Windmills and Washing Machines

The last thing I expect to find in central Iowa is an authentic, working, imported from The Netherlands windmill. But there it stands, its broad latticed arms trimmed in sailcloth, towering four stories over the heart of Pella, Iowa—a bona fide, sparkling clean Dutch town in the middle of the heartland.

Meaning “place of refuge,” Pella was founded in 1847 by 800 people who fled Holland for the promise of religious freedom in America. (And, yes, it’s also the home of Pella Windows.) One of the travel-weary immigrants described Iowa in her journal as “a sea of billowing grasses.” Change “grasses” to corn and soybeans, and the description still holds. The land here undulates and swells with green, very different from the flatter Nebraska I have left behind.

I’ve been staying in Newton, several miles north of Pella. Newton is a “central square” kind of town, instead of a “main street” place, but all-American just the same. Uncle Nancy’s Coffee Shop makes great lattes and fresh chicken with fruit salads and takes only cash. The clean white stone of the 150-year-old Jasper County Courthouse dominates a square of lawn. In-town services include a bank, library, antique stores, hair salon, clothing and home-good stores, furniture shop, and fire station.

Beyond the western boundaries, where houses, railroad, and industry roam, a man drives his pickup truck across his lawn, dragging a mower attachment behind. A drive-in movie theater (yes, they still exist) shows Harry Potter. Roads lead west to Des Moines, east to Iowa City, and in all directions to numerous hiking trails and a wildlife refuge. My stay is too short to take in these other attractions, but I keep busy enough with the ones I pursue.

Iowa soy fields.

Newton’s primary business gain has also been its greatest loss: the humble beginnings and ultimate recent closure of Maytag manufacturing. I learn this from a personal tour given by a 5-foot-2, thick-girthed, white-haired woman with a ready smile, horrid breath, and the desire to tell every detail she knows about every item in the Jasper County Historical Museum.

I usually prefer to mosey through a museum, reading placards that interest me, ignoring others, pursuing a solitary path. But this museum has docents. And not just any docents: 70- and 80-year-old gals who have lived practically their whole lives in or around Newton, and who will, at the slightest chance (which is apparently your merely walking through the door), not only cheerily greet you, but also cleave to you like some flesh-and-blood audio guide that you can’t pry loose or mute.

My self-appointed tour guide is Marion. After some initial irritation at her persistent intrusion and a few gentle but failed attempts to go my own way, I finally give in and join her like a docile houseguest, letting her tell me about every display that I easily could have read about for myself. In truth, aside from the need to always position myself discreetly downwind of her halitosis, her presence turns out to be a good thing.

First, her age and life experience give such an interesting perspective on everything in the museum that we are soon chatting about all manner of farming, early 20th century life, and things like dishware and furniture and books that she remembers using and I remember growing up around because my grandparents or mom had kept them. (I had even bought a few similar items at antique stores myself.)

The other reason she is good to have around is that the Jasper County Museum is two stories stuffed floorboard to rafter, and a bit of a maze to navigate properly. Without Marion there, I would certainly have missed some treasures in this place. We walked through every twist and turn, and I found myself completely engrossed by the tour.

Hands down, this museum has the largest display of washing machines and Maytag memorabilia around. Marion and I laughed over all the new-fangled ways people have developed to wash clothing, and marveled at how Maytag managed to stay ahead of competitors by doing such things as creating the first agitator washer. The closure of the plant in 2007 was a big economic blow to the town (bought out by Whirlpool). The huge factory buildings are now used to build wind turbines.

Washing machines of really olden days.

Washers that some readers may even recognize.

And one like I used just last week.

Maytag, however, is still a big name in Newton, and I’m not just talking about the Maytag Park and Pool, one of the five (count them, five) public parks sprinkled within the few square miles that comprise Newton proper.

I’m talking cheese. Bleu cheese, in fact. Maytag Dairy Farms, while no relation to Maytag appliances except the ownership family, continues to ship its locally made product all over the US. Their facility is open for tours (darn, I arrived too late), and they offer free samples of all the goodies the sell. The white cheddar was good, and the blue (as they spell it) is definitely sharp and tasty. Happily, it freezes.


A road sign en route to Pella announces, “Adopt A Highway: Benedict Bat and Shrew Crew.” A Google search explains this baffling and amusing entity: a Dr. Russell Benedict from Pella’s Central College is in charge of the Indiana Bat Survey and, no doubt, teaches about these flying mice and other small rodents. I can imagine the reputation he must have to call his followers the “bat and shrew crew.”

The Dutch town of Pella is so much more than a tourist town, and very unlike Solvang, CA, or Leavenworth, WA, with their ubiquitous over-decorated buildings, touristy shopping, and everything set up as Swedish or German fru-fru. Pella does have its small share of Dutch souvenir shops and an annual Tulip Festival extravaganza, but it’s a place where people live, not just a place where tourists come to visit, shop, eat Dutch food, and then leave (although they do that, too). There is real pride of roots and Holland here. The central square is at the heart of a residential area. The streets are clean. The décor is understated and rational to the purpose of an area or building. And the museums are, for the lack of a better word, real.

