Central Iowa

You would think there couldn’t be anything we haven’t seen in central Iowa, but you would be wrong. The little town of Riverside Iowa has a claim to fame, and they milk it for all it is wort. Riverside is the birthplace of James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise – oh yeah, not until March 22, 2028. But that doesn’t stop them from enjoying it.

We started at the Star Trek museum where I stood on a functional transporter – at least it was functional as far as lights and sounds go, but I didn’t actually go anywhere. The Woman sat in Kirk’s captain chair from the deck of the enterprise, and we saw Data’s actual desk used in the series and sold by Sotheby’s to a local here, and later donated to the museum. We saw the spot of his future birth, mingled with a statue of the young Kirk in the local park, and generally just had a blast – no Romulan ale however.

We spent the day snooping around the Amana Colonies National Historic Site. Back in the early-1800’s a group of Germans calling themselves the True Inspiration Congregations believed that communal living and worship was the way to happiness. Being generally pushed out of everyplace they tried to establish in Germany, they fled to the US where religious freedom would welcome them. After settling for a while near Buffalo NY, they bought land and set up 7 communal communities surrounding Amana Iowa.

Their communities flourished in the 1800’s. They didn’t disavow technology like the Amish, they just lived in communal communities. Each of the 7 Amana colonies had one kitchen where the entire community shared their meals. Each person did what they were skilled at, and in return the community provided food, shelter and what they needed. It flourished until the Great Depression, when the communities struggled to meet the needs of its residents, and the residents fell prey to their increasing knowledge of how the rest of the US with its capitalism worked.

In 1932, the communities voted to reorganize. Private ownership of land was now the norm. Women cooked meals for a family of 4 rather than a community of 40. Taxes were paid on earnings, and essentially the only thing the community provided after that was a sense of community, and a strong church that still preached the same virtues. The grand experiment was over.

Only 30 some miles from Amana we discovered the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Presidential Library. Hoover was born in West Branch Iowa in this tiny two room home on August 10, 1874. One of three children of modest parents (his father was the local blacksmith), he went on to become the 31^st President of the United States.

His time in office tested his Quaker upbringing. He won a landslide victory in 1928, but was sworn into office just 8 months before the Great Depression. The Nation largely held him responsible for its woes – Will Rogers was quoted as saying “If you bit into an apple and found a worm, it was Hoover’s fault.” Despite trying hard to enact programs to help the ailing citizens, Congress had no appetite for spending and declined to pass most of his legislation. He was routed by FDR when he ran for a second term. Ironically, most of FDR’s New Deal was based on legislation that Hoover tried to pass but Congress blocked.

Hoover and his first lady, Lou Henry, were instrumental in creating the National Historic Site. Many of the original homes in the neighborhood sit on their original foundations, restored by Hoover and his Foundation. His father’s blacksmith shop, his childhood schoolhouse and other significant homes that he would walk by as a child are still there. Herbert and Lou Henry are buried on a hill in the Historic Site that overlooks all – the Presidential Library, his childhood home, and his father’s shop.

While at the Hoover NHS we managed to catch a glimpse of an Eastern Meadowlark, a bird we had not spotted before. So we will consider it a lifer, since we have not identified it in any of our travels to date.

Talk to you soon.