Golf Quotes – A Par Five

“Golf: A passion, an obsession, a romance, a nice acquaintanceship with trees, sand, and water.”  Bob Ryan

“If you’re caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron.  Not even God can hit a 1-iron.”  Lee Trevino (pictured at right)

“It’s easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister’s fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification.”  Bruce McCall

“If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is.”  Horace G. Hutchinson

“They throw their clubs backwards, and that’s wrong.  You should always throw a club ahead of you so that you don’t have to walk any extra distance to get it.”  Tommy Bolt

Putt, Putt, Putt — Pow

As Independence Day approaches, we expect to hear the pow, pow of fireworks going off. But, we don’t necessarily  expect to hear the putt, putt, putt, of old tractors.

But, that’s what Vernon Althoff of rural Coggon has been up to this time of year since the mid-1990s. He put out a couple of his tractors for his brother, Lawrence’s, homecoming after heart surgery and has been doing it ever since. (See my Ramblin’ column in today’s Gazette.)

A few tractors led to more including those of brother-in-law Ed Offerman and various neighbors. In all, about 50 tractors could be on display at Vernon’s farm along Highway 13 near the Linn-Delaware county line about midway between Coggon and Ryan.

Vernon adds flags to his tractors to show his patriotism. He also displays the tractors each Memorial Day and Labor Day even though it takes more than a day to move them out and another day to store them again.

Vernon has always been a Case man, which is why you’ll find a 1931 Case CC and a 1932 Case L among his collection that runs right up to the 1983 Case 2294 that he uses today.

The day I stopped, Vernon and Ed were going to work on a couple of 1940s Case VAC tractors to prepare them for the outdoor show.

“We kind of go back and forth from one shed to another,” Vernon said. “Whatever is cool.”

Let’s just hope that it’s a nice day this Independence Day because it’s pretty cool that Vernon and friends share their collection.

Comedian Is Off To Iraq

When you talk to a comdian who plays the national circuit of comedy clubs, you expect to hear a joke a minute.

Not so with Nathan Timmel, 39, of North Liberty, the subject of today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette. He’s a real down to earth guy, a Wisconsin native who left Los Angeles for North Liberty three years ago. Of course, love had something to do with it since he’s marrying Lydia Fine in August.

Nathan is preparing for another tour in Iraq to entertain the troops this month. He was over there in 2004 and went to Afghanistan in 2006. It was that trip to Iraq where he collected the string of glass beads from a chandelier that, as you’d expect from a comedian, he draped over his right ear for a picture. (left)

“It’s a ton of red tape, it’s a ton of contracts,” Nathan says about the process to entertain for the military. ”My case was lucky. I did a show and a guy walked up on stage and asked if I’d done any shows for the military. He gave me a card and told me to call this person and to use his name.”

Performing overseas for troops is a lot of long flights (commercial and military), hot weather and sand, and worth about $100 a show, not as much as Nathan can make in the states.

“I don’t care. That’s not the point,” he says. “Probably I’d do it for free.

“The point is to do something not everybody gets to do which is to perform in a war zone. The second point, whether I believe in the war or not, it’s visiting people stuck in the war zone.”

As a comedian who takes a humous look at life, Nathan listens to what’s going on in the camps and picks up some new material by listening to the solders’ gripes. “I can give voice to them, when they can’t do it themselves,” he says. “They seem to enjoy that.”

He knows he’ll also get material for future shows, too. For one, his wedding is scheduled for Aug. 8 after he returns — if he returns.

“So this is a way out from that,” Nathan jokes. “Oh, I got taken hostage. I couldn’t make it back.”

But, honestly, he’s looking forward to marriage. And to living in North Liberty, in Iowa, in the Midwest. It’s just that next birthday that bugs him — he turns 40 in November.

For more on Nathan click here to see his Web site. You can also find a variety of Youtube video clips of his performances.

Why Golf And Sunday Go Together

Golf is the perfect thing to do on Sunday because you always end up
praying a lot.

