Lincoln to Iowa City

Today we're talking boxed cakes, rivers, and gilded domes as we travel from one state capital and past another. We also finally leave Nebraska and are finished with the dry Western states!

Transcript

0:09

Hello everybody. And are you ready? Ready or not? We are going to finish crossing Nebraska and we are going to go into Iowa. So Nebraska obviously is much better than everybody thinks it is, so let's continue with that. And we are going to drive out of Lincoln. I always find this part of the country extremely fascinating because it's been quite empty. Up until now, you'll go through a city and then a sudden there's nothing, and then you'll come to another city and it may take hours to get to a city that's even of a re of a decent size. However, once you hit Lincoln, it's clear that you are now entering a denser part of the country, and it's just gonna get more and more and more dense as we go. You'll also have noticed that we have. Left the Platte River and why talk about it if we've already left it right, but this, this stretch of the road and kind of this weird suburban area between Lincoln and Omaha will cross it once more because it goes, makes a giant curve up and then down and we'll cross about halfway between the two cities. So the Platte River, now that we're about to cross over it and say goodbye as it heads towards the Missouri is 310 miles long. But if you measure it from the North Plat headwaters, it is 1050 miles long. The river itself is notable for being very broad, very shallow, and it meanders a lot with a sandy bottom and many islands. It was originally called the Nebraska River by French Explorers after what the OTO people called the river. However, then the French decided it was not a good enough name, and they renamed it Plat, which is the French word for flat, and that became the default name in English in the 19th century. The river was humorously described as a mile wide at the mouth, but only six inches deep, Uh, it makes sense. Then while the French would've changed the name, it is extremely important in westward expansion because many of the trails would follow it. It is probably the largest river that goes through this part of the country reliably. Well, there's really nothing in Kansas that would be very similar. There's other rivers like the Arkansas River. However, then you end up in some of the tallest parts of the Rockies in Colorado and you really don't want to follow up. The Missouri River, up into Montana because then the mountains also there are kind of jagged and terrible. So the plot it is, and you follow into central Wyoming where as we've already driven through, is not as bad as these other parts of the Rocky Mountains. So many trails follow that the PO expressed did. And when the Transcontinental Telegraph and railroad were built, they both followed the Platte River originally. The land around was. Ignored because it was very hard and it was not easily plowed. However, we've discovered with all of this, the Platte River obviously had it going for it because the Railroad Union Pacific now has the largest railroad yard in North Platte on the Platte River. And then Willa Kher wrote a ton of successful novels about the toils and struggles and eventual successes of the people who settled. The land further west into Nebraska fun times. So now we blow over the Platte River. There is a really cool state park if you get off on the west side of the river that I think would make the most perfect family reunion. Place. One, because it's between two cities. Two has a lot of nice campgrounds. It also has a lodge. It's easily accessible from the freeway, close to grocery stores, and also has some really cool. Activities has playgrounds, has an aquatic center and my favorite, because I cannot give up a good view, is an observation tower that sits right on the plot river. It is so pretty up there, you just walk up the stairs. It can be a little frightening'cause if it is even slightly breezy, you can feel the tower sway. It is very stable, but you can feel it and you get this amazing view. You're not even that far up, but. Nebraska being the flatland, it is any of you higher than where you are, is going to be spectacular. So while we're gazing at Nebraska and as we get back in the car to finish our trip to Omaha, we're gonna talk about some amazing Nebraskan inventions. We already talked about Kool-Aid that deserved its own little detour to Hastings, Nebraska. Hopefully we, we go to the grocery store and bought packets on sale. However, there are a few other things that really influenced American life that have come from Nebraska, surprisingly. The first one we'll talk about is Duncan Hinz cake mix. Obviously it's ubiquitous cake mix and grocery stores. Super easy, super fun, also very tasty. Most of the time depends on the flavor. Duncan Hinz was the original cake mix. And why Duncan Hines. Duncan Hines, unlike Betty Crocker is a real person. He was a man from Kentucky and he was a food critic. He realized that many travelers faced the problem of finding good food while on a road trip like us, and so he. Took his wife and they went out and traveled the country and would write food reviews of restaurants. And so his restaurant ratings were the Google reviews, the Yelp of their time. People depended on them and they made traveling easier, more fun. And obviously roadside restaurants coveted a great rating. Because of his fame, he realized he could sell his name and make a lot of money. And so he did. And it all had to be food related goods. Duncan Hinz obviously was getting to the point when marketing was becoming a huge deal in the fifties and a marketer told him, quote, by making your name more meaningful in the home, you can upgrade American Eating habits. End quote, Duncan Hines. Had kind of this weird obsession with people not eating right, and so that was a big factor into his restaurant ratings. That they weren't just restaurants where you'd eat well or it tasted good, but it was wholesome. It was nutritious, it was