Marion VanCleef and John Lange make milo pan- cakes for Milo Day in Carleton, Neb., a community cel- ebration begun 60 years ago by a Lutheran pastor.
Lutherans flip a milo crop …
and come up with community pancakes By Tim Pallesen
is town was small and getting smaller in 1951 when George Obermeyer, a Lutheran pastor,
came up with an idea to keep Carleton, Neb., on the map. Carleton farmers were the first in Nebraska to grow milo as livestock feed. So Obermeyer organized the Carleton Community Club to plan what would become an annual Milo Day celebration. “The rural population was declin- ing and people felt there was nothing to be proud about,” his daughter, Trudy Obermeyer Hutton, recalled. “This was my father’s attempt to draw the community together. This idea gave them something to be proud about.” As a gimmick to bring people to
Milo Day, the ladies of Zion Lutheran Church created the first recipe for milo pancake batter. Carleton’s three other churches joined the Commu- nity Club’s effort. “But the pancake recipe was kept secret for years,” said Rosalie Lange, whose mother-in-law Dorothy Lange was one of the three who created the recipe. “Nobody had it but the Lutherans.” The population of Carleton has fallen from 350 to 80 since Ober-
12 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
USED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE DESHLER RUSTLER
meyer had his idea for milo pancakes. But each Septem- ber, Milo Day is huge for families in Thayer and Fillmore counties, and it keeps Carleton on the map—at least for south-central Nebraska. Bands from a half-dozen towns march in the Milo Day parade at the start of each school year. Candidates from each town compete to be crowned Milo Queen. And everyone eats milo pancakes.
“Surrounding towns say they aren’t able to sustain anything that compares to it,” said Jonathan K. Jensen, pastor of Zion. Jensen is also president of the Carleton Community Club, which celebrates its 60th anniversary at this year’s Milo Day on Sept. 10. Obermeyer, the son of German immigrants, grew up on a farm outside Albert Lea, Minn. “My father had an inventive side,” Hutton said. “He truly believed that you bloom where you are planted. He wanted Zion Lutheran to have significance.”
But coming up with a crop-related idea wasn’t easy because Carleton
doesn’t have Albert Lea’s rich farm soil. Milo, a coarse sorghum never before considered for human consumption, grows well on the dry lands of Nebraska. Lange recalled that Zion used a coffee grinder to prepare the milo for the first Milo Day. “Those original pancakes were death wads in the stomach that required a lot of syrup,” said Peggy Smith, the organizer for this year’s Milo Day. Today’s pancakes are fluffier. Milo Day became extra special last September when Miss Nebraska Teresa Scanlon appeared with the queen candidates and princesses in Carleton before she was crowned Miss America four months later. Jensen expects double the number of towns sending candidates for Milo Queen this year. “We’re going to get quite a boost from the Miss America thing,” he said. After her Carleton visit, Scanlon wrote in her blog: “It’s the communi-
ties like Carleton that remind me why I love being from a small town. The community support is truly incredible and the festivity feels like a family reunion.”
Obermeyer would have been touched. “If ever a person starts to feel that the country is going downhill, that there
isn’t a soul left who really cares or that they are alone in the world,” Scanlon wrote, “they need not look further than the small towns of Nebraska.”
Pallesen is a reporter for the Blair [Neb.] Enterprise.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52