
We'll stay done.
We'll stay done.
We're gonna stay.
Jim, Monsieur, Carol, Gianforte, and I'll be switching that around back and forth throughout the morning.
It'll be Carol sometimes first and Jim second.
But you guys are back at the Golden Rondell Theater, the Essie Johnson Golden Rondell Theater, and you're there for what?
used to do for years, used to do the big shows about Racine in the 50s and 60s.
And you're back for two more.
And that's coming up this Monday and Wednesday.
Let's talk about it.
Yes.
So first of all, thanks for having us back here to share our pleasant memories of growing up in Racine.
Yes, we'll be doing a show called a 50s and 60s scooping tour of downtown Racine.
And it will be at the Golden Rondell on the 31st and September 2nd.
Lots of baby boomer memories, of course.
But today we're going to sort of get you in the mood for it by giving you some behind the scenes info and a few anecdotes.
Now, I guess we need to say that we usually plan out an outline of how we're going to fill our time with Don.
And so...
What we had today was a buildup of 20, 30 minutes on our history and leading up to the program that's coming up next week, the two nights.
Well, lo and behold, we found out late yesterday afternoon that all the seats have been reserved.
They're all taken for both programs.
right?
Uh-huh, in each one.
So we, this is good news and bad news, we said this morning.
Of course, we are so gratified, because every time we plan a program, you never know if people are going to want to be there.
Yeah, what if you
With
Yeah.
Well, I should have probably never had this experience.
My husband and I lived in Chicago years ago, and we treated ourselves to going to Don Amici.
play downtown Chicago, Life with Father.
There were about seven people.
Oh my goodness.
Wow.
The actors just went ahead with it.
But now you don't know how often I imagine doing a program and thinking about that empty theater.
Now, I didn't know the church stopped their second service because it was still there.
So we went there.
And I sat down and the pastor came in and said, well, we don't do the second service anymore, but I will do one for you.
And he sat down across from me, almost knee to knee, and did an hour and a half
service.
you
away from my face.
Wow.
basket there?
had his
to stay there
for no one else.
What an experience.
or
No, I'm really wasting time.
But at the church, I go to a quite a large one here.
I often sit next to the same woman.
when the whole thing was over a few weeks ago, I said to her, we didn't even say the Apostles Creed.
And she said, yes, we did.
We said it.
Or it was thinking of something else.
snoozed.
Well, I think we stand up for that.
seat because somebody was sitting there.
Such Christian spirit we all have.
Not like
Such lovely Christian.
Yeah, it's like the old
I digress.
Well, back to our good news, bad news.
When talking to the
Rundell wonderful staff they said through all their experience people well plans change and when you're talking 300 each program plans change so we hope anyone today that hears about the program from us now will call and will give the number later or online for the waiting list because it might not be for it might be very useful to be on
on the waiting list and learn the day before or so.
But as we were planning this, we thought, how did we actually find a niche like this?
Which surprises us.
But Jim and I, not knowing each other and meeting with our families and all, how come when we come up with these radio programs or programs,
There does seem to be a real appeal about it.
And is it us that are so great?
No.
No, no, no.
We find the older we get, I find the older I get and I'm getting up there.
Those memories of childhood and growing up are so vivid.
Yeah.
The things
But they come back now when you're...
Seven, 14, if you had a crystal ball, would you think, oh, I'm going to really remember this?
We have no idea how precious those memories are going to become.
So the memory idea for many people, especially baby boomers, has had its appeal.
Also, Jim and I often talk with people, the era we grew up in.
We think life is good today, but we as children growing up after the war,
Jobs for everyone, but safe.
We felt safe.
And so what did we do?
We roamed the whole city.
Early on, we had our bikes.
Off we went to the playgrounds, off we went to the parks.
Even as teenagers, we would walk downtown at night to a movie, walk back at night, after Horlick High School, after dances.
If you didn't have a ride home.
If someone wasn't walking you home, I would walk all the way down Carlisle Avenue, like at 11 o'clock at night.
Yeah,
sure.
So we think that our topics have just generated the appeal of our youth and the era we grew up in.
What would you say, Jim?
Oh, I totally agree.
That was the good old days, as far as I'm concerned.
Times sure have changed, though.
But then how our
Talks really began.
