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Come fair time in a small town, you just never know what's going to turn up. All kinds of talented folks put their best creative efforts on display, and their efforts can take just about any form imaginable.
Take a table full of bees fashioned from rocks tied together with welded metal bands for example. That's right, stone insects, sitting right there in the first-floor corridor of the County Administration Center.
Some of the bugs, such as a priest bee carrying a cross attached to a string of prayer beads, are well over a foot long. Others are intricately fashioned from small pebbles — one small stone for each body part: head, abdomen and thorax.
In addition to the clergyman bee, there's a cowboy bee lassoing a small, metal calf, a rock drummer bee banging out a beat on a little trap set and a naturalist bee examining a leaf through a magnifying glass.
More than a dozen rock bees will be on display at the Administration Center through the end of the Nodaway County Fair, which begins today. All are the creations of a couple of Ravenwood residents who have obviously been, well, as busy as bees.
The insects were designed by former Northeast Nodaway R-V administrator Byron Miller and assembled by Butch Runde, who owns and operates Runde Welding in Ravenwood.
Runde, a master welder and rock hound, has been crafting similar table-top sculptures for several years. He said he can make "just about anything" depending on the kind of figures his friends and neighbors request.
The bee concept, he said, came from some rock ants he made some time ago. At Miller's request, Runde added metal wings and stingers, and the ants were transformed into bees.
"It's just something I started doing seven or eight years ago," Runde said. "I get the rocks down at the river, and I'll do just about anything — a cowboy or a priest or an Indian — whatever the person wants. I just do it for a hobby."
Counting the dozen or so bees on display downtown, Runde reckons he's created well over 100 sculptures and has orders backed up for several more. He does, after all, stay pretty busy at his day job welding, fabricating and repairing agricultural tools and equipment.
After learning to weld as a teenager, Runde went to work in his cousin's shop, which has been in business since 1981. When the cousin died several years ago, Runde bought the business.
Come fair time in a small town, you just never know what's going to turn up. All kinds of talented folks put their best creative efforts on display, and their efforts can take just about any form imaginable.
Take a table full of bees fashioned from rocks tied together with welded metal bands for example. That's right, stone insects, sitting right there in the first-floor corridor of the County Administration Center.
Some of the bugs, such as a priest bee carrying a cross attached to a string of prayer beads, are well over a foot long. Others are intricately fashioned from small pebbles — one small stone for each body part: head, abdomen and thorax.
In addition to the clergyman bee, there's a cowboy bee lassoing a small, metal calf, a rock drummer bee banging out a beat on a little trap set and a naturalist bee examining a leaf through a magnifying glass.
More than a dozen rock bees will be on display at the Administration Center through the end of the Nodaway County Fair, which begins today. All are the creations of a couple of Ravenwood residents who have obviously been, well, as busy as bees.
The insects were designed by former Northeast Nodaway R-V administrator Byron Miller and assembled by Butch Runde, who owns and operates Runde Welding in Ravenwood.
Runde, a master welder and rock hound, has been crafting similar table-top sculptures for several years. He said he can make "just about anything" depending on the kind of figures his friends and neighbors request.
The bee concept, he said, came from some rock ants he made some time ago. At Miller's request, Runde added metal wings and stingers, and the ants were transformed into bees.
"It's just something I started doing seven or eight years ago," Runde said. "I get the rocks down at the river, and I'll do just about anything — a cowboy or a priest or an Indian — whatever the person wants. I just do it for a hobby."
Counting the dozen or so bees on display downtown, Runde reckons he's created well over 100 sculptures and has orders backed up for several more. He does, after all, stay pretty busy at his day job welding, fabricating and repairing agricultural tools and equipment.
After learning to weld as a teenager, Runde went to work in his cousin's shop, which has been in business since 1981. When the cousin died several years ago, Runde bought the business.
"We do anything farm related," he said. "I started working down here my senior year in high school."
But even a busy craftsman has to let his creative side out to play once in a while, or at least let it out so that other people can play. When Runde's two grown sons, Cody and Luke, were small, their father fashioned a whole series of boy-sized farm implements so they could pull them behind a couple of pedal tractors.
There was virtually a full line, Runde recalls, including a hay bailer, sprayer, auger, grinder and a pair of trailers.
He still has the implements sitting in an outbuilding. But the boys took the tractors with them when they left home.
"Those were the the first things they took when they moved out," Runde said.
It is possible, however, that the tractors and Dad's home-crafted toys will be reunited at some point. After all, what are grandkids for.
