Au Revoir, Au Revoir Pee-Wee. Au Revoir Central Iowa

Sweet Moses, I misjudged the number of photos that I captured between Central and Western Iowa. Now you have to wait until tomorrow before you are given goose skin from the Insane Asylum Grotto.


Keeping the speedometer at or below Richard Nixon's limit of fifty-five allowed for a physical and mental down shift from my normal Chicago tollway bob and weaves. My slow motion instant play of a day wound through both paved and gravel paths cutting hundreds of thousand of nearly harvest ready countryside. After my stop and chat with the retired Ohio couple near the tree in the road I headed forty-five miles south to the Pizza Ranch server's recommendation of the Vallisca Axe Murder House. 

A delightful little pig welcomed me into what was a medium village with a creepy vibe that I couldn't put my sausage finger on. When I created the Max Allan Collins Film Expo in Waterloo, IA a swell team of filmmakers entered a documentary to be screened about a ninety-five year unsolved axe murder. 

On 9 June, 1912 eight people were bludgeoned to death in their beds with the family axe. Several men were accused, one was acquitted and none were found guilty - leaving the case unsolved. The garage is a three dimensional guestbook for visitors who take the day and overnight tours are available through the official Vallisca Axe Murder website. The image above is a rendering of the home as it was that bloody night along with disturbing portraits of the victims.

Since my first mile into Operation Decompression I promised myself that no admission fees would be paid, all experiences were to be free as the pollen filled air running through my wheezy lungs. Sadly the axe house tours were $10, so I ended up circling the house and garage with an overwhelming sense dark weight on my shoulders. Yeah, yeah, I know that it sounds ridiculous, but this place was just that fucking creepy.

After punching the ATM's pedal to the fifty-five mile per hour metal I got the hell out of Vallisca to meet Leo at Atlantic's Mexican restaurant, the one with free WiFi and hot wings. While I was scarfing deep fried chimichangas drowned in queso, Patrick Kolts texted me about joining him and his friends Casey, Molly and Carolyne for a bonfire and tour of 400 sq ft tree house perched thirty feet above a lake. Before my treetop experience Leo and I skipped the fried ice cream and decided to search for the world's largest bicycle in Lewis, IA.

RAGBRAI is an insane bike ride across Iowa that begins with a back tire dip in the Missouri River and ends at the mighty Mississippi River. Each year the route changes allowing for different batches of towns to reap the monetary benefits of hosting 23,000 drunken two-wheel party hounds. 

This year the lucky burg of Lewis commemorated the onslaught with a sixteen foot tall,
thirty-two foot wide one speed hipster dream bike. The only thing missing was a sixty-four foot tall
douche sporting size 170 skinny jeans with sixty-two inch cuffs.

With my last Central Iowa oddities in the hopper I was off to experience the grandest treehouse in the Midwest and matching hardwood fire. Pitch dark peppered with vertigo inducing constellations made the winding hike through meadows and timber all the better. The view of mist rolling in on the lake's surface from the treehouse would have made any thriller film's cinematographer jealous. 


After a full evening of campfire songs, peach pockets (fresh peaches, brown sugar and marshmallows wrapped in foil - tossed onto the coals) and crazy nordic folktales the girls headed back to the warmth of home. An hour or so later the fellas and I jumped into a wide aluminum canoe and returned to shore. Patrick sat in the bow with a lantern raised high, Captain Casey paddled in the stern and I in the amidship without being able to see anything beyond the oars. My fear of water mixed with the freezing air and butterfly excitement reminded me of sitting at the top of a killer water slide as a husky eleven year old. 


I could not have imagined a grander way of ending my time in Central Iowa. It was nearly three in the morning when I pulled up to Leo's and around four when I was packed and prepped for my morning commute to Western Iowa / Eastern Nebraska. 