Maybe we should spend a little time on that.
It did begin, I guess, tracing it way back.
My husband and I came back to Racine.
We were from Racine, but we lived elsewhere.
About 20 years ago, we came back, and I had an errand to do at the Journal Times, and this was before I was emailing.
So I went down in person, and a staff person at the window,
said to me, well, you've kept your ties to Racine.
And I said, yes.
And she said, well, we are going to do a special on people that keep their ties to Racine.
Do you want to write something?
So, lo and behold, I wrote this 2000-word story or so, and I called it, You Can Go Home Again.
And the next thing I knew, it was in the paper.
And so then for the next 10 years or so, I would write free stories about growing up in Racine.
And then I began to call myself a freelance writer.
And I got a business card.
Never made any money, but I had the card.
And then I wrote a book of collected stories.
So that led me to giving a few talks at the library.
reading my stories.
And Jim, I think you take it from here.
Well, I remember suggesting that we combine our interests.
Carol had the nostalgic ideas, and I had a real interest in Racine's history, in addition to collecting old Racine artifacts.
So we came up with some topics, and as they say, to rest is history.
But our first talk was at the
We've seen the library and Funny story there We noticed that there were a lot of chairs there and I thought well good are expecting a lot of people Well Carol said it's gonna be embarrassing if hardly anybody shows up.
Let's take some chairs away.
I said no no no leave them there
That's
right well lo and behold the chairs we eventually were filled up
They had to bring more chairs, and at the end, there was standing room only.
There's a phrase you don't hear
anymore.
behold.
I say it all the time.
You just said it too.
Or did you say it too?
Low and behold.
I know
These are the folks who do all those great memory shows, all the nostalgia shows that we're seeing at the Golden Rondel Theater.
And we're seeing also with churches and libraries and we're listening to how they got started and all this because people ask, how did you get started?
And we'll remind people that they have two shows coming up at the Golden Rondel Theater Monday and Wednesday.
They're both filled up, but there's this thing where people don't show up.
and the Golden Rondell will keep tabs of who canceled, who doesn't show up, so they will possibly have some extra seating.
A waiting list.
Yeah, it'll be
say, all right, you're in, and they'll put the
Only two.
That was a
Yeah, we're just like New York.
We're like New
Yorkers.
So where do we leave off here?
Well, our first talk at the library
was about the old grocery stores.
Now Carol had written an article about grocery stores and I had all the old advertising artifacts from various old receiving grocery stores like thermometers and calendars and things like that.
So that was our first program.
Jim, can I interject here that how in the world when you think about it, here we are, novices never done anything like this before and we pick the subject.
neighborhood grocery stores.
I mean, now who is going to come to that?
But we actually were on to something.
Because they were such a big part of our growing up for our entire families and as kids with penny candy and the nice owners.
And there were so many.
So
I guess we picked an okay topic to launch.
Right.
Yeah.
Mostly baby boomers and, you know,
even older people that that came but uh did they call them bodegos here what's that
no
huh
italian or if you
want
Really?
It must
be a New York
Yeah.
from New
York.
Right, yeah.
We're over here by Lake Michigan.
Well, we didn't know it, but Rick Bonanno was at the library and when he heard us, he suggested we do the same program.
at the Romalodge.
He was president at the time.
And so we did.
And that was a great program, except
for one thing.
We worked with Rick a lot on his ideas, too.
Yes,
right.
So it was some months later.
And we didn't anticipate this, of course, but right in the middle of the program, the power went out.
Apparently, some squirrel got caught in a transformer or something and shut everything down.
So all of a sudden, we had no lights, no microphone.
and we came to a dead stop.
And who?
Well, Rick held everything together.
Yes.
We had several people on stage.
Rick was leading the entire program.
Yeah.
And he's whispered, you know, just stay here.
But being inexperienced, this was something.
Yeah.
So pretty soon, phones came on.
Yeah.
And then someone
was able to get a generator from nearby.
The staff started bringing in candles.
And there were four or 500 people in this room.
Yeah, that's
right.
But we had complete pitch darkness.
What could we do?
Let us hope this never happens again to any one of
us.
I know it, yeah.
So after that, we began our tenure at the Golden Rondele.
I think we did, what, 20?
