Home Show opens at Vogel Arena

Show's 146

exhibits are free to the public

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Not even a cold north wind could prevent a good number of area citizens from attending the first day of the 21st annual Home & Self-Improvement Show at Vogel Arena.

Many show goers treated themselves to kettle corn, (sugar-coated popcorn) just outside the front doors of the arena.

The free, 146-exhibit show includes doors prizes with the likes of snowmobiles, a dish network satellite and home security system.

Various raffles are also available as show goers enter the arena.

The show is not without a good number of speciality items like zero-soot, 99 percent soybean wax candles, and a customized, metallic green 1950 Ford F-1 pickup truck with wide white sidewall tires.

Other exhibitors include New Ulm Public Utilities, which has handouts on natural gas conservation tips, among other things.

Other brochures include highlights of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway which includes a long stretch of U.S. Highway 14 from DeSmet, S.D. east to Rochester.

At that point, it forks north of Zumbro Falls and Wabasha or south to Burr Oak, Iowa.

Another handout features the 2001 Wilder Pageant in Walnut Grove and other historical highlights in south central and southwest Minnesota.

Many other exhibits center on products for homeowners and prospective home buyers.

Daily seminars deal with digital video TV and DSL, modular-built homes, water color quilting, shadow stamping, perennials, nutrition, smoking and heart disease, lawn irrigation, signs and windows.