The Traunik Hall

You wouldn’t think that our much-loved hall could still be a work in progress more than eighty years after it was built, but just two years ago a deck was added to the front of it to accommodate folks at our dances who like to cool down a bit after a strenuous polka or two. Until then they had to navigate several fairly steep concrete steps, usually crowded with other dancers taking a break, to get outside, and once there, they were a bit too far from the heart of the action to hear the music well or to keep an eye on what was going on inside.

Now they can go in and out with ease, and they can stand around to visit, listen, and watch----and if their feet hurt, sit at one of two picnic tables on the deck. We think this was a good add-on, but there were half a dozen others over the years which a good many---maybe even most---Traunik Slovenian Club members have no awareness of. Those will come to light in the following brief history of our hall, or at least as much of a history as I can coax out of a memory bank which doesn’t give up data as readily as it once did.

All I know of the early days of our hall I didn’t read about in the papers but, rather, heard about from the Traunik pioneers who built it and whom we memorialized twelve years ago with a memorial stone just outside it, which reads:

To this place they came, beginning in 1912, and when enough had come to form a community, they named it Traunik, which means “meadow” in Slovenia, the country they left behind in search of a better life. They brought with them a willingness to work and a desire to succeed, and out of the forest they shaped fields, homes, and a good life for their families.

This memorial is dedicated to them by their children and grandchildren, now scattered about the world but tied by invisible bonds to this spot, where once the night air was filled with Slovenian melodies, and an ethnic community pulsed with life.

They’re all gone now, those hall builders, but the hall still stands, a living monument to their dedication to this community---“living” because it continues to change, though just a little each time, and because we changers are descendants of those builders, a pattern we hope will continue far into the future.

The Traunik hall was built in 1922 to serve as a meeting place for Lodge 387 of the SNPJ. Those initials stand for “Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota” (in English: “Slovenian National Benefit Society”). Until the hall was built SNPJ meetings were held in the John Knaus residence, a little more than a half mile north of the crossroads area which would gradually develop into the village of Traunik. My father told me often about how proudly SNPJ members marched from their old headquarters down what is now known as the ET road to their newly built hall, flags and banners waving to announce to the very small part of the world which might be paying attention to them that something important was happening!

And indeed it was. Not only did the hall serve the organizational needs of SNPJ for almost two-thirds of a century thereafter, it also became Traunik’s social center. It must be remembered that all this was happening only a little more than a decade after the first Slovenian settlers, the Louis Carr and the Anton Knaus families, built their homes next to Johnson Creek in 1912. Further Slovenian settlement occurred quite rapidly after that. It’s reasonable to assume that at first everyone’s energy was directed toward building houses and outbuildings, as well as clearing fields, etc. but by the time the hall was ready for folks to party in, they were more than ready to do the partying.

I suppose the hall would be considered a fairly modest structure even today, but it was far more so at the beginning. It had been built on posts, and there was a partition across the upstairs section just a bit ahead of the area where the bandstand now is which produced a separate room with several tables in it. The term “babysitter” was alien to the young mothers of Traunik, as was the concept, so it was to this backroom that babies were brought whenever there was a social event. When that event occurred in the evening, those babies were immediately “put to bed” on those tables, and each mother took her turn watching over them all while the others were up front having fun. And because babies were never in short supply, those tables were always full.

I’ve been told that the open area under the hall was a popular trysting place for young lovers, who could do their romancing to the sound of music overhead when a dance was going on or to the inner music of love when the hall was quiet. The space among the posts was a popular playground for young children, too, several of whom decided one time that it would be a good place for a marshmallow roast. The fire they built for it got out of control momentarily, and had it not been put out in time, the hall’s history would have been a very short one.

My father and mother were, if not the first, among the first couples to have their wedding reception in the hall, on October l0th, 1925. Celebrations of any kind back then tended to be a bit wilder than they are today. Prohibition was in effect but was not very successful in keeping the local populace alcohol-free. Moonshine, most of it produced in several homes in the community, was readily available, and, powerful stuff that it was, not too much of it had to be consumed before some celebrants, almost always males, became feisty or aggressively cheerful.

