Wednesday, January 1, 2020

La Farge's Bars

Recently a rather momentous occurrence happened in the sleepy little Kickapoo River town of La Farge. On August 28th, the Town Tap, the village’s only bar, offered twenty-cent hot dogs and chili dogs for lunch. Although the chili dogs were delicious, the significance of the event was that it marked the 20thanniversary for Phil & Deb’s Town Tap.  That is a rather long time for a bar or tavern to remain under the same ownership in these parts.
            Phil & Deb Campbell purchased the business in 1999 from Bob & Charlotte Hysel, who had operated the bar from 1976 until 1988 and again from 1994 until selling it to the Campbell’s.  Deb Campbell passed away in 2012, but her name remains on the business to this day.  
            When I was at the Town Tap munching on my chili dogs, I shared some information with Phil about some previous owners of the bar.  I had been investigating who had owned the bar some seventy years before due to a conversation that I had at a family reunion back in June.
            There was a Melvin family reunion on June 15that the Methodist Church on Salem Ridge.  Ruth Clark organized the reunion and a nice crowd attended the event that included a tasty potluck lunch, lots of visiting and looking at family scrapbooks, and walking around the Salem Ridge Cemetery to look at family graves. I was at the reunion because I am the grandson of Isa Melvin Campbell, who was the daughter of Scott and Lucy Melvin. At one time, Scott Melvin owned pretty much all of Salem Ridge, so there are lots of family connections to that place.
            At the reunion, I met Susan Krause, who lives in Potosi.  (Susan makes a living by growing organic worms – isn’t that wild!)  She is the daughter of Charlene (Melvin) Krause and the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin, who ran a grocery store in La Farge for several years.  (Another family connection is that M.P. Melvin rented the store from my parents, who had operated a grocery store there in the early 1950s – more on that Steinmetz Grocery operation later in this piece.)
            Susan wondered if I knew anything about a bar that her grandparents on the Krause side had operated in La Farge.  I did not have any information, but I started digging through my research notes to see if I could find anything.  Sure enough, I did.
            In some of my research notes, I found where August Krause has applied for a tavern license on June 1, 1950.  The tavern was then called the La Farge Tap Room and at the time was the east side of the first floor of the old Opera House building. (The west side of the building was a hardware store at that time operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart.)  
            After a gymnasium was built at the school in 1936, the La Farge Opera House was used less and less for community events.  Herman Abelt purchased the building in the early 1940s and converted it from the original design, which had a huge, open two-story space for the Opera House.  The roof was lowered and several offices were formed on the “new” second floor space. (Eventually those offices were converted to several apartments.)  The street level floor was divided into two places for businesses to operate.  Soon after, taverns started occupying the east side space.   
            In my research on the tavern owners of that era, I found that in 1944, the bar was known as Heckart’s Tavern and was operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart.  A year later, there was another Christmas ad for Heckart’s Tavern, but by 1946, the bar was called the “La Farge Tap Room” and was operated by Bill and Madelyn Cottrill. The bar remained under that name until the Krause’s took over the business in 1950.
            August and Alice Krause renamed the bar the “Tumbler Tavern”.  I found that name for the bar when the Krause’s helped sponsor an ad in the La Farge newspaper for the championship LHS basketball team in March of 1951.  There was also a Christmas/New Year’s ad for the Tumbler Tavern in an issue of the La Farge Enterprise in December of 1950.
            But the Krause’s didn’t stay very long as the bar was called the “Club La Farge” by December of 1951.  That name remained with the bar for most of the next decade of the 1950s with several different owners.  Ray Merwin was one of those owners and he added a back room to the building when he owned the tavern.
            By the 1970s, Jerry and Marie Brickl owned the bar, which they called “Jerry & Marie’s Place”.  They also began a supper club, “The Matador”, in the space on the west side, converting an apartment that had been there.  Brickl’s also renovated a kitchen space between the bar and supper club to serve both businesses.  Bob & Charlotte Hysel bought the business from Brickl’s in 1976 and opened up the supper club to be part of the bar, renovated the kitchen and put in new restrooms. Hysel’s also named their bar, the “Town Tap”, a name that remains today.
            The name of the Club La Farge tavern brought back a memory of a story that Rex Bufton told me many years ago.  It seems that Rex was a bartender at the Club La Farge in the early 1950s.  This was also a time when my parents, Earl and Hope Steinmetz, were running a grocery store in La Farge (at the current site of the La Farge Episcope newspaper office).
            Rex told me that my parents would like to stop in for a drink or two at the Club La Farge after closing the grocery store on Saturday nights. During that time, Saturday nights were crazy busy for La Farge stores and sometimes it would be nearly midnight by the time that my parents got the grocery store closed and locked up.
            Although the bars in La Farge were open until 1 am at that time, there was a village ordinance that no drinks could be served after midnight. Rex told me that sometimes my parents didn’t get to the bar until after midnight.  In order for them to get a drink, Rex would pour out the contents of their drinks into glasses and set them under the bar before the midnight hour struck.  So, they were technically poured before the cutoff hour.  Then when my parents arrived, he would take the drinks out, add some ice and serve them.  It was kind of a “No harm, No foul” kind of thing, I guess.
            By 1954, my Dad had joined LaVerne Campbell in the C&S Motors garage business in La Farge so the late Saturday nights at the grocery store for my parents ended.  They rented the grocery store to my Mom’s cousin, M.P. Melvin, who operated Melvin’s Super IGA Market at the location through much of the next decade.  (And we are once again connected to Susan Krause, the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin.) 
            That post-WW II era was a time of growth for bars in La Farge.  In 1946, Ray Hollenbeck and Doug Gabrielson had wedged a bar into the space between the theater building and Ned’s Pool Hall right across the street from the Club La Farge.  Stan Hollenbeck joined his brother in operating the bar, called the G.I. Tavern, by 1947 and they continued operating the bar through the early 1950s.  But that’s another bar story for another time in this little history of La Farge.  

