Iowa Life Episode 201

[Charity Nebbe] Coming up on this episode of Iowa Life, we'll meet a family dedicated to a sport reminiscent of the Old West.

[Speaker 2] I think that that's why I love it so much is because it's a family event that we all love, and we all can do really well at to.

[Charity Nebbe] We'll hear the musical history of an Oskaloosa publishing company.

[Speaker 3] Barnhouse was started by a man named Carl Barnhouse. He had been composing music, but not having a whole lot of luck getting things published. So he thought, I'm going to try to start my own publishing company.

[Charity Nebbe] And we'll ride along with some young skateboarders as they participate in an after school skate club. It's all coming up next on Iowa Life.

[Speaker 4] Funding for Iowa Life is provided by.

[Charity Nebbe] The Pella Roll Screen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

[Speaker 4] And by the Lainie Grimm Fund for Inclusive Programing at the Iowa PBS Foundation.

[Charity Nebbe] Hi, I'm [Charity Nebbe] and this is Iowa Life. I'm standing on the campus of the University of Iowa, where young people from all over the country come to broaden their horizons and find their passions. Sometimes in life, the spark that ignites a passion can be found in a unique way. Coming up, we're going to visit a farm near Creston that serves as a center for the Travis family to pursue their passion for cowboy mounted shooting.

[Charity Nebbe] When you watch cowboy mounted shooting, you can't help but think you're being transported back in time to the Wild West. The sport works like this. Competitors ride their horses through a course containing ten balloons. The rider has two single action revolvers loaded with blank ammunition that they use to shoot the balloons. They're scored on time and accuracy, facing penalties for missed balloons or not running the pattern correctly.

[Charity Nebbe] There are cowboy mounted shooting organizations in more than 40 states across the country, and here in Iowa. One family is taking the reins on growing the sport.

[Speaker 5] We live in southwest Iowa. We're about 11 miles northeast of Creston, and we're kind of in the middle of nowhere. We always say we're a family that's stuck together and, we enjoy farming and we love horses.

[Charity Nebbe] The Travis extended family is made up of nearly four dozen people, and they are especially tight knit. Most of them live within ten miles of each other, and many of them work together, raising quarter horses. Bruce Travis is one of the patriarchs, and he was the first person in the family to compete in Cowboy Mountain shooting.

[Speaker 5] You know, I'd heard about it probably in the 90s. Todd Jackson, one of my best friends, he came to our saddle club one night and showed a film of, Calvary Mount a shooting in the. When it was just starting. You got to realize this was the 80’s and 90’s on the farm, and we didn't hardly had two nickels to rub together, you know, and it looked like fun.

[Speaker 5] It looked like something that we could compete in really well. But I remember a couple guns were $500 each year, like, whoa, whoa, you know who could do that? You know, in 2012. Another friend, Carl Watson, had been after me and after me to come to a mounted shooting. He was very involved and it rained one weekend I couldn't do anything else.

[Speaker 5] I loaded up a horse and went to one of their clinics and I was hooked. Immediately. We all thought it was stupid. We couldn't figure out why he wanted to do that. What? You don't have time for that? We don't have time for hobbies. And he was going all over doing this. And then finally I remember it was in 2014 and April, he was shooting at the Iowa Horse Fair at the fairgrounds, and I went and watched him, and I never really watched him before.

[Speaker 5] I watched him, and I mean, Jamie did as well. I looked at Jamie, I said, why are we not doing this?

[Charity Nebbe] Not long after, the rest of the Travis family got hooked, too. Now 30 of them compete from eight year old kids to Bruce, who's in his late 60s.

[Speaker 2] It's a full family sport. I think that that's why I love it so much is because it's a family event that we all love and we all can do really well at too.

[Speaker 2] So we are at the Travis Quarter Horses Shoot. this happens once a year at my parents place.

[Unknown] Look at them.

[Unknown] I like to say it's.

[Speaker 2] Not controlled chaos. It's just chaos.

[Speaker 5] My dad says this, and it's the truth. If you have to win to have fun, you shouldn't be doing it. And it's the truth, I mean, in anything, you know, I want to be competitive, and I want to. I want to do the best of my ability. And, you know, God's given me these horses. I want to showcase them the best that I possibly can.

[Speaker 5] Go, go. But this weekend, I missed a balloon. I was so frustrated, but I walked out of the arena and smiled and thought I got the whole rest of the weekend to just have fun and try to get better.

[Speaker 2] Jamie stopped the clock and 16.414 will add 10s and penalties. Make that a 26.414 for Jamie Travis.

