Many attend Aztalan Day

By Helen Mansfield for the Daily Times
Monday, July 2, 2007 1:13 PM CDT

Lynn Schmitt from the Marshall Pleasant Spinners Guild explains the workings of her spinning wheel to some interested onlookers over the weekend at Aztalan Day. (Rachel Primmer/Daily Times)

TOWN OF AZTALAN - Just about perfect weather helped make a just about perfect Aztalan Day was the opinion of Sunday visitors to the festivities at the Lake Mills/Aztalan Historical Society's museum complex.

The event was the 40th anniversary of the major fund-raising source that has enabled the society to maintain its historic log cabins, museum, annex building, pioneer schoolhouse and other attractions.

“We are happy to see the fine crowd today and hope people in general take an interest in history and realize we have a tremendous resource in Aztalan State Park right next door,” society President Mike Ayres said. “Aztalan Day has been a wonderful tradition, and we need to interest more young people to help keep it going.”

Reminiscing abounded among the older visitors, but quite a few youngsters, some accompanied by grandparents, also seemed to be intrigued with the way things used to be.

For kids use to videos and photo phones, it was almost impossible to believe that kids ever whiled away a Sunday afternoon looking through a stereoscope, with its double-picture cards showing such exotic scenes as German cupola guns of World War I or the Chicago Union Stockyards of 1914.

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Among the craft demonstrations this year was a row of displays pertaining to the 150th anniversary of the Lake Mills Moravian Church.

Sue Trumpf was selling the Moravian Cookbook and refrigerator magnets. Shirley Knapp was making small Moravian paper stars, which are sometimes dipped in wax or glitter. Bill Beckman displayed the large white paper stars, which can trace their origins from the 1850s, to be hung in windows. Now they have plastic bases instead of tin and use light bulbs instead of whale oil.

There is a small restored 1861 Mamre Moravian Church next to the museum, where Marvin Kirst pointed out a small Christmas tree newly donated by Diane McFarland and decorated with Moravian candles and stars.

The small log cabins with their pioneer furnishings always draw an interest, but one little girl was heard to say, “I just can't imagine living here.”

Little girls were attracted to Mary Heinen's porcelain doll, Jane, made from 100-year-old German molds and dressed in white finery trimmed with old lace. “It takes patience to make these dolls, especially painting the eyelashes, which are 3 and 3-tenths of an inch apart,” Heinen said.

Longtime society member Russel Wagner, stationed in the museum, had a suggestion for some of the visitors. “Everyone leans over the cases to see things up close, but they should also look up on top of the cases near the ceiling to see such things as an early 1900s custom-made child's John Deere wagon, wooden doll cribs or a German spinning wheel.”

A picture of an Indian dam, or weir, on the wall prompted a viewer to say he had come across the remains of that dam while canoeing the Crawfish River.

Flintknapper Jim Grybush, who used to hunt for arrowheads on the farms in this area, was back again, saying, “I just find the whole experience enjoyable.” This year he was eager to show his Hexton solicifide sandstone (quartzite) arrowheads that sparkled in the sun.

Bill and Donna Stehling displayed Ancient Earthworks Society literature about various mound sites and told how mounds were used for calendars, but they said 90 percent of Wisconsin's ancient mounds have already been lost.

The day was particularly nice for the colorful quilt display. One woman was hoping to find a yo-yo quilt, but Cheryl Peterson said they were hard to find because they took so long to make. “They were usually coverlets made with circles of cloth placed over each other with the edges drawn together to the center, looking sort of ruffled,” she said.

There are always some questions that the society's volunteers haven't found the answer to, such as a couple heard at the Connor Hanson tool exhibit in an old granary. Why is there no “i” in the word granary if it is a building to contain grain? Another puzzler, what was the object in the loft that looks like it's supposed to be squeezed together, has wide teeth and a chute at the bottom?

Friends of Aztalan State Park Bob Birmingham, took time off from his park tours to remind everyone of a program on July 21 at 7 p.m. in the Fargo Public Library about Black Hawk, who is thought to have trekked through this Aztalan area and the downtown Lake Mills Commons park.

Kerry Trask will sign copies of his new book about the Black Hawk War.

Aztalan Day provides a chance to catch up with news about friends and acquaintances that aren't seen that often. Karl Magnussen, 92, who was one of the organizers of the first Aztalan Day, made it again this year, thanks to Dennis Stilling, and sat under a tree answering questions.

Anyone interested in learning more about the unique history of this area is invited to the society's monthly meetings, usually held in the Congregational UCC Church in Lake Mills on the third Friday of each month, to hear various programs with guest speakers.