IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Rod Hegna, from left, Kevin Linbo and Weston Koski have brought the Village Pub to downtown Hayfield. Photos by Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com

It takes a village Hayfield’s The Village Pub Lounge takes advantage of some perfect timing

By Rocky Hulne

If the timing is right, the rest will come easy.

A trio of Hayfield men recently made the right move at the right time and their move has brought a little bit of nightlife and a great place to eat in their hometown.

Rod Hegna and Kevin Linbo opened The Village Pub Lounge in the spring of 2021 and the restaurant and bar has turned into a smashing success with the help of bar manager Weston Koski, who worked at the Flying Monkey, which used to exist in the Village Pub Lounge’s location. The Flying Monkey closed in 2018, and another investor had been renovating the space during the pandemic before they ran out of money. When that investor ran out of funds, the site went up at auction and Hegna and Linbo took advantage of the opportunity and purchased the freshly remodeled location.

“It’s kind of turned into a restaurant,” Hegna said. “The food here has taken off tremendously and it’s more than I ever thought. At about 8 p.m., it starts becoming a bar.”

Hegna owned a bar in Waltham for 14 years and Limbo has owned a bar before, so they have plenty of experience in the business. They both cook on a regular basis, along with Koski, and the restaurant’s burger selection has been an instant hit in a town that was in great need of a place to grab a drink and a meal.

“(Hayfield) was praying for a place like this to come here,” Hegna said. “The bowling alley is here, but if you want to have a few drinks, you don’t want kids around. The Legion is only open a couple of nights a week and this worked out really good for us.”

The Village Pub Lounge also offers pool, dart leagues and has a cribbage tournament every Saturday. The establishment hires a DJ about once a month.

Koski said that the Village Pub Lounge has quickly become one of the primary places to go in Hayfield. He was excited about the opportunity

“There have been a lot of people around the community, Blooming, Kasson and Rochester coming in here”

Weston Koski The Village Pub Manager

from the start, and business has been booming since the opening week, when the Lounge live streamed Hayfield High School’s baseball games at the state tournament.

“I always wanted to do this, so I talked to Rod and Kevin about it,” Koski said. “There have been a lot of people around the community, Blooming, Kasson and Rochester coming in here. We see a lot of new faces here and a lot of faces keep coming back. We must be doing something right.”

The Village Pub Lounge stands out in Hayfield's business district as a fresh start, but it wasn’t always a guarantee that the business would get its chance to start. It opened as COVID-19 restrictions

were easing up, but there was always a chance that those restrictions would return. “It was scary. We were just getting past the masks and the half capacity when we opened up,” Hegna said. “It worked out great for us and the first two months were absolutely crazy.” The Village Pub Lounge is open seven days a week. It is open from 6:30 a.m. to 12 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday. It is located at 4 Center Ave S in Hayfield. The building has existed since 1963 and used to be a library, a fire station and city hall. P The Village Pub in Hayfield adds a nice atmosphere to catch a drink and a meal in.

The Lyle Fire Department has been important in not only emergency situations, but as a core part of the community for 125 years. Photos by Eric Johnson/eric.johnson@austindailyherald.com

One call away: Lyle FD serving its community for over 125 years

By Savannah Howe

The most everyday heroes are not easily spotted every day. They are not always in uniform or sporting badges, nor driving giant fire engines and wielding impressive equipment. The t-shirt-clad guy picking up a gallon of milk at the local gas station could have been the same one kneeling over your loved one in distress just the night before. Teachers, farmers, tradesmen, small business owners have put the safety of cherished neighbors and faceless strangers over their own wellbeing, jobs, hobbies and families. Their acts of service are uncounted, and often forgotten as life moves unflinchingly on after their help was needed.

In the case of the smallest volunteer fire departments, community impact goes far beyond extinguishing flames. Few jobs are as thankless and as depended-on as a small-community firefighters, and the men in Lyle battling fires, fist-bumping kindergarteners at Fire Safety Week and saving the occasional kitten in distress are no exception.

Wayne Frank is a longtime resident of Lyle and has stoically notched 38 years of volunteer service with the Lyle Fire Department. When asked why he stuck around to donate so much time to the cause, Frank said — over some jovial ribbing from a fellow firefighter that he simply “didn’t know any better” — that “somebody’s gotta do it.”

Frank is one of 18 on the FD’s roster, a slimmer lineup than in years past after losing five men to retirement. It’s not that finding volunteers in Lyle is difficult; it’s that those who would volunteer are already doing so elsewhere, usually in many places. Chief (and son to Wayne Frank, the Lyle FD is a Frank family affair) Dan Frank explained that, of the approximately 500 residents of Lyle, perhaps a couple dozen are regularly seen volunteering around town.

To no fault of anyone’s own, the elder Frank added. Careers, children and their extracurriculars such as sports, and other commitments demand more time than ever of the average person, but as a consequence, small-town organizations that depend on volunteerism are “doing less with more,” as Wayne described.

