The Chris Moeller Archives

"Newhall, Newhall, You're the town for me"

My hometown of Newhall, Iowa celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding next weekend, June 8th through 10th. Party planners will have their work cut out for them to match the celebration of the town's centennial in 1982, a formative moment of my childhood.

My parents' brothers and sisters, and many of my grandparents' siblings and their children as well, were on hand for the big event a quarter century ago. The Newhall Public School building (PS1?) had not yet been demolished, though district consolidation had sent the local students off to the neighboring town of Van Horne over a decade earlier. If I recall correctly, census figures put the town's population during the 1980s at 799, and there must have been at least that many people in the school gymnasium on that opening Thursday night for the Centennial Pageant, a musical written by a local husband and wife team, school teachers Mike and Linda Peitz. This pageant would be my dramatic debut (though not my stage debut as I had already played the piano in a few recitals).

My twin brother Aaron and I, (both) seven-years-old at the time, portrayed Hugo and Herald Grovert, respectively, in a scene set at the real-life, but long-shuttered Moeller Ice Cream Parlor on Newhall's Main Street (yes, relation), and I remember feeling a great sense of pride that I got to portray Herald because he was still living in 1982 and attended the performance. (Hugo, evidently, had been killed in World War I.) The elderly Herald, then in his 90s, had been pointed out to me at church and he happened to live with his wife across the street from the high school. Writer's embellishment added now: I stayed with Herald for a few weeks that spring and was able to get a good sense of his mannerisms, his life's motivations and regrets, and heard stories about his youthful love for ice cream that I could channel during my performance.

Later in the production, Aaron and I were used again in a scene during which a group of kids were chased around town (that is, down the theater aisle) by some crazy man with a pitchfork (I forget the dramatic context). The crazy man was portrayed in the pageant by the proprietor of Wally's Grocery, Wally Embretson, one of the most gregarious, and outstanding guys of his or any other time... for a Cubs fan. Wally caught me in the aisle during the actual performance, as I recall, and lifted me up over his shoulder, even though that wasn't in the script. (He had been to the Strasberg school, I think.)

Beyond that episode, I remember a lot of dancing girls in another scene, long legs and garters, and a big finale musical number with the lyric-- "Newhall, Newhall/You're the town for me/There are others that are larger/or finer, far to see/But mostly, dear old Newhall/something, something, something/Newhall, dear old Newhall/I love you best of all."


The parade was held Saturday morning, and that was the one and only time I ever remember getting caught in a traffic jam in town. Coming into Newhall from our farm house four and half miles north and east, cars were backed to what's instinctively called "the Newhall curve" and to old Ralph Boddicker's place. 1982 may have been the last year that the railroad, responsible for the very existence of the town, still rumbled through-- once or twice a day past Chuck's filling station and the NewCo grain elevator, which my dad would later manage, but that wasn't the reason for the backup. The streets were jam-packed. We gathered with the Moeller cousins at my Grandpa and Grandma's house on 5th Street (the southern edge of town).

At this particular time, Dad was the proprietor of the Farmer's Depot in nearby Shellsburg, a grain store taking up residence inside of an old rail station. My folks and their pals designed and built a parade float, utilizing fabric and chicken wire to create a swell, unlicensed, likeness of the Muppets' Miss Piggy coming out from inside of a birthday cake. The Farmers' Depot would soon fall prey to the Farm Crisis of the '80s, but the Miss Piggy was housed in one of our upstairs bedrooms for the next eleven years, even as I lived in mortal fear of both the character's unperturbed facial expression and her lethal karate chops.

The Newhall Quasqui-Centennial in 2007 offers up athletic competition in the form of a 5 kilometer race (when did Newhall go metric?), but it's unlikely to produce anything like the cutthroat horseshoe throwing contests of the early 1980s. Newhall's Central Park, party headquarters for celebrations new and old, then and now, had its horseshoe pits dug up and sodded over in the early '90s, but in 1982, it was still a daily occurrence to see some of the old men in town gathered in the afternoon by "the pits." The elder among them were old enough to have worked the horses when the animals still did the heavy lifting on the farms. I remember a large gathering on the Saturday afternoon of the Centennial. The pits were located on the corner directly adjacent to the Lutheran Church-- presumably, to discourage gambling.

That Saturday evening, Newhall's talent was on display. Pictures were taken of all the families, like ours-- Mom, Dad, Aaron, and me, that dressed in the period costumes of the old settlers, men like Jebediah Newhall. Many of the men, like my Dad, grew out long facial hair for the beard-growing competition, and I stopped shaving, too, as I recall. My grandpa, Elmer Moeller, sang with a chorus, as he was inclined to do. The big wheel races were on, with a number of future NASCAR afficionados at the foot pedals, and one of the headlining acts of the evening was a Ralston-Purina-sponsored pop-music band, whose members Aaron and I got to meet personally because Dad was the local Purina man.

If I could go back to one moment in my life, that Newhall Centennial weekend might have to be the one. To have had all of the family together, and to be surrounded by good friends and neighbors, bonding over our own distinctive community, was-- and is-- something very special. I can't wait for Saturday.

posted by CM @ 1:06 PM