Curt Swarm's Column
The column of Curt Swarm
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Fox call
By Curt Swarm - Mar 05I saw the advertisement for the fox call in an old Outdoor Life magazine. A neighbor gave me all his old Outdoor Life and Field and Stream ...
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My buddy Cor
By Curt Swarm - Jan 08I’ve written about Cornelius (Cor) Van Egmond from Oskaloosa several times over the years. He’s one of Osky’s famous (infamous) Dutch characters/cr...
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Empty Nest: Christmas
By Curt Swarm - Dec 03I’ve never been much of a one for decorating my yard and front of the house with Christmas lights. Not that I have anything against them, and I ...
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Love your body
By Curt Swarm - Nov 19Most people don’t know what their bodies look like. Mirrors don’t reflect an accurate representation, because mirrors show a reverse image, and ...
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Swarm of Bees
By Curt Swarm - Nov 05With my last name of Swarm, as you might expect, I’m used to a lot of references to bees. Growing up, I was known as Bee Swarm, or just plain Bee. ...
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Wahoo at Morris Park
By Curt Swarm - Oct 25I had never heard of Morris Park, outside of Stockport in Van Buren County. When Dorothy Gilbert of Stockport called me, and told me about Van ...
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Swetsville Zoo
By Curt Swarm - Oct 08For 16 years I lived in Windsor, Colorado, a farming community about the size of Mt. Pleasant. When people asked where Windsor was, I would say it ...
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Iowa City
By Curt Swarm - Sep 11In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, I had the opportunity to meet him in Fred and Lois Crane’s backyard in Mt. Pleasant. I got ...
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Shoe Scraper
By Curt Swarm - Aug 27The main house I grew up in, from the fourth grade through high school, was a two-and-a-half story, pre-Civil War, behemoth called Maple Hill. ...
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Highway of Love follow-up
By Curt Swarm - Jul 24You may remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the Highway of Love. The Highway of Love is what I call the stretch of US 34 between Ottumwa ...
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A day in the life of a salesman
By Curt Swarm - Jan 17Not many people know I’m in insurance sales. I never write about it in this column, since the purpose of my column, for the most part, is to tell ...
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We the People
By Curt Swarm - Jan 03With the slaughter of innocent school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the almost daily acts of gun violence in the United States, I ...
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November to Remember
By Curt Swarm - Nov 26November is a special month for me. It’s the month I sobered up. On Nov. 3, 1989, at 2:00 in the morning, I was so intoxicated in my own home, I ...
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Red Power
By Curt Swarm - Nov 12Growing up in Monroe, my father had a Mobile station on the town square. The Mobile station later became a Shell station. Jack’s Mobile turned ...
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Iowa Public Television
By Curt Swarm - Oct 30I was part of the S.E. Iowa Artists Studio Tour this fall. It was my second year for participation, and I was thinking maybe this would be my last ...
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Brighton
By Curt Swarm - Oct 16Another of my favorite burgs is Brighton. It is so happy sounding, as in bright town. My first experience/encounter with Brighton was selling ...
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Uncle Virgil
By Curt Swarm - Sep 25I don’t remember this happening, but Uncle Virgil loved to tell the story about how we were all wading in his creek (pronounced “crick”), when I ...
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Black Feather
By Curt Swarm - Aug 29One of the towns I lived in while growing up was Prairie City. For a couple of years, we lived in an apartment above the grocery store, overlooking...
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Gun Control
By Curt Swarm - Aug 06We’ve all heard the saying, and maybe said it ourselves, “It’s not the gun that kills, it’s the person pulling the trigger. Guns are not evil, ...
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Sight for Sore Eyes
By Curt Swarm - Jul 24A lady “commissioned” me to build her one of my “cattails.” Since this was my first “commission” job — i.e., someone was actually paying me to ...
