Oak Center General Store
A Place for Community Since 1913
By Bill Stoneberg
from Issue #2 of Ocooch Mountain Echo
Walking through the front door of The Oak Center General Store is like stepping back in time. As you push the heavy, wood door open a bell rings, and your first steps are onto a creaky, wooden floor. A long mercantile counter runs the length of the room on one side, and the other side has an old wooden ice box filled with local sodas and assorted items that need to be kept cold. Throughout the storefront there are a small amount of produce and food items along with various goods one might expect to see in a store that caters to free spirits. Entering the place is a kind of time-travel, inducing what I can only describe as a feeling of magic.
I first became aware of The Oak Center General Store in early 2020. My partner and I were excited that Erik Koskinen was scheduled to play. We noticed it was near Lake City, MN and when we clicked on the link to the venue and saw pictures of the old general store, we felt we had to go. Then COVID-19 hit. The Erik Koskinen show was cancelled along with many others. We were very disappointed. The photos of the interior of the venue were so intriguing, it just looked so beautiful and like something from another time. We decided, show or no show, we must go see this place. So, one Saturday afternoon we headed to The Oak Center General Store.
As we entered the store, we were greeted by two dogs. Then, as we began to browse the store, a slight, slow-moving figure appeared in the back doorway. “Hello there!” said Steven Schwen, proprietor, and resident of The Oak Center General Store. We greeted Steven and informed him that even though the show was cancelled, the photos of the venue were so incredible, we just had to see the place for ourselves.
Steven gave us a tour, imparting many little details about the history of the building from both before and after he acquired it in 1976. On this day, and through subsequent visits, I have learned that no time with Steven does not also involve a generous mixing of some stories of his involvement in fights for social justice and the hippie movement of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Oak Center is an unincorporated community that once had a post office, a creamery, and various other businesses, including the general store. The store first opened in 1913 and operated as a general store, implement dealer and community center until it closed its doors in 1970. Steven Schwen resurrected the store in 1976. Since that time Steven has operated the store and a small farm called Earthen Path Organic Farms; growing fruit, herbs, and vegetables to sell in the store, to a local CSA (community supported agriculture) program and for local farmer’s markets. Oak Center General Store is at the front of the building, with an adjacent woodshop, and upstairs is the beautiful concert or meeting room with a built-in stage.
The following is from an interview I did with Steven in December of 2021:
Can you tell us a little about the history of The Oak Center General Store?
I haven’t been here the whole time, it's 109 years old! It was built in 1913 by Sophie Siewert and A.J. Siewert. Sophie's family had the money, and AJ was the wheeler dealer. The stories just kept walking in the door from the day I got this place.
When did you acquire the store?
1976. The 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence! It was my declaration of independence!
I was going to ask that! But this was always a general store like it is now, right?
Well it was more a general store than it is now and it had been closed for six years when I found it.
So, it operated from 1913 until 1970 as a store?
They bought and sold wool, they trucked grain. They sold Case equipment and moonshine…
All the important things, right? So, this was a real important center for the area?
It was. It was a community center.
What is the history of your involvement here at the store? What was your vision? What were you doing with it when you first acquired the property?
I was doing woodworking and cabinet making and remodeling on the side to pay the bills. I started cabinet making because I didn’t have enough income coming in from making furniture for people. I was trying to be affordable for my neighbors and none of them could afford to pay a decent wage to a hippy type who was making furniture. But a lot of the local neighbors were really supportive and allowed me to make some really creative stuff.
In fact, this table here with these carved lion claw feet. I made this for a neighbor that showed me one in a Kmart catalog. The Kmart table didn’t have carved feet, it had just a profile band sawed out and it was particle board with oak veneer on it. He said it was four hundred bucks. He then showed me a table in a furniture magazine that was twelve hundred bucks and had real solid oak and carved feet. He said we like the price on this Kmart one, but we like this other one better. I said, “You know what, there’s a lot of difference between those two tables, but I’ll do the best I can.” So, I made the table, and I figured my wage at two dollars an hour and it came out to six hundred bucks.
So I told him, “Well, the cheapest I can sell this table is six hundred bucks, and if you can’t pay that then I’m going to keep it.” I’m glad I did because there have been a lot of very, very good fellowship times around this table when we have a concert. People come and gather round this table cooking food up for the concert. We actually had a potluck dinner around this table with Eugene McCarthy. And the room was full of people. I have a picture; I can get it if you want to show it on your radio show.
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We both chuckle a bit about showing photos on the radio, but the story of the table brings us to the reason I stumbled upon the Oak Center General Store to begin with, music. You see, part of every musical performance that happens here is the sharing of a farm fresh meal. Shows at the General Store are more than just a music performance, they are about sharing art, ideas, and community. Musicians seem to love playing the store as well. Trempealeau, WI singer-songwriter John Smith said, “It’s like playing inside a guitar.” The list of artists that have performed here over the years is full of recognizable names, including Mark Olson from The Jayhawks, Greg Brown, Charlie Parr, David Huckfelt and also his former band The Pines, Humbird, Erik Koskinen, Chris Koza, The Federales, Molly Maher, Pistol Whippin’ Party Penguins, Dean Magraw, and Bill Staines who had played here every year for over 40 years right up until his death this past year.
