I was pleasantly surprised to see this youtube video when I was taking a look at the In The Agora blog.

I recognized right away what it was. It’s a church where some of my wife’s relatives were members. The only time I was there was in September 2005, when we went to Manning, Iowa for a family reunion. We knew at the time that the congregation was going to cease to exist as a separate entity, that the building was going to be moved to town, and that a video production was planned.

Some good photos of the church and of the move at on line at David Kusel’s web site (click on Trinity Lutheran Church) and at the Manning News. After the Sunday morning worship service, I took the opportunity to take a few of my own.

This is looking south from the church steps. The building across the street was at one time the parsonage. I like that rolling countryside a lot.

And here is a view to the southwest. The car with the bicycle rack is ours. Unfortunately, there was no bicycle on this trip. This would be a great place to ride. I’d probably get more of gravel roads than I usually care for, but the views would be worth it.

I may do history riding in Iowa next summer, but so far I don’t know how the Black Hawk story would take me here to Carroll and Audobon counties. I suppose it’s possible that the Sauk and Fox Indians did some hunting here, but more of what is known about the Sauk and Fox people in Iowa took place along the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers (as well as along the Mississippi).

It’s a shame the building had to be moved. For historical purposes, I don’t much like it when buildings are moved. To me, much of what’s interesting about them relates to the terrain and other surroundings. In this case it’s a rural, agricultural countryside that is now depopulated. If the building could have stayed where it was, it could be used to illustrate an important era in our country’s history that has come and gone.

If an old country school gets sold to a private party, gets vinyl siding and a greenhouse addition, I say it connects the present to the past more than if the building is moved to a park and turned into a museum.

But I don’t get my way about everything. And this church building was in very good condition. If it had stayed here, there would have been no money for upkeep and it would have fallen into ruin. And even though it’s just a building and could be decommissioned, maybe it’s also good for us to have a sense of the sacred, and of sacred places that need to be treated with respect.

Maybe I value such a sense because it is hard for me to come by it. As a pastor’s kid, I was familiar, perhaps overly familiar, with many church interiors like this. I can’t say familiarity bred contempt in my case, but it may have bred casual carelessness. And now, maybe I’m in danger of confusing nostalgia with the sacred. This church with its altar and chancel is much like many other rural Lutheran churches I used to see. So in a way the visit here was like a visit back to my own childhood. I already blogged here about a similar church where I grew up.

I had an event like that about 11 years ago, when I read Roy Meyers book, “History of the Santee Sioux : United States Indian Policy on Trial.” There are other books that could have done it, too, but that happens to be the one I read after my 1996 bike tour when I got drawn into the story of the Black Hawk war and all the issues around it.

Before I read that book I thought I knew a few things about Native American issues. Then I found out my ideas had already been tried and had been found wanting. I might get around to explaining more of the implications of all that in my political blog, The Reticulator. Here I’ll stick to bicycling and history.

My freshman year in high school was at a school on the edge of the Santee Sioux reservation in northeastern Nebraska. It was also near where I started my first-ever, multi-day bicycle tour. This was in 1995, before I read Meyers book.

I had been trying for some time to get my wife interested in bicycle touring. Finally she suggested that I should just go, and she would drive the van. She even suggested a route — I should visit my boyhood homes, and end up where my parents live now. That was a great suggestion.

I don’t know where all my photos from that trip are, but I found some that my wife had taken.

Here we are, off on that first multi-day tour. I’m riding the hybrid-style bike that I used that first year, and my youngest son is following behind, going along with me on my nostalgia trip. This is Winnetoon, Nebraska — which is actually about three miles from where we had lived. Back in the late 50s and early 60s it still had a grocery store, and on Saturday nights the city fathers would set up a movie projector outdoors for community entertainment — like had been done in many other small midwest towns in decades earlier than that.

These photos were taken a few hours before we began the ride. In the background is Christ Lutheran Church, where my father was pastor. We are standing in the schoolyard of what had been the District No. 3 school. I had posted this photo on this blog before, but tonight rescanned it to get a slightly better version. Behind the church and home is a small creek which flows into the Bazile Creek, which flows north through the Santee reservation and into the Missouri.

This is the interior of that church. I think I only got bawled out from the pulpit a couple of times, along with my peers in the back row.

My father liked to come over and play the pipe organ, and occasionally I would come over here and start up the big bellows in the basement so I could practice my keyboard lessons here instead of doing them on the piano in the house. It would have been better if I had done a lot more practicing on either keyboard, and less avoiding of it.

Not to make light of the other good things learned here, but I must confess that I started looking forward to going to church when I realized that it was the place where some girls who didn’t go to that district #3 school would be, too.

This scene is behind that church. The church owned 40 acres from the days when the pastor also kept a few cows to feed his family. It was a great place for adventure, especially since a creek ran through it. The fence ran up almost to the back of the church, and at least once the burro decided to bray away at a time when there was an appreciative audience inside the church. It was back here where our burro would occasionally try nochalantly to kill me. Dad eventually decided to sell it, and used some of the proceeds to buy me my first real bicycle. So I have some excuse for putting all this in a bicycle blog.

My first ride through Nappanee was on my ride to the Midwest League baseball parks in 1996. I was pre-occupied and forgetful that time, too. It was my first experience riding through an Amish town, and it was interesting to see the facilities for horse-drawn buggies. I was already thirsty by the time I got there, but forgot to get water. When I finally got water near South Bend, it took another 24 hours to completely rehydrate myself. I’ve tried not to make that mistake again.

