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The Allamakee County Fair Board has announced country music group “Big Time Grain Company” will be the headlining act for this year’s grandstand entertainment at the 2023 Allamakee County Fair. The brother duo of Bret and Chad Bourquin front this musical act scheduled to perform Friday evening, July 21 in the grandstands, with Flatland Ridge returning to the Fair as the opening act that evening.

Raised on a farm near Olathe, KS, the brothers first formed “Big Time Grain Company” in 2012 and the band has since opened for such headlining performers as Big and Rich, Luke Combs, Restless Heart, Dan & Shay, and many others. With songs such as “Little Redemption” and “Hard to Want”, the musical act was chosen to perform for a crowd of more than 800,000 people at the celebration rally when the Kansas City Royals won the 2015 World Series and has also been the featured entertainment for Kansas City Chiefs home football games.

Water levels on the Mississippi River have been steadily climbing over recent weeks, now to the point of flooding communities along the mighty river, evidence of which can be seen in the photos below along the river valley in Allamakee County from New Albin through Lansing and Harpers Ferry, and on down the river. A combination of record snowfall amounts this year in Minnesota melting so quickly during the unusually warm second week of April, in addition to additional recent snow and rainfall, has caused the Mississippi River to rise more than 10 feet since April 1 from its typical Lansing gauge level hovering above eight feet to its latest measurement as of press time Tuesday morning, April 25 of just over 19 feet, which is considered moderate flood stage, rising nearly six feet within just the past week.

Original composition commissioned in memory of Adelia Dundas will also be live-streamed

by Julie Berg-Raymond

This is a story that resonates on so many levels, it’s difficult to know where to begin its telling. On one level, it’s about the world premiere of a new musical composition being performed by band students in grades five to eight at a small middle school in rural Iowa. On another, it’s a story about how that small rural school district - Eastern Allamakee - embraced a just-out-of-school-himself band teacher and his young family in a way that would touch many hearts and traverse many years, and about how that family and that school district have since both given so much to the other.

This story is about all those things. At the center of it all, though, is a young girl named Adelia.

The 2023 Waukon High School Prom is scheduled to be held this Saturday, April 22 at the Waukon Middle School gymnasium. Doors will open to the public at 7:30 p.m. for the Grand March, which is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Parents and community members may view the Grand March either seated in the auditorium or standing in the gym.

Following the Grand March will be the coronation of this year’s Prom King and Queen. Visitors are asked to exit the building after the coronation in order for students to start the Prom dance, which is scheduled to begin at approximately 9 p.m. Students need to be present and attend both the Prom and Post Prom event to be eligible for prizes at Post Prom being held in the Waukon High School gymnasium. For those who prefer not to attend the Prom dance, there will be alternative activities and games set up in the Waukon High School Library.

The 2023 Kee High School Prom is scheduled for this Saturday, April 22. Pictured above are this year’s senior class Queen and King candidates for the annual event. Left to right - Front row: Queen candidates Alyssa Darling, Monica Davis, Brooklyn Bakewell and Jayden Rankin; Back row: King candidates Jackson Poley, Cota Gavin, Ben Franceschetti and Dylan Waterworth.

The annual Prom banquet will be held at TJ Hunter’s Banquet Hall on Main Street in Lansing, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The Prom dance will also take place in the banquet hall this year following the Grand March and coronation of this year’s Prom King and Queen that will take place in the Kee High School gymnasium.

Project scheduled to run May-November this year

by Ellen Modersohn

It appears an extraction pit project south of Lansing will go ahead after the Allamakee County Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to grant a conditional use permit for it during a Monday, April 3 meeting. The board placed eight conditions on its approval of a petition to remove common fill from the Randy Gaunitz farm at 2074 Lafayette Ridge Drive and haul it to the defunct Alliant Energy plant on Power Plant Road. The soil will be used to fill and cap ash ponds.

Board members Bernard Pratte, chair, Gene Averhoff, Ann Klees and Shawn Gibbs heard comments on the project, mostly from property owners near the extraction pit site or along the route to Power Plant Road. Several people spoke for the allotted three minutes each, and three people ceded their speaking time to Dale Reeves, whose mother owns property near the Gaunitz farm.

In honor of this year’s 50th annual Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), a documentary film titled “Shift: The RAGBRAI Documentary” has been created by The Des Moines Register. “Shift” tells the story of RAGBRAI through photography and interviews with three riders and a pair of community leaders as they overcome grueling miles and personal hurdles to find peace, redemption and clarity in the annual ride across Iowa.

by Joe Moses

Loren Mitchell, Paramedic and Vice President of the Waterville Ambulance Service, provided training and a demonstration Wednesday, April 5 at West Elementary School in Waukon with the assistance of EMT Elliott Evanson, also of the Waterville Ambulance Service.

Kirby Jones, School Nurse for West Elementary and Waukon High School, and Kathy Wood, School Nurse for East Elementary and Waukon Middle School, were part of this training session to learn effective use of the LifeVac airway clearance device, a manually-implemented vacuum apparatus used to try and save the lives of choking victims.

Student volunteer Josey Wood, elementary-aged son of Nurse Wood, participated in the training session as well.

New display will be open to the public later this spring

by Ellen Modersohn

The frigid, windy morning of March 29, a truck and trailer from Tulsa, OK pulled up to the Driftless Area Education and Visitors Center south of Lansing with the makings of a 1,260-gallon aquarium. Throughout the day, workers from custom aquarium builder Under the Sea and the Driftless Center unloaded and assembled the tank along the back wall of the center’s lower-level meeting room.

The crew carefully maneuvered each component through the center’s lower doors using a dolly and plenty of muscle. The acrylic tank measures 16.5 feet long, 40 inches tall and three feet wide, and weighs 2,500 pounds, according to Under the Sea.

“They told me the metal stand that holds the tank weighs 650 pounds, but it felt like it weighed more,” said Ross Geerdes, the Center’s naturalist and next director of the Allamakee County Conservation Board.

Members of the Waukon High School chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) gather around and display the Chapter of the Year trophy they were awarded at the State Leadership Conference held in Coralville Thursday through Saturday, March 30-April 1. Despite having to safely wait out the tornadoes that descended upon the Coralville area the Friday evening of the Conference, the Waukon FBLA chapter earned the 2023 Iowa FBLA State Leadership Conference Lloyd V. Douglas Chapter of the Year Award in honor of the chapter’s first-place team finish among all teams competing. Additional details will be printed in a future edition of The Standard. Submitted photo.