I think you should buckle your seatbelt, but I feel bad for the people in the back seat.
They always seem like they're less important to people in the front.
You ever watch like four people get in the car?
People in the back just sit in there.
People in the front are like bucking up like they're going out of the atmosphere.
You know, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.
People in the back going, hey, what's going on up there?
It don't matter you're in the back.
Your belts are squished down in those seats anyway.
You'll never find them.
Hey, wait a second!
Don't start the car!
I'm trying to pull them out.
Give me a rope or something!
You're going to hate when you're driving and you pick up a friend and they get in
and they don't buckle their seatbelt up like right away.
But they will like 10 minutes into the drives.
Have to have some goofy turn.
Without saving to you, they'll just pull that belt down.
You got a problem all of a sudden?
So what I do, as they're looking down, I go,
yeah!
Yeah!
You!
Child call on me and I'll send it along with love on me to you.
Ah!
We'll go back to the 50s and the 60s right now at 707 at WRGN Radio Jimmissier and Carol
G and Fortier here.
We're talking about winter.
We've been better if we talk about summer.
But we're talking about winter in the 50s and 60s and howap or pole when it's so cold outside.
And this is a program that Carol and Jim are going to do eventually at the Golden Rondale
Theater.
So it's kind of a sneak preview for us and thank you guys for coming in this morning.
Don't thank you.
Pleasure.
No, thank you.
Oh, thank you.
And thank you for bringing so many guests in.
Thank you.
Okay, so we're remembering winter in the 50s and 60s here in Racine.
We're all kids outside.
We even love snow.
I was in New York at the time, which, you know, we got snow, but never got this cold.
I mean, we got to 10 degrees and stuff.
We never really got below zero a lot.
And what will you guys do when we're seeing when it was winter?
Well, after thanking you, John, yes, we were outside.
We loved being outside, but we want to thank you, especially for letting us share these
pleasant memories.
Jim, we have pleasant memories, don't we?
Oh, all the time, absolutely.
Well, yes, we were outside constantly, even into our teens, compared to often complaining
about the winter weather today.
Now I can still visualize all those high white snow banks that we used to have, back when
we used to have snow.
Racine was a very safe place to be.
We walked everywhere, even after dark.
And we had fewer reasons to stay inside.
You know, my family, we didn't have a TV till I was in third grade.
We had one telephone, people didn't hang on the phone.
And of course, the weather cooperated.
We do remember high snow banks.
I also discovered something just this morning.
I asked Siri on my phone, when did windshields come into the forecast?
So I have to say, I think ignorance was bliss, because lo and behold, according to Siri,
we didn't even have windshields in the forecast.
Oh, you had them, you should know it.
1973.
Yeah, they were always there.
We didn't know it.
Chills were here since the beginning of time.
You just didn't know it.
We didn't know ignorance was bliss.
So and Racine promoted being outside.
They helped us kids.
We've done some investigating about all the neighborhood ice skating rinks we had.
We had the tobogganing sledding, but we had our very own backyard fun.
Just keep going.
It says, you know, tell us about some of the interactivities everyone enjoyed as kids.
I think the most popular outdoor activity when we were kids was, of course, ice skating.
You know what?
At one time, the city had 19 ice skating rinks, 19 of them, and I don't think we have any
right now.
Most were just neighborhood rinks.
The rink that I went to all the time was Jerome Park.
I think they called that case Harman Park now, north of Durand, near the infamous Seeker
Motel.
But that's where I used to go.
Is that where it was?
Yeah, yeah.
That was on the south side.
And when we decided to go, we would call our friends.
Remember, we used the telephone, of course, but we just sometimes walked to the back door,
and I would yell out, oh, Tony, for a friend of mine, Tony Cuchero, that's how we used
to do it back then.
We'd just yell at our back doors, and they'd come out, and we'd often get a ride to the
ice skating rink by our parents, they took turns.
But we usually went on a Saturday, or, of course, after school.
Others on the south side that I remember were Humble Park on 21st Street, Greenquest Park
near St. Lucies, Lathor Park, which is now Solbra, it was one behind Nap School, Roosevelt
Park had a nice one right by the lake, and it was one on 21st and Ohio.
Now, I was on the north side, June.
So Albert in State was mine, just a few blocks away.
I remember walking there in the dark, and usually on my skates.
How do you walk on skates?
Very gingerly.
Oh, yeah.
