I rode into Grafton, Iowa on a gorgeous Sunday morning that promised to be warm but not too warm. The peak of Turkey Days had been reached--probably at about one or two that morning at the second of two scheduled dances. I was not around to see it. I had stayed in my hotel room to watch the exciting, nervous Bucks playoff game.
But I had been there on a mission that had been for the most part completed. Grafton, Iowa has two celebrations of note: One in late winter, called its Winter Prom, where you really can dress in prom-like clothes for a dance in a high school-type (Grafton no longer has high school) gym and nobody will think less of you. It is a gathering of relief that we've all made it through yet another bleak winter so the drinks are cheap and stiff and the music is easy to shake a leg to. People know about it from all over. In northern Iowa, at that time of the year, you take what you can get.
The other is Turkey Days, done in commemoration, more or less, of the turkey farms that used to fairly cover the surrounding landscape. There's only one left now, but the spirit of the times, I guess, are brought back the third weekend of every July. The Friday night beer tent, for instance, featured large turkey legs that went for five bucks and that satisfied any hunger anyone could ever want. Sandwiches were not thinly stuffed.
I had learned of its resurrection, post-pandemic, by getting on Facebook. I read the announcement on Wednesday. I had nothing else pending. Off I would go. Based on my experiences with them, I would not recommend every hotel in northern Iowa, but the beds were all right. But I had promised myself to see every Grafton twice--I have to get going now; that lost year can't be replaced--and here was my chance to check off the Iowa box.
There were softball tournaments and beer pong and the featured parade, probably the shortest and most unadorned I have yet seen. But it had the prerequisite cars with advertising on the doors, and kids scooping up the small bits of candy that get thrown from them. They don't fill their pockets anymore; they bring Baggies to handle it.
My goal is to visit, and get to know at least a little about, all the Graftons in the United States. To the best of my knowledge, there are eighteen of them, most of which are incorporated. Grafton, Iowa, population 252 or so, is not the smallest incorporated Grafton on the map. But it is organized, it is clean, and on Sunday morning, it is as quiet as a mouse would be inside Immanuel Lutheran Church, still the town's centerpiece.
The rest was pretty much as it was upon my first visit, in early March 2018, at about noon: Eerily quiet. Not one other car on any of its streets--not one. No one appeared to be doing anything outside, which was far odder than in early March, when the cold winds whistled. It was Sunday, the day of rest, after church. And Grafton was resting.
I had two goals before returning to Milwaukee later that day. The first was to find Lowell Walk's grave. He was still alive when we met in 2018, and I managed to get out of him the story of how he had succeeded the sadly killed (in a boiler accident) mayor, went to Iowa State to a conference which warned of the demise of the small town (in 1970; prescient, that) and returned full of fire. He called a town meeting at Immanuel, laid out the crisis, and the intrepid bunch assembled split into discussion groups and came up with recommendations, many of which were acted upon. (See, back in the day, there wasn't some blithering blowhard saying, I alone can fix this.)
Lowell Walk was a member of a number of families that settled in Grafton and pretty much never left. He served, as did so many others, in World War II; another gravesite had noted that the poor fellow died in Normandy a month after D-Day. After the tragic accident, Walk replaced the mayor and stayed in office for 26 years.
Nobody can know what would have happened if he had not stepped up, but it can be reasonably said that he saved Grafton, Iowa from an uncertain fate. I met his daughter, Nancy, the town librarian, and she mentioned he was still around, though he didn't like to talk to strangers. I coaked her to coax him, and sure enough, he showed up. After talking a bit about his war service and the town in general, he got comfortable enough to pose for this picture with Nancy, before taking me around a town of which he was duly proud:
When he showed me the town's Community Center (the best thing that meeting produced, and really impressive for such a small town), he opened a room filled top to bottom with Nescos into which fresh turkey meat would be cooked. (Remember those?) That's one of the reasons I had to have a big leg--in remembrance of him. I took it on faith that it had been cooked in a Nesco. Tasted just fine.
When I returned last weekend, I learned that he had passed on, said Nancy, as the pandemic began but not of the pandemic itself. He was 96. Though it wasn't unexpected, she clearly missed him. She had directed me to the gravesite, but typically, I'm terrible with directions. I entered what I thought was the north end of the graveyard, looked to the left as she had said and found graves, all right, but not his.
Then, almost by magic, a small fellow drove up in a red pickup truck, probably to do some mourning. He'd been around a few years. I had pulled the car slightly inside the gate, so I thought I might be doing something improper, but I was merely incorrect.
He came up from behind on foot. I rolled down the window. "You're fine," he said of my car's position. "I've left room for you to back out."
"Do you know where Lowell Walk's grave is?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," he said, in a tone that revealed more than it said: If you're from around here, everybody knows. "It's down there at the north entrance."
Oh. The north entrance. I was north, but not north enough. I thanked him and drove another hundred yards or so.
The gravestone is simple. Considering his accomplishments and importance to the community, he probably deserved something much larger, but he wouldn't have liked that. He wouldn't have liked a big deal made about him. So many who served then were similar.
He lies next to his wife. A designation of his membership in the American Legion--the membership, as small as it was, took the typical place in the parade yesterday, short-sleeved white Oxford shirts, black ties and bulging beer guts but prideful, with those in their lawn chairs rising as the flag passed--stands next to it, and the gravestone has his U.S. Air Force service noted. (Actually, the Air Force as such didn't exist until 1947. It should have said "Army Air Forces," but who's to quibble?)
Lowell spent a considerable time in India, which is a place Americans don't usually associate with the Second World War. His job was unsung but vital: loading planes to fly over the Himalayan "Hump" to deliver supplies to the Chinese, most of whom were then our friends. Not long before he died, someone had come looking for him to try to form a group of those who were still left from that unit. Despite his protestations--he preferred face-to-face discussions, never trusting anything done over the phone--he agreed to write down some of his wartime travels so they could be at least told to someone calling from California. I asked Nancy if she still had them. She did. She was kind enough to run off a copy.
Some of those details will appear later. The second of my goals for the day could not be achieved, but that could easily be done online.
I had been gone three years. My journey to Grafton, Iowa has been completed. I know enough. I know that Lowell Walk has passed on but left something no one has yet taken away: A tight-knit community still filled with descendants of several families that, for one reason or another, never thought it was to their advantage to move. You drive through Grafton, Iowa on a Sunday morning and it's so incredibly quiet that you wonder what's really there. If Lowell were here, he could tell you.
He left a Grafton of Winter Proms and Turkey Days and pathetically small parades; all kinds of hokey stuff. But he did leave it intact, still going, though challenges remain. Maybe it will become another Grafton ghost town someday, swallowed up by corporate consolidation and excess. But it sure didn't while he was here. It sure wouldn't on his watch.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment