Style and Class and Dr. De Lespinasse

Stanley Wiersma's Style and Class quite sweetly documents the cultural differences between two small towns in Dutch northwest Iowa, rivals in all things except what he would have characterized as something akin to a community ethos. Style and Class is a collection of poems that are so, only because they're printed in stanzas; they don't rhyme and they aren't characterized by some artsy economy of words or images. I'm not sure what an English teacher would do with Style and Class, and I was an English teacher.

No matter. The poems work, and the collection is a ball, in great part because Wiersma rehearses tales of yore in a fashion that defines those two towns, great rivals, in giggles and smirks that somehow, thereby, approximate undeniable truth to those of us who live here and recognize unique characters. Orange City, he says, has class--Sioux Center, style. Class begets poffertjes on Main Street; style begets a Wal-Mart on the south edge of town. Style loves bucks; class loves decorum. Style is wild; class is not. Style gets a kick out of cruisin'; class adores tulips. Sioux Center loves Casey's Bakery; Orange City loves Brad's Breads.

Last night, we set up 120 chairs and stuck them into every available open space of the museum, but Orange City filled them, all of them, to watch a readers theater presentation that focused on the life of a man of real old-country aristocratic class, a man who graced city streets at the very dawn of the town's existence. His name was Dr. Adolf Fredrik Henry De Lespinasse, a name so heady to pronounce that I've heard, in the past week, three distinct variations.

De Lespinasse (my preference rhymes, sort of, with "messy") had royal blood in his veins, knew it, showed it, and really wanted you to be aware of it. In addition to the precious liquid circulating through him, he was a Renaissance man, by trade a doctor, but by impulse a politician and by sheer craft, an artist. He hated conventions, especially those that grew out of old-time religion like that practiced by most residents of the town where he lived, Orange City. He started his own church in fact, called it "the Modern Church," built it himself at the same time the very serious Reformed Church built their first house of worship. 

Needless to say, the man's own "Modern Church" never reached mega- status, and its bell tower eventually turned, inauspiciously, into an outhouse, much to religious Orange City's glee (no irreligious Orange City existed, it seems, in 1880.)

But Orange City couldn't help but admire the man, because at medicine he was verifiable royalty. And he knew their language, even if he didn't share their reverences. He healed their diseases, made on-the-money diagnoses, dispensed his own researched and created medicines, and made the people whole, even if he wasn't particularly taken with their creeds and confessions. And he did it all in the Dutch language.

The researcher who spent some significant time discovering the story, a former resident of Orange City, Nella Kennedy, created a readers theater presentation we staged last night at the museum, where we played the piece to the hilt before an eager audience whose giggling throughout made it clear that a wonderful time was had by all.

125 people, a full house, showed up for a show that featured a Freemason Unitarian very few of them had ever heard of, a man who was barely a footnote in the town's 150-year history.

That kind of full house, that kind of joy, that kind of experience, could never have happened in Sioux Center because Orange City is interested in such things. Orange City has class, in case you're wondering, and my telling you that it does, is simple proof that Stanley Wiersma wasn't wrong.

Today, I'll run back to Sioux Center to return that cocktail table we used for last night's performance. I'm sure I'll stop at Wal-Mart. 

But last night, I'll have you know, Prof. Stanley Wiersma, that this long-time resident of Sioux Center and present resident of Alton, was more than happy, was thrilled, in fact, to be from very classy Orange City.