Day 70, Sunday, May 12, 2024: Albia, Iowa to Knoxville, Iowa

Carnegie libraries visited: Oskaloosa and Knoxville, Iowa

Mothers’ Day Vignettes; the libraries are closed.

When the police officer wakes me up at 3 a.m. for a wellness check, I wish him a Happy Mothers’ Day. 

At the CG coffee shop, I heard a guy order what sounded like Irish coffee as spoken by Elmer Fudd. Then, the next customer also ordered one in the same Elmer Fudd voice: “Iwish coffee, please.” Now I see that the menu featured the “Iowaish coffee” special, a concoction of espresso, Irish cream (flavoring) and vanilla cream. It’s not Elmer, it’s Liam.

At the corner of the square, two guys in a bigass truck pulling a bigass boat stopped for the light. I said “Nice boat” and they replied “It’s Mother’s Day!” before revving off. I gather that they are not going to spend the day with their wives/mothers, and that all parties will be happier as a result.

Curt and I used to chuckle at Ace’s inability to close down pages on his Chrome browser. Curt: Can you believe he had 138 pages open? Me: Unbelievable! Oh, do not be so eager to disbelieve. I use the Brave browser on my iPhone, and when I close it I simply swipe up. I assumed that doing this also closed whatever page I was looking at on Brave. Au Contraire. I clicked some button on the browser this morning and a page I opened a couple of days ago showed up. Hmm. I don’t technically JFGI anymore, as I use the DuckDuckGo search engine, which means that I should be saying JFDDGI (‘Just Fucking DuckDuckGo It’) to find the answers to my questions. So I fuck ducked my question ‘Where can I see all my open Brave pages on iphone and how can I bulk close them?’ Once I followed the instructions, I discovered that I had 1137 open web pages. Sort of ten times the number that my clueless father had and pretty much every website I had visited this year.

I have a nice little office set up at Lake Miami Park. I’ve unfurled my car top canopy for its inaugural use. My phone is charging on my solar-powered battery on top of my tiny table. I’m sitting in my camping chair, under the canopy, laptop on lapdesk. The birds are singing, the breeze harmonizing with their calls. The only other sounds are the occasional tires on gravel. Before long the wind decided that it wanted to be the star of the show, and it made my canopy get up and dance. After several unsuccessful attempts to make the canopy behave, I packed it up and headed up the road.

Driving north to Oskaloosa, I heard one of my favorite songs, “Grace," by Marcus Mumford. It begins “Well, how should we proceed, without things getting too heavy? Even though I'd never tell you everything, I could've sworn I'd dropped that bomb on you already.” Throughout the song’s video, Mumford looks into the camera, heartbroken. He drinks greedily, over and over, from a clear tumbler holding a clear liquid, tilting the glass so high that the liquid runs down his chin. Vodka, or water? Given the vibe, vodka.

It seems that most of the Carnegie’s I’m visiting are located in a county seat, the town where the county’s governmental offices are located. Most of these town centers follow the same design principles: the country courthouse, the largest and most majestic building in the town, is in the center of a small park. The Albia town square is bordered on all four sides by streets, sometimes wider, other times narrower, sometimes all one-way streets, other times two way streets, lined with businesses. 

Albia Town Square

Oskaloosa Town Square

At this point, the town squares diverge. In many of the towns, most of the businesses lining the square have shuttered. In a few places, the buildings surrounding the square mainly host professional services (insurance, bail bonds, tax preparation, legal services etc.). In these places, the downtown is dead on the weekend.

Albia Courthouse

Some towns are working hard to keep their squares vibrant. A plaque stands by the front door of the Albia (pop. 3721) courthouse, reading “In a continuing effort to preserve and improve our historic city square, the Albia Historic Preservation Board began this project…to place Victoria era street lighting in the historic district.” Those who contributed $1000 or more to this project were recognized on the plaque. The lights were charming, and they did make the town square more attractive. If we extend the Victorian era to 1910, a bit further than history warrants, Albia was about twenty five percent larger than it is today. Although smaller than in its heyday, Albia doesn’t have the feel of a dying town. On the west side of the square – the man’s side, apparently – you can shop for furniture before getting a haircut at Cellar Barber and a beer at Murph’s Sports Bar. On the south, more feminine side, you can stop in at the Beauty Shop by Dara or its competitor Hair Haven, get a massage at either the Sunflower Massage Company or Mind Body Wellness, shop at the Twice as Nice or Cindy’s New 2 U thrift stores, and end the afternoon with an ice cream at Down Home Creations or a margarita at El Vaquero. The other two sides contain primarily professional services.