well-rounded. He sold his name for a new cake mix that had just been invented, this cake mix license. Didn't do well in, in the initial hands of its inventors and was sold to the Nebraska Consolidated Meals in Omaha, which then redeveloped it into a higher quality cake mix, and it was called Duncan Hines. And Instant Cakes have never been the same since. So next time you're looking at Betty Crocker, they eventually got the idea from Duncan who sold his name to a Nebraska mill. So. Thank Nebraska for that cake mix. Next time you go to a birthday party. Another thing that is a little more contentious however I err on the side of Nebraska, is the Reen sandwich. I think a million New Yorkers just screamed out in anger and agony, but many people will claim that it is Nebraska and not just people from Nebraska, but food scholars, historians. People who dedicate their lives to figuring out and untangling the knots of history, say that Nebraska is far more likely to be the plausible explanation. The year 1925 at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha. So set the scene, obviously it's probably smoky, it's people are craving a drink, the middle of prohibition and a late night poker game is going on in the, in this hotel. A man by the name of Ruben Kovski, who's a local grocer in the city, asked the hotel to make him a sandwich of corned beef and sauerkraut. The kitchen. Then added Swiss cheese and a thousand island dressing on the sandwich, which had ripe bread and then grilled it. The man loved it. It became an instant sensation, and then New York stole it. That's all I'll say. Come fight me or fight the historians. Really, I'm just the bearer of bad news to New York. The next thing we'll talk about is frozen TV dinners. You might be wondering why Nebraska has a penchant for foisting. Easily made instant food on the rest of the country, but such as the life of a normal Midwest state there's a really interesting show on the History channel, the food that Built America, and you can get into the whole history of how they decided to make frozen TV dinners, how that came about, and it's really the, there's two men at the center of this. The first one, Carl Swanson, the name very recognizable, if you are a fan of these microwaveable TV dinners, who was an immigrant from Sweden. He started a company that would transport dairy products to local hotels and grocery stores. Pause there for a hot second and we'll go to another man whose name was Clarence Bird's Eye, which if you're a fan of frozen vegetables, you'll also recognize that name. He discovered the benefits of flash freezing in the 1920s, and it's a crazy story of him going to Canada and being in this forsaken frozen land and discovering that his fish had flash frozen and it actually preserved the flavor. Wild story. But we have him to thank for all of our mostly frozen food. And then you have also the rise of refrigerators. So food could last a lot longer. So all of these three things come together. A man working for Swanson. A salesman heard about a company that was trying to preserve Turkey so this company didn't know quite what to do with unused Turkey, and this salesman had the great idea to add other things into a meal that would be a typical Turkey dinner stuffing vegetables and potatoes. So he went back to the company's Bacteriologist, a woman by the name of Betty Cronin, who figured out how to heat all of the parts together while killing bacteria and not letting the food go mushy. So, sounds kind of complicated and we've really kind of rushed over it, but essentially, Carl Swanson started a company that would transport cold goods. Clarence Bird's Eye discovered how to flash freeze food. A company knew that they could flash, freeze Turkey, but then did not know how to sell it. Swanson becomes the best name for TV dinners, and the rest is history. You can go find Stouffer's Hungry Man, any kind you want, and it's the perfect TV dinner and it will not kill you because of a woman named Betty Cronin. I will argue however, that American TV dinners are not the best anymore. France has some amazing, amazing microwaveable meals, but that's another story for another day. So now we're gonna branch away from Food Cliff's Notes. The best friend of students everywhere. Cliff's Notes, well, they started with a young man by the name of Clifton Hillgas, who worked at the Nebraska Book Company in Lincoln. It's a great story already. It starts in a bookstore. He met Jack Cole, a fellow bookseller from Toronto, Canada, who had created a series of study guides that were for classic literature, Shakespeare, all the greats, very similar to today. In 1958, Jack Cole sold Clifton, the US Rights to the Guides. It did not take off immediately. I mean, this wasn't a, oh, here you go. Here's a box I give you the the right to sell them. He just sold the idea to him. So Clifton and his wife Catherine, created 16 guides all on Shakespearean plays at the time in their basement, and then began selling them. This is when it took off, and by 1964, they were selling over 1 million copies. So within what, six, five and a half years, six years. This company. Is now saving students all across the country. Unfortunately, for him, it has now become the replacement for many students. He did not intend them to replace the literature itself, but as a study supplement, something you could have next to whatever you were studying, and it would ask questions. It would help flesh out some of the ideas, the themes, the characters, and it would help you get the most out of the book you were reading or the play you were studying. Every guide until the company was sold in the late 1990s. Had a note with his signature saying, quote, A thorough appreciation of literature allows no shortcuts. End quote, along with Kool-Aid having a child memory, I think every student in America ends up using CliffNotes or the other company that really became famous for the same thing. Spark notes that every, every American student had a book they hated. Or something they didn't