Dubuque Cuisine

Turkey and Dressing Sandwiches

Invented in the mid-1960s by Laura Jane Neyens of Holy Trinity Parish, Dubuque, Iowa. Sold by Cremer’s on Rhomberg Avenue since 1973.

Ingredients

• Leftover turkey
• Leftover dressing
• Chicken or turkey broth for moisture
• Hamburger buns

Directions

1. Mix turkey, dressing and broth
2. Heat mixture
3. Serve on buns

Further Reading

“Culinary King: Bread on Bread. Turkey and Dressing Rises to Every Tri-State Occasion,” by Mary Nevans-Pederson, Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, November 24, 2005.

“TURKEY AND DRESSING SANDWICHES” by Randolph W. Lyon, Encyclopedia Dubuque, January 30, 2009.

“Turkey+dressing+bun=Yum!” by Craig T. Neises, The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa, November 28, 2008.

“Dubuque Initiation Ceremony” by Restless Cube Dweller, Small Town Stranger, April 7, 2008.

Turkey and Dressing Sandwiches on Facebook

Everyone is a Dubuquer

cb:	Hi, I’m writing a feature on local Dubuque bloggers and would love to chat about yours. Let me know if you’re interested and we can set up a short interview. Thanks! Courtney Blanchard, Staff Reporter, Telegraph Herald
me:	Hi Courtney, Sorry for my slow reply. I have a job and small children, so it’s hard to do anything blog related until nighttime. Would it be possible to do the interview in an online chat session and then post the unedited transcript to the Dubuquer blog? Mike
cb:	Sure, that sounds like a great idea! What kind of chat venue were you thinking? I have a g-mail account and often use the chat function there.
me:	I think gmail will work. I could do this at noon today or tomorrow, or possibly after 6 pm. Noon would be better because I have dial up at home. Did you write the article about dial up being obsolete? Heh!
me:	Sorry, Friday would have to be 1-2 pm. Today noon to 1.
cb:	Noon will work! This is my gmail address, so I thought I’d send the reply through here. The interview shouldn’t take that long, maybe 15 minutes. And yes, I did write the article about outdated dial up! But I will shed my bias today.
me:	Noon today it is. Thanks.
cb:	I have one request. Would you be able to wait to post the interview until the day we publish the article? The story will run Nov. 2. Thanks!
me:	Ok, Nov. 2 is good.
	…
cb:	Hello!
me:	Hi, Courtney.
cb:	Thanks for agreeing to the interview!
me:	Thanks for asking me
cb:	That’s what I do. First question. Your blog says that you’ve been a Dubuque resident since 2005. Why did you move to the area?
me:	I took a job as one of the adult services librarians at Carnegie-Stout Public Library. My dad worked for the Savanna Army Depot, and I grew up in the region, more or less.
cb:	What would you consider your “hometown?”
me:	Savanna.
cb:	Tell me a little about your blog and what you write about.
me:	the Dubuquer is sort of a play on The New Yorker magazine, which put Dubuque in the national spotlight in the 1920s when the founding editor Harold Ross said the New Yorker would not be edited for the old lady in Dubuque. I’m interested in this mystique or cliche of Dubuque in popular culture, Dubuque being the epitome of backwardness. I’m also interested recent Dubuque history, especially the Pack.
cb:	Do you think people (elsewhere) still associate Dubuque with backwardness? And why?
me:	Well, maybe backwardness isn’t the right way to state it, but yes, Dubuque is referenced in popular culture more so than, say, Kalamazoo or Paducah. In his recent novel, Lev Grossman refers to Dubuque. Also, in a recent review of a graphic novel, “The Beats: A Graphic History” by Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor, noted rock music critic Richard Meltzer proclaims it to be “as shabby as a Wal-Mart in Dubuque.”
cb:	So what is your favorite reference to Dubuque? Or one of the weirdest?
me:	Politicians seem to think that Dubuque is where the grassroots are thickest. This view is informed, according to my theory, by Harold Ross, Mary Regina Hayford, Edward Albee, and national ads for Dubuque Ham. The politicos are right and wrong about Dubuque. Dubuque is unique, maybe even odd, but it cannot be pigeonholed as leaning right or left or even backwards. Everyone is a Dubuquer, regardless of their political beliefs, or even where they are from. And that’s the ultimate cliche!
me:	My favorites . . . My favorite comic strip is Bloom County by Berke Breathed, and my favorite character is Bill the Cat. I recently learned that Bill the Cat is from the “gentle, green hills of Dubuque, Iowa.” I also love the story of Mary Regina Hayford who travled to New York in the 1960s to try to change the sterotype of Dubuque. I think she even appeared on Johnny Carson show: http://dubuquer.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/a-chic-and-vivacious-woman/
cb:	I think the lesson is that we can all achieve great things.
me:	Or maybe that hairdo and glasses were a bad choice?
cb:	I think Sarah Palin brought back the ‘do. What are some of your favorite blogs (Dubuque or non-Dubuque related)?
me:	route1 by Erik Hogstrom. His consistency is amazing. I post to my blog once every six months, even joke about having a blog just so I can ignore it. It takes me several hours to compose one short paragraph. But Erik plugs away every day. I don’t know how he finds the time to listen to so much music, watch so much sports and movies, and then write so much about those things.
me:	Erik asked me about an article like this about a year or two ago, and I turned him down. I hope he isn’t mad that I’m talking to you. Heh, heh! Sorry, erik!
cb:	It’s a cutthroat job. No getting around it. Ha!
me:	that’s what you do!
cb:	So my last order of business is getting our info for the bio-box we run with these stories. I already know your hometown and profession. How old are you and tell me about your family (wife, kids, dog, millions of siblings, etc).
me:	one thing about the Pack. It seems to me like the number of people in Dubuque who aren’t even aware that the Pack existed is growing. How many people who live in Dubuque were actually born and raised here? It’s interesting to think about how their views of Dubuque differ than those who call themselves Dubuquers
me:	Lovely wife Maggie, who works harder than me, stays at home with Rebecca and Owen. They are the reason why I don’t blog until well into the night. I have to wait until everyone is asleep. Dog Scout and cat Zack
cb:	How old are your kids?
me:	[Deleted]. I tease Maggie, she is a genuine Dubuque soccer mom
cb:	And the rude question, but how old are you?
me:	Owen was born in Dubuque at Finley, there’s hope for him yet
cb:	Tell him about the Pack!
me:	I’ll be [deleted]
cb:	You can always cut that line out when you post it on your blog.
me:	If the blog is around, he can read about it . . . will it be in the paper, though?
cb:	It depends on how much space we have. This is more of an “alternative story form” so it won’t follow our regular neighbor feature conventions.
me:	ok
cb:	But I have to ask in case the editors want it. Thank you again for the interview and granting me part of your noon hour!
me:	Thank you very much. This was fun, and is good material for the Dubuquer
cb:	Good bye!
me:	bye