Hard on the ankles.
Then there was one behind the labor center over by Horlick, and then one at Marquette Street
Park by the fire station, and also Madsen Park up on South Street.
This side had a couple of two Harvey Park, which was located on Blaine Avenue, and, of
course, Graceland Park, which is now locked, but that's the one with that huge sledding
hill.
Now, back to Harvey Park, I have to say such a small world and going back with anecdotes.
Two of my very good friends, Alice and Chuck Frum.
They met on January 3rd, because Alice was ice skating at Harvey Park on her dad's
birthday, January 3rd, 1956.
She was 15, they were 18.
They made a date to go to park that Friday night, and they are a deer-married couple since
meeting at Harvey Park, January 3rd, 1956.
Now what we did, like I mentioned, we would walk to the ring on our skates, or if we
walked and wanted to leave our shoes and boots outside on the ring.
As we said, Racine was safe.
There wasn't a thought to losing anything.
You talking about single blade skates?
Yes.
Uh-huh.
You talking about a guy who never skated his life.
I never put on a pair of ice skates.
I don't know how to ice skate.
I don't know anything about that.
But I can't imagine walking on single blade.
No.
No, I've seen double-bladed skates.
Yeah, these were single.
I don't know how you walk.
Well, anyway, let me tell you, I'm not the greatest athlete in the world.
But if I could do it, you could have done it.
No, no.
It's never too late.
No, I tried it once.
I tried to do it.
And my legs were going each way.
So you did it.
Skate at Radio City Musical?
No, no.
You mean for Mithius and for an Rockefeller Center?
Yeah.
No.
Yeah, wasn't you in those TV commercials or anything?
No, no.
I couldn't do it.
My daughter is a good ice skater.
Is she?
She's in Florida.
Well, but she goes indoors.
No, she was here when she...
Sure, of course.
I think now she can't.
Yeah.
There were different ice skating rinks like in Germantown.
They had a nice outdoor rink.
Yeah.
And she used to go there all the time.
And she skated well.
I mean, it's natural.
But for her, I guess.
To get her backwards forwards in a minute.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah.
She didn't get it from you then.
No.
She didn't get it from her mother either.
But our parents dropping us off.
The only problem with that was there would be set times because we didn't have cell phones.
So if it got colder or your friends were already leaving, you just had to wait.
So your parents time to pick you up.
And where do we buy these all these skates, Jim?
Well, we bought our skates at those sporting goods stores in Racine.
I can think of Dixon's downtown, Divines on Douglas, Higgins in the West Racine.
And for us guys, we always bought the hockey skates.
And we older boys often played hockey at the big rinks like Lathra Park.
And sorry to say that we took over those rinks trying to play hockey.
Us guys from St. Cats from 1965.
We usually just pushed a smaller kid out of the way.
I'm sorry to say, but that's how it was.
Now, does anybody remember cracking the whip?
That was, it could be very, very dangerous.
One guy would start in the center and then everybody would hold a lock arm.
And pretty soon there's about five or maybe 10 people spinning around like 90 miles an hour.
And if that last person let go for some reason, he was seeing crashing into a snowbank.
Like I said, maybe about 90 miles an hour.
There were a few injuries, I'm sure.
Sounds like fun.
A couple of broken arms, broken legs.
We should do that again, Carol.
Smash noses.
Yeah.
That's a good time.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's time for a confession that yes, I did some ice skating.
But to be a great skater or to be outside for the rest of our activities we're going to mention,
what could I call myself a scaredy cat?
I was very, very gingerly doing sports outside.
But I could walk the snowbanks, I could do that.
Also walking to these two major rinks.
We mentioned the neighborhood ones.
But there were two that were just major.
They stood out.
They stood out.
So we could take the bus, too, because we were all like, what would you say?
Second, they're great taking the buses, red line, green line.
Yep.
Or again, our parents dropped us off.
But the ultimate, the most popular, most beautiful was the zoo pond.
And I think whether we realized it or not.
Were there a main street?
Yep.
Okay.
Why does zoo?
And there are photos around in the archives to show beautiful skating on zoo pond.
You can just imagine.
I think, like I said, whether we realized it or not, we were in the most beautiful setting.
And there were hundreds of kids there, including parents, would come.
So it was the ideal place.
Also, now, the zoo pond had a warming house.
We were grateful.
There was a hot chocolate there.
You could get your skate sharpened.
