From an opening in the camera case situated on the back seat of the Family Truckster, I watched the world go by as Vicki drove my photographer and me from Davenport to West Branch, Iowa. And during that entire time, the world looked like 48 miles of endless cornfields. If Iowa was heaven, then angels must be cattle and scarecrows.
We arrived in downtown West Branch at 1:10pm on Friday September 8, 2023. I figured for sure we would go straight to the Herbert Hoover sites first, but I was mistaken. Instead, Tom had something else in mind – and that something else were chili dogs from Main Street Sweets. During our last visit to West Branch, which was October 8, 2021, my two companions had lunch there and my photographer hasn’t stopped talking about their amazing chili dogs since. And I had to admit, when their meals arrived, I thought the dogs looked pretty tasty as well.
After I watched Tom scarf-down his two chili dogs and some coleslaw, it was 1:45pm and time to spend the rest of the day with President Herbert Hoover. My photographer’s well thought out plan was to visit Hoover’s Presidential Library first; then we’d spend some time in Hooverville, which was what Tom called the West Branch neighborhood where the President was born and spent the first nine years of his life; and we’d end our visit at the gravesites of Herbert and Lou Henry – which were located some 500 yards behind the President’s birthplace home.
When we arrived at the parking lot outside the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Musuem, I instantly became nauseous – and it wasn’t from the chili dog fumes my photographer had emitted inside the van. During the first two years of my travelling career, I had remained relatively healthy after surviving a detached head in 2013 thanks to James Garfield. But that all came to an end during our visit to Hoover’s West Branch library on June 29, 2015. It was inside that building, on that fateful day eight years earlier, when Tom discovered my legs had become mysteriously cracked. As a matter of fact, I heard my photographer tell his wife during a phone conversation from that same parking lot that my legs were in such bad shape he could see my stainless-steel tibia through one of the cracks.
But on that Friday afternoon in 2023, my legs were heavily bandaged as the three of us went inside the Presidential Library for the first time in eight years. Before we strolled through the exhibits, my photographer asked to meet up with the site’s director, Tom Schwartz, whom we had met during our first visit when I posed with the Director’s bobble head of Hoover. It turned out Schwartz was a bobble head enthusiast. After the two Tom’s had a brief conversation about our 2021 ‘Hike from Hell’ at Hoover’s Rapidan Camp, I posed for a photo with Mr. Schwartz.
During the next 45 minutes, Tom carried me through the museum where we saw President Herbert Hoover’s life unfold before our eyes. We saw a few items from Hoover’s childhood all the way to his Presidency and his life after the White House. But once again, as it was in 2015, I was underwhelmed by the lack of “Wow Factor” Presidential artifacts on display. Whenever I visit a Presidential Museum, I expect to see authentic artifacts worn by, used by, sat on, and/or rode in by the President of the United States. But in the Hoover Museum, I didn’t see very many of those items. While I did see an early Hoover family Bible sitting on a table, there was no designation as to whether or not it was used during his inauguration. I’ve been to all 13 official Presidential Libraries within the umbrella of the United States National Archives and the Hoover Library ranked 11th on my list. In my humble opinion, even though I’m rarely asked or most people don’t care what I think, Hoover’s library ranked only slightly better than the libraries of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton – and those two were horrible.
When Tom carried me out of the Hoover Library and back to the Truckster, I thought the museum was an accurate representation of Herbert’s Presidency – lackluster and disappointing. That made me wonder what Trump’s Library will feature if and when it’s ever built. If it is built, likely next to his private golf course, I envision a mammoth structure designed to resemble the Capitol Building, surrounded by a gigantic wall, where visitors don’t pay to enter. Instead, tourists will be forced to put on MAGA hats and yell “The election was stolen” as they storm the building without going through any type of security screening. And of course, Covid masks, as well as undocumented American citizens, will be prohibited.
It was time for the three of us to take a stroll through Hooverville, also known as the quiet, little neighborhood where “Bertie” Hoover was born and lived until the age of nine. The historic neighborhood featured Hoover’s birth home, his father’s reconstructed blacksmith shop, a one-room schoolhouse, and the Friends Meetinghouse where the Hoover’s worshipped. There was also the site of the President’s boyhood home, where Hoover lived from age four until shortly after his mother’s death in 1883. Known as the House of the Maples site, the original Hoover home was unfortunately destroyed years ago and only a large maple tree and a sign mark the site.
Vicki napped in the van while Tom carried me around the Hoover neighborhood for about an hour. The weather was perfect for our leisurely stroll – the temperature was in the low 70s and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And although there weren’t any children to contend with, there was a smattering of elderly people who were walking around the sites, which made me laugh to myself. After all, Tom and Vic delayed their trip to mid-September to avoid throngs of tourists, especially school-aged kids. But it seemed as though every senior citizen in the country had the same idea, and now everything was being invaded by the “gray bush” population.
At this time, my photographer and I invite you to take a stroll with us through the world of young Herbert “Bertie” Hoover where you’ll see the sites through the lens of Tom’s camera.
