La Farge's Commercial Club

A meeting of professional men was held at the Masonic Temple on Friday evening, September 3, for the purpose of organizing a Commercial Club.

            Thus began an article in the September 9, 1937 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper about the establishment of an organization of village businessmen.  The article went on to tell what the new club was going to be all about: The purpose of the organization is to bring together the business and professional men of La Farge for the purpose of bringing about uniform business practices, better harmony and to aid in the development of this Community.  It is hoped that through the efforts of the Community Club that La Farge will be selected as the Headquarters for the Kickapoo River Flood Control Survey, and later headquarters for this project.

            At a later meeting held on September 7^th of that year, the new Commercial Club elected Ralph Freeze, an attorney in the village as its first President.  Other officers elected in that 1937 organizational meeting were Secretary – Gene Calhoun, who ran a funeral home in the village and Treasurer – Mac Marshall, who owned a Main Street hotel.  The four Directors elected to fill out the Executive Committee of the club were Bernard Brokaw, William Adams, who ran a hardware store in La Farge, Harry Lounsbury, who ran the village’s drug store and Emory Thayer, the manager of Nuzum’s Lumber. 

            At the time that the new Commercial Club was formed, La Farge and the entire Kickapoo Valley were undergoing some dynamic times. As was mentioned earlier regarding the flood control survey, Congress had approved a federal study of the Kickapoo Valley in August of 1937.  The study would be held over the next few years and La Farge’s business community wanted the village to be the center of that project.  Besides the federal flood control study, an impending event of another nature loomed in the immediate future – the abandonment of the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad.

            In August of 1937 a protest meeting was held in La Farge regarding the proposed abandonment of the Valley’s railroad.  At that meeting, the Kickapoo Valley Defense Association (KVDA) was formed with La Farge Village President Arch Davidson serving as president of the new organization.  Davidson had been a leader in the Valley to get the flood control study (In January of 1937, Davidson and Ralph Nuzum, who owned the lumberyard in town, had spearheaded a petition drive to be sent to Congress in favor of the flood control study. The petitions sent to Congress had been gathered by the Kickapoo Flood Control Association, another organization that Davidson served as president.), and now he would lead the fight to save the railroad.

            One of the first things that the new Commercial Club did was to sponsor a Harvest Festival & Fair to be held in La Farge in mid-October of 1937.  The new festival, which featured a parade and a variety of activities was a success and was held under the sponsorship of the new businessmen’s club for several more years. In 1939, all of the businesses in La Farge closed from noon to 6 pm on the day of the festival.

            Later in 1939, members of the La Farge Commercial Club went to Hillsboro to celebrate the opening of the new state highway between the two communities.  The last section of the new Highway 82 had been completed that fall.  With the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad gone by this time, the development of state highways to La Farge was a main concern for village leaders.  With the completion of Hwy 82, La Farge had the first state road to the village. While at the meeting in Hillsboro, the community leaders from both towns also celebrated the re-opening of the Hillsboro Brewery and sampled some of the “Hillsboro Pale” that was again being made.

            The opening of the new state highway between La Farge and Hillsboro was the result of strong lobbying by village leaders, led by Davidson.  When the railroad abandonment became a certainty earlier in the year, the KVDA switched its emphasis to getting new and improved state roads to the Kickapoo Valley.  Because the railroad had been used extensively by many Kickapoo Valley businesses, especially for the receiving of goods to sell, a new and reliable highway system was needed as a replacement.  Davidson and other La Farge businessmen continued to have the state improve and gravel Highway 82 to Viroqua and to have the state designate the old “River Road” (then County Hwy M) as a state highway.

            Having good roads to La Farge had always been a priority for its business community.  In 1915, La Farge businesses had donated money to have the Otter Creek Road dragged and graded.  At the same time, June of 1915, three La Farge businesses – Chase’s, DeJean’s and Householder’s – had placed a notice in the local newspaper announcing that their stores would be closing at 8 pm except for Wednesday and Saturday. Operating hours for local businesses could be a point of contention in a small town like La Farge.  Probably because the stores actually competed for people’s business when they came to town to shop, establishing a mutual time for hours of operation was difficult to achieve at times.  But later that month the community came together to promote La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration.

