Iowa Town Holds Virus Parade

by Bill Russo

One of the pleasures of collecting old books is finding notes inside from previous owners. Sometimes you find only a name and an address. That was the case with "The Big Broadcast" a volume about the golden age of radio. I found the book in a swap shop on Cape Cod.

In the back, on an inside page, was the name and home city of the original owner. The name was unusual "Angstman" (I hope his life did not match his name!) His home city was listed as Buffalo Center, Iowa. So I tried to reach him but was unable to.

But in my search I learned a little about the town of just 900 citizens and the state of Iowa. It's a sparsely populated state with just 3 million people. They have about 6,000 cases of the virus and have had about 40 deaths-----but the tiny city of Buffalo Center wanted to have a parade to cheer everybody up. 

They did it on April 8th., just ahead of Easter. It was a perfectly distanced Car Parade! The town's local news source filed this report on the festivities: "Roadrunners Bar & Grill in Lakota organized the parade last Tuesday, as a way for people to see one another during the COVID-19 pandemic. Roadrunners owner Donna Heidecker says they had about 25 vehicles take part in the parade."

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