West Newton Day honors memory of town

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

WEST NEWTON--Opal Dewanz was at it again, drumming up some reason for people to pull over on the road to Fort Ridgely and stop in at the Harkin Store.

This time, instead of a 4th of July celebration or a bagpiper, it was a blacksmith, a carpenter, a rug weaver, a jail wagon, a buggy and an elderly gent squeezing polkas an waltzes out of a button box under an old tree in the yard.

They call it West Newton Day at the Harkin Store. It's meant to give a glimpse of what the little river town was like in the days before the railroad caused its decline.

Like any Harkin Store event, the small gravel parking lot was lined with cars. A small group of volunteers from the Nicollet County Sheriff's Department kept watch on horseback for any speeding motorist that should happen to head north.

Dewanz is found moving around the site in her dusty pink 1860s dress, talking to the volunteers and answering visitors' questions. Inside the store are all the goods that Harkin himself left when the place was shuttered 100 years ago.

"This was the first event we did when I became site manager 23 years ago," Dewanz said of West Newton Day. "Back then, I was recruiting friends and relatives and we would have 500 to 600 people here. It was packed."

While West Newton Day draws about 100 people these days, the attendance hasn't given Dewanz an excuse not to make changes to the annual event. The layout of the site hasn't changed in the 140 years that the store has stood, but this year's West Newton Day has faces old and new.

Take Marvin Krause for example. He's played the button box at the Harkin Store for nearly 14 years now. He got hooked into it after he stopped by the site on a trip from his home in Lake Benton to New Ulm. Dewanz asked him if he'd come play his button box at the store. Krause hasn't looked back since.

"The thing about it is you don't have to do anything perfect," Krause explained. "The people mostly are just standing back listening. It's not like you're up on stage and everything has to be just so."

Laura Borchert of New Ulm is another West Newton Day veteran. Borchert gives rug weaving demonstrations in the area and has also been a part of the celebration for 20 years. Borchert learned her technique from her aunt and weaves rugs as an example of how the settlers used clothing that wasn't wearable anymore. She sat quietly on the store's front porch quietly making a rug out of an old avocado green curtain.

To her left stood Lance Sorenson, dressed in a white collarless shirt, denim overalls and a straw hat as he sawed a piece of decorative wood trim using a scroll saw power by two pedals and a series of wheels and belts. Like Krause, Sorenson got a call from Dewanz about 7 years ago and also hasn't looked back. He plies his hobby using machines from the period when he's not working at a manufacturing company in Hector.

"This is such a good group of people, I think I'd miss it if I didn't come back," Sorenson said.

Beyond Sorenson, in the driveway of the private residence that used to be Alexander Harkin's home, Joseph Dummer sits behind the team of draft horses used to pull the Nicollet County Sheriff Posse wagon. Pulling it are Hank and Harley, a pair of 5-year old male horses that toss their heads around in several vain attempts to swat horseflies, deer flies and mosquitoes.

Just beyond him is the buggy, pulled by a 10-year old mare named Geraldine. All three horses belong to Duane Hertzberger of rural New Ulm, who sits in the driver's seat of the carriage.

And at the end of it all is Tom Sanders of Windom, who sweats away behind his blacksmith's furnace as he pumps the bellows, takes the iron from the fire, puts it over the anvil and hits it with a mallet. Sanders, who manages the Jeffers Petroglyph site, worked as a professional blacksmith for the better part of 20 years.

"I think this is pretty cool," Sanders said of the Harkin Store. "It has a real old-time feel to it. I think it's just a little gem."