The Clinton Public Library, October 2003

In 1955, when I was ten, we moved 70 miles south along the river to Clinton. I was already a voracious reader, but in Clinton I was old enough to go to the public library on my own. At the time, patrons weren’t allowed to check out books from the adult section till they were 13, but the library staff made an exception for me. When I went into the library on my 12th birthday, they presented me with an adult card. 

When I returned to the library on October 10, 2003, I found a considerable collection of my books with Clinton author neatly pencilled into the front of them. One of the ladies who’d been on the desk in 1960 was still there as a volunteer; she remembered me vividly. (She said I haven’t changed. That’s not true, but the comment was flattering.)

Me, finding a Geoffrey Household novel in the Childrens Section of the Clinton Public Library. (Household's first novel, The Mystery of the Spanish Cave , was a favorite of mine at 14)

Clinton Public Library: Me and Marilyn in the (present; in my day it was downstairs) Children's Room. Marilyn was on the desk when I got my card to the adult section

The 4th Street Elevator: Now (and for many years) a tourist attraction, but originally built by a banker in 1883 to commute between his home on top of of the bluff and his office in the floodplain.

My parents graduated from the U of Dubuque, and my mother’s family all lived in Dubuque. Mom came home from Boca Raton where my folks were living during the war (Dad worked for the Navy) to have me. When the war ended before she could return, Dad came back also to find a civilian job. 

Dubuque, on the Mississippi, is the oldest settlement in Iowa. Indeed, it’s older than white settlement in the region: the bluffs overlooking the river are full of lead ore, which Amerinds were mining before voyageur Julian Dubuque settled among them. 

For a few years in the 1880s, Dubuque was the wealthiest community in the US with more millionaires and more telephones per capita than anywhere else in the country. The boom (from sawmills) was brief, but it led to some lovely High Victorian buildings.

Because the economy then crashed, many of those fine buildings weren’t torn down for new construction for long enough that people had a chance to appreciate what they had. (Not entirely: the mansion Graystone was bulldozed to become a parking lot in 1945. Its partner Redstone remains as a bed and breakfast, I’m happy to say.)

Redstone: Industrialist AA Cooper's mansion from the 1880s, preserved as a bed and breakfast.

Like many other bright Iowans, I never took the SAT. The U of Iowa accepts scores from the American College Test (based in Iowa City, like the U of I itself) for enrollment–and you could go a long way without finding a better university than Iowa. (Incidentally, ‘educators’ in states like North Carolina claim Iowa’s low rate of taking the SAT means that the state’s ranking is artificially raised. The evidence is that the 5% of Iowans who do take the SAT are in fact a fully representative sample; but if you’re an education bureaucrat from NC, you grasp at straws.) 

I had wonderful teachers at Iowa. They taught me not only how to learn but to love learning. Moreover, I worked in the Main Library as a book page, an education in itself. In the course of reshelving everything that came through the library, I learned of the existence of all sorts of subjects that I’d never have run into in my normal classwork. I pursued some of them, on my own and in classes, and broadened my range of knowledge and interests enormously. 

It was at the university that I met my wife, Jo. Though she’s from Dubuque, we didn’t meet till our freshman year. (I attended her 40th high school reunion in August and knew over 10% of the attendees from my grade school days.) 

I was a history major, but because I wound up taking some thirty hours of Latin also (mostly for fun) I got a double major. My interest in both subjects has continued to my great benefit as a writer and as a citizen. 

Thanks to the suggestion of my webmaster, a former librarian at Iowa, there’s now a considerable quantity of my books and papers in the Iowa Authors Collection. (The guide to the manuscript collection is available online: MsC592 and the books are listed in the University of Iowa Libraries online catalog.)

Me, looking at my history honor's thesis for the first time in many years. ( New York Times Reporting of Atrocities on the Western Front, 1914-18)

I visited it in October, 2003, and found to my delight that they’d added a copy of my Honors Thesis (“New York Times Reporting of Atrocities on the Western Front, 1914-18″). There were also copies of two of my books in the library’s book drop vending machine. It’s amazing and wonderful to be part of a university and a library which were so important to my becoming who I am. 

There’s one other aspect of the state and the university which I want to mention. When I was an undergraduate there was a tree in front of the Old Capitol (it was an elm and died soon after from Dutch Elm Disease) with a bronze plaque noting that it had been planted by the woman who was the sole graduate of the Class of 1864. Southerners tend to claim the Civil War for their own, but Iowans under Sherman were still standing on the Shiloh battlefield after the southern forces retreated. 

Iowans are raised to take their citizenship seriously. When my draft notice arrived, I went–because that’s what a citizen does, however much he may loathe the cause for which he’s being drafted to fight. 

David Schoonover, Curator of Rare Books, shows me the shelves of my books in the Iowa Authors Collection.