At my parents’ wedding reception someone threw a stone through a hall window while people inside were dancing. I don’t think anyone was injured by it, but in no time at all the men were out of the hall and racing north down the railroad track where they assumed the thrower had come from. It seems there was often tension between the Slovenian men of Traunik and the Finns in the communities of Loudspur, Chatham, and Eben. A few Traunik Slovenian men were smitten by the blond and blue-eyed Finnish girls, and likewise some Finn guys found the brown-eyed dark-haired girls of Traunik irresistible. It was a formula certain to cause a few fights between the two groups----and it did until they all wised up and started to inter-marry instead!!.

At any rate, it wasn’t too long before young lovers had to go elsewhere, because in 1926 lodge members decided to build a basement under the hall. Just think of the work that went into that project. Excavation was accomplished mostly manually, with some assistance from horse-drawn scoops. The earth under the hall was all gravel and hardpan, so none of the digging was easy. Nor was the building of the forms, nor the pouring of the concrete. All that hard work was done by men who had already put in hard shifts in the woods or on the farms. What a labor of love that must have been. Undoubtedly the women of the community took on some extra chores back home to free the men up for this volunteer work, and I can imagine them preparing the hearty meals required by those men.

Once the basement work was done, wedding celebrations and silver weddings a few years later got to be more substantial affairs. The entire downstairs area was given over to dining, with the guests of honor seated at what I suppose should be called the head table, a wedding or anniversary cake in front of them and, much more important, a large bowl for the money which guests presented to them. That money, as I remember the ritual, was not enclosed in envelopes, so it was easily visible to anyone curious enough to snoop---and Traunik was never without several resident snoops.

My guess is that there was a certain amount of showing off by the presenters of those money gifts, though Traunik Slovenians had a reputation for frugality, so I don’t think there were ever any “gift wars,” as such. But community dignitaries, those men of more substantial means than the rest, gave according to their means, as did everyone else for that matter. Those gifts would have been smaller, you may be sure, if they could have been secreted in envelopes the way they would be today, but appearances had to be maintained and status renewed at each such event.

In the beginning, traffic between the upstairs and downstairs areas was via the great outdoors, because inside steps were not built until considerably after 1926, though I don’t remember just when. But it wasn’t that much of a problem because most celebrations in the hall occurred during the spring, summer, and fall, and that brief walk into the fresh air of a Traunik evening gave dancers a chance to cool down a bit, or, if they were going the other way, to loosen up their limbs so they were ready for the dancing that awaited them. That notwithstanding, I’m quite sure everyone appreciated those steps when they were installed.

What always awaited celebrants downstairs was the good food which Traunik ladies were locally famous for. To this day I occasionally hear elderly “outsiders” reminisce about how they enjoyed coming to a Traunik event because they could count on really eating well there. For some reason, maybe because as a kid I had sweet things foremost in my mind when it came to eating, my childhood recollections are mostly of potica, strudel, flancati, etc., but I assume that entrée items were as delicious as those desserts. I do remember quite clearly that when it came to desserts, I was always happy when I saw Mr and Mrs. Kehoe (the teachers at our two-room school for the first quarter century of its existence) at one of our events because they almost invariably brought a sponge cake with colored frosting with them.

My only concern was that there would be some of it left when it was time for us kids to sit down to eat. It was definitely not “children first” those days. I suppose that very young children ate with their parents, but I remember that we older ones would lie down on our stomachs outside the hall and look through basement windows for open spots to begin appearing at the tables---a sure indication that all the grown-ups had done their dining.

Would I be as impressed now by the fare that awaited us at those table as I was then? I don’t know, but eating was most certainly the highlight of every celebration for me then. If we kids timed everything right, we could eat and still have time to run upstairs to slide back and forth across the dance hall floor before dancing began---and of course between dances later. A generous supply of corn meal was spread on the floor to help dancers glide easily, and it contributed to some spectacularly fast slides for us----and a few skinned elbows and knees as well!

Perhaps the heyday of the hall occurred before I was old enough to record memories of what was going on there socially. Not too long after the basement project was concluded, the wall which created a two-room upstairs was removed and a stage was built where the backroom had been. It wasn’t a very large stage, but with it in place Lodge 387 of the SNPJ was able to schedule a variety of outside entertainment, all of it with a Slovenian focus, of course. I understand that theatrical troupes from Chicago or Cleveland occasionally presented plays in the Slovenian language, and outside musical groups, both instrumental and vocal, were brought in to provide professional entertainment for folks not likely to be able to go to the cities for it.

