Amana Colonies, IAJul 18, 2009
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When you hear the word Amana, what do you think of? Right - appliances. They make those appliances in this small town outside of Cedar Rapids, IA! Amana is one of 7 communities that comprise a National Historic Landmark!
I had the privilege of staying in this town in a campground for free right next to Habitat friends of mine - France and Bill Moriarty and their dog Spirit. We went out to dinner at Ghengi's Grill, a Mongolian Feast restaurant where you go through a line with a bowl, choosing your meat, the flavoring for that meat, vegetables and a sauce to be cooked with the meat, and rice or noodles to be mixed with it. They cook it all up and serve it in a bigger bowl that sits in front of you like the bowl is tipped toward you - easier to shovel the food into your mouth! That was fun, although I had a hard time picking a sauce because I didn't know most of them. I ended up with sweet and sour because I knew that one!
Afterwards we drove around Cedar Rapids so I could see the two communities where they are building 20 Habitat houses, and how deep the downtown was flooded by Cedar River in June 2008. Many houses there are still condemned but not razed yet. The government building was situated on an island in the middle of the river and now it sits empty and who knows what will happen to it! When I drove by the city on my way to Amana, I smelled some kind of food I couldn't place until I passed the Quaker Oat factory! They used to give tours, but not since the flood. They must have fixed up the building because it is in operation today!
Before dark, we went through the main town of Amana. The Germans settled here to get away from religious persecution in Germany in the mid 1800s. They built houses without kitchens and owned land big enough to grow plenty of crops but small enough so that they could walk back to the community kitchen for lunch/dinner. When the families and forms got too big, they simply started another Amana community! To get the whole and correct story, click here.
Today, the town has buildings to look like the community of the 1850s with many shops and restaurants that serve family style. What would they do with me, a family of one I wonder? I would probably have to join some other family at a big round table.
I didn't grab my camera so I don't have pictures of anything I saw today - sorry about that.
