Column: Pothole Prairie

Ever notice how as the roads get bigger the towns get smaller?

A new stretch of U.S. Highway 20 opened a few weeks ago. When returning to the stomping grounds of my childhood in Iowa on Christmas Day, I drove on this nice, new slab of concrete.

U.S. 20 is officially my favorite highway. As a kid, I deemed it so. It goes from Boston to Newport, Ore. I grew up in Calhoun County, Iowa, which is dissected by the coast-to-coast route. My family lived in Rockwell City during my early grade-school years, back in the 1970s, and a neighbor kid and I would go over to High Street, which up until last month was also U.S. 20, and get all the truckers to blare their horns by making a pulling motion in the air. I’m sure the neighbors loved it.

Since the late 1970s, Iowa has been turning U.S. 20 little by little from a two-lane highway that meanders in all directions through many towns and cities into a four-lane, divided highway that shoots nearly straight east and west. The route has some full interchanges with on-ramps and off-ramps and some at-grade intersections where local motorists stop and then sneak across the lanes.

Growing up, I lived in various places in Calhoun County, but from 1979 to 1989, I lived at a house along the shore of North Twin Lake. Everyone in Calhoun County would go Christmas shopping in Fort Dodge in the next county to the east. That’s pretty much where we would go see movies, too. Or to the orthodontist. Or to Target. It would take 40 minutes to drive the 30-or-so miles at 55 mph with stop signs and traffic. Going to Dodge was always a drive.

A new four-lane Highway 20, when I was a little boy, only reached from Interstate 35 to near Duncombe. Then in the early 1990s, when I was a younger man, it finally came to Fort Dodge. Now, it stops at Iowa Highway 4 just south of South Twin Lake. The lake is visible from the new highway.

Now people who live in Calhoun County can hop on new Highway 20, go a touch over 70 mph and be in Dodge in 22 minutes.

The new pavement goes close to only a single Calhoun County city — tiny Knierim — and passes four miles to the north of Rockwell City, the county seat. If the next extension continues straight west, U.S. 20 probably won’t go close to any other Calhoun County cities. That means, the place I grew up not only is in a flyover state, it now is in a drive-past county.

I recall when Rockwell City, Lake City and Manson were sort of the big towns in Calhoun County. Pomeroy — where I went to school from third grade on — Lohrville, Lytton and Farnhamville were mid-sized towns. There were many itty-bitty towns: Jolley, Knierim, Yetter, Piper, Rinard, Knoke, Somers and Sherwood. And to most people Twin Lakes meant the collection of weekend and summer cabins on the shore of North Twin Lake. The unincorporated place had a small number of year-round families, one of which was mine. South Twin was a wildlife area.

There came a point during my 16th year that I had to drive in Fort Dodge alone. To me, it was the big city. I was quite nervous to take Dad’s stick-shift Ford Fiesta into Dodge. I escaped just fine.

Things sure have changed.

Was it me? Did I just grow up and become accustomed to frequenting places like Des Moines, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago, Madison and Seattle? If they became the true big cities in my mind, then in comparison, did places where I lived — Ames, Iowa; Ellensburg, Wash. and Albert Lea — become the small towns? And did that make the former small towns extremely dinky in comparison?

Or did the roads just get bigger?

Probably all of the above.

The school districts got bigger, too. When I was a freshman, there were seven high schools in Calhoun County. Now, there are two.

Rockwell City, Lake City and Manson now seem to be sleepy little towns but with some life. Pomeroy, Lohrville and the rest are shrunken shells of their former selves. Fort Dodge has lost its luster as the big city, but it remains a regional hub. Twin Lakes — well, North Twin, really — is overdeveloped by people from big cities who have replaced the little cabins with second homes and mansions.

I suppose it is ironic that the new highway comes close to Twin Lakes, rather than the county seat. The one place in Calhoun County the people who live in big cities want to get to, usually, is the lake.

The fact is, more people used to live in the countryside and country towns, especially before the farm crisis of the 1980s. Going to a place like Albert Lea had some importance to it. Visiting the Elks Lodge was quite the deal. Minneapolis was indeed big in the olden days, but even the people there recall a time when it still felt like a single community.

With fewer opportunities in the rural communities, people have moved to the bigger cities. And with America becoming connected with interstates, the Internet and international airports, people communicate and travel more and more across greater distances — and move to new homes more and more.

Going to Grandma’s took minutes. Now it takes hours.

Nowadays, people travel past the little towns to get from regional hub to regional hub. Fort Dodge to Waterloo without seeing Iowa Falls and Parkersburg. Whenever I head to Calhoun County, after the stoplight on Southeast Broadway Avenue at South Margaretha Avenue in Albert Lea, I don’t have to stop again until new Highway 20 comes to its end at Highway 4. Wow! Basically, from Albert Lea to Twin Lake, where I grew up, without pause.

I like being able to get places faster, of course, but I sure appreciate the back roads. Sometimes, I take byways home to Albert Lea. One summer, I even took gravel roads the entire way until Lake Mills. I am reminded of what Charles Kuralt once said: “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.”

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every other Tuesday.