Wednesday, December 17, 2025
This post is ultimately about the "mass casualty event" in Iowa on Saturday night, and may not be the lightest thing you read.
In 1982 I accepted a job at Scattergood School, three miles east of West Branch, and loved it immediately. There was a small meeting house near the road, and a cemetery across the road from it; down the hill we could hear trucks shifting gears as they came around a curve. "Both Nixon and Hemingway had ancestors in this graveyard," someone told me. "That's why they had to make the interstate go around it. It could be the only curve in the interstate in the whole state."
During meetings, there would sometimes be a wood fire in the stove at the old meeting house, which, like most Quaker meeting houses, was austere. No pictures of Jesus, no decoration, just wooden pews, off-white walls, a nice fire, and the sound of trucks coming up around that curve. I think I said the obvious: we need a wall out here to deflect the sound. I wasn't the first to come up with that idea and they did put one in sometime between 1982 and now. But I actually liked the sound of trucks. I had been on the road for many years, camping by roadsides, and it kind of calmed me having traffic there in the silence while I waited and drew faith from my experience.
High school kids were in general difficult and still are, and it was a lively place. I was a cook and a dorm sponsor and helped on the farm. I cooked sometimes what they produced from ground pork and produce from their gardens. I was a lousy cop in the dorms. I helped build a pig barn. I was there alone one winter when it was 20 below. I became a Quaker in that meeting house.
The other night, I went to Iowa to have a cochlear implant surgery at the UI Hospitals in Iowa City. It was Monday, but we saw evidence of the "mass causualty event" in the ditches and shoulders on way through from Tipton to West Branch. I had read about it on the news. Because I was a passenger in the car, I was able to see Scattergood School on the right as we drove through: the prairie, though you can't see the ice-skating pond; the solar gym, whose pipes froze that winter; the soccer fields. but this was while we were seeing trucks and cars in the ditches along the side of the road.
Coming back, though, we had to stop for gas in West Branch, which we got at a Casey's; I'm not sure they had a Casey's in 1982. But when we got back on the interstate eastbound, it was slowed down. It may have been only a ten or fifteen minute delay and fortunately the roads themselves were in good condition. But now we came upon mangled trucks right up on the shoulder, trucks that had gone off the road and still had their blinkers on, more mangled cars, and we were right up close. Traffic crawled, not because of rubbernecking so much as because trucks with blinkers were right there partly on the shoulders; we had to drive between them.
It was called a "mass casualty event" because 40 people were injured, 20 cared for in the hospital which had to choose which to do first. More than 50 cars and trucks were involved over a six-mile stretch just east of West Branch - which is right where Scattergood is. If I'm not mistaken, people at Scattergood could have looked down and seen some of these accidents as they happened.
It's a very crowded road these days - some people take back roads from Iowa City to Davenport just to avoid it - but the back roads aren't easy, and wouldn't have been easy for us either even though we could have cut south in Iowa City. But because it's crowded, and fast, it's dangerous, and it's not the only part of. 80 that ices over quickly, before they can get salt on it, on a cold and snowy night. You can go from doing 70 on a normal road to doing 70 on ice very quickly and then things start happening, and it was a miracle nobody. died although they did have to remove one person from a car. Apparently it was while they were working on a crash in the westbound lane that things started crashing in the eastbound, and things ended up backed up for seven hours, as far back as Coralville to the west, and quite a ways to the east also.
Although seven hours on a cold (~0) day is no small change, it once took me seventeen hours to get across the state of Missouri in an ice storm, so I can imagine what people felt like. It's no fun and you're lucky if you have the gas and the time that you can basically just waste. People will have stories to tell. Scattergood people don't use that interstate, as the road with the meeting house on it doesn't have an exit ramp, and they can't even get on the interstate until West Branch itself. Their stories will be about what they saw and heard down beyond the wall that protects them from it.
It deeply upsets my sense of peace that I've gotten and maintained around my Quakerism. Some people write in and complain about irresponsible truckers, or people going too fast, or whatever or whoever they can blame. Blaming is pointless, though, even blaming the Quakers for protecting their graveyard and making them put a curve in 80. Blame the weather pattern that brings snow and ice right on that little curve only, throwing cars. and trucks into the ditch and into each other. Or blame the ancestors for dying and resting on that hill. I'm not blaming. I'm hearing the gears though, and wondering about the grade, about the exact geography, about what actually happened. The mangled trucks and cars by the road, two days later, with blinkers on or whatever, I'll keep that image too. It's like Scattergood has had that uneasy alliance with the interstate from the start, and it's not any less uneasy now. It's actually very scary, like losing your hearing altogether, which is also happening to me.