Coffee with Harriet Tubman Near the Tree in the Road

The hounds and I settled quite nicely at Leo's after having read his thirty page list of house rules. My favorite of the rules was that the fringe on his area rug had to be spaced exactly 3mm apart at any given time throughout the day. In honor of his handsome little museum celebrating the life of a bachelor, Griswold has installed cellular signal jammers to ensure that all who enter are as lonely as he.

Upon Leo's java recommendation I jumped into the ATM and set course for the Sweet Joy Shoppe. Patrick Kolts' (the Brooklyn transplant) text message about being in Atlantic arrived as I was tipping back a much needed redeye (coffee with a shot of espresso). We caught up through a mix of texts that ended with him joining me for my third. After a swell hour of coffee talk I was given and accepted an invite to dinner at his parents' farmstead the next night.

No matter the distance traveled a sense of being beat down with a penny filled sock leaves me rendered useless. Luckily this feeling swept me to the Shoppe's outdoor bistro table for a five hour stint of swigging bean infused hot water. While stationed near the entrance it soon became clear that I was becoming something of a small town celebrity with questions of, "Are you the writer? When can I see your blog? Have you contacted the local paper, they would love to interview you? Could you illustrate my children's book? Are you from Europe?"

Dinner with the Kolts' was a spectacular mix of beef, potatoes, Dorothy Lynch salad dressing and best of all - truly amazing people. The theme of the evening was travel. We heard of Patrick's parents' time at the Louvre, his friend Carolyne's adventures in Guatemala and of his tour of the world as a photography assistant. It was nice to have a home cooked meal around a dinning room table that lasted into the early hours of morning.

I woke with the need to cram two days worth of photos into one since I took the day off. Leo and I met for a salad that he raved about at the Pizza Ranch. Our waitress spotted Google Maps on the iPad and said, "Oooo, maps. Where ya headin'?" I layed out my two-lane adventure and she recommended the Villisca Axe Murder House. Locals are key to finding the truly unique goods in an area.

On my way out of town I swung by the Hitchcock House, on the word of Leo that it was the boyhood home of the infamous director. Turns out is had no ties to the Vertigo King, rather it was a safe house on the Underground Railroad.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed to find the Hitchcock House had not inspired a world in which birds attack. Although this was a swell time capsule that included a safe house for slaves escaping from Nebraska and Kansas on their way to Detroit with a final destination of Canada. 

A cupboard in the basement swung open to conceal the fugitive slaves during a
time that offering aid or shield to them was a federal offense.



After such a solemn stop I was in need of a lighthearted oddity and what could be better than a plow absorbed into an oak tree?



A farmer was tending to his plow when a battalion of Union Soldiers marched past this very field.
A wind of patriotic revelry swept the farmer up and tossed him into rank, leaving his plow against a bur oak.
Sadly the farmer never returned from war and the plow was swallowed whole by the tree.



You can only see a few pieces of the plow:
above - moldboard is the fancy word for the sharp end that gouges the soil



The clevis or what is commonly called brass knuckles.



 Lucile Vanderbilt and Sir Winston Woo in the split trunk of a monster oak.
Take number four. Ms. Vanderbilt does not enjoy the lens of a camera.

If you ever wake from a heavy night of drinking near Exira, be sure to crawl your way to this ninth wonder of the modern world.

Keeping with my dendrophiliac fantasies I pushed forward and found another rare tree, one that has grown in the intersection of 350th and Nighthawk just outside of Brayton, IA. This 100 foot tall cottonwood was nothing more than a switch that could have just as likely been used to swat the ass of a mouthy farm kid, but it was destined to take root. Local lore says that a land surveyor jammed a cottonwood branch into the prairie to aid in his marking of Audubon and Cass counties.  



The fellas who lay gravel were on a union break when they came upon the sapling. After a discussion
over olive loaf and sour milk they decided to plot the roads around it rather than getting off of their
equipment to cut it down. (I may have fabricated the whole union worker thing, it is a mystery
as to why it was never cut down to make way for the roads).