Songs of Sorrow

Many people familiar with the early history of La Farge know about a poem/song written by Mrs. Abby Payne titled, “The Fatal Oak”.  That poem described the agonizing loss of three young Kickapoo Valley lads from Seelyburg who perished in a raft accident on the Wisconsin River.  Mrs. Payne’s poem, that was later made into a song and sung to a variety of tunes, told of the 1870 rafting accident that claimed the lives of Jim Roberts, George Lawton and Aaron Hatfield.
            Recently as I was doing some research on La Farge’s beginnings, I came across another poem that Abby Payne had written after the death of a close friend in another accident that occurred in 1873.  This second poem again shows the talent of Mrs. Payne as a writer, but also the deep emotional investment about the loss of a dear friend.  She was the voice of the community at that time.
            When I say community, it is important to remember that the 1870s are the very beginnings of what would become the village of La Farge. Dred Bean has built his farm buildings and opened his blacksmith shop by that time at the location that is now Bean Park.  But, Thomas DeJean is still two years away in 1873 from building his general store (which is now the hardware store in town) that would establish “The Corners” as the center of the town.
            Community in the 1870s included the entire rural area around what would become La Farge.  Mrs. Payne and her husband Truman lived on North Bear Creek and were neighbors to the Shattuck’s, who suffered the fatal accident.  But, Abby Payne writes her eulogy about her friend Eliza Shattuck for all of the neighbors of the northern Kickapoo Valley.  That neighborhood stretches from West Lima to the Lawton District, from South Bear Creek to Fairview Ridge, from Otter Creek to White City, from Seelyburg to Rockton and on to Valley.  All those neighbors mourned the loss of Eliza Shattuck and Abby Payne’s words were felt deeply in many hearts.
            Eliza Shattuck was the wife of George W. Shattuck, who was known as Colonel Shattuck.  He had fought in the Civil War with two units from the state of Ohio, where he lived. He was a natural leader in the military, was wounded in two different battles and was mustered out of the service after the war holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  For the rest of his life he would be known as Col. Shattuck.
            Shortly after the war, he married Eliza Little, who was born in Ireland, but lived near George in Ohio.  In 1870, the Shattuck’s moved to Vernon County and bought a farm on North Bear Creek.  (When I was growing up in the 1950s that farm was known as the Brewer place and was located to the road now known as Canyon Avenue.)  In 1873, George and Eliza Shattuck had five children.
            For the 4thof July that year, the family was going to Rockton to celebrate Independence Day.  Eliza had prepared food for a dinner in Rockton at the celebration and the family was dressed in their finest clothes.  They probably rode their horse-drawn wagon up Canyon Avenue onto Morningstar Ridge and then took that road west to where it intersects with Compton Road.  Then they headed north on that road towards Jug Creek, which would lead them over to Rockton.
            At this point on the ridge (where the Theron Moore farm is now located), a ferocious thunderstorm overtook the Shattuck’s wagon while they were traveling down a heavily wooded hill.  Soon the gusty winds blew a tree over that struck the Shattuck’s wagon.  All of the family members were thrown from the wagon and injured, but none as seriously as mother Eliza.  The children and Col. Shattuck would all recover from their injuries, but Eliza did not. She was taken to a neighboring farmhouse, where she passed away on July 21stfrom her injuries.  She was 32 years old.
            Although Abby Payne’s poems were quite well known for that time, her poem about her friend Eliza apparently was not known too much outside of the Bear Creek area.  In her book, Looking At Bear Creek, (1995), Trixie Larson has several pages on the Shattuck families that lived on Bear Creek, including Abby Payne’s poem.  In introducing the poem, Trixie mentions that Alta Todd had once found a copy of the poem/ballad.  It was printed on the back of a paper flour sack and had been handed down through the Todd family for generations.  Here then, is that poem:

