They Say You Can't Go Home Again (but you really can!)

This blog starts with us being in Des Moines, Iowa, the place where I was born and lived until 2 months before my 14th birthday.  I always remember the Iowa State Fair was such a fun place and couldn't wait until the next August so I could go again!  The fair is huge, the fairgrounds are huge, most of the area is paved and the grounds are clean - no trash around.  So, after 49 years, I got to go to the fair again!  I had told one of my elementary/junior high friends who lives in Mexico that I was coming and she said she and her family were coming too!  Then, another friend, Kim, said she and her husband and daughter were going to come from Pennsylvania.  (I last saw Debbie and Kim Spring Break 1972.)  Another friend who lives in Minnesota said he and his wife could come!  There are still several who live locally and I got to see several of them too.  I hadn't seen any of the others since I moved to Arkansas in 1967.  We had an absolutely, wonderful time catching up and doing some fun stuff.  

I heard on the news tonight that the fair had record breaking crowds. The total attendance was 1.117 million!  Saturday, August 15, was the largest attendance with 115,000.  That was the day that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were there.

Sky Ride at the fair

 Odd vegetables

 All these were made from recycled aluminum

cans.  They were shipped out of state to a place

where they took all the color from the aluminum

then shipped it back to Iowa for this artist.

 We saw lots of old tractors...

 ...and lots of farm equipment

 Conrad and I standing behind the largest pumpkin

at the fair.  It weighed in at 1,235 pounds!

 Just a few of the canned entries

 The cakes were amazing and didn't look like cakes!

 A sand sculpture - It was created with 50 tons of

sand and took 100 hours of sculpting

 Meet the Big Bull

It's a Red Angus named Sampson

weighing 2,893 pounds!

Finally, the famous Butter Cow!

This is sculpted every year for the fair.  It is 5-1/2 feet

high and 8 feet long.  They use 600 pounds of butter

for sculpting.  I remember this so well!

We spent a couple hours with one of my cousins and her husband here at the fair.  Then I met up with my school buddies and walked some more.  We spent 10 hours at the fair and still didn't see it all!  

The most amazing thing was that Ken and Millie, who bought our house from my parents in 1967, invited us to stay with them for 5 nights!  I GOT TO SLEEP IN MY OLD ROOM!!!  The house has changed a lot.  They added on to the house and made it much bigger, added on a 2-car garage, and even added some on to the basement.  They have added lots of trees and plants.  They have a great garden, apple, pear, plum and peach trees, a cranberry bush, blackberries, honey bees, grapes and lots of big shade trees.  They have had a lot of rain this summer and everything was so lush and green.  Ken and Millie are such interesting people and so much fun to be with.  We felt so comfortable and welcome.  Mom and Dad would be so proud of the way it's been kept up and that this couple loves it as much as they did.  

My dad built our house in Iowa and we moved in to the basement when I was 6 weeks old.  I don't know exactly when it was completely finished but my dad spent part of the year for 4 years straight (1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954) working in Greenland to build Thule Air Base. He had bought an acre of land from a neighbor and paid for the house as he built it. Originally, it was 900 square feet on the main level and the basement and about half that on the 2nd floor and the rest was a walk-in attic.  There were 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 on the main level.  In the spring of 1959, the house was hit by lightning and burned the upstairs.  When dad rebuilt it, he added a bathroom up there.  That upstairs bathroom still has the original bathtub, toilet, tile and medicine cabinet!  (The sink broke and they had to replace it.)  The bathroom on the main floor still has the same bathtub and toilet but they built a vanity with a new sink in there.  All of the rooms have been changed but I still see "the old house."  (Sorry if you feel I've gone on and on about this but I was just so excited about the whole deal!)

 The garden

 Back yard of my old house

 The back of the house (When they remodeled,
the moved the upstairs windows.)

For comparison, this is what the back of the
house looked like when I lived there.  My
bedroom was upstairs on right.

 The garden

 The south side of the front yard - my dad

put the flag pole there!

 The front of the house (When they remodeled, they
extended the upstairs bedrooms to go the width of
the house. They also added the bay window to
accommodate a Christmas tree!)

For comparison, here is the front of the house
when I lived there.  The upstairs window was my room.

 A view of the house and yard from the road

 Ken asked me if I recognized these cabinets.

When they redid the kitchen, they moved these

old ones to the basement workshop.  They have

the original hardware on them!

This was our front door.  They also replaced

it and used it on a store room in the basement.

So now you've had a little history of my life and have had glimpses of the Iowa State Fair. My next post will be about our trip to see the Bridges of Madison County...no, not the movie...where the movie was filmed AND seeing John Wayne's birth place.  This trip has been incredible and we've only just begun!  We've already driven over 1,150 miles!