No, we’re not off to see the wizard. We’re off to read about the infamous bat incident.
“When did Ozzy become an actor?” the band Bowling for Soup asked in the song “1985”, which was released in 2004, which means that the song itself is closer to the year it references than the present day.
On to the P’s!
An event originally planned for last year as part of Traer’s sesquicentennial will be held this weekend.
A re-enactment of the May 1864 Battle of the Wilderness will take place at T.F. Clark Park Friday through Sunday. An abbreviated schedule is at the North Tama Telegraph. Friday (today) the grounds open at noon. Saturday and Sunday will have the re-enactments. Sadly, there’s notable rain in the forecast for the first time in a long time starting Friday and going through Monday.
(Unfortunately, between work and going to the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, I cannot attend. It would make a great story.)
(So between the Iowa State Fair and the retreat, we have perfect Sunday-through-Wednesdays, but rain comes on both of those events? Come on!)
Yes, it happened during RVTV week, the Thursday before Iowa State beat Iowa. However, Nexstar holds all its newscasts hostage for two hours, forbidding streaming, so it was new to me.
The prompt was a grandmother who lives in Traer.
Could Traer host RVTV some day?
Starting today, according to an Iowa DOT press release, the intersection of US 218 and Maple Street on the north side of Janesville will be closed. A new road will be built alongside the railroad tracks heading north to a new intersection with 260th Street, which is getting an interchange with US 218.
The closure of the intersection is the next step in the plan to convert US 218 between Janesville and Waverly into a full freeway. Building an interchange between the C57 and Business 218 exits allows for current intersections in the area to feed into frontage roads.
This is, to my knowledge, the third interchange in Iowa with a gravel road. The other two are the River Road and Honey Creek exits on I-680 in Pottawattamie County. There will be some pavement on 260th, from the railroad eastward, and three of the four frontage roads will be paved. One of those is the Maple Street extension. One is an Easton Avenue extension that will use some of 218’s present northbound lanes as 218 finally gets a kink that’s been around since forever ironed out. The final paved extension, Eagle Avenue, will include a short segment over a stub of 1920s concrete that was bypassed long ago and ended its life as a driveway to a farmhouse that was torn down in 2020.
I made the Iowa Capital Dispatch last week with my Substack piece from the previous week about being old obsolete washed-up 25 years removed from my senior year of high school.
I managed to scrape together a story about Big Boy’s travels while barely returning to work on time. (The train showed up late.)
The Union Pacific’s No. 4014, the “Big Boy” steam locomotive, is passing through Iowa on a “Heartland of America” tour.
There are two remaining stops for public view, at Belle Plaine at noon today and Grand Mound at 11 AM tomorrow. However, each stop only lasts 15 minutes! No one can get ON the train, just admire its bigness from 25 feet away, per UP rules.
KCRG had a feature on Belle Plaine’s still-standing-but-not-restored train depot six weeks ago.
(KCRG and all Gray stations have autoplay video but if you scroll past the video, then try to come back up, the video disappears but the sound keeps playing. What’s up with that?)
I guess we’re really not a swing state any more if a major vice-presidential candidate is saying things like this:
“For those not from Minnesota, just to be clear, there’s a lot of great state fairs in the country, this is the best one,” Walz said. “I can say that having tried pork chops in Iowa.”
Well, I guess that’s your opinion, don’tchaknow.
The Iowa Department of Transportation is having a special September letting. Contracts are accelerated rather than waiting until the normal date later in the month.
Four of the lettings are in Bremer, Polk, Scott, and Story counties. All of them are because a girder on the underside of a bridge got whacked by something. In Polk County, it’s on the I-80 eastbound flyover ramp in the west mixmaster.
Page from DOT letting showing damage to girder on I-80 bridge.
The other four lettings are in northwest Iowa for debris removal following the flooding this summer.
I had an idea fall into my lap, and I didn’t take it. Also, it rained that Monday, the first time it’s rained on me at the fair since 2015.
However, I had a good second idea, and that’s what I went with, interviewing people working at the West Des Moines United Methodist Church’s food stand.