“Here’s Johnny,” Farewell Farah, Goodbye Jacko

A sidekick, a head of hair and a freak show?

Envelope please.

What were Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson?

That’s what Carnac the Magnificent, played by Johnny Carson on the old Tonight Show, might have said to the deaths this week of three icons of entertainment.

Ed McMahon, of course, was Johnny’s sidekick who became just as well known for hawking the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

Farah Fawcett was the young blonde bombshell who sold millions of posters posed in a red swimsuit, stared in ”jiggle TV’s” “Charlie’s Angels” and married a Six-Million-Dollar-Man. 

Michael Jackson was the cute front man of The Jackson Five who went on to thrill millions of fans with his top selling “Thriller” album and followed it up with “Bad.”

Say what you want about the later lives of all three. When they were at the top of their game, they were American entertainment at it’s best. For that reason, alone, they will be missed.

Pages of Iowa History

“Iowa: A Definitive Collection” edited by Zachary Michael Jack of Oxford Junction and the topic of my Ramblin’ column in today’s Gazette, is really a fascinating read, whether you read only one or two of the 90-plus entries or study them all.

“I wanted it to be big and diverse,” Zachary said in a  telephone interview, espousing how he likes the richness of actual accounts instead of sanitized history book versions. “I hope when you’re done, it leaves readers with a breadth and a scope of Iowa’s history.”

The book includes campaign platforms, creeds, diaries, editorials, ethnographic studies, fictions, government documents, history, humor, journalism, legal opinions, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches and travel narratives from 1831 to 2007. The writers range from the unknown (just as interesting as  the known) to the likes of Carrie Chapman Catt, Bob Feller, Susan Glaspell, Herbert Hoover, Ted Kooser, Aldo Leopold, Glenn Miller, Wallace Stegner, Henry Wallace and Grant Wood.

You can hear Zachary read from the book at 7 p.m. Friday night at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City (and buy a copy for $26.95 there). To learn more about Zachary Jack click here.

Also, you can learn more about publisher Steve Semken who published it under the Tall Corn Books label of his Ice Cube Press in North Liberty by clicking here.

Why Are You Late For Golf?

John, standing on the first tee: “Hey, Bob, you’re late for golf?”

Bob: I had to toss a coin between golf and church.

John: So, why are you late?

Bob: I had to toss it 17 times.

Early Days As Dad

When Rollin Mast of Kinross (the subject of today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette) became a father to twins on Nov. 27, 1992, his challenges were just beginning. First, he was waiting in line to deliver a truckload of grain in Muscatine when Maleah and Courtney, now 16, were born two months early. They were so tiny that nurses at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City posed them in Christmas stockings.

“I remember mom saying dad was afraid to hold us,” said Courtney. “He thought he’d break us.”

“We walked around like zombies for a year,” Rollin says of he and his wife, Tammy. They also spent something like $400 a month for special formula and the diapers for the twins. And he added onto the house to make room for them along with their older brother, Ben, and older sister, Chelsy.

As the girls grew up, the family learned the Chelsy, now 18, was diabetic. She gives herself shots four times a day. But, having been around doctors and nurses all of her life, she’s going to Kirkwood Community College this fall to become a nurse.

When the family’s home was severely damaged by smoke from a fire in the basement laundry room three years ago, everyone pitched in to help. While the girls helped dad hang drywall, mom finished the woodwork and cleaned the dining room chandelier  so it could remain.

Tammy’s death from a heart attack came as quit a shock to the family in May, 2008, but now they’ve pulled together as a family with Rollin as a single parent.

“I’m very glad my girls are as old as they are,” dad says. “I wouldn’t know what I’d do if they were younger.”

Military Convoy In CR – 1919

Today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette provides a simple contrast between the original 1919 First Army Transcontinental Motor Convoy and the Military Vehicle Preservation Association 2009 Transcontinental Motor Convoy that is slated to arrive in Cedar Rapids this Sunday.