Not that Traunicians couldn’t do quite well on their own; they frequently presented plays and other forms of entertainment using local talent. They also held box socials and pillow dances, the details of which only someone a bit older than I could provide.

Another community-generated event was a “vinska trgatev” (grape harvest) celebration, patterned after one held in many villages in Slovenia in autumn. Of course no grapes had ever been harvested in Traunik, Michigan,but at least one railroad-car load was delivered here every year so that locals could participate in what happens after a grape harvest: the making of wine. Remember, prohibition was in effect, thus there were no Gallo or Christian brothers around to make the wine, or stores which could legally sell it.

At any rate, vinska trgatevs provided the folks in Traunik yet another opportunity to celebrate something. A picture in the Traunik hall taken at one of those festivals shows Lud Knaus and a bevy of young ladies from the community standing on the steps in front of the hall dressed in the national costumes of Slovenia---or at least facsimiles thereof. Perhaps the gals in that photograph served food at the event, and quite possibly Lud helped pour the wine, something he did for a living after Prohibition, when he operated the Traunik Tavern just a stone’s throw from the hall. I don’t know exactly what happened at these grape harvest festivals, but I have no doubt there was a good deal of drinking, dancing, eating, and singing.

Singing was a very important part of anything that happened at the hall. Mostly it was accomplished outside in front of the upstairs hall entrance by men, whose vocal cords were sometimes well oiled by moonshine or wine. I remember as a boy listening in awe to the wonderful sound they produced. Their efforts were essentially professional---no shouters or screechers welcome---with bass, baritone, and tenor parts assigned. Good singers achieved community status, and those folks who weren’t good were content to be part of the audience at these informal concerts.

Several bachelors were among the good singers, and they treasured, more than the married men, the status thus achieved. I think it fair to say that in many ways the bachelors appreciated the hall more than anyone else in Traunik because it provided them what little social life they had, though they remained at the fringes of it.

They usually clustered at the back of the hall watching dancing or whatever else might be going on in front of them----I don’t recall seeing any of them dancing. But they ate, they observed, they listened to the music----and they drank, many of them to excess. They likely did quite a bit of the bull work associated with the building of the hall itself and the basement underneath it when that project was going on. It must be remembered that in numbers they represented about half of the adult male population of Traunik, and many of them hired out from time to time to Traunik farmers, so it’s reasonable to assume that they were also available to do some volunteer work.

We youngsters appreciated them because the generous among them were most likely to reach into their pockets for some change when they were at our doings, and they were the most likely, when they became tipsy (and most did), to lose some of that change when they were standing around in the hall or outside it. Because we lived only a couple of hundred yards north of the hall, I was in an advantageous position to police the area the morning after a dance in pursuit of that coinage---and I almost never came up empty.

One modest, but very important change to the hall was made in the underpinnings of the upper level, where the dancing went on. At one dance the crowd was so large and the dancing so vigorous that people in the basement observed with alarm significant swaying of the floor above them, and several men were sent out, while the dance was still going on, for some posts to prevent what could have been a disaster. Subsequently, permanent reinforcement posts were installed which have made the collapse of the upper level into the lower a highly unlikely event.

There were no restrooms in the hall until the mid-forties or later, and people who had to go had to go outside---well, not quite outside but to an outhouse just west of and behind the hall. My memory tells me that it was a fairly large structure with two doors, which suggests that there was one side for men and another for women, but I may well be wrong about that. I do know that the outhouse was sometimes overturned on Halloween night, a popular prank which continued until most outhouses themselves disappeared.

The first indoor facilities were built inside the original hall itself, separate ones for men and women, just north of the pot-bellied stove and west of what is now the bandstand. When the Ostanek family owned the hall for a decade or so in the eighties and early nineties, they added much more substantial restrooms by extending the hall building to the north.

So far, in discussing the functions which took place in the Traunik hall, I’ve mentioned just those that involved entertainment, but it must be remembered that the hall’s primary function up until the disbanding of Lodge 387 of the SNPJ was to provide a place for that organization’s monthly meetings. In addition, in later years an informal group which called itself the Golden Age Club met there once a month, usually on Sunday, just to socialize.

