CLARKSDALE, MISSISSIPPI
When you walk the streets of Clarksdale, Mississippi, you can still hear the voice of blues legend Robert Johnson – ringing from the shop windows as well as from passing cars. There’s a revival going on here and it’s all about the blues – about a respect for the first generation bluesmen who are honored and revered.
But it’s not just about a cultural renaissance. The blues pays, a concept that folks from all walks of life have begun to latch on to.
Filed under Americana, Mississippi River Town, On CNN, Small Business Success
HANNIBAL, MISSOURI
Like unto Samuel Clemen’s legendary protagonist, Tom Sawyer, Alex Addison, the present-day, barefoot ambassador of Hannibal, is all business. “I see [riding the economic downturn] not as a challenge but as a goal – it’s starting to click, [things locally are] going to be really good,” explained Alex, age 13, holding his own in a round-table interview with Mayor Roy Hark, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Terry Sampson, and City Planner Jeff LaGarce.
Taking a day out of his busy schedule as Hannibal’s official “Tom”, Alex took me for a tour of ‘America’s Hometown’ with the polished grace of a professional politician. Together, we visited everybody from the local, modern-day judge, to the minister, to of course, the city’s old-school mayor.
As we talked about the building blocks of America – of what made America great – I learned that Twain’s literature, along with a now bustling Main Street, is making all the difference, at least locally here in ‘America’s Hometown’. There is a buzz in the air along Main Street, as shopkeepers brave the financial crisis in hopes of a year that for many is landing solidly in the black.
The trick, as far as I could see, was a love and rallying cry from business owners and citizens alike to preserve the downtown district. “Preservation doesn’t cost – it pays,” exhorted local resident and former PBS television personality, Bob Yapp.
After traveling the world as a foremost expert on home restoration, with his own show on both PBS and NPR, Mr. Yapp decided to settle for good here in Hannibal, describing himself as one of “Hannibal’s expats” who “are coming to Hannibal [with a love of Hannibal’s] architecture.”
But it isn’t just Mr. Yapp’s generation of eclectic friends, ranging from potter Steve Ayers to the next-door Bed and Breakfast innkeepers of the Dubach Inn, that are excited about restoring America’s architectural past. Yapp is busy mentoring and teaching at-risk youth from the local high school, many of which enjoy their time “on site” so much they plan to take up the trade. “I actually want to do exactly what Bob is doing,” explained one Hannibal High School student, going on to exhort, “when you’re here you actually get to do stuff and work on stuff that you actually want to do.”
Which could describe the new Mark Twain Boyhood & Museum Executive Director Cindy Lovell’s take on Hannibal to a tee, self-describing her time in this town as “being intoxicated with the history [of Twain] ever since stepping foot into Hannibal.” Dr. Lovell’s eyes glance around her as she walks these streets – observing the very homes and hills and river and buildings that directly inspired Hannibal’s favorite son – Mark Twain – with an all-knowing smile that one can’t help but find contagious. “I think Hannibal’s history is so linked to the past,” continued Dr. Lovell, “in the preservation of the past, the lessons we learn from the past. And we have to be vigilant.”
From the city officials I was most fortunate to meet, to the next generation of high school artisans, I believe that Hannibal, and through her example, America’s hometowns around the country, will continue to experience a re-birth of sorts as revitalization begins to hold sway. “Across the nation, small communities are reinventing themselves,” continued Mr. Yapp. “And they’re having a renaissance in the sense that… things change.”
Continuing that walk, Dr. Lovell looked up, gesturing to the top of Main Street. “Tom always has his eye on the future,” explained Dr. Lovell. “That’s why when you look at the statue of Tom and Huck, lording over Main Street from the base of Cardiff Hill, you will see Tom stepping into the future.”
“Not only do we have a good past,” explained young Alex Addison, “but I think it would be better to have a good past and a great future than a great past and an okay future.” A future that judging from the next generation of Hannibal, is most certainly going to be bright.
DORCHESTER, IOWA
As America sits down around their kitchen tables to find the common denominator between health care, diet, and budget, the Jepsens and Koethers, organic producers and distributors of NE Iowa are doing same. But there’s is a different perspective, struggling to find a way to market what just might be the solution.
I sat down for dinner with Ryan and Kristine Jepsen, their mathematically-minded intern, Dirk Marple, and cattle rancher and daughter, Greg and Kayla Koether. The discussion that ensued between the lot, specifically between the producer and the distributor of a small, truly organic business, reflects their triumphs and challenges, as well as the real cost of cheap food. Theirs is an uphill quest – outmaneuvering the big corporations that can afford to sell for less. The answer – “ten thousand organic farming families” – and the pendulum might just swing.
