A little over 100 years ago, hot dogs were just cheap sausages stuffed into buns and sold for a few cents on street corners, at fairs and sporting events. By the 1970s, hot dogs, still cheap sausages stuffed into buns, were such an iconically American food that a leading car company invoked them to give its […]
Des Moines history
Posted inFood & Drink
Her parents’ kung pao chicken had Des Moines obsessed. With Heavenly Asian Cuisine, Nhina Chau brought back the recipe — and explored her Vietnamese roots
Nhina Chau, owner of Heavenly Asian Cuisine, will never put freezer-burned veggies in her egg drop soup. She crinkles her nose at the thought of it. “I personally hate the smell of frozen peas and carrots,” Chau said, squirming in her chair. Egg drop soup is a Chinese restaurant classic. The people of West Des […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The Blazing Saddle is home to leather daddies, lesbians, cowboys, queens and queer elders who can remember a Des Moines before Pride
The Blazing Saddle is open 365 days a year, but a Thursday afternoon at the bar is very different from a Friday or Saturday night. The doors open at 2 p.m., and the bar quickly fills with men, most at retirement age or approaching it. They’ll drink a few beers, or a cup of coffee, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Athlete and lawyer Paul Robeson was a renowned singer of spirituals, Broadway hits and patriotic tunes. By 1950, the U.S. government flagged him as a radical.
On the evening of Feb. 4, 1932, an eager crowd gathered at the Hoyt Sherman Place auditorium for a recital of spirituals by a man whose bass-baritone voice was already legendary. Paul Robeson was an all-American football player, Columbia-educated lawyer, and star of both a hit musical and a West End Shakespeare production. A Des […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Funny page mainstay The Family Circus made its very first appearance in the Des Moines Register — under a different name
Almost everything on the Monday, Feb. 29, 1960 front page of the Des Moines Register made for grim reading: Southern senators plotting to kill a civil rights bill. An armed robbery on School Street. Iowans weary of winter cold. But sandwiched between stories about a brewing Middle East border war and President Eisenhower’s state visit […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘The American people must have more than a choice between evils’: Iowan Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s vice president, was an ag innovator and fierce antifascist
“The Cornfield Prophet” Henry A . Wallace, known for his pioneering work in agriculture, was a progressive statesman who championed the “Century of the Common Man.” A heartbeat away from the presidency for four years as FDR’s vice president, his supporters viewed him as the torchbearer for the New Deal, while opponents dismissed him as […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: 100 years ago, central Iowans embraced gender-nonconforming immigrant and fortune teller Heroda Kaiji
Heroda Kaiji, when he sensed that he was dying, asked his friends to take him from his rooming house apartment in Stuart to a shady hill beside the South Raccoon River near Dexter. He wanted to spend his final moments looking out across Dexfield Park, the amusement park where he had performed as a palmist […]
Posted inCentral Iowa
Des Moines locals fight to save Birdland Pool and prove the North Side isn’t ‘a path of least resistance’
Generations of Des Moines residents have flocked to their neighborhood swimming pools for fun and to find relief from the heat, especially during potentially deadly heat waves. For almost 90 years, destinations have included the historic Birdland Pool at 300 Holcomb Ave in Highland Park, which opened to the general public on May 31, 1936. The […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Bumper Crops: Pinball bans and the Des Moines mafia
There was never an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting pinball, but that didn’t stop some major cities from banning the game from the 1930s through the mid-’70s. In fact, Oakland, California still had a ban on pinball machines as recently as 2014. I first learned about pinball’s checkered history after trying to cajole my mom […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa is steeped in cinema history — and historic cinemas. But keeping an indie theater ticking isn’t easy
In Tommy Haines’ and Andrew Sherburne’s 2017 documentary Saving Brinton, Iowa history teach Mike Zahs discovers a treasure trove of old film reels in a farm basement, including rare footage of Teddy Roosevelt and a never-before-seen film by Georges Méliès (A Trip to the Moon, The Impossible Voyage). Zahs then embarks on an international odyssey […]
Posted inCommunity/News
This 159-year-old bonsai is living its best life at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden
There are, of course, no bonsai seeds — only bonsai trees. Most tree species can be “trained” to become bonsai through a sophisticated, often obsessive process of cutting, potting, pruning, wiring and styling a plant into a miniature, meticulously sculpted version of itself. The art form is rooted in centuries of Japanese and Chinese tradition, […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Officers trained at Fort Des Moines broke barriers during WWI and WWII
Iowa has had three army posts called Fort Des Moines. The first, a ramshackle outpost along the Des Moines River in what’s now Lee County, existed from 1834 to 1837. The second was built at the confluence of the Racoon and Des Moines rivers in 1843 to stop the Sauk and Meskwaki peoples from returning […]
