Good Old Days Water Pollution: Des Moines, Iowa

Back in November, Joe and my wife Jackie and I attended a painting workshop at the Greenbush, Minnesota Library offered through an activity that "... is funded, in part, by a grant from the Northwest Minnesota Arts Council and the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund as appropriated by the Minnesota legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008,” and facilitated by Northwest Minnesota area artist Trey Everett.

Held in a variety of locations throughout the region, we were provided a 12×12 canvas, supplies and instruction to create a piece of art around the theme "WE ARE WATER."

Water can be a source of recreation; it keeps us alive; it is used for daily life. Participants were encouraged to bring snippets or photographs or anything else they might want to use as material, medium, or inspiration.  Forty-four completed artwork have been on display in the NWMAC Gallery, in East Grand Forks, since November and will run through December then move to the University of Minnesota Crookston in mid-January.  There will be a reception on Friday, January 25 at UMC. There will be a catalog related to pieces in the show.

"Chairman Joe"goodoldjoe.blogspot.com/, Jackie and I, along with friend and neighbor Marion Solom, are a tiny group of friends who try to do yearly art trips to local areas, because we may not have the impetus to do on our own. When the opportunity arose to do this workshop we went for it, because it had been so long between times. Unfortunately, Marion had to bow out because of an important doctor's appointment, but three of us, Joe, Jackie and I did make it even though we waxed and waned whether to follow through or not.

It's pretty easy to back out when the numbers start dropping and you weigh the priorities you can concoct if you really try, but Marion had a real excuse and was sad she couldn't make it--the rest of us, did not. The requirement for this workshop was a minimum of five participants. The NWMNAC said they'd try and get our fifth participant so we could have the workshop in Greenbush, so we were already one short with Marion absent. If anyone of us backed out, the workshop would be cancelled all together--and so we decided to see it through, no matter our unrealistic reservations.

Joe brought a photo resource, and so did Jackie. I had an idea in my head, but just before we left for Greenbush, it fell through with me thinking it would be too hard to convey in too short a time. Besides I hadn't painted for probably years now and I didn't want to take on too much over my minimal abilities at best. A workshop, I've learned, isn't where you do your best work anyway unless you participate in many workshops, like one or two a month. In my case, it's one or two a year--or every two years. So when I left the house, I hadn't a clue what I was going to do, and hoped it'd come to me when I walked in the door. And it did.

Well, the theme was, "We Are Water" and likely most people would do happy water-loving paintings depicting water's beauty, but in the same vein, as we don't all take care of ourselves or water. There are those people and organizations who abuse water resources and pollute them. I grew up near such a place in Des Moines, Iowa, and I have memories of it. These are what I chose to paint, one scene in particular that was so blatant it has stuck in my memory all these years is below.

 This scene was railroad property in east Des Moines, Iowa, back in the late 1960s-early 1970s. A virtual dumping ground for railroad debris, a shipping container or boxcar is sunk in a polluted pond of water that has an oily sheen on its surface with creosoted railroad ties and garbage floating in its shallows. My painting was similar but has the container half in and half out of the water. I titled it, "H20 RR"

Theses are the Burlington-Northern railroad tracks, as I recall, miles of city blocks of neglected landscape where boxcar interiors of steel band-reinforced cardboard lay loose in tall grass or blown by the winds against chain-link barriers, where thousands of rats took shelter along the tracks where they lived devouring grain that leaked for miles from boxcars approaching and parked on railroad sidings at the Inland Mills flour mill in Des Moines. This is where my friends and I went for adventure, instead of going to playgrounds. This was our eastside jungle from Hubbell Avenue on the north, to East Market Street on the south.

Photos taken on a cloudy day merely softened the exploitation theme. It was like looking through frosted glass, a kindly filter that masked the reality of the environment.

Below the outlet of the storm sewer that emptied just west of Dean Lake. We used to take our flashlights and walk into the eight-foot concrete culvert for several blocks.

The southwest corner of "Inland Mills", stood west of the railroad tracks between E. Grand Avenue and Dean Avenue. The sun was shining that day and the pigeons on top were soaking it up.

A locomotive heading north, approaching Des Moines Street between E. 19th and E. 20th Streets. I worked at that grain elevator part-time, cleaning offices, when I was in junior high school. The elevator has been gone for probably sixty years.

A warehouse along the tracks. Didn't know it otherwise. Never seemed to be a going concern.

It sat between E. Capitol Street and Walnut Avenue on the east side of the tracks.

Water was just a dumping ground. There was no regard for land or water stewardship.

Looking southeast across the tracks toward the Armstrong Rubber Co., water towers. Dean Lake lays between, unseen, and just as well, for though in the days when my grandfather fished it in the early 1940s, it had become visibly neglected and grossly polluted during my childhood of the 1960s.
https://www.fishingworks.com/iowa/polk-ia/lake/dean-lake-5/

This site will give you a bird's eye view of Dean Lake and the surrounding railroad yards and ponds my friends and I used to explore  as kids. Looks like they cleaned the place up in the past fifty years. Old buildings, like junction houses are gone, new buildings and businesses have sprung up.

Looking north toward E. Grand Avenue between E. 19th and E. 2oth Streets. Inland Mills flour mill stands on the left, spanning three blocks. In the summer, it spewed flour waste that stuck to house and car windows. It was visible in the grass and vehicle finishes. No one complained--or nobody listened. I think I wrote my first Letter to the Editor/ The Lee Township News.

When I owned my 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser, I used to speed down the muddy service roads as standing traffic waited for the trains to clear the crossings. I bet I sold more 4x4s doing that than car dealerships did with the models on the showroom floor.

Hooyah!

 Seems like this is 'way southwest of Inland Mills, north of the area we used to call 

"The Southeast Bottoms," where the National By-Products plant and Iowa Packing plant used to be. It was seldom we'd venture that far away on foot. One time we got the b'jesus scared out of us by a man who thought we were stealing one of his chickens--when we weren't.

Well, okay, we were chasing it because it was on the railroad tracks, but we never caught it, getting caught by him instead. (Hey, I had asthma and was a damn sight easier to catch than that chicken.)

He grabbed two of us by our jacket collars, held us almost in the air and shouted at us in Spanish--then probably laughed himself silly seeing how scared we were. We squirmed loose and ran away as fast as we could. I've never chased another chicken.

Looking southeast across E. Grand Avenue from the roof of what used to be originally called The Des Moines Cooperative Dairy, and later named, Mid-America Dairymen, Inc., toward Inland Mills and the railroad tracks. My family and I worked at this dairy for over 100 years, collectively. I worked there nine, most of it in the concrete block building on the left.