Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back

After an unintended extended hiatus, I’m reviving this heap with a purpose. Because things that move are more interesting than things which are fixed, what we’ll have here is everything and anything having to do with how we move ourselves and our stuff.

Yeah, there will be the important but often boring “transportation policy” matters: infrastructure, gas taxes, user fees, pavement. (But with your help we’ll try to remove as much of the boring as possible, because anything that effects you is usually at least somewhat interesting. At least to you).
But this site will also I hope have lots of cool (and useful) stuff: riverboats, neat old (and new) cars, getting there by air, shortcuts and blue highways, scenery, train whistles in the night, etc., etc.

The great Iowa writer Richard Bissell (Dubuque boy) maybe wrote it best:

I’m afflicted with the hobo philosophy; Weary Willie and Dusty Rhodes are fellow travelers. My wife is thinking of Bridgeport. But I’m thinking of getting to Bridgeport, of moving in the direction of Bridgeport, of the act of going. I’m thinking of the road and the cars and trucks and the tollbooths, stoplights, rooftops, diners, railroad tracks, church steeples, factories, people with flat tires, truck stops, coffee, gas pumps, road maps, perhaps rain or snow and the windshield wiper going Swish Swish Clank Clank.
This is very much a work in (barely) progress and will take a bit of time to gain momentumj, but I hope you’ll be along for at least some of the ride.

*about this blog’s title

Don’t take it too seriously. We’re all idiots here – and I mean that in the good, Johnny Damon  sense. (And I mean that in the good, Jesus-in-the-Fenway-centerfield Johnny Damon sense, not the shorn, Evil Empire Johnny Damon  sense).

 

Say goodbye, it’s Independence Day

Cedar Rapids, Iowa July 4 2008

Time Check neighborhood

Members of Castle Rock Community Church of New Orleans at work in Lisa Kuzela’s house in the Time Check neighborhood. The house had about 5 feet of water in its first floor.

Pastor John Gerhardt of Castle Rock Community hauls a load of debris from Lisa Kuzela’s house in the Time Check neighborhood. The church sent 10 people to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City for three days of demolition and recovery work. Gerhardt’s wife Wendy Gerhardt, nee Rhatigan, was born and raised in Cedar Rapids. Castle Rock’s trip north came after a church group from Cedar Rapids cancelled its planned trip to New Orleans for relief work.

John Gerhardt: “We can look at people with all sincerity and say, ‘We can get through this.’ It causes some stress, but you can get through it.”

Gerhardt’s neighborhood had about 6feet of floodwater, about the same as Kuzela’s area of Time Check. He said about half the residents have sinced returned.

“There’s a sprint at the beginning, to get all your stuff out of your house. But then it becomes a marathon.”

Lisa Kuzela snaps a photo of the church crew at work.

Little Bohema neighborhood

If you’re fortunate enough to have been there, you know why the Little Bohemia was one of America’s great corner taverns. If you’re not, you may be too late.

There was substantial debate over the question: Did the neighborhood get its name from the Little Bo, or vice versa? It was a reputed hangout of Grant Wood and Marvin Cone, which sounds reasonable because Cone actually painted it.