We’ve all heard it. Stay off your cell phone while driving. A Moline woman learned that lesson the hard way recently. Bettendorf police say Jennifer DeClerck, 24, admitted to texting on her cell phone just before her spectacular single-car crash on Interstate 74. DeClerck lost control of her vehicle. It then went into a ditch, hit the side of an on-ramp, went airborne, hit a tree and ended in a ditch on the other side of the on-ramp. DeClerck was extricated, then airlifted to a Davenport hospital.
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Can peace and beauty be found in the big city? Yes, at Vander Veer Park in Davenport. From the beautiful flower gardens, the Conservatory, the greenhouses, the fountain, the playground and the lagoon, Vander Veer is a Quad-Cities treasure. You may enjoy just sitting on a tree-shaded bench some weekend and watching the people go by. You never know what you might see. When I was there on Mother’s Day, a man was walking around with his 3-foot pet python hanging from his neck.
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My wife, Sherry, noted that you know you’ve lived a long time when a building you saw constructed years ago and acclaimed as being quite modern is now being torn down. That’s the case with the Professional Arts Building in Davenport.
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I cringe when candidates say, “If you elect me, I will create jobs.” Elected people don’t create jobs. Entrepreneurs do and only when there is a favorable climate for doing so. Elected people do, of course, have a stake in creating an environment that’s good or bad for doing business.
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The brown tourism-related signs on the interstates around Davenport used to say Putnam Museum IMAX. Now they just say Putnam Museum. Why? According to the Putnam’s Kim Findlay, in January the Putnam converted its Giant Screen Theater from the IMAX film projection system to a Dolby/Barco 4k Digital Projection System. “We are the fifth Giant Screen Theater in the world to make this upgrade,” Findlay says. “We reopened with a documentary called ‘The Last Reef’ that I believe beautifully demonstrates the crispness and color saturation of the 4k digital system.”
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If I could remove one word from the vocabularies of the area’s young TV news reporters and anchors, it would be “actually.” It’s a word that seldom is needed in a sentence. An example: “Firefighters say a dropped cigarette actually started the fire.” Why not just say, “Firefighters say a dropped cigarette started the fire.”
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As long as I am harping about my TV news friends, I get tired everyday hearing them talk about what someone posted on the station’s Facebook page. If I wanted to know what’s on their Facebook page, I’d read it myself. Please, please just give me the news.
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“Over” is a word that is often misused by many of us, including the media. When we mean “more than.” I returned to St. Ambrose for a year in my 30s to earn a second major in mass communications. My newspaper journalism instructor there, Julie Jensen McDonald, drilled into her students the difference between “over” and “more than.” People will often write or say something like, “The benefit raised over $5,000.” That’s wrong. Over refers to a place, as in, “The tree towered over the house.” Over does not refer to a quantity. The sentence should read, “The benefit raised more than $5,000.” OK, the curmudgeon reporter is now getting off his high horse – at least for now.
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My wife is retiring soon from 28 years of teaching. She would have logged 42 years had she not taken 14 years off to be a stay-at-home mom. As one who was “downsized” three years ago by Clear Channel, a communications company bleeding red ink, and now considers himself semi-retired, I think she’ll like retirement after a period of adjustment. I am looking forward to the daytime companionship — right now it’s just our cat Mistletoe and me, and she can’t carry a conversation. I also welcome the flexibility we’ll have for traveling.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

“Big River” play poster. Courtesy of Bill Turner’s Facebook page.

Former New Era actor and now play director, Bill Turner. Courtesy of Bill Turner’s Facebook page.

Not much happens in tiny New Era, Iowa, located just a short distance from the south entrance to Wildcat Den State Park in Muscatine County.

That’s appropriate; there’s really not much there. Just a few houses and a large old community hall that’s connected by a newer social hall to the picturesque New Era Lutheran Church.

At dusk, the deer that wander out of the woods might well outnumber the people of New Era.

There is one time, though, that New Era comes to life. That’s in May each year at a dinner theater hosted by the church.

Guests sit down to a home-cooked meal in the social hall, then they move to the community hall to watch their friends and neighbors in a performance. It’s been an annual tradition since 1994. Proceeds go to charity.

