You know, this was a Thanksgiving song. This was not a Christmas song, Jingle Bells. You guys
were then. It was written as a Thanksgiving song, and there's no references to Christmas
whatsoever in this song here. I brought these two popsicles in that were outside freezing,
karaoke and forte and gymnast era here. And I thank you guys for coming in today because
yeah, you get up early in the morning and stuff to get out there in the freezing cold weather
and have to deal with me, but I appreciate you coming in. Gymnacere and karaoke and forte
have presented a series of popular nostalgic programs over the past 10 years about growing up.
And we're seeing this baby boner boomers in the late 50s and 1960s and these shows are held mainly
at the Golden Round L theater every few years, but have been at the Romallage, the library. I was
at the one you had outside of the library for their anniversary, their big four hundred year
anniversary, whatever. Yeah, that was really nice. And they're going to tell us all about the
topics and how they put these together. You know, over 7,000 people attend the shows are always
free. And I don't know how you put these things together because not only do you get the artifacts
we've got to see, you've actually gotten the people who've been involved in it in real life or
the children of the parents who've been because you know, you've been with a long time. So let's
kick it off here with finding out who these two are. Tell us about yourselves. Jim, what did you
start off? Well, I was born and raised in Racine. I'm a self-sider. I graduated from St. Katz back in
65. I guess I had an early interest in Racine's history when as a kid, I was walking, oh, just south
of downtown. I noticed some old interurban or street car tracks and I thought, what are these
doing here? They were just by the old Firestone store, which sold tires, of course, between Main
Street and Wisconsin Avenue, just east of the courthouse. So I did a little research on it and I
actually wrote a term paper about that in 8th grade. That sparked my interest in Racine's history.
And then when we got married in 79, of course, we were living in Mont Pleasant. I went to an antique
store and I saw a bottle marked the Mont Pleasant dairy company and I thought, I just have to have
that. So one thing led to another and I started to gather more Racine bottles and that eventually
blossomed into collecting other Racine memorabilia. And now I have a basement
containing my collection as well as the spirit of a Racine entrepreneurs exhibit over at the
Racine Business Center. There we have a lot of old Racine memorabilia from my collection,
including the original Nelson Dimes store sign, the Dania Hall sign, and the Uptown Library
sign, which is about I think 12 feet long. And when I move that into my basement, that was before
we remodeled the basement. Now it's going to be a permanent fixture in that basement because it's
just too big to move out as well as a few other things that weigh a ton. Old Racine mangles and an
old washing machine. So yeah, that's the, I always liked Racine memorabilia and of course,
Racine's history. Now if you see there's a big mural in the basement of this building,
it's too big to put in lobby. It was a giant mural painting on canvas. And it's it's you,
so we have it on the wall downstairs. You'll see in the picture the letters WRJ on
on top of the building. They lit up. And what happened to those? We had a new roof put on
and they had to take the letters down. Jim wants that sign. Well, yes, you can have it for sale.
No, because Tom Cargo and Janet Hoff, they have a Nicarage, they have the letters. They don't have
to have a bid off. Well, they restored it. Is it on top of their house? No, it's not, but they
do bring it out to the anniversaries. We used to have it Memorial Hall. Carol, tell us about yourself.
Well, um, yeah, look close to that microphone. How was he up to Jim? Also born in Racine and a
North side or Carlisle Avenue. Um, not a collector, but how did I become so interested in memories
and in writing about them? I have to look back and I do still have my mother and dad's small
kitchen table from 1945 when they married. I remember sitting in our kitchen and my mother had
been an English teacher and loved people putting those things together. She was always kindly
telling stories about the meaning of life for about lovely, lovely people stories. So I think I
more or less absorbed that interest. But, um, another thing about memories that have become so
important to me, that house, 14, 18, Carlisle was the only house my parents ever owned. So the
neighborhood, the house itself, Lincoln schooled on the block, all that is easily in my mind to be
intact with lovely memories. People can have memories by moving across the country.
But my sense of place certainly was Carlisle Avenue. But how did I get writing other than
term papers like writing my husband's term papers occasionally in college? Uh-oh, and truth comes
out. And I got to be on one of those forms. That truth comes out. The professor said I don't like
this style of writing, do you believe that? Well, anyway, coming back to Racine, my husband and I
raised our daughter in West Bend would visit Racine, of course. But 20 years ago in retirement,
we decided to actually move here as well as spend time in Arizona. It was really different coming
back. Now it was life, not just visiting. And I coined the phrase for myself, double vision.
