Sinclair Lewis, Sauk Centre native and the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, had this to say about winter in Gopher Prairie, the fictional name for his hometown in "Main Street": "Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry." Later in the same chapter, he describes the onslaught of the season: "There is so sharp a division between the panting summer and the stinging winter of the Northern plains that they [small boys] rediscovered with surprise and a feeling of heroism this armor [mittens and boots] of an Arctic explorer."
And in an article that Lewis contributed to the O-sa-ge, Sauk Centre High School's yearbook, he wrote nostalgically of his youth, including "sliding down Hoboken Hill."
Winter winds off Sauk Lake still sting at times, and kids still find sledding hills. Yet winter no more completely defines Sauk Centre than does its most famous son, though both have a strong presence in town.
Stand at the corner of Main Street and Sinclair Lewis Avenue in downtown Sauk Centre (population 4,300) and you can feel the pulse of the town that Lewis immortalized.
Lewis, or "Red," worked briefly at the Palmer House Hotel at this same intersection. He grew up in a frame house 3 ½ blocks to the west, and he is buried in the cemetery east of town.
As an internationally renowned author, Lewis lived many places, dying in Rome in 1951. It was a blustery January day in Sauk Centre when Frederick Manfred delivered the eulogy at Lewis' funeral and poured his ashes in the grave.
Lewis' fame has certainly marked the town: There's Sinclair Lewis Park, the Gopher Prairie Motel and the Main Street Theater. The local sports teams are called the Mainstreeters.
But just as a prophet is not honored in his hometown, some residents don't understand why Lewis buffs from around the world make the pilgrimage to Sauk Centre.