Filed under On CNN, Small Business Success
PRAIRIE du CHIEN, WISC
Sustainable agriculture meets sustainable communities in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Albeit, for a town that bills itself as “forward thinking” it was interesting to witness first hand a winning strategy that effectively brings them back to their roots.
Pam Ritchie, Executive Director of the Opportunity Center and the former chair of Prairie du Chien’s Main Street Revitalization Project refers to her work as “community cultivation.” As she explains, “There are a lot of stories [from] many, many years ago about what Prairie du Chien looked like on a Friday night and it was lined with farmers in overalls and families on the streets – talking, gathering together, doing their shopping for the week – spending their money locally and supporting these businesses which in turn supported them.”
One of these farming families would have been the ancestors of six-generation sustainable cattle rancher Greg Koether, who resides on his family’s 600-acre ranch just over the bridge in McGregor, Iowa.
Besides raising and marketing his cattle locally through Grass Fed Beef, he takes time out of his schedule to introduce the importance of quality, 
sustainable food practices to the bright young learners at Prairie du Chien’s B.A. Kennedy Elementary School.
And he’s most certainly not alone. When the school did not yet have a “Farm to School” initiative in place, local parents and self-described “concerned citizens” Kathleen Hein and Marty Green developed a spin-off all their own which they called “Food for Thought,” complete with the motto: “Our Food – Our Community.” The big idea, “To educate the kids about where food comes from, grow a children’s community garden on school grounds, help local farmers by getting their products into the school lunch system, [and in so doing to] connect the community.”
Walking the streets of Prairie du Chien it is easy to feel a genuine excitement in the air from farms to schools to downtown businesses. As Pam Ritchie explains, “There was a group of citizens that really got serious – they got to the point where they were ready to apply for a Wisconsin Main Street status 
and with that they were able to hire an executive director and create a membership of both downtown businesses and community members.”
Which has made all the difference – the bold, rather simple idea that when you talk about revitalizing downtown business, it’s not only business owners that are interested in creating change. Residents of the town can and do participate in effectively giving their downtown district a facelift – in so doing, creating what Kathleen Heim described as “a snow-ball effect” of bona fide town-wide enthusiasm.
Jake Stephens, originally from Florida, is considered a “new resident”, only having lived in this town for ten years. In an area where most families go back five or six generations it can be a daunting task to blend – to fit in. And yet as a direct result of Prairie du Chien’s revitalization he has decided to participate – to share his ideas and his talents – in essence to share with the town the time of his life. When asked to offer a definition of the term “sustainable community” from his perspective, Jake explained, “A 
sustainable community [is] a community that … feeds itself, if you will, that keeps its energy churning and building here rather than going elsewhere.”
“The word ‘community’ is really starting to mean that here,” continued Jake. “Its great … it makes me wonder what I was doing for the past ten years and why I didn’t get involved because just a few people can make a difference. That’s what it all means.”
Filed under Americana, Mississippi River Town, On CNN, Small Business Success
LITTLE FALLS, Minnesota
When the old timers of Little Falls get together at their favorite local haunt, the West Side Café, they remember aviator icon Charles Lindbergh with laughs, stories, and a gleam of pride in their eye.
Charles Lindbergh was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean, traveling from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York to Le Bourget Field in Paris in a single wicker seat, single engine monoplane titled the Spirit of St. Louis. The instantaneous world-wide fame that followed was unprecedented. Upon touchdown onto Le Bourget Field the Spirit of St. Louis as well as Lindbergh himself were virtually torn apart by a mob of over-enthusiastic fans while upon his return to America on June 13, 1927 “Lindbergh Day” was celebrated in New York City “as city offices, schools, and stock markets closed for the day [as] over 4 million spectators lined the streets to cheer the aviator.”
But as the fact of the world’s first Atlantic monoplane crossing becomes legend and the legend of Lindbergh becomes myth – it’s not the man himself the stories revolve around so much as the message he was able to convey. “I think Lindbergh inspired a lot of young men to do things they didn’t think they could do or would be able to do,” stated Little Falls resident Marie Langdeau, some eighty years young. Asked if she had seen examples of that in her lifetime, Marie was quick to reply – “Oh yes, I have.”
Before the man there was a boy – a boy who would spend a good deal of his youth here along the banks of the Mississippi River, swimming, fishing and flying around with his arms outstretched like an airplane, simulating the plane he saw one day from the rafters of his Little Falls home. “He’d sneak out at night and sleep on the porch – he loved the stars,” explained Lee Ann Douchette, a local writer and former radio newsroom presenter. “When he saw his first plane go overhead he just went nuts.”
As the aviator who got the job done and later as an environmentalist who strove for a balance between technology and wildness, it is interesting to see the living legacy left behind in Lindbergh’s boyhood hometown.
