Anamosa - Where gossip becomes myth

Talk to the locals in Anamosa, birthplace of Grant Wood, and you'll hear a lot of stories about the painter, some true, some lovingly extrapolated fables. As local tourism officials struggle to bring people to the town by playing up Wood's connection to it, they find themselves at the generational juncture where local gossip becomes myth. Most of the people who actually knew Wood are long gone and those remaining are retiring or retired. Still, there is a lot to see, most of it in Stone City, a quarry town four miles north of Anamosa where Wood ran an art colony in 1932, and a whole lot of stories to hear.