But what about that warming house?
It was under the zoo animal building.
So we were relatively close to the lions.
But we were close to the smell of the lions.
The odors were really something wafting along with our hot chocolate.
That's one thing we always remember about skating at the zoo.
Absolutely.
Yeah, the lion says, wait a second, is skating.
I smell dinner.
Another great park was Washington Park skating rink.
That was Racine's largest.
They could accommodate hundreds of skaters.
It was enormous.
It was well lit, had a nice brick warming house.
And it was filled with our shoes.
We would just leave there, like Carol said, never had any problems.
Unfortunately, skating stopped there when that area was converted to softball fields many years ago.
Some of us even skated on the river, which could be very dangerous.
One thing you had to listen for was the cracking of the ice.
And if you heard the cracking sound, you high-tailed it off that river.
We came up with a phrase when winter was winter.
And as Jim and I were going over some things we could say today, it was raining here at Christmas.
Now we realize how timely this program is today.
Well, at a second, we're talking to Jim Bessier and Carol's in Fort A.
Winters in Wisconsin, Winters in Racine, in the 40s and the 50s,
and we're coming up in just a moment.
719 at WRJ, at Home Town Radio, refreshed.
720 at WRJ and Radio, good morning.
It's cold.
Wondle up.
We're talking about winter in Wisconsin, actually winter in Racine with Carol, Jim, Fort A and Jim Bessier.
This is going to be a program you guys are going to put together with the Golden Ron Dell in two years, right?
Something like that.
Two years.
I know, it's hard to believe, but it'll go fast.
It's time.
Maybe you'll do it in June of July.
What it won't seem as bad.
And we're talking about all the things people did in Racine from ice skating and so forth,
all through the years and winters from the 50s and 60s, but I'll bet you went sliding.
Maybe tobogganing, right?
Oh, absolutely.
We had a fantastic toboggan slide at Washington, parked on.
That was built in the 30s by the WPA.
It lasted to about 1982.
So all through the 50s and 60s, we could enjoy that.
Eventually, it was starting to deteriorate.
There was liability issues, and it was probably just too expensive to replace.
So they took it away from us.
But it was located in the wooded area roughly across from the old Capitol Theater and east of there.
It was actually just a very long, steep, concrete shoot.
It had a level platform at the top, and the operator would tilt it by pulling a lever and down you went.
But you had to keep your arms and knees inside.
Otherwise, it would scrape along the side of the shoot.
I still have a scar on my leg to prove that.
Can we see?
Yes.
The thing is radio, not TV.
It's safe for the next person to show.
But I remember as kids, we went screaming all the way down.
I mean, we were scared to death going down, but it was a heck of a lot of fun.
And your fun continued when you reached the bottom because it was a long stretch of ice.
So we continued going for another, boy, it seemed like another mile or so.
However, climbing up was a different thing.
You had to climb those stairs.
And we were told there were 98 steps.
And imagine that with a heavy toboggan.
The toboggan we had was probably about six feet tall.
Six feet long and could accommodate what maybe three people.
But you had to lug that thing all the way up from the top.
It would fit in our car, of course, from the front to the back of the car.
I took a walk there a couple days ago and I found no evidence that that even existed.
It was just there was just no signs of it anymore.
What's it even a toboggan has that curved top to it, right?
Is that it has a slay as a toboggan?
Yeah, curved front.
Right.
It softens the impact.
I guess something right now.
I was talking to my friend, Barb Walker, who at 19 had just one experience
at Washington Park, toboggan gym.
She drove there in her convertible so that the toboggan would easily get her there,
get there.
Oh.
But she and her friends, they were unaware of how you had to keep your knees in.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
It ended up with a hospital visit.
Oh, yeah.
But she still likes the story.
Her one time going down the toboggan.
Here's my sledding story.
Yeah.
I grew up in Long Island and at Beth Page State Park, they had the big hill.
And it was a huge hill.
And every year, during winter, we used to go there and go take our sleds down there.
And I must have been about seven years old, six years old.
And my mother was laying down on the sled.
And my father gave her a push and then jumped on top of her.
She was laying down flat, smashed her face into the metal part of the sled at the beginning.
He didn't know what she was wearing.
Oh.
She was wearing sunglasses.
And the glasses were glass back then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she was bleeding, but he couldn't see it.
And they ran into a tree because she wasn't controlling the control.
She was, so she stopped and she got up.
