Northeast Iowa and Antonin Dvorak

In my last entry, I talked about Spillville and the Bily Clock Museum. One thing I forgot to mention is that the museum has two floors. Just in case the clocks themselves didn’t blow you away.  Granted, there aren’t more clocks on the second floor, but there is another important part of Spillville’s history. I might even go so far as to say it’s an important piece of Americana, too.

The first part of the second floor showcases the collection of the Bily Brothers, who were serious collectors. They collected money, other clocks (go figure), Native American tools and arrowheads, weapons from the Civil War and World War I, and they have a library of books full of the classics that were still considered the classics in 1920, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens, not to mention an impressive reference library about foreign cultures and science textbooks. I’d like to repeat that—they read science textbooks FOR FUN. I don’t know about you, but that definitely puts my spare time activities into perspective. 

The rest of the second floor is devoted to one Antonin Dvorak, who is also affectionately known as  “that keyboard dude,” only he had nothing to do with creating the Dvorak keyboard. That was Dr. August Dvorak. Common mistake, really. 

Antonin Dvorak was a classical music composer who lived in the 1890s, when classical music was still a big deal instead of the present, where it’s relegated to either the elevator or the hold music on the telephone while I’m waiting for a customer service representative to inform me that there is absolutely nothing she can do to help and would I like the number to a different service center? Not that I am bitter.

Anyway, Antonin Dvorak was hired as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in America after making a name for himself in his homeland of Czechoslovakia. Dvorak had previously incorporated some Czech folk music into his compositions, and really wanted to get at the heart of Czech music. When he came to America, he wanted to do the same thing. He listened to African-American spirituals, Native American songs, and worked on incorporating them into his music.

So what does this have to do with Spillville, you might ask? Well, in 1893 Dvorak was feeling homesick for his home country, which was understandable. Trans-Atlantic flights were still a long ways away, and if you came to the United States you were going to be there awhile. However, one of the nice things about the United States is that it has plenty of different nationalities immigrating to it. One of these nationalities is the Czech, who established a pretty nice town called, you guessed it, Spillville. So Dvorak came out here in the summer of 1893. While he was here he wrote two pieces of what he thought were very American music—the String Quartet in F, also called “The American,” and the String Quintet in E flat. These are two of his most famous chamber music pieces, which is understandable since he probably didn’t have a lot of room.  That’s funny, because chamber music is music written for a small number of people, so they can play in small areas, and…just forget it.

As for where Antonin Dvorak stayed? It’s currently the Bily Clock Museum.

The Bily Clock Museum has a pretty decent history of Dvorak, including a bust that makes him look like a prime candidate for the Mad Scientists’ Association of America (motto: Trespassing in God’s domain since 1816). Seriously, he has a ring of hair around his head that defies gravity, and a bushy beard that seriously looks like a separate life form. According to the museum, he used to go on long walks along the local river, and the neighborhood boys would come along with them, which proves looks aren’t everything. He would also write notes about his current composition on the starched sleeve of his shirts, which the statues of him always seem to leave out. Still, it’s one of my favorite images of the man. After all, there’s no telling when inspiration can hit.

As I was reading this history, I could see Dvorak out here, enjoying himself, going to play the organ at the local church, and enjoying what might be the most perfect artists’ retreat ever. For those of you unfamiliar with the creative process, it’s really nothing like how the movies portray it. Just as a for instance, in Love Actually Colin Firth plays a writer who goes to Spain and rents out a house, where he spends all his time writing on a typewriter as an attractive Spanish maid brings him the occasional snack and a meal. It’s an absolutely wonderful vision of writing, and as I’m typing this in my apartment with stacks of books surrounding me, sipping iced tea from an aluminum water bottle and not a Spanish maid in sight, I really want to tell Colin Firth where he can shove his typewriter.

Dvorak, though, seems to have hit the jackpot. The house is nice, although you do have to imagine it without any clocks, and the description of his schedule is idyllic. Best of all, he wrote two pieces of music during his summer in Spillville, the ultimate measure of creative success if ever there was one. I can see him getting up, having breakfast, and then going for a leisurely walk down the riverside (The Turkey River, incidentally), filling his head with new thoughts and scratching them down on his starched shirt cuffs, then returning in the afternoon to make sense of the new ideas that had come to him while walking along the river. Maybe his wife would get him lunch, too. You know, I could really use a maid. Or a wife. Someone cute who would bring me lunch.

The point is, Dvorak had it made in that summer of 1893. I don’t know of any creative type who wouldn’t love to switch places with him, just for a day, to see how it feels to be in that rare confluence of relaxation and productivity, where the work you’re doing doesn’t feel like work at all, just something that you love to do and you’re fortunate enough to find someone who will pay you for doing it.

Two more things I would like to point out, and then we’re done with Spillville. The first is the St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, the oldest Czech Catholic Church in the United States. If you find this intensely interesting, you may want to move to Spillville. They are very proud of their Czechishness there. When Andy and I drove there, the one thing that amazed me was the cemetery, which surrounds half of the church and easily has as many graves as there are living inhabitants. There are apparently a LOT of people who settled down here and decided not to leave. It’s amazing that such a small town can have that kind of gravitic effect on its inhabitants, and I say this with a sense of awe and a complete lack of understanding that is usually only achieved by Congress. I wanted to leave my hometown at the first opportunity. It killed me to come back. I’m currently in a town where my nearest family member is a good six hours away, and while it’s not ideal, I’m okay with that. But these people came to a small town, counted themselves among the 300, and were content to have their bodies delivered to the soil there when their time came. Given my life so far, I’ll probably be buried in a completely different state.