            A call was made to all the automobile owners in the La Farge area, estimated to be about 75 at the time, for a Booster Club Trip to promote the 4^th of July.  Eventually 36 automobiles and around 150 people went on the booster trip that included stops in West Lima, Bloom City, Woodstock, Rock Bridge, Hub City and Yuba in the morning of that last Saturday of June in 1915.  When the booster caravan reached Hillsboro, everyone stopped for lunch before continuing on to Dilly, Valley and Rockton in the afternoon to conclude the trip.  La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration was well attended and successful that year thanks to the efforts of the business community.

            In 1920, the La Farge businessmen united once again to sponsor the La Farge baseball team.  The “town team” was the pride of the village and always seemed to play for a championship each year.  Over the years, the sponsorship by La Farge’s businesses for the ball team was a given.

            During World War II, the La Farge Commercial Club ceased to function as the village turned its attention to various drives to support the war effort.  After the war was over, there were calls for the Commercial Club to again unite La Farge’s business community.  In 1947, the La Farge Development Association was formed and Casey Sanford was chosen as its first president.  Sanford, who owned a men’s clothing store on La Farge’s Main Street, led the new organization in helping with the village’s annual 4^thof July Celebration. The new business organization sponsored a raffle for that year’s Independence Day.  The following year, the development association co-sponsored the 4^thof July with the newly formed VFW Post.

            In 1949, a Lions Club was formed in La Farge and it seemed to take the place of the previous business organizations.  The president of that first Lions Club in La Farge was Ed Deibig, who owned the Chevy-Buick garage in town.  The new Lions Club sponsored a “Wild West Rodeo” that was held on Labor Day.  The rodeo was held at Calhoon Park, but crowds that first year were small because of rainy weather. 

             That Christmas season, the Lions Club sponsored a “Clock Stops Contest” fundraiser. People would pay to make a guess on how long a hand-wound clock would run. The clock was on display in the front window of one of the Main Street stores.  The clock ran for 92 hours before stopping and a winner was announced with much Yuletide fanfare.

            One of the main projects that the La Farge Lions Club undertook was to build new tennis courts in town.  Using proceeds from several more successful rodeos, the courts were constructed beyond the left field fence at Calhoon Park.  John Ferris, who ran a funeral parlor and furniture store in the village, was key in making the rodeos successful.  Finn Johannesen, who ran a grocery store in town and also served as the village’s president for several years, led the Lions club in getting the tennis courts completed.

            Over the years several different business organizations were formed in La Farge to provide some type of order in the commercial sector of the village.  Some times the individual businesses had to act upon their own.  

            In May of 1947, a notice appeared in the Enterprise that the four grocery stores in town – the Cash Store, Clover Farm Store, Andrews Market and Kennedy’s Grocery – would all be closed during the summer on Thursday afternoons.  The reason given for the new closing hours were due to the late Wednesday nights when the free movies were held on Main Street during the summer.  At a time when those La Farge grocery stores were sometimes open for 15 hours a day, a break was needed for the workers in the store to catch some rest.

            Different times; different needs for this little Kickapoo River town.

More Pool Hall Memories

Now, friends, let me tell you what I mean.

You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table.

Pockets that mark the differences,

Between a gentleman and a bum,

With a capital “B”.

And that rhymes with “P”,

And that stands for Pool!

(From the song, “Ya Got Trouble”, by Meredith Willson in “The Music Man”)

So I’m standing over a pool table at the Doncaster Hotel in Kensington, Australia trying to remember how to shoot a three-cushion bank shot. If I can make this shot, I’ll be in good shape to win my fourth straight game of eight-ball, which is no small feat since I haven’t played any pool for a number of years. It is July of 2010 and I’m searching back in the memory of my youth for the proper angles to make the shot. I have made the shot many times before on the pool tables at Mac’s Pool Hall in La Farge, but that was nearly fifty years ago, when learning to play pool was a part of a boy’s growing-up. After sizing up the tricky shot some more, I make the call of the three-cushion shot in the far corner and draw back the cue. The cue ball strikes the 13-ball and that brightly colored ball begins its circuit around the table; one cushion, then a second and a third before it heads for the called corner pocket. The small crowd gathered in the hotel’s pool table room inch forward to see if the orange-striped ball would fall in the pocket. As it slowly approaches the called pocket, . . .

If you were a boy growing up in La Farge during my time, there was a pretty good chance that you would know how to play pool. My time to learn to play pool in La Farge was in the 1950s and ‘60s, but young lads had learned the game in the village’s pool halls for generations before my friends and I came along. By the time my learning of the finer aspects of pool shooting was experienced, the lone pool hall in the village was Mac’s Pool Hall.

