Little Town Surviving

When I was growing up in Sac City, Iowa...

1)  There was nothing to do...EVER
2)  I gotta get out...as soon as humanly possible!
3)  Add 1 and 2 together and EVERYTHING HERE SUCKS!

Of course these were the thoughts of a young kid who just assumed the rest of the world had to be better than what we had growing up.  Guess that whole "grass always being greener on the other side" business starts at an early age.

When I was really little we had a movie theater in which I saw half a movie before mom dragged me out screaming and crying. In my defense, if she had just kept feeding me junior mints, I would've been good for the whole showing of Bambi.

We had a corner bakery, where if we were really good and mom had some extra cash, my sister and I could get some delicious cookies.  Or mom had extra cash and shoving cookies into our faces was the best way to get us to shut up.

I wasn't very old when both of these places went away, so there was literally nothing left to enjoy in our small, and getting smaller, town.  Sure we had the parade and the 4th of July fireworks, Chautauqua Days,  and we had the Porktoberfest, and Halloween.  So there were a few days out of the year where we could engorge ourselves full of one kind of food or another. But the other 300 and some odd days...nothing.

We had to entertain ourselves, either playing in the ravine, tearing around town on our bikes, swimming at the local pool, or playing football in Witte's yard.  We had Little League and some other Summer Recreation programs.  Eventually we got out own recreation center to go lift weights, play basketball, swim during the winter time, among other things.

Thinking back on things, I guess things didn't suck as bad as I once thought. For a small town we had a lot of things to do, whether it was on our own, or through programs and facilities that a lot of people put in hard work dedicated to giving us kids, as well as adults, things to do right there in our own little burg.

One of the places that always been a stalwart of the community for the most part under a few different owners, in the recreation area, was Indian Lanes, our local bowling alley.  Now I only used the bowling alley sparingly.  I was usually using most of my money to load myself up on Dr Pepper from the local Casey's, as if my hyperactive self wasn't already too much for some people to handle before the caffeine infusion.  But it was always a place where adults could go and have their adult fun with friends, and still bring their kids who could play arcade style games, or you know, bowl a few frames.

I was recently back in Sac City for Christmas with my wife and my sons to see my parents as well as my sister's family who was up visiting from Florida.  My best friend, Jed was also out with his family from Wyoming, along with his younger brother Jeremiah and his family coming up from my neck of the woods, to celebrate with the oldest brother Josh and his family.  They did a family gift exchange at the bowling alley, which I had learned was now being operated by Josh and his wife, and I think along with a certain guy named Joe Zimmerman.  I make the claim of Joe based on the fact that they have a Notre Dame flag hung up on a wall, and Joe is the only person I know who is truly a Notre Dame fan.  Other than that small blemish (Sorry Joe!), the place looks pretty good.

Now Joe has always been the kind of guy who was made for small town living, and many days I can't blame him despite my living in the Des Moines metro area.  I like to go back to my hometown just to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.  Joe did his time out of the area, but as expected he came back to his roots and his family and friends.  Joe is always a friendly guy with a big goofy grin, a joke waiting on his lips to tell you, and a big old hug. I love the guy.

Josh Burns on the other hand... He was the big brother from another mother, the guy I loved to hate and hated to love.  He was always there to put me in my place when I needed it, and also to pick me up when I needed that.  He really is a chip off the old block that is his father, Monte, who I always regard as my 2nd dad.  Monte always made time for us boys, and for everybody else, both personally, as well as being a longtime baseball coach for a multitude of kids who grew up in Sac City.  Josh and I were never as close as Jed and I were, but he was always around.  I never knew what his plans for life were, when he went off to college in Missouri, but he came back to live and work in the area.  And now he runs the bowling alley.  Like his dad, he's doing his part to help keep the small town of Sac City going.

Some people reading this may see Indian Lanes as just one business in a small town in the middle of nowhere. But to some of us who grew up there, it's nice to see that some places and some people are still there, just as they always were.  And when you can find a place for the whole family to spend some fun time together for a few hours without breaking the bank, you want to keep that in any community.  I think Indian Lanes fills that role. So if you get a chance, go to Indian Lanes, say hello to the owners, grab a bite to eat and something to drink, and bowl a few games.  I promise you wont regret the fun time you'll have and you will support a locally owned business stick around for everyone there now and those to come.

211 North 13th St

Sac City, Iowa

(712) 662-7467

Sample Chapter From Future Book

Just a note: I just wrote this chapter today for a book I've been writing about random events from growing up in Sac City Iowa. I started this project a couple years back doing small occasional essays for thesacnews.com back when it was a fledgling organization on myspace. Eventually I discontinued it from public view, started and stopped writing on it repeatedly. Have been editing some, and am preparing to start submitting to literary agents for representation in the hopes of getting a book published. So for those of you who used to follow the series, and those of you who are just curious, please enjoy one of my latests essays.