Dubuque Ambigram

Rotational ambigram for the geographical name “Dubuque” by Greg Williams. Here’s an email from Greg, posted with his permission.

Hi Mike -

I’m glad you liked the ambigram. Thanks for posting it on your blog.

I worked as an illustrator/designer for the Telegraph Herald in the late ’70s and early ’80s, so I know (or knew) the city well. Just the other day, in fact, I found myself wishing I could stop in for a burger at the Mining Company restaurant. I’ve been in Tampa since ‘85, but I still recall the Mining Company’s burgers fondly …

A few years ago, I started designing ambigrams as a fun side project, wondering whether there might be a sensible way to market them – so I tried the names of a few popular tourist destinations: Vegas, Maui, Honolulu, Dubuque … (ha!)

Actually, while I was playing around with ambigrams, it occurred to me that a “Dubuque” solution might be possible, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, there really don’t seem to be many logical ways to market ambigrams, since the key “trick” involves rotating them. Caps and T-shirts and mugs aren’t really rotational, in standard use.

I had sent the logo to some friends who still live in Dubuque, and who operate Advanta Signs, but we never figured out a good gimmick to put the design in front of people. (Where was your blog when we needed it?)

Thanks again -

Greg Williams

BTW, here’s a link to my TWIPS comics archive:
http://twipcomics.wordpress.com/

Tampa Tribune cartoonist Greg Williams can be reached at williamsprojects[at]gmail[dot]com or via Twitter at @Twipcomics.

To see earlier “Blogjam” and “WikiWorld” comics by Greg Williams, go to bit.ly/Blogjam or bit.ly/WikiWorld.

Dubuque Scene Attracts Book

Author T.P. Jones will be at River Lights, 2nd Edition in Dubuque this Friday, October 2. I enjoyed his new novel, Jackson, and would go to the book signing myself, if I didn’t already have plans with my family.

I first heard about Jackson a few weeks ago when the author’s literary publicist asked me to review it for the Dubuquer blog. It’s hard to be objective when flattered in such a way, especially after receiving a handsome, 560-page hardcover book in the mail for free. But since Jackson is good, I can say with a clear conscience, you ought to read it.

Set in a fictional Iowa city on the Mississippi River, Jackson is about the struggle to save a failing meatpacking plant, and in a parallel storyline, the problems that arise during construction of a dog track. Jackson is the first novel in The Loss of Certainty Trilogy. The second volume, coming soon, will be based on racial tensions in the author’s fictional version Dubuque, and the third book will be about a catastrophic flood.

