Bethlehem Lutherans Fall Festival is coming up next weekend, September 12th, and in to talk about it, we have Pastor Conrad Prell, we have John Felstead here to talk about that upcoming event that is going to be happening again.
It looks, John, like you've got a lot on the schedule for this event again.
Yes, and speaking of schedule, right away I want to say
Sorry to Richland County Fair.
I, when I scheduled this last year, I didn't realize Labor Day is a week later this year than normally and everything got bumped back a week and next year it will not be the same weekend.
And I do want to apologize for that right off the bat.
I am sorry to all the people with the Richland County Fair.
Oh, it's hard to, you know, fathom that because Labor Day is later this
year.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, that was just a,
next year, it's not going to happen again.
So I do apologize for that right off the bat.
So,
okay.
Well, thanks for doing that.
Um, let's talk a little bit about the, the day.
Um, it, it's fundraiser, right?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
For, for Bethel and Lutheran church.
Yep.
And tell us a little bit about your church, if you would
Conrad.
Well, yeah, I'll do, I'll do that.
Um, it's a small group right now.
Um, I'm getting, there's exciting news going on because I'm getting set to retire again.
the end of October.
How long have you been unretired because you, you've been
like, um, well, technically I tried to retire back in 21.
It's going to be five years.
Uh-huh.
It's five years this month.
Actually I attempted and they haven't let me go yet.
No, no, but we have a new gentleman, new resident pastor coming down here in October, end of October is installation Sunday.
October 25th, I think it is at four o'clock in the afternoon.
His name is Paul Shuler.
He and his wife will be coming.
He has been serving up in what's called Loretto, Minnesota, and it's a larger congregation of around 800 souls and far western suburbs of the Twin Cities area.
And so he's going to be moving into quite a different style of life and
size of congregation.
He's going to be going from 800 to about 3035 souls, tries to find housing.
So if anybody out there has a lot for sale, he'd like to put up a duplex or something of the sort and that so that he could build actually down here and move in and start working with the members at Bethlehem and start sharing the message of Christ Jesus.
And so we can
And I can kind of sit back a little bit more again, hopefully.
Do you become a member of the congregation then?
Well, my wife and I actually live in Elroy.
We built a new house in Elroy.
And she's going to be retiring from nursing in the end of November.
So we're kind of undecided right off hand.
I told one area pastor, he said, I could go to three, four different places, rotate on Sundays to various places.
still be, you know, still be worshiping in our, in our Wells churches in the area.
So we'll probably show Bethlehem once in a while.
Sure.
Absolutely.
And your wife does the accompanies.
She does play piano.
Yes.
And that's the hook John wants to get her on.
Sounds good.
Well, it's important as a fundraiser.
John is kind of the main one of the year.
It
is by far the biggest that we do.
We do a few others, but this, this one is the biggest.
This one takes the most people.
This one we're already.
working on for next year.
That's one thing that's blowing me away.
How many people stepped up helped out this year and they're saying in next year we're going to do that.
So I mean this is going to keep going and and it just it gets bigger and better every year.
So if you're here last year it's going to be the same but bigger and better.
It just that that's what we're trying to shoot for every year.
It sounds like you have great support from people that not only members of your congregation.
Oh yeah.
Um, I would like to thank a lot of them.
Um, if I could, if that's okay.
So, uh, I'll start with that then.
So I want to thank Ben and his family, Tom, Maddie, Heather, Georgia, Ralph, Mackenzie, Austin and Destiny Jackson, Sid, Sam Haven, mom and dad, Chrissy, Mackenzie, Pastor and Connie, Devon Dave, Ron and Deb and everyone else.
And I apologize.
I wrote this up this
morning so if I forgot anyone I apologize and I want to give a big thank out to all of our sponsors this year a friend of mine Sid went out and helped me get sponsors and we have a ton of trophies this year so I like to and and everyone that else that's coming in helping thank you so much yeah it takes a lot of people to put something like this on and these guys are just awesome for helping so
Jed's car show will be happening then, uh, eight to noon registration.
And I bet at that car show, you do give out a lot of trophies.
Yeah.
This year is over 50 trophies.
We have 50 sponsored trophies where we have a people's choice of a bus to show.
We give away two plaques this year.
My favorite part of this is 25 and under anyone, 25 and under, please show up.
We give out two plaques this year.
It's called the Young Gun Award.
And I just, I want to keep this growing for generation after generation, this car culture, you know, and we, I've been given out one every year since we started and we get so many entrants that I opted to do this year just because that's, I feel real importantly about that one.
So, um, and we also, the only class we have this year is motorcycle class and I'm lumping all the motorcycles in one class and we have two trophies for that as well.
Uh, everything else, it's,
all them together.
It's all sponsors choice.
They come, they pick the cars that gets their trophy.
Um, we, we set it up.
So only one trophy is going to go per sponsors pick.
So that way, you know, one person going to walk out of there with a bunch of trophies and I like to spread it out.
So yeah, we're pretty excited about all this.
So yes.
And you've had cars come from quite a great distance.
Cars come from all over and we get some of the,
cars I've never seen before and I've been doing this all my life and just phenomenal cars and that's that's what's great about the sponsor choice too.
It's wide open so I mean if a sponsor likes whatever they might pick it even though and it's really unique.
I like sitting back and seeing what they pick for cars because I'm like well that's really cool you know.
It just, you never know who's going to trophy at my show because it's just, it's, it's a totally up to the sponsors.
I mean, if they like it, you could trophy.
So that's one thing else for encouraging people stay till the end.
Cause you might get a trophy even though you don't expect it.
Cause there are some really, really awesome cars there, but please remember we got over 50 of these trophies.
So I mean, you know, stay to the end to see, see who gets what, you know, don't, don't leave because then your trophy will go to someone else if you're not, not on site.
So.
At this time, are you seeing less of like the Model A, Model T's?
Are you seeing more recent cars at your shows?
It's still very so much.
You know, we got cars from the early 1900s that they promised to bring them.
Hopefully they do.
There's a few of them coming, you know, 30s and 40 stuff.
You don't see a whole lot just because you do have to usually trailer them.
You know, they're not really drive them.
I mean, they are, but they're not, you know, they can't go speed limits and stuff like that.
