The Norman Borlaug Harvest Fest

I’d previously talked about the Mighty Howard County Fair, and the other fairs that went on over the summer that were town-centric. I was under the impression that the Mighty Howard County Fair was Cresco’s “fair” event, but in fact it’s more for Howard County. Cresco is just the county seat. What Cresco has is the Norman Borlaug Harvest Fest.

The Norman Borlaug Harvest Fest used to be called the “Ag Fest,” but was apparently changed in the last couple years in honor of Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist. I’m not sure who put this change forward, but I wholeheartedly approve of it. Personally, I think if you win a Nobel Prize your hometown should have an annual festival in your honor. It’s the least people can do.

The festival started on Friday afternoon, when the town closed off the main street in preparation for the big event. A few food vendors showed up, and the main businesses in town set up some displays. The main downtown area was also cleared for the classic sports car display. I still don’t know exactly how classic sports cars relate to a harvest fest, but no one else seemed to mind.

Actually, the “Norman Borlaug” part of the Norman Borlaug Harvest Fest was sort of glossed over, at least on the weekend. The Norman Borlaug Legacy Foundation had a bus tour to go out and see Norman Borlaug’s childhood home, which had a grand total of six or seven people on it. Half of them were members of the Norman Borlaug Legacy Foundation, going out with interested people to conduct the tour.  I decided to go, in no small part because when my family was here, my mom had tried to get the foundation to give us a tour of the Borlaug place. She tried for a week straight before finally giving up, since she couldn’t reach a member of the Borlaug foundation at any time we were available to take the tour. Going to see the Borlaug home felt like upholding the family honor.

The tour more or less started on the bus ride out of town, and I immediately realized two things about the Norman Borlaug Legacy Foundation. First, these people were not consummate professionals. One man gave a decent talk about Norman Borlaug, aided considerably by his wife. It was fun to watch them talk—you can tell when people have been married for so long their thoughts start to intertwine like two strands of ivy, and I enjoyed listening to them play off each other as much as I enjoyed listening to them talk about Norman Borlaug.

Tour at the Norman Borlaug House

The second thing I realized was the Norman Borlaug was the sort of person who inspires you. I’ll be honest—I don’t know any celebrities. I’ve met a couple at conventions, and they have all been unfailingly polite. But the members of the Norman Borlaug Legacy Foundation had actually known him, and they were all changed by the experience. I won’t get too deep into psychoanalyzing them, but the bulk of their conversation centered around Norman Borlaug, how great he was, and how inspiring he was. It was a bit like hearing Simon Peter talking about his old pal Jesus. It’s rare that someone can be that inspiring, but Norman Borlaug was apparently one of those people.

The Borlaug House sits in the country

About fifteen minutes after leaving town, the bus arrived at the Borlaug home.  It was a white two-story farmhouse, set in the middle of a field and somewhat shielded from the road by oak and maple trees. About fifty yards away was a pumphouse, a machine shed and a large white barn. It was the perfect place for a Nobel Prize-winning Agriculturalist to grow up. We all paraded into the house, and then the tour began. Actually, it was less of a tour than it was members of the Norman Borlaug Legacy Foundation telling all the stories they knew of Norman Borlaug, his family, and how some of the areas of the barn were used. As a tour, it was more disjointed than a David Lynch movie with Abraham Zapruder as the cameraman, but I enjoyed it all the same. The sheer enthusiasm these members had was infectious, and if you are ever in the area, you need to take the tour if you can. You’ll walk away inspired to do some good for humanity.

After that, I wandered down the five-booth flea market/craft show and the three-booth farmer’s market. I appreciated the effort, but part of the allure of farmer’s markets and flea markets is the number of things that are available. When you can count the number of choices on two hands with fingers left over, the allure kind of goes away. Fortunately, right around the corner was the classic sports car show.

I have to be honest, agriculture or no agriculture, the classic car show was fun. The cars are awfully pretty to look at, and in some cases you can see yourself getting in, starting up the engine, and taking off for parts unknown. Of course, when you actually get to drive these cars you realize they’re best at going forward, which is kind of a handicap when you actually do driving that requires you to, say, make turns or drive in reverse. Still, most of the time you don’t have to make turns or drive in reverse, so I can see the appeal.

I could go on about all the cars that I saw, but there was one that was particularly memorable. It was a red Mazda Miata, and as I was walking by I noticed a glint of silver on the rear. Walking around the car, I discovered that the glint of silver was one of a set of “girl reclining” silhouettes, the ones more commonly found on the mudflaps of pickup trucks driven by people with names like “Skeeter.” There was also a bumper sticker that read “Little car—Big payments!” Usually, when confronted with this level of tastelessness on a standard automobile, I think to myself that the owner of said car must be a submoron. I would like to say, for the record, my reaction is the same even when the car is a sports car. The only thing was, I encountered the owner of this car a day later. I can’t tell for certain, but it seemed like he had some sort of mental disability. It’s at times like this when you realize that being right about a person’s shortcomings isn’t as fulfilling as you would like.

It also raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is why would such a person own a sports car? I’m not against mentally retarded people owning sports cars as a general rule, but in a lot of ways it’s like treating a homeless person to a cutting-edge gourmet meal when he or she would get more food at a less fancy all-you-can-eat buffet. I will probably never get an answer to this question, and let’s face it, it’s none of my business anyway. Still, I do wonder.

The final big event in downtown Cresco was the parade. As far as parades go, this one was surprisingly big. Almost every business in town wanted to get in on the act, it seems, right down to the family farms. As a lot of parades go, this one was a mishmash of vehicles, including some of the sport cars and some antique tractors, along with some modern-day farm equipment, which easily took up both lanes of the street. There was also the Cresco High School marching band, which did a really good job. I was impressed, especially because I remembered the one time I had marched in a parade with the high school marching band in my hometown. The amount of preparation involved was a phone call a couple days before asking my brother Andy and I if we would like to participate in the high school marching band’s Fourth of July performance, along with the band director handing out some pep band music on the day of the parade. Looking back, I think it’s just as well that Steve Jobs did not invent the iPhone before I graduated high school. I’d also like to thank the YouTube creators for holding off as well.

The Norman Borlaug Harvest Fest may be the end of small-town festival season for the year. If so, it ended the season with a bang. Really, all that’s left is Halloween, and that’s got a decent enough celebration as it is.

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.