Jar of Goodness 9.25.22: Old Munichburg Oktoberfest

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for this year’s Old Munichburg Oktoberfest.

I was very involved with our neighborhood organization from its beginnings in 2001 until 2020, when I realized I was pretty exhausted with it, with the whole thing.

I’ve been on the organization’s executive board, and we’ve been very active with the festival, too. So many meetings. So much hauling of stuff. So many phone calls, emails. Mailings. Talking to the media. The maps and the spreadsheets. I’ve been the music chair, the vendors chair, and I’ve served beer and brats. I’ve greeted vendors at 7 a.m. with my clipboard, and stayed until I was picking up trash out of the street after the day was over. I’ve helped vendors unload, and reload, their wares. I’ve wiped rainwater off of audience bleachers and beer garden chairs . . . there’s no end to the things that need doing in a festival like this. I was really tired of the whole thing.

But I went to the annual Oktoberfest yesterday and genuinely had a good time. I guess I needed to take a few years off.

It was good to see several familiar faces among the vendors: Summit Lake and Hummingbird wineries, Jamaican Jerk Hut, Coldstone Creamery, for example. I did miss seeing a lot, a whole lot, of the people I used to see before the pandemic. A&J Kettle Korn wasn't there, neither was Papa Hart's Pickles, and there were several crafters, too. And the awesome face-painting lady, Jeanette Dixon, of Lil Masterpiece Creations. She and her team really did create little masterpieces. But time marches on, I guess.

I’ve always loved the car show. If I walk to the festival on Broadway, the car show is always the first thing I see. This year a 1964 Dodge caught my eye. Except for being red instead of turquoise, and a different model, it was very similar to the 1964 Dodge I drove in college. Awww, so many happy memories.

Anyway, it was a good day. And yes, I did help out some. The festival isn’t back up to pre-pandemic levels, but that’s okay. It was a good day.

Oktoberfest Preparations

Looks like it’s going to be a great festival this year! I know you all think I’m just being all chirpy and advertise-y because I’m with the group that’s sponsoring the festival, but really: This event has grown over the years and become big, fun shindig.

Honestly, those first few years—how it rained! There was one year we joked about changing our logo to an umbrella. I truly didn’t think we’d keep having Oktoberfest. But here it is, ten years already.

Yeah, there’s the vendors and the car show, the craft booths, the wiener dog derby, the kids’ area, and so on, but the heart of it all has always been the German dinner.

Central UCC lets the Old Munichburg Association use their kitchen and cafeteria for the dinner; and many of the women at Central Church volunteer to help with the food service. They also donate all kinds of nifty homemade German goodies for a bake sale.

Each year, the organizers try to offer something new, something different. Like the Hott & Asel sausage (from the original recipe used by a local butcher shop that closed in the sixties but which all the locals remember).

Or one year, we had authentic German beer, sent to us in kegs from our friends in partner city Muenchberg.

This year, one of the new things is a special sauce for your bratwurst—made using an authentic German recipe from Muenchberg.

I got to see it as it was being cooked today in big pots in the church kitchen: It’s got mustard in it. And some chicken broth. And bacon! (Plus other ingredients I won’t go into; some things ought to remain proprietary secrets, huh?)

I’ll be working at the OMA booth tomorrow, if you want to drop by and say hello. Though of course, I’ll have to sneak out for a few minutes to get me one of those saucy brats!

See you there!


Jefferson City/Old Munichburg Oktoberfest
Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010
Hours: 10–6
Old Munichburg district (Dunklin Street, between Broadway and Jefferson), Jefferson City

Saturday Is Oktoberfest!

Get out your dirndls and lederhosen! Jeans and tee-shirts! Time to polka and have a beer! Saturday, September 25 is the annual Oktoberfest held in the Southside/Munichburg area, centered around the intersection of Dunklin and Washington Streets. (If you’re from out of town, this is the same basic area as the Ecco Lounge, Central Dairy, and the Schaefer House.)

Looks like the weather will be perfect! Click here for more festival schedule and more information.

I’ve told you about the Old Munichburg Oktoberfest before, and even shared a video with you. This festival is a fund-raiser for the Old Munichburg Association, which does all kinds of things to promote and uplift this historic “Germantown” neighborhood.

The festival goes from 10 to 6. Lots of food and vendors, authentic German dinners, two stages, vintage cars, a performance by a bona fide “strongman,” grape stomp, dachshund derby, and plenty of fun stuff for the kids—including the supremely cute “Hansel and Gretel Root Beer Garden.” And of course, a real beer garden for the grown-ups.

The Loehnig band from Hermann and the Rhineland Wurstjaegers will perform in the afternoon at the German stage; the beer garden stage will feature bluegrass and easy rock.

The official tee-shirt this year has a color reproduction of a nifty antique beer logo from C&L Wagner’s brewery, which used to stand right about where the festival is taking place.

And while you’re in the area, you can visit the newly dedicated Munichburg Corner, with its many commemorative bricks.




This year at the festival, there’s a renewed emphasis on authentic German artwork and crafts—artisans from the German Künstlerhaus (Artists House) in Hermann will be inside the Coca-Cola Community Building on Washington St. Here’s some of what you’ll see:

—Scherenschnitten, or scissors paper cutting, and you can buy intricately designed greeting cards, including Christmas cards.

—Schützenfest targets, shooting-match targets, which are elegantly painted targets to fire guns at—but you’ll want to hang these on the walls as art.

—The Friends of the Deutschheim State Historic Site will be selling imported German Christmas ornaments of fantastic design and quality—at good prices!

—There will be show of nifty antique memorabilia from Central Missouri’s historic breweries.

