Muscatine riverfront, Lock and Dam #16, Iowa City

My father got a job with Muscatine Municipal Water and Power in 1967 and worked his way up from engineer to acting general manager.  When we had visitors he would always take them by the locks on the other side of the Mississippi from Muscatine.  He enjoyed chatting with the deckhands as they maneuvered the barges in and out of the locks.  Where were they from?  What were they hauling?  How was the river?  I was not nearly as amazed as my dad at the locking process.  The Muscatine I would show to visitors would be the remains of the 19th Century architecture from when the town was a hub of commerce.  Boats traveled from side to side across the river, from Davenport to Burlington.  What really got Dad’s interest was when the boats would go up and down.

I lived in the River City Housing Co-op in 1979.  By summer Janet had already moved out to her separate apartment leaving me to a small room in Small House.  The University Fieldhouse and hospitals were just blocks distant.  Small House was a few years away from being demolished for the new law school.  The university was beginning a major expansion of the hospital having received the first of many large donations from Muscatine native Roy Carver.  These are the photos of building Carver wings onto the main hospital.  

One of my housemates at Small House, Joanne, said that she felt comforted by having Campus Security drive by the house many times though out the day.  I told her that they weren’t particularly observant and that she shouldn’t feel protected.  She got offended.  I took some Iowa ditch weed marijuana seeds and planted marijuana next to Small House.  The plants got up to the second floor before I told the housemate about them - proving that Campus Security didn’t see our house despite driving by so many times a day.  She got worried that the cops were going to raid the house now and evict us for drug dealing.  Before I cut the plants down, I took a few photos, including these of the grasshoppers enjoying their lives.

And finally there are a few photos of my housemate Dee Welding.  She was from, West Point?, Iowa, and an art major.  I think that she wanted to grow up to become a school art teacher.  Dee later moved into Big House where Cathy lived.  Cathy said that every evening around 10:00 p.m. the guys from Big House would gather around the television and wait.  Dee would eventually walk through the living room to the bathroom, dressed in diaphanous pajamas revealing every curve.  She would finish her evening ablutions and walk to her bedroom.  Then the guys would go off to their respective rooms.

I don’t remember that she would do the same at Small House.  At the time, I only had eyes for Janet.  To my detriment.