A Trip to Cedar Falls, Iowa

        Article and Pictures by Evan Wright

My uncle, Brian, has long encouraged me to meet my great uncles Gene and Leonard Lybbert, who live in Cedar Falls, Iowa, as they are my grandmother’s only two surviving siblings from a family of eight. I had planned to sneak in a trip to visit them before the boys were born, but I ran out of weekends. So, when Brenda told me she was going to take the boys to Fort Wayne for a week, I knew what was top on the agenda. I called up Gene during the middle of the week, and introduced myself. My intention was ask if I could take him and his brother out to lunch if I flew through town (with the intention of eventually heading out to Council Bluffs and possibly Abilene, Kansas), but I couldn’t even offer that much before I was overwhelmed with hospitality. They just needed to know when I’d be flying in.

After scrambling to get organized, and get the wiener dogs to the kennel, I headed out to Clow airport. At the FBO I checked the weather, had a few Munchkins (an indicator someone had had a check-ride that morning), and headed out to the plane. After preflighting, gassing up, and waiting for several "Young Eagle" flights ahead of me to take off, I departed on runway 18 and set a course for Waterloo, Iowa.

The navigation for the trip was relatively straight forward. The course was from Clow to Waterloo Iowa, via the victor airways across the Dupage, Rockford, Dubuque VORs, and then to Waterloo. The only fly in the ointment was that I had a 15 knot headwind. En route to Rockford, I received only static on the ATIS frequency. After double checking the frequency in all the publications in the plane, I called the tower to confirm the ATIS was in service. Tower informed me the frequency had recently changed from 126.7 to 127.6. I checked my chart, noticed it still showed Meigs Field, and felt slightly embarrassed. Upon getting the ATIS, I was able to get the appropriate approach control frequency and get a squawk code for the transition through Rockford’s TRSA.
 

Across the Mississippi to Iowa

I arrived at Waterloo and landed on runway 18 about 15 minutes late, a combination of headwinds, having to pay for my gas, and waiting to take off. After securing the airplane at Livingston Aviation (named after John Livingston, the aviation pioneer, and the namesake of the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"), I walked into the FBO. I was immediately greeted by Gene and Leonard. They didn’t need to introduce themselves, though. They had such a strong family resemblance that I could have picked them out of a police line up.

We walked out to Leonard’s black Cadillac, put my bags in the trunk and drove off to lunch. We pulled into a local dive called "Z’s" a few miles down the road, where we had soup and salad. Despite my best efforts, Leonard refused to let me pick up the check, and he and Gene proceeded to debate which one of them would get custody of me for the night. After lunch, Leonard dropped me and Gene off at Gene’s house, where I met his wife Katherine ("Kak"). I showed Gene and Kak photos of the boys, Brenda, and our dogs, and they showed me a picture they had of all their children and grand children. After our introductions, Gene offered to take me to the museums around Waterloo and Cedar Falls.

Our first stop was the Ice House, a former ice storage facility on the Iowa River. The circular brick building now holds a museum dedicated to antique ice cutting and farming equipment. Gene showed me what various things were for, and explained what sort of things they had had growing up on the farm in Cresco, Iowa. For example, I had never seen a milk separator before, much less a hand cranked one. There were also mock ups of various businesses from the turn of the century. In the "General Store" there was a box of Whitman's chocolates just like the one I’d given Gene and Leonard as a housewarming gifts. I pointed them out to Gene and joked that maybe he should check the expiration date on the ones I brought him.

The funniest part was when Gene spotted a model T, and told me about how he and Leonard had had one during World War Two, but were always driving it on flat tires, since new ones were unavailable. He proceeded to show me how all the pedals and levers worked. Then he explained that the Johnson rod was a primitive gear shifter that allowed the car to run in either low or high gear. Since I had thought the Johnson rod was something from "Seinfeld", I thought it was hilarious that there was such a thing. After this very "hands-on" demonstration, Gene looked over at a large sign that read Please Do Not Touch, whereupon he sheepishly suggested we move on.

Our next stop was the eponymous Victorian House museum, which was not surprisingly, a Victorian house. The house had been configured as a museum, and was now hosting a small Civil War exhibit about Iowa’s role in the conflict. On the way there we made a Laurel and Hardy-esque wrong turn and almost walked in to the Cedar Falls Women’s Club. There wasn’t too much in the Victorian House to see, just a small assortment of medals, publications, uniforms, and firearms, but it was still fun.

   
The Ice House and Victorian House Museums

Before heading home, we stopped off at the supermarket to buy whiskey and beer. Back at Gene’s house, he poured himself a drink, a double bourbon and Juicy-Juice in my honor and offered me a beer, which I gladly accepted. We traded family stories for a while, then drove to Leonard’s house, where we all piled into Leonard’s car to go to for pre dinner drinks.

The restaurant Leonard had picked had recently been in the national news because a Bosnian artist, Paco Rosic, had painted a half scale replica of the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling using two thousand cans of spray paint. After briefly reconnoitering the main floor, we headed downstairs to the "Catacombs", the bar in the basement. After a round of drinks, we headed off to dinner.

The next locale Leonard took us to was an upscale Italian restaurant complete with a white Steinway. Much of the interior furnishing had been trucked up from Las Vegas when Caesar’s Palace was remodeled. Gene and Leonard were really pulling out the stops to show me a good time.

Afterwards, we drove back to Leonard’s house to unwind for the evening. During the course of showing me around the house I learned that Leonard had been a Judge Advocate in the Air Force, and had personally worked with General Curtis Lemay. I also learned that he had all the pilot ratings in the book. He sent me back with a 1973 copy of the commercial pilot PTS. The original price was 65 cents.

The next morning, while I was having a cup of tea, and I glanced at the local paper. On the cover was an article about Paco’s. After reading it, we were off to the country club for Breakfast. Having not anticipated this sort of royal treatment, I felt slightly under-dressed.

The weather to West was deteriorating, ruling out continuing to Council Bluffs; The only option was to head home.

Goodbye, Cedar Falls

The flight back was smooth, but the winds had shifted, so I had a head wind on the return trip as well. On the leg to Dubuque, I passed over an old airport which wasn't on the chart. A second look revealed two cars drag racing side by side. It seemed a waste of perfectly good airport. Not far off the course to the North, the sectional chart showed Kevin Kostner’s "Field of Dreams" as a landmark. Just to be safe, I topped off the tanks at Dubuque, before heading back to Illinois via the Rockford VOR to Clow. The total round trip had taken four and a half hours of flight time versus eleven hours of driving if I had taken a car, making it possible for me to meet two family members I otherwise would never have met. And, the two branches of family are now back in touch. If there is a better use for a small plane, I am hard pressed to name it.