As soon as Tom and I were finished visiting all of the Hoover sites in his childhood ‘Neck of the Woods’, the two of us returned to the Visitor Center parking lot where we found Vicki snoozing in the Truckster. We had one final Hoover site left to visit, which were the gravesites of our 31st President and his wife. I was mentally stunned when Tom’s wife didn’t roll her eyes or make a snide comment as soon as my photographer told her we were headed to the burial site next. I thought for sure I’d hear the words, “Haven’t we been to that gravesite before?” But Vicki said nothing – she smiled and began the short drive past the Presidential Library and up to the beautiful hillside gravesite. Maybe her unexpected joy came from her knowing Hoover’s was the only Presidential gravesite scheduled for the entire trip. But little did she know, Tom had planned on us visiting a large number of cemeteries during the next 15 days, even though the others didn’t have any Presidential connection whatsoever.
When we arrived at the hilltop, located roughly 500 yards behind the President’s birthplace, the three of us walked the short distance to the beautiful, yet simplistic, burial site. A tall American flag flew over the site, which included an arched walkway, and two slabs of Vermont white marble where the President and First Lady were laid to rest. Behind and above the two grave markers were three rows of shrubs, which were framed by a row of pine trees at the very top of the hill.
On October 20, 1964, President Herbert Hoover died at the age of 90 from massive internal bleeding at his Waldorf Astoria suite in New York City. Five days later, he was laid to rest at his beloved birthplace in West Branch. Hoover once wrote of West Branch – “My grandparents and my parents came here in a covered wagon. In this community they toiled and worshipped God. The most formative years of my boyhood were spent here. My roots are in this soil.” Following his burial, Herbert Hoover became part of the Iowa soil as well. And so did his wife, even though she died at the Waldorf on January 7, 1944 at the age of 69 and was originally buried in Palo Alto, California. Shortly after the President’s death, Lou Henry Hoover’s casket left California and headed East where the First Lady was re-interred alongside her husband.
After I posed for a handful of photos at the gravesite, the three of us sat and absorbed the tranquil solitude where the Hoover’s were laid to rest. That’s the moment I nearly fell over in disbelief. Vicki looked out over the tree-filled rolling grounds in front of us and said to my photographer: “I’d love to build a house and live right here. It’s so peaceful and beautiful, plus you’d have a Presidential gravesite in your backyard.” Even though Tom said living there would be great, I knew he was lying through his teeth. Not only is West Branch, Iowa in the middle of nowhere, if he were to pick a Presidential gravesite to live near, it would be Jefferson’s in Charlottesville, Virginia. My photographer loves every aspect of the Commonwealth of Virginia, with the exception of the hiking trail to Hoover’s Rapidan Camp in the Shannondoah Mountains.
It was a few minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon when we left the gravesite and headed along the pathway back to the Truckster. But instead of taking the direct route to the parking area, Vicki suggested the three of us walk the trail out through the Tallgrass Prairie. At first, I knew my photographer was annoyed with Vic’s suggestion because that trail was twice as far as the original pathway. And since Tom is made of 60 percent water, he likes to take the path of least resistance – especially if it’s downhill.
But once the three of us made it out onto the prairie, my photographer was singing a different tune. No, it wasn’t Dominique; however, Tom found the scenery to be very photographic with the vast abundance of wildflowers, butterflies, and other assorted insects. Plus, the area gave the three of us an opportunity to see what the landscape of Iowa looked like before the land was settled in the second half of the 1800s. It turned out the National Park Service had restored 81 acres of the land south of the Hoover gravesites to represent the prairie of long ago, even though the fertile land in front of us had been plowed and farmed by the time Herbert Hoover was born in 1874.
As the clock hit five o’clock, I knew my two companions must’ve been exhausted. We had been on the road for nearly 300 miles over the past twelve hours and it was time to get to the hotel. As soon as we arrived at the Days Inn, which was located outside of downtown West Branch on the south side of I-80, Vicki registered while Tom unpacked their belongings from the van.
Once in our room, my photographer set me alongside the television set where the three of us watched a movie called ‘Friday Night Lights’, which was reminiscent of our 2021 trip to Texas where we sat in the stands for a high school football game in Odessa between the Permian Panthers and Midland Bulldogs.
During the movie, I watched in disgust as Tom devoured a pint of chicken fried rice he had brought in a cooler from home and heated in the microwave oven. Then he washed the rice down with the caramel apple he bought at Lagomarcino’s Confectionery in Davenport.
Shortly after the movie had finished, the lights in the room were extinguished around 9:30pm and I was left alone in the darkness with only my thoughts. As hard as I tried to envision all of the great sites we had visited earlier that day, all I could think about was the plane that crashed about 180 miles to the north of us on February 3, 1959 – the Day the Music Died. Over and over, I envisioned a red and white Beechcraft Bonanza slam into a frozen cornfield outside of Clear Lake, Iowa and then cartwheel into a mangled heap of metal against a barbed wire fence. I quickly realized why I had such a vivid and horrendous dream – in less than twelve hours, I’ll be standing on the gravesite of a person who died in that plane crash. No, not Buddy or The Bopper, they’re buried in Texas. And not Ritchie, either; he rests in California. At some point in the early afternoon on Saturday, I’ll get the opportunity to pay my respects to the pilot of the plane – Roger Peterson. My photographer will also have the chance to make peace with the pilot as well. After all, the 21-year-old Peterson was blamed for killing the three rock stars.
“I can’t remember if I cried, when I read about his widowed bride. But something touched me deep inside, the day the music died.”