Cards were played by some, lunch was served, and there were other activities, I assume, which I was unfamiliar with because I didn’t qualify as a golden-ager back then, though at age seventy-seven I certainly would now. Tony Gornick was the motivating force behind that group, but debility and death eventually took away not only him but the lion’s share of those who were served by it. Those of my generation who still lived here didn’t have any interest in continuing it, and even if we had, there just weren’t enough of us to make it go, so it ceased to exist. But while it functioned it met an important social need for a group which today would be called senior citizens, and Tony Gornick’s leadership role was much appreciated.

There was one time each year when ethnicity was not a factor in determining what went on in the hall, and that was just before Christmas, when the Traunik school Christmas program was held in it. Though Traunik was predominantly a Slovenian community during its heyday from 1920 to approximately 1950, its school served a number of families from Ladoga as well as, among others, descendants of George Nickel, who homesteaded land which later came to be the heart of Traunik at least a decade before the first Slovenian family showed up here.

The hall briefly played a role in the education of Traunik’s children: classes were held in it for a few months and then shifted to a room above the local general store, which at that time (circa 1923) was owned by John Knaus, until construction of the school was completed in January of 1924. There was no room large enough in the school for a Christmas program so that big community event was held in the hall. Preliminary practices for plays, skits, recitations, singing, etc. took place in the school, but once the stage was built in the hall,final practices, a dress rehearsal, and of course the program itself took place there.

My reminiscence for the next several paragraphs will involve the time period, l935-42, when I was a student at the Traunik school and participated in eight Christmas programs. The first excitement of the season for me was the moment when Mrs. Kehoe lined up us little room kids (chart class to grade four) and gave us our marching orders for the short walk to the hall for final practice. And they were marching orders: we proceeded solemnly, silently, and in single file to our destination.

When I became a big room student (fifth through eighth grade) it was Mr. Kehoe giving the orders, and because he was quite casual about nearly everything and we, of course, thought of ourselves as more “mature,” we drifted in a more leisurely manner to the appointed place, throwing a snowball or two and in general releasing some of the pent-up energy characteristic of such a group. I must say, though, that my most vivid memories of the Christmas program come from the time when we were under Mrs. Kehoe’s tutelage.

I can recall very little about those final practice sessions, but I retain many of the event itself, as I’m sure everyone who was a part of it does. When the big evening finally arrived, parents, other relatives, friends, and the general public filled all the wooden folding chairs lined up in rows as well as the benches along the walls, while we, the stars of the show ,fidgeted in our seats up front and surreptitiously looked back in awe at what we perceived to be a tremendous multitude of people. For us it was a big, somewhat scary, and in the end pleasurable affair, and I don’t think we took it lightly even when we became “big roomers.”

Up front and just to the left of a small stage a monstrous pot-bellied stove (the same one that’s in there to this day) radiated its heat toward the audience, almost cooking the youngsters closest to it, who were too excited to pay attention to such discomfort, while just barely managing to heat the far back corners of the hall, where shirt-tail relatives and casual bystanders clustered.

The heat released odors that no amount of scrubbing could purge from the hardwood floors and the all-wood walls and ceiling, essence of spilled beer and cigarette smoke, barely discernible but strong enough to remind us kids that this was essentially an adult place, where grown-up things such dances and weddings happened.

My memory of the program itself is that it always went off quite well; Mrs. Kehoe, stern disciplinarian that she was, saw to that, and we all, well, almost all, took our practice sessions quite seriously. After it was over, Mr. Kehoe, dressed in a Santa suit, distributed gifts. He was physically well suited for that role because, though he wasn’t exactly obese, he had a pot belly which required little padding inside his costume, and, being a ham at heart, he ho-hoed his way through the distribution of gifts in a most believable manner.

After each of us had received his exchange present and a bag of Christmas candy and peanuts from the school district, we moved reluctantly away from the Christmas tree and into the cold December night air with visions in our heads, not necessarily of sugar plums, but of other things associated with the Christmas celebrations which we awaited us at home. To this day the Traunik hall on the night of our Christmas program is what I am most likely to be reminded of whenever I step into that venerable old building.

