Go Retire Psychiatrist

I read an interesting article in the Iowa Capital Dispatch a couple days ago entitled “Iowa communities look to fill gaps in statewide mental health care” by Kadin Luhmann. The fascinating main story was about a relatively new mental health care initiative taking place in my hometown, Mason City, Iowa. It led to a number of connections that just seem to keep linking me to other memories.

The main report was about a disability service agency called 43 North Iowa, which is a community effort to reach those in need of mental health and recovery services. Its name is pretty striking because “43” means that Mason City is located at 43 degrees latitude, which is at the heart of North Iowa.

And the people working at 43 North Iowa have big hearts. The agency has 3 major aims: Transitional living, Employment Services, and Community engagement. The logo is a compass with the mission statement, “Helping People Find Their Way.”

The main office is on 2^nd Street NE and since I like to fiddle around on Google Maps, I connected with the immediate neighborhood. It’s about a block north and a block west of the historic old YMCA. I guess I should call it the River City Apartments because that’s what it is now. It helps a lot with scarce housing.

I used to live at the YMCA ages ago when it was still just the YMCA. There were several rooms for single men to live although they were pretty austere. There was a cramped room with a desk and chair, a bed, a small closet, and I think it had a window. One of my neighbors was building a motorcycle in his room, which was against the rules, but we never reported it to the director. There was an ancient snack vending machine in the hall, from which I got a Butterfinger. I took one bite of it and saw what I thought was half a worm wriggling wildly. I called the local emergency room from the pay phone on the main floor to speak with poison control. The doctor just laughed. It took me a while to get to sleep that night.

The next connection is how I came to live at the YMCA when I was 16 years old. The short explanation without going into too much detail is that I became an emancipated minor. There was one key person who helped me out of a difficult situation and I’m just going to call him Larry. He was a support person who got me my first job, which was at Wallace, Holland, Kastler, Schmitz & Co. That’s a local consulting engineer firm that is still in business today. Strings got pulled and despite being underaged, technically, I got on the job training and a permanent position as a draftsman and surveyor technician. I worked in the same room with Larry’s brother, who was a senior draftsman.

That connected me to the next big memory. That YMCA was where I first met my wife, Sena. She worked at the front desk and there was always a newspaper on the counter. I spent a long time “reading” the paper because I was sweet on her right away. We eventually got married. Sena stayed for a short while at the YWCA. That is not on the registry of historic places like the YMCA is, but there has been considerable progress in renovation in the last few years so that now it’s a pretty nice place for local artists to present their works.

Larry and his family hosted a little party at their home after Sena and I were wed at the Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa in 1977. That’s why we have wedding pictures.

When I think about the compass on the logo of 43 North Iowa, I realize people can move in many directions in their lives. We never do that by ourselves.