Sometimes, coming up with new entries for this blog can be a challenge. I’ve got one more Cresco store that I think would make a good blog entry, and to be honest I’m saving that for when I really need it. In the meantime, do I go with the tourist attraction up the road, or do I see if any events go above and beyond the generally accepted scope of small towns?
Then there are the times where a blog-worthy event jumps out at you. The induction ceremony for the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame, blared out on the electronic billboard at the junction of Main Street and Highway 9, was one of those events. It was going on Monday right after work, and the short message also implied there was going to be a cocktail/social hour and dinner before the ceremony took place. This is great, I thought. Now I get to see what the Iowa Wrestling scene is all about!
As I’ve mentioned before, my knowledge of wrestling begins and ends with Hulk Hogan. Okay, if pressed I will admit that I did sit around watching a few rounds of WWE and WCW television with my college roommate Donald, and that some of the background of pro wrestling lifts it from being the sport of trailer trash kings into a heady blend of circus sideshows and soap operas for men. Actual wrestling, though? As far as I knew, that was only a sport preppy high schools had, and that if you were very good at it you’d go on to compete in the Summer Olympics if the year were a multiple of four. So why not see what actual wrestling was all about?
The drive from my office to the Cresco Visitors’ Center, which also doubles as the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame, as long-time readers of my blog might know, takes about ten minutes. During that time, I reviewed what little I did know of wrestling in Iowa. At the Cresco Fitness Center, there is what you’d call “Pee-Wee” wrestling, which has nothing to do with Pee-Wee Herman and everything to do with kids around the ages of 8-11. I’ve seen a lot of high school students in the Cresco Fitness Center weight room, constantly working out and drinking water infused with protein powder afterwards, and there are few men in their 20s and 30s who drop their kids off at the swimming pool and hit the gym for an hour, keeping themselves impressively toned, as though they are just waiting for the Cresco High School to call them up and say, “Hey! There’s an emergency opening on our varsity wrestling team! Are you sure you graduated?” I mentioned before that there are precious few overweight people seen at the Cresco Fitness Center. Other than the obvious reasons why this might be, I want to point out that I think a lot of these people probably wrestled in high school, and now that they have gone and become adults, they still have the same habits and attitudes toward keeping themselves fit. It’s kind of admirable.
As I got to the Cresco Visitors’ Center, I noticed it was very, very quiet. Way too quiet, in fact. Weren’t they supposed to have an induction ceremony there or something? It was only when I talked with one of the people who runs the Visitors’ Center, a very nice woman by the name of Spiff Slifka, that the section of the induction ceremony that had taken place in the Hall of Fame itself was over. It lasted maybe about twenty minutes, and then people went to the Cresco Country Club to have a dinner and present the inductees. Okay, that was fair. The Cresco Visitors’ Center is nice, but it is a bit on the small side.
I was just turning to go when Spiff introduced me to two of the men on the Hall of Fame board. I smiled as I shook the hand of one massive mountain of a man, and another man in his sixties with a barrel chest and a grip that could turn an iron bar into a horseshoe. Holy crap, I thought. I kept on smiling politely, because pro wrestler or not, both of these guys looked like they could easily throw me through the front window if they got it in their minds to. Of course I’m kidding. They were both very civilized, and neither of them probably thought how easy it would be to bench press me more than once.
After some brief conversation, I drove down to the Cresco Country Club. This place really should get its own blog entry someday, as it is a beautiful golf course. The only setback is that I don’t play golf, and so don’t really have any great desire to play out there. Not that I’ve never played golf before, but it has been only of the putt-putt variety, and while I’ve gotten a hole in one a couple times, there have been a lot more times where I’ve gotten 15 on a 5-stroke hole. I’m pretty sure that actual golf requires more skill. However, the place definitely deserves a walkaround, and as the country club is gearing up for this year’s golf season, I may do that sometime. 
The parking lot of the country club was packed to the point that I managed to cram my subcompact car into a tiny spot in front of the dumpster. For the first time I wondered about whether the Cresco Country Club could actually hold everyone, and I started to get a sense of the “Iowa” in “Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame.” They had invited everyone in Iowa who was passionate about wrestling to show up at the country club. That threw the entire trip into perspective for me. I found myself wondering about how Cresco of all places had come to be the home of the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame. It’s not Des Moines, Davenport, Bettendorf or even Iowa City. To be honest, Cresco is out of the way, and probably a lot of what makes you want to come to the ceremony is whether you live in the northeast quadrant of Iowa as defined by the intersection of I-35 and I-80. I wondered at who would show up.
I got my answer about ten seconds after walking through the door. The crowd consisted mostly of men with barrel chests and short haircuts, and a disturbing number of them were over six feet tall. The ones that weren’t still had chests that jutted out a good six inches in front of them, even if a few of the men had also developed a gut that stuck out just as much. Still, these were guys who looked as though they were ready to get in the ring at any time. If someone had drawn a circle on the floor in chalk, I bet there would have been a few friendly matches starting, with the real possibility of the induction ceremony being canceled because teams would have formed. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed a lot of the men looked at me when I came through the door, size me up, and silently assessed that, yeah, they could take me in a fair fight. They were probably right, too.
A man with a dark green blazer walked up to me as I entered and asked if I was here for the ceremony. I told him yes I was, and I was directed to a woman seated at a desk in order to buy a ticket. I walked over, and got out my checkbook to buy a ticket for...TWENTY DOLLARS? Seriously? Yes, I know that we’re in a country club, but…okay, sure. Maybe some of the money does go toward renting the place, but still…yes, I know everyone else has paid the fee to get in, but I’ve had gourmet dinners that cost less than this. Do you have a contestant from Top Chef back there cooking the food or what? I managed to convey absolutely none of these points as I wrote the check, got my ticket, and started mingling.
(To Be Continued)
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