And I remember seeing that our face was all red.
Oh, no.
This is the blood dripping.
And we took her to the hospital.
And that was back in the early 60s.
When she was 92, she still had the scar.
Oh, to prove it.
Yeah.
And I said, we always said to my father, he was like, what were you thinking?
Yeah.
Jumping on top of her, going down a hill.
I mean, he wasn't a big guy back then.
He was now, he wasn't through, and it was later years.
But what was going through your head and then smashed her and didn't know about it.
Didn't know she was hurt.
You know, Rose and family lore.
Well, yeah, that's true story, though.
Yeah.
And she had the scar to prove it, just like your leg.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Well, and now I have to remind myself, but on the north side,
we had for tobogganing Johnson Park.
Again, true confessions.
I never went on a toboggan slide.
But it was less dangerous, I've learned, because it was not as steep.
And it was metal, not concrete.
But still, we didn't even know such a thing as how much existed.
Mm-hmm.
We were out there.
Just having fun.
That's right.
Yep.
Another toboggan slide was located at Petrified Springs, or pets, as we know it.
Also concrete.
But it was very hard to find.
It was right in the middle of the woods.
I remember when it was dismantled many years ago.
I found the heavy concrete sections lying in the Pike Creek at pets.
And we were just there last year hiking.
And with the grandkids.
And we found the abutments of what used to be that old toboggan slide.
Isn't that depressing to go see a childhood or a leg-married piece?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
That's right.
But kind of fascinating, too.
Yeah.
You see that you're looking for those remnants.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
That's like they really existed or are no trace.
Yep.
Well, sledding was a kid's delight.
And that was so easy because we had hills all throughout Racine, and we found them.
So just thinking back a little bit, some of our hills.
McKinley School, North Beach, Shoop Golf Course, Johnson Park, Lincoln Park.
Racine Country Club, reservoir park over in Maryland Avenue.
Graceland Park, now Lockwood.
And the biggest hill, not right in Racine, but Petrified Springs.
And then there was sledding at Herrick Avenue, which was dangerous, because that was coming down a road, and it was very steep.
But I was glad to have my own miniature hill.
And my block on Carla, Avenue, there were about five or six steps from the sidewalk that would go up toward the houses.
So that was just fine, probably starting at each two to maybe five, just walk out the door.
And I was down that hill in probably ten seconds, but it was easy.
You could go up five steps and start again.
And Jim, I think there were some other dangers.
Well, yeah, for sledding, for the foolhardy, there were some dangerous gullies, actually not too far from our toboggan slide, just more towards Washington Avenue.
There was one gully called a suicide gully, and that's pretty much described how it was.
You would literally be going through gullies, and there's trees within just a few feet of you.
But like I said, that was on the same hill as our toboggan slide.
I know the city pretty much closed them off eventually, but now they're pretty much grown over by trees.
But you actually took your life in your hands if you went down that gully.
Coming up, we're going to talk about ski jumps.
I never knew there was a ski jump around here, and it's still there.
You said we can see we can talk about this coming about a tease people here.
So we're going to talk about that, a ski jump in the scene.
You ever go on it, by the way?
No.
No.
But it wasn't Olympic height or anything.
No.
I didn't think so.
On the wide world of sports.
We didn't quite make that.
That's coming up, we're talking about winters in Racine in the 50s and 60s with Carol G and Fort A and Jim Monsieur.
The more coming up in just a moment, it's 6-2-7-29.
7-29 at WRJ at hometown radio refreshed at 1,400 am.
99.9 FM and 98.1 FM in Kenosha Stereoia.
Oh, I could hide beneath the wings of the blue bird as she sings.
The six o'clock alarm would never ring.
What's its ring?
And I ran.
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes.
My shaven razor's chrome and it's zinc.
Cheer up, sleepy G.
Oh, I can't wait.
7-35 at WRJ in radio, hometown radio refreshed at 1,400 am.
7-35 at WRJ in radio, hometown radio refreshed.
And this morning we have Carol G and Fort A and Jim Monsieur in here.
We're talking about growing up in the 50s and the 60s in winter in Wisconsin.
And you both say you both remember your mom's pulling you on sleds.
Jim during the daylight, Carol at night.
This is when you were in their 40s, right?
Yeah.
Your mothers were still pulling.
Oh, yeah.
They were amazing women.
Yeah, they were in their 80s and still pulling you on the sled.
