greenfield, ia.

Today we drove over to the little town of Greenfield to visit my grandma and Jed's grandpa (a town over). It was a lovely day! Grandma showed us the old opera house and all the remodeling they have been doing there. I remember going years ago when they first started and I can tell you it was a mess! So it was fun to see how far they have come. My mom grew up in this town and I have many fond memories of going to visit my grandparent's for a week with my sister and cousin every summer. I love that the movie theater in town only shows one film and I love to imagine when my mom was a girl buying ice cream cones for 5 cents. I've heard so many stories of my mom and her sisters and all the things they did there. It is a pretty quiet town today, but it was a hoppin' little town in those days. Small towns just aren't nearly the same as what they used to be. But it is fun to hold on to the memories.

 P.S. Not many people have seen this film, but Greenfield was the backdrop for the 1971 movie Cold Turkey starring Dick Van Dyke. You can see my mom in the high school marching band in a short clip from the film. And my mom said Dick Van Dyke was really the nicest guy. He sat around singing songs to the kids in the town like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." My mom even got his autograph. She couldn't say the same nice things about Bob Newhart! Apparently he thought himself too big for a small town like Greenfield.