This year’s show is a musical, “Big River: the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” featuring the music of Roger Miller. And church member Bill Turner, 56, of Muscatine, returns for the 14th time as director after acting in four early New Era productions.

Turner and his wife, Mary Maxson, are happy to be transplanted Chicagoans. He was raised west of the Windy City but came to love this area while attending Augustana College,

After graduation, Turner worked in downtown Chicago for three years. But he and his wife decided they didn’t want to raise a family in the city or the suburbs.

“So we came back to the Quad-Cities area,” he says, “and I got a job at Bandag and have been there ever since.”

He is a business analyst at the company, now owned by Bridgestone.
The couple have three children, Adam, Aaron and Kari. Adam and Kari are part of the “Big River” cast.

Turner did some theater in high school but wasn’t involved as an adult until Adam, his oldest son and in middle school at the time, auditioned for a community theater part.

Turner drove the boy to the audition.

“They talked me into auditioning at the same time. I got a big part, and the rest is history,” Turner says with a laugh.

Though he didn’t take part in New Era’s first production, “Godspell,” in 1994, Turner won the part of Jesus the next year in “Cotton Patch Gospel.” He then acted in plays the next three years before the director left, and he took that job.

“I said I’d try it, and it went pretty well,” he says of directing. He hasn’t returned to the New Era stage except to sing in plays’ choruses several times.

Being an actor is the most fun, and being a director is the most work, says Turner, “because you have to worry about everybody and every thing.”

That includes the cast, the costumes and the set and “trying to hold it all together. But there’s also a high level of satisfaction being director, to come up with a vision for the show and get to see it be played out.”

How does he deal with cast members who are worried about forgetting their lines?

“I just tell them that they are well prepared, to trust what they have been doing in rehearsals and to go out and have fun.”

As a patron who has attended every production except the first one, I can tell you they do just that – have fun.

“Big River” plays weekends only May 18 through May 26. For more information, call (563) 299-4710 or (563) 263-0881 or e-mail neweradinnertheater@gmail.com.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises. Submitted to The North Scott Press as an “Everyday People” column.

Phil Roberts (l) with Mike Grimm.

Phil Roberts (l) with Wayne Freedman.

IBNA executive director Jeff Stein. Phil Roberts photo.

Jean and Cary J. Hahn. Phil Roberts photo.

It was great seeing my longtime broadcasting friends Saturday, April 28, 2012, at the Iowa Broadcast News Association (ibna.org) convention, held this year in Coralville, Iowa.

Thanks, too, to IBNA members for re-electing me to their Board of Directors as their Southeast Iowa representative. I was on the board earlier — in fact I’m a past IBNA president — but left in May 2009 when my one-year term ended. That was just a few weeks after I had been released from my news anchor/reporter job at WOC-AM in Davenport, Iowa, due to station owner Clear Channel’s sorry financial state.

(Incidentally, WOC, the area’s only “news/talk” station, once had as many as six news people. Now, aside from a rip-and-read part-timer in the morning, there are none! The “local” news comes from WHO-AM, a Clear Channel station in Des Moines. A sad state of affairs…)

It was a pleasure finally meeting Mike Grimm, our luncheon speaker at the convention. Mike is formerly of WMT, Cedar Rapids, then KMOX, St. Louis, and now is the voice of the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

When I handled media relations (1990-2001) for NASCAR’s Midwest-based All-Star Series, I provided racing news and results to Mike and his WMT boss, Ron Gonder. But we’d never met until Saturday.

I also had the pleasure at lunch of sitting next to Wayne Freedman, a workshop presenter and our evening awards banquet keynote speaker.

He is a fabled, many times award-winning San Francisco TV reporter — a great storyteller. He also produced features at one time for CBS News.

At dinner, Cary J. and Jean Hahn, two of my favorite people, joined me. Cary and I are roughly the same age, share Missouri roots and have been through good times and bad times in broadcasting, a profession we both love. A former Shelley Award winner, Cary is the news director at KMRY-AM in Cedar Rapids.

