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.  

Waiting For The Lake

When one is putting together a book that tells the story of a particular town, the details of how to organize that story can become a problem.  Perhaps the story flows naturally through the era of time being chronicled, one part of the story following the other in a logical neat order.  Or perhaps the story is disjointed, wandering off in one direction for a while before lurching suddenly back in another.  When you come to the end of the story, after all of the writing has been done, then one has to figure out where the divisions or chapter breaks will fit into that story.  An editor can start to dissect the story and look at presenting it in the form of a published book.  Where are the chapter breaks; where should the graphs and maps go; which photographs should be included with the story – these are all questions that need to be answered as the book is edited and prepared for publishing.

            As I write at volume II of my history of La Farge, I need to think about some of these editing questions as I move through the time period of 1962 to 2013.  I am tempted to just write the story from beginning to end and disregard any consideration for organization while I write.  I basically did that with my dam book, That Dam History – The Story of The La Farge Dam Project.  Once I started writing that story, I just rammed forward with the writing and paid little attention to the format of the book or how that story might look in book-form.  Interestingly, for that writing on the dam book, I wrote the story of the dam project first and then wrote the “Prelude To The Story” introductory chapter afterword.

            I have received criticism from some about how the dam book was organized and I think those people who question the format and how the book was put together have valid points.  Some have said that my “Prelude” chapter, which includes many of my opinions on the dam project in its eleven pages, should have come at the end of the story.  I thought about putting it there, at the end of the story, but decided to put it up front in the book to sort of clear the air of my opinions on the topic.  I hoped that after reading the “Prelude”, the reader would look at the rest of the dam story and see that it was hopefully written without too much prejudice or bias.  As Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, sir.”

            Something else that I hear from readers of the book has to do with the length of a couple of chapters in the book, particularly chapters 3 and 4.  Chapter 3 - “Parallel Paths – 1968-1975” is sixty-six pages long and Chapter 4 – “The Wilderness Years On The Government Land – 1976-1996” is forty-four pages in length.  None of the other four chapters in the dam book are longer than thirteen pages.  There is some inconsistency there, to be sure.  But as far as the story flowed, the chapters and their length seemed to be logical divisions of the telling of the tale.  Looking back, I think the chapters could have or should have been divided better, especially chapter 3, but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

            Now I’m working on another book, and am trying to use some foresight in telling this story of my hometown.  The story covers a fifty-year period, so there could be a simple way of dividing the book by coming up with a chapter for each of the five decades that the story covers.  The story may play out that way, but I’m already looking at the first chapter as covering the years 1962 to 1975.  Those are the years of the story framed by the first unveiling of the Corps of Engineers dam project at La Farge (1962) and the eventual stopping of the project by political forces in 1975.  As far as how the dam project affected La Farge over that time frame, there is a lot of story to tell.  It is a long and convoluted trail that has to be followed in telling that part of the story.  Not only do I have to relate the amazing run of events that played out in the telling of the dam story, but the effect of those dam project twists and turns on the village has to be told as well.  The loss of population and rural communities is one aspect of how the dam project affected La Farge.  But perhaps of equal or even greater importance is how the divisiveness of the debate over the dam project tore at the town and its leaders for decades.

In addition, there were other things going on in La Farge during that time.  There was a physical transformation of the town during that time.  The town started the process of moving away from the river and relocating on higher ground.  There was a great deal of change in the business community during that time, some of which carries through to the present.  There was also a migration of new people to the community during that decade, people who would eventually make up the foundation of the town.

All of these aspects of that time frame need to be told.  Is telling all of that part of the story too long for one chapter, especially the first?  I’m not sure; we will see how it all plays out when I take keyboard to fingers and start putting it all down on the Word document.  Regardless what I end up with in telling that part of the story, I think that I have a good chapter title for that first one.  It is the title of this blog entry.  So what do you think; does the chapter title do anything for you?

The Night Some Packers Came To La Farge

As we watched the Green Bay Packers unsuccessful march towards a fifth Super Bowl title, it is interesting to observe the effect of the team’s successes and failures on small towns like La Farge.  Of course this story is being played out in nearly every small town in the state of Wisconsin.  From Lena to New Diggings and from Clayton to Caledonia, the small towns of the Badger State don their “Green & Gold” as the success of “their” NFL team increases.