Urination and Lifesavers


Let’s just face facts right off the bat here. Boys find potty humor of all sorts funny. Well, basically we find anything the body can excrete highly interesting and amusing. Its funny when we do it, say it, read it, or write it. Snot, poop, pee, farts, blood. It’s all fair game to our strange sense of humor. We may be absolutely disgusted to the core when someone lets a nasty fart rip, and yet still amused. VERY amused. When someone steps in dog poop, again we are disgusted by it, especially if we are the ones to step in it, and yet we can’t help but laugh our heads off about it, especially when it’s someone else stepping in it. For the next couple short anecdotes, if you are a girl or highly sensitive to disgusting things, I’d suggest you skip this next part altogether because it gets pretty bad. What’s it all about? In one word, Pee.
Little boys and dogs are more alike than different. Dogs will wander about the neighborhood lifting a leg and peeing on everything in sight that they find to be valuable real estate. Growing up in Sac City, I knew a particular young boy we’ll call Miah, who acted just like this. Although to be honest, I don’t think he cared about the real estate he was marking. When he decided he had to go pee, he just went pee. On a bush, a fire hydrant, the sidewalk, on the tires of a parked car, on a moving car for that matter, your leg, his own leg, behind a tree, next to a tree, from up in a tree, or on your house, your cat, or your dog; you name it, Miah peed on it at least once. I think that if Miah found himself in the midst of a busy intersection and felt the need to go pee, even if it meant being squished by a semi truck, he was going to whip it out and go pee RIGHT there and RIGHT now. I’m pretty sure the only thing safe from getting peed on by Miah was an actual toilet. I don’t know if he had an allergy to porcelain or an affinity for peeing on everything else, but like a dog, he marked his territory wherever we went.
Little boys and packs of dogs also have something in common. There must be in any pack, an established Alpha male. One day while playing in the ravine with my friend Sonny, he was standing on the wall while I was below on the ground. I was busying myself with something or another when he called my name. I looked up in just in time to see a golden stream headed in my direction. An as though I was paralyzed I stood there while my t-shirt got soaked with Sonny’s pee. Clearly Sonny had established himself as the alpha male. He got in trouble as I did what any good young fighting warrior of a boy would do- I tattled to my mom. And while he was in trouble and stuck sitting on the couch until his mom came to pick him up, he still had a stupid grin on his face knowing he had marked me as his territory, and himself as the top dog.
Now everyone knows that dogs love to chase mail carriers. In Sac City we had one particular mail carrier that handed out lifesavers to the kids. Any kid who asked received a tasty fruity Lifesaver once a day. I managed to find out that by helping the mailman deliver mail to some of the houses on one side of the street while he walked down the other earned me one more Lifesaver for every stop back to the mail truck. On days when I was bored, I would spend a couple hours with the mailman, earning my lifesavers. My mom, realizing how much of his candy I was consuming, always made sure to buy him a big box of Lifesavers every Christmas just so other kids could have some as well.
One day, my best friend Jed and his little brother Miah caught me in the middle of doing important mail delivery. They wanted to play, but I blew them off, saying I would come over after I was done following the mailman around. When I finished I grabbed my sister and went over to where my friends were hanging out. Since I had blown them off they hatched a very evil plan to get me back. I found my friends, and they informed me that they had just gotten brand new released flavors of Mr. Juicy drinks. This time it came in lemon flavored. However, they said, it had been in the sun for a bit, so it was warm. Being my gullible and naïve 8 year-old self, I had no problem trusting my wonderful friends without any suspicions. Both my sister and myself began to sample the lemon flavored Mr. Juicy. My sister was thirsty and started to guzzle it down. The Mr. Juicy concoction entered my mouth, hit my taste buds, and I immediately knew I had been tricked.
“AUGH!” I cried out after spitting the nastiness onto the ground. “This tastes like piss!” To which my sister started gagging and trying to spit out the remainder that was in her mouth. She had clearly swallowed some already. My friends were laughing hysterically.
Hey! I warned you this was going to be disgusting! If you read this far and are sorry you did, fearing you may have just thrown up a little bit in your mouth, you only have yourself to blame. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning to skip ahead.
Thanks to my friends, I now had Miah’s pee inside of me! He literally gets it everywhere. After a few words were exchanged, I joined in and helped prepare more nasty drinks to see whom else we could trick. See what I mean? Yes, it’s definitely disgusting beyond belief, and yet still leads to the funny! Why does it lead to the funny do you ask? Because, we made it happen to somebody else too!