Prairieburg - Whatever you do, don't get off the road.

On to more stories from our trip to the Midwest. Of course on our travels to the Midwest, we had to pay a visit to the great state of Iowa, since my dad grew up there. My dad was a city boy. He grew up in Cedar Rapids but his mother Yoland Whitney was a country girl, born and raised in Prairieburg, as many of the Whitney's were. Prairieburg is about 30 miles northeast of Cedar Rapids.

Prairieburg was where life in Iowa began for the Whitney's. Apparently in 1855 there was a plan of sorts hatched between Joseph Whitney (Yoland's grandfather), his brother in law Charles Chadwick and his uncle Alvah Whitney, to travel from Lee Center Township, Illinois, where they were all living, to the land office in Dubuque, Iowa to buy land from the US government. Land available for those who were willing to work hard and make a life for themselves in the unsettled parts of Linn County, Iowa.

Alvah, the older and more experienced uncle led the way. Alvah had already purchased 800 acres in Lee County, Illinois and a few years later would purchase another 200 acres there to make it an even 1,000 acres. At the land office in Dubuque, with the younger Joseph and Charles under his wing, he did buy 320 acres of land in the rolling hills of Iowa. Joseph bought 320 acres as well and Charles bought 160 acres. All this acreage was found in the township of Boulder - which would house the town of Prairieburg where my said grandmother, Yoland Whitney was born and raised.

(Just a note - *A few years later, in 1857, Joseph bought another 240 acres in Boulder Township.)

Joseph later donated the land for the Prairieburg Cemetery. He along with many of my relatives are buried  there. As you can imagine, I also have many other relatives buried in the many small towns that are scattered around Linn County.

We began our journey through Linn County by finding and visiting the Lafayette Cemetery. The Lafayette Cemetery is a beautiful little rural cemetery with a white church and corn fields surrounding it. There were also some handy but then again not so handy outhouses located there. I located a number of my great grandmother Anna Blum's family there. Yeah, success!

Our next stop was the Prairieburg Cemetery. After a short drive past a few creeks and around some hills, we found the town of Prairieburg. I had my directions telling me which way to go. We began down a gravel road but then we had the bright idea that we must be going the wrong way. So, we decided to turn around and head back into town in hopes of further enlightenment as to which way to go.

Well, this is where the trouble began. Turning around on a gravel road is no big deal, right? We have lots of dirt/gravel roads in Utah. We are professionals at turning around! It is very green in Iowa, with rolling hills and lots of creeks and rivers everywhere. On either side of the road there was grass and other vegetation growing. Looked okay to me. Nothing much to worry about. Well, as Dan began to turn around, he swung a bit off the road and our car immediately started sliding and tipping down into the seemingly harmless grass. Unknown to us was that the grass was covering up the deep ditches on both sides of the road.

I started yelling as we slid down into the ditch and I watched out my window as the car began to tip. The kids were too horrified to say anything. Dan kept his cool and turned and turned the wheel to keep us from tipping. He then stopped and tried to back up. Didn't work. Then he put it into 4-wheel drive and tried to drive forward and out of the ditch. After turning and I mean turning the wheel, along with the 4-wheel drive, we finally got out and back up onto the beloved gravel road.

After a great sigh of relief, we quickly noticed that something wasn't quite right with our Suburban - the vehicle that was supposed to take us through the Midwest and back to our home in Utah. We drove slowly back into town and parked our car on a side street. Dan got out and began checking the car. In the meantime, I asked a man if he knew how to get to the Prairieburg Cemetery. It took him a minute to recall the cemetery that was actually only a few minutes down the road. He was nice but was enjoying his evening beer or two.

Next came a man with a bag full of Japanese beetles. He had thousands of these bugs crawling around each other in a large clear sack. The man was in his 80's and had a Japanese beetle trap in his yard. He had already collected another bag full earlier in the day. He lived next door to the man with the can of beer.

You see, not much goes on in Prairieburg, so our arrival was causing a small stir. It is a lovely, quiet town but with no amenities to be had. Next came a man on a motorcycle. He told us that he had driven home from Colorado that day on his motorcycle. We asked him if there happened to be a mechanic in town. He said yes and went to go get him from his home, as his shop was closed for the day. He soon came back with the mechanic, who immediately began checking out our woeful car.

As all of this was going on, I continued to have a nice conversation with the elderly man holding the bag full of beetles, while the man with the can of beer listened. It turns out that the elderly man and I were related to each other. He was not a close relative but nonetheless, he was related and knew all about the Whitney family. He told me where the cemetery is and where Harley Whitney owned a farm. It was almost like a movie scene.

The power steering had broken and they had no parts and could not help us in Prairieburg. Without power steering, we drove slowly south to the nearest "big" town of Marion. We found a mechanic in the morning who promised us our car would be fixed by 12pm. Didn't happen. Instead, all seven of us had to drag our luggage through Marion to the mechanics shop and wait until 3pm when the car was finally deemed road worthy.

The final scene of this story is when we finally found the Prairieburg Cemetery. We took lots of pictures as so many of my relatives are buried there. Our trip to Prairieburg turned out to be a memory maker in more ways than one.