The Vinegar Man

The tiny town of Roslyn sits amidst the Glacial Lakes Region of northeastern South Dakota, a district of shimmering lakes and low hills. To the casual observer, Roslyn is just another ordinary prairie hamlet.

Ordinary -- until one spots the International Vinegar Museum that commands a prominent position on Main Street.

The how and why of the International Vinegar Museum begins with an extraordinary man named Lawrence Diggs.

My wife and I had an opportunity to visit with Lawrence recently at Rosie’s, a bar/ café located across the street from the International Vinegar Museum.

“I started out as a West Coast radio DJ, then moved onto the TV business,” said Lawrence regarding his life before vinegar.

After spending a decade in the broadcast biz, Lawrence decided to become a paramedic. “I wanted to find a way to give back,” he said when asked about this quirky twist in his career path. Giving back is a common thread in Lawrence’s life.

Being a paramedic in a major city taught Lawrence many skills, including the ability to start an I.V. on an unconscious child in the rain, and stabilizing a shooting victim as bullets whizzed by.
Lawrence again followed his instinct for giving back by traveling to the west African nation of Burkina Faso.

“I helped establish the first ever emergency medical service in Burkina Faso,” said Lawrence in his unfailingly affable manner. “People there didn’t even know what an ambulance was.”

It was during his sojourn in Burkina Faso that Lawrence became interested in vinegar.
“They have huge sanitation problems over there. It occurred to me that what they needed was something that can kill germs, is cheap, and can be easily produced from local ingredients. Vinegar was the perfect fit.”

Lawrence discovered that there was no definitive textbook about vinegar. Undaunted, he studied vinegar and literally wrote the book about its production.

Lawrence told us that vinegar has been around for the entirety of recorded history. Conversing with him was like attending a lecture given by a very lively and engaging instructor. When the discussion turned to the wonders of our world, especially the vinegar microbe acetobacter, Lawrence murmured reverently, “I see evidence for God in everything.”

“Hannibal used vinegar to split boulders in his path as he marched his army, which included war elephants, over the Alps,” said Lawrence. “That was over 2,000 years ago. This tells us that the ancients had a deep understanding of vinegar‘s properties. His feat wouldn’t have been possible without a long history with vinegar.”

My wife and I asked how one makes vinegar.

“Vinegar can be produced from anything that has enough sugar or starch,” said the Vinegar Man. “Beer and wine work especially well. They’re always trying to turn into vinegar anyway.”

We asked where one might acquire the proper bacteria for making homemade vinegar.

“It’s everywhere!” grinned Lawrence as he gestured at the air. “All it takes is a source of sugar or starch and maybe a little acetic acid to kick-start the process.”

Homemade vinegar is similar to any other home-produced item.

“You’ll never get exactly the same result twice. That’s the beauty of it. We have been conditioned to expect that everything we consume will be absolutely uniform. But by doing so, we miss out on the deep richness of variety!”

So how did you end up here? And what’s the deal with the museum?

“After I wrote the vinegar textbook I came to be regarded as an expert, so I started a vinegar consulting business. I came to Roslyn on vacation and liked the town so much that I decided to stay.

“Roslyn was looking for something to set it apart and draw people. I told them that they needed to create something that was totally unique. They looked at me and said ‘You’re the uniquest thing we’ve got. Why don’t we do something based on your business?’ This was how International Vinegar Museum and Roslyn’s annual Vinegar Festival were born.”

Has the Vinegar Museum succeeded?

“It’s been a success in that it put Roslyn on the map. It’s succeeded in that our kids are proud when people say to them ‘Oh! You’re from the town with that Vinegar Museum!’”

Lawrence recently handed the reins of the International Vinegar Museum the Vinegar Festival over to the town of Roslyn.

“My goal is to resume my vinegar consulting business,” he said. “Another of my goals is to travel to poor countries and teach them how to make and use vinegar. I don’t know how much time I have left on this earth, but while I’m here, I want to give back as much as I can.”

One gets the feeling that Lawrence will achieve all his goals -- whether it’s traveling to a small nation to teach vinegar production or changing an ordinary small town by helping it launch a very unordinary festival.

Hunkering

The economy is in the news a bit nowadays, which is
about like saying that the sun tends to rise in the east.
Every day brings yet another boatload of bad economic
news. The weight of it presses down on us and makes us want
to huddle in the basement like children hiding from a summer
thunderstorm.
It's been said that the only difference between a
recession and a depression is our collective state of mind.
If that's the case shouldn't the government, just to be safe,
start pumping Prozac into our water supply?
A farm machinery dealer summed it up best recently when
he commented, "This country would be a whole lot better off
if people would just quit listening to the news!"
Not listening wouldn't change the fact that it has
gotten tough for many. There is no shortage of pain as folks
watch their dreams melt like a snowman in May. But as dire as
things may seem, there can be no doubt that we will someday
find our way out of this ditch.
America is still the greatest country on the planet.
She is still the land of opportunity, full of ambitious,
energetic and inventive people. New industries and new jobs
will rise from the ashes of this recession, or downturn, or
whatever you want to call it.
While this dip in the economy is probably not as bad as
the Great Depression, we can certainly take some lessons from
that era. One of them is the lost art of hunkering.
Hunkering can be summed up by a bumper sticker I once
saw: "I've done so much with so little for so long, I can now
do almost anything with just about nothing!"
I was a farmer for most of my life, which meant that I
was self-employed. There was thus little chance that I would
be fired for, say, showing up late for work. On the other
hand, my boss could really be a jerk and often forced me to
work long hours. My wages generally fell somewhere between
"little" and "none".
Because of this, my wife and I perfected the art of
hunkering during our early years together.
Certainly we would have qualified for food stamps back
when we were a struggling young dairy farm couple with two
small kids at home. We never applied for them, though. Pride
was a factor, but I also thought it weird that a guy who
raises food would get food assistance from the government. In
any case, we never went hungry.
This was because we hunkered. We did without such things
as nights at the movies, and planted a large garden. When one
of my cows broke a leg, we butchered her and my wife canned
most of the meat. We dined for many months on the delicious
beef stew that was once a Holstein named Becky.
We also ate road kill, thanks to my wife's uncanny
ability for "grilling" deer with the car. Such events are a
pain in the neck for us, but generally fatal for the deer.
When we were young and poor, we never let a little thing like
tread marks on a carcass stand in the way of fresh venison.
Speaking of cars, we did everything we could to save
gas. We had a Chevette -- basically a roller skate bolted to
a lawn mower engine -- which got about 50 miles per gallon.
It had a stick shift, so I would extend our gas mileage
whenever we went downhill by popping the tranny into neutral
and killing the engine.
I often drove many miles out of our way so we could save
gas by coasting down a hill. My wife argued that this used
more gas than we were saving, but women tend to have a poor
grasp of the automotive world.
Another hunkering method involved saving on electricity
by burning candles. My wife has always had a thing for
candlelight. When I met first her, my wife's apartment had
more candles than a Medieval monastery.
Luckily for us, our family knew about this and often
gave my wife candles for Christmas and birthdays, along with
extra-special candles from Rome for the Fourth of July.
One evening we were enjoying a cozy candlelit meal when
my wife caught me staring deeply into the flickering flame.
Smiling warmly, she reached across the table, squeezed my
hand and murmured, "What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking about how all this wax is going up in
smoke," I replied, "And what it's going to cost to replace
these candles. But I believe I've come up with a way to make
them last longer. What do you call that stuff I'm always
digging out of my ears?"