            In the immediate area around the city of Green Bay, this allegiance to the Packers by small town Wisconsin has been around pretty much since the beginning of the storied franchise.  For towns like La Farge and others that are several hours drive from Titletown, the connection to the Packers is a product of the NFL coverage on television.  When CBS began covering all NFL games in the 1950’s and when LaCrosse opened a TV station (WKBT) that would carry those Packer games, the good people of La Farge who had access to television sets and good rooftop antennas could start following the team from afar.  I was growing up in the village during that heady time.

            Now all of this; the NFL exposure on CBS, the coming of the television age to La Farge, and me becoming a Packer fan, would not be nearly as significant without Vince Lombardi also coming to Green Bay during this time to coach the team.  That coaching decision worked out pretty well for the Packers, didn’t it? (After all, there is a good reason why that Super Bowl hardware bling is called the Lombardi Trophy.)  My generation was spoiled absolutely rotten by the Packer’s success while Lombardi coached them.  NFL championships piled up for the Packers during those wonderful times and the new generation of Packer fans watching on television (like me) came to expect nothing but finishing first each year in the NFL.

            The first television that I ever watched when I was a kid growing up in La Farge was at Stan and Marge Hollenbeck’s house.  It was an evening potluck supper TV gathering as Stan had purchased a new Zenith from Major’s TV and the whole neighborhood was invited in to see the new contraption.  The kids sat on the floor in front of the TV while the adults watched from the chairs and couch.  Every available chair in the house was in that living room that night and Freddie Major was there to make sure the new Zenith TV housed in a beautiful blond oak console would get Channel 8, the new signal from LaCrosse.  I remember the snowy screen, the WKBT test pattern and then a show actually coming on around seven that evening. 

I have no idea what that TV program was, but I was hooked on the new medium of communication. Soon it was “Fury”, “My Friend Flicka” and “Mighty Mouse” (Here he comes to save the day!) on Saturday mornings and Ray Scott and Tony Canadeo bringing us the Packer games on autumn Sunday afternoons.  What was not to like about the Packers in those days?

By 1960, Lombardi’s second year at the Packer’s helm, Green Bay played the Philadelphia Eagles for the NFL championship.  They lost that game played at Philly that day (Remember Packer fullback Jim Taylor deciding to try to run over Chuck Bednarik near the goal line at the end of that game instead of attempting to run around him in the 17-13 loss?), but Green Bay went on to win five NFL titles over the next seven years.  That run also included the Packers winning the first two Super Bowls, although at the time, those games took a back seat to winning those great matchups with the Cowboys to win the NFL.  It was ridiculous how good the Packers were during that run of success (Don’t forget that one of the years that Green Bay didn’t win an NFL title was in 1964 when the Pack had an 11-2-1 season record, but finished behind the hated Chicago Bears in the Western Division.) and it remains an era of excellence not repeated since in the league.

But after Lombardi stepped down as Green Bay’s coach after the 1967 season, the Packers only had two winning seasons over the next decade.  During that time, Green Bay won one division title, but was bounced out of the playoffs in their first game.  It was not a very good time to be a Packer backer.  Which brings us to the 1978 season, after which some Packer players ended up playing some basketball in La Farge.

By 1978, Bart Starr, the quarterback of the glory days of the Packers’ 1960’s title teams and a two-time Super Bowl MVP, was coach of Green Bay.  Everybody liked Bart Starr in Packerland and hopes were high when he started his coaching career in Green Bay.  That 1978 season started great for the Packers as they had a 7-2 record after nine games.  But then Green Bay finished badly, going 1-5-1 down the stretch to tie Minnesota with 8-7-1 records atop the North Division of the NFC.  Since the Packers had not beaten the Vikings during the regular season, they finished second and did not make the playoffs once again.  But optimism had returned for the Packer faithful, including their many fans in La Farge.  It was with that renewed spirit that the La Farge Lions Club decided to bring the Packers to the Kickapoo Valley to play a basketball game.

It was not an easy decision for the local service club, which had been founded in La Farge in 1974.  Bringing the Packers to town was not cheap.  Up-front money to schedule the appearance of some players from the Packer team was substantial and the La Farge Lions Club at that time was nearly always broke.  But Lions member Orval Howard, who owned and operated the Village Market grocery store in town, supported the event and stepped forward to make arrangements for the game to happen.  And so it came to be that members of the La Farge Lions Club took on a team of Packer players in the local gym on Saturday, January 20, 1979.