20 programs there altogether, maybe 10 years at the Rondel.
Our last one was three years ago.
And then after that, we spent some time at the Living Faith Church through Preservation Racine, but now we're thrilled to be back at the Golden Rondel.
As far as we're concerned, it just doesn't get any better than that.
And I think over 5,000 people came to see us at the Rondel.
Sometimes we say seven thousand, we've got to add this up, but we don't want to exaggerate.
So from not having any idea from the first night doing grocery stores at the library, we're so pleased that people want these memories.
relatable topics.
People can relate to these.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mention somebody other programs.
We try to make this interesting and we haven't had too many people walk out on this or fall asleep.
No tomatoes either, which
is good.
No tomatoes yet.
But we've tried to add a lot of interesting things, and besides giving some just background facts.
So when we have concentrated on our topics of downtown, we have done a lot about the stores, and we've done a lot about the entertainment that was downtown.
Besides now, what we'll mention a few others, we have mentioned the grocery stores.
and bakeries.
But some things we ended up experimenting with and doing that I guess we enjoyed and people have enjoyed.
We had at the Golden Rondella fashion show.
Oh yeah,
We were
to find the actual fur coats like in Value Village or a few people that had saved theirs.
They had to have the actual label in.
And so we had the fashion show.
Then we had a sighting by Elvis, one of our Elvis impersonators.
There was
John Benfield.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So when we were doing movies, we were showing a screen and we got to some of the Elvis movies and then we hoped we could pull it off.
There was kind of a pause.
Hopefully just the right timing and we're not used to this, but where people would think, what's wrong?
And out from the top came Elvis down to the stage.
Yes, singing blues away.
He did a great job.
Remember that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And all in all, we've relied very much on the word panelists.
When we began, somehow we just picked the word panelists.
People that have something to do with the topic.
So with those downtown stores, we had
Our guest, Pete Seizek.
Now, he is a descendant of the Zahn family.
And Pete knows the history.
What he brought along on stages he talked, quite the effort, the huge gold-framed portrait of Edward Zahn that hung next to the gold elevators.
That was Pete.
Terry Lynch, who has passed away.
Terry's father owned our most upscale shoe store.
It was on 6th Street called Seymour's Shoes.
Seymour's Shoes was known for how to dye fabric shoes for weddings and formals.
If you wanted aqua, you got aqua.
If you wanted purple, you got purple in just the exact stage.
So Terry opened up his talk saying, thank you for sending me to college.
And we're talking about the shows they put on at the Golden Rondell Churches and Library and how they got started.
We'll give you a sneak preview of what they're doing on Monday and Wednesday and tell you how you could possibly get into the show because they are filled up.
But, you know, some people canceled the last minute, but they allow 300 people in for each one of the shows.
You're only doing two this time.
Right.
And so that's it.
And they got...
Filled up fast.
Well, we were really shocked and, of course, thrilled.
Now our task is to make everyone glad that they're there.
That's our task now
my
I'm out of
I can make a problem out of anything.
And this is what's going on.
It is,
that.
Still going over our past laurels and then we'll switch.
But when we were kids, like grade school, to go down to the time stores, sit at the counter and have a Coke and fries.
So we had Nancy Gump as a panelist.
She was a waitress at one of the counters.
Arlene Lepiccolo came, her mother, June, and her father, owned the record mart near the Venetian downtown.
June, the mother of seven, had a list, the top 100.
Rosemarie Romano, she talked about the popular hurlman's bakery that her father had and had pictures of a staff of 15, maybe?
women all in beautiful white uniforms.
And Rick Bonanno talked about matrangas for our grocery stores.
Who else, Jim?
Oh, we had Nibs Costerman.
What a character.
He talked about the ace grill and the nitty gritty.
Apparently he was a bouncer at the nitty gritty.
Who else did we have?
Butch Luther.
How about the story about Nibs where the East Grill?
Oh, the East Grill.
I like that story.
What's his
Nibs Kosterman.
Norbert.
Norbert, he's not with us anymore.
Yeah, he's gone.
Nibs, that's a great name.
Yeah, his dad was named Nibs as a nickname.
with Nibs.
Tell what happened at the Ace Grill for nibs.
Well, he was always cutting class from St.
Katz ending up at the Ace Grill to shoot pool in that.