For instance, if I went down Carlisle Avenue, oh, I could see how it actually looked,
but I could also see how it was. And that still amazes me today how at 75,
people, many people like me, our memories of 56, 70 years ago are so vivid. And if they're
important to us, it gets to be really an interesting and almost emotional thing to talk about them
or write them down. Well, I hadn't written them down, but there's so many surprises about gyms
in my journey to do these programs. Mine began, of course, with how did I write a story so that
anyone knew I might do this? I wrote a story, I wrote a letter to the editor and took it down
in person to the journal times. It was about the Racine city band that my dad had played in.
I wanted people to think about going attending for the summer at the zoo. And the woman said to me,
yes, but you're also putting your address down as Arizona. And we're going to do a special
on people that keep their ties to Racine. Do you want to write something?
Well, no one will be whole just on that phrase. Again, another surprise, I went home and I wrote
this story. You can go home again. Didn't hear anything? Forgot about it. And then one Sunday,
the phone started ringing. And my neighborhood friend that I hadn't talked to then in decades,
Martha Rock had hunted me down and said, I read your story today. So that was another surprise.
I began writing then for the journal times free of charge, two, three, four times a year about
growing up and receiving my own stories, but finding that people liked them because then they
could remember their memories. So surprise from beginning to end. And that also led to one book,
my heart leads me home, a daughter's memoir. That is my claim to fame. One book, some stories.
You know, and I mentioned in the previous hours, I have great, I grew up in New York, but I can
remember vividly when I was a kid walking up and down Fifth Avenue, I told you, looking at the
living windows of Lord and Taylor, which they used to have there with their robotic Christmas characters,
and getting on that long six hour wait to get into radio city musical to see a movie
with the rockets and all the other shows they had there. But just get online at like nine o'clock
in the morning, if you're lucky, you got into the three or four o'clock performance.
Because between the movie and the show, it took three, three and a half hours to get into it.
Those are my memories. And I was a little kid, and I remember that everybody remember, I think
people remember a lot more than they think they remember the movie. One last thing, when I went back
to the Bronx with my brother, I was a little kid in the Bronx, we didn't live there that long.
We couldn't get into the building. So we had looked through the window, there's a couple of years
ago, looked through the window and I saw the mosaic tile floors in the lobby. And they were the same
ones we had in the bathroom and I remember crawling on those floors and it hit me and I had never
thought about it, but I remember those mosaic tiles. It was sitting back there in the back of
his brain. There's not too much room in this brain, but it was sitting back there the whole time.
How did you two get together to do these programs? Because you'd weren't friends as kids,
it was as tiny as our cider and salt. That's right. We never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never.
Yeah. But we were both members of preservation recene years ago and we still are. And one time,
I attended one of Carol's talks at the library and after her talk I suggested why don't we get
together with my collections and your speaking ability. We should maybe merge and do a program
again containing my collection and her famous talks. And she was a little hesitant at first and
I thought, well, okay, well, that's the way you want to be about it. But she came around and she
suggested that we, if we do one, Carol would fill in. Yeah. I really, it kind of left me cold. Well,
how would you merge collecting with nostalgia? But after a few weeks, really, I had just written
a story that still stays as one of my favorites. It's called The Store. It was about Willie
Kadrachi's grocery store, my store, our store on Albert Street. And I had included a lot of friends
names in that store, in that story, about how we all loved going on our bikes, the penny candy,
the, even some of us, not me, but getting cigarettes for our parents, you know, going to the store.
So then I did say to Jim, well, how about do you have anything on grocery stores?
Well, Jim, what do you have on grocery stores? I had a lot of grocery store memorabilia,
the giveaways, calendars, thermometers from a number of old grocery stores, advertising bowls and
so on and so forth. And I thought, oh, that'll make a good program. And fortunately, Carol agreed to
do that. And we had our first program at the library. And this is something I want to mention. I
still kid Carol about this all the time. When we got to the library, there were, of course,
tons of chairs there set up for us. And we were expecting a rather large audience, at least I was,
but Carol said, oh, we're not going to get as many people as these chairs suggest. Let's start
taking some away. I said, no, Carol, let's just see what happens. And again, hold that story right
there. We were leaving off at the chairs. Carol said, take them away. Yep. And you said, leave them.
Yes. It's 719 at WRJN radio. Carol, Jim, 14, Jim, we're seer here more coming up in just a moment
at WRJN. Increasing cladding this today with a hind air 26 degrees right now. We've got sunny sky
and 14 degrees.
