maxime innocens

“The town that time forgot and geography misplaced” has been Agincourt’s subtitle, almost since the beginning. So much so that it seemed the proper motto to grace the city’s official documents: its seal incorporates what google.translate claims is proper Latin and the official flag remains a work in progress. It follows — as naturally as anything does in this context — that Agincourt would have an entry in the WPA guide to Iowa.

Published in 1938, Iowa, A Guide to the Hawkeye State explores the state region by region in somewhat organized “tours” — as if anyone had enough spare cash to afford gasoline! — generally from east to west, from the Mississippi to the Missouri. The book has been available in reprint forever, though I suspect you’d have to find it in the O.P. market these days. I checked and found an original 1938 copy for $106 on biblio.com! Shocking because I seem to have acquired two copes myself. And I didn’t pay anything like that.

Some years ago, I wrote a similar “entry” for Agincourt in Hilton & Due’s The Electric Interurban Railways in America, another standard reference which would have been remiss to overlook our fair city. Agincourt’s summation in either would have been formulaic and (I thought) easy to simulate. Messrs. H&D proved easier than the WPA format. Then I had a perverse moment of inspiration: suppose it had been put in the hands of Douglas Adams: “Mostly Harmless” pretty much sums it up.