Always 12:51 in La Farge

In the past few years, I have written several local history notebooks during the Yuletide season based on a nostalgic trip down La Farge’s Main Street of the past. Many of the visits down memory lane drew comparisons between the village’s Main Street from previous times and that of today. Although I have received many favorable comments from readers about those notebooks, those trips to nostalgia make me wonder if I am over-doing the concept. After all, all of us involved in this little history project about La Farge have their favorite time to remember about their hometown. In these year-end local history notebooks I have stepped back to the early 1950s, another time to the 1960s and last year composed some doggerel where I time-traveled through decades of Christmas memories on La Farge’s Main Street.

But if one had the gift to do some of that time travel, where would you stop the clock in your memories of La Farge? Would it be some favorite time in your childhood when you were growing up in this village? Would it be that best birthday party ever or that very special 4^th of July Celebration? Where would you stop the clock in your cavalcade of memories about this place?

The reason that I pose this question is because of the clock on the La Farge State Bank. Although the time & temperature sign on the corner of the bank building has been operating in starts and stops for some time, the clock finally locked up, gave up the ghost and has posted the same time (with no accompanying temperature) for the past several weeks. It always reads 12:51. Which is alright in a way because, as we are want to say here in the Kickapoo Valley as we try and look on the brighter side of things, the stopped clock is always correct twice a day. But what time is it stopped on? Is it nine minutes before one in the afternoon, which means that the lunch hour is almost over? Or is it fifty-one minutes past midnight, which might have meant “last call” at La Farge’s watering holes in years gone by. (Do taverns and bars really need to stay open until 2:30 AM? Didn’t our grandmothers always tell us that nothing good ever happens at two in the morning?) So if we’re all locked into 12:51 here at the end of our current year of 2011, where would we like that clock to stop in another year from our past?

I was thinking perhaps that it would be fun to stop the clock at some highlight of the village’s history. Perhaps we could go back to that election in 1899 that ratified the incorporation of La Farge as a village. Or we could stop time nearly a decade later and perhaps could be a passenger on the Kickapoo Stumpdodger as it wound its way back up the Valley after La Farge’s town baseball team had taken on all comers at the Crawford County Fair. The players and fans would be giddy after winning the tournament, which had been set up (rigged might be a better word) to beat La Farge in the first place. A week later, the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper would declare the La Farge team the best in the state for its exploits. Those would be fun times to be a part of.

How about a time stop in La Farge on November 11, 1918 as the Great War was ending? We could hear the village’s church bells pealing out the news of the armistice being signed in Europe and join in that wonderful parade that spontaneously bloomed on Main Street. Wouldn’t that be a fun place to stop in our time travels?

We could move forward in time and welcome all of the local service men and women back at the end of World War II. That was a time of great change and transition in the village, a time of hope for the future. Maybe we could pinpoint a particular season of one of those great LHS basketball teams in the early 1950s? Wouldn’t that be fun to time travel back to those old gymnasiums in the Kickapoo Valley League and watch the Wildcat boys rack up win after win.

Even though there are mostly forgettable memories of the ill-fated dam project that most of us would not want to relive, there are even a couple of times in that dam story that might warrant a stop. I would like to time stop in the village on that Saturday night in May of 1971 when La Farge dam supporters celebrated the decision by Governor Patrick Lucey to support the dam project. Governor Lucey, in an open letter to the citizens of the Kickapoo Valley (which was really an open letter to La Farge), had said that, “If participatory democracy is to have any meaning whatsoever, we must, I feel, respond to the people most directly affected. With this in mind, I have decided not to stand in opposition to the project.” I missed that Saturday night celebration in La Farge forty years ago, so it would be fun to return to that time to catch the excitement.

Another dam project time stop we might want to make would be for “Proxie’s Funeral” that occurred in January of 1976. Perhaps no village ever put on a more effective and fun form of protest against their elected representatives. Wouldn’t it be fun to return to that time to attend Senator Proxmire’s wake in the Raven Bar or accompany the funeral possession up to the dam site? We could hear “Reverend” Red Alderson’s humorous eulogy again and watch Ward Rose toss the dummy effigy of Senator Proxmire off the unfinished dam into the “Dead Sea”.

Perhaps we won’t even have to travel that far back in our time travel. We could go back to the turn of the new millennium and welcome in the twenty-first century. Maybe we could be in the victory parades as the village welcomed back another champion LHS volleyball team? Wouldn’t it be fun to relive those noisy nights as the team bus was escorted back into town by the fire trucks, sirens wailing and lights flashing, and the Wildcat girls on the team screaming with joy to the town and showing off their latest conference championship trophy or WIAA regional or sectional championship plaque?

So many times to choose from for our stopping of the clock, but I would personally choose a Christmas Eve in 1953. (I’m kind of guesstimating on the year here, buy I think that I’m about at the right time.) My family lived in a ranch house on Highland Street, between Bird and State Streets. We were all still together then as a family and this six year old was stubbornly hanging on to his last beliefs in the magic and wonder of Santa Claus. We walked to the Christmas Eve services at the Methodist Church only a block away. I remember the huge Christmas tree in the front of the church, how the lights were dimmed and the candles provided most of the light. Carols were sung and I joined other children from Sunday School classes with some special songs of the season.

