An Outsider's View of Lake Mills, Iowa

Lake Mills, Iowa, is what you might imagine a Mid-western small town to be. It used to be a thriving small-farm center, but when the farms consolidated, the number of farmers shrank, and the schools shrank. The schools consolidated, and the towns stopped growing. The stores emptied.

The small industries are moving away. There are more store buildings than stores. There is one grocery--a nice one--and a casino out by the interstate. The coffee shop is busy. It has a kind of monopoly. They still sell hamburgers without all that fru-fru stuff; you know: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, avadadoes, peppers, sauces. California burgers! Sheesh!

Instead, they feature Made-Rites, but they cannot call them Made-Rites, so they call them, "Crumble Burgers". Crumble Burgers skip all that green garden decorative stuff, too, and the meat is crumbled, and looks and tastes as if it had been boiled to death for its sins. It comes wrapped in a paper coffin, snugly, to keep the crumbles from rolling away. They put the abused hamburger directly on the table.

But enough of faint praise! Lake Mills has an astounding mural, painted on one of the brick buildings along Main Street. (I think it is named, "Main Street". I didn't look. What else?

Someone had fun creating the illusion. Most small-town murals are god-awful, daubed versions of a photograph someone found in the attic of the drug store, from 1921. Not this one! Rome, or Apuleia, or maybe something east of Eden lies out there. "Toto, we aren't in Kansas, anymore!"

There are bricks painted on bricks, and butterflies resting on the ledges. The sky has been tugged down to eye level.

Lake Mill is in transition. With a sense of humor. And Crumble Burgers.

But, truth be told, one of those scorned West Coast hamburgers would really be nice. You wouldn't have to call it a "California Burger", or a "Vegetable Burger". You could call it a Garden Burger, maybe, or name it after the Couty: "It was the Worth Burger I ate!"

Maybe not. That would be a Crumble Burger, or as they call it where the franchise fees are up-to-date, a Made-Rite.

Comments

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