But then once you hit the fifties on up, all the way to brand new stuff and we encourage anyone to bring it out.
You know, I mean, if you think it's, if you think it's worth spending the $10, and the show is $10, but you get a meal ticket, which is $10.
So if it's worth a spaghetti meal coming out.
I love going to car shows and you know, one of the ones that caught my eye a couple of years ago at a, at a different show was a station wagon.
I mean, those are things that you'd, you know, you saw him as a kid.
They're not that common anymore.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And one year we had three votes wagon bus vans there and you don't see hardly one and they all three parked together.
That was really neat.
And it's just the uniqueness of it all.
You know, just, I,
We do Pontiacs, but we got everything and I love them all.
It's just, they're so neat.
You know, just cause everyone, it's just, everyone's into something different.
That's what makes it so cool.
So, well, I have a Pontiac vibe.
So
bring her,
put her in.
Well, it is over 20 years old, I guess.
What's your favorite brand of old car, Pastor?
If I ever, if I ever wanted something, I'd like to have a VW bug.
Oh, the bug.
One
of the old sixties models.
Um,
I had an old friend, a classmate I went to college with, and he had one during college years.
And this one was the one where, of course, the engine's in back, but it had no heater.
It was just the vents were built through the door system to somehow get to the front windows and the guys in front.
We froze in front, and the guy sitting in back
was the
nice warm
one, because
he was next to the engine.
And it was a little three-speed job.
and you sit in those things and you think, there's nothing in front of me.
I'm not even sure the windshield's in front of me.
As
small as they are, but that'd be something like that.
Of course, my first car I had was, people would say, you had what?
I had a 73 Pinto.
Ran fine.
It was just turning into a rust bucket at the end over the years that I had it.
Although it it served its purpose as I
had it
during my years at the seminary in Mekwan.
Sure.
Well, that was an economy car at the time.
Oh, yeah,
it was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Luckily, nobody ever ran into you.
No, no, nobody ran into my
back end.
Oh, we want to switch a little bit and talk about the arcade.
That really excites me, John.
What's what's up with the arcade?
So starting at the beginning with arcade, um, we had a room for, uh,
youth, young adults in the building that we also have the church in.
We rented that room out to Richland Center School District for special needs.
Under that agreement arrangement, I said we're going to keep a youth room no matter what.
We got a pretty gracious grant to help
renovate a shed.
And then my son and his friends really stepped up and they said, dad, if we take on the renovation, can we buy more games?
And that really snowballed because we ended up as my family, my friends, my mom and dads, my wife, Erica's mom and dad.
pastor, a lot of people from the congregation, we all chipped in, did all the construction, saved money wherever we could, and spent it all on games.
And my son and his friends, and sometimes I got dragged along too, went all over the country and got these games.
I mean, we went out to-
Oklahoma,
you went
down to-
We went out to Oklahoma and bought a small arcade and brought all them back.
Sam's been out to Chicago, he's been above La Crosse, he's been to Minnesota, and we just
I don't know how many games are in there.
Maybe 30 plus.
We got a little bit of everything for everyone.
It's all set up for free play.
I went through most of the machines.
We got everything working pretty good.
Um, yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot of really neat stuff in there.
So all vintage John.
No, uh, some are the, some are the three quarter machines that you can actually buy at Walmart, like the arcade one up machines.
They call them at Simpson, uh, miss back man, stuff like that.
and some are actual vintage.
We got stuff from the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s onto the present.
Little bit everything.
We got some of the original NASCAR Daytona machines.
We don't have them linked yet.
We're working on that, but they both work really well.
We just got all kinds of games in there.
And
you're going to have a ribbon cutting next Saturday.
Yeah, at 1030, we're going to have the ribbon cutting and then it's all open to general public.
It's all free play.
So
one of his favorites is the Alice in Wonderland, pinball
machine.
Yeah, we got a pinball machine.
Alice in Wonderland.
This
thing is immaculate.
I don't know what year it is, but the bells and the lights all work on it.
And it looks, it looks like it's brand new right out of the box.
Oh, I love pinball.
Yeah.
That's a great, that's a great machine.
Do you know what vintage that is?
Actually, it's brand new.
Oh, it's brand new.
I put it together.
Okay.
That's why it's your favorite.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Cause the newer ones are more computerized
and
pre-1980 or whatever
it was, they were mechanical.
But like Patrick's saying, you can't tell them apart.
It's, it's, you'll notice when you, that's got a center screen in it that's, you know, that you're like, oh, that shouldn't be there.
But otherwise it plays just like a regular pinball machine.
So that's a fun.
Is there a plan to open this to the public then?
There is.
We're waiting for, for, uh,
wait until we get everything straightened out to figure out who's going to do what with that.
But yeah, we want to open it to the public.
We really want to open it to youth groups of any kind and come in and just enjoy it.
You know, so that's, that's what we're kind of gearing it towards.
Your favorite game is Alice in Wonderland then, Pastor?
No, my favorite is one of the Daytona games.
Oh,
okay.
Um, there's, there, uh,
There's just the three tracks, but you start out dead last in each one and you have to work your way up through, but you only have so many laps to do that then too.
And stuff.
And you do get bumped around
with
the cars, but the seats do move some.
You have to steer.
You got your gas pedal and brake pedal with them.
So you really have to concentrate on what you're doing to keep up with the rest of the cars that are on the screen.
But there's the pool table, there's foosball, there's the air hockey's going.
There's the basketball hoop game, there's ski ball.
There's a variety of the other arcade games and that too.
So kids could go in there for a couple of hours and not play every game.
If they went from one to the next, they could stay in there for several times and not duplicate one game.
at all.
We have a few machines there that have hundreds, if not thousands of games on them too.
So I mean, once you lock on one machine, you can get into many different games just on that machine as well.
So great.
Yeah, you can spend hours there.
Kids will have a lot of fun with that, I think.
Yeah,
I
know.
Kids of all ages.
Kids of all ages,
yeah.
What are some other things going on next Saturday then for young people, Pastor?
You've got a lot of events it looks like.
Well, we do have, we are going to be handing out these little, you know, it's, it's outreach too.
Uh-huh.
Um, it's not just fundraise, but it's outreach too.
So I got these little, these are quite popular the last few months or a couple of years, these little Jesus statues.