The ATM did not like being parked half in a ditch and almost refused to clear her way out.
As I lurched forward into the road I almost sideswiped a Buick from Ohio that held a nice
retired couple in town for Atlantic's Coca-Cola days.

Tomorrow I will complete this day's stops and prepare you for western Iowa and Omaha, both of which had more visual treasures than you could ever imagine. Dare I say Insane Asylum Grotto?

Here is the Nice Indian Woman I was Talking About

What I thought to be as a short leg of three plus hours turned into a nine hour jaunt peppered with a couple of dandies. The final two stops made for a spiritual experience balanced by an ultra jumbo gal in moccasins.

West Bend, IA is nothing more than a gas station mashed into a smattering of ticky-tacky little boxes wrapped around the opus of an inspired manic priest.

Like many of the locations captured by my handy fish-eye lens,
the Grotto of the Redemption has the distinguished honor of being the "World's Largest" grotto.
Father Dobberstein activated the Catholic Phone Tree (yes, they have such a thing)
and requested that all parishioners load railcars headed for West Bend with
precious stones; geodes, coral, petrified wood, calcite and a whole sack of other geological oddities.

Fr. Dobberstein spent forty-two years constructing this wonder beginning in 1912.
He had only two assistants toward the end of his life, Matt Szerensce and Father Greving,
who eventually completed the project after Dobberstein's death.

Even the stations of the cross are constructed entirely of only the grandest stones that
a Catholic could find. No matter where you stand in the Grotto a sense of calm surrounds you. 

Exquisite Italian marble sculptures of Christ, his Disciples, angels, Mary and Joseph
are placed chronologically throughout the Grotto. Here is Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.
A creepy looking Judas was hidden around the corner with his sack of gold
coins for pointing Christ out in the Roman lineup.

I could have spent hours pining over the placement and beauty of each gem.
Even with the intensity of subject matter there was an ever present sense of whimsical folk art.

I know that you will never be "just in the neighborhood" of the Grotto of the Redemption,
but make the trip whether you are religious or not. Father Dobberstein's creation that was built
to fulfill the promise made to the Blessed Mary for curing him of pneumonia.

Walking out of the Grotto renewed the purpose behind Operation Decompression and pumped me full of curiosity for the remainder of my adventure. With just enough time for one more stop before bunking at Little Leo's Griswold manse, I again hit the two-lanes.

One of the best parts of foregoing any tollways or freeways is the lackadaisical feel of meandering among the crops ready for harvest. My colorblind eyes work best when the surrounding colors are earth tones, making for a gem of a view.

Twenty-seven miles southwest of the Grotto in the small town of Pocahontas, IA stands a lady who was forced to accompany a Brit named John Smith and his singing dog in their canoe out west.

If it were not for this brave twenty-five foot maiden Mr. Smith would
have been executed by her tribe for duping them into selling
Manhattan for a bucket of Mardis Gras beads.  

Pocahontas, IA is named "The Princess City", yet Pocahontas was never a princess.
It was only after her death that a fictitious title was bestowed upon her.
P.S. She married a fella who invented a better strain of tobacco, became wealthy, had a son, moved to England, was the toast of the Court and ended up dying of an unknown illness at the age of twenty-two on a river bank in Virginia.

I will make the rest of this lengthy novella quick and to the point through the magic of bullet points:

• I had to pass through Atlantic, IA on my way to Leo's.
• Atlantic is sixteen miles north of Griswold.
• Julie and I have a friend named Patrick Kolts who lives in Brooklyn, NY.
• Patrick's Parents live near Atlantic.
• On my way through I voice texted Patrick, "Chad Allen reporting from Atlantic, IA, all is well"
• The next day he texted, "What?! I'm in Atlantic, IA"

More on Brooklyn via Atlantic tomorrow along with an Underground Railroad House, an axe murder house and my becoming a local celebrity in Atlantic.