The outset of World War II marked a turning point of sorts for our hall. About three dozen young men of Traunik answered the call to arms when the U.S. entered the war, and three, Albin Knaus, his cousin Henry Knaus, and John Zbacnik, were killed in action in Europe, ironically not many hundred miles from the place in Slovenia that their parents had migrated from. Those who survived their tour of duty had enough of a glimpse of the outside world to prefer living in it rather than taking over the family farm they had grown up on----or, if they didn’t prefer living in the city, they recognized it as the place where they were better positioned to make a living than in Traunik.

At any rate, the absence of a younger generation to take over for the older members of Lodge 387 of the SNPJ spelled the eventual doom of the lodge. It continued to function quite well for a decade or so after the war, with monthly SNPJ meetings in the hall, quite a few wedding receptions, and other social functions. But I don’t recall many silver wedding anniversaries celebrated in it in the fifties and after. As mentioned earlier, the Golden Age Club made use of the facilities for a number of post-war years, but eventually that, too, died out, and when SNPJ membership dwindled to the point where maintaining Lodge 387 was impractical, it was disbanded in ______with remaining members assigned to the central organization.

Among the last official activities of Lodge 387 was the sale of the Traunik hall to several members of the Ostanek family, who rented it out to various organizations and individuals for dances and other events. The Ostaneks were very good stewards of the hall while they owned it, but in 1993, when I approached them about the possibility of selling the hall to the Traunik Slovenian Club, which we were then in the process of forming, they agreed to do so.

Of course the sale hinged upon our being able to raise the money to purchase it and to set aside funds for its long-term maintenance. Letters were sent to just about everyone of Slovenian descent who had a Traunik connection outlining what we had in mind and asking for financial pledges. The results were astounding: within a month we had $28,000 committed to our effort, and the rest, as they say, is history.

We bought the hall for $l0,000, put the rest in a maintenance fund, and began preparations for a dedication celebration at the hall. The first thing we did was to haul a large boulder (with the help of a front-end loader, of course) from a spot a mile and half north or the hall to where it can be seen today, just west of our hall under a large old maple tree. To that stone we affixed a brass plaque containing the message which appears at the beginning of this piece, and on July 4th, 1993, we began our dedication event with the unveiling of the stone by my father, Frank H. Bartol, who at age 98 was the oldest of the surviving Slovenian immigrants to Traunik, and Christina (Gornick) Lustick, who was the youngest.

Richard Debelak was there with his button box accordion to provide music for the occasion, with Conrad Lustick and a few others among us old enough to remember the words to some of the songs he played making it a sing along. After all that we went down into the basement of the hall to partake of some of that good ethnic food which no Traunik hall celebration has ever been without.

That event marked the beginning of a new era for our Slovenian ethnic community. But it must be said here that there very likely would never have been that new era if the John Knaus clan had not begun having annual family reunions in 1976 , which culminated in a 4th of July dance at the hall. For a number of years prior to that, Jim and Barbara Oberstar and Joe and Angie Mahne were in charge of that annual 4th of July dance. Those folks kept the spark of ethnicity alive in the community until it could burst into full flame again with the formation of our club.

The very informal by-laws of our very informal Traunik Slovenian Club emphasized the idea that the hall now belonged to all of its members, who could use it without charge for any social event that they could dream up---within reason. And we have!! Richard Debelak has devoted many of his spare moments to honing his impressive skills with both the chromatic and button box accordion and until recently provided the music for at least two dances a year, one around Memorial Day and the other in the fall. Richard recruited a couple of his cousins to play alongside him, Matt Spears and Mike Klobucher, and more often than not Bill Kilpela, of Finnish descent but “belonging” in such a group anyway because his wife is Slovenian. In between, Richie Yurkovich and his band from Willard, Wisconsin, played (and will again this year) for what has become our traditional fourth of July dance.

The idea that the hall belong to all its members really took hold, and besides being the locale for several dances a year, it’s been used for a wide variety of other events since 1993. There were several class reunions, a number of family reunions, some wedding receptions, an Eagle scout ceremony and reception, a golden wedding anniversary, to mention just a few.

For me, personally, one of the most special events took place in August of l995: my father’s hundredth birthday party. About a hundred and fifty people were there to help him celebrate it. It was a typical hall event: good food, much camaraderie, and accordion music in the background. Richard Debelak provided that music, and my dad danced a polka to it with my sister Marge to prove that he didn’t leave much of himself behind in reaching that century mark.

