NEW YORK MILLS, Minn. -- It is the Little Town that Could. It is the Athens of the Prairie. It is the epicenter of serious, down-to-earth thinking in the upper Midwest.

To prove it, New York Mills awarded a gold medal to a Long Island Episcopal priest this weekend and declared him America's Greatest Thinker. They've been doing this for six years, and so far, nobody's challenged their right to do it. Harvard's attorneys have filed no writs.

Clark Berge also got $500 and enjoyed the hospitality of the people of New York Mills for a couple of days during the Sixth Annual Great American Think-Off. He was one of four finalists invited to present their arguments, pro or con, on this year's big question, put to all the amateur philosophers who entered the essay contest sponsored by the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center: "Is Honesty ALWAYS the Best Policy?"

The question is one the people of this area are evidently interested in: More of them showed up for the debate than in the last five years -- over 300. It was also evident that the current scandal of morality and honesty in Washington is seen here, with some sadness, as reflecting the spirit of the times. One of the contestants, a sex therapist from California, used it as the leitmotif of her essay and presentation. She drew an enthusiastic response.

In fact, honesty must be a topic of interest to many Americans these days. The Cultural Center received more than 820 essays this year, the largest number since the contest was launched in 1993, the brainchild of John Davis, a local artist. Entries came from 45 states, from the East Coast and West Coast. A few even came all the way from Argentina.

Forty-two essays arrived from Maryland, more than half from Baltimore.

A panel consisting of a university philosopher, an accountant, a musician, a priest, a teacher and a disc jockey chose the final four, who came in for the debate.

Berge, a thin, ascetic-looking man with a milky smile, rust-colored beard and vague eyes, argued the No position before the crowd in the New York Mills High School gym. He is a community organizer among the poor of Long Island. He argued that compassion was a greater virtue than "rigorous honesty," when exercised without regard for consequences.

The soft-spoken priest tied his opponent in knots during the final round of the three-hour debate, with biblical citations supporting the necessity to occasionally shade the truth to effect more benign outcomes, especially at those times when society is in disarray and lunatics rule -- such as during the Holocaust and in the Balkans today.

The finalist Berge disposed of was a 19-year-old college student from Fargo, N.D., named Mac Schneider, a husky football lineman with a broad face brightened by a perpetual blush. Schneider argued that honesty was always the best policy, without exception. He confessed he would probably turn in his mother if it came to a question of his lying to the police to shield her -- and won the silver medal.

"So, you better watch out, Mom," he said, grinning into the cameras of the C-Span network, which broadcast the debate live.

There was one Dan Quayle moment. It came when, in response to a question, Schneider said he believed the U.S. government did not lie to the American people.

Berge allowed that remark to sink in. Then with exquisite enunciation and in a tone of exaggerated sadness, he said: "I believe the government lies to us."

The house came down.

Rounding out the debate

An 84-year-old retired surgeon from nearby Detroit Lakes, Minn., Charles Eginton, also argued for no compromise when it comes to honesty. He was lean and deliberate, and conveyed his points in a voice so low that everybody had to bend toward him to hear him. He made reference to the Ten Commandments, the rules of an honest life. These, he said, were not sent down to be obeyed only at one's convenience.

The other contestant holding up the No besides Berge was Susan Block, the sex therapist. New York Mills had probably never seen the likes of her. She wore gray platform boots, a wildly patterned floral dress, a white translucent picture hat. She had big teeth and lavish hair, and brought a theatricality to the whole affair that everybody appreciated.

Well, nearly. One member of the audience complained that during her first round debate with Berge she tried to upstage the priest as he spoke by fanning herself with a purple feather.

"I've done some amateur theater, and you'd get killed for that," said Jim Buchan.

Block's arguments, for the most part, had to do with the truth and consequences of sexual frankness. She counseled discretion, especially these days when people who demand the absolute truth are often the ones likely to abuse the information they receive. Her most pointed reference was to independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr and his "$40 million witch hunt."

The winner was chosen in a secret ballot by the audience, the majority of them locals. The first-place medal Berge received was a circle of brass with a sterling-silver center and an image of a naked thinker sitting on a tractor wrought in 14-karat gold. Asked what he would do with his $500, Berge said he would probably "give it away."

As if to endorse the growing celebrity of New York Mills, three national television networks, plus National Public Radio, took note of what went on here. During the breaks, people gathered around the C-Span bus outside, marveled over its sophisticated equipment, especially the huge television monitors.

