This is where it started: my first visit to the first community: Rugby, North Dakota, January, 2003. Why does one go to Rugby in January, you ask? If you want to see what a town is made of, you have to see it in the tough season, as well as the sweet, and January in Rugby is the tough season.
I met Dale and Marilyn Niewoehner
yesterday afternoon at their apartment above the funeral home. They live in a museum - quite a collection of elephants of various sorts which belong to Marilyn; of ocean-liners, which belong to Dale; and various other obsessions sprinkled in, including a collection of most of the translations of Gone With the Wind. Dale and Marilyn salvage architectural features from old buildings, so you'll see stained glass windows from a church, doors from a school, etc.
I interviewed Dale in his capacity as the most vocal advocate for keeping Amtrak alive and well in Rugby; in his capacity as mayor of the city; and to talk about his family's story in North Dakota.
Marilyn prepared a wonderful supper for us, chicken baked with rice, broccoli, salad, ice cream and a Rippin' Good cookie for dessert. The salesman for one of Dale's suppliers lives in Ripon, Wisconsin, and brings the Niewoehners cookies from the cookie factory there, just eight miles from my home.
Dale has his obsessions - Amtrak service to Rugby, ocean-liners, old bells, old fountain pens. Marilyn has her obsessions - sewing, a collection of sewing machines, reproductions of women's clothing from 1860-1907 that she sewed herself, elephants, Gone With the Wind. The Niewoehrners showed me their apartment, Dale showed me the funeral parlor on the first floor, both of them took me to the old Presbyterian church next door where Marilyn runs her business selling embroidered goods, "Em-broideries." She also has the Victorian Dress Museum in the former Episcopal church the Niewoehners own, where she displays the forty dresses she has sewn, some of them award-winning reproductions. At one time the Niewoeh-ners also owned the Methodist church in Pleasant Lake but they've since sold it.
When I return to Rugby I will interview Marilyn for her perspective on life in Rugby, for she comes to the topic as an outsider and one who doesn't seem to accept the accepted wisdom. Dale introduces himself to new people in town as Rugby's "trouble-maker." Both Dale and Marilyn appear to bring passion to whatever they do, enthusiasm for what Rugby has to offer, and - having come into the community from outside - perhaps a bit of distance that those born and bred in the city can't manage.
To be continued....
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