×

At 86, Dave Prelip populates Fort Dodge Facebook sites with photos old and new

Shagging the drag. Dining at Treloars Inn, Constantines, Tony’s. Movies at the Strand, Rialto, Dodge and Iowa movie theaters on Central Avenue. The Lancers Drum and Bugle Corps. The Harvest Festival at Dodger Stadium. Buddy Holly performing at the Laramar.

All are among the rich history of Fort Dodge — and while no longer with us, their memories are kept alive on the internet, for perpetuity, thanks to Facebook pages devoted to the city and Webster County — and to the photographic work of 86-year-old Dave Prelip.

Prelip’s photos — ones he takes today and historic pictures he finds — are viewed and commented upon by thousands of former and present-day Fort Dodgers on such sites as:

“Fort Dodge Iowa: The Best Hometown in America”

“Shagging the Drag”

“You Might Be from Fort Dodge If …”

“One of my hobbies is using Photoshop, and I touch up the historic photos that I am able to find and that people have given to me. I have quite a few pictures that I still haven’t gotten to yet,” Prelip said. “But I also take a lot of pictures that show Fort Dodge buildings and scenes as they are today.”

Prelip is armed with an arsenal of six high-end cameras, and the photographs that he regularly contributes to all three sites — and others — draw many Facebook “Likes” and comments from viewers who hail from all around the world, but who also live in Fort Dodge and the surrounding area.

“I love coming back to Fort Dodge,” said Jolyn Magnusson-Cataldo, who grew up in Fort Dodge from 1951 to 1968 and now lives in Des Moines. “I love the old pictures that bring back so many good memories. I’m cheering Fort Dodge on as all the new industry is coming to town. It’s exciting to see it come back to that time when I was growing up there. I love coming back and showing the grandkids where I lived, went to school.”

Always popular are photos of downtown Fort Dodge from the days when Central Avenue was teaming with businesses such as Gates, Fantles, Model Clothing, Lilians Fashions, The Boston Store, Welch’s Shoes, Charles A. Brown clothing, Sears and more.

Restaurant menus published on the sites always ring a bell. And oh, the prices back then. On the menu at Constantines, which was on the corner of Ninth and Central, a menu item: “Bacon Sandwich on Toast, with a chocolate malted milk. 25 cents.” Treloars Inn on the north side — where the Village Inn is located today — commands tremendous nostalgia — for its ribs, its fried chicken and its baked beans. And the carhops who tended to customers on roller skates.

For Jim Rodenborn, whose father started Hawkeye Glove Manufacturing in 1970, there is enjoyment in “the photos that show my family’s manufacturing business from times gone by. Then, as now, the manufacturing business in the U.S. was difficult.”

On the “Shagging the Drag” site, “The majority of the people who go on the site are in the 35- to 60-year-old range,” said Bill Shimkat, its administrator. “They are people from all over the world. But they also live in Fort Dodge. I think there’s still a number of people who like to know the history of where they are living, seeing things from the past — how things have changed.”

The site formed by Shimkat, who with his brother Ed and his uncle Bruce own Shimkat Motor Company, notes: “If you grew up in Fort Dodge, Iowa prior to the ’90s, at some point you shagged the drag or cruised Central. This is all about teenage angst and car culture.”

Shagging the drag was the practice of teens starting in the 1950s who drove up and down Central Avenue and around the City Square on Friday and Saturday nights, as a social gathering place, said Shimkat, father of sons 15 and 12 who himself shagged the drag.

“It was good for the soul,” said Tom Ryan, formerly of Fort Dodge, now living in Portland, Oregon. “I used to shag the drag in my ’51 Chevy truck. Nowadays kids get hauled off to jail for that kind of thing. Where’s a kid show off his wheels nowadays … “

Said Tom Koch, of Glen Ellyn, Illinois: “Shagging the drag was a rite of passage in 1971. I was on it with a full car the night I got my license. ‘American Graffiti’ could have been filmed in Fort Dodge. I grew up in Fort Dodge, but rarely make it back. Dave’s photos and all the comments bring good memories back and make me realize that I am proud to be a product of Corpus Christi School, St. Ed’s, and Fort Dodge.”

