While I had been to Iowa once before (in 2007), that was nothing more than a token visit. Back then I drove up I-29 in western Iowa, mostly through torrential rain and I was afraid I was going to have a severe accident. The only activities I did were to eat dinner at a truck stop and buy gas and postcards. That's not much of a visit.
This time, I was in eastern Iowa and had an actual destination in the state. I even stayed overnight. Iowa seems to have quite a number of insects. It was hot and they would not leave me alone. It's very flat with some occasional hills.
Herbert Hoover was the 31st president. He is most associated with the Great Depression. Unfortunately, he was president at the wrong time. After a bubble in the 1920s, it was bound to burst. A few months after taking office, the stock market crash of 1929 happened. The boom times of the 20s simply could not last. To make matters worse, Hoover was not able to connect with the people. He was an engineer, but lacked the charisma needed in a president. This is similar to what destroyed the presidency of Martin Van Buren, the 8th president. (I know a lot about Van Buren since he was Kinderhook, NY.) After the wildly popular Andrew Jackson, Van Buren lacked Jackson's charisma. The economy crashed in 1837 shortly after Van Buren's presidency began, and he was unable to fix it.
Hoover had an illustrious career before the presidency. Under the Wilson administration, he helped feed starving people in Europe. He wanted to be in public service. He was popular and well known then, and served as Commerce Secretary under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. When Coolidge declined to run for a second full term, Hoover ran for president in 1928 and won by a landslide. Hoover was sworn into office by Chief Justice William Taft, who had served as the 27th president (Taft was the only former president to swear in a successor).
In the case of Hoover after he lost the election for his second term, there was a coordinated effort by FDR's people to write history to blame him for the crash. FDR would then get the credit for fixing it. In the final days of his presidency, Hoover tried to implement programs and wanted assurances that FDR would continue these programs. Hoover's interest was in helping the American people, while FDR's interest was in his own legacy. FDR's own people admitted they hesitated because they wanted the blame to go to Hoover.
During the FDR years, Hoover was shut out of the public eye. His reputation was ruined. The museum referred to this as his wildnerness years. After FDR's death, Harry Truman brought Hoover out of obscurity, asking him to head up relief efforts in the aftermath of WWII. Truman and Hoover became good friends, even if they disagreed politically. Truman also asked Hoover to reorganize the Executive Branch. Hoover was delighted and felt this new work added years to his life.
Hoover was also a strong intellectual. He was very much against Communism and against mediocrity. He believed in individuals doing extraordinary things. He promoted individualism while still having people look out for each other. But he felt it was important for people to strive to be "uncommon people" rather than just "common people." Even at age 88, he had great optimism for the country. He wrote around forty books, including a book about Woodrow Wilson. It is said that this is the first time a former president wrote a book about a predecessor. However, John Quincy Adams wrote a book (published after his death) about James Madison and James Monroe, his predecessors.
I visited Hoover's grave site, which is a simple slab containing his name. As Hoover grew up as a Quaker, he was taught humility. The grave site does not mention that he served as president. In that sense it's similar to James Madison's grave which simply says "Madison" and his birth and death dates.
I saw the birth home, which is extremely small. Hoover came from humble beginnings. His family lived in that home for a short time before moving on. He made a decision to purchase and preserve his birth home and often visited West Branch, Iowa, to remember his roots.
The National Park Service has recreated the entire neighborhood where Hoover was born. (They have done the same with the neighborhood where Abraham Lincoln lived as an adult in Springfield, Illinois.) There is even a working blacksmith shop which does everything as it would have been done in the 1870s. Products are sold and demonstrations are done at the shop.
After leaving the Hoover home, I went to get lunch. West Branch is a quaint little city and had a couple of small restaurants, but I didn't have time to wait. I needed fast food because I had an eight hour drive ahead of me. I also needed to go to a place with an Internet connection since I could not get online at the hotel the previous night.
My next hotel was in Erlanger, Kentucky. This was just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. While it was nice to include Kentucky as a state visited in this trip, the real reason I selected this city was that it has a hotel that required the minimum amount of points. It was also an airport hotel and airport hotels are typically very clean.
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The drive to Erlanger, Kentucky went through eastern Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and finally into Kentucky. I would be in five states today. It was a daunting drive and took over eight hours. There was a change in my planned drive as I-80 eastbound was closed in Iowa going towards the Illinois line. I had to take another interstate (I-280?) to I-74.
I thought I might end up passing through one of these states without getting out of the car. But, I bought gas and dinner in Illinois, and more gas in Indiana. Prices were around the $2.60s in Indiana.
In Indiana, my heart sank as I noticed that I-465, which is a "beltway" around Indianapolis, was under massive construction. Signs warned that drivers should seek alternate routes. Thankfully, during the time I got to that area, there was not a lot of traffic. Things were slow, but tolerable.
The hotel in Kentucky was an adventure all in itself. It was around 11:15 or so when I arrived. I was exhausted. I had crossed from Central Time to Eastern Time (in Indiana) so I lost an hour. I wanted to get into my hotel room and rest. The clerk told me that I had "already checked in." I explained that I did not check in already and nobody was with me. She thought perhaps it was just a data entry error and gave me a key card. She hoped nobody else was in the room. She could have called to find out.
When I got up to the second floor, I knocked on the door just in case. There was no response. The key card would not work. The clerk gave me another key card. That one did not work. She asked another staffer to go up with me. That third card did not work. A fourth card was given. All the while, time was wasted and I was really looking forward to getting some sleep. The fourth card worked....and the door was partially locked. A man yelled asking what was going on. The hotel had messed up and gave me a key card to a room occupied by someone else!! Thankfully it was the hotel staffer that opened the door. He apologized profusely.
When we got down to the front desk, the man was on the phone with the clerk, expressing his outrage (and rightfully so). The clerk gave him lip service and then said to me "Nasty, nasty." I just looked at her. He had a right to be nasty when he was interrupted in his sleep.
Finally, I was given a new room and a key card that worked. I was worried that I'd again open the door on someone already in the room. Since they had plenty of rooms available, if they were not sure whether the first room was occupied, they could have given me the second room to start with. At least an hour was wasted with this inept nonsense.
I had at least another two hours worth of email to do, plus I had to determine the final hotel I wanted to stay at, near Erie, Pennsylvania. I didn't get to sleep until around 2am.
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