A bike ride hearkens to a common conversation we used to have

RAGBRAI riders making the trek from Sioux City to Storm Lake on July 23, 2023.

Love-hate best describes my feelings about RAGBRAI which, in case you didn’t notice, retraced its first route of 50 years ago and rolled through Storm Lake on Sunday.

Love in that is a uniquely Iowa thing that has not really been replicated, the ultimate of neighborly. In that Dolores loves it and I love Dolores (You read it here first!). That it all started as a way for Des Moines Register columnists John Karras and Donald Kaul to goof off for a week on the company expense account.

Brother John took their picture for the Storm Lake Register and Pilot-Tribune in 1973 as they led a small but merry band of bikers across the state. Old man Clarence Pickard rode wearing a pith helmet. Over the years it grew, and Karras grew tired and Kaul got fired and the Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger took the handlebars until he decamped for Cooper.

It was The Des Moines Register at its very best, the newspaper Iowa depended upon that created a common, mainly pragmatic conversation in the four corners of the state. It was probably the best metro paper in America back then, although it wasn’t really a metro but read like a community newspaper with a Washington bureau.

The Register kept Iowa honest and open like no place else.

This old editor has a special place in his heart for the Cowles family, who got their start in Algona as our family did. Gardner Cowles was a banker there, and bought The Register and Leader that had been struggling. He turned it into a statewide franchise that ultimately spawned a media empire including Look magazine, TV and radio stations, and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune.

The Cowles heirs wanted to cash out and sold to Gannett in the 1980s. That was the end of the party.

RAGBRAI rolled on. It became more about money. That’s what I hated.

My gosh, did Bob Dorr and Molly Nova rock the socks off Lake Avenue when RAGBRAI came through years ago. The rain stopped and the clouds parted for the Blue Band reunion, and that night I turned into a pumpkin and must have gotten old. I never heard of the bands who played here Sunday. I’m out of the loop. Nothing tops that night until Jerry Garcia climbs out of the cemetery.

I understand the money part. Gannett paid too much for the papers it gobbled up across the country from family trusts. There are debts to pay. They paid more than $200 million for The Register four decades ago and it might be worth a smidgeon of that today. About the amount it would take to run a congressional campaign for just one cycle.

Look at all the money lavished on political campaigns or sag wagons and beer.

You would think there is enough money and self-respect in Des Moines, and Iowa, to restore that set of facts and common conversation we need so badly. Gannett has been selling off papers as notes come due. Glen Taylor brought local ownership back to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and it now is among the strongest news operations in the nation. John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, did the same thing with the Boston Globe.

The Cowleses, the Ruans, the Hubbells, the Knapps, the Lambertis and the Krauses have done a ton for Iowa. If they wanted to do something really great, they would put their Republican and Democratic money together and free The Register from corporate bondage. Just give a little less to Kim Reynolds and Cindy Axne for one cycle and you might get the keys to the pressroom.

And, you would get RAGBRAI, which as long as it is about money, and people obviously don’t mind, makes it a nice side stream of revenue.

I miss Paul Bernhard of Bancroft screaming “PORK CHOPS!” in that piercing high voice of his. I miss a full page of legislative coverage every day of the session. I miss Bob Dorr and the Blue Band. I miss Gordon Gammack going to Sioux Center to interview the garden club. So I am old and nostalgic for the days when local interests elevated local voices across Iowa. I’m glad we still serve pie along blacktop roads. If it is about money, Glen Taylor just doesn’t burn Franklins on cold Minnesota nights for the fun of it. Of course, there’s money in it for Taylor. There is in Iowa, too, and I would do it if I could but I am old and poor and have enough on my hands without being responsible for RAGBRAI. It could be done. It should be. It could be public broadcasting, if the governor didn’t have her thumb on it. This is America, where we depend on the rich to cut us some slack and give us back a full and honest conversation about this land we love.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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