03 Ottumwa, Iowa

If bookstores are rare in Iowa, personal libraries are therefore slim
and eclectic by nature of inheritance. I’m shown a prized old book, an
1895 tome on medicating oneself with wild herbs. I check out the
sections on laudanum, jimson weed, and bleeding oneself to relieve
headaches. I am curious how many people in the Midwest accidentally
killed themselves after using this book, companion to their bible, as a
guide to remedy their ills. The section on tansies is pointed out as an
herb recently found effective against ants. I’m offered borrow of the
book during my visit, but decline on the basis that I will not want to
give it back, will read the whole thing instead of looking at the
soybean and corn, and will feel guilty for not returning a singular
collection of one book per family.

The most interesting building in Ottumwa is one that has been gone for
more than a hundred years. The Ottumwa Coal Palace existed from
1890-1891 as a promotional building veneered with coal and paper mache
made to look like coal. There is currently a scale model (made from
plaster painted to look like coal) of the gothic structure along with
information pertaining to the southeast Iowa coal industry housed at the
Wapello County Historical Museum. Every farmer in southeastern Iowa had
their own coal mine. The museum is very well organized, and occupies the
second and basement floors of the Amtrak and Trailways station in
downtown Ottumwa. The building is made of coarse limestone cut into
ashlar blocks. There are several buildings faced with terra cotta in
Ottumwa, though of modest proportions. In 1916 was built the now
restored six-story Renaissance Revival brick and terra cotta Ottumwa
Hotel south of Central Park. The architects were Proudfoot, Bird &
Rawson of Chicago. The most outstanding building today I think is the
First National Bank of terra cotta in a Neo-classical style. Ottumwa
also sports an historic horse trough with lion’s head and spigots.

Iowa is friendly and consoling in an odd way. I’m sitting on the
sidewalk, which appears to be a native custom, and this gray haired
fellow walks toward me. He is wearing a resplendent silver long-horned
steer belt buckle and a monster of a turquoise and silver bolo tie
clasp. I’m in admiration despite the fact that he looks like he might
have fallen off too many mules and is missing his wife. As he gets close
by he says, “I won’t give up. I’ll never give up.” Not knowing what else
to do I tell him I’ll never give up either, even if I’m not too sure
right then what I’m not about to give up on.

I much enjoy the Canteen, a yellow painted cement block building the
size of a three-car garage where I purchase loose meat on a bun with
onions and mustard and stick a pushpin into a map of America to show
where I am from. This is a happening place in Ottumwa and where I learn
from a proud grandmother that Iowa girls as young as four years of age
shave their legs.

For souvenirs we go to O’Leary’s Hardware where they have a bridal
registry and I try to by a coffee mug with pigs on it. They have nearly
run out, but think that there is one cup left in the back that they go
looking for. Mug in hand I move on in quest of a cold beer.
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][<en Follett
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