Good exercise for them, yeah.
Well, Christmas was really predictable because we had to have radio flyer sleds.
And maybe we passed them down from brother to sister, but still.
We had, can you imagine the sails of the sleds?
Jim had dicksons and higgins and divides.
They must have been stacking up like crazy.
But besides sledding on those hills, I do have such a sentimental picture in my mind.
Of my mother pulling me and then I know you have a story, Jim.
But at night.
And I think maybe she did this half a dozen times.
Would I have been to remember it like I do four or five years old even.
But we would go down the couple blocks of Carlisle with the beautiful milk glass globes shining down the center of the boulevard.
Maybe a light snow falling and that diamond crystal kind of look in the air and on that ground.
She would pull me those two blocks down to state street.
And then we would go left because for one destination, the bookmobile was in front of Lincoln Bakery.
And it was warm and cozy inside.
And then we'd go home.
I'm trying to think what we did with the books, but she must have been so prepared.
And I think she was the tiniest person.
And to do that with me, it's left me a memory of 70 years still vivid.
Well, my story involves my mother pulling my sister.
And I was probably maybe four years old and my sister Kathy was three.
And my mother was pulling us to our grandmother's house about six blocks away.
This was during winter just after a storm, a snowstorm.
And we were actually on Karnie Avenue.
So she was pulling the sled on Karnie Avenue.
Well, halfway there, I fell off the back.
And I didn't say anything.
I just sat there on the street and just looking around, I guess.
My sister turned around, saw me and didn't say anything either.
She probably thought, well, here's my chance to get rid of him.
And my mother, of course, was going the other direction.
So she didn't see me there.
Well, about a half a block later, a garbage man yells out, hey lady,
you lost one.
I'm so glad she retrieved you, John.
Oh, well, thank you.
But Don had mentioned about the ski jump.
Yes, there was one at the Washington Park.
It was actually close to Washington Avenue right in the middle of the woods.
It was built in the late 50s, but it was dismantled around 1968.
And again, I couldn't find any signs of it ever being there.
So that's long gone.
You can still see it, though?
No, not anymore.
You can't see.
There's nothing.
They dismantled that back in 1968, I believe.
And we're not talking about the agony of defeat, the wide world of sports.
No, it was quite small.
Again, I think we're emphasizing how safe Racine was, though, crime-wise.
How we could get around as kids.
Yes, maybe our parents were driving us, but the bus and walking everywhere.
And giving us these extra pleasant memories that we just love to resurrect.
Well, Racine did not have actual skiing.
But I have to tell you my story.
It's kind of like the Rosen Lore.
My friend, Karen, from grade school, and we're still very close friends.
And I can tell you, ahead of time, Karen is an athlete.
She went on to bigger and better things.
And this was close to the end of my skiing experience.
But we were in junior high, never had skied.
And her dad, very athletic, was ready to go to Elpine.
So I got this phone call and against my better judgment.
I said, yeah, yeah, let's go to Elpine.
So Karen and I spend our time on the rope toe.
She got it right away, and I struck old, of course.
But now it was that feel in the air of the afternoon was starting to have some shadows.
And it was people, you know, kind of maybe already leaving a little bit.
We hadn't seen her dad. He was off on the bigger slopes.
So we had this brilliant idea.
Well, this was the end of the season.
We should ride the chairlift so we could see the view from the top.
So we get on the chairlift only to realize it didn't come down.
We had to ski down. It dumped us off at the top.
There we were.
Looking down this enormous slope, kind of like we were in Vail or Europe.
We did not know what to do.
But lo and behold, just off to the left was a woods.
So we picked the woods.
Well, you couldn't wait until spring walked downhill.
Oh, it was sheer panic.
So we made our way down through the woods without breaking any bones.
And as I said, Karen went on to bigger and better things.
She was undaunted.
But I didn't do a lot of skiing.
Did make it Colorado once or twice in my life.
But we will always remember the folklore of Alpine.
Where was that again, Alpine?
That's near East Roy.
Oh, Alpine Valley. Alpine Valley.
Well, the problem I've always found with those ski lifts are,
you always see on the news how they get stuck.
And they need a fire.
Oh, we'll never be terrible.
And I don't want to do anything where there's an ambulance waiting at the bottom right now.
Standing by further instruction.
Yep, yep, yep.
But we had snow days back then as well.
And as we know, they were the best.
