How Swede it is: Greetings from Swedesburg, Iowa

Swedesburg welcomes you.

The Swedish American Museum

 John Alvine and David Johanson (not The New York Dolls-Buster Poindexter David Johanson, another David Johanson) were Swedeburg's last Swedish immigrants.

David emigrated as a child and before he left Sweden, his mother knitted him these socks, which he kept under his pillow.

Downtown Swedesburg

They have a handsome goat made out of hay bales to beckon the passersby to stop and visit.

One of our favorite things to do when driving through an area we haven't visited before is to get off the main roads and into some tiny little place we couldn't have imagined visiting back home. We looked up Swedesburg, Iowa, since Sherry is of Swedish heritage and I have a Swedish first name. It's a very small, unincorporated community in southeastern Iowa and the great travel website roadsideamerica.com mentioned they have a giant straw goat there, so what more did we need? As you would expect, there are lots of farms in this region, but the Swedes who came here over 100 years ago had to do some swamp-draining to make this place livable, and swamp-drain they did. Reminded me a little of Swamp Castle in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Today Swedesburg's Swedish American Museum pays tribute to those rugged Scandinavians with pictures, books, documents, exhibits, and living, breathing people who will gladly tell you all about it. You'll see so many references to lutefisk, St. Lucia and dala horses that you won't mind the lack of Ingmar Bergman, Volvos or ABBA.

Swedesburg, vi älskar er!

Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again: The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Presidential Library of West Branch, Iowa

Herbert Clark Hoover

President Hoover's boyhood home...

...and the family outhouse.

They're proud of Hoover in Iowa and for good reason...

...he's the only Iowan elected President. The Hoover site is located just minutes off of Interstate 80 in eastern Iowa.

The presidential library and museum (off-peak)

Hoover was a life-long fishing enthusiast...

...and was a dam good engineer,too.

A Hoover life mask from 1919.

Joyce Harken of Mount Vernon, Iowa made a quilt from t-shirts of 29 schools named after Herbert Hoover. Way to sew, Joyce!

Nobody writes headlines like Variety.

"I did not have sax with that woman": While we were at the Hoover museum, we were lucky enough to see a temporary exhibit featuring Bill Clinton's saxophone.

Presidential libraries and historic sites like Monticello and Mount Vernon always make for good roadside stops, but we at Eccentric Roadside favor the less, shall we say, showy commanders-in-chief. We've had the pleasure of visiting the Chester A. Arthur birthplace in Vermont and the James K. Polk homestead of North Carolina, but those places pale in comparison to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Presidential Library and Museum of West Branch, Iowa. There you'll find out all sorts of fascinating facts about America's 31st president. For instance, he never actually said "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." The Republican National Committee used that phrase in an ad and it stuck to him. It's also a misnomer that he did nothing when the Great Depression broke out. He enacted some programs and by 1932 the Depression was showing signs of improving, but the public blamed Hoover for not doing enough and Franklin Roosevelt defeated Hoover that year. Hoover also donated his salary while president to his fellow government workers whom he considered underpaid and to charity. On the same property as the library/museum, they've also got President Hoover's birth home (a small cottage, actually) complete with the family outhouse, a blacksmith shop, Quaker meeting house and President and Mrs. Hoover's graves. And there's a gift shop full of Hoover clothing, china, books, videos, jewelry and other Hooverabilia to remember your friends and loved ones by.

So, next time you're passing through eastern Iowa, don't live in a vacuum! Drop by the Hoover place. (Hoover? vacuum? That joke really sucks!)

Breaker number nine, put your ears on me now: The World's Largest Truckstop of Walcott, Iowa

Way to keep it classy.

"When I says Whoa, I MEAN WHOA!"

They've got "Smoky and the Bandit" on DVD, in case you've worn out your copy.

In 1964, the Standard Oil Company opened a small truckstop in Walcott, Iowa on the then-brand new Interstate 80 that offered one lube bay, a truckers store and a small restaurant. Forty-seven years later, that location is known as Iowa 80: The World's Largest Truckstop and in it you will find a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, a two-story 30,000-square-foot Truckers Warehouse with chrome accessories, books, DVDs, CB radios, bumpers, custom built show trucks and a 20-by-40-foot wall displaying 500 illuminated truck lights, 24 private showers, a 60-seat Dolby Surround Sound movie theater, the Driver’s Den lounge with leather chairs and a fireplace, two game rooms, an embroidery center, a vinyl graphics shop, a barber, a dentist, a truck service center, a Truckomat truck wash, a CAT Scale, a huge fuel center, a Wendy’s, a Dairy Queen, a Blimpie, an Orange Julius, a Taco Bell, a Pizza Hut, and enough parking for 800 tractor-trailers, 250 cars and 20 buses. There's also a trucking museum housed in its own separate building that, alas, was closed the day we stopped by last spring. There was still plenty to see, though, in this trucker's Mecca of the Midwest. A half-hour of browsing, two large sodas, a T-shirt and 10 gallons of Regular later and we were on our way west. 10-4.

Goth to get you into my life: The American Gothic house of Eldon, Iowa

That's Grant Wood's sister and his dentist.

They were thrilled.

The original owners of the house were Charles and Catharine Dibble. They lived here with their eight (!) children. The Gideon and Mary Hart Jones family owned it when Wood saw it. He asked and got their permission to paint it. The house fell into disrepair in the 1960s and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

They've done a nice job of landscaping around the house and the Grant Wood museum...

...seen here.

Here's Alan, one of the awesome docents we talked to, and a portrait of Wood...

...and his wife Rosie. We really enjoyed their friendly Midwestern hospitality.

The house sits on the corner of American Gothic and Burton.

You'd never guess such a famous house would be in such an unassuming neighborhood.

Inside the museum, there's a great wall of parodies.

The house was left by its owner to the State Historical Society of Iowa, who lease it out to private tenants and the public isn't allowed inside. The current tenant is Beth Howard, who has a pie baking business. No kidding.

At the museum, they'll loan you costumes and take your picture. Some folks get pretty creative...

We're purists and opted for the dour-faced traditional approach. It was 97 degrees, windy, and humid.

There are only a few paintings that are so well known, they're part of popular culture. Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Mona Lisa" is one, Edvard Munch's "The Scream", another. And, of course, there's "American Gothic" by Grant Wood. In 1930, Wood noticed a simple house built in Carpenter Gothic style in his home state of Iowa and decided to use it as the backdrop of a Midwestern American scene with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house": an elderly farmer and his daughter. The model for the farmer was his Cedar Rapids dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, and for the daughter he used his sister Nan. All three elements -- the farmer, the daughter and the house -- were painted separately and no one posed in front of the house. Wood entered the painting in an Art Institute of Chicago competition and the judges gave it a bronze medal and $300. The Institute also bought the painting and it remains in their collection today (not bad: 300 clams for a priceless work of art). At first, some local Iowans thought the painting was disrespectful and made fun of their way of life. This could not have been further from Wood's intentions, as he had great reverence for the local people and gave up a European painter's life to locate in Iowa as a working artist. Eventually the painting was seen with affection by both Iowans and critics, and hundreds of parodies have resulted (that's how you know you've really made it). The house is now owned by the state of Iowa and sits in an unassuming, quiet neighborhood in the small town of Eldon. They've put up a very nice Grant Wood museum next to it and when we were there, two terrific docents, Alan and Rosie, told us all about Wood and the area. Best of all, they have a whole closet full of bib overalls, blazers, colonial print aprons, white-collared dresses and a pitchfork or two so you can get your picture taken, free of charge mind you, in front of the house. We loved visiting this place so much...you don't get more Americana than this. Goth bless America.