FROM THE HEARTLAND

All the world’s a stage
SCHLEY - ‘All the world’s a stage’...words that come from past English literary great William Shakespeare and are also proudly displayed on the front of Lon Scheidel’s most recent creation - an awesome bandshell/stage that is located on his property in Schley, Iowa. 
The property itself is a stage of sorts - a showcase dedicated to history. Scheidel loves preserving, collecting and re-creating history. It is his passion.
“I remember when I was putting up the rafters,” he recounts a day he was working alone (which isn’t too unusual) on the circa-late 1800s log-cabin from Protivin, Iowa he was re-assembling on his place. “I fell off a rafter, hit a beam on the way down and landed on the cement floor...I laid there for a moment thinking...‘OK...this hurts’...then I slowly started being able to move my toes, then my fingers and finally was able to get up.” 
Then he added, after a shake of the head and a smile, “When you’re younger, you can survive more of that stuff.” And Scheidel started his 50-year process of preserving history when he was younger, much younger in fact, at the age of 12 years old. 
“It was one of my grandfathers who got me into this. He used to take me out to the old land-fill and point out this and that, and what they were used for.” It was then that Lon’s fascination with memorabilia and the past began and has continued ever since. 
The first item he collected was an old pop-cooler from his neighbor that had originally been in an old dance hall.
“I’ve concentrated my collection over the years...and it has expanded and changed.”
That is obvious when a person sees what he has done on his property in Schley (which is right across the street from where he grew up as a kid). 
He has practically created a replica town or village dedicated to past history; including an original post office/store, an original gas station, a farm-implement sales and repair shop, an old one-room school-house, an original log cabin, a replica water tank, and even a phone booth. 
Along with his pre-1900s-built personal residence, there is also an original church/graveyard on the premises. Scattered throughout his well-maintained property (what one might call a personal park) are vehicles, tractors, carts and such dedicated to/from past eras, and all the buildings are decorated inside with antiques, memorabilia, tools and general items and such from those eras consistent with the buildings, and in doing so - Scheidel  has created a virtual museum village.
“I eat over the sink since all the tables are full of antiques!” he jokes.
“I like to bury myself in a project because it helps take my mind off stuff,” Scheidel  remarked as he pointed out the water tower he built during the time he was grieving over his mother’s passing.
“I never know how something’s going to turn out till I start building, and then all of a sudden new inspiration comes and the vision changes.”
That can be seen clearly inside Scheidel’s replica bar, where there is a Harley-style motorcycle hanging on the wall! “I got another motorcycle and a truck in my living room...and a truck upstairs,” he jokes. “People walk upstairs from my living room and all the sudden...there’s a Model-T truck!”
There is a lot of humor and fun-heartedness in Scheidel, like when he commented on an original vintage Czechoslovakian training rifle used back in the 1930s, “It shot pellets,” he chuckles. “No wonder they didn’t win the war!” 
One of the buildings on the lawn is a replica Farm Implement Store and mechanic shop he named in respect of Art Svestka, that is filled with old steel-wheeled tractors, a car like the legendary racing great Richard Petty was driving back in the 1970s. There are glass cases filled with toys and past memorabilia, with antique miniature cars and vehicles on top of the cases, and even a vintage firetruck. It is typical of what Scheidel has done inside all the buildings on his property he either brought in and restored or built from scratch.
A lot of what he has spent years doing is out of respect for how people lived years ago, as well as preserving past individual entrepreneurial dreams and visions.
“My grand-dad Rudy started farming with horses, but by the time he passed on, he was using giant four-wheel drive planters, tractors and combines. What he saw in his lifetime and in the way technology advanced was truly amazing...and then in my lifetime…!,” Scheidel shook his head and added, “Technology is going and growing so fast...sometimes I wonder if we are becoming too dependent on it.”
Scheidel has used a lot of recycled material in what he has done throughout the years on his place, and is still using a lot of recycling in his present projects, which include a dance hall and a bandshell that he has almost completed (if anything is ever really fully completed). The bandshell’s flooring and ceiling were rescued materials from a fire-damaged building, and so displayed above the stage, where performers will be located, are the words - ‘After the Fire.’
He shrugged off any great compliment about being environmentally friendly and recycle conscious by stating, “I’m just poor and a tight-ass.”
In all that Scheidel does, there is one thing that he really enjoys, and he proclaims as his ‘forte’, and that is lighting. It is evident in the band-shell/stage he has on the back of the premises, that he is just now putting the finishing touches on. The stage and large expanse of well-manicured lawn that is in front of the event center, make it a prime spot for future concerts.
 What Scheidel had done on his property is mostly preservation of history, but what he is doing now is truly - a field of dreams.
There is much from the past he has collected and restored, but one wonders if the best is yet to come. And that is Lon Scheidel - from the heartland.
 

Cresco Times

Phone: 563-547-3601
Fax: 563-547-4602

Address:
Cresco TPD
214 N. Elm Street
Cresco, IA 52136

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