ST. DONATUS, Iowa - A hot day haze is not making much headway in a shady valley below St. Donatus. Standing on a hillside, I try to convince myself that I am in Europe, not Iowa.
St. Donatus is "old world," in a wooded basin exactly 71.3 miles north of the Quad-Cities — Iowa's version of the tiny European country of Luxembourg.
Just about everyone here is Lux-related. It's a hamlet where everyone loves wiener schnitzel and potato pancakes, and where the mother tongue is not only regularly spoken — it is taught.
You walk unsteadily in St. Donatus because everything seems as if it is on a slight slope.
"Watch your footing," Sue Deppe calls out. "The whole town sort of slants."
There are 152 residents in St. Donatus. The population has not varied by more than 10 or 15 people in a quarter-century or longer. That says something about hanging on at a time when small towns are dying on the vine.
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These Luxers will tell you they are a sturdy bunch, with their own Heritage Society and steeped in the roots of their founders who arrived from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg more than 150 years ago. They named the valley, which reminded them of their homeland, St. Donatus for the patron saint of storms. Some statues around town show St. Donatus with a lightning rod in hand.
If you go, you will be corrected if you pronounce it "Do-nah-tus." It is "Do-nay-tus."
At first look, I didn't find much to see in St. Donatus, even though the whole village is on the National Register of Historic Places. The town, the atmosphere and the sociable people have to sink in. What doesn't have to sink in is the scenery. The highways and roads in, around and out of this village are picture postcards to some of the most glorious scenery in all of mid-America.
Slipped into one hillside is St. John's Lutheran Church. On another hillside is St. Donatus Catholic Church, where the 150th anniversary of its renowned stations of the cross will be celebrated July 10.
At nightfall, I find the looming Catholic church still unlocked. It is dim, steeped in the essence of an empty church lit only by flickering vigil candles. Kerosene chandeliers - dating to 1908, when the church was built - hang unlit. It is a consoling place to be on a late afternoon as a light rain falls outside. The church is still in active use, but at this time of day, we prop the door just in case it slams and leaves us locked inside for the night.
The fame of St. Donatus may be in its stucco-over-stone buildings and the way they were built the Luxembourg way, which is roofs gabled at both ends. St. Donatus claims to have the oldest rock barn in Iowa and a 150-year-old bed and breakfast, but it is the Kalmes Restaurant that draws my attention. Kalmes is a national attraction. Its décor is St. Donatus gothic.
The Kalmes porte-cochère entry is gas pumps. Patrons can pay to fill 'er up after entering a doorway with a hand-lettered sign offering for sale head cheese, pickled herring and homemade horseradish.
Windy Kalmes, whose grandfather, Pete, opened the place as a saloon in the early 1850s, is sitting in the barroom with his wife, Helen, when I stroll in to buy horseradish. Pete's bar is still in use. The barroom is a fooler, a place where two worlds congenially meet. It has coin machines, Herky the Hawk curtains and a gent at the bar who is knocking off an old standby, a boilermaker - a shot of whiskey washed down by a beer.
The back and upstairs dining rooms with long tables, antique plates displaying castles on the walls and beamed ceilings are what make diners think they are in Europe. Over a plate of red cabbage and tripe (blood sausage), Roman Scholtz of Davenport raises a stein and says, "This is like the old country."
The whole place can seat 275, and on autumn weekends - with fall color at its peak - it's packed. A purveyor says this restaurant shows what burgeoning business a small town place can pull off, with tourists and a catering trade reaching to Des Moines.
I sit, listening to a clock striking the hour with a tinkly tune. The clock's face says the hour's song is "An der schönen blauen Donau," which no one
at the moment can translate.
"Be sure, everyone in St. Donatus has Luxembourg roots," Helen says. "I've been over to Lux three times."
Cindy Bartels, who was born in St. Donatus, has been to the homeland six times. She laughs and says, "Luxembourg, which is so close to Germany, Belgium and France, is only 35 miles wide and 65 miles long. It has only 500,000 people, but 3 million Lux descendants live in America."
The day I was in St. Donatus was a holiday, with big bowls of homemade noodles and sauerkraut and sausage alongside the wiener schnitzel. Whatever the day, wiener schnitzel, a breaded pork, is always served at Kalmes.
After filling up on kraut, I poke around this tiny town, still not believing I am in Iowa rather than the real Luxembourg. Off to the side of U.S. 52 is a giant stone barn. Betty McGuigan of San Diego is taking pictures of the barn that is pretty much the same as it was in 1839. Cows lived on the first floor; the family of Peter Gehlen, the builder, had to be content on the second and third floors.
The barn is still stone, but other places were covered with stucco a century ago or longer to seal the stone mortar and show affluence. One St. Donatus house is known as "the pink place" for its painted color. It's a favorite spot to be photographed in a town that likes to have flower boxes at its windows.
I'm drawn to the big Gehlen House, quarried from stone in the hills around St. Donatus. It's been everything from a post office to general store. Now it's a bed and breakfast owned by a corporation of locals. The door is open, so we wander inside. There are no occupants. It's not the Ritz, but the price is right - $56 to $86 a night.
Beyond the stunning scenery, the charm of St. Donatus is the combination of Iowa friendliness and old-world charm of its inhabitants.
"We love one another. We're all Luxembourgish," says Betty Jaeger, who was born in St. Donatus but has a soft German/Belgian accent. "That's because I was born into a household where Lux was spoken." She cautions me that her last name is pronounced "Yager."
Some folks in town speak Lux and, like Nester Lampe, teach it to those who are interested.
He shakes hands and repeats the national slogan of Luxembourg: "Mir wolle blewe wat mir sin."
In Lux, he says, that means, "We want to stay the way we are."
