Kuntz Days in Ridgeway

If there’s one thing that is becoming synonymous with summer, it’s the local round of fairs. As far as I can tell, almost every state has a state fair. One of the exceptions is unfortunately Michigan, whose state Fair was shut down in 2009. But out in the breadbasket of America, the state fair is alive and well. It is particularly alive and well in Minnesota, which has the third largest fair in the United States. The first two are in Texas, which seems fitting somehow. If you’re curious, the Iowa state fair comes in at 18.

The next step down from state fairs are the county fairs. In northeast Iowa two of them dominate the public consciousness. Howard County, home of Cresco, has a large one that lasts for a week. So does Winneshiek County, home of Decorah. Both feature roughly the same things—livestock, fair food, rigged games you’ll have fun trying to win and fair rides which were last inspected for safety sometime in the 1970s, a fact you’ll only really think about when the g-forces are hitting your body at the apex of the ride. Have fun!

After the county fairs are the much less well-known “town celebrations.” These are fairs offered up by towns. Ostensibly they celebrate an aspect of the town, but the reality is everyone loves a chance to get out and party. So in Lime Springs you have Sweet Corn Days, in Chester you have Old Settlers Days, and in Ridgeway you have Kuntz Days.

Over the weekend, I had the choice of going to either the Old Settlers Days or Kuntz Days, or heading down to the comic book store in Cedar Falls. But I was curious. What kind of events do they have? What do they celebrate?

My first choice was Old Settlers Days in Chester, but then I saw a flyer for Kuntz Days in Ridgeway. A little asking around revealed that one Everett Kuntz had written a book about Ridgeway or something to that effect. Then I went to the Howard County website and looked at the events of the day for Old Settlers Days. The events in question were not quite even remotely connected with Old Settlers. The main event was a Tractor Pull. Another main event—a Children’s Tractor Pull. While this had every opportunity for comedy, I decided to go to Ridgeway instead. After all, someone wrote a book about Ridgeway, a community that is most known for being between Cresco and Decorah. According to Wikipedia it has around 300 people, give or take 100. So I headed out to Ridgeway, waiting to see just what would be in store.

Usually when I drive through Ridgeway to get to Decorah, it’s a quick two-minute drive through Highway 9. I enter around an area owned by the Winneshiek Co-op and exit around the Winneshiek Park, a name which I would think Decorah might take issue with. It’s not often that a small community establishes its park as the county park, but Ridgeway had done it. Perhaps there was something to this town of which I was unaware.

As I had so many times before, I zipped into Ridgeway passing the Winneshiek Co-op grain silos. Two minutes later, I zipped past Winneshiek park without seeing any sign of a celebration. Crap. I turned my car around and drove back along Highway 9, only this time I turned down a random side street. I knew from experience there was some kind of community, and the town was small enough that if I went down enough back roads there would have to be some sign of a celebration if any existed.

Two blocks later I found exactly what I was looking for. To be honest it wasn’t a big celebration. It wasn’t even a medium-sized one. Let’s face it, in a town where there are 300 people you can’t expect a big turnout. I’d say maybe 200 people were there, but that might be overstating things a bit. Still, this wasn’t about numbers, it was about celebrating. I parked the car and immediately grabbed a brat, potato chips and soda sold by the Ridgeway fire department to begin partaking in the celebration. I’ve always thought bratwursts are the ideal standard of fair food, at least for adults. They’re portable in a way hamburgers aren’t, and they have a number of ways they can be topped. They’re also taste a lot better than a hotdog. Hotdogs taste kind of bland, and they’re all about the toppings you can put on them to disguise the fact that you’re eating a hotdog. Brats, though, brats are salty and meaty, and in my opinion a little sauerkraut and mustard only enhances the flavor, although you really shouldn’t put on much sauerkraut and mustard on your brats. If you do, you should at least make sure you have a place to sit down so the kraut and mustard doesn’t get all over your hands and on your jacket. These are the kinds of tips Miss Manners never talks about, by the way.

As I was trying to wipe the excess mustard and sauerkraut off my hands and my jacket I arrived at the community center, where all the action was. In the street there were a bunch of kids’ games, like musical chairs, a beanbag toss and a “fishing” wall. There was also a bouncy castle that seemed to work intermittently, causing the adults on at least one occasion to rush to it and hold it up while trying not to panic the children inside while the owner got the blower working again. This is another aspect of small town life that makes me smile—if this had happened at the Minnesota State Fair, the attraction would have been shut down for fear of lawsuits while they tried to figure out what the problem was and convince people it wouldn’t happen again. Here, though, as soon as the blower was working, the kids got back inside and the adults let them. Sometimes bouncy castles fail, and when they do you deal with the situation and then get back to celebrating.

The center of the Kuntz Days celebration was the Ridgeway Community Center. It was easily the nicest building in Ridgeway, and true to its word it had a lot of community stuff going on. The local 4-H had a bake sale in there, and I bought a cookie to show solidarity. In another section there was a nail-biter of a bingo game going on, or so I judged by the fact that everyone was staring at their bingo cards as though the instructions to the Ark of the Covenant were written on them.

Far more interesting, though, was the collection of photographs taken by one Everett Kuntz. As it turns out, my source was wrong—he did not write any book about Ridgeway. Instead, he took a lot of pictures of the Ridgeway community circa 1939. By a lot, I mean enough to cover three tables. According to one website on the subject, he had over 2,000 negatives when he finally got around to getting them developed. At some point later, they came to the notice of one Jim Heynen, who took the pictures, created some vignettes about what was going on in them, and published the book as “Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of a Small Town in Iowa, 1939-1942.” You can find it on Amazon if you’re so inclined.

The photographs do what photographs do best—preserve a moment in time. And with any photograph of people you don’t know, there’s a sense of mystery. There’s a shot of a young man and a young woman on stage, with another man dressed more formally seeming to announce something. The title is, “The Engagement.” Just like that, there’s a story there—who were these people? How did they meet? What did they do to support themselves? What was the wedding like? Did they have a happy marriage?

There are other photographs—people working, people taking, people living their lives before World War II, unaware that someday people in 2011 their lives would be a snapshot of what might be considered a simpler time. It’s very alluring—you can see how people could want to visit the world in those photographs, where people were friendly with each other and where everyone is smiling or busy working on something. No wonder people want to return to the “Good Old Days,” which never seem to be the days that are ahead. But those people had their problems, too. The date was 1939, the waning days of the Great Depression. Two years later, the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor and we’d be introduced to one of the monsters of history.

Really, though, the photos are an excuse to get together and party. That’s a good thing. One of the things Everett Kuntz’s photos shows are people getting together and enjoying one another’s company, and there are quite a few reasons not to do that as it is. I think a community getting together and getting to know their neighbors is well in the spirit of what the photos convey, and I think it’s something Mr. Kuntz would appreciate.