Get your goose in Fennville!

It all started when…

To understand why a couple of hundred locals are waiting on Main Street in the cold and drizzle for Amtrak`s Pere Marquette train to arrive from Chicago-and, more specifically, for one of its passengers, a 55-year-old computer programmer from the Windy City named Arnold Nelson-you have to understand first what happened four years ago.

It was in 1985 that Fennvillians concocted a celebration they christened a Goose Festival-primarily, as town leaders tell it, to persuade Amtrak to stop here once again on the way to Grand Rapids, 40 miles to the northeast.

''It was a gimmick,'' acknowledges Kym Zumbrink, co-owner of a local hardware store and prime mover in the festival planning, which consisted, that first year, of a committee that met to try to answer the question, according to one member, ''Well, what do you do at a goose festival?''

The train-stop subterfuge was successful, although just for the weekend in question, a period in which the town of less than 1,000 decided not only to celebrate (in art, parades and buckshot) the hordes of Canadian birds that pass through on the way to winter homes, but also to make it legal for the citizenry, during a prescribed 24-hour period, to conduct on fellow humans the surprise grab to the posterior commonly known as a ''goose.''

When the train used to stop here, in the 1960s and earlier, it would let passengers off at the depot on the east side of the tracks. So when civic-minded townsfolk got together in 1985 to kick off the festival and welcome the resumption of train service, they lined up, naturally enough, where the depot was.

''We had quite a crowd down there, and the high school band and everything,'' says Cliff Paine Jr., executive secretary of the Fennville Area Chamber of Commerce.

But just as times change, so do the exit plans of railroads. The once-a-year train ground to a halt, and the Blackhawk band struck up a rousing but since forgotten tune. And nobody got off. At least nobody that the multitude could see.

When the train pulled back out of town, there, walking into the tavern at the 75-year-old Stevens Hotel, having exited on the west side of the tracks, was a stranger in a suit, Arnold Nelson.

Nelson was the only Chicagoan to take the first train to Fennville`s first Goose Festival, and he did so not because of any innate interest in things ornithological, or even things festive. He did it because Fennville was closer to his mother`s house than the stop where she usually picked him up.

On the Pere Marquette four years later, Nelson roams the train with a nearly permanent smile, an ambassador for the town and his own legend.

A husky man with thinning hair, flourishing sideburns and an overbite, Nelson is a lifelong bachelor who does his computer work for a Chicago bank. From his lakeshore apartment on the city`s North Side, he rides his bicycle frequently through the parks and has circumnavigated Lake Michigan by bike.

As a hobby, he has compiled a list of the locations of more than 600 Chicago water fountains that run continuously in season, along with the dates they are turned on for the spring and off for the winter. He has another list, of 110 people to whom he sends postcards during his annual trip to Europe, a trip he says he can afford because ''I don`t have a car.''

His last public involvement prior to Fennville was as a Republican precinct captain in Detroit`s most heavily Democratic district, and he describes himself, cheerily, as a ''complete nonentity.''

But on this night, on this train-and in the small Michigan town that it is heading to-Arnold Nelson is a star. ''Most people can`t believe it,'' he says. ''They look at me and think, `HIM?` ''

''Do you know who I am?'' he asks conductor R.K. Henman, who`s making his first goosefest run. (Herbie Wott, says Nelson, is the regular conductor. ''I got him on my postcard list.'')

''Are you a Fennvillite?'' responds Henman.

''I`m Arnold,'' says Nelson. ''I`m better than a Fennvillite. I`m a cult hero up there.''

Henman seems skeptical, but tells him that two young women were the only others on the train to buy a ticket from Chicago to Fennville. Nelson tracks them down.

''You don`t know who I am?'' he asks Deborah Kaschube, who lives in Naperville and is on the way with a friend to visit her parents.

Kaschube looks at him quizzically. ''You`re my neighbor,'' she guesses at last.

Nelson looks disappointed. ''I`m Arnold,'' he says.

''Ohhhh!'' says Kaschube. ''You`re Arnold! You`re the Arnold.'' She turns to her friend, Susan Siska, and explains, ''Arnold`s the very first man who ever took the Amtrak train to Fennville.''

Later, another man, who struck up a conversation with Nelson in the club car, finishes his soda. ''Well, it was nice meeting you,'' he says, ''and I feel honored that I`ve met the-the leader of the Goose Festival.''

That kind of respect did not always come his way. Nelson recalls trying to buy a ticket to Fennville the first year, after his mother had called him up breathless over the news that the train was stopping there.

''I went over to the ticket office,'' Nelson says. ''They laughed at me. I said, `No, there`s a ticket.` I remember they had three people all tapping into the terminal, trying to find it'' in the computer system.

Eventually, they did. It was an uneventful ride, until the stop before Fennville. Apparently in an effort to convince Amtrak that it was doing a good and profitable thing, ''Half the town rode down to Bangor to ride into Fennville,'' says Nelson. ''The train was mobbed with people-pretty well-oiled, but nice people.

''A woman said, `What do you think of this train?` I said, `Pretty good. I`m the only one that bought the ticket from Chicago.` She said, `When you get to Fennville, you`ll get the biggest welcome you`ve ever seen in your life.`

''And the train stopped, and Amtrak let us off on the wrong side. We all piled off, and there was no one there.''