When we returned home, a miracle had happened! While we were in church, St. Nicholas had visited the village, stopped at our house and filled under our Christmas tree with presents, many of them for me. Grandmother, who lived across the street, joined us in opening the presents – what a grand evening it was! The next day, we all packed into Dad’s Buick Roadmaster and it was off to Aunt Alice & Uncle Mike’s house in Cheyenne Valley for Christmas dinner. The house was packed with family and friends. The women worked in the kitchen to help Aunt Alice get the huge dinner ready; the men sat in the living room and talked about their jobs and adult stuff like that. The kids were upstairs regaling each other with news of their wondrous Christmas presents.

Those were special times for me in my memory stop, but they wouldn’t last much longer. Stopping the memory clock at a particular time only can last for so long. The next year, our family’s Christmas Eve was held in a room at the Viroqua Hospital, where my Mother battled against the leukemia that was ravaging her body. That’s one of the disadvantages of stopping the clock on these trips back into our memory – the bad times aren’t necessarily erased as we make the clock stop to visit the good times.

May you all make it home for Christmas.

If you would like me to send you an autographed copy of my new book on the La Farge dam project, please send $19 to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639. If you would like me to mail you a copy of my earlier book on the history of La Farge, send me $25. However if you would like both signed books sent your way, then send me $40. All of the dollar amounts listed will cover all mailing expenses.

I have been busy this week sending out the book to people all over Wisconsin, from Phillips to Janesville and from Germantown to Wausau. Books have made their way to Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, California, Washington and Alaska. The book will soon be in the hands of our exchange-student daughters in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Sydney, Australia.

Locally, copies of the book are available at the Episcope office, La Farge State Bank, Kickapoo Valley Reserve Visitor Center, Rockton Bar, Bramble’s Bookstore in Viroqua and Dregne’s Gifts in Westby.

By the way, I am currently working on a local history notebook about pool halls in La Farge. If you have any photographs, memories or stories to tell about the fascinating billiard room culture that once thrived in our village, send them my way. Working together, we can tell the story of this little Kickapoo River town.

The Ottevale Railroad

I was interested in reading the recent story about the reincarnation of the Ottervale Store taken on by the Alderson’s living up Husker Hollow way. There was a nice little article on the history of the store that was put together by Patsy and Kevin Alderson included in that issue of La Farge’s local newspaper. Reading the articles and looking at the many photos of the moving of the store building stirred memories of the story of the ill-fated railroad line from La Farge to Ottervale. As with many a tale told on the Kickapoo, it started with the best of intentions.

It was the winter of 1901-02 and by January the snow was piled so high as to scrape the telegraph wires running along side the Kickapoo Railroad line. In those days, when the snow was piled that high, folks stayed indoors more and gathered to talk at the stores on La Farge’s bustling Main Street. Sitting around the pot-bellied stoves at Chase Brothers Mercantile, Millard’s Store and Post Office or Pott’s Hardware Store, the local wags would pontificate on the latest news and gossip.

A story of interest all that fall and running into the winter was the decision by the Kickapoo Railroad officials to not extend the line north beyond La Farge. Original plans had called for the railroad line to continue north towards Rockton and Ontario, then on up the Valley and over the hill at Briggsville to Tomah. There it would connect with the main east-west rail line running to La Crosse. Good intentions indeed, but the Kickapoo railroad line was always short of funds and did not have the money to pursue expansion beyond La Farge, so the plan for extending the railroad line north to Tomah was scuttled. Although that decision left La Farge in the envious and financially lucrative position of being the northern terminus of the railroad line, some in the community saw a need for more connections to the outside world. Soon the idea of a branch line to bustling Ottervale was being bandied about.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the La Farge Enterprise newspaper came out strongly for the Ottervale branch line in its January 31, 1902 edition. An article on the front page of that issue, Railroad To Ottervale, outlined the positive benefits of the plan:

What is the matter with having a railroad from La Farge to Ottervale? For our part we can’t see anything of importance to hinder, and what little obstacles there may be in the way are not of enough account to prevent the carrying out of such an important project as this. The benefits to be received from such a road are too many and great to be enumerated here, but we will mention a few which we think will set at rest any doubts in the mind of the reader as to the advisability of the plan.

· 1^st It would make La Farge the junction of two of the most important railroads in Vernon County.

· 2^nd If Ottervale should ever happen to grow to be a large city like Milwaukee or Chicago it would be a great advantage to this town to have direct railroad connections.

· 3^rd If a gold mine should ever happen to be discovered over at Ottervale our citizens could go over there to dig and come back on the evening special and in this manner we could get rich without depopulating the village any.

· 4^th It would be of great advantage to La Farge to be the junction of two important railroads and might induce some large manufacturing establishments to locate here and help build up the town.