You know, I actually had Perry Clomo in the air with me once. No, it's not, it's not, it's not.
And I said to him, you know, the people member SC TV, the comedy show is beyond television, second-city television.
Oh, sure. And they always made fun of him as Mr. Relaxation. They used to wheel out the guy who played him on a gurney with an IV.
He was so relaxed. He was something Mr. Relay. I said, I said, what do you think about that? He says, I love my biggest fans at SC TV.
And he knew about you experience. Well, he's so good. He can laugh at it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mr. Relaxation, Perry Clomo.
Yeah. Okay. We left off with Jim to seer and Carol, Jim, 14. We left off. You were about to put on a show at the
Racine Public Library. You set up the chairs. Carol thought they weren't enough. You thought they were just enough.
Take it from there. Carol thought there were too many. So I wanted to come down to about 10.
And there probably were 50 there. I was very, very nervous about that. Right.
And I kept telling her, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. The audience will show up.
And again, she said, oh, we're good. There's just too many chairs. We have to start taking some away. I said, relax.
Pretty soon, they started to fill up. And it got to a point on where the library had to go get more chairs.
They didn't have enough chairs. They kept bringing more chairs. And beyond that, people were standing in the back
because they simply ran out of chairs. So I still rub it into Carol all the time.
Well, what we found out there was low and behold, this grocery store in nostalgia was touching people's hearts.
I mean, what a strange topic to present grocery stores. But people came, people wrote to us.
Because they have memories. That's yes. Everybody's got a memory of the supermarket.
Whether it's their mother's name, you can't have that. Or since breaking a jar of pickles in the aisle, everybody's got a memory of the supermarket.
I remember those big signs they used to put in the front with the big sales signs that those painted.
I don't have many more. Jim has got some signs.
Yeah, thanks to, you know, me, ten cents a penny.
Oh, yes, sir.
That was giant signs out there.
And the owners generally were so friendly to us kids. Many of our memories are being kids going to the store.
How many of you have changed stores? How many changed stores did you have out here growing?
Well, we had national A and P.
That was later.
Yeah, we had quite a few changed.
But the corner grocery stores were our heartbeat.
My brother and I were just talking about the grocery store. We used to go through food fair.
And it was a one-shot deal. That was the store. It didn't have a chain or anything.
We had A and P. I think everybody had an A and P.
Oh, sure.
But we had a grand union in New York.
But the food fair supermarket is where everybody is shopping.
And when they've sold and they changed the key food,
well, I can't shop there now.
It's the same food you got on the food.
But everybody was key food now.
I don't know if I can eat that food.
It's the same exact food you got last week.
I know.
Speaking of chains,
when Willie and Sylvia Kodraci closed their Albert Street store,
they were going way out on Douglas Avenue,
like practically to Milwaukee,
and opening a century.
And that was just like unheard of.
We were glad for them, but sorrowful.
Well, anyway, back to the library.
Here we're finding out that people were enjoying the program.
Two days later,
I happened to be the one that got a phone call
from someone I'd never met.
Rick Bonanno.
He had been in our audience, unknown to us.
He was the president at the time of Romallage.
And with the predominantly Italian grocery stores,
he said, we got to bring it to Romallage.
We met with Rick.
He loved our format that we developed.
He tweaked it. He got members involved.
And a few months later,
we were ready to have the grocery stores brought to Romallage.
We walked in, and there were 500 people.
It was all set to be the greatest night, and it was.
But Jim, you tell this.
And then something happened.
Through no fault of Romallage,
there was a power outage.
Apparently some squirrel got caught, some place,
and it caused a...
Yeah, blame the squirrel.
And so there was a power outage.
And if you can imagine,
we were doing a show and tell for our grocery store items.
All of a sudden, we had no light.
We had no microphone speaking ability.
We were just completely, literally, in the dark.
And what can we do?
There's nothing we can do.
Fortunately, somebody came to our rescue.
And Rick held it together.
I remember he was whispering, stay right here.
We'll figure it out.
Fones came on with their lights.
The staff came in with candles.
And eventually, even a portable generator was brought in.
But the show must go on.
Well, anyway, we'll never forget that.
But Rick held it together for us.
So, no, we were...
I guess, surprisingly, beginning to think,
what can we do next?
Well, let me ask you that.
Why do people like to reminisce so much?
I live in the past.
That's a fault. That's not good.
