May 22, 2014: The brick Irwin school was built in 1917. Note the stonework.
There are only 10 incorporated places in Iowa starting with I, but four county seats among them. Five have a population under 1000.
Irwin is one of the relatively few Iowa towns without a high school whose town name starts a district, IKM and now IKM-Manning. Irwin’s original school building is entirely separate from a 1960s building that is still in use for preschoolers to third-graders.
August 4, 2015: The welcome marker for Elma, in Howard County.
First, something I thought I did a while ago (page created 5/2/12!) but apparently never uploaded: I moved all the photos for the I-35/US 18/Business 18/IA 122 interchange to a new page. Each page for Business 18 and IA 122 has other new photos.
Then, some summer cleanup adds at least one photo to pages in northern Iowa along US 218 and US 63: 93, 105, 157, 162, 188, 272, 346 West, 346 East, Business 218 Waverly, Business 218 Charles City.
January 25, 2012: Texas Ranch Road 1, Lyndon B. Johnson State Park & Historic Site, Stonewall, Texas.
The last time I was in Texas, more than one hotel had waffle irons that would give you a waffle in the shape of Texas. If you’ve been down there, you know Texans love the shape of Texas, and the New York Times is on it:
“The shape’s not perfect,” says Bud Kennedy, a longtime columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “It has jagged edges and sharp points and smooth lines. But it’s not some boring box shape. It’s a great brand, and not just on cattle. I went to Iowa four years ago for one of the presidential debates. There’s a lot of homespun sense of place in Iowa, but there was no place where people served me waffles the shape of Iowa.”
If you think about it, Iowa would be a good shape for waffles. Two good lines on the top and bottom with character on the edges. (It wouldn’t be a bad shape for highway signs, either.)
By the time the national media comes back to Iowa to start covering the 2020 caucuses — sometime between five weeks from tomorrow and 20 months from now — let’s rectify this shortcoming. Iowa-shaped waffles for everyone!
August 8, 2016: The north end of Iowa Highway 471, in Early, about two months after it was created. The number, the highest signed in the state, is assigned to what had been US 71 between new US 20 and IA 175 after 71 was rerouted to run north along a reconstructed IA 196 and west on new 20.
A vacation that ran ahead of schedule enabled me to get a batch of road/city targets in western Iowa, including the signed IA 471. All signs along the route are wide and put up by a contractor. Early is the only town along the route.
After an emotional plea earlier this month from one Collins-Maxwell teacher/coach to continue sharing sports with Baxter if at all possible, last year’s interim C-M superintendent said “it’s not going to happen.”
The Tri-County Times reports that C-M has been looking for a sports sharing partner, and Colo-Nesco has given an initial response.
Colo-Nesco joined the Iowa Star Conference in 2010 for the same reason North Tama did — it had become a small fish in its pond — but its closest conference-mates are in Tama County. The Royals dropped to 8-man football in 2012.
The Colo-Nesco board discussed a possible arrangement at its September meeting, but wondered about locations for games, changes in classification, and new uniforms, the Times reported. NESCO stands for Northeast Story County, and “East Story” would work for combined Colo/CM teams.
After North Tama football was demoted to Class A in the early 2000s, the Redhawks bounced around geographically. In many configurations, NT was on the periphery — the northernmost of a southern district, westernmost of an eastern district, southernmost of a northern district. Sometimes GMG was right there with us, also isolated from the bulk of the district because of Waterloo or Cedar Rapids in between. (NT has played GMG every year since 1998 except for 2002-03, either as a district or non-district opponent.)
In the past few years, school attrition and enrollment drops elsewhere have returned North Tama into more geographically compact districts. This two-year cycle, though, brings something new: Two games in the heart of Iowa.
North Tama has never played Colfax-Mingo and Grand View Christian of Des Moines (or its quasi-predecessor, Grandview Baptist) before. Those two teams are quite separated from the rest — BGM is the closest — and it so happens that NT will be traveling to both this year, back-to-back.
For North Tama fans, or anyone else in Class A District 5, I’ve made a page with directions to both of those schools (PDF). Grand View, which is based in what used to be Saydel’s elementary school, plays its football games at Saydel High School.
April 13, 2016: One of four interpretive panels about Grant Wood at the “American Gothic” House in Eldon. Open image in new tab for larger version.
A Los Angeles Times reporter dropped in on Anamosa, Stone City, and Eldon, going beyond “American Gothic” and exploring Grant Wood’s rich connections to the land and culture of early 20th century Iowa.
July 25, 2016: The St. Lucas Veterans Memorial prominently honors two people: Father Aloysius H. Schmitt, who died at Pearl Harbor, and Pfc. James A. Kruse, an Army medic who died in Vietnam in 1969.
The U.S. Department of Defense has identified the remains of the Rev. Aloysius Schmitt of St. Lucas, Iowa, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald reports. (Story on Register’s and World-Herald’s websites.) Schmitt was a chaplain on the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941 and, according to the article, saved the lives of 12 sailors before the Oklahoma capsized in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Schmitt’s remains will be interred at Loras College on Oct. 8.
I’m putting this in the blog because I made my first visit to St. Lucas, in Fayette County, this summer, and photographed the veterans memorial.
A wind turbine on the south side of Traer is providing 40 percent of the town utility’s energy usage, the Waterloo Courier reports. (This was the newspaper centerpiece last Sunday.) The turbine, now five years old (and built after the derecho), will be paid off by the end of next year. Traer Municipal Utilities also has some solar panels generating electricity.
It’s a big change from when trainloads of coal came downtown to serve as fuel.
