FINISHING THAT CHRISTMAS WALK

(In the last blog entry we were taking a walk into the past on La Farge’s Main Street on a busy Saturday night at Christmastime.  The time is in the early 1950’s – a time when the village’s stores were packed with shoppers buying presents for the holidays.  Our stroll had led us down the north side of Main Street, where we had paused in front of the Mars Theater.  As we cross the street and head towards the La Farge State Bank, we will conclude that stroll through years of yore.)

The bank is closed and dark, they are never open at night, 9 to 3 only, Monday through Friday, but little one’s like us wouldn’t go in there anyway. Listen to the music coming out of the Club LaFarge. We can’t go in there either or the tavern across the street, they are not for little kids like us, although my folks occasionally like to stop in after the grocery store is closed. Boy, it looks smoky in Mac’s Pool Hall. We’re not old enough to go in there either, but we can stare through the front windows at the older boys and men shooting pool and playing cards way in the back.

Next door, the Cash Store is really doing a business as the area’s farm families come to town for their weekly purchase of groceries.  Dutch Carpenter will be busy at the cash register tonight. I imagine that things are just as busy at the other two grocery stores in town.  I sometimes help my folks at their store next to the feed mill; I hope Charlie Z. can find his pipe tobacco tonight. Whenever I’m there in the store, he never seems to be able to find it without my help.

            Let’s stop in to Harry Lounsbury’s Drug Store. Harry always has some neat stuff for Christmas, all kinds of boxes of candies and other goodies. Maybe I will buy my Grandma this nice package of talcum powder with a pretty powder puff. Let’s check out the soda fountain to see if any of the teenage couples are sharing a malted or cherry Coke. They all seem to be talking about the big win the Wildcat boys had in basketball last night at Soldiers Grove. La Farge never seems to loose any of their basketball games, but they are supposed to have a really tough one coming up over Christmas vacation with a good team from Onalaska.

            Next door, Doctor Gollin has the lights on in his office and there are people in the waiting room. He seems to work day and night for this little town. We could stick our head in the door and yell up the stairs at the “Central” telephone operator. That’s where Abelt's have the phone switchboard and the operator would place a call for you, especially if you were a country kid and needed a ride home. You wouldn’t even have to tell her the number, as she knows everybody’s number and all the “shorts” and “longs”. Sometimes when the boys are playing a basketball game away, a fan will call her from Gays Mills or wherever and she gets the word out that the Wildcats have won another one.

Another grocery store is next to the doctor’s office; Dick Gabrielson owns this one.  His grocery store is in a new building, made of cement blocks and just put up last year.  There is a line at the cash register here, too.  As we keep walking, we come to another restaurant, the Band Box Café.  I can hear music coming from the juke box in there, so the curtains would be drawn open on the little band box hanging from the ceiling and the mechanical musicians will be playing their little hearts out.  It looks like some of the Wildcat basketball players are sitting at a big table in the Band Box, probably having Pepsi’s, burgers and fries. 

            Let’s stop at the hardware store on the corner and look at the displays in the front windows. Wouldn’t one of those pocketknives be a nice gift to get for Christmas? You could do some serious whittlin’ with one of those beauties. Those are some nifty looking Daisy BB guns, too. A boy couldn’t go wrong receiving a gift like that, although you would have to be careful not to shoot your eye out. I might have to drop some hints to Santa Claus about something like that for a present when he comes to the firehouse for his annual visit on the Saturday before Christmas. There will be a free show that afternoon, too. I’ve heard that they’re going to have a Gene Autry western. Boy, won’t that be a swell day here in town! Maybe we can go ice-skating on the village skating rink right below the firehouse. We could get a good hockey game going with so many kids in town.

            Wow, it’s getting late, it must be way past eight o’clock by now. We had better start for home. Those Christmas decorations hanging over Main Street sure are beautiful. Bright colored lights and fresh evergreen garland wrapped around each pole, too. The Mobil Gas Station on the corner is really busy as cars are being filled up before folks start their trip back home. The lights are on at the shoe shop just down the block.  Mr. Wood is the cobbler and he can repair any kind of shoe or boot at his worktable in the back.

Let’s linger a little at Deibig Motors to look at the new Buick in the showroom. Wouldn’t that be a super gift for a family to get for Christmas! Of course, the Buicks cost more than the Chevy’s, so if you couldn’t afford a new Roadmaster, perhaps you could still “See The USA in a Chevrolet”.

            Leo Smith is closing his gas station for the night; he has finished that last oil change and the car is backing out of the side door right next to where his big red fuel truck is parked on the side street. Look’s like the feed mill is closing, too, as the farmers have loaded up the last bags of grain into their pickups before heading home.  My folks’ grocery store is really jammed with people tonight.  Much too busy in there for a little boy to be running around, so I had better head upstairs.

The night’s business on the bustling little village’s Main Street is starting to slow as snow begins to fall from the sky. Isn’t it a beautiful sight?

            Merry Christmas to all – may you all make it home for the holidays!

Waiting For The Waters - 1972

In 1972, the community of La Farge was in a state of transition as work on the Corps of Engineers’ La Farge Lake and Dam Project continued through the year.  Most of the land needed for the project, located north of La Farge to the Rockton area and beyond, had been purchased by the government agency by that time.  The families who had lived on those farms and in those homes were dispersed.  Some of those people remained in the La Farge area; many did not. 