T.P. Jones gathered background information for his novels by living in Dubuque for two years in the 1980s. With permission of Dubuque city officials, Jones went on patrol with Dubuque police, collected garbage on Dubuque streets, worked on area farms, and spent time on the kill floor at the Dubuque Packing Company.

In his acknowledgments in Jackson, Jones takes care to note, “While the city in my work is modeled partially on Dubuque, no one-to-one relationship exists between the two.” Jackson does not mirror the historical facts of how FDL Foods emerged from the Dubuque Packing Company, for example.

Yet, Jackson is a convincing portrayal of the attitudes and perspectives of people caught up in a defining moment in history. As someone who moved to Dubuque in 2005, Jones’ novel helped me imagine what this community must have experienced in the 1980s, and helped me better understand how the economy, environment and race continue to impact Dubuque today.

I’m looking forward to reading the next volume in the series.

Famous Dubuquers: Bill the Cat

“Aack! Thbbft!” Bill the Cat’s biography from Wikipedia:

Bill the Cat’s character was raised in Dubuque, Iowa, left for New York to become a film star and left his girlfriend, Sally, behind. Some of Bill the Cat’s film roles include the leads in Orangestoke: The Legend of Bill, Lord of the Monkeys and Terms of Bill’s Endearment. During this period, he drank heavily, used illegal drugs, and “free-based Little Friskies” until his friends helped him to recover. On September 30, 1983, Bill drove his Ferrari into a cactus at 140 miles per hour, dying instantly in the crash (the media, not wishing to divulge the true nature of Bill’s death, claimed that he died of acne). The only part of Bill that was salvaged from the wreckage was his tongue, which young genius Oliver Wendell Jones used to clone Bill and bring him back to life. In the latter months of 1984, Bill’s bid for the American presidency was effectively ruined by his decision to run off and join (and end up leading) the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult in Oregon, only to be “rescued” and deprogrammed several weeks later by a humorous application of the Ludovico technique (by forcing him to watch reruns of Leave It To Beaver.) (All of this, by the way, a fictional account of his life, as mentioned by the other characters.)

Bill spent time as an unintelligible rock star who sang and played “electric tongue” with his heavy metal band Deathtöngue, later Billy and the Boingers. Bill got rich when their song “U-Stink-But-I-♥-U” became a jingle for Wheat Thins, but he did not share the wealth with his bandmates. Although Bill was the front-person of Billy and the Boingers, the band excluded him and disbanded when it became public that he spent his nights staying up late, reading the Bible with a nun. After this incident, Bill became the televangelist “Fundamentally Oral Bill”, parodying (and, in the Bloom County universe, rivaling) real-life televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts.

Bill was accused of treason for sending secrets to the Soviet Union with the unwitting assistance of his lover Jeane Kirkpatrick. Secrets he sold included: secret antiperspirant, the secret formula of Coke, the secret of the Sierra Madre, and the secret of George Bush’s appeal (the secret being that he doesn’t have any appeal). He was exchanged to the Soviets for accused spy Cutter John. While in Russia, he was responsible for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and was traded back soon afterwards. The reason he stated for returning to the US was, as he put it, “to make some dough,” although this reason was edited by Milo into the more PR-friendly “to once again walk the green grass of freedom.”

Bill the Cat twice won the National Radical Meadow Party’s nomination to run for President of the United States, in 1984 and 1988, despite being dead in the first instance, and despite having a vocabulary that mainly consisted of “Aack!” He lost twice, once because of coughing up a furball on Connie Chung. In spite of this political affiliation, he embarked on a torrid love affair with Jeane Kirkpatrick, and being used as the primary source for an illegal cat-sweat-based baldness cure. His brain was replaced with Donald Trump’s (who had been hit with his yacht’s anchor while sunbathing in New York Harbor).

Bill the Cat returned to comics in Berke Breathed’s now canceled strip, Opus, which ran from November 23, 2003 through November 2, 2008. Given Bill’s ostensible death and revival by tongue cloning (a la Sleeper), his carcass was suggested as the source of the recent BSE (aka “Mad Cow Disease”) epidemic. Later, he was chosen as the new mayor of Bloom County. He got the message when he was playing Garfield at a mall promotion (the child in his lap asked her father if Garfield had died). Mayoral efforts for Bill and Opus involved forcing low-jeans teenagers to wear suspenders. Bill, however, lost an election a few months later because of an affair with Paris Hilton.

Dubuque Stimulus Package

From the dollar dish on University Avenue in Dubuque:

Gay Marriage in Dubuque

Is Dubuque poised to be the same-sex marriage capital of the Midwest? Is Iowa a new gay mecca?

Buying the cow in Dubuque could be an ultra chic declaration of defiant love, a romantic getaway which openly challenges dogma and rejects the cliché of Midwestern provincialism!

