Story by Tim King, photo by Jan King
The Land Correspondents
Long Prairie — One Saturday not long ago, Ona Reinbold was sleeping a little late at her rural Long Prairie home. She’d worked hard the night before, she had earned a few extra winks. It was not to be. Her husband, Gary, gently woke her.
“Do you want to be a miracle worker?” he asked.
A young woman was on the phone. She had come to nearby Sauk Centre from Minneapolis. Her sister’s wedding was that afternoon. She was a bridesmaid. She had a pretty dress. And she had just burned a hole in it with an iron.
Ona, who has been making alterations, sewing zippers, knitting sweaters, making Halloween costumes and curtains, and putting patches where they are needed for 18 years, came to the rescue.
“The hole was in the front where it did the most damage,” Ona recalled.
But the dress was made in such a way that a patch could be made largely invisible. Although the bride did not learn, on her wedding day, that her sister was wearing a patched dress, the fact is now likely a treasured family memory.
Miracles on such a scale may not be all in a day’s work for seamstress Reinbold, but small miracles are regularly performed in her little shop in the now largely vacant Hart Building in downtown Long Prairie. One recent week she hemmed 24 pairs of pants. On another week she altered seven bridesmaids dresses. She’s made lots of things from scratch.
Sometimes the projects are a little unusual.
“A man wanted some fishing pole covers,” she said. “One was seven-feet long and the other was 12 feet. They had to have a fleece lining and zippers.”
The request was made, no doubt, because Ona had a line of hand-made covers for upright vacuums. She had covers with cow’s heads, teddy bears, mice, rabbits and other creatures. That was back in the day when the Hart Building was a hopping place with a coffee shop, gift store, H&R Block office, travel agency and a much larger Ona’s Crafts and Alterations.
“I had 85 craft consignors in the early 1990s,” she said.
There still are about six crafters, including an Amish wood worker. Ona is never caught up on her work as a seamstress. Somebody is always in need of a tuck in their dress, shortened pants, or a patch where it counts.
