Character and perspective

The first memory I have of Des Moines is the weather beacon whose lights flash the forecast from a television transmission tower in downtown. I first saw it more than 40 years ago as my grandparents drove us across the country.

"Weather Beacon red, warmer weather ahead.

Weather Beacon white, colder weather in sight.

Weather Beacon green, no change in weather foreseen.

Weather Beacon flashing night or day, precipitation is on the way."

In the 15 years or so that I've come to know Des Moines a little more, it is only fitting that the beacon still flashes here. It is a reminder of simpler times, before we could get the weather on a smartphone, when transmission towers were more symbolic of TV than a cable or dish, when downtowns boasted department stores and hotels with coffee shops and mezzanines.

The department stores are gone from downtown Des Moines, but there are decades-old hotels with coffee shops and mezzanines and up and down Locust and Walnut, grand old weathered building which architecture buffs marvel at. I work in one of those old buildings now.

From the moment you enter the marble-ladened lobby of the Des Moines Register, you feel it. The tradition. The character.

• The pictures of 15 journalists who've combined to win 17 Pulitzers. 
• The globe, 19-feet around, with marks countries like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and which sadly no longer rotates but still occasionally draws a curious visitor. 
• The old mail chute which runs from way up on the 13th or 14th floor all the way to the lobby, right by the elevators, just like the one at the old Hotel Fort Des Moines around the corner or down the street at the Savery or Kirkwood.
• The staircase, whose steps from the first floor to about the third are worn from decades of shoes. By the fourth floor, not so much. The steps are smooth. The elevators are busy.

I've never been fortunate to work in a building like this and I was waxing on about it to one of the building/maintenance staffers the other day.

"Character. It's got character. It's really neat," I said.

"Character? That's what you call it," was the harrumph-saturated reply.

"I'll tell you what I call it. I call it a place with a million-year-old HVAC system which is always too hot or too cold for someone. I better not say what else I'd call it."

We both laughed.

Nothing like a little perspective. For both of us.