And we got 300, some of them all together.
And then on the ribbon on it says Jesus with the heart, you.
So Jesus loves you.
So we want to share that message with them too.
You know, hopefully encourage people to
if they're not in the area, at least go to their church, or if they're in the area of Rockbridge and Richardson Center and Hub City and so forth, you know, come on over.
We have services still at 10.15 for now, and depending on what Pastor Shuler wants to do, when he's installed, he might change the time and that, but there's always church and then Bible class afterwards, and Erica and Deb Highland, they
work at doing Sunday school whenever there's kids available.
It doesn't have to be just through September through May.
It's through the summer too and that's so and I've got two boys I'm getting lined up for catechism classes again for their second year so getting that all going and if anybody any adult wants to do you know an adult instruction class you know they can just give me a call or contact somebody in the church and I'll get in touch with them too.
and work on so that they become members of the church.
And Lord willing, Lord will continue to bless their numbers and they'll continue to grow.
Cause we plan on handing these out too.
I was thinking of gluing them to or taping them to the trophies.
So every trophy winner got one too.
But Jesus action figure.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
And there's spaghetti there next Saturday
as well.
My wife has already started making the spaghetti.
She does a phenomenal job.
I get to taste test it every year, so I'm fortunate that way.
We have a huge playground.
We got face spinning a craft.
We got tiny acres farms.
We got a bake sale.
Yeah.
Do you have somebody, you know, members that are also selling brats and pulled pork this year?
No, it's barbecue and hot
dogs.
Barbecue and hot dogs,
okay.
Yep.
And we got a craft fair.
About a little bit about the craft fair Unfortunately The person in charge that has had health issues this year.
He is on the road to recovery So if anyone's looking for spots, we have a lot of spots wide open if you want to contact myself on it if you can't get a hold of Dave or Dave We do have a lot of spots open, but I had had a lot of interest in the craft fair also We have she-shells to paint.
I can't say that twice
And we've got all kinds of crafts going on.
Simpsons, we already reserved, they got a people carrier wagon.
So Simpsons tractor right next door.
We're going to have that running around.
We've got all kinds of stuff going on.
So yeah, it's not just a car show.
There's a lot of fun events to keep everyone entertained.
So.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
You can take the kids and they can get lost in the arcade for a couple of
hours.
Oh yeah.
Well, you go to the car show and.
You can actually have a couple of meals, you know,
spaghetti
and have a brat.
Yeah, absolutely.
Works out well for Bethlehem Lutheran's fall festival next Saturday in Rockbridge Rockbridge school.
And you're still going strong.
It sounds like
John.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, one, I remember we had 90 some cars last year show up.
That's a big show.
Yes,
it is.
Sid's promise in 120.
So we'll see.
At least he says I'm going to have at least 120.
Well, we got double the number of trophies from last
year.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
So you got to
have a few more.
Yes.
You're going
to have if we have that many cars, if we have a hundred cars, it means one out of two
cars
is going to win a trophy.
Got pretty good house, especially when we take this year, we're doing it different again.
I like to keep my cars out of the show, but I want to, I want to register them.
I want people to see them, but we were putting signs on them saying can't be no, no judging, please.
um so what i'm doing is anyone who volunteers this year if they want to put their cars in they're still welcome to they pay the ten dollars but uh so it when you come in if you see a line of cars that are not in the show them are our cars
We're bringing them over there to show them off.
We love these shows as much as anyone else, but we will not be accepting trophies.
So that takes 10 to 15 right out of the equation.
So I mean, when you start talking that kind of, you know, I mean, then, then you got really, really good odds for a trophy then.
Yeah, you definitely
do.
And we'll
hope for good weather for you.
That does make a difference with the old car people as well.
I'm looking forward to seeing if there was a Volkswagen wagon there last year and
you walk by him and here he hands you a magic marker.
Sign your name
somewhere.
He
said, sign it on the back.
If it's on the front, it seems to fade quicker because if we're in rain, it gets washed off quicker.
So I signed mine in back last year.
So if he's there, I got to see if we're still in the backhand.
A Volkswagen
with autographs.
It was white.
The lower half was all white.
And I think the top half was a, it was a different, it was a two-tone color in that, but there were people signing out all sides of the, the vehicle.
So.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
Next Saturday, September 12th.
Anything either of you gentlemen would like to add here this
morning.
Um.
Well, you know doing outreach we we are gonna be doing the journey to Bethlehem this year too It falls in December 12th two weeks after Thanksgiving We're gonna try to get something put together so we can hand that out at the show Just keep us you know keep keep keep us in mind when you look at Facebook and everything We do a lot of really neat events and you know, we just want people to come
and enjoy the events with us.
I guess just another reminder again of the new pastor coming.
Paul Schuler is his name.
He and his wife Tracy will be moving down here sometime in October and installation is going to be October 25th, four o'clock in the afternoon and there will be some sort of a luncheon afterwards after the service then too.
So if people have never been to a Lutheran
church installation service, please come.
We'll make sure there's room available for them to be there.
And so they can see what that's all about and then visit with the new pastor that's there.
I'll be in the background.
For the first time in a few years.
Yes.
Well, pastor, we have certainly enjoyed getting to know you and thanks for your service there for Bethlehem Lutheran and hopefully people can beat your high score in the arcade next Saturday.
That will
be too
hard.
Good luck, gentlemen.
Thank you.
You bet.
Pastor Conrad Prell, John Felstead talking about Bethlehem Lutheran Fall Festival.
That's at Rockbridge School coming up next Saturday, September 12th, featuring Jed's Car Show, Family Fun, Arcade, Spaghetti, Craft, Fair and Swap Meet.
Lots of stuff next week.
Music.
On the first part of our morning show today, we're focusing on Cross Currents Heritage Center at Tipisaki Farm near Blue River.
Ben Moffatt, curator of events at Cross Currents Heritage Center is in the studio with us.
Good to see you again, Ben.
How are you doing?
Very well.
Thank you for having me.
Did you summer well?
Yes, except I was back in Hawaii getting prepared to come back here and we had that tropical storm Lala.
had a 40 hour power outage that was tough
oh man
yeah i didn't even realize that so yeah the big island got hit horribly really
devastating lots of damage and
yeah like a foot of rain you know a couple feet of rain just amazing
Fortunately, we didn't get any of that back here.