I live in the past.
And my wife knows this.
And we all know that I live in.
My mother knew it too. She used to say to me,
come on, you're going to get back into the present.
But why do people like to reminisce?
Is it just they remember the good times and not the bad times?
Right. I think everybody likes to recall their pleasant memories
of growing up in-ray scene during the 50s and 60s.
And that's pretty much the era that we talk about.
So, yeah, what kind of things do you like to...
People like to reminisce about?
When I went through downtown, when I first moved to Wisconsin in 1980,
I lived in Milwaukee, but I drove through downtown.
It's a lot different than it was.
They had a JC Penny, a Walgreens downtown,
all the big stores in the mall.
Came in and kind of wiped that downtown.
Yes.
In an ironic twist, the mall is now being torn down.
Yes, yes.
I very around it.
And downtown is still here.
Well, when we talk to people about, out and about,
it's so common for people our age to say,
oh, we grew up in the best of times.
And then that usually leads to, we felt safe.
And the stories of roaming around,
taking the bus downtown maybe in third grade, fourth grade alone.
My friend Linda Benedict for now talks about she took a walk one time
and she was gone for an entire day.
We could climb trees, we could explore new neighborhoods.
We had adventures because we felt so safe.
Also, every neighborhood had a local playground.
ours was located about a block away.
And that's where we met new friends and hung out.
And throughout most of the day in a summertime,
we would come back for supper at night or when the street lights came on.
But we met all our friends at these little neighborhood playgrounds.
Unlike today, where I think kids are more confined to the house with their,
you know, their computers and their video games and so on and so forth.
But we had great times back then.
There was an episode of the Simpsons ones where I guess they lost power.
And then they were something went wrong.
And all the kids had to turn off their televisions.
And they turned off their video games.
And the camera panned over their town of Springfield.
And then all of a sudden, all the doors started,
kids started coming out.
You heard they were laughter.
They started playing in the backyard on the street corner.
Because they lost electricity.
And there was nothing to do.
Absolutely.
And they had to go do something so they went outside.
And they played.
And you don't find a lot of that anymore.
I guess it was when we looked back,
another phrase people will say it was such a simpler time.
And I think we were reminded of that with our last program that was held in June.
One of our segments of summer in the city was a return to Kittyland.
We'll get to talk about that.
Because I kind of take Jim.
I wanted to go back.
I was not here for it.
So hold on to that thought about Kittyland.
Because we're going to talk about that exactly when we get back.
When I went to go find the sign and they couldn't find it.
Yes.
We'll talk about that coming out.
All right.
It's 729 at WRJN.
Increasing cloudiness with a hundred twenty-six today.
Mostly clear tonight.
Loads around twenty-one.
And sunshine tomorrow with a hundred forty are the believe me.
Right now sunshine is out.
It's still fourteen degrees in WRJN.
Fourteen hundred...
I'm dreaming of a wine's Christmas.
Just like the one...
The biggest selling song of all time.
That Christmas song.
The biggest selling song of all time was the Bing Cronsby version of White Christmas.
And did you know it was used by the U.S. government as a signal to our troops in Vietnam
that Saigon had fallen in 1975.
I think it was.
Oh.
Yeah.
This was when they played this song to the troops.
Time to get out.
Oh my.
Yes.
You learned it.
She came in here.
You thought you knew everything.
Yeah.
That's right.
And then you know that.
Yeah.
Now you know everything.
We appreciate it.
Now you're smart.
Jim Bessier and Carol G. and Fortair here.
They do memory shows growing up in Racine in the 50s and 60s.
They do it at the Golden Rendell Theatre a couple of times a year.
Or once every two years.
Once every two years.
It seems like you do more than that.
Once every two years.
Plus they do it at the public library.
They did it outdoors this last summer or this summer before.
Yeah.
Boy, time goes fast.
And we're talking about growing up in Racine.
And you mentioned Kittyland a few minutes ago.
And you guys did a show on Kittyland.
And you actually had, now a grown woman, ran the Ferris wheel
when she was 10 years old.
And they said to my wife, what parent let them on a Ferris wheel?
It was being operated by a 10-year-old.
The owners of Kittyland.
What parent allow that to happen?
You think back now.
You've never seen that today.
Oh.
Nobody would let you do that.
Tell us about Kittyland.
Well, we were talking about people reminiscing now
and saying what a great era we grew up in.
And it was a simpler time.
Well, we found that out when we were planning the June program
about summer in the city, which included a segment on Kittyland.
