We’re halfway through the O’s.
Back when I was in Des Moines there was a time when I spent Sunday afternoons with a small group of Scrabble players. It took me MONTHS to win my first game, and even then, it was only by hitting a triple-word near the end for maybe a 10-point margin. In the end, it wasn’t quite for me.
“I have a vocabulary,” I told them, attempting to justify myself. “You know Scrabble words.”
I double-checked, and OQX is not one.
Bobby’s Grocery and BBQ in Dysart, formerly Terry’s Food Center, could close soon without a rapid infusion of cash. Stories: North Tama Telegraph, KWWL, KCRG. KCRG is wrong on one detail: The nearest grocery store is in Traer (9 miles), not Vinton (16 miles), and that one can use shoppers too. Bobby’s has set up a GoFundMe.
It’s hard to keep a tiny grocery store in business; profit margins are notoriously low. But as the news stories show, the Dysart store has been battered by storms both literal and metaphorical.
The store has lost power repeatedly, including in the past month, that caused it to lose all perishable stock, the Telegraph story says. In addition, there has been significant (and very much not transitory) inflation. But the most obvious culprit is right there on Highway 21: Dollar General.
In 2022, Iowa Starting Line reported on the negative effects of Dollar General moving into towns that only had one family-run grocery. Part of the story focused on Trunck’s Country Foods, which had been running the Dysart grocery in addition to its base in Reinbeck, and how its owner pulled out of Dysart. The store would have closed if not for the Torres couple buying it, and they’re the ones asking for support now.
Dollar General doesn’t carry meat or fresh produce while Bobby’s and many other family-run grocery stores do.
At last check, Traer is the 14th-largest town in Iowa that does not have a dollar store or one in a bordering city. If Bobby’s goes under, that will be a giant warning light.
A Model T Ford crossing the country for the anniversary of the “10 millionth” car doing the same in 1924 was delayed in coming to Iowa. That meant that not only could I check it out last Wednesday, but I would be at the Wieting Theatre in Toledo for a presentation on the Lincoln Highway. I combined the events into a story.
The Orient-Macksburg school district in southwest Iowa will cease to exist at the end of the 2024-25 school year. The district made the decision Monday.
WOI, KCCI, and Iowa Starting Line all have stories. The last goes into the most detail. However, the latter two need a correction/clarification: Only voters in the dissolving district vote on its dissolution. A soon-to-be-appointed dissolution commission will get in communication with neighboring school boards on what areas the surrounding district would be willing to take. The commission will also take residents/property owners’ input and then draw lines. See Iowa Code chapter 275.53 and 275.55.
If the attempted Gladbrook-Reinbeck dissolution is any example — and given its circumstances, it may not — the school boards will be in favor of whatever land OM will offer. North Tama’s letter said it would work with GR and AEA 267 “to reach an appropriate solution.”
If Clearfield’s dissolution is any example — and I really hope it isn’t — residents of OM will want to go every which way and create a crazy quilt.
Right now, the Winterset and Nodaway Valley districts do not spill out of their county lines at all. If they did, that could cause administrative headaches, including extra ballot styles created for just those outlying portions in elections. Those boards could specify that they do not want anything outside their counties. Orphaned land, should there be any — and in the modern era, I don’t think there has been — would be the state’s responsibility to figure out.
The last district to dissolve was Corwith-Wesley in 2015, but 87% of the school territory went to LuVerne and CWL had been together for decades. No district in the modern era has voluntarily dissolved in the summer following its last high school graduation; Boone Valley came close, shutting down one year after its last senior class. Russell and Hedrick were both forcibly shut down by the state over funding issues.
June 10, 2024: The padding and backboards in the Goldfield gym date to before 2007, based on family video archives.
The Goldfield school will be torn down starting next month.
I got wind of this through an alumna of Goldfield High School, who saw on Facebook that someone saw the city council minutes about its demolition. The “notice to bidders” was in the Eagle Grove Eagle on April 18.
The school, built in 1956, closed as an elementary in 2008. Iowa Central Community College used some classroom space for a while but that duration is unknown.
While the demolition is to begin “no sooner than July 15,” what remains of what’s inside is to be emptied out Friday. If you have any interest in trophies from events in the north-central Iowa area from the 1960s and 1970s (and in some cases earlier!), the sale is from 12 to 4.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone goes for the scoreboard at 12:01.
Good news! I was wrong … mostly.
