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Time Machine: Podunk Center
Tiny town was called ‘Hub of the World’
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
“Podunk.” It’s a synonym for a nondescript, unimportant hole-in-the-wall.
But add “Center” and “Iowa” to it and it’s a place. Or at least it was a place.
As I searched through Gazette archive photo envelopes, one labeled “Podunk Center, Iowa” caught my eye. It was dated January 1983.
In fact, the unincorporated town of Podunk Center dates to 1934.
That’s when Harold Morris quit his job at a Des Moines meatpacking plant and bought an acre of land in Madison County on Highway 169.
He spent $1,500 building a general store with gas pumps. Morris decided to name the spot Podunk Center, because “it was the best name I could think of at the time,” he said. “Names like Toonerville and Feltonville just didn’t fit it.”
It acquired the added nickname, “The Hub of the World,” because it soon became the area gathering place.
The Gazette noted the burg’s existence in an August 1946 article. “On Highway 169, south of Des Moines, there is a little general store, sitting by itself in the middle of the prairie. It’s labeled Podunk Center.”
A 1962 Gazette story described it this way: “It’s just a one-building, country store, crossroads with a population of four. It came into being about 30 years ago when the farm folks of the area needed supplies and found it time-consuming to go farther away.
“A Harold Morris, long since retired, opened the little store in the 1930s. Percy Estell, 72, a farmer and hog raiser who lives nearby, recalls the little lean-to to which farmers brought their milk, cream and eggs to trade. Government restrictions on Grade A milk squeezed out the milk business. And egg grading regulations brought an end to egg trading.”
New owners
Homer Weeks, his wife, Gloria, and their two daughters moved into Podunk Center in 1961.
Gloria Weeks had grown up in the area. She persuaded her husband, a Des Moines movie projectionist, to buy the 12-by-16-foot store. They converted a little lean-to on the side into a café.
The store was open seven days a week. The Weeks’ daughters, Linda, 13, and Sheryl, 6, helped run it.
A tall steel structure outside the café, used as a TV antenna in 1962, was once used to generate electricity for the building.
The Weekses added a four-unit motel near their store/café and business was good.
When Podunk Center was offered for sale in March 1969, advertisers assumed it was the original backwoods Podunk.
It wasn’t, but stories about Podunk Center began circulating across the nation and the asking price of $7,000 shot up to $10,000, and then to $17,000.
But it was still on the market in July with interest waning.
The famous one-acre “hick town” was finally purchased for $10,000 by a Hollywood, Calif., man, John Garr and his wife, who moved there March 12, 1972.
Podunk burns
Two days later, the store/café/service station exploded and burned to the ground. The cause was a leaking propane tank. The motel and a garage were saved.
The next year, the motel caught fire.
Then Highway 169 was relocated a half-mile west of town in 1972.
The Garrs said they would rebuild. But by 1977, they couldn’t be located, according to the Associated Press. John Garr’s Winterset phone was disconnected. An answering service for John Garr in California said he wasn’t available.
Former owners, the Weekses, said there was nothing in the buildings. Gloria Weeks commented, “It’s in pretty sad shape.”
“It really is too bad he couldn’t have done anything with it, Gloria said in 1983. “We were the center of the community. Where could you go today like that? There are just so many wonderful memories of Podunk. It’s hard to realize it’s gone.”
Podunk Center wasn’t over yet, though. The bus company, Greyhound Lines Inc., wanted a rural area to use in its advertising. It chose a photo of a small town for its posters and labeled it Podunk, but it wasn’t Podunk Center. And the closest bus terminal was 10 miles away, but it wasn’t Greyhound.
No one lived in the rebuilt Podunk Center in 1978. It was “unmarked, deserted and falling down,” according to the Des Moines Register. The Garrs had moved a house to the site and placed it on concrete blocks, but no one lived in it.
Podunk Center had a short revival after John Garr died in 1995. His wife and daughter opened a restaurant in the remaining building. But by 2012, it too was gone.
Podunk Center remains in the country’s vernacular, though.
In 1999, a lobbyist in the Iowa Capitol said he felt sorry for citizens who came from places like Podunk Center to petition their government. In 2007, Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, commenting on political campaigning, said, “There’s no question that the star quality of some of this year’s candidates may diminish the importance of the church basement meetings in Podunk Center.”
This structure was one of two that were left of Podunk Center in February 1983 when the photo was taken. (Gazette archives)
This structure was one of two that were left of Podunk Center in February 1983 when the photo was taken. (Gazette archives)
These structures were all that were left of Podunk Center in February 1983 when the photo was taken. (Gazette archives)
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