The town squares in Oskaloosa and Knoxville, the next two towns with a Carnegie, also show determined efforts to keep them vital. I spent a couple of hours in the Smokey Row coffee shop on the square in Osky (as the locals call it). The town square there is a park, as the courthouse is located on the street facing it. The focal point of the park is the statue of Chief Mahaska, for which the county is named. The statue’s plaque had an interesting angle on the Chief’s history: “He lived at peace with the white man and was slain by an Indian in 1834.” (Savages!)  In Knoxville, I snarfed down a basket of chips and salsa so I could make the 7 pm showing of “The Fall Guy” at the Grand Theater.

Knoxville Grand Theater

The Grand epitomized community pride. When it was first built, “it compared favorably to venues in Chicago, St. Louis, and other large midwestern cities” (it had 700 seats). The theater has survived a fire, the Great Depression, evolving technology (it hosted one of the first in-theater video stores in the country), and changing tastes. Rather than simply closing it down – as so many theaters on town squares would be – the Grand was donated to a non-profit theater group which has kept it open. Before The Fall Guy began, the previews included four advertisements for local businesses. The final pre-movie video was the theater’s manager reminding the patrons “don't talk, don’t text, don’t trash.” Cost for the night: $16 included ticket, medium drink, and medium popcorn.

I had stayed at the Smokey Row coffee shop until it was time to go to a 4.30 AA meeting. It had been four days since I had attended a meeting, and I’m sure that’s the longest period between meetings for me in the past ten months. Did I feel like I needed to attend a meeting today? No. Did I think I was going to drink if I didn’t go to a meeting? No. I wanted to attend one as a matter of discipline, not desperation. And also because the meetings are just about the most human meetings I’ve been to. Individuals, who might hardly know each other or perhaps have been friends for decades, share stories of tragedy, grief, and sorrow as well as joy, accomplishment, and humble pride.

Here’s the thing. A typical AA relapse story goes like this (short version): “I stopped attending meetings, and then I started drinking again.” My mad research skills remind me that failing to attend does not equal starting to drink. I have no idea how many alcoholics stop attending AA meetings and nonetheless don’t go back to drinking, because I never see those people: I only see those who stop, start, and then come back in. Relapse after non-attendance might be rare, common, or frequent, and I don't know which one is most likely. I definitely don’t know what would happen to me. I do know that this is one risk I can avoid. I believe that I won’t start drinking again if I continue to attend, and so I will continue to attend, even if I don't think it matters today. 

The Sunday Afternoon Group meeting was small: three men, three women, none of us younger than 50 or so. It was a Big Book meeting, so we took turns reading aloud from the story “Me, and Alcoholic?” When Jim, the second reader, began his Big Book was fluttering in his hands like my car’s canopy in the Iowa wind. He was virtually illiterate, and unable to make out all of the words in the phrase “Of course I drank. Everybody did in the set which I regarded as the apex of civilization” which began his section of the text. (Granted, ‘apex’ is not a word one is likely to encounter in daily life unless one’s daily life involves watching the movie Jaws.) Jim was not to be pitied. Jim was a hero to Deedee. When it was time for her to read, she began by giving him a hug and thanking him: “Jim was the first person I met on the first day I came into the rooms. I’m so glad to see him today.” Jim has been sober for 37 years. If I live to be as old as Ace, and remain sober during that entire time, I will not have been sober for as long as Jim. 

Knoxville has only two motels, and both were virtually deserted. I thought that if I parked at one of them overnight I would stand out and draw attention. iOverlander had a suggestion for me: the local Walmart. I had been avoiding sleeping at Walmarts because, oh, I don’t really know why. (Reason: snobbery. I could get behind parking overnight at a Target, because that chain is so much classier.)  Once I’m in my sleeping compartment, I’m there to sleep, so it really doesn’t matter much where I am parked. With a light rain pattering on Goldfinger’s roof, I could imagine myself to be anywhere, so I’ll imagine the Santa Monica beach.

Albia Carnegie Library

Oskaloosa Carnegie Library