Because we thought, here's a great lead-in.
You lived in Racine.
Yes, you could go to Illinois.
You could go to Muskego Beach.
You could go to these huge amusement parks.
That was going to be the lead-in.
But we didn't have to.
Because right here in Racine, we had Kittyland.
So Jim looks up the pictures of these huge places,
the big roller coasters and everything.
And now we were ready in our planning to show Kittyland.
We realized it was a simpler time at Kittyland.
The rides were tiny.
The concession stand looked kind of like a little hovel, actually.
So simplicity.
But Kittyland, it was proof again how people loved the simple.
Because that was such a popular segment.
And our panelists was Helen Horlick Pugh,
the one that ran the merry-go-round,
because her parents owned it.
Pugh oil, right?
Was that the same Pugh talent?
Yeah, she married.
But Helen Horlick, the Horlick family,
that was on their land.
Horlick high school, the Horlick dam,
that was all Horlick land.
Well, she's got some history in her face.
You married into Pugh and she was the Horlick staff.
Absolutely.
Yes.
I hope she's listening right now.
I'm hearing all that.
But anyway, so we talked about Kittyland.
And of course, I didn't grow up here.
So I never experienced it.
But I had one of my own hometown.
I had a small Kittyland.
In fact, it was called the Mass Peak Resue in Kittyland Park.
And I wanted to go back there.
And it was by the Horlick dam, right by the hotel.
They changed name so many times.
I don't know what it is now.
And I couldn't find it.
Now the sign.
The sign.
The sign saying that this was the spot.
Yeah.
And I knew it was the spot.
But I wanted to see the sign.
And there was a family having a picnic there.
And I said, my wife and I were there.
I said, well, we can't bust it on their picnic.
Excuse me.
I want to see a sign.
So I remember writing to Jim texting to him.
And I said, where is the sign?
And you told me exactly where it was.
I said, oh, right.
Where they were picnic.
So the next day we went and we saw the sign.
And it took a picture of it.
And it talks about this was the site of Kittyland.
And although I was never there as a kid, I never saw it.
I felt sad.
You look around.
It's all grassy now.
There's nothing there.
Yeah, sure.
And you think about all the children that grew up there
with their memories went to the rides there.
And this was, they looked forward to going to Kittyland here.
And now it's empty grass.
You know, when Jim posts on retro recene
and other Facebook nostalgia sites,
when he said prior to the program, way prior,
does anyone have memories of Kittyland
within a couple hours how many responses were there?
Oh, my gosh.
There were hundreds and hundreds of memories.
Of memories.
Of retro recene.
Yes, likes or comments.
Yeah.
Well, we ended up having a phrase that Helen,
our panelists liked.
And that was to counteract how little Kittyland
did look on the screen with our pictures from her.
Kittyland, a tiny place,
but it remains larger than life.
And for many of us, it does.
Talk about some of the shows you put on.
Why'd you start?
Well, we were...
This is confession time.
Uh-oh.
Jim and I love picking out a topic,
meeting the people that are going to enhance our knowledge about it.
But when it comes close to the program itself,
we are nervous, Rex.
We have terrible states, right?
Both of us.
We didn't even sleep last night
because of this radio program done.
I'm a friend.
You can't get to be at a table here.
I don't need to be old.
So I don't know if we're ever going to get away from just...
We're still kind of new with this.
We never were in plays.
We never designed programs,
but here we were now,
with Rola Lodge,
things look like we should pick another program.
Preservation Racine sponsored us,
and we were accepted for a program at the Golden Rondell.
What were we to pick?
So the next years were spent on downtown Racine,
because everybody went there.
Jim, describe, yeah, downtown.
Our programs after the grocery store
and bakeries centered pretty much on downtown.
And we had our next two programs about the downtown stores.
That was called what?
Downtown shopping or something?
Let's go shopping.
Let's go shopping.
Right.
And we talked about all the various stores that were once there.
My gosh, I think we have from our memories,
we have the dime stores, of course.
And if you were a kid growing up in Racine
during the 50s or 60s,
your first stop when you got a few bucks in your pocket
was to head straight for the downtown dime stores.
And just, you know,
have maybe lunch there or buy a few trinkets.
Man, you were living like a king.
You could buy a bird or goldfish.
You could buy anything there.
That's right.
Guys bought cap guns and, you know, toy soldiers
and things like that.
And girls, what, what do they get there?
Well, let's go shopping.