One example of a successful local business inspired by Lindbergh is Joe Berg of DJ Products, an innovative local manufacturer specializing “in [robotics and] moving around anything on wheels.” Joe showed me his latest product – dubbed the Aircraft Caddy – having “develop[ed] it based on Lindberg’s name and with official use of the Spirit of St. Louis airplane logo. Joe is striving to keep local jobs local. “It’s so important … our town relies on every job we have … whatever we can do to try to keep jobs helps our community.”
On the other side of town, Ty Gangelhoff, Park Manager of Charles Lindbergh State Park (from original land deeded over by the Lindbergh’s in 1931), brought out his record books to show that to date this year alone, over four thousand campers have come to enjoy the park’s five hundred and seventy acres, inhabiting protected “bald eagles and the three major biomes of the area – the prairie biome, the hardwood biome and the pines biome.”
For the education take I went over to Charles Lindbergh Elementary School where Principle Jill Griffith-McRaith explained, “His work here [on the environment] helps our students remember and continue their work with conservation and keeping the world a better place,” going on to say, “part of his legacy is through the Lindbergh Foundation which provides scholarships [and] grants to teachers who continue that environmental work.”
And from the environment to hope, Little Falls Mayor Catherine VanRisseghem summed up the effects of Lindbergh’s living legacy as such: “[Back then] at that point, times were really tough – people without jobs, without hope – and Charles Lindbergh was that spark of hope for them … and I believe that the same goes for now a-days – times are tough, people are losing jobs and their lives are being impacted greatly, but there still is hope … that dream, that ability to dream and to accomplish those dreams is still within us as people here locally and .. that true spirit is still there in the Spirit of America.”
Filed under Americana, Mississippi River Town, On CNN, Small Business Success
COHASSET, Minnesota
The difference between a tavern and a bar is, according to Wikipedia, that at a tavern you are a “guest” while at a bar you are a member of the public. But a quality tavern is more than that – what makes a tavern is more than hanging up a shingle with the letters “TAVERN” in wild-west rustic face font.
The historic White Horse Tavern, Newport, RI
Turning the page in American history, the historic taverns were where the Continental Congress met, where the US Marines were first formed, and where General Washington would launch his victorious assault on the British by crossing the Delaware.
A quality tavern is a gathering place, a quality tavern is full of curious characters, a quality tavern is a place where one can stumble upon a great American story.
I’d like to share such a story in the form of Florio’s Grill & Tavern of Cohasset, Minnesota.
It had been a day of 14 hours paddling including fighting waves coming up-river and a lightening storm. It had been wetland for the vast majority of the day and as such nowhere to get out. The sun had set and I was dead tired and by the time I arrived at Cohasset I was ready to lay down some money for a hotel. There was no campsite on the map for many, many miles.
The good people of Cohasset had together spent $3,000, I’d later learn, to build a boat landing for travelers just like myself where I tied up my canoe and grabbed my wallet. It was about 10PM and after crossing the railroad tracks I saw a log tavern radiating light with a couple cars parked outside. Ashamed of my boots (they were wet) I opened the door and thought about asking after a hotel from where I stood. The waitress beckoned me forward and as I came into the tavern the owner, Ron Floria, came over to listen.
I explained that I was looking for a hotel and when they said the nearest one was five miles away, I shook my head and thought I was finished. There was a silence. “Do you have a tent?” asked Ron. “Yes, yes I do. I could pitch it on somebody’s lawn if anybody lives around here.” “How about just outside?” I looked outside and saw trees and old-school wooden benches and a lot of grass. “Great, just great!”
Ron did everything he could to make me feel at home. He offered to bring his truck around so he could shine her lights on my little operation – so I could see what I was doing with the tent. He let me bring my wet stuff inside to dry out overnight. He shook my hand and welcomed me to Cohasset – and he meant it.
I would spend the following two days camped outside Florio’s Grill & Tavern during which time I was able to write, edit and upload the Andy Wells interview(s) as well as a personal interview with CNN international – a story that would be eclipsed by the solar eclipse later that week in Asia.
I noted that Florio’s was booming – that the open-planned wooden log structure was filled with a very positive vibe, full of volunteer fire-fighters, with youth baseball teams, with business professionals, with city officials, with the wise old men of the town.
Susan Harper, the City Administrator, came over to shake my hand when she heard that I was camped just outside, what turned out to be across the street from City Hall. “This is the community hub – the only restaurant in the town,” explained Susan. She told me how much the entire town loved the place – that when there was a flood at the church as a result of the April thaw Ron had come over with hot food for all the firefighters – for everyone. “Just that simple act – it meant a great deal.” She was so excited and touched that I had chosen their town to pitch my tent, well before she would learn that I was doing a little reporting. Asking about Susan’s reaction to me a bit later other locals explained that she had meant what she said because she was forward-looking. She could see the day when many people would come from the river to spend money and take in the sights of Cohasset.