Thanks to IBNA executive director Jeff Stein of William Penn University and everyone else for a meaningful convention. See you April 20, 2013, in Johnston, Iowa!

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

Ah, the Main Street Historic District in St. Charles, Mo. ( historicstcharles.com/about-us/history/main-street ). There are lots of reasons to visit this place listed on the National Register of Historic Places:

* There’s the history. St. Charles, which is located on the Missouri River west of St. Louis, was founded in 1769 by a French Canadian fur trader named Blanchette, as Les Petites Cotes (The Little Hills).

* The architecture is varied and beautiful. The buildings on the brick-paved street, most of which also are brick, have been restored.

* There are 125 shops and restaurants in the 13-block historic area. You’ll find art, crafts, wine, clocks, jewelry and much more. One specialty shop we visited sold scores of flavors of olive oil, all different and available for free sampling. Another store had thousands of bottles of sauces and seasonings for food items and mixes for drinks.

The restaurants offer a variety of lunch and dinner menu items. Some have patio seating available.

The portions were so large at our delightful meal at Tony’s on Main Street that we walked out with to-go boxes.

If you arrive early enough on the day of your Main Street visit, you’ll find free, on-street parking. Or you can motor in to the ample lots behind the shops located closest to the river.

If you wish to just sit and watch the world go by while others shop, there are benches in front of some of the stores, although there could stand to be more of them. Or you might prefer to sit in the gazebo in the historic area’s tree-shaded, flower-filled park to see the river flow by.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

(photos by Phil and Sherry Roberts)

If you have a sweet tooth and are interested in historic icons like Route 66, no visit to St. Louis would be complete for you without a stop for an ice cream treat at Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard, 6726 Chippewa St. That’s in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood.

Ted Drewe Sr. reportedly started making honey-sweetened frozen custard with a carnival, then opened his first ice cream store in Florida in 1929.

A store on Natural Bridge Road in St. Louis opened in 1930 followed by a store on South Grand Boulevard in 1931. The family opened a second south side stand, the current Chippewa location, on what then was Route 66, in 1941.

According to the firm’s website, teddrewes.com, “By 1958, the south side stands were all that remained.”

We visited the historic Chippewa location and weren’t disappointed with the product or the service.

Ted Drewe’s offers a variety of sweet treats, listed on a sign on the side of the building. They include Cardinal Sin, All Shook Up and Terramizzou. (Get it? Mizzou?) They are made with vanilla ice cream plus the flavorings and toppings people order to go with them.

The place is best known for a specialty called a concrete, which ranges in price from $2.30 for a mini to $5 for a large.

Concrete is Ted Drewe’s custard blended with numerous ingredients and served in a cup with a spoon and straw. It’s so thick the spoon won’t fall out if the cup is turned upside down, which servers willingly demonstrate.

Customers come and go in a steady flow at this place, and there’s a large lot with plenty of free parking. There are also benches on which you can sit to enjoy your treat on a pleasant day.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

Arguably the best deal in town, admission to the St. Louis Zoo (stlzoo.org) is absolutely free!

That’s right. You can view up to 18,000 animals from 700 species without spending a dime.

Sure, there is a hefty charge if you park in one of the zoo’s two parking lots. But the zoo is located historic in Forest Park and, if you arrive early enough, you can park free on the adjacent streets if you wish.

And sure, zoo concessions are pricey, but you can leave a picnic lunch in your car if you want and take a break from your zoo visit to walk out and enjoy it. Because admission is free, going back and forth is not a problem.

There are fees for some individual zoo attractions but, if you desire, you can spend an enjoyable day at the zoo by just visiting the free attractions.

If you do decide to buy food and drink or souvenirs inside the zoo or if you do decide to pay admission to an added attraction, rest assured that your money is going to a worthy cause. All proceeds support the zoo’s conservation programs.

We started our zoo day with an enjoyable $5 mile and a half miniature train ride to get an overview of the grounds.

The 90-acre zoo is divided into various zones.

At the new Stingrays at Caribbean Cove, guests are encouraged to dip their hands into a saltwater pool to allow bonnethead, white-spotted bamboo and nurse sharks, cownose rays, southern stingrays and horseshoe crabs to safely touch them.