Trempealeau, WI singer-songwriter John Smith said, “It’s like playing inside a guitar.”
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How did you start hosting musical performances?
My vision when I first moved here was influenced by a commune that was called the Orinoco G Church. I moved there in ‘72 when I graduated from college, after having gone through the whole anti-war protests and the Chicago Eight Trials and Crosby Stills and Nash singing about “your brothers bound and gagged” you know. That was all happening right while I was going to school.
and you moved to a commune here in Minnesota…?
Yea, you know, building a whole new world. We were pretty ambitious. Building from the roots up. Starting with the land, we stopped using chemicals and formed co-ops, building a new economy.
It sounds like the experiences in the commune and the time period carried through here at the store and with the farm.
Oh yeah, like I said, I was permanently affected.
So, you got this in 1976, what did you do with it right away? Start the farm?
Well at that time I was calling myself a missionary farmer. I was trying to become the advanced guard of the organic back to the land movement here in my home state of Minnesota. My neighbors were a little wary, or skeptical when some guy with long hair and a beard moved in. Some families around here wouldn’t let their kids even come in store!
So, you got the store and you’re doing missionary agriculture work. How did that lead into the music?
When I first got this place the stories from old timers came in through the doors. I heard a whole lot of the history of everything that happened here. Including the bootlegging story about the Seiwerts and people telling their kids they couldn’t come in here because I was a communist! This friend of ours, David, was coming by and I mentioned how we used to have this really great little get together back in Oronoco when I lived in the commune, and we would show movies. David said, “You can check movies out from the Rochester library, let’s do that again.” So, after doing those movies for a little while, David said, “Let’s do a square dance.” So, we hosted a bunch of musicians from the Winona area who called themselves the Sugar Hill String Band.
The Sugar Hill String Band came up and we had Bob Bovee and Gail Heil calling the first square dance. You know Gail died a few years ago, they always used to come together. Pop Wagner used to come and call once in a while. The square dances filled the place up with back-to-the-land homesteader types. You know the old hippy types who had gotten back to the land? They came out of the hills! It was great times. I think we had maybe more than a hundred people for a square dance. We had five-gallon buckets with boards on them and old rocking chairs and kitchen chairs to seat everybody. So pretty much everybody had to be standing up or dancing. I’m trying to remember how many squares we had going up there. We probably had at least two squares going and maybe it was three.
Actually, that wasn’t the first music. The first music was the first year. The power company and the phone company were threatening to shut us off. The only income we had, the store, wasn’t much income really, and my woodworking hadn’t reached a level where I was able to make enough to cover the payments and the bills. So, utilities were threatening to cut us off, and a friend of ours that came by to fix one of our refrigeration units said, “Well, you know what? I’ve got a band and we’re short on gigs. You guys are short on money. Why don’t we have a dance here and we’ll split the gate. You supply the place, and we’ll supply the music and the beer.” And they did supply the beer. It was kegs of beer and plastic cups.
The band was called Wild Oats and the first people that walked in were all bikers in leather and one of them said, “Wow look at this place there’s nothing you can wreck!” Actually, we anticipated this might happen so I had sheets of plywood screwed to the fronts of all of these shelves to protect our stereo and our dishes and everything else from damage and he pounds on the front of the plywood and says “Look there’s nothing you can wreck!” I’m thinking, aw jeez this is not going to go well. So, they got upstairs and the band’s playing and it's one in the morning and they run out of beer. There are overturned plastic cups laying all over the floor and beer is two inches deep in the middle of the floor. These floor joists are 34 feet long you know so there’s a slight sag to the middle of the floor and the spilled beers all kind of ran to the middle and it's two inches deep. And these guys, who showed up in Harley boots and leather leggings and stuff, are taking their shirts off and running and sliding in the beer. So it’s splashing up on either side like the wake from a water skier you know. Just the spray. So eventually they’re getting up on stage taking up a collection to get more beer. My first wife Nan and I, we were sleeping up there and we had mattresses out on the floor. I got up on stage and said “You know what? This is our home, this is our bedroom, we have to sleep on this floor! No, that’s it, we’re done. Everybody go home!”
They all complained, and everybody started to leave. We carried up wood shavings from the shop and dumped wood shavings and sawdust all over the floor to soak up the beer. We shoveled the sawdust up and carried it out to the barnyard. We got it all cleaned up and we went downstairs and here’s a neighbor kid who was still in high school, passed out. He had puked on the couch upstairs already, he’s passed out in a snowbank outside, and can’t find his keys! He just lives a mile down the road you know. We turned to go back up the stairs and there’s a couple making out on the stairs and by this time it’s four in the morning. We looked at each other and said, “Folk music.” (laughs)
She (Nan) was really into Bill Stains, who just died two days ago by the way (December 5, 2021). Probably one of the longest running troubadours in the U.S. He was really well known; you’ve probably heard some of his stuff before.
