Above An advertising postcard featuring a tavern owner from Bonair IA named
John Pecinovsky (1899-1942). After opening his tavern in the late 1930s, he attracted wide attention, was sought after by tourists, and was featured in
Ripley's Believe It or Not, when he began to wear an outfit that was dark-colored on one half (bearded) and light on the other (clean-shaven). He was buried dressed the same way in nearby
Cresco IA. See our
earlier, related post.
Bonair has all but vanished now, but there is an American writer (she teaches writing in France) named
Janet Hulstrand, whose relatives were from Bonair, who is in process of writing a memoir about her Midwestern origins called
A Long Way from Iowa. See her post from 2014 titled
A Little Town Called Bonair. I believe it was in Cresco (or was it Decorah?) that my father (who grew up near Ossian IA) saw
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West extravaganza, c1912.
