And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, Editor Emeritus

... that it may seem somewhat heretical for someone who has lived all but eight of his eighty years in Waukon, but I’d like to say some nice things about Lansing.
My maternal grandfather is probably spinning in his grave at that beautiful Lansing cemetery, because until his dying day, whenever he had a few beers, which happened with some frequency, he would cuss Waukon, saying a sheriff’s posse in a nighttime raid stole the courthouse from Lansing.
This morning’s Cedar Rapids Gazette announced to a larger section of eastern Iowa that a portion of Lansing’s Main Street has been named an historic district because of a quirk. The only quirk mentioned in the story is the presence of many shops and eateries, which hardly seems a quirk.
Rather. I think the secret to Lansing’s charm is the fact that a river runs past it, the Mississippi. Construction of that new multi-purpose building at the confluence of the Mississippi and Village Creek just to the south will only enhance things.
But I have appreciated Lansing since reaching the age of reason. It was my mother’s home town, and she loved the river. They would tell stories and show photos of summer-long encampments on the shores of Winneshiek slough, where in those pre-air conditioning summers they went to escape the heat. They talked of how as teenage girls they would row a flat-bottomed boat upstream to “Doc’s” place on an island, before it was swallowed by the nine foot channel. Despite those adventures, neither my mother nor her older sister ever bothered to learn to swim!
For about 30 years in the 1960s-1980s period we fished the Mississippi at Lansing, first in a little 14-ft. wooden boat powered by a 5 hp motor, which we launched and recovered at the Big Slough landing just over the bridge. After my dad died in 1969, my mother used a portion of his life insurance and I matched that figure, and we bought a tri-hull boat and 50 hp motor, and berthed it in south Lansing.
My grandparents lived near the Rethwisch lumber yard, and most springs when the river flooded, we had at least one day of trying to spear carp in the floodwaters there with a garden fork.
Trips up Mt. Hosmer were always a treat.
Several times, when I was a ‘tween”, my mother and I would stay for a day or two to do some painting or wallpapering, and I might be sent solo to the butcher shop with a quarter to buy a ring of homemade bologna. A treat was an ice cream cone from Dutch’s and maybe some penny candies.
My grandmother and one of her sons always planted a “hot bed” in early spring and raised tomato, cabbage and pepper plants for sale to regular customers. It was located along the walk from the house to the woodshed, which also contained the two-hole privy.
And that was not a favorite memory of Lansing, especially in winter!