St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page T001

1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 I A PAGE: T01PD1TR0701 INSIDE Get a sideways view of Iowa trip, T8 If you go info, T5 Iowa By Tom Uhlenbrock ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH WATERLOO, IOWA The ballot is in, the vote has been counted and the winner is Paco Rosic, a Bosnian refugee and reformed ti artist who used 5,000 cans of spray paint to re-create the Sistine Chapel ceiling at his restaurant in Waterloo. Rosic edged out Patrick Acton, a college counselor who has built incredibly detailed models with wood matchsticks, including a 12-foot-long model of the U.S. Capitol that took 478,000 matchsticks and looks like it should have ant-sized politicians sitting inside. While early presidential primary gets all the attention, I held a contest of my own with a looping road trip in search of the weirdest, wackiest, most amazing attractions the Hawkeye State had to offer.

Iowa was too big to cover in just ve days, so I may have missed your favorite destination. Personally, I wanted to see where the music died, but the farm eld near Clear Lake where a plane crashed in 1959 carrying Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens would have meant a half-day detour. Still, I strolled through picture-perfect towns such as Pella, ate a banana split for breakfast at the ice cream capital of the world in Le Mars and watched a young businessman from Cincinnati knock my hanging curveball into the corn stubble beyond the Field of Dreams in Dyersville. I also visited the birthplace of Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset and of Donnabelle Mul- lenger in Denison. You remember them, you? I met Paco Rosic one rainy morning in downtown Waterloo at his restaurant, appropriately called Gal- leria De Paco.

Above the plush tables set for dinner was a ceiling covered in a glowing version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling that would have made Michelangelo proud. Rosic, 27, explained that he was born in Sarajevo, but his family ed the Bosnian War in 1991 and settled in Germany, where he became a ti artist, or tagger, as a teenager. When his family immigrated to the United States in 1997, he wanted to elevate his artistic skills, but use the same medium. Rosic saw the Sistine Chapel in an art book at the age of 6 and was hooked. When his parents turned a dilapidated antique store in Iowa into a gourmet restaurant, the barrel ceiling became his canvas.

ew to Rome, I had to see it with my own Rosic said. walked into the Sistine Chapel and it blew me away. I stood there for hours and Returning home, he worked as long as 15 hours a day on his project, lying on an industrial scaffolding 12 feet above the ground. It took more than four months to re-create the biblical scenes with 384 characters on the restaurant ceiling. Because of the spectacular results, Rosic, now a U.S.

citizen, has been commissioned for similar projects, including one in Las Vegas. wanted to prove you can do something positive with a can of spray paint I call it aerosol he said. me, this is the greatest country. America is the only place you can do MELLOW FARMERS The German founders of Burlington built Snake Alley, which says is the crooked- est street, in 1894 to get their wagons and carriages from the top of Heritage Hill down to the business district. I was admiring its seven curves over 275 feet when Jackson Collins walked up.

I was a kid we used to drive down it one way, and then we backed up it the other in 1948, in a Collins said. let you do that kind of BS The street attracts scofflaws. Moments later, a young man in a red sports car with the top down sped up the one-way street, the wrong way. Fifty miles to the west, eld had the only city guide in America that provided a pronunciation key and nition for the word More than 30 years ago, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who became world famous as the guru to the Beatles, was looking for a place to set up a school for his followers of Transcendental Meditation when he purchased the old Parsons College in eld. This little farm town was ooded with hundreds of hippies from both coasts who were seeking a blissful life and world peace amid the elds of Iowa.

The maharishi now lives in Holland, but nearly 1,000 of his followers still attend his Mahari- shi University of Management, where they meet at 5 each evening to meditate. After some early friction, the TM followers and the farmers have melded into a mellow community that has a thriving art scene, a world-class spa and hotel that recently hosted the Beach Boys, and gourmet shops and restaurants tting a big city. Even the mayor meditates. Eldon was a short ride from eld, and a must stop because it is home to the modest white cottage Grant Wood used in his painting of a somber-faced farm couple with a pitchfork. There was no one in sight except two construction workers building a visitors center across the street.

Joe Miranda and Juan Ochoa agreed to pose with their ladder. BAD VIBES IN NEWTON Pella, home to the window manufacturer of the same name, looked like a movie set, with a re-created Dutch village, beds of tulips everywhere and the tallest working windmill. T-shirts in a shop window said, not Dutch, not After paying $1.90 for an avored pastry from the 100-year-old Jaarsma Bakery, I was in need of exercise and stopped outside of town at the Cordova Park Observation Tower, a water tower converted into the tallest observation tower at 118 feet. A sign warned tower requires physical and climbing the 168 steps was, indeed, breathtaking. I made a U-turn on Highway 14 going through Monroe to take a second look at an octagon-shaped house in need of repair.

get any weirder than this house and the guy who lives in said Lauri Williamson, who answered the door. The owner was David Lorton, a professional buckskin- ner who preferred to be called Snake. Out-of-the-way If quaint you seek, then check out the Hawkeye unusual attractions, including a spray- painted version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a matchstick model of the U.S. Capitol and a pound popcorn ball. And concrete bulls come any bigger than Albert.

Get more STLtoday.com/travel See the slide show and listen to Tom Uhlenbrock tell more about his Iowa trip. Paco Rosic used 5,000 cans of spray paint to re-create the Sistine Chapel ceiling at his restaurant in Waterloo, Iowa. Photos by Tom Uhlenbrock Post-Dispatch Construction workers Joe Miranda (left) and Juan Ochoa in front of Grant house in Eldon, Iowa. EXPLORE PUZZLES ADVICE COLUMNS INSIDE BEHIND EXPLORE: AIR FORCE WEEK ADVERTISING SECTION Five good reasons to visit New Orleans this summer And it kicks off with the Essence Festival on July 5 SEE PAGE T4 PLEASE SEE IOWA T8 SUNDAY JULY 1, 2007 SECTION STLTODAY.COM/TRAVEL ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 1 1 16:16:20 16:16:20.