Weaving Together Community, One Maypole at a Time

Minutes after Chris and I pulled into our friends Barbara and Bill’s backyard in Clutier, Iowa, their next-door neighbor appeared at the edge of the lawn. I imagine that’s just what you do in a town with a population of 200 when a big, white camper van with Montana plates rolls in: you investigate.

“I’m Linda,” she introduced herself, walking toward me with an extended hand. “You must be here for the wedding,” she smiled.

While Chris unwound a hundred feet of extension cord to connect our rig to power, Neighbor Linda pulled her sweater closer around herself, and expressed her distaste for Iowa’s unseasonably cold spring weather.

“The daffodils are two weeks late, if you can believe it.”

She asked me how I knew Barbara and Bill, and I told her how I’d met Barbara in 2001 at a writing workshop in Prescott, Arizona, and that we’d been friends ever since.

Then Neighbor Linda mentioned that her own partner was named Bill, too, and that the house on the other side of theirs was occupied by a couple whose names were also Bill and Linda.

I joked that since Barbara wasn’t changing her last name, maybe she should start a new marital tradition by changing her first name. She could become Linda, to complete the neighborhood trifecta.

Neighbor Linda liked my joke, which of course made me like her.

We must have passed the security clearance, because without further ado, she headed back toward her house, waving over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow!”

Across the street at the Z.C.B.J. Hall, preparations for the next day’s event were well underway.

Chris and I had been assigned to help Ardene and Gerry, a couple of local people that Barbara had engaged as her wedding organizers.

Ardene, former mayor of Clutier, and secretary of the Clutier Betterment Committee, was also the person who scheduled events at the Z.C.B.J. Hall. When Barbara inquired about renting the place for her wedding, Ardene mentioned that she happened to also be a decorator and event planner. And there you have it; a complete wedding in one fell swoop.

It seemed there was nothing Ardene didn’t do, but in the event that there was, she had her friend Gerry to pick up the slack.

Gerry, it turns out, had spent years as a purveyor of bull semen for artificial insemination in the beef production industry, a job that took him all over the globe before returning to the family farm in Clutier.

“Now I’m just a picker,” he said, chuckling, describing his business of procuring antiques and collectibles. “I was a picker before pickin’ was cool,” Gerry said with a wink. As I watched him use a broom handle to expertly weave tulle into a trellis positioned over what would become the pie table, it was apparent that he was a decorator before decorating was cool, too.

Ardene was at work with yards of brightly colored ribbon that she was attaching to the top of a ten-foot Greek column that looked like it had once been used as a prop in a play, or for an elaborate toga party.

“When Barbra and Bill set their wedding date as May first, I knew right away there had to be a Maypole,” Ardene said over the loud clicks of the staple gun, smiling to herself.

As Chris and I arranged flowers and greenery, Ardene and Gerry shared bits of the story of the Zapadni Cesko Bratrske Jednota Hall, which, given the mouthful of a name it had, was always known by its initials. Built in 1901 by Czech settlers, it was designated for community meetings, dinners, graduations, dances, and other social events. At one time, it had even housed the Clutier Public Library.

But if you asked Ardene, it was really all about the dances.

“People used to come from all over Tama county for those dances,” Ardene reminisced, looking out across the empty dance floor. “They would pack this place, shoulder to shoulder.”

She went on to describe one of the hall’s unique features: the 75-year-old advertising curtain that hung behind the stage, painted with promotions for area businesses, displaying their two-digit phone numbers.

“I still remember the lumber yard was 54,” said Ardene, whose mother had been the main switchboard operator until the dial telephones started showing up in Clutier in 1965. “And now we’ve got these stupid things,” she laughed, pointing to a smartphone in a glittery case. She shrugged gently, “I guess change is part of life.”

There was one change, however, that Ardene, Gerry, and the townspeople of Clutier were not willing to abide by.

By 2019, operating costs at the Z.C.B.J. hall outweighed any revenue that was coming in, and the list of costly deferred maintenance was growing. It seemed the only answer was to sell it, likely to a buyer interested only in the building materials, with demolition on the mind.

Enter the Clutier Betterment Association, of which Gerry is president, and Ardene is the treasurer. The group spearheaded a creative fundraising campaign that not only kept the lights on, but financed a new roof, and windows to boot.

“Replacing the siding is the next phase,” Gerry said, weaving ribbon and silk flowers into the lattice archway under which vows would be exchanged. “Once we raise the money, that is.”

I recalled Barbara and Bill’s wedding invitation, refreshingly devoid of links to a gift registry. “No gifts please,” it read, then, “Contributions may be made to Z.C.B.J Restoration Project.” I was glad I’d brought my checkbook.

The wedding ceremony the next day could be a full-length column unto itself, but for our purposes here, I’ll fast-forward to the part after dinner, when, even before the last forkful of pie was shoveled in, the dancing began.

As guests were summoned by Elvis, Van Morrison, and Pharrell Williams, the dance floor was reanimated by the human presence it had been aching for.

After a few warm-up songs and, of course, the Chicken Dance, Ardene and Gerry carried the Maypole out to the middle of the dance floor.

On cue, the music transitioned from ABBA into a traditional Czech polka.

“This is a good one,”Ardene said, nodding her approval in the direction of the makeshift DJ booth, where Sara, a friend of Barbara’s who had recently moved to Iowa from New York City, played music from her iPhone through the sound system.

At first, everyone just grabbed ends of ribbon and started dancing freeform, like rambunctious dogs getting wound up in their leashes. But it turns out there is actually a proper way to dance around a Maypole, and one of the wedding guests was in the know. She led the group into a joyful orchestration of over, under, over, under; the movement of neighbors passing in opposite directions wove the ribbons around the pole into a colorful braided pattern that, somehow, we turned around and danced our way out of.

As we danced the dance, round and round, again and again, I flashed to a memory of when I worked in the Grand Canyon on a trail crew back in the 1990s. I remember lying on my back on a slab of sandstone long after dark, watching the blinking lights of a commercial jet, wondering if anyone on that plane had a clue about what they were flying over. I wondered the same that night in Clutier, if anybody on a plane would know that they were flying over a 120-year-old dance hall whose life had recently been spared, and that the people dancing around a Maypole on a butter-soft dance floor were having so much fun that their faces hurt from smiling. It seemed to me we’d be hard to miss, because from where I stood at the end of a teal colored ribbon, the glow from that room wouldn’t be missed from an airliner, or even from outer space.

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