Arnold Ziffel Revisited

As a child in a major Midwestern city, I watched Green Acres. Bumbling Eb, channel-surfing Arnold Ziffel, greenhorn Oliver Wendell Douglas (Fresh air!), and screw loose Lisa Douglas (Times Square!) were all half-brained Hooterville hoots subtlety and subconsciously influencing the way I viewed agrarian life, people, and their collective intelligence. Into the early ‘70s and besides Green Acres, television networks aired a wave of similar shows that reinforced my perceptions of rural ridiculousness: Mayberry RFD, Hee-Haw, Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Beverly Hillbillies—to call out several.

If any network today were to dare cast any other minority—Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Poles, Peruvians or Dyslexics—in such a degrading fashion for a new TV show, all multicultural hell would break loose. Yet we tolerated rural ribbing. And still tolerate.

Our cover story, CEO Paul A. DeBriyn of 600-employee, Mankato-based Agstar Financial Services, obliterated my one or two remaining brain synapses still trafficking in these old thought patterns. He’s no Mr. Haney. Raised on a smallish Wisconsin farm, DeBriyn brilliantly helped pull rural financial services provider AgStar Financial Services out of an ‘80s mega-crisis. The private cooperative now manages $8 billion in loans and lease assets, and has 25,000 clients/stockholders.

In our company profiles this issue, we feature determined Brent Donner of DLC Manufacturing (New Ulm) and persevering Jim Kozan of Waseca Music Company. Both men, we so learned, have quite a tale.

Sursum ad summum,
Daniel J. Vance
Editor