How did the farm go through the summer?
Farm is doing fine.
Good.
Well, let's talk a little bit about it.
You've recently had an event this past Saturday.
We
actually had two events.
Mark Kup and I presented it.
Blue River Autumn Fest marked it his talk on mastodon hunters and mound builders.
And I presented about my great aunt Lottie Coom Robertson and it was called a girl from Blue River.
And we had a very appreciative audience, lots of local folks.
My piece, I'm going to try to make a little video for our YouTube channel.
because in the spring I was visiting cousins, kum cousins, in Seattle and one of my cousins pulled out this videotape that he took from 1983 and at that time Lottie Kuhn was 80 years old in a wheelchair at the round barn motel and spinning her yarns and so my wife clipped them and we put it into a program so the people in Blue River
heard her and saw her telling these stories about being a girl in Blue River early 20th century.
A childhood completely unlike any childhood today.
She had a pony, she could go anywhere.
Six or seven years old, she had to go to the hospital in Chicago.
When it was done, they put her on a train alone.
Six, seven year old put her on a train, comes back to Blue River.
She could take the train to Lone Rock to play with her cousins.
Stay all day, come back after supper, take the train back.
And then at age 12, she learned how to drive a car.
Just amazing.
A wonder child there,
it sounds like.
So that was the morning.
And then we were double booked that afternoon.
We had artists in the farmhouse.
three Ho-Chunk artists talking about art and their processes and it went very well.
We had another good audience and then at the end of the day the sun cleared and people could hang out on the lawn, eat chocolate chip cookies, have snacks and it was really a wonderful day.
As you look over the crowd Ben, is it local people?
Is it a lot of people coming from a long ways away?
Not too long.
It's a mix.
We get some local people.
Certainly the Blue River crowd was almost entirely local.
We've gotten some people from Madison.
Some, some from Verroqua, Spring Green.
But largely people around there.
A lot of retirees.
Some young people.
You
have some things coming up here in, I always hate to say fall, but it's not going to be quite fall, but we're calling it fall foraging.
What can you tell us about?
Yeah.
So this is a chance to get some free food and you learn what is safe.
What are some of the lookalike plants?
Maybe there's a plant that, you know, part of it is edible and part of it is not.
or you can prepare it some way, you know, if you boil it a bit or saute it.
And the leader is a very dynamic woman named Abby Lehmann.
And she is the kitchen gardener and foraging expert, Ataliessen.
And she's been running these workshops at Ataliessen.
But there, of course, you're going to pay a little more.
And so she will orient people in our
19th century farmhouse where we have a lot of our gatherings.
And then people will go into our west wood lot, which has never been clear cut.
Some big old oak trees there.
And she will take about 20 people and show them what to eat, what not.
And I think she's planning to prepare a little treat at the end too.
Can you give us some examples of some of the things that she
picks?
I remember sweet Cecily.
I walked with her last fall.
Sweet Cecily was one.
That's the one I remember most, but she knows it all.
She's an expert.
It always makes me wonder the first people to
try something.
Oh, no, that ain't going to
work.
Don't eat that uncle.
Uncle Rupert did or, or I'm thinking it's the kids, you know, kids will just put stuff in their mouth.
Oh, well, they ate those berries.
Let's watch that one.
And I've noticed, uh, you know, in the last few years that there are lots of edible mushrooms that.
I would never even have, I'd be like, no, don't stay away from them.
You know, stay away from them.
They're poisonous, but a lot of people know what they're doing
out there.
Yes.
I don't think she's going to cover mushrooms as much as other things.
And that is Saturday, September 12th at one PM.
And you need to register and you register at our website, crosscurrentsheritage.org.
You scroll down to the post that says 2026 fall events, click on that and then
find that event and there's a button to push to register.
So hopefully people will do that.
Is there a number?
Is there a limit of people?
It'll be 20.
Yeah.
She doesn't want any more than 20.
Okay.
So and I think we've got about five or six already signed up.
So
September 12th, a special day.
And then I know you're going to be doing some old house tours.
Yes.
And these are September 19th and 20th at three.
October 4th at 10 you register the same place our website crosscurrentsheritage.org and go down to that fall events and this is not your typical tour partly because I'm the fifth generation to live in that house
And we have these artifacts that we can pass around, or you can handle, or you can smell.
So I like to say that you will see, hear, touch, feel, smell, and even taste history.
And I choose, we could, it's one of those situations where I've seen other
friends do tours of it, and it's just overwhelming because there's too many things.
So I've, again, sort of curated it.
Okay, what is an object that has a story attached to it?
Stories from the family, either from John Coombe, the settler who settled it in 1838, or his sons, or grandchildren.
And so every object I talk about is connected to a story, to a person.
And so you get to know a few of the family members, not everybody.
And there are some ghosts, not real ghosts, but some of John Coombs children who died young and their death haunted the family.
So there's those stories too, which are suitable to October and September, I suppose.
What about the objects?
I'm guessing there are quite a few of them that are extinct, right?
That people have no clue what they are.
Yes.
And we actually have a on our YouTube channel.
Roger Bailey from Muscaday discusses several tools.
There are two short videos where we try to stump him by showing him tools and he'll talk about how they were made and where and when.
Yeah and that's actually very fun for children to show them something and say well what do you think this is for?
And a lot of times they have no clue because it might be to help you darn socks.
or an iron without a plug, you know, that sort of thing.
It's amazing that your forefathers, you know, they chose to keep some of those things.
Were they hoarders in their day?
I think they were.
There's a story about Lottie one time as a girl going to the farm and I don't remember who was there with her.
It might have been another of the younger generation.
They said, let's clear some of this out.
The old folks were
gone to an event and so they just emptied the basement and attic and all this stuff had it on the lawn you know this is all junk and the old people came back and said put it back put
it back good thing they did
right yes and no because Bruce and I are still sorting through stuff we haven't seen everything Bruce is my brother we still haven't seen everything in there
Why do you think the the buildings have survived because there are a lot of structures that were built around that time that didn't make it?
Well, it's that old post and beam for one thing and then just a lot of care.
But then getting back to Roger Bailey, this master carpenter from Muscaday, we say he's saved four of the five buildings at one point.
