Author tells stories about Iowa’s interesting places

MARENGO — Friends of the Marengo Public Library brought Megan Bannister to town last week to share a secret. Many secrets, actually.

Bannister, an author and travel writer based in Des Moines, told stories from her book, “Secret Iowa: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure.”

The book is Bannister’s second. Her first was about Iowa supper clubs.

“Secret Iowa” contains stories of 84 places all over the state that people can still visit but may not be aware of.

“I truly believe that boredom is in the eye of the beholder,” Bannister read from the book’s Introduction last week. “Most often we’re bored because we aren’t being curious enough.”

The book is part of a larger series by various authors for a single publisher. There’s a “Secret Kansas” and a “Secret Route 66.”

That made the book a little easier to put together, said Bannister, because she had a format to follow. She was limited to a certain number of places and had to keep the book below a set number of pages.

The work took about nine months.

Poweshiek County’s wagon wheel sculpture in Grinnell has a place among Bannister’s weird, wonderful and obscure as does Grinnell’s “Jewel Box” bank designed by Louis Sullivan and Brooklyn’s flag display.

The book also tells the story of Belle Plaine’s Preston’s Station that served travelers on the Lincoln Highway for more than 65 years.

Bannister is an Iowa transplant. She came from the Chicago area to attend Drake University in Des Moines and study journalism.

She never left.

Bannister started touring the state with friends and had a list of interesting Iowa places before she started the book. When she began writing “Secret Iowa,” she contacted communities for information about their interesting novelties and histories.

People have either a positive or negative reaction to the word “weird,” said Bannister. “I love the word weird,” she said. There’s nothing disparaging about it.

Plenty of popcorn

Among the Iowa weird is the world’s largest popcorn ball — confirmed by Guinness World Records.

The current popcorn ball is the fourth Sac City has displayed. “They grow a lot of corn specifically to make popcorn,” said Bannister.

In 1995, the city set a record with a popcorn ball that weighed 2,225 pounds, but a Boy Scout troop in Wisconsin broke that record shortly after.

The town tried twice more, and each time, its record was broken, Bannister said.

So Sac City residents decided they needed to go big or go home. They went big — 9,300 pounds big. That fourth popcorn ball, created in 2016, is 12 feet in diameter and can be seen through the window of a shed on Sac City’s Main Street.

Giant hoax

The Cardiff Giant is one of America’s most famous hoaxes. The fact that it has an Iowa connection is not so well known.

George Hull decided to build a fake giant after seeing the pale blue streaking in gypsum while visiting his sister in Fort Dodge in 1868.

He purchased a stone 10 feet long, weighing 3,000 and, with difficulty, transported it to Chicago where an artist sculpted a giant out of it.

Hull had Stubb Newell bury the giant on his Cardiff, New York, farm and “discover” it while digging a well Oct. 16, 1869.

Thousands of people flocked to the giant, paying 50 cents to get a look at it. P.T. Barnum tried to buy it, but Hull wouldn’t sell, so Barnum made his own giant.

The original giant is still in New York, but in the 1980s Fort Dodge wanted to pay tribute to the Iowa connection and made a third giant from Fort Dodge gypsum which is on display at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village.

300,000 pennies

When looking for wonderful things in Iowa, Bannister thought of the Iowa State Fair. The fair itself is not secret, so Bannister had to find a little-known story about it to justify including it in the book.

She found the perfect story at the Iowa State Fair Museum.

In 1929, The Des Moines Register and Tribune asked children to send pennies to buy an elephant for the fair. The children raised $3,000 to buy a small elephant, commonly referred to as Baby Mine.

For 13 years the elephant performed tricks at the fair and toured the country with Iowa State Fair employee Elwood Emery.

By 1942, Baby Mine weighed 4,000 pounds and was costing the fair 80 pounds of hay and 25 gallons of water a day. She was eventually sold.

Though visitors can no longer see the elephant itself, a statue of Baby Mine stands in the Hy-Vee Fun Forest on the fairgrounds.

Lakers in Carroll

Sometimes people see something and wonder “Hey, why is this thing here?”

That’s the reaction people have when they see a Los Angeles Lakers-theme basketball court in Carroll.

The Lakers were originally based in Minnesota, said Bannister. Hence the name, Lakers.

In January of 1960, the Lakers played an afternoon game in St. Louis and were flying back to Minneapolis when the small DC3 they were traveling in flew into a snowstorm and lost power. The pilots were flying blind.

After about 5 ½ hours, still not home, the plane had to make an emergency landing with little visibility.

The pilots flew so low they could read the water tower and billboards. They landed the plane in a cornfield outside Carroll, close to where the city park stands today.

All 23 passengers were safe.

Residents who saw the plane circling knew something was wrong. By the time the plane landed, emergency vehicles and residents with warm cars were waiting, said Bannister.

They offered food, water and blankets.

On the 60th anniversary of the emergency landing, the Lakers donated $25,000 for a basketball court near the site.