River’s Edge is a mythical waterway through four continents featuring Asian elephants, cheetahs and hippos.

At Red Rocks, lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes and antelope live in natural settings.

The Wild showcases bears, penguins, gorillas and other animals that, according to the zoo website, “climb, swim and swing through some of the seemingly inhospitable places on the planet.”

If you enjoy history, take in Historic Hill, one of the oldest parts of the zoo.

There’s a cypress swamp inside a 1904 Flight Cage and the buildings that house birds; monkeys and lemurs; and reptiles and amphibians have a 1920s Spanish architectural flavor.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

(Phil and Sherry Roberts photos)

It’s quirky. It’s quaint. It’s fun. The City Museum in St. Louis, according to its website (citymuseum.org), is “where the imagination runs wild.” And after a visit to the 600,000-square-foot building at 701 N. 15th St., you’ll likely agree with that claim.

This one-of-a-kind museum occupies several floors of a 10-story former International Shoe Co. factory. It’s the brainchild of artist Bob Cassilly and friends, who built the place out of – get this – reclaimed building materials and other assorted junk they’ve found. Inside you’ll also find hundreds of authentic relics from the past – from a chest-type Coca-Cola machine to a former bumper car at a carnival – that’ll have you waxing nostalgic.

There’s truly something for every age.

The first thing you need to do is park your car, which costs $5. Parking and the museum’s main entrance are on 16th Street.

When you leave your car, you’ll immediately see MonstroCity, an outdoor interactive sculpture and multi-story playground with tunnels, skywalks and a slide. Highlights include a fire truck and airplane to explore.

Now glance up at the rooftop playground, which includes multi-story monkey bars and Big Eli, a restored, working, four-story Ferris wheel. Wait! Is that a full-size yellow school bus hanging over the edge of the roof? Sure is, and the daring can even climb in and slide behind the steering wheel if they wish.

Next you’ll want to hurry to the entrance for your ticket to fun. General admission tickets
for people ages 3 years and up are
$12 plus tax or $10 plus tax after 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

The roof is an additional $5 plus tax, and an interactive aquarium
costs an extra $6 plus tax. But fear not, there’s plenty to see and do at the museum even if you pass up those places.

Once inside, kids will be instantly be drawn to the first floor’s tree house, 5,000-gallon tank of fish that are native to Missouri waters and labyrinth of tunnels, filled with larger-than-life creatures.

“Working down there was like being seven years old, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling texture and seeing faces and dragons,” Cassilly says on the museum website. “If I was walking through the caves and I imagined a creature in the wall, we’d put one there.”

Before moving on, take a stroll through a life-sized whale and be sure to find the Puking Pig, an old boiler atop an 1880s fire pump. It periodically fills with water, then swivels and dumps its load into the wave cave below.

Now start making your way upstairs, where you’ll be amazed at the working vintage shoelace machines that once used to make bootstraps for U.S. soldiers during World War II. Now, they crank out brightly colored shoelaces, bookmarks, bracelets and necklaces that you can buy.

Kids can ride on a miniature train while adults ponder the creatively decorated shops nearby that sell sandwiches and drinks. Dine amidst colorful neon signs, vintage posters, movie lights, pinball machines and the world’s largest pair of underpants.

When it’s time to move on, check out the insect and pencil collections and the intricate gargoyles and other architectural gems saved from the wrecking ball.

Belly up to the long wooden bar and imagine a cowboy standing beside you. Or walk inside the ornate elevator cage or bank vault you’ll find on display. Study a primitive toilet and bathtub, then touch that iconic American statue – a smiling Big Boy holding a thick burger on a plate over his head.

Like vintage clothes? Do you need an authentic red or blue band member’s jacket? City Museum has them. There’s a whole floor of old-time sweaters, ties, jeans and dresses for sale.

And there’s more for the kids to do, too. They can build something big using hundreds of building blocks or learn how to swing on a trapeze. They can make some crafts to take home or use some ramps for running and ropes for swinging.

