A love letter to Washington

This is a love letter to Washington. Or Warshington, if you prefer.

I grew up in Davenport, but was born in Washington. Davenport was fine. I’m proud to have grown up and gone to school there. But I was more in “like” with Davenport.

Washington, though. Now that’s a love story.

Earliest memory: Upstairs in my grandparents’ house in Washington, in bed, covers tucked under my chin, awakened by cooing mourning doves. Preschool me thought they were “morning” doves, of course.

To this day, mourning doves are my favorite bird. And alarm clock.

My grandparents; uncle and aunt; and two first cousins lived in Washington. John Logan was the only one of Al and DeIna’s eight kids who still lived in Washington. John, Rhea, Jim and Tom anchored our family in Washington.

My extended family visited frequently. My parents, often an aunt or two, and my sister and I would pile in the car and head for Washington. Windows open. (No AC.) AM radio. Two-lane roads all the way.

We passed the time with padiddle. Counting horses. (Your count was erased if you passed a cemetery.) License plates.

The first major kid landmark was the Dewey Portland Cement Company outside of Buffalo along Highway 22.

The next hot spot along the “back way” to Washington through Muscatine was a particular area that always was eroding and threatened to send us hurtling into the Mississippi. My adults didn’t sense the danger. But I remained on full kid alert till we were safely past.

THE highlight, though, if I could convince my parents to stop—not a sure thing—was the Muscatine Maid-Rite smack-dab along the highway.

If we went the other, “normal” way, then the highlight, of course, was the swinging bridge in Columbus Junction.

I need to pause here and explain something. When your name is “Mike Jones,” you tend to gravitate to more, shall we say, interesting names. To this day, I “collect” names.

And, boy, did Washington have some great names. Beenblossom. Turnipseed. Tweeten, Winga. More….

Why I couldn’t have been a Beenblossom or Turnipseed was my first inkling that life isn’t fair. Had I known that hyphenating names would become a thing in the future, I would have been Michael Jones-Beenblossom-Turnipseed—and forever dined at Winga’s Cafe.

To Washington proper. Stretched out right across the highway was a big white banner, “Washington: Iowa’s Cleanest City.” I about burst my buttons with pride. And Washington DID seem cleaner than other cities.

My family always stopped at the Lemmon, later Logan, Jewelry Store. What a magical place to be a kid. The workings of the (non-digital) clocks and watches were a wonderful mystery.

Cousins Jim and Tom had the coolest toys. Plus they had a tree house! Disneyland. Schmisneyland. That place could not be any cooler than this! And way out in California, wherever the heck that was.

Washingtonians had their own vernacular, which I loved. My uncle owned a patch of timber. (In Davenport, he would have owned “woods.”) We went “uptown.” (In Davenport, you went “downtown.”) Washington had a square. (Davenport snaked along the Mississippi willy-nilly.)

My second-favorite thing about Washington? The fountain, of course. Those colored lights! We had fountains in Davenport, but not gee-whizzy ones like this. I’ve never been to Rome, but I doubt that Trevi Fountain could come close to Washington’s Central Park Fountain. Does Trevi even have colored lights? Pffft.

Washington’s main attraction was family. I loved ‘em all, but my Uncle John deserves special mention. He was the funnest—and funniest—person I’ve ever known. A teaser and prankster. Creatively so. Some of his pranks are legendary. Space doesn’t permit here, but wow.

A close second was cousin Jim. Cousin Tom has the dry wit of the family. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Alas, the weekend would end and it was time to go home—to leave the Beenblossoms, Turnipseeds and Swarzendrubers and return to Smiths, Millers, Johnsons, and yes, Joneses.

Thankfully, one day in school in Davenport, I learned about the wonderfully-named Bix Beiderbeck. And my neighborhood graced me with a kid named Billy Dilly. Maybe there was hope for Davenport, after all.

XOXOXO, Washington.

Mike Jones

Galena, Illinois