We had to, with the old parlor, my mother had reprinted the wallpaper, taken a scrap of it, it was falling off the walls, and it must have been right around the time of scanners, maybe 2000 or 1999 or something, sent it off to a wallpaper company, and they had to guess at the colors it was so faded, and they reprinted it.
But we didn't want to put it up, because in the middle of the parlor there was a big sag in the ceiling,
cracks in the walls.
And Roger, having worked on these old buildings in that area for 40 years, he knew just what to do, which was put in steel girders.
Because when it was built, there was a upstairs wall five feet away from the downstairs wall.
So that was causing the sag.
That upstairs wall was pulling it down and then pulling the joists out of the ends.
So he knew to put these steel girders in and then he took all the plaster down and saw that the lath had not been overlapped.
They probably you know some teenage boys or something putting up the laugh and the seams lined up so the plaster is gonna crack So he went to the store to buy it laugh, you know eight foot laugh Not available Only like little four foot lengths He ended up making laugh in his basement over the winter in his shop
in his spare time.
Yeah, and then we got a
restoration plasterer who had worked on the Capitol in Madison.
She did the plastering and then we got a third or fourth generation wallpaper person to put it up.
So the parlor really looks like it would have in 1860s.
The houses were self-built lots of times, but a lot of times they had additions that were added on.
Is this house, does this house?
It does.
The kitchen is added on.
It was just a porch and then a summer kitchen and then
a porch, but other than that it's the same footprint, no big additions.
But this tour, we do a little bit outside and then we come in, we can see the privy, the smoke house, the outhouse I should say, the smoke house, and then you come in and you see the family room, that parlor.
is kind of the climax.
And you also get to look into the master bedroom where some of the original wallpaper is still up.
So you can see just how faded it was.
I'm guessing it had a pretty good roof over the years too.
That's the other key
to keeping a
building,
right?
Yes.
We've been pretty good about that.
And that was one thing we asked Roger to do.
And he said, oh, I'm too old.
But he'd done so much work inside.
I think he got some prices from some young guys.
And he said,
I can save you money, but I think he also felt like I'm not going to let some young guy put up a bad roof and then all the plastering and everything I've worked on is gets ruined.
So he did it himself, but he had a lift.
But he did the end though.
So the roof is a good 30, 40 year roof with, I forget the type of the force of wind it can withstand.
He got the best shingles we could get.
So that house should stand for more generations
than
it sounds like.
And I know you're also talking about the school program.
We've talked about that touched on in the past, but you're excited to be bringing young people to that house.
Yes, we want them to feel proud of where they live.
And as you know, you don't really know yourself if you don't know where you came from and your history, but also to realize
Again, how fast things have changed, you know, you just I mean some of my cousins use the outhouse, you know, there was no Toilet in there until the 1950s.
There was no bathroom in there until the 1950s.
When did you get electricity?
Do you know
I think that I don't know not exactly sure I think in that house it was in the 50s also because my mother remembers Visiting her uncle will and it was all kerosene lamps and
and candles and of course the soot from those you know stained the roof and the ceiling so so for these kids it's yeah getting a sense of that but also that there's this history right in their backyard because the site was also the site of a Native American village actually probably several villages and then right across the road is Wanik's bird man bird mound
Five miles to the east is Frank's Hill.
So you know that for Thousand years, maybe several thousand people have been living there and that's something we can all be proud of because it's We're part of that human community that has lived there.
I think maybe I've asked you before but students Impressed I'm sure by this but what what are they usually what really gets to them when you show
more?
Well, we've done high school and
the ick value is always pretty impressive.
You get a response when you bring out a chamber pot, you know, and talk about the dead of winter, you know, and... Ick factor, okay.
Yep.
Are you really going to go out there to that privy, you know, in a dead of winter?
You just got a pee, you know?
So show them that or... Yeah.
Oh, we have a cannonball and the little kids just...
are awed by that.
There's a old dinner bell for calling in the workers or I suppose for emergencies and people can get to ring that.
So those are things.
So we have set up with Riverdale Elementary that every fall we get their teachers over during their institute days last week of August and tell them what we're going to be doing
in the spring so they're prepared they can even teach some of it ahead and then in the spring when the kids are starting to get a little restless is when they do the field trips and we're also setting up a kind of outdoor classroom well in an outbuilding a former hog house we're going to put in a classroom so we can split the group in two and have two different activities
or two different speakers.
And that way in the house, we maybe only have 10 kids or so at a time.
Is there plans for welcoming other school districts too as well?
Yes.
We're going to try to set this up with Riverdale first.
Riverdale High School came in the fall, in the spring.
And Dan Pulvermacher, who's the history teacher at Richland Center, he's on one of our boards and he, we're going to try to get his students this spring too.
Um, and then, yeah, start opening it up to, uh, Bosco bell and, um, various, whoever wants to come.
Yeah.
That's great to be able to see that history.
face-to-face yes maybe it maybe it hits home to him a little bit more
I think it definitely does and it's also just such a beautiful spot on this terrace looking over the river valley it's just a it's been a gathering place for thousands of years who's a gathering place for our family and continues to be a gathering place
well Ben you recently got to ride a canoe yes
back
home didn't you
yes in June we got a invitation from the Ho Chunk Nation
Bill Quackenbush, who has since retired, it was one of his last things.
He was given, the nation was given a big cottonwood tree and they made a dugout canoe out of it where you dig it and then they burn it and dig some more and burn.
And the nation was having a canoe ride about three or four days, I forget how many days, from Portage
to the Mississippi River and he invited us to join from Muscaday to Port Andrew and there was a whole flotilla of canoes and kayaks and then this dugout and we all took turns paddling the dugout for a little bit and then when they it was a mix of Ho-Chunk other Native Americans and Euro-Americans for one of a better term.
Real community mix.
and we got off at Port Andrew and then the whole crew came up to our farmhouse and took a tour and we got to tell them what we're doing with cross currents and it was really great and great to meet some of these people and always good we feel to have the Ho-Chunk on the land telling their stories but it's it's complicated because we tell our story and that's their nightmare you know so
But
we feel it's better to be open about it rather than sweep it under the carpet.
Well, it's all a part of history.
Exactly.
And that it adds to the richness and understanding what humans do to each other, good and bad.