Take the Scholte House, for instance. It’s the only estate I’ve ever toured where wallpaper is allowed to peel, carpets to be threadbare, decorative fringe to show the wear of inquisitive child’s hands from four generations of inhabitants, and ceilings to show water damage from the natural aging of a home. The caretaker, a slight brunette in her mid to late fifties, lives in the house, handles and cleans its furnishings every day, runs the small gift shop, and answers a slew of questions about any personal effect that catches my fancy. (Scholte was the preacher who led his flock across the Atlantic and the wilds of America to found Pella. He had married a woman who enjoyed the good life of the French, so the house was elegantly appointed in its day.)

In an Escher-like time warp, the Scholte sitting room today is almost identical to what it looks like in the black and white photo on the table--a picture of the elderly granddaughter sitting in the same room. The painted portrait, several art objects, and much of the furnishings are in their original locations as when she lived there.

The iron chest that held the immigrants’ entire stash of gold--about $25,000--to start their lives anew. A cleverly crafted locking mechanism is embedded in the lid, while the locks in the front are fake.

The head of a walking cane that Scholte received from President Lincoln. It was common for Lincoln to give canes in gratitude for a service received (Scholte was Lincoln’s selection for Ambassador to Austria, but Congress said Scholte couldn’t take the job because he wasn’t US born). I looked in awe at this artifact, imagining Mr. Lincoln himself may have handled it before giving it away.

I had been encouraged by customers at the Maytag Dairy to be sure to visit the bakeries and meat markets in Pella. Boy, were they right. Jaarsma Bakery and Vander Ploeg Bakery both offer tasty pastries like almond-filled “Dutch letters” (I’m really sorry I bought only one of these big S-shaped cookies in my sampling), poppy seed muffins, fresh-baked bread like robust “Crackin’ Good Wheat Bread” and soft, white “crinkle bread,” and Dutch imports like “Friese gember kruidkoek—Frisian Ginger Cake.”

At Ulrich’s Meats I buy pre-cooked prime rib and fresh bologna (it looks more like salami, but isn’t as salty), then get a deli picnic lunch at In’t Veld’s Meat Market and Sandwiches. Here they accept my credit card at the deli register, withdraw cash from the meat register, and pay the till in the deli register to complete the transaction. The fancy financial footwork has something to do with keeping the accounts separate, but both the sandwich maker and I laugh over the process.

Lunch of a tiny Dutch bologna “reuben”--the bread was about 3" round.

A view of the town square from my picnic spot in the central park.

Even the cheese comes in Dutch shapes: tulips, clogs, and windmills.

Pella, bright and clean.

A “canal” runs through it.

A hideaway courtyard has beautiful tile paintings of past Dutch life. A glockenspiel chimes the hour nearby.

The 1850s style windmill was built in 2002. Crafted in Holland, disassembled and shipped to Iowa, and reassembled by the Dutch carpenters and mill specialists brought in for the job. It’s a fully functioning grain mill built to Dutch design and American building code. The whole wheat flour makes wonderful pancakes (I can attest).

The blades and their folded sailcloth. On exceptionally windy days, the blades are tethered to the framework. They’re also grounded against damage during electrical storms (lightning strike is the most common demise of windmills).

Like a lighthouse, a Dutch windmill is often the home of the operator. That blue, elevated cabinet is the bed, no more than four feet long--the Dutch of the 1850s slept propped up on pillows, believing it better for their health.

A typical Dutch foot warmer...add a pan of hot coals and toes stay toasty.

Sixteen kinds of wood are used in the mill, each for a specific purpose according to its strength, weather resistance, resilience, etc.

Testing the flour.

Multiple grades of output.

A bonus, room-sized display of Holland in miniature. All it needed was sound effects. I could swear the boats bobbed in the water when I wasn’t looking.

Behind (and part of) the windmill museum is an extensive and fascinating historical village that depicts Dutch life and business over about 100 years in Pella. This thatched area is a replica of an underground home the immigrants used in their first seasons in Pella. Barely tall enough to stand in, muddy floors, and roofed with wood poles and straw. Apparently, this kind of home was familiar from their homeland.

Cookie cutter form typical of a Dutch bakery. Like many of the buildings in the historical village, the bakery is open and active during the annual Tulip Festival in spring.

Clogs in varying states of construction, which they make and sell on site. A schedule of volunteer work shifts during the tulip festival was still posted.

A 100-year-old spelling cabinet, complete with punctuation marks and diphthongs like ae, au, uu, and other sounds (remember, this is Dutch). How I would have loved having something like this as a child.

Honest, this was already spelled out!

Local pharmacy of old.

Couldn’t resist a photo of this instrument of hair torture.

A working calliope called the Goliath. A smaller, less garish version was called the David (I’m not making this up).

Wyatt Earp’s “duplex”; he lived in the part at the right. The exterior wooden steps have dips in the middle from the thousands of feet using them over the years; when iced up, they are so hazardous that they’re off limits for tours during winter’s worst.

The original pulpit that Dominie (Reverend) Scholte shipped all the way across the Atlantic from Holland. Gorgeous carvings.

Back at Newton, girls take up the library chair’s offer to “Please take note, my arms are wide. Bring a friend (or two!) for a short ride. Play, tell a joke or just sit and be, but come back any time to see me--and read.”

A 5-foot tall “Fantasy Lizard” guards the library lawn.

After all the touring, Patchouli helps me with my newest form of entertainment, found at a Newton antique shop: a book of Wordoku, a kind of sudoku that uses letters instead of numbers and spells a 9- to 10-letter word in every puzzle.