In researching the 1919 convoy, I found some interesting stories in The Evening Gazettes of July 23 and July 24, 1919. The convoy consisted of 65 vehicles, 250 enlisted men and 40 officers. The convoy parked along Fourth Avenue SE from Fifth Street to Eighth Street where the men set up their cots right on the street. The men “will have the liberties of the city at all times,” one article stated.

In addition to dinner in Greene Square Park, the soldiers were given the use of showers at the YMCA and had a street dance with music “furnished by a Cedar Rapids orchestra mounted on a truck” and were able to see “speaking and motion pictures.”

As evidence of the time it took to travel on the dirt and mud roads of the time, the Cedar Rapids Rotary Club met the convoy in Mount Vernon at 3 p.m. and accompanied it to Cedar Rapids where it arrived after 4 p.m. Soon after the arrival, Fourth Avenue took on the appearance of an Army Camp.

“Here and there groups of men were spreading their cots for the night in the center of the street, others were working on the cars, cleaning and oiling them, others were at the YMCA enjoying the privileges of shower bath and pool after the long and dusty ride. (You can see how dirty the trip was as shown by this soldier washing his truck in Cedar Rapids in this photo from the archives of the Ames Public Library.) The work was all done before the mess call was sounded so that after the meal most of the men were free to enjoy the evening. Two huge repair trucks with their dynamos for creating electricity, their work benches and tools, were humming with activity most of the evening in order to have everything ready for travel when the train pulled out at 6:30 a.m. today.”

Commander Col. C.W. McClure, was worried when he heard the men would be sleeping in the street. “However, when he arrived in the city and found that the street had been roped off and that the cars and the men at rest would not be molested and also seeing the nearness to the square he heartily approved the plans of the local committee.”

And then there was supper, a meal  the men said they would long remember. “Chicken, oh boy,” one soldier exclaimed with another responding “Yea, bo.”

“The menu was all-inclusive of good things to eat, fried chicken, sandwiches, potato crisps, pickles, olives, cake, ice cream, watermelon, ice tea, coffee and plenty of good water to drink.”

The tables in Greene Square Park were set up in the shape of the Rotary wheel, since that was the host organization. “Following the dinner, cigars and cigarets were passed to all the men and all told to help themselves liberally.”

“The greatest moment came, however, when the light (searchlight from one of the Army trucks) was concentrated on the American Flag flying from the public library building. It was a thrilling and magnificent sight and the thousands of people broke into applause and cheering as Old Glory waved gently in the breeze with the great light on it.”

What A Year With Reinert Brothers

On May 25, 2008, Tom Reinert and his family lost their Parkersburg home to a tornado.

On June 12, 2008, Mike Reinert and his family lost their Cedar Rapids house to the flood.

Since then, I’ve followed the brothers, who grew up in Elkader, in their recovery efforts in The Gazette. (Today’s is the 9th and last installment of that series.)

It’s been quit a journy for the two families.

Tom, his wife, Maureen, and their children, Nic and Dani, pretty much had everything blown away. In May, they moved into a beatiful new 4,000-square foot two-story home among dozens up dozens of new homes in Parkersburg.

Mike, his wife, Angie, and their children, Matt, Jenny, Amy and Jonny, luckily saved most of their possessions. But they had quit a chore mucking out their house and rebuilding it. A huge saving grace was all the help they received from family, friends and church members who pitched in to make the house live-in ready by mid-November.

Mike, who is now working on the flood damaged rental home he’d bought before the flood (left), knows how lucky he and  his brother have been. Nobody was hurt or killed. Nothing major was lost. Family and friends came to the rescue. They both have places they can now call home again.

“It sure is nice to be back in your own home,” Mike said as he showed me around the rental house. “The Lord has been in charge of everything that happened to us over the flood. We didn’t really suffer.”

Mike now looks around the neighborhood along Eighth Street NW, about eight blocks from the Cedar River, and knows that a lot of the houses will come down as the city buys them out to construct future flood protection. He hopes for a bright future.

“I would like to have a beautiful green park near my house,” Mike says. “This was such a nice neighborhood. It is. People are coming back.”