Two Lane Adventures: Day 26 of 117 on our “Go West, Young Man” Two Lane Adventure

On our two city tour today, we are going to get our friends, Charlie & Nancy, into the spirit of Freedom Rock hunting! Our first stop is the Winnebago Visitor Center, just to see if they are open. Their website says they are closed, but with the Winnebago Grand National Rally in town … maybe they are?! Nope, not open!

We headed to the Hancock County Freedom Rock located in Britt Iowa. As we arrived, into town, it looks like an awesome small town. It seemed like a very welcoming community. It is a simple yet powerful painting.

The back side has a black & white painting of a soldier kneeling with a bright blue ribbon flowing behind it stating the phrase "For Those Who Gave All." On the front side, the county's namesake, John Hancock, is visible striking his famous signature pose. On the top of the rock the American Flag is draped, like it is covering us.

The interesting footnote about this rock, is when it was originally painted, it was set southeast corner of the Britt Municipal Building lawn. City officials have received comments about the visibility of the rock, because landscape plants are tall enough to obstruct the view. The Freedom Rock was painted in 2014 by Ray "Bubba" Sorensen, an Iowa artist who paints patriotic scenes on large rocks in Iowa counties. They moved the Freedom Rock to the middle of the Veterans Park on an elevated platform.

A bonus attraction in Britt, was the Hobo Museum. In most people’s minds hobos are a thing of the past, frozen in time since the Depression. The image of a hobo, walking along rails with a light bindle stick, hopping trains from state to state to avert life, leaves them as an iconic figure of Americana. Since 1974, three different generations composing the hobo community converge once a year in the city of Britt, Iowa to celebrate and exchange thoughts, tips, and stories about a penniless lifestyle. They gather to share tales of wandering around the country avoiding troubles and danger, and to preserve their self-taught train engineering and coded languages generated by decades of hobos. With the goal of archiving and keeping alive their culture, the Hobo Foundation bought the Britt movie theater and installed a permanent display of artifacts donated the hobos. According to their web site, the extensive memorabilia of such famous hobos as Frisco Jack, Connecticut Slim, Hard Rock Kid and Pennsylvania Kid, just to name a few. The foundation also hosts the National Hobo Convention. Too bad, we could not go inside, as the Hobo Museum is closed on Sunday.

After leaving Britt, we headed to Clear Lake. The region around Clear Lake was a summer home to the Dakota and Winnebago American Indians. In 1851, settlers arrived and began a friendship with the Winnebago natives. By the year 1855, the first Clear Lake School was built as well as the first steam saw mill. In that year a hotel was built and by 1870, the town had 775 residents. The City of Clear Lake was incorporated on May 26, 1871. In 1909, Bayside Amusement park opened for the first time. In 1933, the Surf Ballroom opened up on the site of the old Tom Tom ballroom that had been destroyed by fire. The opening dance night saw approximately 700 couples attend. In 1947, the Surf Ballroom burned down; a new Surf Ballroom was built across the street the following year. The Bayside Amusement park closed down in 1958. There is still a Lady of the Lake. It is a sternwheeler ferry boat which takes passengers on a scenic cruise around Clear Lake.

Surf Ballroom is the site of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper's last concert. In the early hours of February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, who had been performing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, took off from runway in Mason City, on its way to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. The plane crashed soon after takeoff, killing everyone aboard. This event was later eulogized by folk singer Don McLean in his famous song, "American Pie", in which the death of these '50s icons serves as a metaphor for greater changes within American society as a whole. In June 1988, Clear Lake also replaced street signs officially changing 2nd Place North to Buddy Holly Place in honor of the late singer.

I found my first blank Freedom Rock! Clear Lake will become the home for the Cerro Gordo County Freedom Rock later this summer. A committee was created to bring a Freedom Rock to the county. The 16-ton rock, which was donated by Dennis and Jodie Lewerke, is set in its location by the Main Street, USA sign on the corner of North Eighth Street and Main Street. In addition to the rock, there will be a brick path, landscaping, spotlights, and three flagpoles with the US flag, the Iowa flag and POW flag. For this town, the process began about four years ago when Andrews was working with the DNR and saw Freedom Rocks during his travels. He discovered that Mason City didn't have one, and there wasn't one in Cerro Gordo County, so Clear Lake should get the ball rolling. The committee had to get the rock approved by the mayor and city administrator. Sorenson, the artist, is working on completing his Freedom Rock Tour by painting a boulder in each of Iowa’s 99 counties, as well as a rock in every state. He has done about 74 in Iowa so far and 1 in Minnesota. Sorenson will be in Clear Lake to paint the rock on Aug. 24. It usually takes seven to 10 days to complete the project.

We visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Stockhome Home in Mason City. Mason City’s architectural claim to fame began when leading citizens sought to build a bank and hotel. Attorney James Markley’s daughters attended a boarding school that Wright built for the architect’s aunts in Spring Green, Wisconsin and he was so taken by its design that he recommended Wright for the project. The combination City National Bank, Park Inn Hotel and law offices, done in Wright’s classic Prairie School style, opened in 1910. It’s the only remaining hotel of six designed by Wright and was a prototype for one of his most famous works, the long-gone Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. But it, too, almost disappeared. The bank fell on hard times during the 1920s farm crisis, was sold in bankruptcy and was converted to retail space. The hotel struggled along until 1972, was divided into apartments and fell into such disrepair it was imploding on itself, making a list of the top 10 most endangered historic properties in Iowa. The nonprofit Wright on the Park Inc. took ownership, and the hotel, along with the former bank and law offices, reopened as the Historic Park Inn in 2011. Not without a fight, however. Some members of the community considered it “a pile of junk.”

While Wright was working on the hotel and bank project, a local physician asked him to design a home. The Stockman House, completed in 1908, is Iowa’s only Wright-designed home and is now open for tours through the Architectural Interpretive Center next door. The home is Wright’s take on the middle-class housing he described in a Ladies’ Home Journal article titled “A Fireproof House for $5,000.” The four-bedroom home has several Prairie School features, including a projecting hip roof with overhanging eaves, ribbon windows and an L-shaped open floor plan around a central fireplace. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to break out of the box of the small, separate rooms typical in Victorian homes.

Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the Stockman House also was almost lost to history. Before it could be torn down to make way for a church parking lot, it was acquired by the city, moved to its present location and sold to the preservation society. After Stockman House was completed, several other families wanted homes in the Prairie School style, but Wright had left town by then. William Drummond, an architect in Wright’s Oak Park studio who came to Mason City to oversee the bank and hotel project, designed one house. Walter Burley Griffin, who also worked for Wright in Oak Park, designed another five but left for Australia after winning an international competition to plan its new capital, Canberra. Francis Barry Byrne, another Wright protégé, designed two more houses. All are part of the Rock Crest-Rock Glen National Historic District, the nation’s most compact grouping of Prairie School buildings unified around a common natural setting: the rocky bluffs and verdant glen on opposite banks of Willow Creek.

The Music Man Square was recommended to us by a tour guide at the Stockman house. Unfortunately, it is closed on Sunday & Monday. But, I will tell you a little about it. The Music Man Square features an indoor 1912 streetscape with an ice cream parlor and gift shop. It is set designs recreated from the Warner Brothers motion picture The Music Man. There’s also an interactive museum highlighting Meredith Willson memorabilia and music-related exhibits. Plus, visit the restored 1895 modified Queen Anne house that was Meredith Willson’s birth place and boyhood home.

Robert Meredith Willson (1902-1984) was born in Mason City, Iowa and had an immensely successful career in the music and entertainment industry as a musician, composer, conductor, arranger, author, and radio personality. While growing up in Mason City, Willson showed great musical promise. After his Mason City High School graduation he went to New York City to study and before long was professionally engaged playing with John Phillip Sousa and then with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After a stint in the Army, he began working in radio and television. In addition to composing, writing and appearing on television, Willson made concert appearances around the country with his wife Rini, herself a star in the concert, radio and opera business. Meredith Willson is best remembered for his Broadway musical “The Music Man”, for which he wrote the script, lyrics and music.

This famous musical was a tribute to his hometown since the fictitious “River City”, featured in the Broadway hit, was based on places and people in Mason City. “The Music Man” became one of the five longest running musical plays in Broadway history and won several prestigious awards. The play has been revived both on Broadway and in the movies – a Walt Disney production of “The Music Man” stars Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenowetch. The Beatles even capitalized on the success of the musical with their cover of “Till There Was You.”