wanna study and ended up using that in its place. Mine was Charles Dickens. Uh, great expectations was bleak. Another story for another time. Anyways, there's one more invention this may feel like invention overload, but I'm just. Blown away at the sheer amount of stuff that's come out of Nebraska that we take for granted every day in our, in our daily, normal, boring lives. This last one is VA grips, and you may be like, oh, okay. It's a form of, it's basically special pliers. They were invented by a man named William Peterson, who was a Danish immigrant who moved to Nebraska to the town of Dewitt, the very tiny town of Dewitt, which is south of Lincoln. He opened a blacksmith shop and in his work. He realized he needed pliers that would both clamp and lock to hold the metal in a thigh like grip. So he tinkered around with a pair of pliers and then eventually would invent a screw mechanism in the handle that adjusted the pliers and also would lock them in place. He got a patent for them in 1921 and then. Within three years, also got a patent for a revised version. In 1924, he started building, just making them himself, and he would sell them out of the back of his car. The story could have ended there. However, he caught the attention of a certain consumer, the United States government, who realized that these pliers could be extremely useful to the military. So he landed a government contract in World War ii, and this is when VA grips blew through the roof, the cell. He continued revising them throughout the years, and it wasn't until 1957 that he added the easy release lever to the players. They're kind of fun to use because they make a very satisfying click when they unlock, and they were actually made locally dewitt until 2008 when the factory was closed and production moved to China. Which was the story of many a factory. But there you go. Nebraska, a perfect way to end our drive through the state. I know a lot of people are gonna be like, what about the zoo? Or what about the Lazen Gardens? A zoo's a zoo, sorry, but I'd rather talk about Kool-Aid, Duncan Hines, Ruben Sandwiches, frozen TV dinners, cliff notes, and vice grips. They're actually on my list of things to buy. Next time I go to Nebraska, gonna go to Menards and find vice grips. Anyways, we have arrived in Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, starting point for many a great western adventure over. We're heading east and we are going to cross the Missouri River. It's one of the most important rivers in the United States because it drains 500,000 square miles of land, but also forms a big part in our cultural mindset. It goes through many states and drains at least 10 and two provinces. So it covers a lot of ground. Most of it follows what is the Louisiana purchase? So the Missouri River starts in Montana, then goes through North Dakota. Makes a curve southward through South Dakota, and then ends up becoming the border between South Dakota, Nebraska, and then Iowa, and then it will deviate down into Kansas before turning East through Missouri and then ending just near St. Louis. The longest tributary is the river we just crossed 30 minutes prior. The Platte River and the Missouri River is very famous for its high silt content. Over half of the sediment emptying into the Gulf of Mexico comes from the Missouri River. What you may think, oh wow, that's not a lot. However. The Mississippi River is kind of just the name carrier. So here we go. Half of the sediment comes from the Missouri River. Half of the water, over half of the water comes from the Ohio River. The Mississippi just rides on the rest of the rivers, honestly. But that's another story for a trip down to the Delta, we've crossed into Iowa, and immediately you will notice a difference. It is hilly. Council Bluffs. Weird. The casino, there's a casino parking lot you can get a really good view of Omaha in. I've done that. Paid and to get into the parking lot, just to take the picture. Uh, my mom and sister were very patient with me that day, but you climb out of Council Bluffs and then you'll turn, will turn east and head towards Des Moines. This, this drive to me is fascinating, which I know I say that about pretty much everywhere we'd go. However, it just goes up and down. It's kind of like you're driving over green waves and it gets extremely fertile and green and corn, and it's just classic Midwest. I love the Midwest. As a general rule, my favorite place in the Midwest is Ohio, but Iowa I think presents the most perfect stereotypical image of the Midwest, and this drive is probably a big reason for that. So it's just driving straight. Straight east, up and down, up and down, up and down over, over the hills. I will say this, that, uh, Iowa has a lot more highway patrolmen out than Nebraska does. Just having driven through it like 10 times, that's just my own experience, but there's probably construction going on as well. Iowa is another interesting place along with Nebraska, but unlike Nebraska, it's not really. Strung along a river or a freeway. It's much more diverse in location and just spread out along the whole rectangular. Iowa is not N in Nebraska, the same sense. Iowa's not like Nebraska in the same sense that it follows the river or the freeway or the trains. It is much more interspersed, I guess, throughout the whole state, more evenly spread out throughout the whole state. So there's other places like Mason City that are not close to the freeway that are amazing and some interesting Dutch cities close by as well. However, there's just many things to see bridges of Madison County. If you're a musical fan, Madison county's real close to Des Moines, and if you pay close enough attention as we drive past the signs, which as a good road trip person, you should pay attention to all the signs. You never know what you're gonna see. John Wayne's birthplace. I have never been, sadly, and part of that's because I'm not the biggest John Wayne fan. But I'd be fascinated to go see his birthplace. Have driven past it so many times and