PRESCRIPTIONS TO HISTORY

It is a metal spindle nearly three feet long.  It extends from an antique metal base, no longer able to support the weight of its contents.  Strung along the spindle is the story of several years worth of La Farge’s history from over a century ago.

            R. P. Dalton was elected village president of La Farge at the April 1909 elections.  Later that year, on November 20 and 22, he had two prescriptions filled at Ed Coyle’s drug store in La Farge.  Dr. Joseph Esch, who had his office over the village post office on South State Street, had written both of the prescriptions for Dalton on slips provided by Ed Coyle’s drug store.  One of the prescriptions was for sodium succanate (sic), which is an eye drop ointment.  Perhaps La Farge’s village president didn’t like what he was seeing around town.

            The metal spindle contains thousands of prescriptions dispensed by that La Farge drug store from the years of 1908-09.  The length of time that the prescriptions cover is from July 1908 through December 1909.  I carefully peeled off a couple hundred of the RX’s from the last three months of 1909 to try to get an idea what they were all about.  They can help to tell some fascinating stories, especially when you tie in other information on La Farge’s history from that time.

            Dr. J.E. Bingham came to La Farge in 1909 and set up his practice upstairs in the Donaldson Brothers hardware store building on Main Street (the present site of Bergum’s Food Mart).  Dr. Bingham came from Whitewater and used his own personalized slips for prescriptions instead of those provided by Coyle’s Drug Store.  Bingham was known as La Farge’s “town doctor” because he made house calls with a horse and buggy and going too far from town caused delays in service.  On December 4, 1909, Dr. Bingham wrote an RX for “Baby Wallis” (probably misspelled Wallace) and the directions read “one every hour till bowels move well”.

            We have Patsy Johnson to thank for saving this unique historical collection of prescriptions.  She bought the spindle containing the RX’s at an auction held in Bean Park four or five years ago.  She neither knew where the spindle came from nor exactly what to do with it once she had it in her possession.  When the new VMH Clinic opened in La Farge last summer, Patsy admired the displays of medical history in the waiting room.  Thinking her spindle of prescriptions would fit into the display, she showed it to Dr. Deline.  He passed it on to this history guy to look at.

            Dr. H. N. Cohen had a medical practice in La Farge during 1908-09.  His professional ad posted in the La Farge Enterprise from that era read – Dr. H.N. Cohen, Diseases of Women.  In my research, I found that Dr. Cohen kept rather irregular business hours while practicing in La Farge.  He had a practice in La Farge for a short time then moved to Wonewoc in 1910.  Dr. Cohen moved around a lot as later in 1919, he was practicing in Wilton, but then moved his practice to Tomah that same year.  On December 1, 1909, Dr. Cohen prescribed a laxative for Mrs. George Wilson with directions “Take after meals”.

            An interesting aspect of the sample of studied prescriptions on the spindle is that children’s names are rarely used.  Usually the RX will be for “James Riddel boy” (that’s probably a misspelling of Riddle) or “Bert Cowee (boy)”.  There were other prescriptions for the “Blakeley Boy”, the “Gudgeon Girl”, “Mrs. Brown’s boy”, the “Emerson Heisel Girl”, “Chas Brown’s boy”, the “Hughy Major baby”, “Joe Waddle girl” (probably Waddell), “Ald. Oldenberg’s (boy)”, the “Grant Coleman girl”, “Ernie Heisel Boy” and “Aug. Trappe boy”.  This last RX listed was probably for young Henry Trappe, who would have been three years old at the time.  Henry went on to live to be one hundred years old, so the prescription must have made him well back then.

            Brothers Ed and John Coyle had purchased the drug store business in La Farge from Cyrus Yeomans in March of 1904.  Yeomans had opened La Farge’s first drug store in 1897 and for the next decade the village had at least two and usually three or more doctors practicing, which meant for a healthy pharmacy business.  The business operations of the Coyle Drug Store had undergone a major change in January of 1909 when John Coyle sold his share of the La Farge business to his brother and moved to Mondovi to open up a drug store there.

            When looking at that spindle of proscriptions that Ed Coyle filled back in 1909, one can get a pretty good idea of how busy the doctors were in La Farge during that era.  Since Dr. Esch wrote most of the RX’s on the spindle, you can get a closer look at his practice in particular. 

            Joseph Esch was the “country doctor” in La Farge.  “Doc” Esch, as he was affectionately known, had purchased the first car to be driven in the community in 1904.