Because John Coombe, there are some stories where it's very friendly with the Ho-Chunk and then others where he's trying to move them along.
His house was burned.
A couple of
times.
He had two cabins burned, yeah.
Yeah.
And didn't let it stop him.
I don't know if I had two cabins burned, whether I'd go back and build a third.
Yeah.
What was your first clue, right?
Yeah.
How long did it take you as far as a canoe ride?
How long of a ride was it then?
That's not too long.
Maybe two and a half hours or so.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good.
When you're on the river, do you kind of like close your eyes and imagine what it was like for the early settlers?
Oh yeah.
Well, thanks to the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway, you can really get lost because leaf on you don't see
Anything, I mean, there are houses that were grandfathered in, but they're long stretches where it's just wild.
And we saw eagles.
I've seen kingfishers out there.
It's, it's really magical.
I'm sure it is.
Well, a lot of things coming up this fall, um, you know, and I know you're going to do some storytelling a little bit later on this fall.
Yes.
October 17th.
We have real down home storytelling then backport storytelling.
And we're bringing in a professional.
named Jim May who grew up on a farm in northern Illinois.
His father was a farmer and I think he was the youngest son so he was like his father's shadow and his father was a horse trader also and Jim is really a professional.
I met him first in Hawaii.
I think I saw him two or three times.
The state library would fly him over because he's such a well-known storyteller.
He's also won Emmys.
He's a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee.
In fact, he's going to be there again this year.
So he'll be the featured storyteller.
He'll tell at the beginning at the end.
We'll have some music in between because I like
I've seen a lot of storytelling and sometimes they go story to story to story and you don't have time to let it sink in.
So it's nice to have a bit of music in between kind of a palette cleanser, let it seep in.
And then in between we'll have a local teller named Cecilia Farron and she grew up on a century farm and she tells a very beautiful poignant story about her father and home baked bread.
And our goal is, I don't think I'm giving too much away, to start a loaf baking in the kitchen at just the right time so that when all the storytelling is done, you've got that smell and we slice up the bread, put some butter, jam, whatever, and everybody gets a taste of that.
So there's that example of tasting history.
Definitely.
And that's coming up in October.
We'll have you back and you can tell some of your own stories maybe.
Yes, that would be great.
Give us a little pregame show
for that.
That would be
great.
Great.
And so again, you want to make sure that people pre-register if they're interested in the fall foraging.
Or any of our events, you go to crosscurrentsheritage.org, scroll down to the post that says,
2026 fall events, click on that.
And then all the events are individually listed and described.
And there's a button for each to sign up.
Fall time is your favorite time, I think at the center.
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
Thanks for coming in, Ben.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Ben Moffat joining us, the Cross Current Heritage Center at Tipasaki Farm near Blue River.
And again, check out their website and their socials for the upcoming events.
We'll be back with more coming up on the morning show.
Music.
On the first part of our morning show today, we're focusing on Cross Currents Heritage Center at Tipisaki Farm near Blue River.
Ben Moffatt, curator of events at Cross Currents Heritage Center is in the studio with us.
Good to see you again, Ben.
How are you doing?
Very well.
Thank you for having me.
Did you summer well?
Yes, except I was back in Hawaii getting prepared to come back here and we had that tropical storm Lala.
had a 40 hour power outage that was tough
oh man
yeah i didn't even realize that so yeah the big island got hit horribly really
devastating lots of damage and
yeah like a foot of rain you know a couple feet of rain just amazing
Fortunately, we didn't get any of that back here.
How did the farm go through the summer?
Farm is doing fine.
Good.
Well, let's talk a little bit about it.
You've recently had an event this past Saturday.
We
actually had two events.
Mark Kup and I presented it.
Blue River Autumn Fest marked it his talk on mastodon hunters and mound builders.
And I presented about my great aunt Lottie Coom Robertson and it was called a girl from Blue River.
And we had a very appreciative audience, lots of local folks.
My piece, I'm going to try to make a little video for our YouTube channel.
because in the spring I was visiting cousins, kum cousins, in Seattle and one of my cousins pulled out this videotape that he took from 1983 and at that time Lottie Kuhn was 80 years old in a wheelchair at the round barn motel and spinning her yarns and so my wife clipped them and we put it into a program so the people in Blue River
heard her and saw her telling these stories about being a girl in Blue River early 20th century.
A childhood completely unlike any childhood today.
She had a pony, she could go anywhere.
Six or seven years old, she had to go to the hospital in Chicago.
When it was done, they put her on a train alone.
Six, seven year old put her on a train, comes back to Blue River.
She could take the train to Lone Rock to play with her cousins.
Stay all day, come back after supper, take the train back.
And then at age 12, she learned how to drive a car.
Just amazing.
A wonder child there,
it sounds like.
So that was the morning.
And then we were double booked that afternoon.
We had artists in the farmhouse.
three Ho-Chunk artists talking about art and their processes and it went very well.
We had another good audience and then at the end of the day the sun cleared and people could hang out on the lawn, eat chocolate chip cookies, have snacks and it was really a wonderful day.
As you look over the crowd Ben, is it local people?
Is it a lot of people coming from a long ways away?
Not too long.
It's a mix.
We get some local people.
Certainly the Blue River crowd was almost entirely local.
We've gotten some people from Madison.
Some, some from Verroqua, Spring Green.
But largely people around there.
A lot of retirees.
Some young people.
You
have some things coming up here in, I always hate to say fall, but it's not going to be quite fall, but we're calling it fall foraging.
What can you tell us about?
Yeah.
So this is a chance to get some free food and you learn what is safe.
What are some of the lookalike plants?
Maybe there's a plant that, you know, part of it is edible and part of it is not.
or you can prepare it some way, you know, if you boil it a bit or saute it.
And the leader is a very dynamic woman named Abby Lehmann.
And she is the kitchen gardener and foraging expert, Ataliessen.
And she's been running these workshops at Ataliessen.
But there, of course, you're going to pay a little more.
And so she will orient people in our
19th century farmhouse where we have a lot of our gatherings.
And then people will go into our west wood lot, which has never been clear cut.
Some big old oak trees there.
And she will take about 20 people and show them what to eat, what not.
And I think she's planning to prepare a little treat at the end too.