“You get that group of people that are willing to help in your community, that are willing to volunteer, but the hard part is they are spread out between so many different groups,” Dan said. “If we were only in the fire department, it’d be pretty easy, … but you just get pulled in so many different ways.”

Many of the department members are cross-dedicated to other groups, such as the first responders, the Lions Club, the Lyle annual celebration committee and the Lyle Area Cancer committee. But even if they weren’t, being on the fire department alone is a huge time commitment, and not just to the department’s 25 to 30 calls per year.

125 years of service

The City of Lyle was officially incorporated on June 18, 1870. The Lyle FD, in an unusual coincidence, was founded exactly 25 years later to the day. The town and its fire department held a shared anniversary celebration in the summer of 2021, where the FD participated in a few festivities including a traditional water fight, but Lyle firefighter Alex Block explained that nothing specifically celebrating the FD’s milestone has been planned yet.

On the third weekend of February, the department will resurrect its annual firefighter appreciation chili supper after being forced to cancel due to the pandemic last year. Three volunteers who dedicated at least 20 years of service will be recognized: Les Frank (33 years), Jim Guthmiller (20 years) and Brant Strouf (20 years).

“That’s a lot of time to volunteer on a fire department,” Dan Frank said. Many of the Lyle FD members are dedicated to supporting the department for the long haul because, as the chief explained, if no one does it, those small-town services disappear. And, as Block added, being an emergency responder in a very small community brings a starkly different challenge than in large communities.

When the victim is a friend

“It puts a different feel on it when you’re going to your neighbor’s when they’re in crisis,” Block said.

Those calls, after all, never happen for a good reason, and seeing a neighbor, coworker or friend in a car accident or losing their home to a fire is extremely difficult.

“To me, being in the fire department is easier [than being a first responder] because it’s generally property you’re dealing with,” Dan Frank explained. “You don’t have the personal connection as far a patient with first responders, the medical side of things.”

On the other side of the coin, Block and the Franks understand that having your neighbor, coworker or friend respond to your emergency may bring a lot of security to the community. But responding to those car accidents will always linger for the firefighters, Dan Frank said, especially when the faces of the victims are known.

“When the semi went into the school back in 2018, any fire department could have just done what they needed to do and gotten out of there,” Block said. “It happened in the beginning of the day just as school got started, and we had guys there right when it happened, and they were still there at 6 o’clock at night just helping with cleanup when it wasn’t necessarily the fire department’s job to be in there picking up brick and mortar off the floor. But, you know, it’s our community. And so we all take part in that.”

Dan Frank explained that he and his fellow firefighters take pride in their community, school and churches just as much as they do in the fire department. Small-town fire departments are often called upon since they are organized manpower, his father added.

“We carry pagers and have that structure that you need in an emergency,” Wayne Frank said. “That’s who you call, no matter what it is. You don’t know who to call, you call the fire department.”

The firefighters are happy to give their time, labor and sometimes safety to the people they care about. That is “why the fire department gets themselves into the things they do,” Dan Frank laughed. Everyone on the fire department has a natural affinity for helping others, but with everyone being volunteer and having full-time employment elsewhere—the roster includes farmers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and more—that means sacrifices and juggling responsibilities.

That all plays to the department’s advantage, though. Being experts in many other fields means having a diversely skilled team of responders; if it were a paid fire department, everyone’s primary field of expertise would be exactly that: fighting fires.

“We have a lot of talents and resources within everyone here,” Wayne Frank said. “If one might not be able to do it himself, he knows someone who can. The school accident was a good example because we had to do a lot of things, but we had contacts and in a pretty short time we basically cut the truck out, got the hole plugged and stabilized the building.”

Always of service

Small-community firefighters are serving their towns in more ways than suiting up for fires. The Lyle FD has scaled trees in cat rescue missions, helped at local events and fundraisers, and given countless fire engine rides, photo opportunities, and high-fives to admiring children. The huge smiles and waves from an excited child’s perch in a fire truck, Dan Frank said, is one of the best parts of being a firefighter.

While they are the ones climbing out of bed or clocking out of work to answer a neighbor’s SOS, the firefighters are not the only ones making sacrifices. They often leave spouses and children behind, something they’re always aware of.

“Sometimes we spread ourselves thin,” Dan Frank said. “We try to be real with the guys that are talking about joining the department. It’s a family commitment. It’s not just about us when the pager goes off at three in the morning and you might not be back for hours. You have to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Still, Lyle’s volunteers are there at every beck of the pager—many of whom have been responding for decades. The chief is coming up on 20 years of service, and Block will celebrate 9 years of volunteering soon. They wouldn’t change a thing about the day they were sworn in.

“Just being able to help people makes it worth it,” Dan Frank said, recalling a day several years ago when the department responded to a camper fire on Christmas Day. “[The resident] said ‘just having you guys show up was a weight lifted off my shoulders.’ Being able to help somebody that much… sure, we went out there on Christmas Day and it was colder than heck, but it’s just little things like that that keep me going.” P