We were able to use our format.
And a lot of AV to almost go one by one
into some of these stores.
And we had panelists who had family connections to the stores.
So that was easy to come up with a two-hour plan.
What, what we did was, for instance,
I keep mentioning the word panelists,
meeting people that would give special knowledge to our programs.
So in the let's go shopping, of course,
people would think of the store zons.
And we had Pete Seizek, who has become a friend,
who keeps the legend and the knowledge of the zon family
alive for us all.
So Pete gave a wonderful talk,
and along with his supplies that he brought,
right there on stage was this huge,
200 pound, 200 pound frame gold picture
of the founder Edward Zon.
And it had hung by the gold elevators and zons.
Which, by the way, is now the hotel Verdun.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes, and we're so glad after all these years.
And when we walk in there, we can say,
oh, this is where the stairs to the home goods was.
You know, we can see the layout.
No one else would know.
But this is what was where,
but we're thrilled to see that place.
We ended up doing a fashion show in that program.
We called it a fashion show.
I remember it.
Yeah.
We were able to locate with, again,
having the time to investigate things
and have people help us.
We had high-end coats, like for coats,
with the actual labels.
Make coats too.
Make from idols, sons, Arctic furs.
And Martha Hutsick, Martha Rock Hutsick, my girlhood friend,
took over that fashion show.
We had anecdotes about idols.
Now, this, again, is a woman's thing.
But Janice Klispera, who had been a staff person at idols,
she wrote in an anecdote for us that Christmas Eve shopping
at idols with a beautiful woman's clothes.
She actually, in the 60s, sold a sweater for over $250
because there was a desperate man looking for a present.
Back to Zons, Karen Mulder,
our friend gave an anecdote that we incorporated.
She and her mother took a taxi downtown
to see Jane Mansfield arrive at Zons.
Really?
Only to be totally shocked at the difference
between what might show up on a magazine.
And what was presented?
What's a Jane's man?
It was.
It was.
It was.
It made the papers.
Yeah.
Have they get her to show up at Zons?
We'd have to ask Pete Seizick.
Yes.
So we'll have to turn this program over to Pete sometime, though.
How do you, Jane Mansfield, to show up at Zons
in the scene with guests?
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
And then, of course, you talked about the,
the seeing that beautiful windows at Christmas time,
we had the porters.
Oh, yeah.
The beautiful setting you could stand outside
and just pretend that you could have a living room
that looked like that.
You know, that's a buzz.
I brought my kitchen tablet porters.
Well, seeing all that, that's a status symbol.
Yeah, why is that?
I always tell people this came from porters.
Yeah.
And right now, my husband and I have a dining room table.
Get this.
His parents, we've saved it.
He haven't been able to use it for years.
Had it in storage.
Our daughter, if she's listening, is going to laugh at this.
We took it out of storage lately
because we had a move here in the scene.
That dining room table is over 70 years old.
But the main thing, it's from porters.
Yeah.
We also talked about the many men's stores that were downtown.
More Jones hardware store.
I think a lot of us guys went there.
For Christmas, they sold toys.
Also, my gosh, we had other stores for men.
Joel Lawrence, Wolf Brothers, Mr. Junior,
George and Lester's.
Brought back a lot of pleasant memories.
They're all gone now, of course.
And the men would, of course, be dressed in suits.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, they had the tape measure around their neck as well.
Yeah, all the time.
And the chalk.
And the chalk, exactly.
Right.
And you always wondered how they could get those chalk stains out of the suit.
Yeah.
It's from lines along the pants of your jacket.
And then the following program, we talked about downtown entertainment.
Which was a couple years later.
Yes.
Correct.
And that included the theaters downtown,
the Venetian and Rialto.
Plus a few more that the many people didn't remember.
The Badger and the Main Street.
We talked about the Ace Grill for shooting pool.
Dance venues like the Niddy Gritty and the Ivan Ho and the Y dances.
And of course, our favorite scoop in the loop.
And I just want to mention that one of our panelists
for the dance venues was Craig Colbits, who came all the way from Seattle
to be a panelist.
He was one of the former owners of the old Niddy Gritty.
So hats off the Craig for doing that for us.
You know, I got a note here in text message from the Vice President of this company.
He said, I remember Zon's a Christmas earliest memory of meeting Santa as a kid.
Oh, sure.
Yes.
That is a classic picture.
And it's Chris Marrow sent that.
So many people have the very same picture.
Yep.
From Zon's.
