In Iowa: A Wizard of Odds and Ends

Tom Roller's warehouse is a monument to bureaucratic bumbling. A stroll through it stirs up visions of shattered, best-forgotten programs for the public good, and the rise and fall of federal agencies. Of course Roller doesn't see it that way. He prefers to think of his 12,000-sq.-ft. warehouse on the Iowa state fairground in Des Moines as the U.S. Government's very own garage sale.

Roller operates the warehouse for the surplus property division of Iowa's department of general services for the benefit of some 1,500 public agencies in Iowa. A beneficent act of Congress requires that federal excess property be offered to state and local agencies, virtually free of charge, before it is put on public auction. That means before all those cigar-chomping characters who excel at turning a profit from reselling Government castoffs can lay hands on it.

At first glance the warehouse, with its mounds of gas-mask bags, ponchos, entrenching tools, field jackets, might be confused with some kind of Army-Navy store. Over the past few years Roller has acquired enough military surplus to equip the national guard of a modest-size Central American dictatorship. G.I. helmets and uniforms, for instance, are much in demand as props for high school drama departments.

Almost routinely, Roller has become arms dealer for the "Cedar Rapids Air Force." He has snagged four UH-1B helicopters for medical evacuation use by the city. Two fly; the others are being cannibalized for spare parts. List price for these helicopters: about $250,000 each. They cost Cedar Rapids only $10,000, for repair and refitting. In addition, Roller has provided 17 two-seater Hughes TH-55 helicopters, some without engines, others near wrecks. Four operable craft have risen, phoenix-like, from the wrecks of the 17.

But, Roller says, "when you think of Army surplus, you think of only a fraction of what the Federal Government generates." Roaming his domain, Roller glows as he handles a 400-ft. roll of computer paper. "These are neat," he says. "Schools can use them for drawing paper."

There are rows and rows of red and orange desk calendars, nameplate holders, In and Out boxes. "Somebody in the Government thought they'd brighten up offices with these things," explains Roller. "Now we are brightening up county clerks' offices in Iowa." County clerks are abandoning their 1917 Remingtons for the reconditioned electric typewriters that line the shelves of the warehouse. Roller regularly sends a truck to Washington, D.C., where "quite serviceable typewriters" can be obtained for Iowa agencies at between $50 and $75 (list cost when new: $200 and up).

Modern Government does not run on military and office equipment alone. Through the warehouse come potter's wheels, musical instruments, looms, stretchers, record players, 50-lb. boxes of nails, humidity gauges, bottles of chemicals, screwdrivers and pliers of every shape and size, salt-tablet dispensers, ear slugs, potato peelers, X-ray film projectors, buckets of paint, faucets, even 59 forceps for delivering babies.