Ron Floria represents three generations attached to Florio’s Grill & Tavern. A retired cheffer from the railroads, Ron took early retirement and put his money into Florio’s – which he runs with his son, Larry. Larry’s son, Dominic (age eight) is a frequent guest, along with other family and friends. The tavern is a family business and it is successful – on multiple levels. They run it and watch it carefully and the quality of the operation shows.
When you order buffalo wings they come larger and tastier than I’ve ever seen and/or tasted in my life. They’ve cut the cost of the menu and offer specials every night – specials which actually fill the place up. When you order the blackened salmon it is both fresh and reasonable. And when you look up from your table, a gargantuan moose smiles down at you from its mount on the wall. “My cousin got that one,” explained Ron. “Up at the Boundary Waters. They get bigger than that a bit farther north but this is a good sized one.”
Ron would tell me stories of his time on the railroad, of how you can never judge a book by its cover. He’d relate business tips and success stories of how he’s made it during these tough times. In short, Ron became my friend and when it came time to at long last depart, the Minnesota Nice principle of saying goodbye multiple times rang true.
Ron Floria and his family represent a great All-American story. Their tavern is the real deal. They are working hard to pursue their dreams and in so doing to offer a valuable service in which folks, from near and far, are quick to shake hands, to speak of the good times and the bad – but most importantly, quick to smile.
Filed under Americana, Mississippi River Town, Small Business Success
BEMIDJI, Minnesota
Andy Wells III of Wells Technology was honored recently by President Obama himself for his success in business as Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year, and moreover, for his willingness to share this success and knowledge with his community – the Red Lake Ojibwa Tribe.
“It was a surprise to get the award from the Minnesota Small Business Administration but also a bigger surprise to be invited to Washington D.C.,” explained Mr. Wells. Upon arrival to the White House with small business award winners from different states, Andy was seated in front as a ‘special guest’ – a guest whom President Obama would address in his speech on the “courage and determination and daring” of great leaders, stating: “It’s what led Andy Wells, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwa Tribe to invest $1300 back in 1989 to found Wels Technology, manufacturing industrial tools and fasteners, and creating jobs near reservations in Minnesota, where he lives.”
On a reservation where the penitentiary equals the size of the local high school it can be a difficult thing, as a young person in the community, to move oneself forward – to actually visualize the word ‘hope’. Andy Wells hires the people that all other business owners pass up – the young, formerly misguided ex convicts, the alcoholics – people who have made poor decisions in the past but who show determination to make something better out of their lives. Wells’ philosophy: “You’ve got to help people… that’s the root of success.” He offers a program that not only teaches the machining trade but also betters and strengthens the character, teaching honesty, self respect, as well as what it means to truly have pride.
And he’s successful doing it. Last year, Wells Technology’s proceeds equaled 54 million dollars, profits which Mr. Wells turns around to better the community.
Upon arrival at Wells Technology, which doubles as Wells Academy, it struck me as an interesting concept to put a classroom front and center in the headquarters of a main business office. “Every day is an open house,” explained Mr. Wells. “Every day we’ve got a busload of reservation kids or church groups or even car enthusiast clubs coming around. When the busses pull up you can see who the tough kids are – the ones who smoke a cigarette outside before coming in and hang their head in the classroom. But when we start to show them how our products help shoot flares out of military helicopters and other interesting things, they perk up – they start to ask questions – they start to understand why it is important to learn about math and science.”
Mr. Wells is a pillar of not only small business in Minnesota but also the pride of the local community as well. And yet all of this success hasn’t changed Mr. Wells, hasn’t made him at all prideful. When I asked the Mayor of Bemidji, Richard Lehmann, to describe Andy, he simply explained, “Andy is one of the humblest, kindest men I have ever known. Incredibly intelligent. A real pleasure to meet and to learn from.”
“There is book learning and there is other wisdom,” explained Mr. Wells, referring to the system of ‘elders’ within the Native American community. “The [positive] influences began in my life early – it was neighbors, my parents, my grandparents … A neighbor friend, named Charlie Barrett, who really had no formal education but was a very humble neighbor noticed me running ahead of the adult groups quite often and he said to me, ‘Why don’t you open the door for people when you’re up there.’ At the time I thought he meant the physical door but now when I look back, maybe he meant more. Maybe he was a wise fellow like many of the wise people I’ve met, and he could see that perhaps one day I would be able to open doors of opportunity for people – and now that’s one of my main missions in life – to continue doing things that help other people because so many have helped me.”
Filed under Mississippi River Town, On CNN, Small Business Success
Neal Moore is a world traveler, creative activist and co-author of Down the Mississippi: A Modern-day Huck on America's River Road (Mark Twain Museum Press). Check it out! -- http://amzn.to/14xxNV1.
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