Still the Barn
This past Friday, the Republican Party of Iowa held its annual Lincoln Dinner at the downtown convention center in Des Moines. Every four years, when there’s an open seat on the GOP side, the dinner is a major event…no fewer than 13 presidential candidates spoke for 10 minutes each at the dinner, which was a sellout with some 1,200 in attendance.
I was invited to be the voice that introduced each of the candidates…so if you watched on one of the cable channels and the voice that asked the crowd to “please welcome” a speaker sounded familiar…that’s why. I have some thoughts on the substance of the evening to share another time.
But today, I am struck by the transformation of the building so many of us knew as Veterans Memorial Auditorium, or “The Barn”…it was the site of countless concerts, and state tournament play in high school basketball and wrestling, plus the Iowa Barnstormers, from 1955 until 2010, when the shiny new Wells Fargo Arena took its place.
The Barn was destined to fall victim to the wrecking ball, to become a parking lot. But luckily, visionary folks saved the main building and built on a state of the art convention complex. The old auditorium is now the main ballroom, and my seat behind a public address microphone was not that much different from the seat I had in 1979 when I watched my high school team play in the state boys’ basketball tournament.
The shape of the room, and the high, curved ceiling, looks the same…restored, better acoustics, modern lighting…but as I looked out at the main floor, I could almost imagine a basketball court there. And instead of a large video screen projecting the podium speaker, I could imagine the large map of Iowa, with counties marked, and a light that would shine brightly in a county if a team from there was in the tournament. One by one, the lights would dim as a team lost, until there was a single light shining as a champion was crowned.
And as I heard those 13 contenders make their respective cases…I could almost see light bulbs for a few dimming…we won’t know which light will be left shining until January 15th.
The outer hallway sports a wonderful montage of images, posters, and tickets from all the concerts and shows at the old Vets Auditorium…a true walk down memory lane. And appropriate, as more history was written inside later that evening.
