Memories Under the Oaks
Growing up on a southwest Iowa farm in the 1940s and 1950s
A memoir by Connie Scotton Plank
Connie Scotton Plank showing her grandchildren the La Prairie one-room schoolhouse she attended as a child in rural Page County, Iowa. By the time this photo was taken in 2005, the building was being used to store hay bales.
About the Author
Connie Scotton Plank was born in 1940 and grew up on her family’s farm in Page County in southwest Iowa, the daughter of Gerald and Jean Scotton and the younger sister of Bonnie Scotton Vaage.
​
After leaving the farm, she trained at the Iowa Methodist School of Nursing in Des Moines, became a registered nurse and served many years as a public health nurse in Louisa County, in southeast Iowa. She married Charles “Chuck” Plank in 1961 in Des Moines and they settled near Columbus City, Iowa, where they owned and operated a farm implement dealership—Plank Implement—for 50 years from 1963 until the time of Chuck’s death in 2013. They also raised three children—Jodie, Shawn and Andy.
Connie lives at Wesley Acres Senior Living Community in Des Moines. She says some names were changed in stories to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent) but that all events actually happened as written, to the best of her recollection.