Tyler JettDes Moines Register
For years, the neighbors on Northwest 63rd Place lived in peace.
The Conkels bought a wood-shingled ranch-style home on the west end of the sleepy street in 1998, one of the first five families in the neighborhood. The Browns came two years later, building a white brick home next door.
The couples were friendly. Billy Brown shoveled the Conkels’ driveway, brought them products from work at Anderson Erickson Dairy and gave their granddaughter a stuffed animal. Sid Conkel cleaned the Browns’ driveway when they were away and said he taught Brown how to start a new riding lawnmower.
Then came the lawn décor. In 2002, Brown was driving around Indianola when he spotted a statue of a lion for sale. Brown, a Leo, had always been drawn to the animal.
Soon, he was drawn to a lot more. He bought giraffe statues after seeing them in a catalog. He bought palm tree sculptures after eyeing some at the Iowa State Fair.
A man in overalls from Knoxville knocked on his door one day, telling him how nice his yard looked. The man said he could make the yard look even nicer.
He had a pair of marble lions he was willing to part with for $3,000. The lions had been in a Jackie Gleason film, the man said.
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The next thing the Conkels knew, a crane was dropping those lions on the west side of Brown’s yard, where the beasts stare through marble eyes on commuters driving between Ankeny and Des Moines on Northwest Sixth Drive.
The Conkels said they didn’t mind the statues at first. But the collection continued to build, and eventually Brown’s yard became a forest of concrete, aluminum and hard plastic. In addition to lions and giraffes, he bought frogs and flamingos. He arranged a scene that stretches from the front, through the western side, into the back.
Then, one night, Brown spray-painted his statues hot pink.
“I’m the king of the jungle,” said Brown, 73, in a raspy voice, biceps swelling through his tight shirt.
“It never ends,” said Barbara Conkel, 77.
The Conkels said neighbors complained quietly, amongst themselves. Eventually, Sid Conkel confronted Brown. He asked Brown where exactly he saw this statue collection ending. He told him that others on the street didn’t like the look of Brown’s yard – the Conkels included.
One day, the Conkels looked out the window to find that Brown had placed a new statue on a palm tree: a chimpanzee “with the ass pointed toward us,” Sid Conkel said.
The Conkels called the Polk County planning and development office, but no county ordinance prohibits the accumulation of lawn statues, no matter how numerous or pink.
The Conkels consulted with real estate agents who said Brown’s property devalued theirs. In 2017, the county board of review agreed to decrease the assessment of the Conkels’ property by $13,000, with a county appraiser writing that the neighboring home was a “nuisance.”
A year later, when Brown petitioned for a variance to add a gazebo, Sid Conkel spoke at a public meeting, unsuccessfully petitioning county leaders to create a more restrictive ordinance against lawn statues.
Brown turned his two flamingo statutes, giving the Conkels a view of their rear ends. In response, the Conkels built a fence that ran down part of the property line, blocking their view of Brown’s front yard.
Brown felt attacked.
“How can you say, ‘I want to be your friend’ after you put a fence up?” he said.
Chaos ensued. Brown and the Conkels got into a loud argument. Barbara Conkel called the police. Brown called the police. Sid Conkel said Brown told him he could beat up anyone he needed to and called his wife "a pretty vulgar name ."
The police did not arrest anyone. But the Conkels said the fight created a stir.
Some neighbors did not return calls or declined to comment to the Des Moines Register. Jerry Goedken, 78, who lives three houses down on the other side of the street, said he could see both sides. He likes Brown.
"It’s rather interesting and rather strange," he said. "It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m far enough away from it. And it’s a conversation piece. And it's a good direction finder when we want to tell people how to find our house."
At the same time, he understands why people like the Conkels don't want to live near such a collection. Sid Conkel said others in the neighborhood don't want to confront Brown after the shouting match.
“I still don’t know what I did,” he said.
His father taught Billy Brown and his siblings how to fight
Brown idolized Muhammad Ali. The swagger. The fancy clothes. The fearlessness.
“He had a lot of women,” Brown said. “Going anywhere he wanted to go. Doing anything he wanted to do.”
His own life was nothing like Ali’s. Growing up, he and his six siblings were on welfare, dipping bread corners in grease when the food supply ran thin. Their mother cleaned white people’s homes in the South of Grand neighborhood.
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But Brown did learn how to fight. Neighbors called him and his siblings “The Brown Bombers” because of their tendency to chuck rocks when they were outgunned. John Brown, Billy’s older brother, said the lesson came from their father, Arthur.
“He drove that into us,” John Brown said. “If somebody’s bothering you and they’re bigger than you, you better get a stick, a brick, something and hit him upside his head. If you don’t, I’m going to beat your ass when you get back.”
Arthur Brown was a thick-armed bricklayer. And an alcoholic.
He threw men out of his home by the seat of their pants. He smashed windows with bricks. He broke John Brown’s jaw and nose during a beating, keeping the boy out of school as he healed. He ordered his boys to box in the backyard, pitting three siblings against one to make fights interesting. He died when Billy was 11, a suspected suicide from drinking antifreeze.
The brawling skills paid off when the boys got to East High School, in the depth of 1960s racism. When Billy Brown was 17, according to the Des Moines Tribune, a riot erupted at the school. The problems started on a Friday, when a boy broke a car window with a snowball. A white student got out of the car and, according to the newspaper, “asked a group of youths” who had thrown it.
