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. 

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.

A Giant Cock, Cone and a Dash of Pocahontas

After a dandy of an day and evening at my mother-in-law's bungalow it was time to pack the hounds and head south to my dad's miniature bachelor pad (it's small because he is really little) in Griswold, IA. As the wind whipped the hell out the hounds with their heads popping out both passenger side windows, I kept my eyes open for the next two-lane attraction. Our first photo-op came in the form of a large cock and cone on the outskirts of Clear Lake, on the north of US HWY18. Both fiberglass megaliths were exactly what I needed to get the handy Canon primed for the next few weeks.

Clear Lake Cock

Two of my favorite things as a kid:
Wonder Bread and a TWIST cone

I can honestly say that I have never seen
the underside of a cone's lip before.

As a young chub my Grandpa Jack used to take us fishing and actually let us talk, unlike Leo who demanded silence while trying not to stick his whole finger into the stink bait jar. If old Grandpa wanted us to really feel like we were hot shit he would take us out to snag a couple buckets full of bullheads (a nasty little fish that lives in and eats the crap at the bottom of the lake). Those slimy guys never grew much larger than a hoagie bun, unless you were to find yourself in Crystal Lake, IA where the World's Largest Bullhead resides.

Swell Fella on the Jetty: You want me to move my truck from in front of that?
Sweaty Fat Man from Chicago: It's not in the way, thanks though.
SFotJ: Isn't that thing goofy looking?
SFMfC: Yes it is. I;m traveling throughout Iowa snapping photos of big weird stuff.
SFotJ: That's not the biggest weirdest thing in Iowa, this guy is (gesturing to the old man in the boat).

We used to catch enough bullheads to fill the cleaning table in Grandpa Jack's yard.
They would be piled so high that it was nothing more than a floppy, sloppy table top.

In a yard across from the Bullhead was an old Rock Island Railroad dining car. I bet that poor car never in a million years would have thought that it was going to end up as the centerpiece to a half ass hosta garden in small town Iowa.

This was more than a big day, it was the plunge that I needed to clear the steel wool from between my ears and realize that fresh air was supposed to make my nipples hard - not my eyes run and nose itchy. The only thing that could have followed such an amazing stop was the World's Largest Cheeto in Algona, IA. As I closed in on this the most illusive of the World's Largest snacks I spotted a billboard for a Louis Sullivan Jewel Box Bank only a mile from the Cheeto.

A few year back the city of Algona raised $180 to purchase the World's Largest Cheeto as a tourist draw. Once the seller found out about how his Cheeto brought an entire dozen of people together he donated it to the city. Rather than display their haul in a public place for all to see, it is kept behind locked doors at Emerald's Restaurant. Sadly they are closed between lunch and dinner leaving my memory card short an image of that sweet little nugget of orange goodness.

If it were not for that Jewel Box Bank billboard this stop would have been a wash. Louis Sullivan was the mentor and teacher to a pampas ass named Frank Lloyd Wright. Without Sullivan, there would not have been a Wright. Later in life Sullivan became a dead broke drunk. Much of the world had written him off, thankfully a bank director wasn't one of them. He designed and completed nine banks in total, all of which are still standing.

You can definitely see where Wright pulled some design elements.
Henry Adams Building
123 Main Street - Algona, IA

He loved placing intricate patterns on mundane surfaces. What a grand sill.

Only two more stops to go and at this point the hounds were a bit peckish and in need of some major leg stretched. It just so happened to be their luck that a swanky dog bakery occupied a storefront two doors down from the bank. Pet Kingdom's proprietors were two swell gals that absolutely loved the hounds and insisted that they taste the pastries before I even considered buying. We left with $4 of pastries in the sack, $10 in their bellies and an ear full of great places in which to photograph.