Day 72, Tuesday May 14, 2024: Ames, Iowa to Lake View, Iowa
- Mark Carl Rom
- May 14
- 5 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Jefferson and Audobon, Iowa
I visited my new love, the Ames library, again for a morning tryst. The newspapers were racked behind the table where I was sitting, and the rack held about a dozen print (print!) newspapers ranging from the New York Times to the Ames Tribune. All free for the public to use! Three stories about Iowa caught my eye, as they reveal much about the state of affairs we find ourselves in.
The next few paragraphs are about American politics. If that’s not your thing, or you just don’t want to deal with politics today, then skip down to The Story Resumes Here.
Iowa’s Attorney General, Brenna Bird, attended the hushmoney trial of Donald Trump in New York. According to the Des Moines Register, AG Bird, Iowa’s chief law enforcement officer, said that “Politics has no place in a court of law” and that Trump’s trial was a “travesty and a sham.” To recap: Iowa’s Attorney General, a Republican elected by the people of the state, has no respect for New York’s legal system. So what possible reason could AG Bird have for attending the trial? “I just wanted to kiss President Trump’s ass” would be my guess.
The next story is actually about Nebraska (aka “West Iowa”). Conservative Republicans hold all five of Nebraska’s congressional seats, and one of the simplest things for a political party to do is endorse its incumbents (incumbents are overwhelmingly likely to be reelected). The Nebraskan Republican party cannot do that simple thing as it endorsed two challengers and withheld endorsements in the other races. The un-endorsed incumbents’ sin? Corruption? No. Communism? Hardly. Concubines? Nuh uh. It was because the incumbents showed insufficient fealty to the MAGA movement. Nebraska voters remained sensibl(ish), and all five incumbents prevailed.
The final story involves weather. Iowa has long experienced frigid winters, spring tornadoes, summer droughts, and autumns that are really quite pretty. It has not experienced the kind of weather that is now routine. As long as homes have been insured in Iowa, it has been a low risk state. Low risk means that insurance claims were randomly distributed and infrequent; for example, every so often a house but not an entire city may burn down (unlike in the olden days). For the past four years, insurance companies in Iowa have been losing so much money that some companies are pulling out of the state altogether. Why? Hail and wind storms are getting worse and more frequent. Why? Not because our criminal justice system is a sham, nor because Iowa’s elected representatives are insufficiently MAGA friendly. The reason involves two words that are unlikely to cross the lips of AG Bird or MAGA believers: climate change. That is, if you believe the headlines in the Iowa newspaper The Gazette: “Climate disasters have made Iowa a losing proposition for some insurance companies.”
The Story Resume Here
Public libraries are the closest America comes to full service institutions free to all. Inside, the library has a lovely reading room, with comfortable chairs, good lighting, and art (photographs of historic Ames) on the walls. A sign asks “Do you need something? Ask for the supply kit at the nearest service desk.” The supply list includes tampons, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, sunscreen, and other sundries. [Note: these supplies are provided by the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation, not by taxpayers.] Book clubs can check out book bags containing multiple copies of the same book, making them available to multiple members of the club to read at the same time. You can pick up a bookmark that contains a list of 12 books on a common theme, such as those focusing on LGBTQ literature; the library’s website contains more lists on romance, mystery, manga and graphic novels, and many other categories.
Each month the library posts an Adult Reading Challenge list, with a theme such as “Food memoir or cookbook about a food culture different from your own” (October), “Book that has been banned or challenged, including adult or youth books” (November), or “Anthology or ‘Best … Writing of the Year’ book” (December). Those up to the challenge can track their progress (digitally or in analogue), they are encouraged to read daily (“it can be 10 minutes or three hours”) and if they document they have read each day they win a prize (in January 2025 the prizes were “a delightfully designed holographic Aurora Borealis sticker or an adorable hot/cold pack in the shape of a polar bear”).
The library’s reach extends outside, where a bench offers free device charging. Free wifi is also available outside and, as one who often arrives at a library when it is closed, this is a most valuable service. Not everyone has wifi access at home, or in their car.
Before I leave town, I’m going to stop in at the Iowa State University creamery. I’ve had ice cream at ag schools, and they never disappoint. I can only imagine what experiments were conducted on those cows…
I’m going big today. The Reiman Gardens on the Iowa State University host the World’s Largest Concrete Gnome, and I just can’t leave town without seeing it. When it was being built, the designers of the Iowa Gnome (“Elwood”) thought it would be the world’s largest gnome, period, beating out the prevailing record holder “Gnome Chomsky,” who lived on a mini-golf course in upstate New York. Even before it was finished, Elwood learned that a yet larger gnome was under construction in Poland. So, with marketing flair, Elwood’s title was changed from “World’s Largest Gnome” to “World’s Largest Concrete Gnome,” which seems to open the door to lots of new possibilities (like World’s Largest Driftwood Gnome, World’s Largest Gummy Bear Gnome, World’s Largest Dryer Lint Gnome, etc.) This afternoon I’ll have the chance to see the World’s Largest Bull, Albert, who stands 28 feet tall and boasts a pair of giant gonads. During his adolescence his eyes were painted blue; today, they are a more bull-appropriate brown. I regret to report that I will not visit Iowa’s many other biggest, like the World’s Largest Strawberry which is located in the obviously named Strawberry Point, as it’s too far off my path. I’ll also miss the World’s Largest Truckstop (which some have likened to a trucker’s Disneyland), the World’s Largest Cheeto, the World’s Largest Concrete Spike, and the World’s Largest Manmade Grotto. Also: the world’s largest Pocahontas, Popcorn Ball, Swedish Coffee Pot and Coffee Cup, Wooden Nickel. You know what they say about someone who is always boasting about how big they are….
I ended up skipping Elwood and seeing Albert. Elwood was not visible from the road, and I didn’t feel like putting up the $12 it would cost to take a selfie, so I’ll just donate $6 to the Society for the Preservation of Concrete Gnomes and call it a day. Albert, and his gonads, were every bit as impressive as billed. There was a large puddle on the concrete floor between his legs. I can’t say with certainty that it wasn’t bull piss; it sure didn’t taste like it.
When I arrived in Lake View, I stopped. A campground was right off the road, and it called my name. I paid the fee and backed into a slot just feet away from Black Hawk Lake. The Sauk Rail Trail (BikeIowa describes it as “5 Friendly Communities, 2 Beautiful Lakes and 1 Great Ride!”) begins (or ends, depending on your direction) by the campground. For only the second time on this trip, I cooked dinner – I’m in Iowa, so it included pork chops – on my Coleman two-burner. Lake View, a town of 1,000, is very walkable, so I walked it.
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