In the town of Houghton, Iowa (fun fact: The locals pronounce the town as “HUFF-ton”) they had an attraction called a “Redneck Pool”. It seemed appropriate to join in as the only banjar player to play in something called a redneck pool, so I did. Near by a local group was serving ice cream with a home-made chocolate sauce. It was damn good!
We did the pass-through in Salem and I played banjo on the porch of the museum. One of the docents there named Mike said I should stop by the next town of Houghton and play some banjo for Betty Jo. It took a while, as I was in the redneck pool and broke a string on the banjo, but I got it back together and headed off to the John Deer dealer where Betty Jo worked. The dealership was off the route about three blocks and as I approached, I can see this woman standing outside wait to hear a banjo! Mike was not sure it was going to happen but then there I was. Some people have to work in these towns and miss out. Not Betty Jo!
A wonderful stop on the route was called the Geode State Park. It was a beautiful park and worth visiting again. At the park I met the woman (A music teacher named Jenny Peters ) who brought here ukulele with her on her bike. Here we are jammin’ some tunes.
Now this is redneck swimmin’ ! This mud beach was still a ways from the final town, yet there were still people out in the river and maybe 300 more in Geode park. just chillin’. I left the park and wondered how late the rest of the pack was going to hang?
I’m sure that there were still 200 people back at Geode Park when I arrived in Middleton. In fact, I was late getting into this town, so the rest of route had NO SERVICES from the Ragbrai crews or the Iowa State Patrol ! No sense hanging around here, I headed out to Burlington with the rest of the pack (what was left of them) to have dinner with my crew at 8:10 PM!