And one day, Monsignor Witkoviak from St.
Katz made a surprise visit to the Ace Grill to see how many of his students from St.
Katz were hiding out there.
And Nibb saw him, and Monsignor saw Nibb's, but he didn't pay Nibb's any attention because Nibb spent so much time away from St.
Cat's, Monsignor never even knew who he was.
I just love that name Nibb's.
Nibb's,
oh
yeah, he was the one who always issued fake IDs.
If you were under 18, he was the one who supplied you with a fake ID.
stuff.
He was the guy.
Yeah.
I also love the story or the phrase that Nims would say, do you want to be?
Yeah.
How many guys are 18?
One or two would raise their hand.
How many want to be 18?
Everybody would raise their hand.
He was the supplier for fake IT.
There's always one sketchy guy in the neighborhood.
That's right.
Oh,
yes, yes.
Another person we had was
Craig Colbets and he was one of the original owners of the nitty-gritty and he had a lot to say about how the nitty-gritty started and the bands that were there.
And speaking of the bands, we had a lot of different former band members who played during the 60s.
Bands such as the Voyagers, the Argonnes, the Sultans, they all played at our local dance venues from time to time.
So at the end, everybody was on stage, like Carol mentioned, all doing the twist.
We probably had maybe about 20 former band members on that stage at that time.
We also did a topic called Summer in the City.
I think that was our last one at the Rondell.
We talked about Kitty Land with Helen Horlick-Pew.
That was her parents who owned Kitty Land.
The outdoor theaters.
We talked about that the Washington Park pool with Marsha and Joe the 4th of July prayed we had a segment on that too with Wendy Spencer
Now that the outdoor let me just
say something
this
Look at all
those
brass with
And we
Washington Park Pool.
We went down
gone.
Depressing, isn't
them
Yeah.
We still see it was left.
Right.
You could
where it was.
still
Yeah.
but it's not
it's just hard to go back to these places.
Yeah.
And
and
get through anymore.
I think this is so wonderful that you and Terry take such interest.
You have so many interests we've been learning and you'll take a book and you'll go there.
Now like the Wisconsin Magazine, you're going to Kaloma.
because you've seen about a variety show.
It was
So you follow up on these things.
So, well, the outdoor in the Washington Park pool, I want to add with Marsha Conant and Joe Pavkovic, we got to know the two of them.
They were unacquainted, weren't they, Jen?
They didn't know each other.
Right.
Yeah.
But we found out somehow that they both were very funny.
And so they met and so they
come up with some 10-minute dialogues.
They sit at a table and do their
script.
And they bring down the house.
I mean, they are very funny.
They are our comedy team.
But now it's time to mention that Marcia and Joe will be joining us again at this new program.
They are going to be using a script that they had five years ago on Scooping the Loop.
It's that good.
Why change a good thing?
But one major change to this new program happens to be the inclusion of none other than Don Rosen.
Who's going to be with us handling some of the music segments.
You had a great interview with Bob Barry.
He's still you.
You let us know he's.
alive and well.
And I think that interview here at WRJN was awarded by the Wisconsin broadcasters.
Yeah, best interview we've went to.
The best interview.
Pretty wonderful.
We're chatting with Jim and Carol this morning and we're talking about the history of the shows they've done and what they really mean to people at the Golden Rondell Theater, also churches and
libraries and right here on the radio station.
And let's continue when we left off.
Well, now finally turning to where we are and will be next week.
We decided, even though we have done a lot about the entertainment downtown, including shopping and scooping, that very area and the scooping are just so high in our special memories.
And so we decided to do
Instead of a two-hour program, this is a bit abbreviated, about an hour and a half, returning to our stores and our scooping.
But it will be with a somewhat new program and improved program.
Would you say,
Jim?
Oh, sure, absolutely.
We do have a new and improved program, like you said, about not only scooping, but also the downtown stores.
We're actually returning there because
When we did it in the past, it was just so popular, one of our most popular ones.
And again, the title is going to be a 50s and 60s scooping tour of downtown Racine.
Now, one reason that we decided to do this also was Jim and Lynn's son, Mark Mercier, has been working all these years right along with Jim.
When we began with the grocery stores,
At the library, we had one handout and it was a page out of the 1950s phone books that listed the grocery stores.