With the new automobile, Dr. Esch could expand his practice into the rural areas around La Farge. The good doctor liked his new auto so much that he bought another and then another. He was soon selling autos out of the Hotel Ward garage, a lucrative addition to his medical business. In 1909, he purchased a White steam-driven automobile. The White Steamer greatly enhanced the doctor’s country practice as the vehicle could climb the area’s steep hill roads without faltering. When Dr. Esch went into the country to make house calls, he would have someone drive the White Steamer for him, so he could rest or sleep between calls.

Dr. Esch had a busy, thriving medical practice in 1908-09.  On November 20, 1909, he wrote prescriptions for seventeen different patients.  Amazingly, that day was a Saturday so Dr. Esch was keeping office hours on the weekend during that season of illness.  From my research, I also found where Dr. Esch wrote two prescriptions on Sunday, November 21, both for Mrs. Em Rittenhouse.  I’m assuming there was some type of emergency, but I don’t know if Ed Coyle filled the two RX’s on the day it was written. 

The next busiest day for Dr. Esch was on November 29, a Monday, when eleven prescriptions were written.  Oscar Marshall and his wife both had prescriptions written that day by Doc Esch.  The directions for Oscar’s RX read, “Put 15 drops in water, take every four hours”, while Mrs. Oscar Marshall had a prescription that covered nearly two pages of slips and contained nine different ingredients!

Some of the directions for taking the prescribed medicines show how times have changed since 1909.  In one RX for the “Bert Rittenhouse boy”, the directions read, “Take one or two drops on sugar every 15 minutes for up to 3 hours”.  Remember the old saying about being tough and taking your medicine?  Well, obviously, that boy of 1909 would take the doses more easily if they were sweetened up for him.

There was also a prescription for a Mrs. Hicks that read, ”Heaping teaspoonful dissolved in water ½ hour before meals and one hour after”.  The drug on this RX slip can actually be deciphered (which generally doesn’t happen on most of the slips) and the prescription is for something called sodoxylin.  With a little research in a pharmaceutical book from that era I found that sodoxylin was used for acidemia (upset stomach, etc.).  According to Abbott Laboratories (yes, the big drug company was going back then), which manufactured the drug, “it neutralizes acidity; checks fermentation; promotes elimination”.  You can fill in the blanks from there to imagine the end results for Mrs. Hicks.

There you have it; a bit of La Farge’s history from over a century past told through a spindle of prescription slips. 

Gassing Up In La Farge

One of the manifestations of the corporate merger movement of the American oil and gas industry in the latter half of the twentieth century was the gradual disappearance of places to buy gas in small towns like La Farge.  I was thinking about this the other day as I was filling up my pickup with petrol at the Z-Zip Stop, the village’s one and only gas station.  We used to have lots of gas stations in town, but those days are long gone. 

Awhile back, Mark Phillips encouraged me to write about all of the old gas stations in La Farge; seems his Dad, Blaine, who used to be in the gas station business in the village, thought it would be a good local history topic.  Recently Gary Hagen showed me a newspaper clipping from the early 1970’s.  It told about Carson Lawrence retiring after operating a gas station in town for nearly forty years.  Putting all of that together, it seems we may have an interesting story here.

  That term, gas station, is a term from the past, for today La Fargians buy their gasoline locally at a convenience store – the Z-Zip Stop.  It used to be that a gas station could pretty much run on its own in a small town like La Farge.  They were also called “service stations” back then and full service was how they all operated when the customer drove up to the pumps.  Gas would be pumped, oil level checked, windows washed and change made while the customer sat in the car – that was the service of that time.  There might be some candy and Cokes behind the counter for sale and some car maintenance services like oil changes were available to customers as well, but gasoline sales paid most of the bills for gas station operators back then. 

Today, the Z-Zip Stop operates a mini-general store, a propane outlet, a fast food restaurant, a mini-beer depot, and a mini-bank (ATM) for its customers besides offering gasoline for sale on La Farge’s Main Street.  It is a one-stop shopping place in the village for a business that operates seven days a week and sixteen hours each day.  In many ways, the multiple items for sale, being open every day and for long hours is an old fashioned model for a business in small towns like La Farge.  Since its’ beginning, La Farge has had many successful combination-type businesses offering multiple goods and services to its customers.  The convenience store model, like the Z-Zip Stop, is almost a throwback to those earlier times.  However, having only one place to buy gas in La Farge is a relatively new phenomenon in the town’s history.

