Posted September 05, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
South Des Moines Sculpture Park Art Festival is Sept. 15 The outhouse doesn’t work, at least not as originally designed. Instead, the worn and weathered wooden box hides the smoke machine. The smoke machine attaches to an underground piping system running to a 30-foot-tall unidentified flying object. The faux UFO
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Posted August 01, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Gloom Balloon frontman shows off his favorite albums. For any fan of Iowa music, Patrick Tape Fleming should be an instantly recognizable name. If you don’t know him as a founding member of Ames-based rock band The Poison Control Center, you might know him from his enduring musical efforts under the moniker Gloom Balloon
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Posted July 04, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Altoona engine expert saves a rusted-out relic from going postal It looked like a cannon, and assuming the old engine wouldn’t run again, the man’s plan was to transform it into a mailbox. But before putting it out for U.S. Postal duty, the man heard he needed to talk to Don Pettey. Engines of
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Posted June 06, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Graham Steffes-Clayton loves lifting heavy stuff Strongman Graham Steffes-Clayton likes calculus, his hometown of Pleasant Hill, being a college student, playing tennis and eating food. But most of all, Steffes-Clayton likes lifting heavy stuff — and the 18-year-old is good at it. “I won the United States Strongman Association national
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Posted May 02, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
One small step for man and one man’s mission to touch history Most people know Paul Revere for his famous late-night horse ride while proclaiming, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” Fewer people are aware that when Revere wasn’t saving the nation from tyranny, the American hero earned
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Posted April 04, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Mushroom bats, sawdust baseballs, Spiderman masks and a passion for America’s game During the summer of 1968, Mark Mahoney fell victim to the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. The Iowa kid from Oelwein entered that day’s doubleheader ready to cheer for the Cincinnati Reds and The Big Red Machine loaded
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Posted February 28, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
State champion pinball wizard will represent Iowa in Las Vegas at national tournament HISTORY LESSON: Pinball machines were originally made without flippers. Winning was a matter of chance, thus the flashy games were little more than well-lit gambling devices functioning as slot machines. During the 1940s, these flipperless diversions were deemed hazardous to society
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Posted January 31, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Possibly Iowa’s largest collection of frog figures This started with a gift from her mother. Charlotte Loter was in seventh grade. It was a frog made of cloth and stuffed with something similar to whatever it is they put into Beanie Babies — although it pre-dated Beanies by years. If you had asked her
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Posted January 03, 2018in Collections & Hobbies
Local veteran Julia Wearmouth wins gold at the 2017 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival During the Vietnam conflict, Julia Wearmouth’s older brother was a lurp. That’s military speak for long-range reconnaissance patrol or LRRP. LRRP teams are small and heavily armed reconnaissance units that patrol deep inside enemy territory. “Most of
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Posted December 06, 2017in Collections & Hobbies
Boyhood friends replicate a Wagon Queen Family Truckster “This is a damn fine automobile, if you want my honest opinion,” said the car salesman to Clark Griswold before concluding his bait-and-switch in the 1983 comedy, “Vacation.” “You think you hate it now,” the slickster adds. “But wait’ll you drive it.”
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