Toe-tapping

music at

Harkin Store

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

WEST NEWTON -- It was a true Harkin Store experience Sunday as strains of popular polkas and waltzes played by Arnie and Marilyn Anderson pulsated from the store's front yard.

For over 15 years now, Anderson has been bringing his particular brand of "old tyme" music played on either the accordion or concertina to the veranda of the historic Harkin Store.

The last few years he's been accompanied on drums by Marilyn, his wife of four years.

"I hadn't played any instruments until I met Arnie," Marilyn Anderson said. "But I picked up the drums about two years ago so that we could play as a duo.

So, playing without a sheet of music between them, the Andersons entertained a good-sized, for the Harkin Store, crowd of nearly all ages for the better part of three hours.

As visitors sat, tapping toes, under a tree-leaf canopy amid the columbine and purple and white dame's rocket (a four-petal imitation of wild phlox), the Andersons played all the old favorites.

Songs like the "Saturday Night Waltz," Beer Barrel Polka," "Waltz Across Texas," "Lichtenstein Polka," "You and Me Together" polka, "Echoes in the Hills" waltz, "Life in the Finnish Woods Waltz" and many, many more.

"I guess you could say I'm semi-retired," said Anderson who, with his wife, lives on and still works an 80-acre farm 10 miles north of St. James. "I've been playing music ever since I can remember, and it's a volunteer-type thing. I don't take any pay for it."

Anderson estimates that he performs "well over 100 times a year, maybe even 150, mostly at nursing homes and senior centers. I do it mostly alone because Marilyn works and can't get away all the time."

Marilyn Anderson works in activities connected with Shepherd's Circle, a special-care unit for Alzheimer's patients, at Pleasant View Good Samaritan Center in St. James.

She does try to make the parades that her husband participates in.

"You'll have to see us," she said. "We have this '53 Chevy pickup. I drive, and he sits in the back and plays his accordion."