—Outside the Coke Building on Washington Street will be the Osage Bluff Blacksmith (look for the billowing smoke), making useful objects for sale. The blacksmiths at work will fascinate your kids!

—Next to them will be the Firehouse Woodcarvers at work carving delicate figures to delight all ages.

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Obviously, you need to go to this festival. “Get your German on”!

—I’ll see you there!

The Trinity . . .

Hi! And welcome to October, the best month of the year! Because we think a lot about German heritage this month--what with all the Oktoberfest celebrations going on--I'm going to make an effort to focus on German-heritage recipes this month. Yeah--as in, more than usual!

I've often explained to people that German festival food is like the "holy trinity." There are three things you need:


Brats.





Kraut.





. . . And German potato salad.





Okay, there are a few other things that are great to have, too:


Cooked apples.





. . . And--of course--beer.





(Photos in this post are from the German supper at this year's Old Munichburg Oktoberfest, held on September 26 in Jefferson City. As in previous years, the dinner was served in the gymnasium of Central United Church of Christ. And the women of the church did a great job of preparing and serving all that food! Oh, and the last photo is from the beer garden. Of course.)

Oktoberfest 2009

Thanks to Mayor Landwehr, I found out about this little video of the Old Munichburg Oktoberfest. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And in this case, a video is worth a thousand pictures.




It all went very well--there was rain in the morning, but it had stopped by the time the festival officially began. And for the rest of the day, the weather was pretty much perfect. Just a few gusty winds, and a couple brief sprinkles. Sunny, blue skies.

There was a group of visitors from Muenchberg, our partner city in Bavaria, and they seemed to enjoy their visit, almost as much as Jefferson Citians enjoyed meeting them.

The Lions had their fund-raising grape stomp; the Loehnigs and the Wurstjaegers (I've told you about them before) performed at the traditional music stage.

The organizers are perfecting the event--this year the kids' zone, German music and folk crafts, and the German supper, were all loosely grouped together, while the more raucous beer garden and its blues and rock music, the vendors, and the car show were in another area. I think separating the mellow areas from the rowdier crowd made everyone a little more comfortable.

This year I sensed that the festival workers were in a pretty good mood--busy, but on top of things, and enjoying the day. Which is a good place to be.

And we sold loads of Capitol Brewery tee-shirts, and about a ton of Hott & Asel baloney.

Good day. Good day.

Munichburg Part 1

I’ve mentioned our neighborhood before, but today and tomorrow I want to tell you more about it.

The reason is that Saturday is our neighborhood association’s big fund-raising event, its annual Oktoberfest. Here is a link for more information.




We live in Jefferson City’s Old Munichburg neighborhood, which is basically a “Germantown.” In the mid-1800s, it developed as its own little village, separate from Jefferson City, which was to the north, on the other side of Wears Creek (which is now the Highway 63/54 expressway).

Jeff City’s official downtown is on a hill close to the Missouri River—the main street is High Street, which runs along the crest of the hill. Hence Jeff City’s downtown is known locally as “uptown.”

Meanwhile, Munichburg developed to the south, on the other side of Wear’s Creek, and later became known as the “South Side.” It was primarily settled by Germans, and many of the folks immigrated from the same town in Bavaria: Muenchberg.

The German immigrants called their Missouri settlement “Muenchberg” after their hometown, but English speakers, overhearing this word, interpreted it as “Munichburg,” since they were familiar with the name of Munich (which is a much, much larger city than Muenchberg). And the name “Munichburg” stuck.

So Munichburg developed its own little business district, centered on Dunklin and its intersections with Madison and Jefferson. A few businesses in this area have long, long histories. Busch’s Florist, for example, has been around since 1890. The ECCO Lounge has been there, under different names, since the middle 1800s. Even the local Coca-Cola bottler is a direct descendent of its predecessors, all basically at the same location: Moerschel Products (1922), the Capitol Brewery (1892), Wagner Brewery (1870s), and Gundelfinger Brewery (1847).




In addition to these businesses, there were groceries, dry goods stores, hotels, funeral parlors, even a separate fire department.

There were German-speaking churches, too. The Central UCC was formed 151 years ago as the Deutsche Evangelische Central Gemeinde—Central German Evangelical Church.




Even the house we live in now, our home, was originally built in 1874 as a German Methodist Episcopal Church (a way for German speakers to participate in Methodism the way the AME Church developed as Methodism for African Americans). My dad (who should know) contends that our house is the oldest structure in the city originally built as a house of worship that is still standing. Hmmm.




But you know . . . things change. That’s all history. Cars revolutionized people’s neighborhood choices. The town grew and Munichburg was absorbed. The Germans lost their accents, the Anglos started drinking beer, and both were assimilated and mixed across the town, constituting a more generic “white” population.

By the 1970s and ’80s, Munichburg had become an “inner city” neighborhood, endangered by neglect and low-income rentals. As the old-timers died or moved away, nonresident landlords purchased the sturdy brick homes and began renting them out, speculating that the property might be developed someday as a new convention center or something.

(For as long as I can remember, Jefferson City has had wet dreams about building a big convention center, an income-producing panacea for a community that refuses to increase its taxes, annex adjacent neighborhoods, or allow riverboat gambling. But this is another entire topic.)

In addition to the landlords and their disinterest in upkeep (much less renovation), the neighborhood’s infrastructure has deteriorated. The sidewalks and gutters on our street are the same ones installed in the 1920s (hence, you can hardly see the sidewalks anymore, and the re-re-re-resurfaced street is nearly level with the curb in many places). . . . Anyway.




The Old Munichburg Association was our district’s response to this situation, and it’s made some tremendous progress since it organized in 2000. That is why I encourage you to attend the Oktoberfest this Saturday—it has to do with historic preservation, with community, and most importantly, with the future.