Another monumental moment was the marriage of Patty Debelak to Larry Longard. Our hall had seen a number of wedding receptions but never before that time a marriage ceremony, nor, as far as I can remember had there ever been a wedding parade through “town.” That happened because Larry and his bride were to spend their wedding night in the Bartol “home place” an eighth of a mile north of the hall. Larry had heard that this was a ritual frequently practiced in small rural European communities, and when he asked me, about midway through the dance portion of the celebration, if I thought the orchestra would agree to leading such a parade, I confidently said: “Of course.” They were, and in no time at all the newlyweds, the band playing in front of them and a large contingent of guests marching behind them, arrived at their destination. Larry carried his bride across the threshold, we all cheered and applauded that part of the ritual, and then we went back to the hall to dance the rest of the evening away. I couldn’t help thinking, as I marched with the group, about those other marchers of seventy-five years earlier going down that same road in the opposite direction to claim the hall as the headquarters for their lodge.

But if there has been one “premier” event at the hall during these past fourteen years, I think most club members would say that it had to be the pull-out-all-the-stops millennium celebration we sponsored on July 2nd, 2000. On that day the exterior walls of the hall were draped in red-white-and-blue bunting in recognition of the upcoming Independence Day holiday, and its upstairs interior walls featured about a hundred and fifty photographs from Traunik’s past, each accompanied by a paragraph explaining what they represented. They turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole celebration.

In the northwest corner of the hall we had set up a display of artifacts from Slovenia, as well as its new national flag (it had declared its independence from the rest of Yugoslavia just two years earlier), and also a flag of Loski Potok. In that corner, too, was a memorial to the three young men mentioned earlier who were killed in action in World War II, with the following inscription under their photographs:

“Had Fate been kinder to them, Albin, Henry, and John could well have been here to celebrate this -------------with us. But they went to WWII along with dozens of other Traunik area men and all three were killed action in the European theater. We need to remind ourselves that had the cause for which these three brave soldiers made the supreme sacrifice not been successful for the United States we wouldn’t be doing any celebrating in this hall, which their fathers had helped build more than seventy-five years ago. Stop for a moment and offer a silent thank you in their memory for what they helped make possible for all of us.”

As for the activities at the hall that day, they were the usual ones, with a couple of extra ones in keeping with the specialness of the occasion. Janez Novak, the mayor of Loski Potok, Slovenia, where most of Traunik’s Slovenian immigrants hailed from, was the honored guest of our club. His wife and several others folks from Slovenia, who had been invited privately by individual club members, helped give this celebration a truly international flavor, and mixing with them that afternoon and evening made us all feel closer to the country of our ancestry.

The mayor gave a brief talk in Slovenian, which was translated into English for us by Mary Sossi, as it had to be because there were few among us except those guests from Slovenia who could have made much sense of it otherwise. There was little else in the way of a formal program; we just mingled and enjoyed each other’s company on what unfortunately was as cold and drizzly a July day as I can remember. Luckily, we had rented a huge tent, which we erected just east of the hall to provide shelter. And of course we ate----the usual ethnic delicacies but also Paul Lucas’s Croation chicken, which he prepared for us on a huge rotisserie over a bed of charcoal just behind the hall. Then we worked off all that food through the evening to the music of Richie Yurkovich.

The bunting came off the hall just a week after our millennium celebration, but the pictures are still on its walls, as are the artifacts, and the military wall of honor which we hope to expand upon. Barb Oberstar and I, the present “keepers of the keys,” will be glad to open the hall for any individuals or groups that would like to take a closer look at everything, especially to read the text accompanying each of the photographs.

There’s much to be learned from them. And to stand alone, in the middle of the hall, surrounded by many photographic images of those who came before us is an experience far different from being there with a hundred other people to celebrate one event or other.

Two years ago, Corinne Leskovar, well-known promoter of Slovenian-American culture and editor of Zarja, published nationally by the Slovenian Women’s Union of America, telephoned me to say that she was coming up with a group of folks from the Chicago area to Bishop Baraga Days. She told me that she had been reading about our little Slovenian community, and she would like her group to see it on their return trip. I informed her that there wasn’t much left of that Slovenian community any more but that we have a hall we’re very proud of which we’d be pleased to show her.