Each of us does.
Yep.
I wrote a story and it was in the paper with that picture of me.
Same fantastic Santa and Ed Zon's.
Yes.
You know, I think I'd like to interject here how indebted we are
to finding these wonderful people to help us, which we call panelists.
That sounds so like scientific, you know.
But for instance, way back to the grocery store, Delores Pinot.
Delores Cristiano Pinot, now deceased.
She grew up at Cristiano's.
That was a very well-known Southside grocery store.
And now we've mentioned Helen Horlick-Pew.
That recently we had Wendy Spencer, also who is part of the Fourth of July.
Jim mentioned Ace Grill for Pool.
We had Nibb's customer, your friend, who passed away.
And Nibb's had a special sense of humor.
Oh.
Every panelist brings gifts.
Yes.
But Nibb's, do you remember his joke about he was at the pool hallway too much,
your mom's senior?
No, mom's senior of a Colvery Act.
I apparently came to see if any St. Katz guys were there, you know, playing hooky.
And somehow he avoided mom's senior.
Well, Nibb's claimed he was skipping school so much at St. Katz friends
that when that mom's senior looked over the boys that were playing pool,
he didn't even recognize Nibb's customer.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Well, we can take a break here real quick.
I want to come back.
I want to talk about one of your other shows.
I want to know what goes into planning these two hours.
All straight again.
All right.
And is there going to be another one?
We'll find out.
Oh, you have to look at your watch.
Oh, he's not coming up this afternoon, is it?
It's 749 at WRJN Radio, Carol G and 14, Jim and Sierra here.
Well, I guess we're talking about growing up in Racine as baby boomers
in the 50s and the 60s.
More coming up at WRJN.
Gotta keep it right here.
It's 749, a sunny sky in 14 degrees right now.
It's 750 at 551 R.
It's 751 at WRJN Radio.
And with me is Jim and Sierra and Carol G and four tape,
presenting their shows at the Golden Rondale and all over Racine
about growing up in Racine in the 50s and the 60s.
Tell us about some of the other shows you have done.
Now, you did one on theaters, which I like, because I love movie theaters.
And I still couldn't understand how you get these big movie palaces
with over a thousand seats.
And I quit, we're all these people parking.
And there's a good question.
They said they took the buses, but not everybody took the buses.
Right.
People walked back then and we walked all over the top.
We walked all over.
As kids, we walked all over.
And any time of day.
Not when it's 10 degrees.
No, no, no, no.
We did.
We did.
Yes, we did.
We just dressed warm.
Yeah.
We walked to school, football games and dances and everything else.
The most recent program we did was this June, Don,
and we did Summer in the City.
And that included, we talked about Kittyland, the outdoor theaters.
The Fourth of July prayed.
And of course, the Washington Park pool, which...
And I went back there.
Yes, you told me that.
I went there after I saw your presentation.
I went back there.
And some of the things you grew up with are still there.
Some were not.
Yeah.
Because it's not what it was.
But we still noticed some of the buildings that you mentioned
in the program.
And we went back and took pictures of them.
I said, this is where it all took place.
Yes, people jumping into these pools.
I mean, the pictures you had had hundreds of people at this pool.
And now you're looking at it and there's plants there now.
Yeah, exactly.
And all the memories...
The memories are there.
Right.
But the actual place where the memories took place are gone.
And it's kind of sad.
And again, I didn't grow up here.
Yeah.
So I...
But they gave you so much credit for delving into a scene.
I grew up through your shows.
Oh.
This is my pretend hometown, received Wisconsin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we had early on thought we should always conclude a segment
with what it looks like now.
And usually we do that.
And it's usually a drone photo.
And we had this word, what...
What was the demise?
But that is really such a sad word to the demise of the Washington Park pool.
But at least we pretty much like the Horlick sign.
We try to show the location where this place was.
Because most of the places do not exist at all anymore.
Three words I have for you.
Nothing is forever.
That's true.
That's true.
For you two that live in the past like me,
that's kind of tough to handle sometimes.
It is.
It's tough to handle when you go back to these places.
Yeah.
You want them to get some names in people.
Okay.
Let's get some names in.
I don't want to lose anybody.
But we couldn't do it without these wonderful people that know the history of their place.
This is like the end of a movie when the credits are rolled.
That's it.
Marsha Foes.
She helped us so much with our movie segment.
Ron Idol gave us a lot of information about idols.
We had Eric Olson for bakeries.
That was with grocery stores from ONH bakeries.
