Click here to read more entries from Dave’s column, “Ramblin” or to buy his book, “Ramblin’ Reflections of Hidden Iowa.” A dozen years ago, about the time I married my wife, Suzanne, her oldest daughter, Megan, heard the Allman Brothers Band’s song “Ramblin’ Man” on the radio. “Is that Dave’s song,” Megan asked. “Yep,” her [...]

  Happy birthday, Lincoln Highway. Our nation’s first transcontinental automobile route turns 100 this year — officially on Oct. 31, 1913. But, the Lincoln Highway has always been a favorite Ramblin’ topic, whether it’s the Youngville Cafe or the Tama bridge or old routes in Cedar County or through Marion and Cedar Rapids. So, what [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — Even though Kevin Dochterman, 48, has never married, he’s helped support 50 children. And it’s worth every penny of the $600 or so he sends them every month. “They need the help,” Kevin says, simply. They are children in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. In India, Indonesia and Thailand. In Ghana and [...]

  CORALVILLE — Harry Connick Jr., tickled the ivories of the shiny Steinway & Sons Model D, a 9-foot concert grand. Lang Lang, a 30-year-old New York-based Chinese concert pianist, played that keyboard, too, as well as a similar grand with a subdued satin finish next to it. And, behind them, on a brighter sounding [...]

  VINTON — If bricks and mortar can ever represent community cohesiveness and generosity, the building would look like Virginia Gay Hospital in Vinton. A new program — The Plaza of Heroes — cements that notion, for it pays tribute to people who have kept the hospital alive. Small cities like Vinton, population 5,300, often [...]

  If old pictures could talk, we’d know what those guys with guns have been up to as they pose beside a car with a rear window shot out. Thing is, none of them are talking. And the picture has no information. But, after running into it in an old scrapbook, Keith Techau of Lisbon [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Seniors in Cedar Rapids are getting restless. After the Floods of 2008, they lost the Witwer Senior Center in the central business district. The replacement, at the Ecumenical Center and Green Square Meals site at 605 Second Ave. SE doesn’t compare, with 2,500 square feet of shared space to 12,000 square feet [...]

MARION — “Happy birthday, Abe,” I say, greeting Lance Mack in the food court at the Marion Hy-Vee. “Why, thank you,” he replies. “I feel good for a man of 204.” Yes, today is Presidents Day, the Federal holiday that celebrates the births of George Washington (Feb. 22, 1732) and Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12, 1809), [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — When I met Paul Glenn, he was prepared to celebrate his 54th birthday as if it would be his last. Diagnosed with advance renal cell carcinoma, a non-curable kidney cancer, doctors told him to go home to die. He sat in a wheelchair in his Mechanicsville home, his shoulders slouched under [...]

HIAWATHA — In the old days, during The Great Depression of the 1930s, most kids loved the arrival of new mail-order catalogs so they could make up their “wish lists” for Christmas. Annabell Harger, who knew her family was so poor those wishes would never come true, instead relished the transfer of the old catalog [...]