Mac Marshall had started the pool hall at that spot on La Farge’s Main Street in the 1940s, perhaps shortly after his hotel had burned down in 1942. When his son, Mac Marshall Jr., returned from serving in World War II, he ran the pool hall for several years before becoming postmaster. For the next thirty years, the business was rented out to various men who operated the pool hall in that premises. During most of those years, there were three pool tables in the building and several tables for card playing in the back room. The card room was an adults-only area, off limits to anyone under the age of eighteen. There was an age limit on pool shooting as well, which varied from 12 to 16 years of age, depending on the particular time in La Farge’s history that one views.

I think that the La Farge village board lowered the age for pool playing from 14 years of age to 12 about the time that I turned that younger age. I seem to remember that “Carp” Lowrey was running the pool hall then and asked and received the change from La Farge’s village board. There were quite a number of us “town boys” at that younger age, so the rule change swelled the customer base for the pool hall. My friends and I rushed to Carp’s pool hall to take advantage of the change in age requirements and become masters of the art of shooting pool.

We plunged into games of “Rotation”, “8-Ball” and the trickiest of all of the basic games, “Bank”. The game of Bank was an adaptation of 8-Ball in which every other ball, including the eight ball had to be made with a called bank shot. Bank required a higher level of shot-making expertise and strategic planning than the more basic games of pool. As a youngster starting to play the game, you learned the finer points of these pool games in a variety of ways. That education could often be accompanied by the emptying out of the change in your pockets, as you often had to pay for the lessons by paying for the games you lost.

The pool game of Bank cost more to play, a dime per game compared to the nickel charged for Rotation or 8-Ball, and the cost could accumulate fast as you lost and learned how to play the game with the older players. But the real education in the game of Bank came when you played partner Bank, two against two, with the old-timers. Each of the elderly players would have a youngster as a partner. The veterans could control the outcome of the games as they passed on the nuances of playing the angles of bank shots, positioning the cue ball for the next shot and playing defense against the opposition. On a Saturday afternoon, when Grover Hamilton came down from West Lima and Otis Arms came over from Valley, the old friends often taught the game to La Farge youngsters. I was fortunate to be involved in a few of those Saturday afternoon lessons in the finer aspects of playing Bank. Besides the lessons learned for the younger players, it was also a social time for the teachers. By controlling the game, the elders could share the week’s news as the lessons were taught. They could make the games go on forever as they manipulated the cue ball into hopeless situations for the next shooter. Scratches meant pulling a made ball from the pockets and putting it back in play, thus extending the game and the lesson some more.

I have many fond memories of my experiences in Mac’s Pool Hall over the years, but few seem so special to me now as those games of partner Bank with the elders of the game. There are many ways for a boy to learn about life while growing up in a small town like La Farge, and one of those ways might just be over a pool table. I am thankful for those who took the time to teach the lessons.

There is no longer a pool hall in La Farge. Mac’s Pool Hall closed sometime back in the 1980s. We think the last man to run the pool hall was Grover Hamilton, still trying to get people to play his favorite game of Bank. Others who ran that pool hall over the years included Ned Sewell, Ted Hammond, Bobby Kennedy, Theron Phillips and the previously mentioned Carp Lowery. When the pool hall was closed and the equipment sold off, it is said the pool tables ended up in Madison. The store space where the pool hall had been became the new site for the village’s library. It was a good use for the space, but not nearly as alluring to boys as the pool hall had been.

By the way, if you were wondering about that three-rail shot that was circling the table at the Doncaster Hotel, it went in the corner pocket just as I had called it. The small crowd then assembled murmured in disbelief. Now all I had to do was make the eight ball in the side pocket, which I had lined up pretty well with my leave of the cue ball. It was almost a straight-in shot, but in looking at the position of the two balls, I also saw an easy bank shot across to the other side. I made the tougher call for the bank shot and the black eight ball crossed the table and found its home to end the game. Some lessons are just not forgotten.

“The young man who can play a crackerjack game of billiards

usually is not good for much else.”

- La Farge Enterprise, January 28, 1909

-

I wish to thank Kay & David Mick, Shirley Marshall, Maxine Shird, Gary Hamilton, Blaine and Mark Phillips and others for their help with this story. If you would like to help with this little history project on La Farge, please contact me at bcstein@mwt.net or P.O. Box 202, La Farge 54639.

If you want to order signed copies of my books, the prices are $19 for a copy of the book on the La Farge dam project, $25 for a copy of volume I of the history of La Farge or $40 for both books. Mailing and shipping costs are included in all prices.