BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Archives

The listserv where the buildings do the talking

BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS@LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Ken Follett <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Date:
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 07:41:25 +0000
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (75 lines)
01 Ottumwa, Iowa
Ken Follett's 1998 Heritage Quest

The scheduled 19 passenger United Express Beechcraft from Chicago landed
at Ottumwa Industrial Airport in the afternoon. I think the twice-daily
landing is the sole method of weed whacking for the cracks of the
concrete runway. Prior to the trip we had bet on the color of the wind
sock. It was orange.  Driving past the empty base buildings, crudely
built of an orange terra cotta, I feel like we have arrived at a remote
Midwestern mental hospital. Richard Nixon was once based here at the now
abandoned Navy Airbase, for what reason I have no idea, probably to
practice speechifying. Ottumwa meant for the Sox ‘n Fox “place of bumpy
waters”, which aptly resembles the flight in, but today is known as the
City of Bridges. There are six bridges in Ottumwa, I think, as the town
straddles the Des Moines River going anywhere implies crossing at least
fifteen times and it is easy for a tourist to lose track.

Not having been in town for an hour I'm hanging loose in the Enterprise
lot waiting for a rental rig when the guy with the hose washing a
pick-up truck points me out to one of my cousins as his friend Bob
Perkins, manager of the local Kum & Go. “Why, if I saw him on the street
Id say, “Hello Bob.”” I brace myself to quote grade A egg specials.

My first culinary exploration in Iowa is sauerkraut pizza with stale
beer, then biscuits with paste gravy, loose meat, and last is native
morel mushrooms with a bubbly wine. Everyone in Iowa is friendly and
they like to overfeed. Later, at home to Long Island I ask for sweet
corn, something I do not see eaten in Iowa. There is not much fiber
consumed here.

I am not in Iowa for RAGBRAI, the big bicycle race,  but for RFR, Rose
Family Reunion. My maternal grandfather was from West Grove, formerly
called Dead Manes Grove (a place where a dead man was found), which is
south of Ottumwa, south of Paris (a smaller crossroad than West Grove),
and about seven miles west of Bloomfield, near the Burlington-Northern
tracks. We stop long enough to look at a barn, swat flies, shake a leg,
and let the kids play with two local kids on the swing set. We are
visiting several gravesites, an Iowanian pastime particularly for teens
under moonlight, and the original Rose home surrounded by twittering
swallows. Someone not a Rose now owns the property, and there is little
incentive to fix any porchwork found broken.

We are told about the Mormons camping on the property. We are told about
my grandfather running around the woods with a spirited redheaded
Montgomery girl and their spooking a bear in a honey tree. My great
grandmother was a Montgomery, and a schoolteacher, which my great
grandfather caught in the barn. Rose & Montgomery were companionable
families dating from a Huguenot landing in New Amsterdam, travel up the
Hudson, stopping in Upstate New York then settling in southeastern Iowa
in the 1870’s. Great grandfather Solomon Rose was reputed to be a fine
judge of horses and at one time the wealthiest farmer in the region with
700 acres of sheep land. Great grandmother Emily Rose seems to have been
a bit peeved at being caught in the barn and is reputed to have spent
the rest of her life ruining Solomon to the benefit of her boys, my
grandfather being the youngest of the batch. I probably have it all
wrong, but I figure it better to have a fabricated heritage than none at
all.

They say that Emily did not like the woman that my grandfather’s elder
brother was courting, so she arranged that the two boys would travel
East to visit the portion of the family in Upstate New York. I'm struck
by the series of divergent choices made in the past to leave West Grove.
The countryside in both locations looks the same, only there be a few
less rocks in Iowa. My grandfather meets his future redheaded bride at
the West Dryden First Baptist Church Mountain Oyster Dinner Dance. In
those days everything reasonable and respectable had a long name. He
remains at Upstate New York and becomes a master finish carpenter. His
brother returns to Iowa and marries his sweetheart. This is not enough,
I want to fill up the conversations that I imagine were had along the
way. The buildings alone do not suffice as an answer, they are only
props.
--
][<en Follett
SOS Gab & Eti -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5836

ATOM RSS1 RSS2