And so it happened: the first tour bus ever to come down the Traunik-Kiva road pulled up alongside the hall (it was almost as big as the hall itself) and disgorged forty-five passengers, who then spent the better part of an hour and a half checking out everything in the hall upstairs and down, praising it mightily as they went and making me swell with pride as I followed them around. Just about every one of those forty-five was photographed next to the Traunik Stone.

When the group returned to the bus, it remained parked for what seemed like a long time to me, and I began to wonder if perhaps the driver had encountered some mechanical difficult with it. But eventually somebody stepped out holding an envelope containing contributions to the Traunik Slovenian Club collected from our visitors. That explained the wait (even generous Slovenian-Americans think for a moment or two before parting with their money). And, judging from the amount of money in the envelope, these were generous.

All in all, their visit was a highlight of 2004 for our club, and I was only sorry that there were just a few of us “locals” on hand to participate in it. But our Chicago area visitors must have liked the experience enough to repeat it this past September, and this time we were prepared to be good hosts. At least a dozen of us were on hand to greet them this time as they disembarked from their tour bus to the button box accordian music of Richard Debelak and went directly down into the basement of the hall for coffee and dessert----which of course included cheese- and apple- strudel.

After that there was much mingling, photographic display viewing, and picture taking around the Traunik stone, with Richard, our roving musician of the moment, playing Slovenian music to the delight of hosts and guests alike. It all ended with our guests once again showing their appreciation with a generous donation to the Traunik Slovenian Club, and, for our part, an invitation to our guests to come back again the next time Baraga Days are held here in the central U.P.

An interesting sidelight to the event I’ve just described: our house guests at the time were my first cousin, Louis Mohar, and his wife Mary. Both had been displaced persons in the aftermath of World War II and had spent several years in a refuge camp in Spittal, Austria. While there, Mary, a teen-ager in 1945, worked in the kitchen of the camp with her best girlfriend, whom she had had no contact whatsoever with in the sixty years since both had left it separately and eventually wound up in this country.

One can well imagine what sixty years can do to teen-agers to make them unrecognizable to former friends, so it was only after casual conservations during coffee and dessert between the Mohars and others at their table that talk got around to participants identifying themselves. Then came that wonderful moment when Mary realized she was talking to her long-ago friend and the emotional reunion which followed it.

Another outside group had an opportunity to see what we’re all about when two years ago the Heritage Day Dinner of the Alger County historical Society was held here. The photographs of the early days of Traunik were of special interest to those who attended, as one would expect, and this time many Slovenian Club members were on hand to accept praise for what we had been able to do together.

That brings me up to the present moment. The past and the present of our Traunik hall have now been revealed to the best of my memory*. Its future will be shaped by you younger members. No one can say now what that future will be like, but I fervently hope that those invisible bonds mentioned on the Traunik Stone will never be broken and that the night air around our beloved hall will continue to be filled with Slovenian melodies, if only once in a while.

*In as much as this history is being published only on our club’s website, additions to it or corrections of any facts it contains will always be welcome, as will be photos that any of you may think appropriate. 

	A "Vinska tragtev" (wine Festival) at the Traunik Hall. From Left to Right: Emma (Debelak) Knaus, Angela (Laurich) Lustick, Ludwig Knaus,  Tilie (Knaus) Archer,  Antonia (Knaus) Lustick
	Another photo, probably taken at the same time as the photo above. From left to right: Antonia (Knaus) Lustick,  Emma (Debelak) Knaus, Olga (Debelak) Ritenauer,  Angela (Laurich) Lustick,  Vera (Knaus) Negilski,  and Tillie (Knaus) Archer.
	A photo September 1999, event at the Traunik Hall. From left to right: David Sterle,  Joe Shega,  and Pete Ostanek.
	Downstairs in the hall. Gladys Bartol comming down the steps.  Seated at the table left to right: Vickie Shega,  Frank Bartol,  Bryan Oberstar,  Angie Kee,  and Joan Ostanek.
	Traunik Hall September 1999. Richard Debelak playing his button-box accordion outside the hall. Joe Shega on his right,  and on his left Pete Ostanek.
	The Traunik Hall after the new deck.
	The Traunik Hall before the new deck and stairs were added.