What am I missing? Lots! City Museum has nearly 100 displays.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

(Photos above by Phil and Sherry Roberts)

My wife’s a teacher. And each year for many years during Sherry’s spring break, we travel somewhere new and different. We’ve been all over the country.

Depending on our destination for a particular year, we sometimes run into wintry weather. Most of the trips, after all, fall in March. We walked through snow, for example, to see the ocean in Maine. And we stayed with snowmobilers at a motel in the hills of Vermont.

But the upside of a spring break trip is that there generally are no long lines at our destinations. The only other travelers, for the most part, are other older folks or families who also are on a spring break trip.

This year we decided to visit a familiar and favorite place, St. Louis. That’s also where our son Brendan and grandsons, Pierce and Cade, reside. Brendan works during the day, and his boys were in school – their spring break had not yet begun.

But our visit allowed us to stay with them, spend time with them each evening and go sightseeing on our own during the day.

We drove down on a Monday and back home the following Friday. Tuesday through Thursday were spent visiting various attractions.

We toured the St. Louis Zoo on Tuesday; the City Museum and a historic Route 66 attraction, Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard, on Wednesday; and the shops and beautiful old buildings of St. Charles’ historic district on Thursday.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises.

I’ve crossed yet another item off my bucket list — that list of things I want to accomplish before I meet my maker.

With wife Sherry and grandkids Harrison and Marin in tow, I attended a roller derby competition, the Quad City Rollers vs. the Crash Test Dolls from Des Moines at the RiverCenter.

Admittedly this was not a major bucket list goal. It was easily accomplished and fairly inexpensive as entertainment goes. But a goal is a goal no matter how small, and it was nice to mark it complete and have fun doing so.

I happily discovered that today’s roller derby is not like the choreographed roller derbies I watched on television as a teen in the 1960s.

Remember them?

They took place on banked tracks surrounded by a railing into which — or over which — competitors regularly sailed at the hands of the opposition. If there was a purpose to the old way of doing roller derby aside from knocking an opponent down or getting into a scuffle, it was lost on me.

To my way of thinking, the old roller derbies were more like All-Star Wrestling on wheels than any sort of true competition.

It’s not like that now, at least for the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, which sanctions the Rollers’ events.

It’s a valid team sport — nearly a dozen dates, both home and away, are on the Rollers’ schedule — at which points are scored. And there are rules, like no pushing from behind.

But roller derby is still a rough game. According to the Rollers’ website (quadcityrollers.com), “it’s a full-contact sport, we train hard, we hit hard and we play hard!”

It’s also great fun to watch and, I’m guessing, to play.

Skaters for the Rollers go by monikers like Twofist Tallulah, Bootius Maximus, Destroyovsky, Cherry ChapsKick and Sweet Daisy D’Mise. A coach answers to Chicks Ahoy.

The Crash Test Dolls sport names like Z’ro Tolerance, Hot Whips Houlihan and Dinah Soar.

The roller derby girls come in all shapes and sizes. All have to be at least 18 to participate.

The night we attended, the Quad City Rollers wore black miniskirts and sleeveless jerseys, fishnet nylons and a variety of colorful knee-high socks.

They also wore the kind of skates — with four wheels for each foot – that I rented as a kid when I skated at two now-closed rinks, The Prom on Brady Street and the Roll-a-Rama at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds.

For safety, the skaters wear kneepads, elbow pads, helmets and mouth guards.

A couple hundred spectators, including lots of families, showed up the night we attended. People sat in unreserved chairs surrounding the flat, oval track, which was marked by tape on the concrete floor.

I would have liked to have taken a place in the first row but thought better of it, since we had grandkids with us. They call row one the “suicide” section. If you sit there, out-of-control skaters are likely to end up in your lap.

The competition was a pleasant change of pace from the stick-and-ball sports. Before it started, the Rollers’ announcer graciously explained for newcomers the objectives of the various team positions and how the teams score points.

A bagpiper provided halftime entertainment, and the Rollers signed autographs and posed for pictures when it was all over.

I particularly like this line from their website: “We also give back to the community through public appearances, donations to fundraisers as well as through donating a portion of the proceeds from each bout ticket to a local charity.”