By the early ’90s, the practice had pretty much stopped: “Kids today, there are so many other things they do,” Shimkat said. “They’re not looking for this kind of entertainment — every Friday and Saturday night, burning gas downtown. There was a lot stronger car culture then. That’s gone away. It’s a generational thing.”

Neil Olson, founder of “Fort Dodge Iowa: Best Hometown in America,” grew up in Fort Dodge and for 41 years has operated a heating and air conditioning business in Minneapolis, where his granddaughter introduced him to Facebook in 2009. He also started a Facebook page for his Fort Dodge Senior High School Class of 1961.

“My roots are in Fort Dodge and I always believed Fort Dodge was the best town in America, the best town to grow up in,” Olson said. “So my goal was to create a group of decent people who like to talk about their hometown. Our basic criteria for membership: They have to have lived in Fort Dodge at one time or another.

“To me, Facebook is more than just a social media site — it’s a place that allows us to express our point of view, to share our opinion, to meet up with old friends and meet new ones, and to start new adventures.”

If members post material that is objectionable, including advertising for products or services or making critical remarks, they are removed from the site, Olson said.

Joe Canavan started the “You might be from Fort Dodge if…” site five years ago. “It started as kind of a joke, but it grew quickly from there — to more than 5,000 members today,” he said. “I have lived most of my life here and I love Fort Dodge. So many good memories.”

Among favorite sights among his viewers are early pictures of the Crossroads Mall before it was enclosed, older buildings such as the downtown Sears store, restaurants like Sylvia’s, the gazebo in the City Square and Christmas lighting on Central Avenue.

Canavan, 41, works for the DART (Dodger Area Rapid Transit) system and lives in Eagle Grove. He, too, has little tolerance for negativity on the Facebook site.

“This group is about fun. Please if you want to bash Fort Dodge, go to another site. This is a place where you come to just share memories of Fort Dodge. It’s enjoyable to see old pictures of the city.”

None of the Fort Dodge administrators believes that their sites compete with one another, and many of their followers are on multiple sites.

The websites are gratifying to all three administrators.

“I’ve been a history buff my entire life,” Shimkat said, “I started out as a history major at the University of Iowa, but ended up with a marketing degree … I’ve always found our local history fascinating. My gratification comes from sharing memories with others that grew up here. I frequently have people that grew up here and moved away many, many years ago, that have found my Facebook page and have told me thanks for bringing back some old memories. Often, it’s a comment about how they had forgotten about a specific event or place until a picture brings it back. I get the enjoyment of reading people’s memories of Fort Dodge. My family has been here a long time. I love the community, the people of Fort Dodge. I love the architecture.”

Olson said he derives great pleasure from “knowing that a lot of people from Fort Dodge are able to connect with friends, meet new friends, reminisce about what is was like growing up and living in Fort Dodge, and learning about fact and fun things that they never knew about their home town. There is personal satisfaction that I was able to create a group that has brought thousands of people to together that are having a good time!”

The largest challenge for all three sites is finding high-quality photos to post, and that’s where contributors like Prelip come in.

“In the summer, I’ll go up and down the streets of the city taking pictures,” said Prelip, an Army veteran of the Korean War who worked 27 years as a service technician for Sears before retiring in 1990.

Prelip was part of the Brushy Creek Honor Flight two years ago that took veterans to see monuments in Washington, D.C., and traveled with his cameras, naturally — feeding some of the photos to the Fort Dodge Facebook sites.

He plans to keep on posting photos — to the delight of his many followers, like Dean Peterson, who said:

“I’m a ’58 grad of Ft. Dodge High … my father was president of Fort Dodge Lab … my brother an employee of Union Trust Bank. Those are my roots. My parents now have passed. My brother moved and is now retired. And now I must rely upon the wonderful pics to recall my early life’s history. Shagging the drag stands at the top apart from playing baseball in the Dodger stadium. Thanks for keeping these memories alive.”

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today