There seemed to be a constant process of farm auctions stretching up the Kickapoo Valley as the people were displaced from their former homes.  Some of the previous owners rented their own homes back from the Corps on a short-term basis while looking for another place to call home.  Once the people were gone, the Corps listed the buildings on the vacated properties for sale to the highest bidder.  The pieces of the former farmsteads could be moved or razed; it didn’t really matter to the Corps, which simply wanted the land emptied of signs of human occupation.  The Corps continued the lease of agricultural fields on the project lands that summer and many former owners rented their fields back for growing crops of corn and harvesting cuttings of hay.

In the village of La Farge, the changes were also apparent as the town prepared for the coming of the waters of Lake La Farge.  In February, the new La Farge United Methodist Church had been dedicated and consecrated on the site of the previous church.  The old church had been torn down the previous year to make way for the new place of worship.

One block south from the new church, the village’s business district underwent significant changes in 1972.  Perhaps anticipating the affects of the dam project on the town, several new businesses opened in La Farge.  David Mick began a Mutual Services insurance agency that summer with offices over his father’s grocery store on the east end of the business district.  Kickapoo Gifts, a new gift shop featuring work by local artists, opened in the former grocery store building owned by Dick Gabrielson.  Colleen Sullivan operated the shop, which had hundreds of visitors on its first weekend of business.  Don Potter opened a new realty office in town to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding recreational real estate market.  Markee Soft Water, operated by Dick Heckart, opened a business in La Farge that summer as did Bobby Kennedy with his new carpet installation and cleaning service.  In addition to new business operations, several long time La Farge businesses saw changes that year.

A new lawyer came to town that summer as Phil Stittleburg, fresh out of UW Law School, bought Ralph Freeze’s law business and moved into the offices on south State Street on June 1.  Freeze had practiced law in La Farge for forty years, having bought the practice from Alva Drew.  By fall, Ralph and his wife Isabelle had left the village to retire in Arizona.

Russell Schroer bought the H & D Lumber sawmill operation in the summer of 1972.  Schroer bought the mill from Clair Russell, who stayed on with the business to buy logs for the new operation known as Schroer Hardwood Lumber Company.  Lee Hiles and Russell Davison had started the H & D lumber mill in 1953.  The Schroer family with two little girls came from Stevens Point and moved into a new mobile home placed on the west end of the Sherrill Huston trailer park next to the sawmill.

One of La Farge’s two remaining grocery stores changed hands in the summer of 1972 when Orval Howard purchased the Cash Store from Toby Funnell and Elmer Huffland.  Orval, with his wife Jan and two young sons, moved back to his hometown and the new grocery store was named Howard’s Village Market.

Lonnie Muller, needing to devote more time to his fledgling newspaper business (the Epitaph), sold his cable television system to Numsen Master Antenna Systems out of La Crosse.  The new cable owners soon upgraded the La Farge antenna system and expanded TV channel offerings to its customers.  More TV choices also meant a higher cost for cable subscribers in La Farge.  Those weren’t the only bills going up in La Farge though.  Vernon Telephone phased out the old party-line phone numbers that summer, and the new single-party system came with a higher price tag each month.  Earlier in the year, water and electricity rates increased in the village as the La Farge Utility Company petitioned for and received the approval to raise its rates. 

In August, the cheese factory business in La Farge changed hands as Warner Creek Cheese Factory owned by Jarry Glick of Hillsboro purchased the operation from Durward and Ethel Burt.  The new owners, who had run the cheese factory near Valley for thirty years added a Grade A market for La Farge area dairy farmers to access, while also keeping the cheese making operations going.  Richard Glick became the manager of the La Farge plant and plans were made to add a retail cheese store to the operation, which was up and running by the end of the year.  Richard, his wife and two little girls moved into the apartment above the cheese factory.

   By the next month, construction had begun on La Farge’s newest business – a motel.  Dick and Bea Gabrielson, with Gary Hall Realty of Viroqua as general contractor, built the new motel one half block south of Main Street just across the street and to the west of the La Farge Enterprise building.  Some delays in construction of the new motel were caused when flowing wells on the property proved difficult to cap, but by early November the new building, which featured a residence for the owners and ten motel units was nearing completion.

The motel became the second new commercial building on Main Street as Cecil Rolfe had opened his new facility for making cabinets earlier that spring.  Rolfe’s Cabinet Shop, a 24’ x 60’ cement block building, was located a block to the west of the new motel on the north side of Main Street between the Ed Muller & Sons Construction property and the welding shop.

Old buildings in La Farge came down that fall as well.  The building that had housed Casey Sanford’s Clothing Store on Main Street was torn down in October.  The 24’ x 40’store building located next to the Band Box Cafe was taken down by Pete and Robert Fish of Bloomingdale.  More demolition was happening less than a block away as the old Odd Fellows Hall, long a fixture in the village on the corner of Bird and Penn Streets was also being torn down.  The new Methodist Church, needing additional parking for their expanding congregation, purchased the old lodge building, located across the street from the new church.  Arnie Widstrand and his children took down the old 24’ x 44’ hall after an auction was held to sell off the old lodge furnishings.

But 1972 was a time for looking forward in La Farge instead of back to the past.  The dam project pointed towards the future.  In August, LaCrosse Concrete Company leased two lots from Art Nelson across Mill Street from Nuzum’s.  The company soon set up a concrete plant on the site to provide cement for the construction beginning on the dam project.  Art Nelson’s dump trucks were busy bringing in sand from Oxford, Wisconsin and crushed rock from Elroy to the La Farge cement plant site.  By November the first cement was poured at the dam site for the construction of the dam’s water intake tower.

Soon the waters of Lake La Farge would be lapping along the shores of the Kickapoo Valley as the community made plans for the future.