Can you give us some examples of some of the things that she
picks?
I remember sweet Cecily.
I walked with her last fall.
Sweet Cecily was one.
That's the one I remember most, but she knows it all.
She's an expert.
It always makes me wonder the first people to
try something.
Oh, no, that ain't going to
work.
Don't eat that uncle.
Uncle Rupert did or, or I'm thinking it's the kids, you know, kids will just put stuff in their mouth.
Oh, well, they ate those berries.
Let's watch that one.
And I've noticed, uh, you know, in the last few years that there are lots of edible mushrooms that.
I would never even have, I'd be like, no, don't stay away from them.
You know, stay away from them.
They're poisonous, but a lot of people know what they're doing
out there.
Yes.
I don't think she's going to cover mushrooms as much as other things.
And that is Saturday, September 12th at one PM.
And you need to register and you register at our website, crosscurrentsheritage.org.
You scroll down to the post that says 2026 fall events, click on that and then
find that event and there's a button to push to register.
So hopefully people will do that.
Is there a number?
Is there a limit of people?
It'll be 20.
Yeah.
She doesn't want any more than 20.
Okay.
So and I think we've got about five or six already signed up.
So
September 12th, a special day.
And then I know you're going to be doing some old house tours.
Yes.
And these are September 19th and 20th at three.
October 4th at 10 you register the same place our website crosscurrentsheritage.org and go down to that fall events and this is not your typical tour partly because I'm the fifth generation to live in that house
And we have these artifacts that we can pass around, or you can handle, or you can smell.
So I like to say that you will see, hear, touch, feel, smell, and even taste history.
And I choose, we could, it's one of those situations where I've seen other
friends do tours of it, and it's just overwhelming because there's too many things.
So I've, again, sort of curated it.
Okay, what is an object that has a story attached to it?
Stories from the family, either from John Coombe, the settler who settled it in 1838, or his sons, or grandchildren.
And so every object I talk about is connected to a story, to a person.
And so you get to know a few of the family members, not everybody.
And there are some ghosts, not real ghosts, but some of John Coombs children who died young and their death haunted the family.
So there's those stories too, which are suitable to October and September, I suppose.
What about the objects?
I'm guessing there are quite a few of them that are extinct, right?
That people have no clue what they are.
Yes.
And we actually have a on our YouTube channel.
Roger Bailey from Muscaday discusses several tools.
There are two short videos where we try to stump him by showing him tools and he'll talk about how they were made and where and when.
Yeah and that's actually very fun for children to show them something and say well what do you think this is for?
And a lot of times they have no clue because it might be to help you darn socks.
or an iron without a plug, you know, that sort of thing.
It's amazing that your forefathers, you know, they chose to keep some of those things.
Were they hoarders in their day?
I think they were.
There's a story about Lottie one time as a girl going to the farm and I don't remember who was there with her.
It might have been another of the younger generation.
They said, let's clear some of this out.
The old folks were
gone to an event and so they just emptied the basement and attic and all this stuff had it on the lawn you know this is all junk and the old people came back and said put it back put
it back good thing they did
right yes and no because Bruce and I are still sorting through stuff we haven't seen everything Bruce is my brother we still haven't seen everything in there
Why do you think the the buildings have survived because there are a lot of structures that were built around that time that didn't make it?
Well, it's that old post and beam for one thing and then just a lot of care.
But then getting back to Roger Bailey, this master carpenter from Muscaday, we say he's saved four of the five buildings at one point.
We had to, with the old parlor, my mother had reprinted the wallpaper, taken a scrap of it, it was falling off the walls, and it must have been right around the time of scanners, maybe 2000 or 1999 or something, sent it off to a wallpaper company, and they had to guess at the colors it was so faded, and they reprinted it.
But we didn't want to put it up, because in the middle of the parlor there was a big sag in the ceiling,
cracks in the walls.
And Roger, having worked on these old buildings in that area for 40 years, he knew just what to do, which was put in steel girders.
Because when it was built, there was a upstairs wall five feet away from the downstairs wall.
So that was causing the sag.
That upstairs wall was pulling it down and then pulling the joists out of the ends.
So he knew to put these steel girders in and then he took all the plaster down and saw that the lath had not been overlapped.
They probably you know some teenage boys or something putting up the laugh and the seams lined up so the plaster is gonna crack So he went to the store to buy it laugh, you know eight foot laugh Not available Only like little four foot lengths He ended up making laugh in his basement over the winter in his shop
in his spare time.
Yeah, and then we got a
restoration plasterer who had worked on the Capitol in Madison.
She did the plastering and then we got a third or fourth generation wallpaper person to put it up.
So the parlor really looks like it would have in 1860s.
The houses were self-built lots of times, but a lot of times they had additions that were added on.
Is this house, does this house?
It does.
The kitchen is added on.
It was just a porch and then a summer kitchen and then
a porch, but other than that it's the same footprint, no big additions.
But this tour, we do a little bit outside and then we come in, we can see the privy, the smoke house, the outhouse I should say, the smoke house, and then you come in and you see the family room, that parlor.
is kind of the climax.
And you also get to look into the master bedroom where some of the original wallpaper is still up.
So you can see just how faded it was.
I'm guessing it had a pretty good roof over the years too.
That's the other key
to keeping a
building,
right?
Yes.
We've been pretty good about that.
And that was one thing we asked Roger to do.
And he said, oh, I'm too old.
But he'd done so much work inside.
I think he got some prices from some young guys.
And he said,
I can save you money, but I think he also felt like I'm not going to let some young guy put up a bad roof and then all the plastering and everything I've worked on is gets ruined.
So he did it himself, but he had a lift.
But he did the end though.
So the roof is a good 30, 40 year roof with, I forget the type of the force of wind it can withstand.
He got the best shingles we could get.
So that house should stand for more generations
than
it sounds like.
And I know you're also talking about the school program.
We've talked about that touched on in the past, but you're excited to be bringing young people to that house.
Yes, we want them to feel proud of where they live.
And as you know, you don't really know yourself if you don't know where you came from and your history, but also to realize
Again, how fast things have changed, you know, you just I mean some of my cousins use the outhouse, you know, there was no Toilet in there until the 1950s.
There was no bathroom in there until the 1950s.
When did you get electricity?