For an August outing this year, we stayed at a campground between Nappanee and Bremen. On the last day I went out for a 30-mile morning ride. I took this gravel road as part of an effort to avoid US-6. By the time I got to the end of this mile, I needed my raingear. I put my maps under cover and ended up guessing my way until I accidentally found myself in Nappanee. From there I knew my way back to camp.

This is one area where one sees a lot of adult Amish people on bicycles (as opposed to the more conservative Amish in Adams County who are required to give up their bicycles when they become adults). I wear a lot of yellow in the rain to make sure I’m visible. During this day’s rainstorm, the Amish people I saw on bicycle wore dark ponchos — which made me worried for them.

This photo is from October 2006. I took it somewhere south of Nappanee, on one of the county roads I had taken in order to avoid Highway 19. I wondered what an Amish-Mennonite church was. I just now got around to looking for information about it. I found this article in Jstor:

Sectarian Ideology and Church Architecture

Charles A. Heatwole

Geographical Review, Vol. 79, No. 1. (Jan., 1989), pp. 63-78.

Abstract: Church structures of most denominations do not exhibit consistent differences. A case study reveals that Mennonites once worshiped exclusively in plain buildings but now use a stylistic spectrum from plainness to modern generic church architecture. Ideological interpretation within the sect explains the choice of architecture for a church. Mennonites are symptomatic of a broad denominational trend. A dynamic model of relationships among religious ideology, church architecture, and the cultural landscape is presented.

And the article contains a a photo of the Fairview Amish-Mennonite church south of Nappanee, near US-19. However, the building is obviously not the one in my own photo. Heatwole’s description says it’s a mile east of US-19, which is a good match to where I was riding, and approximately seven miles south, which sounds perhaps a bit too far (but I’m not sure).

He also says, “…the Fairview Amish-Mennonite Church was founded by persons who broke away from the conservative wing. Compared with fellow moderates, therefore, the Fairview congregation is ideologically conservative and meets in a plain-looking church….”

However, none of the photos in the article, whether of more liberal or conservative mennonites, shows pointed-arch windows like the one in my photo.

So what happened? Did the church move? Did something happen to the building so the congregation bought a protestant-denomination church building and took it over? A break-away group from the break-away group? It might be something to ask about next time I’m in the area.

I hope they didn’t get wiped out by that tornado, though. Some Amish homes were destroyed. I see by looking at Photo #10 from the Indianapolis Star that one eating place I’ve used a couple of times has been damaged. Several months ago my wife went with another woman from our area to visit with a couple of Amish women at a restaurant in Nappanee. I think they were trying to learn what German Lutherans might have in common with the Amish. She was not able to tell from the photos whether the restaurant where they met was demolished, but it looks like that end of town was hurt pretty badly. She is concerned about those women she met in Nappanee, but at least we know that nobody was killed in all that destruction.

There was Nextel service at Buffalo, so I called to see how things were going back at work. It was the first time since I left on vacation. (Nice!) It was already into the afternoon by the time I started south again.

The road south of I-40 follows the Buffalo River valley to Lobelville and Lindon, and then follows a ridge for several miles before dipping down into the valley at Flatwood, and then out again. It was mostly just a matter of slogging into the wind up and down hills with the usual twists and turns, watching out for trucks, and taking snack breaks at gas stations at Lobelville and Lindon.

This sign in a churchyard in the valley got my attention:

I wouldn’t refuse to worship together with the people who do that, but I’d first have to build up some reserves of energy for a) arguing with them or b) keeping my mouth shut. If I had a time machine I’d go back and tell Henry VIII and Martin Luther that this is what happens if they’re not careful about taking the church in nationalistic directions.

After I climbed the twists and turns east of Flatwood, I suddenly realized that the traffic had disappeared. Where it had gone, I don’t know. Not only were there no more trucks, but cars were few and far between, too. I needed to make a turn south, to Waynesboro. I came to an intersection with a road that went off to the south, but it didn’t look like much of a road. The road to the east looked like this.

The road to the south looked like this.

I wasn’t sure if it was the right turn. It was getting late and I didn’t want to have to backtrack and re-do any of the miles into the wind, nor did I want to go off on some old road who knows where. It was time to ask for directions.

But there was nobody to ask. Several miles back, while taking a photo break at the bridge over the river, a driver had stopped and asked if I needed help. That sort of thing happens often. So I stood by my bike alongside the road, studying my maps. That’s often all it takes. Finally a car came along, and ignored me. A few minutes later I heard another one coming, so stood by the road with my arms outstretched, map in one hand and helmet in the other.

That worked. It was a pickup with two men, looking like maybe they had come from work. I asked if this road to the south was Highway 13, the road to Waynesboro. “Are you going to Waynesboro?” the older one asked. “You can take that road. It will save you a couple of miles.”

Is it any good for bicycling?

“It’s about like this,” he said, pointing to the bit of it you can see in the photo. He looked at the younger man and he agreed. “It will save you 3-4 miles,” he said. They wished me good luck, turned around, and drove back the way they had come.
Well, that was a bit strange, but I was all for saving miles. I rode down the hill, and found that the road was NOT as good as the part in the photo. But it was ridable, so long as I didn’t try to ride fast. And later when I had better maps I found that it had NOT saved me 3-4 miles. It had saved me only a mile. But I got a photo of an old double log-cabin that was falling apart — something I had been wanting.

Back on Highway 13 I was riding with the lumber trucks again. Once in a while I’d get a whiff of the smell of the logs. Red oak it smelled like. I never got to verify that it was red oak, though. I presume white oak would be better for furniture wood, but I guess I don’t know that for sure, either.

By the time I got to Waynesboro I needed my light and reflective vest. I even got off the road a couple of times when there were too many trucks in the dimming light. 66 miles for the day.

Photos fixed, 1-Aug-2007