never gotten off. I'm not following my own rules for road trips, but possible if you ever want to drive through Iowa and see John Wayne. However we've arrived in Des Moines, and unlike what Google or Apple Maps say, which is to go around the city on the beltway, never, never, never. I am one person who always will drive through the city, even if it takes 30 minutes longer. I wanna see the city, not the outside. We're going to cut right through Des Moines. And I think Des Moines is surprising that way, that you're kind of expecting just a ho-hum, midsize Midwest city and you get down and it is a city with a skyline and a pretty skyline on the, let's see, I'm thinking about it West Bank of the Raccoon River, you have the city skyline, and on the East Bank you have the state capital. Yes. You know where we're headed. The Iowa State Capital, and this one is also a unique state capital. We've now arrived at the part of the country that is now starting to use State House, by the way. So it is commonly called the Iowa State House. This building was built between 1871 and 1886, which might account for its slightly florid gilded age vibes. It is the only five dome capital in the country. The central one is super famous as well because of its gold leafing. It is covered in 23 karat gold, and the last re gilding took place in the late 1990s with a cost of$482,000. A lot of money, but it looks really pretty in the sunlight. Inside the state capitol, there is a model on loan from the Department of the Navy of the USS Iowa. It's 18 feet long and few inches, so one fourth of each inch of the model is equal to one foot of the real boat. So the USS Iowa, if you are inclined to go see the real one and not just the model in the middle of the country, you can go to San Pedro, California and visit the USS Iowa as a floating museum. It was the only ship of her class to have served in the Atlantic Ocean in World War ii. Lots of history there. Iowa's very proud of it as they should be in the south hall of the state capital. There's a collection of porcelain dolls. You might think, oh, not the place for it. Kind of creepy, weird. However, these dolls represent the 41 First Ladies of Iowa, each in their inaugural gowns. Unique. These are why we go to the state capitals. You never know what you're going to see. That is very unique to the state. The state capital is also home to the world. Food praise. Which if you're like me and hadn't heard about it before, looking up the state capitol, that is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced humanity through food. So it's not really a chef prize, but more of a scientist prize. It is kind of meant to compete with the Nobel Prize because a lot of people don't see how literature or physics necessarily solve the great humanitarian crises that you hear across the world. They might, literature would help us be more empathetic and realize the plight, but it might just be that the World Food Prize was for boots on the ground. So Norman Borlaug was a native Iowan, and he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for contributions to food production, and he realized that peace. Many times comes through increased food security and he, uh, he campaigned for the Nobel Committee to make a prize that was related to food because of its use in peace, poverty, and war. The committee refused. Uh, saying that Alfred Nobel's will did not allow for that and they had to stick with what they were told, and Norman did not stop there. He continued to look for sponsors and would eventually find General Foods as a partner and then another businessman by the name of John Ron Argue, RUAN. So one example of why you might win in 20 16, 3 people won for creating a biofortified orange fleshed sweet potato. That was resistant, tolerant, and high yielding. So a perfect thing to grow in places with a lack of water or a lack of fertilizer or anything else could go wrong, but also be extremely nutritious. Now, the reason why it's in Iowa, because if this is such a prestigious prize among food scientists, why wouldn't it be somewhere with a more prestigious. Background. It's because both Borlaug and the other businessman sponsor were from Iowa and they acquired the former Des Moines Library as their headquarters, which is quite close to the state capitol as well. So when time, when the time comes to award their prize, they use the House of Representatives chamber in the state capitol for the award ceremony and then adjourned to the library for the after party. Who knew? Right. World peace through food was. Related to the Iowa State Capitol, and if you get to get to the ceremony early enough, you can go see all a collection of porcelain dolls with the first ladies inaugural gowns on them, we're just gonna kind of push through, but there's so much more we can talk about for another trip. Mason City, I'm just gonna say it, Mason City, because I have to tell you this. Can't believe I didn't say it earlier. As we crossed the Platte River, we get into the car and if I'm driving, I've set this up beforehand because it's too much as you're crossing the river and you don't wanna be on your phone because this freeway's huge and it gets complicated quite fast on the Iowa side. But as soon as I see cross under that, welcome to Iowa sign. We are blasting Meredith Wilson's the music man. It's iconic. It's great. It's one of the best musicals ever written, and you get to drive through the state where it is. How great could that be? You have a builtin soundtrack for driving across Iowa. Anyways, Iowa, Nebraska, it's a great part of the country, and we're going to get ready to cross perhaps the most famous river in the country for the next episode and get through a few more Midwestern states. Well, thanks for joining today. Rest up because we're gonna get, go through some really hairy traffic spots in the country, Chicago. Um, yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be great. We'll have a fun time getting stuck somewhere probably. Thanks for listening and see you next time.