Brown said the newspaper missed a key detail. According to him, the white student kicked a bent-over Black student in the face. Brown said he gave the Black student a skewer, a shank that Brown kept on him for protection. The Black student stabbed the white student.
By that Monday, the white student was back in school. A fight broke out that morning, and hundreds of students poured out of their classrooms, breaking about a dozen chairs, according to the Des Moines Register. Parents pulled many students out of class. A reporter observed that “a line of about 40 white youths paraded past the school chanting anti-Negro epithets.”
More students fought each other after school, and the police arrested 13 kids, including Brown.
Billy Brown's wife: 'His whole aura just kind of attracted you to him'
One other trait Billy Brown said he learned from his father: his work ethic.
When Billy Brown left school, he tried his hand at weightlifting and boxing. He trained for hours at the East Side Boxing Club and became a neighborhood fixture, jogging the streets, sometimes to the shouts of the N-word by white drivers.
He called himself “Lightning” and wore tassels on his boots.
“His movement is what he was known for,” said Kervin Veasley, owner of Sarge’s Westside Boxing Club. “He had fast hands and fast feet.”
Brown won statewide Golden Gloves competitions, traveling to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1977 to compete in a national tournament in the 139-pound division. He lost in the first round, according to the Register, and quit the sport soon after.
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But he could still outwork anyone. He landed a job at AE Dairy, where he said he became a utility player, filling roles for workers who called out or took vacation. He worked weekends and holidays, sleeping in his car for a couple of hours between shifts. (A 1995 child support filing shows he made about $50,000 at the time — the equivalent of about $100,000 today.)
He poured the money into his passion: looking good. John Brown said his brother bought pistols so he could dress up as a cowboy. He’d take photos of himself and show them to friends and family when they visited.
He collected motorcycles and cars, a collection that now includes Corvettes, an Audi TT and a 1989 Camaro IROC convertible. He covered his walls in mirrors, bought chrome furnishings and kept a fully stocked bar — even though, unlike his father, he didn’t drink.
“It made him feel like he had accomplished something,” John Brown said.
“His whole aura just kind of attracted you to him,” said LouAnne Hall Brown, his wife.
“He wants people to like him and like his stuff and think it’s the greatest,” said Tammera Berry, an ex-girlfriend.
“I don’t know, man,” said Billy Brown. “Maybe I’m just cool.”
The stress of Saylorville life weighs on Billy Brown
But his swagger is a façade.
John Brown said his mother once found Billy in the garage, alone, crying, unable to explain his sadness. Billy Brown said he can still hear his mother’s voice, comforting him in his depression, saying that he made her proud, telling him to take a deep breath.
Still, the sadness remains. Life in Saylorville pulls pain from under the surface.
He moved into the community because his wife, who is white, felt uncomfortable in the neighborhood where he grew up. She saw drug deals, and men shouted come-ons as she jogged.
“She’s fine,” Brown said recently. “And I’m the one that’s struggling.”
One night, while builders were still constructing the Saylorville house, Brown slept in his car on the property. He said he awoke to flashlights and police officers tapping the window, demanding his ID.
He estimates that officers have pulled him over about a half-dozen times near his home, asking why he’s in the area. He said a neighbor confronted him at a Casey's General Store, asking why Brown built such a large basketball hoop in his backyard.
He doesn’t believe the Conkels dislike his statues. Instead, he said, they are upset that he bought a Corvette that’s newer than theirs.
“People hate you because your home is better than their home,” he said. “I don’t do nothing to shame these people around here. That’s just who I am.”
Brown deals with his stress through routine. He awakes at 4 a.m. in his detached garage, alone. He drinks coffee on his porch in the cool darkness, thinking about “why people are the way they are.” He lifts weights at 5:30, pushing toward the endorphin rush that makes his biggest problems feel manageable.
“I might seem like I have it good,” he said. “But mentally, in my head, I ain’t got it good. These guys, they’re just people in the neighborhood, living their natural lives. I’m not. I’m stressed all the freaking time just because I’m Black.”
He has earned love, his friends say. He volunteers to water the plants and make deliveries for Created in Johnston, a lawn décor store. He opens Sarge’s Westside Boxing Club when the owner is away, teaches kids fight technique and gives motivational speeches.
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Opal Current, whose son trained as a boxer under Brown in the 1980s, said Brown showed up at her home one day with a bouquet. They hadn’t seen each other in years, but she and Brown sat and talked about their lives.
“I had the feeling that there was old hurts maybe, an undercurrent,” she said. “It wasn’t whining. It wasn’t, ‘I’m going to kill them.’ But he’s trying to make things better in his own way.”
The yard helps, Brown said. He has visions for more. He wants an alien that he saw in a catalog. He wants a pair of 6-foot-tall dragons, arranged around an iron throne from “Game of Thrones.” Drivers passing by will stop, tell him how fantastic his yard looks.
“There are a lot of nice people in the world that we haven’t met yet,” his wife said.
Consider the old lady who parked outside once. She told Brown that she loves flamingos, and she just had to meet the man with the vision.
One morning, she told them, the Browns may wake to find her in the lawn, camped under one of those giant flamingos.
“My house,” Billy Brown said, “is your house.”
Tyler Jett is an investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach him attjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on X at@LetsJett.He also accepts encrypted messages at tjett@proton.me.