Playing for the Packers that night was Johnnie Gray (#24), who was a starting safety on the team and a popular member of the team.  He was joined by linebacker Michael Hunt (#55), who was a rookie 2^nd round draft choice and had played his college ball at Minnesota.  Eric Torkelson (#26) was a back-up Packer halfback who played that night in La Farge.  Torkelson was a young good-looking guy and was a real hit with the ladies, some of who were able to sit on his lap that night.  Steve Wagner (#21 and a former Badger player) was a back-up defensive back and good special teams player for the Pack that year, also made his way to La Farge.  Rounding out the team for the Packers that night was Reed Giordana, who had been a little All-American quarterback at UW-Stevens Point and had been signed as a free agent by Green Bay in 1976 and took some snaps for the Green & Gold in a couple of pre-season training camps.  Giordana brought a friend along with him to play that night and the friend looked remarkably like Packer kicker Chester Marcol, but wasn’t.

A crowd of nearly 600 people packed the La Farge gym that night to see the Packers players and they were not disappointed.  Those four Packer players and one or two near Packers put on quite a show for their fans.  They signed every autograph on every program, t-shirt, and football that was shoved their way.  They held every local kid on their lap for every possible photograph that they could and had little skits to interact with the fans during the basketball game.  Their easy access and interaction with the fans, especially the kids could not have been better.  I think they beat the Lions in the basketball game, but it seems that a tie might have been worked out in the end.  After the game, the Packer players hung out with fans for nearly an hour, continuing to sign autographs and have photos taken.  Then they went to a post-game party with the Lions Club members hosted by Orval and Jan Howard at their house.  If was after midnight when they finally left La Farge and headed towards home.

I’m not sure if the Lions Club ever made any money from that Packer game, but it was a rousing success in all other aspects.  Several local men joined the club right after the game and others were drawn to join the Lions later because of the event with the Packers.  Many of the youngsters in attendance that night became Packer fans for life.  The smiles and memories of those La Farge youngsters who were at the game that night would last for generations. 

Taking La Farge's Inventory

TAKING A TOWN’S INVENTORY

            When doing historical research on a particular place over a long period of time, one occasionally has to pause and take an inventory of where you are.  It is easy to get lost in the minutia of a place’s details that is often the joy of research.  That little tidbit of an item found in the local newspapers “Personals” from forty years ago might be a gem for the researcher to savor.  But every once in a while, one has to put down those tidbits and gems and take a long look at the big picture.  In the case of my research on the history of La Farge, one needs to stop and take the town’s inventory every so often.

            I am just finishing the process of researching in the clipping files of the last fourteen years of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper.  The Enterprise was La Farge’s weekly newspaper from 1898 until 1973 and the various publishers kept the yearly clipping files, which contained a copy of each issue of the paper.  Arnie Widstrand was the last publisher of the Enterprise and the files remained in the Widstrand family’s possession.  Sarah Gudgeon, Arnie’s daughter, loaned me the Enterprise files from 1960 through 1973, which I used extensively when I was writing my book on the La Farge dam project.  Sarah needs the files back for some of her family research, so I have been finishing up my research in them before returning them to her.

            My research in those files from fifty years ago has really been a relevant trip back in time for me as the newspaper covered an era when I was growing up in La Farge.  Those issues chronicled the years of my attending and graduating from high school in La Farge, going away to college in LaCrosse, moving away to teach in Cambridge, Wisconsin and returning to La Farge in the fall of 1972 to teach at my alma mater.  In the last few weeks as I have been pouring through those issues of the Enterprise, I have been filling up notebooks with gems and tidbits from those times.  I now need to stop and take stock in what I have.

            One way to take a town’s inventory is to look at the business or commercial district in the place.  Since there are generally no business directories or maps available for that assessment of La Farge, the task can be a tad daunting at times.  But the year-end issues of the newspapers provide a nice tool for the inventory.  Back then (and this stretches back to the very beginnings of the newspaper and the town), nearly all places of business in La Farge would place ads in the Enterprise at Christmas and New Year’s.  The Christmas week ads wished all of their customers the best in the holiday season and the next week there was another ad wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year.  The business ads were so large and numerous that the newspaper would often have to expand by a couple of pages to get everything included in those issues.

