be having more often: In many cases, going with one neighbor will not be a good fit for at least some of the geographical area. CCE is an L-shaped district that wraps around Spencer (a district that expanded southeastward when it got the north half of South Clay). There are parts of CCE that are closer to high schools in Hartley and Sioux Rapids.

The board has not decided which town (Everly or Royal) will lose its school building, though. Just because elementary grades are being retained does not mean the current setup will remain. This happened in the Harmony district, where Bonaparte Elementary was closed and students moved to the isolated building on County Road J40.

The decision means that last fall’s CCE homecoming court will be the last for the Mavericks. It also means the end of a sports lineage that included the 1960s Everly Cattlefeeders girls’ basketball teams, winners in 1966 and runners-up in 1968 against Union-Whitten.

Clay Central-Everly’s enrollment is 312. Clear Creek Amana, CCE’s almost-neighbor alphabetically but polar opposite in every other way, added 377 students in two years.

(h/t two readers reassuring me I’m not screaming into the void)

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