DHA LXXXIII
(9/30/2004)

Calendar

October Board meetings Wednesdays, October 6 and 20, 6:30 p.m., museum.

Museum open Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Lester Lauritzen will also open museum on request, if available; call 605-563-2732; or in advance, by mail at address at top of DHA news.

Catered Supper

A catered supper is planned for the museum Saturday, November 6th, at 6:30 p.m. Eighty to ninety people can be accommodated. Tickets are $10.00. Brief entertainment during the supper is being considered.

Christmas Tree Contest

DHA is considering a Christmas Tree Contest in the museum the afternoon of the Danish Days Danish Supper, Sunday evening January 2, 2005. Trees to be no more than 3 ft. tall, natural and no lights. Entry $20 per tree; eighty-five percent of entry money to go to winners. Categories: Most Danish; Most Viborg; Most Religious; and People's Choice.

Metal Wall Art Raffle

Through the great assistance of award-winning Viborg artist Lynn Peterson, DHA will raffle one of Peterson's large farm-disk blade wall sculptures, similar to a smaller one on display in the museum. The small photo shows the sculpture to be raffled. Tickets will be $5.00 each, five for $20.00. A total of 500 tickets is planned.

Mange Tak

To recent visitors to the museum. To Richard Skola for sitting in for Lester a while Sunday p.m., Sept. 19 so he could go free-loading at the Viborg Repair and Towing open-house.

To the people that brought items and made contributions or gave memorials.

A Main Street Cafe Question

Of special attention to rural students starting high school at VHS the fall of 1938 with me.

Prior to the start of school in September, a lady operating a cafe, somewhere in that popular block on the west side of Main Street and north of the 4-way stop, advertised a special dinner for students, for a reasonable cost. My (LRL) parents thought the price was affordable, and I thought the menu acceptable. With a few others, I went down the first day of school, but for some reason now forgotten, the lady told us that she could not provide the advertised special. I think I settled for a hamburger. Thereafter, I brought by dinner from home, in the "round roofed barn" type of dinner pail I'd used for 8 years of country school.

Can anyone answer the following questions? 1) Who was the lady that operated the cafe, and where in the block was it located? 2) What was the cause that cancelled the special? (It seemed like a good deal for her and for us students): unavailability of, or some change in the cost of, supplies? Some complaint? Some regulations prohibiting the special, its price, or ingredients?

In the Museum

The WNAX Neighbor Lady and Danish Dancers display.

Many Viborg-Daneville area housewives will remember the "WNAX Neighbor Lady" programs on "WNAX 570 on your radio dial" weekday afternoons.

Mrs. Speece, "Your Neighbor Lady", retired, and her husband Harry spent two or three hours in the DHA museum on Saturday, July 17th during Danish Days 2004 in Viborg. Many also remember Your Neighbor Lady putting on demonstrations during the reign of the Pork Show in Viborg. Reportedly, they had planned to go to Huron on Friday, but delayed a day to appear at the Museum.

Even this DHA News writer remembers, as a boy, hearing her when his mother listened (on a battery radio through the 40s), and on occasion was directed to copy the day's recipe when his mother was otherwise occupied. The following "history" depends upon the accuracy of his memory 50-60 years later.

Miss Wynn Hubler (?) came from the Des Moines, Iowa area to work in the office at WNAX. When the lady that was broadcasting recipes resigned, possibly due to maternity, the manager informed Miss Hubler that she would now do the recipes, etc. During her first broadcast, in introducing herself, she said, approximately, "I'll be like your neighbor lady," and Your Neighbor Lady became one of the best known titles in the WNAX 5-state listening area.

Some time during WWII, Miss Hubler married Harry Speece, at that time in the U.S. Navy. The Speeces raised a foster daughter and on or more children of their own.

The Neighbor Lady display: large photo, Neighbor Lady -- WNAX sign, and WNAX floor stand studio microphone, and the Speeces' presence during Danish Days 2004, was arranged by friends of DHA, Mylo and Dorothy Preheim of Parker. Preheims also provided the "Danish-Dancer: mechanical mannequins" to the right in the photo. The Preheims are long time historic preservationists. Originally from the Freeman area, Mylo barbered in Viborg in the late 1930s or early 40s when he met and married Dorothy Jensen, daughter of Irwin Jensen. In the 40s they lived in Irene, where Mylo also manufactured wagon boxes for farmers, and got into electronics. He is supposed to have had the second TV set in S.D., for which he had to erect a very tall tower to bring in the then weak signal in the Irene valley. They have lived in Parker for many years, where Mylo had a music store, and they began preserving historic artifacts.

The museum also has a framed collection of phots of the Danish Dancer couples, and two thick volumes of photos from the Dancers' activity over a wide area beyond Viborg-Daneville.