Mallory's Camera

Jump: Lake Mills, IA → Garner, IA – School Grounds: 30 miles
Go back out the way we came in…
Arrows to HWY 69 SOUTH…
HWY 69 SOUTH to Garner… arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm


Garner, Iowa smells like a farm. It’s an odor compounded of fertilizer (okay, manure), drainage ditches, green growing things. It’s not unpleasant.

On our way here we drove through Forest City, home of the Winnebago manufacturing plant. Factory has laid off fifty percent of its workforce in the last eighteen months.

Another huge plant on the intersection of Highways 18 and 69 just outside Garner. Iowa Mold Tooling.

Garner has a first rate coffee house. I was the only customer there for the first two and a half hours it was open. Then a guy came in to buy a cappuccino for his wife to sip as she drove to her shift at Wal-Mart thirty miles away. “Well, you know Ruby – she lives on this stuff,” he told the cashier.

“Ruby’s workin’ two jobs. She’s earned her coffee,” the cheery, apple-cheeked proprietress replied. “How’re things otherwise?”

Guy shrugged. “Oh, you know. IMT’s got us down to twenty hours a week. Next week it’s goin’ down to sixteen. Was talkin’ to a guy in upper management. ‘We just built our last compressor,’ he told me. ‘There’s no more orders in the pipeline. As long as I’ve been working here, fifteen, twenty years, almost as long as this company’s been active, there’s always been back orders. But not now.’”

The woman frowned. “You can’t stretch the work out?”

“No. No, we can’t. See, you gotta meet the ship dates for the customers you still have. You don’t want to lose them.

“So what are you gonna do there when there’s no more work?”

“Well, today we’re mowing lawns. Tomorrow maybe we’ll scrub floors. Don’t know what we do after that.”

The woman sighed. “I’ve never seen it this bad.”

“No kidding. I don’t mind cutting down four hours a week – well, I mean, I mind because of the money but it’s not an inconvenience, I live here in town. Once things turn around and those orders start pouring in, they’re gonna have us working ten hour shifts and overtime! But the guys who live out of town – they don’t want to drive an hour for four hours work –“

“What else is there?”

“McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, I guess. But they’re not union jobs. You can’t support a family on McDonald’s and Wal-Mart.”

The woman glanced at the latte cup in the guy’s hand but said nothing. She was no dummy. In point of fact the guy’s wife, working two jobs – McDonald’s and Wal-Mart – was supporting his family.

“Listen, things are going to get better,” the guy said. “I just know it.”

I have a hunch he’s right. Things will get better, at least here – Iowa’s a swing state; if the recession deepens, the feds are gonna want to rain a whole lot of stimulus swag on towns like Garner, and the Republicans are gonna elbow them out of the way, screeching, no, me first!

Garner’s main drag is called State Street. In 1913 a truly remarkable shop opened on State Street, operated by two German-born bicycle racers and mechanics, Fred and August Duesenberg. (August had previously operated a bicycle shop here.) The Duesenberg brothers sold sports cars they built themselves. To this day many racing aficionados believe the Duesenberg was the finest car ever built. It was certainly the first automobile to incorporate such “modern” innovations as dual overhead camshafts, four-valve cylinder heads and hydraulic brakes. It drove 90 miles an hour in second gear. Zero-to-sixty for the Model J was eight seconds. Ever use the term, “That’s a doozy!”? It’s a corruption of the car’s nickname – Duesenberg? Duesy!

Al Capone drove one. So did Greta Garbo. So did Clark Gable. In 1921 the Duesenberg became the first American car to win the Grand Prix at Le Mans, France. Duesies won the Indianapolis 500 in 1924, 1925, and 1927.

Brilliant engineers the Duesenberg Brothers. But maybe not such brilliant businessmen. Or it could have been Fred Duesenberg’s untimely death (following a car crash in 1932) or the Great Depression. By 1937 the final Duesenberg manufacturing concern had crashed and burned. Today the 600 some odd Duesenbergs still in existence are Tonka trucks for fabulously wealthy folk too chickenshit to set fire to their money for kicks.

The Duesenbergs didn’t stay long in Garner but the town still celebrates Duesy Days in July every year.
White building in the photo below is the site of August Duesenberg’s original bike shop (not the building itself obviously…)