Posted April 01, 2020in Des Moines Forgotten
These are strange days for us all, but we will push ahead. Like Mathew McConaughey said in a YouTube video, “Right now we are at a red light, but there is a green light on the other side.” Leave it to McConaughey to take a break from massaging the new
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Posted March 04, 2020in Des Moines Forgotten
On the morning of Wednesday, June 29, 1977, residents of Des Moines woke up and began to carry out their regular morning habits: They got out of bed, opened their living room curtains to observe the rising sun, and drank their pre-timed brewed Folgers. Some of those who left their
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Posted February 05, 2020in Des Moines Forgotten
The numbers on the dial changed, but Ron Sorenson’s commitment to the station and the Des Moines community remained consistent through the years. Ron Sorenson had no interest in a radio career. He loved music. He listened to it on the radio. He even played in a folk band called
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Posted January 01, 2020in Des Moines Forgotten
So’s Your Mother and The Laughing Iguana Most of my faithful readers are aware of my weekly music program on 98.9 FM KFMG called “Iowa Basement Tapes” — a show that plays Iowa’s history in DIY music dating back to the rockabilly and psychedelic acts of the 1960s, the political
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Posted December 04, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
P.T. Barnum would have been impressed by the showmanship. The holidays have arrived whether I want them to or not. We have worked all year for this moment when we spend our hard-earned money on the people we care about the most — and those who we can’t get away
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Posted November 06, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
It was my soul food. I am a Chinese food junky, especially old-fashion sit-down places. When I was growing up in the Quad Cities, my dad would take me to a place in Milan, Illinois, called Shanghai. Shanghai was an old-school, sit-down Chinese place. It was also affordable, so it
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Posted October 02, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
Did you ride the “Hydrotube”? The new season of “Stranger Things” has sparked nostalgic interest in shopping malls. The show highlighted an abandoned mall that was brought back to life as a surging metropolis complete with a pretzel shop, a food court and shopping options as far the eye could
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Posted September 04, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
His leadership at the time continues to be impactful today. I often think about the different parts of my life and how social climates are different. I was born Sept. 11, 1985. The Midwest, as a whole, had a strong middle class, and a good union job could feed a
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Posted July 31, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
Betty Lou Varnum’s show was a safe place for many central Iowa kids. I wish I could have experienced television the way children and adults did back in the 1950s. I imagine it was similar to the first time many of us saw what the Internet had to offer in
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Posted July 03, 2019in Des Moines Forgotten
Big dreams were behind the Warren County track, as it was to be one of the premiere road-racing tracks in the U.S. In October of 2012, I co-hosted Home Movie Day Des Moines, a film event where people brought in their homemade 8mm and 16mm films. Janet Barcheski Green had
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