On the page for IA 39, I said that present-day US 30 west of the west edge of Denison, following the railroad, was never part of the Lincoln Highway. Well, in the course of exhaustive research since I wrote that — see the Denison Highway Chronology — a correction is needed.
The original Lincoln Highway to Dow City stayed on the north side of the then-Chicago & North Western Railroad and Illinois Central Railroad. This included stairsteps through Arion that every source does differently. In the second half of 1925, IA 6 was graded on an alignment paralleling the railroads on the south side. The Denison Review on Nov. 10, 1926, said the C&NW overpass was completed. The state map was not updated until after paving through Crawford County was completed in 1929.
In 1960, US 30 was four-laned from Denison to the northeast corner of Dow City. In 1962, a relocation of US 30 over the railroad and Boyer River was completed. Chamberlin Drive is a piece of the 1925-62 route of 30.
It’s possible that the 1929 Lincoln Highway pavement, and very likely the 1925 bridges, stayed in place until one of those bridges near Dow City had to be closed because it couldn’t handle semis. That probably happened Oct. 28, 1980, based on articles in the Review on Oct. 25, 1980, and July 9, 1981. The concrete on the closed segment was extant at least through April 1982, according to aerial photos.
About a mile and a half of westbound 30 from the intersection southwest of the ethanol plant to Chamberlin Drive is on the roadbed of the Lincoln Highway built in 1925.
So there you have it. After it took a decade for me to update the IA 39 page (2008-18), it took another five years to correct a supplemental part.
For the first time in five years, St. Ludmila’s Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids is having a real kolach festival.
There was no celebration in 2020 or 2021 (but there were sales), and 2022 was somewhat but not quite normal.
According to Gazette archives* and the festival’s Facebook page, the kolaches were $10 a dozen in 2016, $12 a dozen in 2019, $15 a dozen in June 2022, and $16 a dozen in September 2022, with the half-dozens being half that. In 2022 there was a bonus sale before the defunct St. Ludmila school was torn down in 2023, and at that time, a volunteer told the Gazette the cost of filling had gone up 23%.
For 2024, the kolaches are a whopping $18 a dozen, $9 for a half-dozen, or $2 apiece. Is it a steep jump? Yes. Is it going to stop me from buying some, assuming I remember and they’re not out? Of course not.
The intersection of Fleur Drive (originally SW 21st Street) and Grand Avenue on the west side of downtown Des Moines had a history in the state highway system. Fleur was the main way for downtown traffic to get to the south side and airport. For 35 years, IA 123 ran south from Grand to Army Post Road (see Jason Hancock’s Highways of Des Moines page).
Now that Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway has taken the place as the primary connection, the city of Des Moines is moving forward with a project to reshape the intersection. It’s part of a larger sanitary/storm sewer separation project originally proposed at the end of 2020. Stories: Des Moines press release (with video), KCCI, Des Moines Register (via AOL).
For decades, this area has been where Grand Avenue changes from two-way to one-way traffic, with Locust Street handling eastbound. Grand and Locust will be converted to two-ways over to 15th Street, the west side of the Western Gateway Park. Fleur will flow directly into Locust with no connection to Grand. The space immediately east of Des Moines’ Central Campus school will be turned into green space.
In a related project, the westbound lanes of MLK Parkway on the south side of downtown, which were only about 20 years old, were torn up and repaved for sewer separation.
The Grand/Fleur intersection was certainly not “obscure”, as a city of Des Moines engineer Steven Naber says in the video, but it’s much less prominent today.
It has been more than a decade since the US 151-X20 intersection at Springville gained notoriety as a crash-prone spot. It’s been five years since upgraded warning signs were placed there. A long-proposed interchange will not be built for another four years.
And yet, there are complaints about upgrading it. KCRG found someone at the public meeting last month who wants speed cameras instead. (However, thanks to the Iowa Legislature’s advance in the war on them this year, such cameras would only be able to issue warnings.)
The interchange would wipe out the bank and the Casey’s at the intersection, as well as some houses on the south side of 151. In addition, old 151 would be closed on the west side of town, with an access road only for the quarry.
I wrote something last week that starts with something very much in my zone but goes a little beyond it. I wouldn’t suggest extrapolating it too much into my thinking of things.
It got picked up by the Iowa Capital Dispatch, too, albeit with a different headline.
As I make clear in the caption, the image is a photo illustration, but it’s not too far off from what the real thing will look like.