We had a person Nancy Gumb who was an actual waitress at the dime store lunch counter.
We had Hillary Miller Cracha from Miller's Flowers, that long time shop.
Rosemary Romano.
Her father was part of Prince Bakery on the north side.
She talked about bakeries.
And then there was a wonderful, done, wonderful record store downtown by the theaters.
The record mark.
I remember that segment.
And either Arlene La Piccolo or her brother Gilneson talked about June's top 100.
Their mother's top 100.
Right.
And then back to Peter, we said Pete Seisick.
Butch Luther, a very famous boulder here.
He warmed up as the sessions went on by the third or fourth session.
He was now sporting some wild bowling clothes that he had worn in the 60s.
Right.
And brought in a lot of laughs.
Yeah.
So Bush, she kept three wedding dresses that were on display for the downtown shopping in her home in her living room with long windows.
Until people stopped once and around and said, who's getting married?
You know, so is long past the marriage.
Yeah.
But she kept the dresses for us for our displaced.
We are thankful to all these people.
Okay.
I remember in one of your pictures, they showed downtown with these giant neon vertical signs.
A Venetian?
Well, listen.
They had other ones.
The store is too heavy.
There were many of them signs.
They're pretty much all gone now.
Right.
Most downtown zone have those big giant or even movie theaters don't have them anymore.
But I saw the pictures you had.
Sure.
And what a vibrant downtown.
Oh, that's where all the action was.
That was where all the action was.
And that's, of course, where Scooping the Loop was as well.
That's a whole different segment.
That was probably our most popular segment I think we did.
That's like the cruising from North graffiti.
Exactly.
The cruising down the street.
Yeah.
What are you working on now?
Let's give us a sneak peek.
Only our listeners will know.
Okay.
All right.
We did summer in a city this past June.
We're thinking about doing something maybe like winter in the city.
Which would include the various ice skating rinks that tabog and slide by Washington Park.
Buying your own Christmas tree at the many Christmas tree lots.
The downtown stores that were decorated for the Christmas holidays.
What else, Carol?
Skating at Zupa.
Oh, yes.
Ice skating.
Yes.
I remember the ice skating rink in festival hall, which is no longer there.
Right.
Just moved here.
That was an ice skating rink there.
Yeah.
And I know the downtown people off Kelly Cruz from the DRC down here in here tomorrow.
But they set up an ice skating rink.
Excuse me, a monument square a couple of years ago.
That's right.
It wasn't big.
Yeah.
It was an attempt.
Going a circle.
Yep.
Now, Jim can test the water, so to speak.
I don't know if he looks at it this way.
But I mentioned that when we were thinking about Kittyland, prior to that, he had mentioned
it on retro recene in the Facebook sites.
And like a thousand people had written in.
I remember Jim saying several years ago, he had posted, does anyone remember picking out your Christmas tree?
And you had huge responses, right?
It was Christmas tree last huge.
Back then, everybody bought a live tree.
Probably still do.
But there were so many smaller, like old gas stations that would sell Christmas trees.
And other stores that would sell them too.
And there were so many lots back then that would sell Christmas trees.
You don't see that anymore.
So you know why?
Because nothing is there.
There you go.
That's right.
One reason that it takes us a couple of years, I guess, besides we're very involved with Jim and his grandchildren.
And John and I, with our granddaughter, we let it evolve.
And we find out Christmas tree lots.
Okay.
No, the more you think about it, then it goes into flocked Christmas trees.
Aluminum Christmas trees.
The rotating Christmas trees.
And we have a whole segment right there.
Ready for us.
You have to cut these grandchildren loose.
You got to concentrate more on the shows.
I don't lose.
It's here on Europe.
Yeah.
Jim is here.
Carol, Jim, 14 here.
Are they going to be back on a regular basis?
We're so thrilled.
You people are comfortable here now.
Yeah.
We're going to be back here on a regular basis.
And we're going to talk about some of the other shows.
Some of the stuff we didn't get to today.
Jim and Carol are part of the big shows they put on baby boomers growing up in the 50s and 60s and recene.
At the Golden Rendell Theater and other places around Racine.
And you guys are a treasure.
And...
Don, one thing.
You got to keep it alive.
One thing we need to say is we've had wonderful audiences.
The men of their walking and their smiling are with us.
Thank you, Carol and Jim.
Okay, I'm Don Rosenback tomorrow again.
Right here at WRJN with Kelly Cruz in the DRC.