Cache Is Not At The Posted Coordinates
Mr. Toot is the mascot not only of the North Iowa Band Festival, but also for Mason City as a whole. His image has appeared on everything from T-Shirts to business cards to city light poles. Now his image also appears on the geocaching map just south of Mason City Iowa. Each of these puzzles will include a fact or story in theme with the art series. Some may also include a question or two for you to answer correctly to find the coordinates.
The Music Man
In the movie during the song "Iowa Stubborn" there is a scene where a parady of Grant Wood's painting American Gothic is shown.
It makes one wonder why a movie that was to have happened in 1912 have a depiction of an actual painting that was done in 1930. Perhaps it is just to show more ties with Meredith Willson's home state of Iowa.
In Grant Wood's painting the figures depicted a farmer standing beside a woman who has been interpreted to be his daughter or his wife. The woman was Wood's sister Nan Wood Graham and the man in the painting was their dentist Dr. Byron McKeeby. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 19th century Americana, and the man is holding a pitchfork. The dentist was from Cedar Rapids where Grant Wood had his studio.
Wood entered the painting in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. One judge deemed it a comic valentine, but a museum patron persuaded the jury to award the painting the bronze medal and $300 cash prize. The patron also persuaded the Art Institute to buy the painting, and it ramains part of the museum's collection.