You Are Here: Stone City

Sometimes it's weird stuff that makes you proud to be an Iowan. Like last weekend, when I took a couple friends to Grant Wood's old stomping grounds at Stone City.

Abbey's from Michigan, Marisa's from all over, and both were intrigued when I mentioned in passing the old Stone City General Store Pub, where we'd go back in the day to have a couple pints and listen to music by the fire or watch the Wapsipinicon River roll by just outside.

And talking about it made me curious, too. So we headed over last Saturday afternoon to see what there was to see.

We passed the old St. Joseph's Catholic Church, which closed for regular business nearly two decades ago, over the Wapsipinicon River and parked at the General Store Pub – which reopened for business just a couple years ago after being closed for a decade or so.

It's the building where, in the 1930s, Grant Wood lived in an upstairs apartment. It's also the kind of place where get the feeling you're the only person there who doesn't know everybody else – but that it doesn't really matter. All kinds are welcome at the pub, just so long as you don't swear. Oh, Tris will let it slide if you slip up and let loose with a curse – but a gutter mouth will get you thrown to the curb. You've been warned.

Once we'd gotten our fill of deep-fried sweet potatoes and Wapsi Willies, we decided to explore, and wandered across an old stone barn that had been converted into some kind of usable space. It was so large and so well kept that we couldn't decide if it was a business or a house. “Should we?” We asked each other. What the heck. We knocked on the door.

And it was opened by Deb Berberich, who lives there all right. Not only did she greet us with a smile, she gave us a tour – showing off the basketball court upstairs and her girls' old bedroom suite. Talking about her family and asking about our lives as if we were old friends.

“Girls, you don't have to spend a lot of money to make a home,” she told us – and explained that nearly every stick of furniture in her lovely, massive house was from a curb or secondhand store. Then she showed us the studio where she recovered chairs and made clothes and worked other domestic magic.

My non-Iowan friends were stunned by her generosity, and even I was surprised – and proud.

We said goodbye and thanks, and headed back to the Wapsipinicon River for a final look, waving at passing cars as we went. I saw an older couple taking their dogs for an evening stroll, and stopped to pass along a little news.

We don't have mountains or oceans, but by Jove we've got people here. Good people I'll take over dramatic landforms any day.