The Song of Mrs. Shattuck
By Abby Payne

Farewell my dear husband and children farewell,
How I feel to leave thee there is no one can tell. 
We all enjoyed all the pleasures this earth can afford.
And now I must leave you and dwell with my Lord.

In my richest attire on the fourth of July, 
How little we knew that death was so nigh.
My whole family circle, my husband and me, 
Came nigh getting killed by the limb of a tree.

While passing through the greenwoods and down a long hill,
A storm was fast approaching, my blood seemed to chill.
My soul was filled with horror, but all done was no good.
It was bound to overtake us while passing through the wood.

The storm came on quickly, the wind it did blow,
The lightning did flash and the thunder did roll.
The trees were fast falling, the limbs all around,
One fell on our wagon and swept us to the ground.

We were picked up insensible in all our sad fate,
And carried to the neighbors, our destiny to wait.
But when I survived from the wounds I received, 
The state of my family caused my spirit to grieve. 

But I have no time to murmur for soon I must go
I must leave my dear family and friends here below.
But your Master has told you that you can come to me,
For I must go forever and cannot come to thee.

My thanks to the Grangers for their kindness to me,
There’s a lodge up in Heaven for thee and for me.
The Savior is our President, our pass word is prayer,
We can gain the last victory when we all get up there.

Farewell, Christian friends the whole world around,
I shall sleep in the grave till the trumpet shall sound.
Then my Master will call me and bid me arise, 
To meet you in glory in yonder bright skies.

Farewell, my dear husband, for you I do love,
Prepare to meet me in Heaven above.
We will celebrate a day far better at last,
Where the storm and the tempest of this life is past.

Farewell my dear children, I bid you adieu,
The time is fast approaching when I must leave you.
But your father will love you as he has done before.
Prepare to meet me on Cannan’s bright shore.

My family is surviving and free from all pain, 
They’ve all gotten better and they’ve gone home again.
But oh how lonesome and lonely it will be,
For that bright and happy home is no longer for me.

Farewell my dear mother, I can no longer wait.
You will come to see me, but it will be too late.
For I will be buried beneath the cold clay,
Come visit the spot and see where I lay.

She flapped her bright wings and we see her no more.
We think we now see her on Cannan’s bright shore.
Where the angels are waiting to welcome her home.
Where the storm and the tempest never more will roam.

            The grave of Eliza Little Shattuck is located in the Bear Creek Cemetery.  On the Shattuck family tombstone are these words dedicated to who she was:

She died as she lived
At peace with all.