When I was growing up in La Farge in the early 1950s, I believe there were eight or perhaps ten places where you could buy gas in the village.  There were five gas stations and four or five other places where you could stop to fill up if you needed to, all located on La Farge’s Main Street.  If you would care to join me, let’s go back to those times of sixty years ago and take a look at those gas peddlers from yesteryear.  (I hope to hear from blog readers on this trip back in time – let me know if you have any memories of the old gas stations and other places that sold gas.)  Let us begin our little gas station survey from the ‘50s by starting on the village’s west end, down by Nuzum’s.

At that intersection of Main & Mill Streets there were two gas stations.  Carson Lawrence’s Sinclair station was on the southeast corner (where the car wash building is today).  Carson ran a gas station there on that corner across from the cheese factory for over thirty years.  Across the street on the northeast corner (a vehicle lot for the truck center today) was a Cities Service station, which featured an outside car hoist for oil and tire changes.  Gene Campton may have been running the station at that time although there were lots of operators, Dave Burocher and Don Nida to name a few, at that location over the years.

Moving east up Main Street, there were gas pumps at the Clarks Brothers Garage on the southwest corner of Silver & Main (across the street from the present Z-Zip Stop).  Leo & Clanus Clark sold Chryslers, Dodges, and Plymouths from the garage, so pumps were needed to fill up all of those new cars. (There may have been gas pumps at the Ed Muller & Sons Construction building back down the street a half a block, where Jeff Kennedy now changes tires now for the truck center, but I’m not sure the public could buy there.)  At this intersection of Silver & Main Streets, I think there was once a gas station on the northwest corner (the present apartment building owned by George Wilbur), but I cannot remember one there in the early 50s.  Across the street at the Major’s Feed & Equipment Store (Now Penny’s thrift store and Potter’s Realty), I think they had gas pumps as well, but again, I’m a little fuzzy as to when they took them out.  The La Farge Oil Co-op gas station was to the east of Major’s where Heartland-Cenex Co-op store is now located.  (I think the gas pumps there were taken out after Cenex purchased the local co-op business.)  Now let’s continue our tour as we move east up Main Street.

On the southeast corner of State & Main Streets was the Mobil gas station.  This station was built at the end of World War II and was the newest facility in town.  Jack Dempsey may have been running the station at that time, but there were a number of operators, Floyd Stoleson, Pete Evans, Alvie Sandmire were some, at that location over the years.  There also were gas pumps next door at the garage that housed the Chevy-Buick dealership.  Ed Deibig was the owner of the garage then, which is now owned by LaVerne Campbell.

 Continuing to move east, Neil Donaldson had gas pumps in front of his hardware store located on the northwest corner of Maple & Main Streets (the current location of Bergum’s Food Mart).  Neil’s gas pumps were probably the oldest in the village.  They were tall pumps with clear glass tanks and they were run by manpower.  Neil cranked a handle that pumped the gas into the glass tank so one could see and measure the gas being purchased.  When the glass tank was full, the hose drained the gas by gravity down from the pump into the car’s gas tank.  If you were buying more gas than the tank on the pump could hold, the whole procedure had to be repeated.

Kitty-corner from Donaldson’s Hardware will be our last stop for gas at Leo Smith’s Sinclair station (now Irv Gudgeon’s woodworking shop).  (Another feature of the gas business in those earlier times was multiple stations in the village selling the same brand, like Sinclair.  At one time in the 1930s, there were three Skelly stations in La Farge.)    Leo’s building had been one of the original blacksmith shops in the village, which was converted to a gas station as horsepower overtook “horse power”.  The conversion provided a bay for service work on cars where the blacksmith shop had been.     

That concludes our little gas pump tour through La Farge’s Main Street from yesteryear.  In those four blocks on the village’s main thoroughfare there were lots of places for gassing up back then.

Looking back, it is hard to understand how all of those places of businesses in La Farge could make it selling gas during that time.  But it was a different time – a time when two hundred more people lived in the village.  In addition, nearly every farm around La Farge was in production back then and those rural folks did most of their shopping in La Farge.  That shopping trip to town, usually on a Wednesday or Saturday night, often included topping off the tank on the family sedan before heading home.  Many of those farmers also brought their grain to the two mills in La Farge to be ground into feed.  Those trucks and pickups loaded with sacks of feed for the farm animals were gassed up in town as well.  More customers created a demand for more gas stations to provide the service to the people of the community.