We would always tune in to WRJN.
And at that time, WRAC in the morning with anticipation, of course,
waiting for that announcement.
And once we heard that announcement, man, we just went outside as soon as we could.
We call our friends on the phone or go to the back doors and knock there again or whatever.
But we had to get outside.
And I remember this was mostly a guy thing, but we built a lot of snow forts.
And these were elaborate, elaborate snow forts.
We could withstand an army, I think.
And then at night, what we would do would we would pour water on it.
So the next day, it would freeze and it would be like concrete.
And remember all the snowball fights as kids?
Don, I'm sure you have snowball fights back then, too.
Yeah, especially when they used to soak the snow in water, let it freeze.
I give you a concussion with that snowball.
Such nice young boy.
Oh, boy, yeah.
But I'm sorry to admit that in many cases, we would throw snowballs at cars and then hide in the bushes.
And one time, we did that at a church rectory.
And the guy actually stopped, chased us to the rectory.
And of course, the priest said, did you boys do that?
And of course, we denied it.
And then the guy was so upset, he just shook his head saying, imagine that lying to a priest.
Thank you.
Have you gone to confession?
Oh, of course we do.
Oh my gosh, yes.
Remember the snow caves we used to make back when the snow piled up in front of our house?
We would actually, they were probably maybe four feet tall.
The snow banks, we would dig caves out in them.
But you had to keep one eye out for snow plows because during a daytime, they would just come barreling along.
And if you were inside that snow cave, I mean, it was your tough luck.
I made those in my backyard.
But I was always, when I got in there, it got claustrophobic because what if it caved in on me?
Caved, caved in.
That's right.
Wow.
Well, it was easy to build snowmen.
Frosty, the snowman was with us as an incentive.
And we would try our hardest for the three sizes and so forth.
I never got to take part in a huge one, but I think your wife Lynn did.
Yes, my wife Lynn had an interesting story when she was kids growing up on a north side.
They wanted to get their picture in the journal times by building a massive eight foot snowman.
And of course, that was an easy thing to do or so they thought they spent hours rolling the snowball.
It got to about four feet, I understand.
And it was parked in somebody's driveway.
They called for reinforcements, but they couldn't even budget.
So they just left it there.
And then of course, when the owner of the house came,
he imagined coming into his driveway with this massive snowball there.
Well, he couldn't even get into his driveway.
And he was not too happy.
He eventually had to take an axe.
My wife was telling me and destroy that giant snowball.
So they didn't make it into the paper?
No, unfortunately not.
Well, now this next one that we were thinking about, especially for girls,
we would lie right down in the snow and make snow angels.
And we would look up at the snow falling, let it go in our mouths.
Now, it doesn't make me feel very, very old.
I mean, I cannot imagine.
No, today, saying, oh, I'm going to make a snow angel today.
Well, Jim, let's just push her down in our front yard here at the radio station.
Yeah, just say, OK, we'll look over there and push her.
And she can make a snow angel thing to get out.
Just to think of delighting and snow that much,
to just lie right down in the middle of it.
Yeah, and you picture in a paper if you did that today.
Oh, my goodness.
And then another thing that we would use kind of as a challenge
was eating icicles.
Now, we had a problem over on Carlo Avenue,
because as beautiful a street as it was,
the whole neighborhood so nice, we were near Bell City.
And those icicles and the snow,
at times, with the right wind direction,
had little black specks in them.
So I do remember some mothers saying,
don't eat the icicles because that was soot in them.
But how we would break them off.
Oh, yes.
A snow cone.
A snow cone.
Yeah.
With no flavor.
That's right.
That's right.
And of course, we did sketching back then.
If you know what that is, I'm sure Don,
you remember sketching.
You never did it.
You never did it?
That's when you hook yourself onto the back of a bus or a car.
Yes, yes.
No, I never did it.
My mother didn't let me do that stuff.
Oh, you didn't tell your mother?
Well, she wouldn't let me just do it.
She was so terrified of doing it.
She wouldn't let me play sports in high school.
I was going to get hurt.
Oh, yeah.
You never let me do anything.
Yep.
The best time to go sketching is when you saw a city or a school bus go by,
or a delivery truck, UPS or whatever.
You wait by a stop sign, and then of course you'd hit your ride on the back.
I wouldn't do it in front of a car because they could see you.
And they would object to that for some reason.
I don't know why.
You were some juvenile delinquent.
