Iowa Travelogue

River City, anyone?  Michele and I just spent four days in Mason City, Iowa, the inspiration for Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man.”  But we went to north central Iowa for a reason that had little to do with trombones and clarinets.      

Believe it or not, Mason City with its population of 28,000 is a treasure trove of Prairie Architecture.  We stayed in a restored Frank Lloyd Wright hotel and walked around a neighborhood dotted with homes designed by Wright, Walter Burley Griffin and other Prairie architects.  This is anything but “flyover country.”  

            We stayed in a room that overlooks the town square with its Civil War memorial, erected in 1884.  If memory serves me right, it was once possible to order a statue like the one we saw of a Union soldier standing at attention.  That, or there were some very busy sculptors who did thousands of these memorials across the Midwest and Northeast.  (Sorry, Confederate statues in the South don’t count for much here.)  Either way, those statues have more life and dignity to them than anything at Wrigley Field or the Cell.  These days, we let the second-rate pass for public art.  They did better in Mason City.

On a trip like this, it’s in for a penny in for a pound, which was how we ended up in Owatonna, Minnesota.  Louis Sullivan did the National Farmers’ Bank there.  Sullivan was a difficult man with a self-destructive streak fueled by alcohol.  When the big commissions dried up, he turned to designing banks in small Midwestern towns.  These works have been called his “jewel boxes.”  I’ve never been a big Sullivan fan.  To me, the Auditorium is a fussy building inside and out while Carson Pirie Scott fails to achieve any of the interior grandeur necessary for a department store.  But this bank, my god.  The art glass, the brickwork, the light fixtures and the stenciling combine to form one of the most sublime designs I’ve ever seen.  And to think I read in the paper banks are moving in the direction of maybe one teller per branch.  After that comes zero and little reason for Wells Fargo to keep the bank open to the public.   

We walked up and down Owatonna’s main street, had a great cheese and tomato omelette for breakfast (alas, we were too early for the walleye sandwich) and saw a life-size cutout of Twins’ manager Ron Gardenhire in the front window of the Ace Hardware; the Twins were a few hours away from getting pounded 18-3 by the A’s.  With performances like that, Gardenhire has a good shot of being canned before long.  That cutout could be a real collector’s item soon.

On the way home we stopped by the Field of Dreams in Dyersville.  This was my first time without Clare.  Everything was movie-set perfect: blue sky; green grass; yellow rows of corn; the Stars and Stripe waving smartly from its pole just this side of the corn in center field; a man in his seventies running the bases, complete with pretend slide into home and his wife cheering him on.  I saw a sign by the field which read in part, “have faith in simplicity.”  That may not be possible for much longer.

A Chicago-area couple bought the site late last year and plans to build a complex with as many as 24 fields for softball and baseball.  Among other things, a handout promises “Meals, Clubhouse lodging, laundry service, access to training facilities for athletes and coaches”; “Ballpark Bucks for use at the Field of Dreams Movie Site”; and “Video coverage of the All-Star Ballpark Heaven experience.”

           The first phase of construction is set to begin in time for tournaments starting next June.  According to the website, the cost will be $675 per player and coach.  I think we spent $10 for a Shoeless Joe Jackson snow globe ten years ago.  Have faith.