That was it.
I remember
that.
And now through the years, more and more photos and visuals have come into our programs.
And that is very much due to Mark.
So now the visuals are wonderful to see.
And I want to point out, for instance,
Everyone is beautiful color.
We started with some with black and white.
But instead of seeing just a car, like a VW Beetle for swooping, Mark has placed the photo of a car in front of Zanz in the 60s.
what he's
he puts that stuff together.
That's what he's
Absolutely.
I mean, all
didn't exist.
So we see people walking across the street.
We see stores embedded in what had been maybe like
10 or 12 car pictures.
So because of Mark's talents, we felt these visuals and at the Golden Rondelle on that huge screen, it is worth revisiting in this new form.
Yeah, they're going to love it when they see those pictures.
Sure.
All right.
So now how to get reservations or call in?
Well, like we've been saying, we are
full already at this time, but I'll give you the phone number to call to put yourself on a waiting list.
And that's 262-260-2154.
We didn't say it's free.
It is free.
It's at the Golden Rondell Theater and it lasts about an hour and a half.
Please feel free to call that number.
Seven o'clock
begins, but the doors open at six.
The doors open at six and they allow you to go up to the theater at six thirty.
And then there's an online sign up?
Yes, that would be scjohnson.com slash C I P in capital letters.
That's community, what something program,
program.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm
At some time, you had
together.
Well, we increased it from a half hour to an hour and a half.
So that's an hour's worth for this one.
But where do you find the visuals?
All over the internet and private collections people send me photos.
I have a few So you have to look but they're out there.
I have to praise Jim because he's so active on our eight Facebook sites about nostalgia and Racine and How many people are on that those Facebook sites?
I'm guessing at least 50,000.
Whoa.
Can you
imagine?
It's a world out there.
No wonder why they
got it filled up in one day.
It's a world out there.
And so all you have to do, and he's an administrator and a contributor all the time, and so all you have to do, I guess, too, is put in a topic and the photos that people send in are archived.
And then they're just our regular online sources of Racine.
But that's where Mark has made them now come alive.
Yeah, all postcards.
That's another great source.
Of course, most of those are in black and white, but Mark has the ability to enhance them, colorize them, and then sometimes put them to motion.
So,
Yes.
And you could stay in the front there.
That was the zone.
They didn't tear it down.
They just repurposed the whole building right there.
It's just to go to these places and kind of walk down the streets and see what it used to be like.
A lot of the buildings are still there.
They're just resurfaced for other things.
That's right.
But as a person who didn't grow up here, it's always fun to go back and look at the pictures and then hay market square.
And do I remember though when the monument square, they had a pool in it
when I first
Do you remember that?
Well, what we're going to add as one brief segment in this too is
that we never had Petula Clark in downtown.
You know, when you want to feel better, you go downtown, and that was really our life.
So we spent some time talking about that and hearing that music too.
But I gotta tell you, when I heard that last night at the rehearsal, the first thing I thought about was George Costanza on Seinfeld, when he was supposed to be Pinky Tensy, who was boss, and his boss went to the bathroom, and George, he thought he was following him in there, and when the boss came out, he said,
George, I want you to take care of this project.
Just remember, it's all happening downtown.
So then him and Jerry tried to figure, what was he talking about?
So they went through the lyrics of the song downtown because George didn't want to screw up.
He
said, it's
Let's go to that song.
We figure
Yeah.
Well, we are awfully grateful that Don is joining us because we thought he would say, guys, I have to get up at 4 a.m.
I got to be at the radio.
I never take a day off.
That was good.
I didn't think of that.
Let me write that
down.
Too late, Don.
Too late.
You're signed
up already.
I should have thought
about it.
Yeah, that's right.
And so this might be ending about 8.30 if it starts at 7.
Sure.
So, you know.
I could have done it at
Well, you'll have to speed right home, except people might want to come up on stage and see you done.
I would think
work takes a long time.
Well, thank you for letting us come here to keep it up.
It
Yeah.
Now people can turn on their radios again.
on Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday, Monday and Wednesday,
seat's a winner
show.
And bring your singing voices.
There's going to be some sing-alongs.
Thank you guys.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, Don.
Thank you, Don.
You guys are