I don't know.
This is coming out, isn't it?
Well, yeah.
Is there any statute of limitations on these?
Doing things at the factory and sketching.
Oh my gosh.
Yes, I know it.
But...
Now, how about the fumes with sketching?
I didn't bother us for some reason.
We didn't...
But there were things, weren't they?
Yeah.
But I didn't bother us.
No.
Oh, fun was fun.
You know, we had a...
That took preference over anything.
I remember maybe like walking home from Horlick or Washington,
in junior high, and seeing guys go by sketching.
I'm not many, but, you know, they're going over the ice-packed streets.
And I know that...
Now, my friends are lean and dominant look piccolo.
I had learned some time ago that Dominic and his late friend Steve Rock,
they wouldn't start out in front of Sacred Heart, like a rectory.
But they would walk over to Carlisle in Summit in Qwani and start there, sketching.
But Dominic, I understand, was partial to merry-gold and progressive dairy trucks.
And exactly why I'm not sure.
But I do have to smile when I realize that Dom became a well-known police officer.
Oh, yeah.
And of course, we shoveled a lot back then.
I remember kids coming around looking for a few bucks to make.
Of course, back then it was probably a quarter or 50 cents.
But I remember many kids coming around.
Can we shovel your driveway for, say, 50 cents?
And of course, we would shovel ourselves when we were older.
You remember the smelling the cold furnaces back then?
Everybody had a cold furnace, I think.
And that smell was just very, very unique.
I missed that to this day.
Back on the shoveling, now they come by and they say,
we'll do it.
And it went 10 or 20 bucks.
But I got news for you.
If you're an older person, you can't shovel a lot of snow.
It's worth it.
10 or 20 bucks, they'll shovel everything.
The kids come out of the shovels on their shoulders.
They start doing it.
And they want to make the buck and they do the job.
Yeah.
Carol, G and 40.
And Jim Messier here talking about Winters in Racine.
More coming up at just a moment.
7.29.
I make it 7.49.
Talking about getting old.
7.49.
At WRJN Radio.
Home Town Radio.
And fresh to civic media station.
7.50.
At WRJN Radio.
And we're talking about Winters in Racine.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s of two people that lived it.
Jim Messier and Carol T. and Portair here.
And we leave off with you guys here.
Well, it's time to get into the clothing that we had.
Ah, yes.
Yes.
Being outdoors all this time.
It amazes me.
But just like the windshield factor, that became, I guess,
on thing in 1973, we didn't know that clothing was going to come with
Gore-Tex and North Face and Colombia and all these things.
So mainly we had a lot of homemade mittens.
Maybe we went to pennies or zons, the sporting goods stores and got things.
But Christmas again.
All these mothers and grandmothers.
They were knitting and crocheting mittens.
We had to have a lot of them because they wore out fast.
But we had those little clips.
Remember those clips on our jackets?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Or those strings.
Yeah.
So you didn't lose them.
But oh, they got wet so fast.
And we were used to face scarves.
Those would be handmade too.
Even in the fall, actually moms and daughters were wearing
head scarves.
And many of us went to zons as an aside here for Christmas and had our picture
taken in our era with the zons Santa Claus.
And when I wrote a story about this years ago and had my picture used in the paper
from the 1950s, sitting on Santa Claus's lap, didn't I have a head scar
foot right inside the store?
So we were used to face in head scarves.
How about the boys?
Oh, the boys had those caps with the flaps over the ears.
I remember them very well.
Locked.
What do they call them?
Those are feet.
Yeah.
Oh, they're feet.
Yeah.
So it shows you what I know.
Snow pants.
We all had snow pants.
I remember those big heavy boots we had.
Those rubber boots with the buckles on them.
We had a buckle them all the way up.
It took forever to do that.
I just loved the story about my husband, John's dad, and the boots with buckles.
I think he could be quite call it the rascal.
And so one of our family lore things is he was banished to the cloakroom.
I don't know what Grady was saying, maybe six, greater so.
And he had no trouble.
Those wet floors of the cloakrooms with all the clothes drying and dripping.
Well, he spent his banishment time with those boots.
And he buckled all of them together not in pairs.
So can you imagine what school was out?
And everybody went to get their boots.
They were all buckled to the wrong pairs.
Well, I picked you Jim looking like that kid from Christmas story.
I remember the kid with the coat.
They couldn't get his arms down.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was funny.