From the Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce:

“If you are adventurous, you’ll delight in Dubuque’s long list of places and things to explore. You can meander on foot, float by boat or cruise in the car to casinos, museums, race tracks, shops, wineries, orchards and more.

If you prefer to kick back and relax, let one of our excellent guided tour services take you by trolley, bus, horse-drawn carriage or boat to see the history, natural beauty and exciting destinations awaiting you in our lovely Midwest river town!

Single? Married? Kids? Doesn’t matter in Dubuque. Your choices for leisure and entertainment are vast for the size of our community. No matter your choices for how to spend your ‘play’ time, Dubuque has many activities and attractions to offer.”

From Twitter.com:

“never considered driving to Dubuque and getting married until today.”
http://twitter.com/amberb01/statuses/1445432495

“Know of anyone looking to get married in the Dubuque area after today’s ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court? DM us for more information.”
http://twitter.com/LCTV13/statuses/1446140807

“Iowa is suddenly the next hot spot for gays? What’s in Iowa besides Dubuque and gay marriage rights?”
http://twitter.com/sisterstalk/statuses/1446330237

“Good news out of Whodathunkit, Iowa… Dubuque is now more progressive than West Hollywood.”
http://twitter.com/Dofang/statuses/1446791135

“Recommends Dubuque, IA for all your gay marriage needs. Picturesque and accessible small city on the Mississippi.”
http://twitter.com/dapclark/statuses/1447859931

“I wonder if Des Moines or Dubuque will be the San Francisco of the Upper Midwest. I was hoping it was going to be Madison. Well played Iowa”
http://twitter.com/Bibliomom/statuses/1449215268

“I have a feeling dubuque won’t be the same after tonight”
http://twitter.com/gocards300/statuses/1451203525

“Anybody else out there ever think that gay couples would be allowed to marry in Dubuque or Badger, IA before say, NYC, San Fran, or LA?”
http://twitter.com/lisadaily/statuses/1451669007

“Iowa legalized same-sex marriage. Half the SF tax base is looking at land in Dubuque.”
http://twitter.com/danstpaul/statuses/1452835162

“bittersweet that I could have a hubby in Dubuque,DeMoines,or Davenport,but not Laguna,LongBeach or Los Feliz. Not that I have any proposals.”
http://twitter.com/burnedoutdoc/statuses/1455883874

A Dubuquer’s Dilemma

From John P. Mulgrew, “And Life Goes On” by Jazbo of Old Dubuque. Dubuque, Iowa: Witness Publishing Co., 1935, page 46.

A Few Words About Dubuque

A few words about writer Dorothy Parker’s “inextricable association” with Dubuque:

. . . Imagine Parker seated at the Algonquin Round Table, surrounded by people like Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marx, and Edna Ferber. Someone says, “Use the word horticulture in a sentence.” Parker answers, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” This combines what Parker is known for: a semigraphic pun on sexuality, and an invocation of verdure— “horticulture”—the genteel world of trimming hedges and choosing flowers. If you don’t get the joke, or if you’ve got a problem with it, you’re either Clarissa Dalloway en route to buying your flowers—and we’ll get back to that—or you’re from Dubuque.

Dubuque is key to Parker, which is to say that provincialism is key to urbanity. Pourquoi Dubuque? One of Parker’s Algonquin confederates, Harold Ross, wrote in the prospectus to the magazine he was starting that “. . . The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.”

From Jessica Burstein, “A Few Words About Dubuque: Modernism, Sentimentalism, and the Blasé” in American Literary History Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 2002, pages 227-254.

~

From John P. Mulgrew, “And Life Goes On” by Jazbo of Old Dubuque. Dubuque, Iowa: Witness Publishing Co., 1935, page 8.

Dubuque in the News

Here are just a few recent examples of how Dubuque shows up in news editorials and blogs.

November 12, 2008. Carl Leubsdorf of The Dallas Morning News argued that Sarah Palin’s November 3rd campaign appearance in Dubuque, “a conservative stronghold in a solidly Democratic state,” signaled the start the 2012 race.

November 30, 2008. Carl Leubsdorf “probably should check the facts before making political pronouncements” about “good old ultra conservative Dubuque,” scoffed Mary Rae Bragg of the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.

January 6, 2009. Joseph Palermo of The Huffington Post said Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Miri Eisen “looks like a soccer mom from Dubuque.” Actually, Colonel Eisen was born in northern California.

January 20, 2009. John Nichols of The Nation attempted to justify his opinions on foreign policy by claiming that Barack Obama’s presidency began at Carnegie-Stout Public Library in Dubuque.

February 5, 2009. Jessica Gelt of the Los Angeles Times reported that “a spunky phenom from the Jazz Age,” 91-year-old drummer Jerri Thill, “is still rocking.” Ms. Thill was born in Dubuque in 1917.