Do you know
I think that I don't know not exactly sure I think in that house it was in the 50s also because my mother remembers Visiting her uncle will and it was all kerosene lamps and
and candles and of course the soot from those you know stained the roof and the ceiling so so for these kids it's yeah getting a sense of that but also that there's this history right in their backyard because the site was also the site of a Native American village actually probably several villages and then right across the road is Wanik's bird man bird mound
Five miles to the east is Frank's Hill.
So you know that for Thousand years, maybe several thousand people have been living there and that's something we can all be proud of because it's We're part of that human community that has lived there.
I think maybe I've asked you before but students Impressed I'm sure by this but what what are they usually what really gets to them when you show
more?
Well, we've done high school and
the ick value is always pretty impressive.
You get a response when you bring out a chamber pot, you know, and talk about the dead of winter, you know, and... Ick factor, okay.
Yep.
Are you really going to go out there to that privy, you know, in a dead of winter?
You just got a pee, you know?
So show them that or... Yeah.
Oh, we have a cannonball and the little kids just...
are awed by that.
There's a old dinner bell for calling in the workers or I suppose for emergencies and people can get to ring that.
So those are things.
So we have set up with Riverdale Elementary that every fall we get their teachers over during their institute days last week of August and tell them what we're going to be doing
in the spring so they're prepared they can even teach some of it ahead and then in the spring when the kids are starting to get a little restless is when they do the field trips and we're also setting up a kind of outdoor classroom well in an outbuilding a former hog house we're going to put in a classroom so we can split the group in two and have two different activities
or two different speakers.
And that way in the house, we maybe only have 10 kids or so at a time.
Is there plans for welcoming other school districts too as well?
Yes.
We're going to try to set this up with Riverdale first.
Riverdale High School came in the fall, in the spring.
And Dan Pulvermacher, who's the history teacher at Richland Center, he's on one of our boards and he, we're going to try to get his students this spring too.
Um, and then, yeah, start opening it up to, uh, Bosco bell and, um, various, whoever wants to come.
Yeah.
That's great to be able to see that history.
face-to-face yes maybe it maybe it hits home to him a little bit more
I think it definitely does and it's also just such a beautiful spot on this terrace looking over the river valley it's just a it's been a gathering place for thousands of years who's a gathering place for our family and continues to be a gathering place
well Ben you recently got to ride a canoe yes
back
home didn't you
yes in June we got a invitation from the Ho Chunk Nation
Bill Quackenbush, who has since retired, it was one of his last things.
He was given, the nation was given a big cottonwood tree and they made a dugout canoe out of it where you dig it and then they burn it and dig some more and burn.
And the nation was having a canoe ride about three or four days, I forget how many days, from Portage
to the Mississippi River and he invited us to join from Muscaday to Port Andrew and there was a whole flotilla of canoes and kayaks and then this dugout and we all took turns paddling the dugout for a little bit and then when they it was a mix of Ho-Chunk other Native Americans and Euro-Americans for one of a better term.
Real community mix.
and we got off at Port Andrew and then the whole crew came up to our farmhouse and took a tour and we got to tell them what we're doing with cross currents and it was really great and great to meet some of these people and always good we feel to have the Ho-Chunk on the land telling their stories but it's it's complicated because we tell our story and that's their nightmare you know so
But
we feel it's better to be open about it rather than sweep it under the carpet.
Well, it's all a part of history.
Exactly.
And that it adds to the richness and understanding what humans do to each other, good and bad.
Because John Coombe, there are some stories where it's very friendly with the Ho-Chunk and then others where he's trying to move them along.
His house was burned.
A couple of
times.
He had two cabins burned, yeah.
Yeah.
And didn't let it stop him.
I don't know if I had two cabins burned, whether I'd go back and build a third.
Yeah.
What was your first clue, right?
Yeah.
How long did it take you as far as a canoe ride?
How long of a ride was it then?
That's not too long.
Maybe two and a half hours or so.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good.
When you're on the river, do you kind of like close your eyes and imagine what it was like for the early settlers?
Oh yeah.
Well, thanks to the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway, you can really get lost because leaf on you don't see
Anything, I mean, there are houses that were grandfathered in, but they're long stretches where it's just wild.
And we saw eagles.
I've seen kingfishers out there.
It's, it's really magical.
I'm sure it is.
Well, a lot of things coming up this fall, um, you know, and I know you're going to do some storytelling a little bit later on this fall.
Yes.
October 17th.
We have real down home storytelling then backport storytelling.
And we're bringing in a professional.
named Jim May who grew up on a farm in northern Illinois.
His father was a farmer and I think he was the youngest son so he was like his father's shadow and his father was a horse trader also and Jim is really a professional.
I met him first in Hawaii.
I think I saw him two or three times.
The state library would fly him over because he's such a well-known storyteller.
He's also won Emmys.
He's a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee.
In fact, he's going to be there again this year.
So he'll be the featured storyteller.
He'll tell at the beginning at the end.
We'll have some music in between because I like
I've seen a lot of storytelling and sometimes they go story to story to story and you don't have time to let it sink in.
So it's nice to have a bit of music in between kind of a palette cleanser, let it seep in.
And then in between we'll have a local teller named Cecilia Farron and she grew up on a century farm and she tells a very beautiful poignant story about her father and home baked bread.
And our goal is, I don't think I'm giving too much away, to start a loaf baking in the kitchen at just the right time so that when all the storytelling is done, you've got that smell and we slice up the bread, put some butter, jam, whatever, and everybody gets a taste of that.
So there's that example of tasting history.
Definitely.
And that's coming up in October.
We'll have you back and you can tell some of your own stories maybe.
Yes, that would be great.
Give us a little pregame show
for that.
That would be
great.
Great.
And so again, you want to make sure that people pre-register if they're interested in the fall foraging.
Or any of our events, you go to crosscurrentsheritage.org, scroll down to the post that says,
2026 fall events, click on that.
And then all the events are individually listed and described.
And there's a button for each to sign up.
Fall time is your favorite time, I think at the center.
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
Thanks for coming in, Ben.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Ben Moffat joining us, the Cross Current Heritage Center at Tipasaki Farm near Blue River.
And again, check out their website and their socials for the upcoming events.
We'll be back with more coming up on the morning show.