In some ways, it was like coming home. But so is deafness, in a way. That's another story, equally scary. At least I'm here to tell the tale.
In 1982 I accepted a job at Scattergood School, three miles east of West Branch, and loved it immediately. There was a small meeting house near the road, and a cemetery across the road from it; down the hill we could hear trucks shifting gears as they came around a curve. "Both Nixon and Hemingway had ancestors in this graveyard," someone told me. "That's why they had to make the interstate go around it. It could be the only curve in the interstate in the whole state."
During meetings, there would sometimes be a wood fire in the stove at the old meeting house, which, like most Quaker meeting houses, was austere. No pictures of Jesus, no decoration, just wooden pews, off-white walls, a nice fire, and the sound of trucks coming up around that curve. I think I said the obvious: we need a wall out here to deflect the sound. I wasn't the first to come up with that idea and they did put one in sometime between 1982 and now. But I actually liked the sound of trucks. I had been on the road for many years, camping by roadsides, and it kind of calmed me having traffic there in the silence while I waited and drew faith from my experience.
High school kids were in general difficult and still are, and it was a lively place. I was a cook and a dorm sponsor and helped on the farm. I cooked sometimes what they produced from ground pork and produce from their gardens. I was a lousy cop in the dorms. I helped build a pig barn. I was there alone one winter when it was 20 below. I became a Quaker in that meeting house.
The other night, I went to Iowa to have a cochlear implant surgery at the UI Hospitals in Iowa City. It was Monday, but we saw evidence of the "mass causualty event" in the ditches and shoulders on way through from Tipton to West Branch. I had read about it on the news. Because I was a passenger in the car, I was able to see Scattergood School on the right as we drove through: the prairie, though you can't see the ice-skating pond; the solar gym, whose pipes froze that winter; the soccer fields. but this was while we were seeing trucks and cars in the ditches along the side of the road.
Coming back, though, we had to stop for gas in West Branch, which we got at a Casey's; I'm not sure they had a Casey's in 1982. But when we got back on the interstate eastbound, it was slowed down. It may have been only a ten or fifteen minute delay and fortunately the roads themselves were in good condition. But now we came upon mangled trucks right up on the shoulder, trucks that had gone off the road and still had their blinkers on, more mangled cars, and we were right up close. Traffic crawled, not because of rubbernecking so much as because trucks with blinkers were right there partly on the shoulders; we had to drive between them.
It was called a "mass casualty event" because 40 people were injured, 20 cared for in the hospital which had to choose which to do first. More than 50 cars and trucks were involved over a six-mile stretch just east of West Branch - which is right where Scattergood is. If I'm not mistaken, people at Scattergood could have looked down and seen some of these accidents as they happened.
It's a very crowded road these days - some people take back roads from Iowa City to Davenport just to avoid it - but the back roads aren't easy, and wouldn't have been easy for us either even though we could have cut south in Iowa City. But because it's crowded, and fast, it's dangerous, and it's not the only part of. 80 that ices over quickly, before they can get salt on it, on a cold and snowy night. You can go from doing 70 on a normal road to doing 70 on ice very quickly and then things start happening, and it was a miracle nobody. died although they did have to remove one person from a car. Apparently it was while they were working on a crash in the westbound lane that things started crashing in the eastbound, and things ended up backed up for seven hours, as far back as Coralville to the west, and quite a ways to the east also.
Although seven hours on a cold (~0) day is no small change, it once took me seventeen hours to get across the state of Missouri in an ice storm, so I can imagine what people felt like. It's no fun and you're lucky if you have the gas and the time that you can basically just waste. People will have stories to tell. Scattergood people don't use that interstate, as the road with the meeting house on it doesn't have an exit ramp, and they can't even get on the interstate until West Branch itself. Their stories will be about what they saw and heard down beyond the wall that protects them from it.
It deeply upsets my sense of peace that I've gotten and maintained around my Quakerism. Some people write in and complain about irresponsible truckers, or people going too fast, or whatever or whoever they can blame. Blaming is pointless, though, even blaming the Quakers for protecting their graveyard and making them put a curve in 80. Blame the weather pattern that brings snow and ice right on that little curve only, throwing cars. and trucks into the ditch and into each other. Or blame the ancestors for dying and resting on that hill. I'm not blaming. I'm hearing the gears though, and wondering about the grade, about the exact geography, about what actually happened. The mangled trucks and cars by the road, two days later, with blinkers on or whatever, I'll keep that image too. It's like Scattergood has had that uneasy alliance with the interstate from the start, and it's not any less uneasy now. It's actually very scary, like losing your hearing altogether, which is also happening to me.
In some ways, it was like coming home. But so is deafness, in a way. That's another story, equally scary. At least I'm here to tell the tale.