So folk music…
Well, we decide we’re doing folk music and the first one she wanted to have is Bill Staines. But this friend of ours who got us steered towards doing music, David, he brought us an album of Greg Brown. We liked it, so David somehow got in touch with Greg Brown. I believe this was 1978.
So, it all got going pretty quickly then?
Yea, yeah. That first show we split the gate with this band and got all the beer and sawdust cleaned up and it paid those first two bills. We decided we were going to do folk music. So, we go up to the Coffeehouse Extemp above the New Riverside Café in Minneapolis where Bill Staines was playing. Bill ended up being the longest standing regular musician that we had here. He played here every year for forty years. I think we had to cancel once because of a snowstorm. Bill used to show up with his cowboy boots and his cowboy hat and he was an incredibly versatile vocalist. He was spot on with his, what’s that word for being able to sing right on the…
pitch?
Perfect pitch! He had perfect pitch. He had this song about 18 wheelers where the line was “I grew up with my face in a roadmap.” Nan and I had three kids, and the youngest was Jesse. He’s still the youngest. The kids always thought that he was singing “I threw up with my face in a road map.” So, one of those times when he (Bill) was playing here Jesse got his cowboy hat and his cowboy boots on. Bill’s doing the soundcheck and he’s up on stage tapping his foot and playing his guitar singing that 18 wheeler song and Jesse’s right next to Bill trying to tap his foot in sync with Bills foot and he’s singing “I threw up with my face in the roadmap”! (chuckles) You know, life has been magical here. The Folk Forum concerts really have brought a lot of magic through the doors.
Actually, we called it Folk Forum not because we were going to do folk music. I was working with some people out of Millville that were doing the North Country Anvil, it was a regional magazine that quit printing probably 20 or 30 years ago. There was a community of people that had developed around the North Country Anvil and the stuff that was happening with the Folk Forum. We had been talking about the folk schools like in Kentucky and down in The Carolinas, so we called it Folk Forum. The intention was that the Folk Forum was going to be a forum to kind of try and enlighten people about treating the soil right and alternative economies, and about opposing nuclear weapons and warfare.
Different ways to do things.
Yea, yea. I don’t want to sound egotistical but to raise the level of consciousness a notch or two, you know? And the first forums that we did weren’t music, except for the two square dances and those first two folk musicians. We did workshops on renewable energy, how to build your own solar collectors, how to build your own wind charger, grafting, organic farming, horse farming, and holistic medicine actually!
When I quit med school, I went out to Pennsylvania to go to a homeopath school and get certified as a homeopath. I asked the person that was instructing at the school if he would come and do a workshop on homeopathy at Oak Center as part of our holistic medicine series and he was actually a well known banjo player and pedal steel guitar player! In New York City at one time they called him “the wiz kid of banjo.”
So, did he play here too?
He did a homeopathic workshop on Friday night and a pedal steel banjo concert the next night.
So, you’ve been doing the Folk Forum for almost 45 years?
You know we had something scheduled with Bill Staines on the last Sunday in February, which he had done consecutively every year for more than 40 years.
So he was going to play in February 2022?
Yep. And I was thinking when he called, gosh, I hope you can get up to the stage. He’s 74 and I’m only 71 and I have trouble getting up on the stage. Bill Staines was a true troubadour. He just told stories from one end of the country to another.
You said you had communicated with Erik Koskinen and David Huckfelt recently about playing here again.
David’s a really great guy, and when he played with Benson Ramsey in the Pines, they would sell out weeks ahead of time. His dad Bo Ramsey used to come here with Greg Brown, and they would always sell out. And then Bo Ramsey married Greg Brown’s daughter.
But David and Benson used to be a show that people came to. But as far as concerts coming up in the future, I was talking with Erik. He was back in New York state with his mom. Erik said why don’t we see how things look in January. Let’s get in touch in January. I’m waiting to schedule something with Erik.
Charlie Parr has said that he wants to come back too, and you know he always sells out. But that’s one thing we’ve been holding out on with Charlie, he always packs the house. I don’t know if we can pack this place and have people feel comfortable.
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Steven’s words, “I don’t know if we can pack this place and have people feel comfortable” echoed in my head as I left the store. Like I said, if I were to describe my first time walking into The Oak Center General Store in two words, “It’s magic.” My experience at The Oak Center General Store has been both wonderful and disheartening. Wonderful because it takes you back in time. It is a window into another world where the unchanging past collides with a possibility filled future. And for the musicians that play here, well, like singer-songwriter Johnsmith said, “It’s like playing inside a guitar.” It is also disheartening because of the times were in, times that would solicit a comment like, “how do you pack the place and still feel comfortable?”
These days The Oak Center General Store often sits empty except for the echoes and shadows of the life that has passed through it over the past century. This place needs that life. It needs to be packed; packed with people sharing experiences of art, music, food, and most of all community. What The Oak Center General Store really needs is community. Community is what we all need right now. Perhaps if we channel life into places like The Oak Center General Store, they will channel life back into us.
Learn more about The Oak Center General Store at www.oakcentergeneralstore.com