It was Dave’s first trip to the Iowa Capitol too.
“Well it’s about time,” the tour guide quipped when I explained that although I grew up in Iowa, lo these many years later, this was my first time to see its state capitol building.
The dome is just as impressive from the inside as from the outside.
And what a palace of a statehouse it is. 330,000 square feet of marble floors, hand-painted frescos, Italian tile murals and hand carved woodwork. All topped with a huge dome covered in 23 karat gold leaf.
Dave and I looked at each other and had exactly the same reaction: How did they convince a bunch of frugal farmers to do let them build this?
One of the panels from the display in the State Historical Museum detailing Iowa’s long history of social justice.
At the state historical museum next door, there was a particularly inspiring exhibit which reminded me that, besides frugality, Iowans have another core value:
A long history of social justice.
In 1839 when a Missouri slave owner came to retrieve a slave from Iowa, its supreme court ruled “No man in this territory can be reduced to Slavery.” The U.S. Supreme court later overturned that ruling.
In 1869 Iowa was the first state to admit a woman to the bar.
My alma mater The University of Iowa was the first public university to grant a law degree to a woman (1873) and to an African American (1879), and the first to put an African American student on a varsity athletic squad. It also had the first female college newspaper editor in 1907 and was the first state university to recognize an LGBT student organization.
There was at least one moment of frugality in the capitol building. Iowa got a great deal on this bronze after it was rejected by Illinois officials for their capitol because it was too scantily clad.
In a case before the court in 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court held that “separate” was not “equal” and ordered an African-American admitted to the public schools. This effectively integrated Iowa’s schools 96 years before the federal court decision, Brown v. the Board of Education in Topeka, did the same thing.
The first permanent mosque in North America was built in Cedar Rapids.
In 1939, while most of the world still turned its back on Jews attempting to flee the Nazis (including the U.S. government) the tiny Quaker community just down the road from where we’re camped this trip created a hostel that took in 186 refugees.
Yes, Iowa’s first ladies were all clones. At least the dolls depicting them are, in this display of inaugural gowns at the capitol. The display was First Ladie Billie Ray’s idea, and the dolls were all cast from a mold of her face. The real Billie Ray is the one with the fur and the saucy hairdo.
And of course, four years ago the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution did not discriminate against any of its citizens, including same sex couples—making it one of the first states to embrace marriage equality. 
And so it is that while we’re on this stop of our journey—Dave and I have chosen to exercise that right. We were married this afternoon in the historic Johnson County Courthouse.
Just down the road from our current campground is the tiny Iowa farm town of Oxford—population 821. It hasn’t changed much since I was a kid growing up nearby and we’d come to the rodeo held outside town every year.
There too, right next to beer taps where it belongs, was one of our old New Orleans neighbor Dr. Bob’s signature “Be Nice or Leave” signs.
