POLKAS, BRATWURST HIT AT PARTY

FRUITLAND -- It's hard to find an unhappy face where people are dancing to polkas.

"It's happy music," says Richard Kump. "This is why we love it."

Kump, who teaches German at Southeast, and has wife Gardis were two of hundreds at the Bavarian Halle Friday night for Winterfest, a celebration of bratwurst, sauerkraut, lederhosen and upbeat accordion music.

Ten minutes after Marv Herzog and the Bavarian Band of Frankenmuth, Mich., started playing, the dance floor was packed with couples, most of advancing years.

If the smiling, lederhosen-clad Herzog has a worry, that's it. In his 51st year of playing "The Beer Barrel Polka" and "The Tick-Tock Polka," he looks around at all the gray hair and wonders who will be dancing polkas in the future. "And who will replace us on the bandstand?" he asks.

Bob Drury says preservation of the culture is one reason he hosts the festivals at his Bavarian Halle. "A lot of the people in this country love the old German music ... We're trying to keep the heritage alive."

Among those are a table of men from the Veterans Home, who are Bob and Ann Drury's guests at each of the Bavarian festivals.

Winterfest is a benefit for Notre Dame High School. The semi-annual Bavarian music dances have raised more than $90,000 for the school over the past 10 years.

Ronald Grojean, the architect who designed the new Notre Dame High School now under construction, and his wife Faye were there celebrating his family's German heritage.

"The Grojeans are all from New Hamburg," he said. "My father, Theon Grojean, used to be a bouncer at Schindler's Tavern."

He wonders about the future of this music, too. "When this generation's gone, will the next generation have the respect?" he asks.

Raymond and Marian Essner came from Kelso to hear the music and support the cause. He used to play accordion in a band called The Gold Tones, and they used to dance to polkas. "Now we just dance to the slow ones," she said.

Also there from Kelso were Mary Jane and Martin Jansen. The Columbia Construction Co. president and his wife have been to every one of the dances here, but they've also gone to Frankenmuth and to Bavaria with Marv Herzog.

Frankenmuth, known as "Michigan's Little Bavaria," is a mecca for those seeking Bavarian culture. It is filled with Bavarian-style buildings that inspired those Drury has built at the Fruitland I-55 interchange, Herzog says.

The future of polka music may be uncertain, but in a number of places in the U.S. there are still stations that play the songs 24 hours a day, says Herzog. He has recorded 30 albums and has a legion of fans who follow the band from one dance to the next.

Friday, polka-lovers were there from as far away as Indiana.

The Kumps said they heard this kind of music at dance halls and festivals while growing up in Europe.

"You could compare this to your country music," Gardis Kump said.

Richard Kump prefers German polkas to Polish ones. "Polish polkas make me feel like I'm going to have a heart attack," he said.