Dad remembrance pilgrimage: Day 2
Previous leg: Sikeston to Canton, Missouri
July 11, 2022: Canton, Missouri to Tama, Iowa
After a brief night in Canton, Missouri, day two of my pilgrimage began with a long breakfast in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Chris Comly is one of the hardest core long distance riders I know. He has done several Iron Butt Rallies and was returning home to Pennsylvania after participating in the Hoka Hey ride in South Dakota. We originally met online when we were both guest panelists on the Motorcycles and Misfits Podcast. Although we stay in touch through technology, it was a blast to be able reconnect face to face. It’s quite rare that either of us is within three states of the other. Rearranging my schedule for that breakfast was totally worth it.
Fictional tourist attractions
Eventually, both of us had to continue to on to our next destinations. Chris headed east and I headed north towards Riverside. In the original Star Trek series a passing reference was made to the captain of the USS Enterprise being an Iowa boy. After that episode aired, the city leaders of Riverside petitioned the studio to be named the future hometown of James T. Kirk.
The ploy worked. Every year Riverside celebrates Trek Fest and hosts a small museum in honor of Captain Kirk.
Riverside is also the place where I bought my first motorcycle 20 years ago. Ned’s Auto and Cycle is a small shop started in the family garage in the 1950’s. Ned has long since passed but his son, Jim, continues to run the business focusing on European cycle repair. Even though I have yet to own one, Jim is precisely why I continue to lust over anything produced by Moto Guzzi.
Dad’s military history
After stopping in Riverside I resumed my family history explorations and was able to fill in some of the details and context for my fuzzy small child memories by visiting Washington and Iowa City. My dad began his military career as a chaplain in the Iowa National Guard. His first assignment was the 209 Medical Battalion in Iowa City where he also supported the subsidiary medical unit in Washington.
One of my first memories of dad in uniform was when he gave the invocation at the ribbon cutting for the newly built Washington armory. We got to take a tour and I remember being so excited by the indoor rifle range. The Washington armory was precisely what I remembered but the Iowa City visit proved to be a little more challenging.
When I got to the neighborhood where the unit should be I saw nothing I recognized. I circled the block a couple times before spotting a sign that said Johnson County Veterans and Armory Memorial. After parking I learned that dad’s armory was destroyed by the floods of 2008. The unit moved and rebuilt on higher ground. The Johnson County Administration Building stands on that location now.
No sleep ’til Brooklyn
From Iowa City it was time to visit the primary destination of the day, Brooklyn. Yes, Iowa has a Brooklyn too. It is a town of 1,500 people where my dad pastored First Presbyterian Church 1979-1988. My brother, Nathan, was born very early during our stay. Both Nathan and I began elementary school there before finishing high school in Creston.
The clerk of session (translation for non-Presbyterians: church president) was very generous with her time and gave me a tour of the building. I even got to climb up in the bell tower for old time’s sake. The building and the manse look very much like what I remember, but the tiny brick garage we struggled to park in has been replaced by a spacious two car garage built by the BGM shop class.
Our old Sunday school room is still precisely the way I remember it, with the sad exception that the shuffleboard court we spent so much time playing on has now been carpeted over.
Parts of the community of Brooklyn look different from when I was a kid. The old library is now the city museum and the town has rebranded itself as the Community of Flags. Huge flag displays line Jackson Street downtown. The giant American flag can even be seen from the interstate several miles away.
The town was briefly home to John Wayne and one of the Marines who raised the flag of Iwo Jima is from Brooklyn. A couple of Iwo Jima vets were members of our church and dad did one of their funerals before we moved. The school I attended is no longer available there. It was the old fashioned three story red brick building every midwestern city had once upon a time. It has been replaced by a new handicapped accessible building on the same campus as the high school.
Dad was a volunteer firefighter and EMT in Brooklyn. The firehouse that they operated out of has been replaced by a larger, more modern building in what was a vacant lot next to the elementary school when I was growing up. Downtown also has an old vaudeville opera house that was revitalized by one of the local service clubs when I was a kid. During the summer they would show old movies, newsreels, and cartoons to give us something to do. The theater has recently been rehabbed once more and contains a community center named after a local business owner I knew as a kid.
My earliest childhood memories are from our time in Brooklyn. Getting to see it again was a special treat, doubly so since I got to poke around the church building we had spent so much time in as a kid. I will be forever grateful for the hospitality I received from the clerk of session.
Ultimately, it was time move on and I headed north to camp at Otter Creek Lake County Park near Tama.
Day 2 mileage: 219.1 (820.1 total)
Next leg: Tama to Des Moines, Iowa
