And so some terrible news went out yesterday and today from Rock Rapids, Iowa.
I can’t remember such agitation and anguish amongst the alumni of our little hometown in northwest Iowa.
The emails were hot and heavy and sad because the Sportsman’s Lounge, a landmark institution and the meeting place and local pub for locals and alumni, had burned down on Monday and the police were investigating possible arson. As Darryl Freed, class of 1953, ex backshop ace at the Lyon County Reporter and helicopter pilot in Vietnam, put it in an email update: “This is a catastrophe of biblical proportions.” It was particularly poignant because the alumni were coming back to town in a few days for Heritage Days, the town’s big annual celebration, and their favorite hangout would be a burned patch off of Main Street.
Here’s the story from Sioux Falls television station KSFY:
http://www.ksfy.com/category/185294/video?clipId=5930074&autostart=true
Everyone went to the Sportsman’s Lounge, sooner or later. I say sooner or later because some of the more proper young and older ladies woiuldn’t set foot in the place, a bit rowdy and lots of drinking. Then their alumni friends came back to town and they had to go to the lounge if they wanted to see them.
Everyone had a favorite story about the lounge. My favorite involved Ted Fisch, class of 1952, scrappy center on the 195l football team, member in good standing of the fabled Hermie Casjens gang. Ted was back in town for a class reunion and Heritage Days. He ambled up to the bar and asked for a glass of red wine. The wine was promptly produced and Ted drank it down. He then asked for another. Sorry, the bartender said, we don’t have any more wine. So there was Ted Fisch, just in from Redondo Beach, Calif., unable to get more than one glass of wine at his hometown bar.
Next year, Ted showed up and asked for a glass of wine. This time, the lounge folk were ready for him and they had a shelf and backroom full of good California wines. Ted had two glasses. This was classic Rock Rapids humor and we told the story again and again through the years, always noting it happened in the bar at the Sportsman’s Lounge.
Losing the Sportsman’s Lounge is like losing an old friend you have known for years or that you played football or basketball with in high school. This was the case with Doug Peterson, a retired naval officer now living near Mount Shasta, California, when he got word that the lounge had burned to the ground. He recalled that he was a halfback and Darrel (Tank) Wilken was the lineman who opened up holes for him back on late 1950s teams. Tank was the guy who founded the lounge, Doug said. Tank went off to Alaska to work as a guide and rented out the lounge. Tank died when his plane crashed on takeoff in Alaska. The lounge was sold and changed hands several times through the years.
Doug is bringing his fiancee, Kathryn Thornton, back to Rock Rapids for the first time for Heritage Days and his 50th class reunion. She told me in an email that she is “devastated” that the Sportsman’s Lounge will be gone. She said she’d heard all the stories for so long about the lounge from Doug and me (she was a longtime consultant to the Guardian). Now she feels cheated because she missed by a few days seeing what we were talklng about with such affection.
The good thing is that the lounge never seemed to change. It always had a musty 1960s look and feel. I swear that every time I came in through the years that the “Leave it to Beaver” reruns were playing on the television set above the bar.This was a nice local touch because the star of the show, Jerry Mathers, had been born in Rock Rapids in the late 1940s when his father Norman Mathers coached high school football and basketball, including my power house junior high team. The tv scenes of the rambunctious Beaver could have been set in Rock Rapids and Beaver could have fit in nicely with the Hermie Casjens gang. Local columnist Ken Barker has figured this all out and is leading the charge to bring Jerry Mathers back to town for Heritage Days next year.
My favorite connection to the lounge was Larry Raddle and basketball. He and his wife Barb owned and managed the place for years (Larry at the bar and Barb doing fried chicken in the back,) Larry and I played basketball together through junior high and then on the famous high school teams of l95l-53. We were the same size, 6 foot 4 inches. When we came out of the locker room, with our band playing “On Rock Rapids,” and Larry would dunk the ball, we often had the game won before the opening whistle. I couldn’t quite dunk the ball but I had a deadly left hand hook shot.
Whenever I was in town, I would show up at the lounge for the special martini he would make for me. We would talk about our team and why we never made it to the state tournament. I always made the same point, Larry, you needed a jump shot. (Jump shots weren’t used in our day, alas.)
When I first asked if he could make me a good martini, Larry said, how about a Pete Appel special? Sure, I replied. I knew Pete worked at the Rock Rapids State Bank down the street and so I figured I couldn’t go wrong. The Pete Appel special turned out to be my first triple martini, light on the vermouth. Soon, I was staring at five triple martinis stacked up in front me at the bar. I had became part of the lounge tradition: whenever a visiting alumnus stood at the bar, drinking with gusto, the locals would buy another of the same drink and send it quietly along the bar to the drinker. I was never quite sure who was buying me triple martinis, so I waved thanks and tried to get them to stop.
Larry knew the town and he knew his customers. In the summer, he would have the farmers bring in their sweet corn and pile the ears up on a table near the door. On Christmas Eve, he would close the lounge at 6 p.m. sharp and kick everybody out. “I couldn’t stand the wives calling up on Christmas Eve and asking for their husbands to come home,” he told me. Larry’s customers always got home in time for Christmas Eve.
The Sportsman’s Lounge, RIP.
I hope Editor Jodie Hoogeveen of the Lyon County Reporter, the excellent small town weekly just around the block from the lounge, will figure out how to do a proper obituary. Or maybe it’s a story for the lively newsletter of the Lyon County Historical Society. I hope the obit will give us the ownership and historical lineage of the lounge and tell us about the life and good times of this indispensable institution that may be gone for good. My line is the same as always: You don’t have to go to England to enjoy a good neighborhood pub. You can go to the Sportsman’s Lounge in Rock Rapids, Iowa. b3