And I remember, too, with these clothes going on and on about our clothes.
But our kitchen on Carlisle had registers, heat registers.
And I had a little stool that I would sit next to the heat register talking to my mom.
Maybe reading a book or something.
But I would have to compete with the warm air coming out of that register.
Because that's where we hung the mittens and the socks.
But then people not having clothes dryers.
The basements had to have clothes lines.
Oh, sure.
Where our heavy wet clothes had to dry for the weight.
That's right.
And eventually we came inside.
We were either cold or hungry or whatever.
But we would come inside for a break.
I remember my mother using a member Bosco and or Coco Marsh.
It's similar to Hershey's syrup.
But she would warm up some milk and put that in there for a hot chocolate drink.
The Coco March lion was on there.
Yes, the lion.
That's right.
Amazing what is remembered.
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
And then of course, I remember the hostess snowballs, how fitting.
Twinkies, hostess cupcakes.
All that good healthy stuff for you.
That we ate back then.
Look how we turned out though.
We turned out okay.
Overweight.
That's true.
Well, and then of course we had such a variety of bread here in town.
Because we loved our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
So it's fun to even remember the wrappers and the slogans.
Wonder bread.
Did they start out eight bodies and they don't went to 12?
Builds bodies 12 strong ways.
Yeah, yeah.
Eventually, but first I think it was seven or eight, wasn't it?
Oh, they found some additional improvements.
They found some additional improvements.
Well, well, ways.
That's right.
And then you've said Jim that Mrs. Carl's and Butternut were from Kenosha.
Well, they're from Milwaukee, I think.
I'm a walker.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, they bought out campus from that mistake.
Did they?
Yeah.
Well, campus was our wonderful, wonderful big bakery.
Well, I think those wrappers were diamond shapes.
I think so.
Yeah.
Red and white.
Yeah.
And I don't think we had, well, we had our peanut butter and jelly, but whenever you say
the word campus, you have to say coming down 16th Street, was it a block or two blocks away?
You could smell the glazed holes.
Oh, my gosh.
You know, I never tasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my life.
You never did?
I guess we have to bring you one.
No, don't even doubt it.
I didn't attempt it.
I'm not going to eat it.
It doesn't appeal to you.
No, what I brought.
We had in the warehouse all of them.
My brother ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
My wife eats them.
I just won't touch them.
Is it the peanut butter itself or the jelly?
No.
You don't like the mixture?
I love peanuts.
I eat peanuts all the time.
I just don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Oh, that's amazing.
My gosh.
Oh, then we had potato chips.
I think red dot.
Red dot.
Was baked.
And jays.
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
We didn't have to really worry about, well, our kids get being husky or overweight because
they're all right.
Look at our activities.
We were constantly on the run or on the walk.
Everything outside.
That's right.
That's right.
Such wonderful, pleasant memories that we have.
Oh, my gosh.
Even a winter.
Yes, absolutely.
Maybe not today as much.
Going back 50, 60, 70 years or very pleasant memories.
And Carol, look at Winter so much, she's leaving for Arizona now.
To get away from the winter.
I should have gone early this week, obviously see.
I stayed for this done.
So you're a snow bird, huh?
Yeah, I am a little bit back and forth, but I am.
So.
Well, you stayed for the cold weather.
I'm just going to get water by next week.
Stay for this program.
You guys are so good to have here.
I love it.
Jim Vaseer and Carol, June 40.
Carol's got a book out.
We're going to read.
Called My Heart Leads Me Home.
Is that you and your dad on the cover?
That is.
Oh, what a lovely picture.
Yeah, I love that picture.
Oh, it is.
But it's already from about 70 years ago.
I don't care.
It's new to me.
One book to my name, but.
You're a published author.
That's all it matters.
Thank you guys very much.
Jim, you're going to be at solo next time.
Yes.
Carol, you're going to be in Arizona under the sun.
Uh-huh.
Well, baking in the hot Arizona sun.
Thank you guys very much for coming in, boy.
Thank you.
You're giving us a pleasure.
And, Dan, thank you for doing what you're doing for our whole community.
Oh, you're very welcome.
Coming up tomorrow, Keith Fair is going to be here.
One of the first candidates we're going to have in talking about what he's going to do.
In the fourth congratulate district.
If you vote for him, that's coming up tomorrow at WRJN.
I'm Dan Rosen, 759.
Stay where you are.