· 5^th If the railroad was successful we could build other roads out to West Lima, Muncie, Rockton and other points and make La Farge a great railroad center.

· 6^th The Enterprise could be carried to Ottervale by mail without taking it a whole week for it to get there as it does now.

We trust that there are none of our readers who do not yet see clearly the advantages of this road and we will go on to explain why we think the road can be built just as well as not. There is nothing as we can see lacking to build the road with except the money, but there is no use in getting discouraged for the lack of that when everything else necessary for railroad building can be found right in the village. A good set of officials can be picked out here and we would suggest the following persons as being, according to our best judgment, in every way capable and competent to serve as a good set of railroad officials:

Jonathan Gift President

M.O. Morris V. President

Dr. Butt Sect.

Dr. Gaines Treas.

G.E. Tate Train Master

J.H. Potts Engineer

H.C. Plimpton Fireman

R.P. Dalton Brakesman

D. H. Bean, Mike Ward, and Sam Hook could furnish the money. To show that we are in earnest and are willing to do our part we will agree to furnish the hot air for the airbrakes. If there is anything else necessary for building a railroad just let us know and we will find some way to get it. We hope that all those who wish to take stock in the road will get together soon and get the work started as soon as possible so that we can have it completed before all the snow melts away.

That mention of snow in the last line of the article was probably a key to the idea of the fictitious branch railroad running up Otter Creek. In an earlier issue of the Enterprise that winter, the correspondent from Ottervale had mentioned that the snowdrifts were packed so hard on the road leading to La Farge that you could drive a train over them. At around the same time, there was some grumbling about the deep piles of snow on La Farge’s Main Street, which made it hard to maneuver around with horse & sleigh or on foot. Somebody mentioned that they should haul the huge piles of snow out of town, so why not use them for a firm bed for the proposed new line running to Ottervale? The idea was hatched to lay the track of the proposed line across the firmly packed snow and within a week of the original article, a notation was made in the local newspaper that “stock for the Ottervale railroad was going as fast as pancakes & honey” and that William Riley would run the new railroad eating house.

Two weeks later in the February 21 issue of the Enterprise another article appeared titled Our Railroad. The article read:

“We found the following article with no signature attached in front of our office door one day the first of the week. As we first read it over a suspicion crossed our mind that the writer was trying to make fun of “our” railroad, but upon sober reflection we deemed it incredible that anyone could be so trifling and frivolous with the serious things of this life and so we concluded that the writer must have ment (sic) it all for the best but was probably not as well posted on railroad building as we are. Following is the epistle:

Mr. Editor: The Enterprise seems very enthusiastic over the R.R. to Ottervale, as the stock is nearly all sold and the balance will be well watered and the new road will be christened the U.C.& L.C.R.R. The grade stakes will be set as soon as the first train passes over the line. The tickets will be good on all divisions of the drop in and catch on line. The conductor will take up all passes by anyone not holding the same and the lucky person who holds a pass will be entitled to ride on foot or horseback from any place in the whole wide world clear up to Ottervale.”

The railroad to Ottervale wasn’t the only fanciful proposal circulating as winter turned to spring in the Kickapoo Valley in 1902. In the March 14 issue of the Enterprise, the following piece of local news appeared, “This is the time of the year when railroad building takes its usual boom. On of the latest railroad projects is to run an electric line from Union Center to La Farge, taking in the towns of Rockton, Valley, Hillsboro and Dilly. Hillsboro has long been wanting a railroad but the present scheme of running an electric line clear through to here originated with some of the men over at Valley who would also like a road for their town. It is said that all the businessmen in the towns along the line are in favor of it and they claim to be able to raise $100,000 among themselves toward carrying out the project.”

Alas, the electric line through Dilly was never to be (But at least we know where the idea for those postcards that showed a train line running down that little ghost town’s main street came from.), and alack, the line to Ottervale met the same fate. In the April 11, 1902 issue of the Enterprise a brief mention was made of the demise of the phantom line when it was noted that the Ottervale RR was abandoned due to not enough snow. Hot air will do that some times to even the best of ideas.

Although the idea of the mythical Ottervale Railroad had drifted away like the cigar smoke from whence it was hatched, the Kickapoo Railroad made plans to expand in La Farge. By later in April, the real railroad company was building side tracks to facilitate easier loading and shipping from the La Farge mills and stockyard, further positioning the village as a main transportation center in the Valley.

Later in the spring, Ottervale was dealt another blow when the U.S. Postal Department announced that the Ottervale Post Office. (probably housed in the store there) was being discontinued as of June 30. Mail would be hauled out to Otter Creek on a new rural mail route from La Farge after that date. It must have seemed as if the whole world was shrinking away from Ottervale, what with the loss of their post office and mythical train line. But good news arrived that November when Alex Hill, the owner of the La Farge Telephone Company revealed plans to string telephone lines out Otter Creek and up to Salem Ridge. By the following spring, Ottervale was connected to the outside world with the latest telephone communication devices. You win some and you lose some.