            When looking at these holiday advertisements placed in the village newspaper, one can see what businesses were operating in La Farge at the particular time.  By going to the year-end issues of the Enterprise from other years, one can start to plot some transition in the village from one era to another.  When looking at those particular holiday ads from seventy-five years ago (1937), fifty years ago (1962) and forty years ago in 1972, one can trace continuity and change in La Farge’s Main Street business district.

            Continuity may be in the form of holiday ads for the same business over all of those years.  The Nuzum Lumber Company would be one of those places of business stretching through the years from 1937 to 1972 and another would be the La Farge State Bank.  (Interestingly, both of those places of business are still operating in the village to the present day.)  The Lounsbury Drug Store is another business found in all of the past issues during that time span.  That business even touts its longevity because Harry Lounsbury’s 1972 holiday ads for his drug store boast of  “41 years of service to the La Farge Community”.

            Continuity can also be observed by looking at the same business operated by different people over the years.  La Farge’s funeral parlor is a good example.  In 1937, Gene Calhoun is the village undertaker, while in 1962 John Ferries is operating the funeral parlor in town, having purchased the business from the Calhoun family.  By 1972 Arlen Johnson, who purchased the business from Ferries, is providing the village’s mortuary needs.

            One could also trace the continuity of a business by looking at the businesses in a particular building.  Since the present La Farge Hardware Store is the oldest building located on Main Street, looking at the businesses in that building over the years can be a way of plotting the continuum.  In 1937, there was a Gamble Agency store in that building, while in 1962 Mick’s Hardware was there and ten years later in 1972, it was the home of Rose Hardware.

            Great change is also evident when surveying the holiday ads from those different years.  In looking at the holiday business ads from those years between 1937 and 1972, one can see the change that takes place over the years in a small town’s business district.  Places come and go; some holiday business ads only appear in one of the year-end issues, but no more.  In 1937, La Farge had holiday ads for a Koffe Kup Kafe (I’m assuming the owners last name may have started with a “K”?).  In the 1962 issues, ads for the Mars Theater appear and in 1972, there are ads for Kickapoo Gifts operated by Colleen Sullivan.

            And so it goes.  Time passes by for a community and the sand is out of the old hourglass for 2012.  Bring on 2013.

History Update

I send my apologies to those of you who frequent this blog for not posting any thing for nearly six weeks.  I have been busy, but there is no excusing my absence.  I hope Santa will forgive me for my feeble effort and bring this Kickapoo boy some presents in a couple of weeks.
My little talk at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison on November 10 went unexpectedly well.  I was not anticipating much of a crowd, but there were probably more than 100 in attendance as I talked about the La Farge dam project.  Chuck Hatfield, my amazingly talented co-publisher on my book projects, served as the introducer and also handled a nice slide show that accompanied my talk.  Milton Bates, who wrote a book on canoeing and the history of the Bark River, also was part of the program and it was interesting to meet him and hear of his watershed.
There seemed to have been a number of students in attendance at my dam talk.  Some of them were taking notes, so I imagine some course at UW uses the La Farge dam project as a learning lesson for something.
I recently went to Arcadia, WI and picked up a new printing of my dam book from Supreme Graphics located there.  Carolyn and Chuck rode along and we enjoyed a nice tour of the facilities.  The new printing is very nice as the new cover rendition has a brighter color and the photographs in the book are much sharper than in the first printing.
I have just finished a two-part Local History Notebook for the Episcope newspaper on some history of gas stations in La Farge.  That research proved interesting and after the first part was published, I heard from many people about the topic.
I have been busy researching the clip files of the old Enterprise newspapers, which was La Farge's town newspaper until 1973.  Sarah Gudgeon had loaned me the files for the last twelve years that the paper was printed - 1960-1973.  Her father, Arnie Widstrand was the paper's editor and her mother, Doris, wrote a column in the paper for several years.  All of the files are still in the family, so they are a real treasure of historical information.  I'm finishing up the issues from 1970 right now, so I need to get two and a half more years of La Farge's history out of them as Sarah needs them back for a family history project of her own.

If you would like me to send you one or both of my books, please send a check and your address to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge 54639.  Volume I of my history is $25, which includes mailing costs and That Dam History - The Story of The La Farge Dam Project is $20.  I can mail both books for $40.

Take care everyone, I'll see you soon (promise) on this history blog.