BOB GWALTNEY / Courier & Press Jim and Becky Harl and their three children, Joe, 19 months, Will, 3, and Anna, 6, are involved in the Germania Maennerchor experience.

A costume contest for kids gets thrown into the hops and heritage as the Volksfest turns Evansville once again into

By RICH DAVIS Courier & Press staff writer 464-7516 or rdavis@evansville.net
July 31, 2002

Yes, there are endless toasts of "Ein prosit" (Eye-n PRO-zit) and folks who do The Chicken and polka in the evening.

And there is that traditional tapping of the keg - a ceremony at 6 p.m. Thursday, which this year will feature basketball coaches Steve Merfeld of the University of Evansville and Rick Herdes of the University of Southern Indiana.

But Germania Maennerchor, whose annual three-day Volksfest (folks fest) begins Thursday on North Fulton Avenue, isn't all about beer, sauerkraut, oom-pah bands or adults soaking up a good-time feeling known as Gemuetli-chkeit.

There's something for kids, too, as the 102-year-old club steers its image more toward family. Strict drinking laws prevents people younger than 21 from attending the evening bierstube that fills the rathskeller and outdoor garden, as they did in the 1960s and 1970s. However, on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Germania is staging Family Day.

The cast of "Sound of Music" from the Lincoln Amphitheatre will perform, and there will be games, clowns, free hot dogs and a German costume contest, which Jim and Becky Harl's three children, Anna, 6, Will, 3, and Joseph, 19 months, will enter.

"No one gets left out. All the kids get some kind of prize," said Becky Harl during a recent club event that found her wearing the traditional Bavarian dress known as a dirndl. Hers was mostly brown with gold and green embroidery. "I purchased it from one of the ladies of the club. I have three of them."

Husband Jim, a Whirlpool Corp. engineer, sported his red-checkered shirt and gray leather lederhosen, a mail-order gift from Santa Claus. Anna, 6, showed up in a purple-and-white dirndl, but the sunflowers to her long pigtails made her the picture of a Von Trapp singer. Will and Joseph wore shorts and suspenders, plus bowler-type hats.

"It's hard to justify spending $60 for lederhosen for them because they'll grow out of them so fast," explained Becky Harl.

"But they get in the spirit," added their father, watching the boys run around an echoey rathskeller.

Family Day is open to the public, and children don't have to wear a costume, although Germania officials expect at least 15 to 20 children to show up in costume.

The Harls belong to Germania, a German social and singing society founded in 1900 when German immigrants were pouring into Evansville. Maennerchor means "men's chorus" in German.

"I was single in the early 1990s, and a couple of my buddies had joined. It seemed like a fun thing to do," said Harl, who grew up in Darmstadt and had German grandparents.

In 1994, he was bartending at the Volksfest when Becky, a New Harmony, Ind., native, walked in with her coed softball team. "She looked good," Harl recalled, smiling at his blond, brown-eyed wife.

The dirndls, lederhosen and pin-covered hats worn by many club members at festival time often are hand-me-downs from older club members.

"You get hot in this (dirndl)," said Becky Harl, prompting her husband to laugh, "Mine's kind of breezy."

Only a few dozen of Germania's 400 members are active in the choruses, and there are fewer and fewer oldtimers with German accents, but the brick clubhouse at 916 N. Fulton and its Volksfest continue to be Evansville's deepest bow to its heritage. Volksfest started in 1934, only to be halted by World War II. It was revived during Evansville's Sesquicentennial in 1962.

Harold Griese, 70, grew up on West Iowa Street near what he calls Lower Main Street, the area now described as North Main Street near Garvin Park. The neighborhood was full of German families. Around the corner was Engelhard "Butch" Sunkel's grocery store, where Sunkel made the Volksfest's spicy bratwurst.

"I was a butcher boy for Sunkel, cleaning up (the kitchen) after school," recalled Griese.

Sunkel's secret recipe, or something close to it, is still used by the meat company that provides 2 tons of bratwurst for Volksfest. Fifty volunteer cooks produce 3,000 pounds of pig knuckles, 950 gallons of potato salad, 540 gallons of sauerkraut and 400 gallons of beans.

Becky Harl says: "When we come here, my kids say they're going to Bobby's house." She was referring to bartender Bobby Beaven, standing behind a bar where this year's Volksfest T-shirts feature the German and American flags and a post-9/11 theme: "Sharing Our Heritage."