Floyd Penkhus moved to Ames in 1947 to start a Lincoln-Mercury dealership with his brother Bob and Jack Hoeppner, a Des Moines friend who had been a Lincoln-Mercury distributor.  Using $10,000 Floyd and his wife had saved over the years, they bought a building at 111 Main Street for the business, which later became Jim Wagner's.  A few years later at his brother's suggestion that Ames could use a bowling center, Floyd found 460 feet of South Duff Avenue available, so he bought that portion of the corn field for $11,500.   Then within the same year he built both a skating center and a bowling center there, with a miniature golf course between.