Day 23 Garner to West Union

Before we left Garner we had our breakfast and talked with a Nebraskan who was on a tour with some friends. They rode the three wheelers, which I hypothesize are for bikers who because of age and lack of strength become too nervous to handle a big two wheeler.

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He enjoyed not encapsulating himself in a car – he liked to smell the different states and claimed that he could smell the difference between manure from Beef and Dairy cattle. We have gotten there yet, and when we do, we will definitely take the shortest route home.

Freedom Rocks in Iowa

The group was on tour around 16 counties to find the “Freedom Rock” of eachcounty. Iowa has got 99 counties in total and it is a state initiative to erect a rock in each county to honor veterans. Maybe this concept is not 100% transferable to Denmark but with 98 counties in Denmark you could find a common theme and create some attention and tourism in some of the “kommuner” which are not on the common tourist path.

Birthtown of the tractor

Tractors have not always been Troels’ and my main interest but today the tractor suddenly became a talking point. We had turned our mental radars off and were mainly thinking of getting to West Union with the least possible effort in the head wind.

At our lunch stop, however, we spoke with an older gentleman who was working at Charles City scrap yard. He could tell that the tractor was invented in Charles City and as bonus info he could inform that the Little Brown Church was just 10 miles south east of Charles. As he expressed it: “Strange to grow up with the Little Brown Church in your back yard”. The Little Brown Church in Bradford is famous because there is an old song, supposedly known by all Americans, in which this exact little brown church plays a role. According to the Church’s website William Pitts wrote the song before the church was built, forgot about his song, but remembered it, when he later visited Bradford and saw that a brown church had been built on the spot, he had envisioned. Sweet story and a very old fashioned song.

But as mentioned, Charles City is known for the role it played in the history of the American tractor. If tractor is a piece of machinery that can replace horses on a farm there is probably some debate about where the first tractor was built, but the partners Hart and Parr called their construction “a gasoline-powered traction engine” around 1900. The company does not exist anymore – John Deere rules in Iowa

West Union, probably our last night in Iowa