`Arnold Nelson eats here`

Four years later, Nelson is the festival`s undisputed hero, a sort of knight in a National Review tie who rides into town once a year.

''We thought that was pretty funny that he was the only one that got off, after all that hullabaloo,'' says Paine of the Chamber of Commerce. The Fennvillians who rode that train Paine dismisses as ''ringers.''

So somebody made it a point to get Nelson`s name, and, the second year, Stevens Hotel owner Bob McCracken had a ''Welcome Arnold Nelson'' party.

''Other businesses picked up on it,'' says Paine. ''They had signs out,

`Arnold Nelson eats here,` `Arnold Nelson shops here.` Fortunately, Arnold Nelson turned out to be a fellow with a pretty good sense of humor.''

When Nelson visited the Fenn Valley Vineyards, according to owner William Welsch, employees had him autograph labels of the winery`s special Goose Festival White.

''He didn`t expect to be what you call a celebrity,'' says Tom Sowers, a Fennville resident who drives a snowplow for the State of Michigan. ''But people made him a celebrity.''

''He was real shy at first,'' Kym Zumbrink says. But not for long. Fennville began receiving postcards from Nelson, printed with a message such as ''Go, Goose Festival!'' When meetings of the festival committee were in session, ''sometimes he`d call the meeting place,'' Zumbrink says. ''I don`t know how he knew.''

The Welcome Arnold Nelson party became an official part of the weekend, printed in the program just before the ''Blackhawk Boosters pancake breakfast at the Masonic Hall'' and the '' `Floyd R. Turbo` (Johnny Carson`s dimwitted hunter character) goose trophy contest weigh-in, `dead or alive!` '' ''It`s the best part of the whole festival,'' Zumbrink says. ''He is just so sincere.''

`Stars and Stripes`

At the party, which begins on the street and moves into the Stevens bar,

''They don`t have a band anymore,'' Nelson says. ''But they`ve got a big record player, and they play `Stars and Stripes Forever` or something. You`d think a ship was being launched.

''It`s a big joke,'' he says. ''And it`s a joke on me. But they`re nice about it.''

Sending Fennvillians down to meet the train and ride it north has developed into another festival tradition. This year, nine people get on at Benton Harbor/St. Joseph. Many more are expected at Bangor, the last stop before Fennville.

''I`ll buy this entire car a drink,'' announces Nelson, ''before it gets to Bangor.''

Conductor E.C. Turner makes his way through the car, collecting fares. On the yellow destination tickets he places above their seats, he writes

''Fern.''

''Fern?'' says one of the nine. ''Fernville?''

Waiting for the train at Bangor are two yellow ''Fennville Public Schools'' buses, packed with 114 residents, including a large contingent of children.

''Arnie, Arnie, how ya doin`?'' they say as they file on.

''How`s your wife and all my kids?''

''Arnold. Arnold Schwarzenegger.''

''Arnold, have you been out in the rain again?''

''You were supposed to have our tickets, Arnie.''

One of them, Ron Clark, carries a Faulk`s H-100-H High Pitch Honker goose call, which he blows at random, with abandon. Conductor Henman sticks his head in the car to give periodic estimates of the time of arrival.

In Fennville, the train greeters have since learned which side of the street to line up on, and the mood is jovial as the train pulls in and the townsfolk get off. Nelson waits until everyone else disembarks.

''We want Arnold. We want Arnold,'' chant three teenage girls through fits of giggles. The railroad crossing bells ring. ''Stars and Stripes Forever'' is, indeed, playing.

And then Nelson steps off, acknowledging the cheers, plunging into the crowd, hugging people, pumping their hands, all with the fervor of a politician on election day.

''This is the most excitement I`ve ever seen here,'' says a photographer for the Fennville Herald, who`s lived in the town only a few months.

The party moves into the bar, and Nelson buys drinks and is bought drinks. Owner McCracken presents him with a cake. Periodic chants of ''Arnie, Arnie'' arise, and, as you wander through the crowd, you hear snatches of the tale being retold: ''first one that got off'' here, ''wrong side of the train'' there.

Robert Fein, the new superintendent of schools, is sitting at the bar, talking with Kym Zumbrink. ''I don`t need to worry about being down here,'' he says. ''One of the women tending bar is the president of the PTA.''

The privilege of legalized goosing has long since been withdrawn, the victim of some in town who thought it unseemly, McCracken says. Nonetheless, in five years of existence, the festival has seen attendance rise from 3,000 to 9,000, according to Zumbrink.

But the train stop-which began as the point of the whole thing-seems to have very little to do with it: According to conductors on the Pere Marquette, except for Arnold Nelson and the ''ringers,'' only the two young women and a reporter bought this year`s fare expressly to go to Fennville.

Zumbrink has tried each year to persuade Nelson to come back into town on Saturday and serve as grand marshall of the annual Goose Parade, but to no avail. ''It`s unfortunate,'' she says. ''I keep begging him.''

Nelson says he prefers, instead, to relish Friday night and spend the rest of the weekend at his late mother`s home, in nearby Pullman, doing yard work. ''I got about 4 billion leaves,'' he says.

''I don`t want to be grand marshall. I think this is enough,'' he says, indicating the party around him. ''Midnight every year, I`m just John Q. Pullman.''

- Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1989