[Speaker 5] You don't hear much cussing. You don't hear much swearing. You know, there's guys that have bad runs and you don't see guys that were pouting in the corner screaming or having a fit. Dave, you did the same thing I didn't look like. But you get all the blues. They're there to enjoy the sport and enjoy the company. Half of the fun there is seeing all your friends when you pull into a shoot.

[Speaker 5] Think about it.

[Speaker 2] There's as much pressure on you as you want there to be. But at the end of the day, everybody is cheering for you and everyone wants you to do well. It's a sport unlike any other.

[Speaker 5] Nice. Good job.

[Speaker 2] Nice job. Maddie. Maddie is still an 18.407 And filling in for Maddie.

[Speaker 5] I'll tell you what. This is a guy that I look up to. I have for the last 49 years. Come on, dad, let's see you get it done. I don't know how many times I've shot. Hundreds of times. I'm still really nervous. And adrenaline. Still really fighting. Gentle Bob is running good. The minute you go, it's just a rush. You can run down barrels

[Unknown] you’re going to bring Bob on home. Here. Eight, nine and ten. Nice round 18.256

[Speaker 5] and Wayne, I've played with motorcycles most of my life. I don't think there's anything that can match that rush.

[Speaker 2] I'm an insurance agent in Creston, and you know, we've not had great weather here in Iowa. And so there's a lot going through my mind at work. you know, a lot going through my mind when I get home. But when I am out there, all I'm thinking about is what I'm doing on my horse. And it's freeing.

[Speaker 2] It's a release. There's no feeling like it.

[Speaker 3] We are a band music publishing company. We have been in business for 138 years. We are at our warehouse, which houses at the moment over 7000 different products that we published over the years. Anywhere from the very first semester beginning bands in the fifth or sixth grade, all the way up through college, university, adult and professional bands. And we shipped music to Japan, many European countries, Australia, China, South America.

[Speaker 3] just all over the world. Barnhouse was started by a man named C.L. Barnhouse, Charles Lloyd Barnhouse. He was apparently a very good cornetist. The problem was, he was sometimes in bands where he wasn't getting paid regularly. And so he happened to be in Des Moines playing with a musical comedy show, and he hadn't gotten paid for 2 or 3 weeks, and they got ticked off and said, I quit at the same time.

[Speaker 3] He had been composing music, but not having a whole lot of luck getting things published. So he thought, I'm going to try to start my own publishing company. So this is the very first publication from the CL Barnhouse Company, a march called The Battle of Shiloh that was written by Carl Barnhouse. This was number one in our catalog, the very first piece of music that the company ever published.

[Speaker 3] You have to think back into the terms of 1886, when this company started. Music had to be engraved into a sheet of metal, of zinc or lead, using tools that were shaped for different kinds of musical symbols. If you wanted to make an eighth note, for example, you would use one tool for the note head. You'd use another tool for the note stem.

[Speaker 3] You use another tool for the flag on the eighth note. So just to make one note, you'd have to use three different tools and punch them into the sheet of lead in reverse. Because all of the printing was done as a reverse impression. So it was a very painstaking process to produce the engraving plates for music publications back in those days.

[Speaker 2] Good evening everyone, and welcome to downtown Oskaloosa. And an evening of music with the one and only Oskaloosa City Band. My name is .........

[Speaker 3] In the days before radio and television and even sound recordings, people, if they wanted to hear music, they had one of two choices. They could go someplace where it was being performed, or they could make it themselves.

[Speaker 2] Much of the music we perform each week is published locally at CL Barnhouse House, located on the north edge of town.

[Speaker 3] And so often in smaller communities, especially, there would be a town band that would play concerts, perhaps during the summertime, or perform for community events, or be in parades. And that was the only opportunity that a lot of average people had to hear

[Speaker 2] music. Written by C.L. Barnhouse, composer Robert Sheldon. This is Hill Country Holiday.

[Speaker 3] But it was all about entertainment. I mean, people went to band concerts because they wanted to have a good time. They wanted to enjoy the music. They wanted to hear music that was tuneful, that was melodic, that was rhythmic. It was all about entertainment. And if people didn't enjoy what they heard, they wouldn't come back. So the bands played what audiences wanted to hear.

[Speaker 3] So when the company started, he started off publishing just his own music, and then later other composers came to him and we began publishing the music of others. We've always been associated with circus music, and circus performances of 100 years ago were accompanied by live music, and many of the musicians who led the circus bands and who wrote music published with us.

[Speaker 3] The most famous of those composers, Carl King, was a circus musician for nine years. His career there culminated with the leadership of the Barnum and Bailey Circus Band, and he composed over 200 pieces of music that we published. This is a picture of the 1913 Barnum and Bailey Circus Band. And this fellow right back here is Carl King playing the baritone.

