Memorial Day weekend 2005, grotto expedition through western Iowa & Minnesota

Slicing through the pot roast countryside of Iowa...

While we waited out a thunderstorm at Pizza Ranch in Harlan, IA,
 gave $20 to the pizza-jockey Sean, who didn’t know 
anything useful about grottoes in the town, but he needed the money
 to buy The Da Vinci Code — he’s a HS senior, wants to go to Rome 
so he can see the “secret altars” etc. that Brown writes 
about in his bastard accounts of the cabal du jour... 
also wants to major in Business.

Epiphany in lightning flashes and empty pizza pan
on the wettened Saturday night streets of Harlan.

“I got my cheerleader’s outfit at the Carroll, IA, Wal-Mart for $22.66.” 
Every Wal-Mart is a city of death. Discount 
consumerism digs more graves in the retail necropolis.

Stayed the night at Motel 71-30, manager: Jan of Schostakowa, Poland.

Unmap
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(5/30)

No Dobberstein grotto in Carroll.
Grotto in Defiance, IA, is sub-par.
        Was Carroll grotto dismantled 
        and hauled to West Bend?
How ‘bout in Harris, Iowa?

Rembrandt, Sutherland, Hartley (got hot fudge shakes here), 
May City, Harris (Bud Allen’s “David Grotto”), Sibley 
(met Aunt Glad’s companion, days before she was moving 
for good to her brother’s in Michigan).

Into Minnesota via the southwestern corner. Blue Earth, Arco 
(a great old grotto/ gas station turned private home here, 
mosaic'd facade and free-standing patriotic, animal themed 
statuary has been moved to the local campground.)

The visions of the Midwest continue under this blue sky and upon
this blue earth.