The second thing to point out is that the town has a public library. This isn’t really a historical landmark, but the knowledge that Spillville gets its own public library makes me very happy.

The Bily Clock Museum

In northeast Iowa, there is a place where clocks, farmers and woodcarving combine. The result is the Bily Clock Museum. I’ve been to see it once about a year and a half ago, and when my brother Andy showed up to spend Easter with me, I thought it was high time to go see it again.

The first thing to know about the Bily Clock Museum is that it is located in Spillville, Iowa. I firmly believe this is one of the greatest names for a town ever imagined. Keep your Truth or Consequences, which is pretty good, and your Fairviews, the most generic name for a town ever and coincidentally the most popular town name in the United States. But Spillville just sounds as though it was the result of a tanker truck accident, where a bunch of volunteers gathered to clean up a toxic waste spill and then when they were done said, “Screw it, we’re staying here.” The real reason, unfortunately, is that the town was founded by a guy with the last name of Spiel. Spiel’s Village=Spielville=Spillville.

You can’t exactly get to Spillville from Cresco, at least not directly. Yes, you take Highway 9, which runs through my experiences in northeast Iowa as surely as supermodels run through Tiger Wood’s golfing experiences. You go east until you’re halfway between Cresco and Decorah, in a little town called Ridgeway, and this is where things get weird. You have to turn down a sideroad, one that seems to be maintained with less frequency than a Brigadoon appearance, and the sign that directs you clearly says “Spillville, 8 (miles).” After you go down the expressway you come to a fork in the road with a sign that points you in the direction of Spillville. It also says, “Spillville, 9 (miles).” I’m not entirely sure how you can move physically closer to a point on a map and have it be further away. I personally think some quantum physicists should study this, as it could be invaluable in figuring out the true nature of the universe. I would also like to suggest, just to cover my bases, that the northeast Iowa road commission take a look at what their sign painters are doing.  I think it’s heroin.

The first thing you notice about Spillville is that it is a tiny town. It has a population of around 300. Normally a town with 300 people in it almost qualifies as a suburb or a bedroom community. But Spillville soldiers on, probably because there’s no other town for about nine (ten) miles. It’s impressive to see such a small town with a car dealership, even if there are only two cars in the dealer lot, both used. Spillville also boasts a gas station and mini mart, a nice restaurant, a bed and breakfast, and a bar called the Farr Side that easily had more customers in front of it than the other businesses combined.

Another point of interest is that Spillville actually has a town square, a stone gazebo right dead in the middle of main street that you have to drive around. You can look at it and think, just for a moment, that men in top hats and women wearing bonnets will be walking out to the gazebo, along with a small marching band playing the Spirit of ’76. Then you see the car dealership and get taken back to the twenty-first century.

The Bily Clock Museum is in a brownstone building that contrasts with the rest of Spillville like a red dress in a black and white film. It’s almost a perfect rectangle from the front and side, with no bits sticking out. It was built without decoration or pretension, simply meant to provide shelter. Even so, it stands with a quiet kind of majesty, something that would puzzle anyone who happened to zip through the town. Of course, anyone who did zip through town would be taking the highway four miles over. Most people who come to Spillville know what the building is.

Finally, there are the clocks themselves. Now, when I say “clocks,” please do not think of anything that can be hung on a wall. These are more like sculptures, with intricately carved panels, moving parts that activate when the hour is struck, and in one notable case the entire clock is carved from wood, including the clock gears.  In most of these sculptures/clocks the themes are similar—religion and science. One clock has the twelve apostles parade through a door, displaying themselves on a track for you before going back into the machinery.  Another showcases their version of the influential figures of the age, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. Yet another has fifty-seven panels showing the history of America and the progress of the pioneers. There are some smaller pieces, but by and large they are the exception to the rule.

It is impossible to look at these clocks and not be awestruck. The Bily brothers were farmers, after all, who only did woodcutting as a hobby in the winter months when the lack of crops to tend left gaping holes of time to fill. They also only had a fifth-grade education, but they were avid readers. They put together a library that would shame most people who consider themselves academics, and in other circumstances it’s not hard to see them being university scholars. Also, they only traveled about thirty-five miles from their farm in Spillville. Most of the time, they were content to be farmers, and when they had some spare time they’d design and carve these clocks. For fun. Not for fame, and not for money—Henry Ford wanted to buy one of the Bilys’ clocks, and they turned him down, even when he offered them one million dollars. This is usually the part in the story where people say, “and they spent the rest of their lives in the loony bin, the end.”

 I take away a different moral from the story, though. If you are a farmer in the middle of nowhere, and despite your impressive book collection have never been more than thirty-five miles from home, you might be perfectly content with where you are and what you have. You might also have some project that you’re proud of. If you have all those things, then let me ask you, what good will a million dollars do you? You’ve already got everything you need, or want. It’s a peace of mind very few people have, or even understand. I could evangelize here, say that it’s because we have commercials telling us what we need next or that it’s because celebrities constantly flaunt their wealth and success, but I don’t think that’s the case. It’s more having peace of mind, being happy and content, is worth more than being able to buy something. It’s a state I think everyone is aiming for, and it may say something about how few people ever manage to achieve it.

It’s also worth noting there’s a lot you can do if you have a hobby you like and some free time to practice it.