[Speaker 3] And this is the band that Carl King wrote, Barnum and Bailey, his favorite for earlier that year. That's the most famous march that we ever published. It's probably the most famous circus march ever written, and when you hear it, you immediately think of a circus. I have a very strange history with this company. Band sort of became my thing in high school.

[Speaker 3] I wasn't involved in sports, I wasn't involved in other activities. Band was kind of my home. And so as I became interested in the music, I started looking for recordings of band music. And then I decided I was going to start collecting this kind of music. So I started purchasing band music from different places. And one of those was Barnhouse, and I got really excited about the circus music aspect of it, and Carl King and I finally wrote to the people of Barnhouse, and I asked, is there any kind of a list of his music?

[Speaker 3] And the response was, well, we have this, this archive of music, but it's kind of disorganized and I don't know what compelled me to do this, but I said, what if I came up there and went through your archive and got it organized for you? And Bob Barnhouse senior, who was a grandson of the founder, I said, okay, that'd be fun.

[Speaker 3] Bob Senior gave me a key to the building. I was here for a week and he said, just come and go as you please lock up when you leave. So here's a 17 year old kid going through the music art that and then over the years, I started my teaching career and I started doing some other things and music and stayed in touch with the folks here.

[Speaker 3] And in the late 90s, they asked me to start writing arrangements for them to publish. And so a couple of years later, I was in the middle of a job transition in Saint Louis, and he said, did you ever think about moving to Iowa? And so I said, I'd love to talk about that. So I was 15 when I first came to the Barnhouse Company, and I'm 62 now, so it's been a lifetime thing.

[Speaker 3] I feel honored to be a part of this, getting to actually have a job that I love so much. I'm just a lucky guy.

[Charity Nebbe] Throughout the growing season, Iowans can reliably depend on a variety of flowers to emerge, almost like clockwork. By early May, tulips are in full bloom. In July, native prairies are awash in color, and every year around the time of the Iowa State Fair, a field of hardy amaryllis flowers in Des Moines takes center stage.

[Charity Nebbe] The Walnut Creek Bike Trail in Des Moines is a popular avenue for cyclists and pedestrians year round, and for a few weeks every August, trail users are treated to a dazzling display of hearty amaryllis flowers.

[Charity Nebbe] The one acre plot of land belongs to the Shoemaker family. William Shoemaker started planting the bulbs in the mid 1980s before the bike trail even existed. Year after year, he added more to the mix, multiplying the field into hundreds of thousands of blooms. William died in 2021 at the age of 93, but his legacy continues to live on through his son Bill Jr, who maintains the fields for passers by to enjoy.

[Charity Nebbe] New bulbs are sowed in the fall and the foliage is mowed down in June for a few months. The field looks like a typical grassy lawn until the flowers come up in August. The blooms first appear sparsely in shaded areas, but within a week the otherwise green field is carpeted in pink. The flowers scientific name is “Lycoris Squamigera”, but they have many nicknames ghost lilies, resurrection lilies, naked ladies, or surprise lilies, to name a few.

[Charity Nebbe] The nicknames are fitting because they seem to rise out of nowhere like magic, reaching full height in as little as 2 or 3 days. As part of the Amaryllis family, the flower structure is much like its siblings. Each stalk is about two feet tall, with 5 to 7 pale pink, trumpet shaped blooms at the top of the stem.

[Charity Nebbe] The stamens extend far past the petals, attracting a variety of pollinators. The flowers give an extra boost of color and fragrance at the end of the summer, when many other flowers have long since faded.

[Charity Nebbe] Thanks to the Shoemakers decades of dedication and growing and maintaining the fields. The patch of hardy amaryllis flowers is a delight that anyone can enjoy.

[Charity Nebbe] There are so many benefits to afterschool programs. They can provide kids with an opportunity to put down their phones and socialize, learn healthy behaviors, and gain confidence at an after school skate club in Des Moines. Students can also learn a new sport.

[Speaker 2] First things first is we're going to get our helmets on, right? We're going to make sure the sizes we had on last week are the right sizes. And then after that, we're going to grab our skateboards and we're going to......

[Speaker 7] Skate club is a fun afterschool activity in the morning public school. It's a good place to try out skateboarding and see if it's a sport for you. Oh, right.

[Speaker 2] A little too tight. Yeah. My bad. You need help with that, Bella? How's that feel, David? Good, good. Here we go. Can I see how much I gotta tighten it? How's that feel?

[Unknown] A good. Start. Stella. Nice. All right. We're here. There you go.

