Dannebrog and the Liars Hall

Dannebrog and the Liars Hall

Not every town in America celebrates Grundlovfest every June—commemorating the signing of Denmark’s Free Constitution in 1849—but drop in to Dannebrog, Neb., on the first Saturday of that month and you’ll find yourself smack in the middle of Danish music, Danish flags, a Danish Viking ship mural, even Danish pastries to eat from the Danish Bakery.

The festival celebrates Dannebrog’s founding by Danish immigrants in the 1870s, and Gaylord Mickelsen does a brisk business selling Danish collectibles that day from his Little Mermaid Gift Shop. Mickelsen’s real love, however, is the Liars Hall of Fame housed within his shop walls. The hall is the brainchild of the town’s most famous citizen, Roger Welsch, who appeared with Charles Kuralt off and on for 10 years on CBS’s Sunday Morning show.

“The main street in town is even named Roger Welsch Avenue,” explains Welsch, a humorist and author. “That sounds like a big deal, but it only means I have to shovel the snow off of it in winter,” he adds with a straight face. “We don’t plow it; it’s not that big a street.”

Welsch has written nearly 30 books, including Everything I Know About Women I Learned from My Tractor (his latest) and It’s Not the End of the Earth But You Can See It From Here (about rural life). The Liar’s Hall of Fame in Mickelsen’s store was inspired by Liar’s Corner, the title of another Welsch book, and Mickelsen says nothing in the hall is to be trusted.

The Australian ammo server is one example. “You aim between two rabbits,” Mickelsen says. “Then shoot, and the bullet hits a knife blade mounted on the barrel, breaks in half and you get two rabbits in one shot.” Hmmm ….

“You can’t believe a word Gaylord tells you,” Welsch says of Mickelsen. “Did he tell you about my favorite recent addition to the hall? A box of golf balls the size of hailstones. I like that one.”

Another item in the hall is a shotgun choke designed for bad shots. It consists of a funnel whose wide end fastens on to the end of a shotgun barrel to concentrate pellets through the narrow end as they explode out.

Throughout the talk, however, both men make it absolutely clear that they cherish their town, and either moved to Dannebrog to stay (in Welsch’s case) or remained there as a native (in Mickelson’s case) because the town represents everything they love about America. “I wanted my children to be raised in a place like this,” Welsch explains.

“A place like this,” in Dannebrog’s case, is a town with 352 citizens and a sense of roots, neighbors, hard work, and values. Townspeople have gathered on their front porches for generations in the evening to talk of family matters, corn prices, and the chance of rain.

But they also work hard to keep the town vibrant, says Shirley Johnson, a member of the Dannebrog Area Booster Club. “We’ve built a bandstand and hiking trails,” she says, and are restoring the 1908 Columbia Hall as a community center, museum, and performance hall.

Tom Schroeder, who owns the Danish Bakery, says he and his wife are Nebraska natives who moved back from Denver after adopting their three children.

“We decided we wanted to raise our kids in a rural area,” he says. “We saw an ad for a house in Dannebrog, and here we are.”

The town was named for the 780-year-old Danish flag by Lars Hannibal, who led a group of Danish immigrants into Nebraska, and literally means “cloth of the Danes.” That is, if you believe most townspeople. If you believe Roger Welsch, however, it means something else.

“Dannebrog is Danish for ‘one horse,’” Welsch says. But he says it with reverence.

More information

Dannebrog is about 150 miles west of Omaha, south of Route 92. The town’s website is www.dannebrog.org, and Welsch’s website is www.agriculture.com/welsch/roger/.

Tom McMahon is a freelance writer in Omaha, Neb.

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