"Hey, there's Fred down by the podium. Dang!"

It was small-town America at its purest. After the debate the four finalists stood on the stage blinking, their medals hanging from bright ribbons around their necks. The crowd applauded happily. People waved little pennants, each expressing support for or against total honesty.

Afterward, everyone was invited to a reception at the Cultural Center, a few blocks from the high school. Food was available, courtesy of Eagle's Cafe across the street, and large quantities of free Glacial Lakes beer, from the new microbrewery, also across the street. Entertainments over the weekend, in addition to the Think-Off, included a Farmers Appreciation Dance and a hog roast. Animals courtesy of Tigges Pigges.

Eric Graham, executive director of the Cultural Center, finished it all up when he christened a new addition to the New York Mills Sculpture Park with a large bottle of Glacial Lakes beer. The piece is a 20-foot-high, 3,000-pound representation of a tractor.

The tractor is the logo of New York Mills, and its silhouette appears on the town water tower. The naked-man motif on the medal given the debaters -- a reference to Rodin's "Thinker" -- symbolizes a union of the town's traditional reason for being, farming, with its more recent preoccupations with art and culture and the big questions of life. Previous years' essay questions asked whether God exists, whether life has meaning, whether human beings are essentially good or evil -- stumpers like that.

The christening of the tractor sculpture lent a further coherence to the events of the weekend. Why?

Because the center, the brewery (the only microbrewery in the region), the expansion of Eagle's Restaurant, plus a new flower shop, a remodeled bakery and various other commercial enterprises, are products of the spirit of progress stimulated by the establishment of the Cultural Center in this once lethargic town.

Absent from this year's festivities, however, was the man who thought up the idea of the Think-Off, who most people acknowledge as the intellectual godfather of this peculiar prairie renaissance, which also includes an artist residency, the sculpture park and the Cultural Center itself, with its art shows, readings, concerts and other cerebral events.

John Davis remained out on his nearby farm. His connection with the Cultural Center was severed a few months back, and none too amicably. Fellow artist John Woodward said he was a victim of "a coup d'etat."

Davis was the artist who came up to New York Mills from Minneapolis in the 1980s, found he had strayed into a cultural desert, and managed, with the help of other interested citizens, to bring this all about.

"The Think-Off was John's idea. The Cultural Center was John's idea. The Sculpture Garden was his idea," said Woodward. "His absence is very poignant."

Graham, the current executive director of the Cultural Center, will not speak on the record about the circumstances that put Davis out in the cold. Graham was hired by Davis to replace him as executive-director last year. Then Davis disassociated himself from the day-to-day operation and went off traveling, pulling an Airstream trailer around the country looking for material for new Think-Off questions. When he returned, he says, he was discouraged from re-associating himself with the Cultural Center's activities.

The ouster of Davis was agreed to by the board of directors. One of them, Jim Buchan, said it was not unusual in nonprofit organizations for new people to rapidly succeed the originators, and sometimes without gentle agreement.

"But," he added, "I believe it is not so good an idea to bury your founder so quickly," he said.

Graham did give tribute to the absent Davis at the outset of the debate.

This part of Minnesota is full of little towns like New York Mills: small, neat and clean, populated by the children of Scandinavian immigrants (Finns around here), all embedded within a backdrop of large-scale farming: graceful old saddle-backed barns, and other agricultural structures of silver and pewter, plus a proliferation of tractors and harrows displayed like lawn ornaments, the tools of tillage and harvest.

Many of these towns are always looking for some device to call attention to themselves, something to hook the tourist driving by in his RV.

Perham, for instance, is a small community 10 miles west of here; it celebrates itself as the venue for a turtle race.

About 60 miles south is Sauk Center, another lovely town with wide shady streets and neat lawns and single-family houses with porches. It has transformed itself into a shrine to its most famous son, Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lewis did it by making fun of his home town, ridiculing its hypocrisy, and renaming it Gopher Prairie in his novel "Main Street." He also put the name Babbit, and the adjective Babbitry, signifying the narrow-minded complacency rampant in such places, in the dictionary.

Lewis got out of Sauk Center as quickly as he could, wrote his books and died in Italy.

But the folks back home forgave him. They named a street after him. They conserved his birth house. The chamber of commerce made a museum. They even went to Italy, dug him up and reburied him in the town he despised. Sinclair Lewis is Sauk Center's most visible industry.

Lewis at least was dead when they buried him.

Pub Date: 6/23/98