[Speaker 2] It helps when feet too are all the way on the nose and tail. Yeah. Perfect. Looks like you guys might be ready for concrete. But it's whatever you guys are comfortable with. We bring 20 skateboards and helmets to get kids on a skateboard. A lot of them have never been on a board before, so it's pretty exciting.

[Speaker 2] The first couple weeks, we really work on pushing and balancing and how to stop, how to turn.

[Speaker 7] For a lot of these kids. The afterschool clubs are going to be the first experience they have with skateboarding.

[Speaker 7] We're introducing the sport to kids that may not have had exposure to it in the past. This is not typically part of gym class. There's not leagues. There's not clubs to sign up for. It's in a place that they're familiar with. It's with their friends. It's safe. We've got qualified instructors.

[Speaker 2] I want everyone to tell me where I put my front foot on the skateboard. Exactly. I'll switch it to get in pushing mode and then riding mode. Right? Yeah. All right. I was a female skater, and that we were going to have some little girls who might be a little nervous around older boy instructors. So that's kind of where I came in to show them that skateboarding is not just for the boys.

[Speaker 2] You can do it too. One last question. All right. What do we yell when our board goes flying? Oh, boy. Exactly. All right. Are we ready to free skate?

[Unknown] Yes. All right, let me know if anyone wants to hold hands okay. All right. Go right ahead. Watch out for one another. Can I see it again? Do it one more time. Wow. You really got it that pretty quickly.

[Speaker 2] They learned that they've got a need for speed. And so we start going faster and then learning some tricks, like some toe flips. That's the one we like to start out with. The kids really like that one. Really makes them feel good when they see the board flip.

[Speaker 7] In elementary, middle school, and early high school, skateboarding was a huge part of my life. That's where I found confidence. That's where I learned the benefits of physical activity. And it's where I made a lot of friends.

[Speaker 8] And then right after you do it like that and you hold it there, what you want to do is just put all your weight on your front foot and lean forward. Let me see one.

[Speaker 5] Yeah, exactly like that. Perfect. Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 8] That's pretty much what you're going to do. You're going to, like, lift it up and you're going to stick out your arm. Kind of like that,

[Speaker 7] It's different than a lot of sports, but because of that, it attracts different types of people.

[Speaker 7] And we weren't ready yet. And so we want to be there to support those kids that often don't find a place in a normal team sport activities.

[Speaker 2] Sometimes we have kids who come to skate club, maybe a little upset. They'll tell me, you know, I'm a bad kid. You know, I'm angry or things at home are tough. And I just always, always tell them to put that into the skateboard.

[Unknown] I've got a very good.

[Unknown] Yeah, right. That was it. That was a full rotation, dude.

[Speaker 7] Part of the reason why I and others start started skate DSM is because we wanted to give that experience to other kids in the community and show how much skateboarding can impact you know your life, in a positive way.

[Speaker 7] People don't think of Des Moines when they think of skateboarding. We're at a world class Lauridsen Skate Park, largest skate park in North America. It's 88,000ft².

[Speaker 7] We are celebrating the end of the school year and the end of our after school skate clubs. with field trips to the skate park.

[Speaker 7] We're always talking about ways to get our kids off of screens and outside, enjoying the fresh air and getting exercise. Skateboarding provides that.

[Unknown] Oh, you had it. You had it for sure.

[Speaker 9] It's just a way to get your energy out and like, feel all the wind going in your face without having to hold handles like a bike or a scooter.

[Unknown] I got on the board.

[Speaker 9] And I just fell in love with it.

[Speaker 7] It's not about becoming a top skateboarder. It's about progressing and learning and getting better than when you started. If you just learn how to ride, that's perfectly fine. If you walk out of the skate club and still don't know how to ride a skateboard, but you had a great time. We also count that as a big success. Maybe this will become the thing that they're passionate about.

[Speaker 7] You know, every kid, particularly at this age, is kind of finding their passion. We have gone from one school to 16, from one program to 31. So we've had tremendous growth just over the last year. We want to expand these opportunities to kids beyond Des Moines. That's where the future lies with After-School Skate Club.

[Speaker 2] That feeling of being able to get something that's super tough. They get to carry that throughout the rest of their day, throughout the rest of their week, and hopefully the rest of their life. So skateboarding can make you feel pretty capable of some incredible things.

[Charity Nebbe] That's it for this show. Thank you for joining me as we explore Iowa's people, places and cultures. I'm [Charity Nebbe]. See you next time for more Iowa Life.

[Speaker 4] Funding for Iowa Life is provided by.

[Charity Nebbe] The Pella Roll Screen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

[Speaker 4] And by the Lainie Grimm Fund for Inclusive Programing at the Iowa PBS Foundation.