Time to share the final collection of auxiliary images I took while harvesting the town signs of Fayette and Winneshiek Counties. Included in this collection are pictures taken at Montauk. Montauk is the mansion and home Iowa’s 12th Governor William Larrabee. I don’t know anything about William Larrabee, but I’m guessing his entire platform wasn’t to destroy rural schools to line the pocketbooks of the out-of-state interests that funded his campaign.

Here is the final collection of images:

Postville

Montauk

Clermont

Elgin

If you don’t know what The Straight Story is, here it is from the Wiki:

In June 1994, Straight’s 80-year-old brother Henry Straight (Palisade, January 4, 1914 – Iowa, June 15, 1998) had suffered a stroke. At the age of 73 and in poor health from diabetes, emphysema and other ailments, Straight could not see well enough for a driver’s license, so he decided his only option was to travel on his 1966 John Deere riding lawn mower.

Setting off in early July 1994, Straight drove the mower along highway shoulders, towing a trailer loaded with gasoline, camping gear, clothes, and food from his home in Laurens, Iowa to his brother in Blue River, Wisconsin.

About four days and 21 miles into the trip, the lawn mower broke down in West Bend, Iowa. Straight spent $250 on replacement parts, including a condenser, plugs, a generator, and a starter.

After traveling another 90 miles, Straight ran out of money while in Charles City, Iowa. He camped there for a few days until his next Social Security checks arrived in August. He was interviewed by local newspapers. On August 15, Straight’s lawn mower broke down again when he was two miles from his brother’s house near Blue River. A farmer stopped and helped him push it the rest of the way. At a top speed of 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h), the trip took six weeks in all. After the visit, his nephew, Dayne Straight, drove him back to Iowa in his pickup truck.

Henry Straight recovered from his stroke and moved back to Iowa to be closer to Alvin Straight and the rest of his family.

Paul Condit, president and general manager of Texas Equipment Company, Inc., in Seminole, Texas, heard about the trip and gave Straight a 17-horsepower John Deere replacement riding mower worth $5,000. Straight disliked the media attention from the lawn mower trip. He turned down offers to appear on various TV talk shows including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman.

David Lynch (of all filmmakers) turned the story into the movie THE STRAIGHT STORY. Richard Farnsworth played Alvin Straight and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

The film was shot in chronological order along the original route that Alvin Straight took. Richard Farnsworth was suffering from terminal cancer during production and the paralysis of his legs shown in the film was real. He took his own life they year after the shooting of the film.

The movie currently streams on Disney+.

The next county we will visit for auxiliary images will be a little bit different. It will mostly involve a camping trip I made with Carla and Jason, but I consider them to be auxiliary images because I did take one town sign picture on the trip.