That helps put a positive face on roller derby.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises. This piece submitted as a column to The North Scott Press.

Mary Kay Shanley: How you lived will be important information for those who follow. Phil Roberts photo.

Mary Kay Shanley holds a family portrait of her grandmother and others. She says little is known about her grandmother's life. Phil Roberts photo.

Mary Kay Shanley's topic stirred lots of interest. Phil Roberts photo.

Tell your life’s story. Future generations will be interested in knowing how you lived.

That was the message from West Des Moines author Mary Kay Shanley, the guest speaker on Feb. 19 at a quarterly meeting of the American/Schleswig-Holstein Heritage Society (ASHHS), a worldwide organization based in Walcott.

One of ASHHS’ objectives is the study of family genealogy and the preservation of family history, noted the group’s program chairman, Dean Rohweder, in his introduction of Shanley.

“I love that you care about your past, and you keep your past alive,” said Shanley, whose talk was entitled, “The Magic of our Memories.”

“It’s a very, very important thing to me.”

Shanley, a former Des Moines Register reporter and the author of many books, including “The Memory Box: Gathering the Keepsakes of the Heart,” began her presentation by describing what can happen when life stories aren’t preserved.

Shanley held up a group portrait of a young woman — her late grandmother, Mary — and five young men, Mary’s brothers, all born in the 1870s.

Mary wed Patrick Shanley, and they had two sons, one of whom was Mary Kay Shanley’s father. But in 1916, Patrick, an accountant for a railroad in Minneapolis, died of a heart attack.

His wife, who had little formal education and no money, moved with her two young children to Webster City, Iowa, to be near one of her brothers, who lived nearby.

She earned money by ironing shirts and baking bread.

“That’s how she kept her family together,” Shanley said.

Years later, Shanley said, when her grandmother could no longer live alone, she moved in with her son, his wife and her. “Then, when I was 10, she died.”

Shanley said that’s basically all she knows about her grandmother.

“I have to tell you that in all 10 years, I never once asked her about her past,” Shanley told the ASHHS audience. “It never occurred to me that she had any past other than living in that house (with us).”
When Shanley did become interested in her grandmother’s story, there was no one still living to question.

“So there is nobody I can ask. Mary’s life is all gone,” lamented Shanley.

“For all of you in this room, you have relatives for two or three generations back who would have said to you (had you asked), ‘Oh, I don’t have a story to tell. I didn’t do anything. I just lived a common, routine, everyday life.’ We know they didn’t.

“But maybe we can’t tell their story because nobody asked, because none of them shared, because they didn’t write it down.”

Future generations are likely to look back at us, she continued, and want to know more about the lives we led.

“But if you’d ask us now, we’d just say, ‘We lead common, everyday, ordinary, routine lives.’ No, we don’t. We don’t, not to them.”

Shanley noted, for example, that many in the ASHHS audience were alive before television had been invented. “We lived a life they’ll never know,” she said of those who have always had TV in their lives.

“Everybody has a memory box full of all of our memories, and we take it with us wherever we go,” Shanley said.

Most memories, she noted, started out as very small, very insignificant events that, if nurtured, became precious memories that now need to be passed along.

Shanley offered these suggestions as to how to accomplish that:

1) Share your memories in the form of stories to your grandchildren.

2) Share your memories in letters – as opposed to easily deleted e-mails — to your children.

3) Interview people in your family for additional information.

4) Let someone interview you, then transcribe that interview.

5) Write down your memories.

Shanley said you don’t have to be a professional writer to do that. “Good writers write like they speak. You just tell the story on paper.

“If you don’t know what to write about, look in your memory box. It’s where you keep your stuff, and your stuff is what no one else in the world could possibly want … but it’s important for you.”

At the urging of some our children, my wife and I have been writing down our memories as they’ve occurred to us for several years.

Lack of information about our ancestors in the study of our genealogy has reaffirmed how important one’s memories might someday be to other family members.

After hearing Shanley’s words, we’re now documenting our memories with renewed enthusiasm.

Copyright 2012 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises. This ran as an “Everyday People” column in The North Scott Press.