Nostalgia: Jello and A Covered Dish

 

Jello in setting in the refrigerator during the 1940s meant one thing: company. Meals didn’t come from store-bought packaged food. During the summer, food came from the garden. During the winter it came from the home-canned summer’s bounty or the frozen food in the rental freezer locker at the Farmer’s  Co-op store. Milk and eggs came from Grandpa’s farm. Nobody had a lot of money after the war, and money wasn’t going to be spent in a store unless it was necessary.

Jello was usually orange, strawberry or cherry flavored with banana slices added, unless some fresh or canned fruit was put in. Jello was usually put in a ring mold from which the Jello was released when the mold was very briefly set in water. The mold would be turned over on a plate and there the jiggly wonder was. Molds got fancy. They were shaped like stars, lobsters, fish, or were bowl-like with little shapes in the sides.  Shapes added to the company-set table, but the shapes didn’t matter to kids.

More and more Jello became a staple at ladies’ luncheons, potlucks and funeral dinners. It was a store-bought product that made an impression. By then, there were flavors such as lemon and lime that kids thought were really messed up when yukky coleslaw, celery, carrots and walnuts were added. Whatever happened is anybody’s guess, but by the mid-1960s Jello started fading from potluck scene. It was strongly suggested at the planning meeting for a women’s salad luncheon that Jello was not a salad and should not be an offering, except the little old ladies with the blue hair continued to bring such favorites as green peppers in lime Jello slathered with Dream Whip. After that it seemed as if Jello went by the wayside, only to be brought back in one recent instance by the pastor who looked at the food at a church potluck and asked where the Jello was. The church ladies thought he was quite cosmopolitan, coming from the East Coast where people must still consider Jello a delicacy.

It was indeed a surprise to see Jello served as the dessert at our building’s Friday dessert and coffee for those teachers not on playground duty. The dessert was called Broken Glass, which reminded the teacher who made it of stained glass church windows. Since it was the last day before the Christmas break, the dessert was quite fitting. Made with a graham cracker crust, firm orange, lime and cherry gelatin was cut into small pieces and then dropped into whipped Dream Whip and lemon Jello before being poured over the crust, then sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs, and allowed to set. Servings of the Broken Glass were pretty, even prettier when made in an angel food pan. Broken Glass made it to the Christmas table that year. Though it had to be calorie laden, the seemingly light dessert was fitting on that Christmas table. It also made a new bride look good.

Before the days of unions, district teachers got together for in-service and in social groups. Ours was Teachers’ Council which met after school once a month. Each school, on a rotating basis, was responsible for refreshments, which in those days meant coffee and dessert. Always coffee. Never tea. The district reflected a Scandinavian background, and those who drank tea in Northeast Wisconsin in those days were considered “affected.” Our building’s chair instructed us to bring bar cookies and then asked if there were questions. At 26 and the youngest teacher by 25 years, I was surely not known for culinary delights. I had a question. What was a bar cookie? When it was explained in the midst of eye rolling, it turned out to be brownies, lemon bars, peanut squares and so on. Who ever heard of a bar cookie? Nobody where I grew up. We called the desserts what they were and we knew what we were eating. 

After admitting I didn’t know what bar cookies were, I didn’t want to admit much else. I was engaged and didn’t want to look any worse. Then we had a day of meetings for which each school was assigned a specific potluck food. When we were told to bring a covered dish, I was afraid to ask what was supposed to be in it. A woman who had befriended me wasn’t going to roll her eyes, so I asked, only to learn that a covered dish was simply a casserole. We called casseroles what they were, although there were some who called them hot dishes. I made some pretty good casseroles, so when I brought my covered dish, I didn’t tell anybody that my tasty contribution was really a casserole.

Casseroles have gone by the wayside to be replaced by Hamburger Helper, Mac and Cheese and a great many more things on the grocer’s shelf. Adding water to a box of Jello makes it one of the easiest things to make, however now it is a convenience food sold in the deli department or even comes in little sealed plastic cups on the grocers’ shelves. Somehow it is not surprising because one can buy frozen baked potatoes that only need to be popped into the over for 30 minutes, thus shaving the other 30 minutes off dinner prep. And those deli hard boiled eggs? It takes longer to get to the store than it does to boil them. Of course, when one gets busy and the water boils away, washing the eggs off the ceiling takes much longer than going to the store.

Many years later covered dishes and church basement ladies started resurfacing. About 15 or so years ago, two women from Hastings, Minnesota wrote a hilarious book reflecting the ladies, the covered dishes and more in a time that was. Today seems like a good to get out an old mold, make some Jello and invite company for dinner. Maybe a covered dish would be a perfect compliment. Add a glass of wine and let the memories flow.

 

Algoma's Steam Laundry

eHow tells us steam washers operate as do traditional washers, however employ the added benefits of steam. When steam is injected into the water washing, there is additional cleaning power. With that comes refreshing, sanitizing, and odor and  wrinkle removal. Did Algoma’s steam laundry operate in such a fashion? Though its steam facilities were not the same as those featured on TV commercials today, it was certainly state-of-the-art for the time, and its services were in high demand one hundred years ago.

In 1903 Algoma boasted the opening of the new Steam Laundry in the structure along the south side of the Ahnapee River, previously called the White Front building. In an earlier time the brick building was the site of Rod Berrio's, John Barrand’s and Jim McCulfor’s saloons, Cameron and Nelson’s marble shop, John Charles' blacksmith shop and  William Boldt’s cigar factory. A younger generation remembers Ralph Hubbard’s welding shop and then Kurt Baum.

The building at 93 Steele Streets no longer exists. Neither do the docks which once serviced it and the community. When Joe Drobnik opened his Steam Laundry at what some might call the northeast corner of First and Steele, the laundry was the first stop for visiting ships’ crewmen. Not only was it a chance to get their clothes washed, but the men could clean up themselves as well. The facility offered showers for the crew and for town bachelors living in hotels or rented rooms. As late as the 1950s, Timble’s barbershop, the site of today’s Community Improvement Association, sported a little sign on the window indicating “shower baths” were available. The need was still there.

It was in 1902 that Martin Bretl bought the White Front building for use as a steam laundry. A year later he sold to Joseph Drobnik of Milwaukee who actually opened the laundry. At Drobnik’s grand opening a few days before Halloween, the city’s ladies were presented with carnations as they inspected the new machinery, which was said to be the best available. The laundry was met with more interest than anticipated, and it was felt it would be a huge success. Drobnik thought his facilities were of the latest design and that his work could not be equaled by anywhere along the lakeshore.

Drobnik prospered and continued to make news in 1907 when he installed a two-ton machine in which he could wash an astounding 300 shirts at once. So popular was his service that his plant was crowded to capacity as customers came in droves from surrounding towns. By 1916 he bought a Ford delivery truck and built a garage behind the laundry. Drobnik remained in business for 25 years before others took it over. Conrad Menne was leasing the laundry in 1930 when he added dry cleaning and pressing equipment.

Trucks and the railroad had taken over freight transportation so significantly that by the late 1920s the Steam Laundry was no longer feasible, and a 1931 sheriff’s sale closed of the business. Perhaps the Depression forced people to care for their own clothing or perhaps it was competition. Algoma had another laundry operating at the same time. It was thought to be somewhat of a novelty as it was a “real” Chinese laundry. Wah Lee, a "Chinaman," rented Martin Bretl's 4th Street building to open a laundry in 1922, however it was not in business long and its history is not known. Those who wanted baths could go to Timble’s Barbershop. Lee was not the lone Chinese in Kewaunee County. Charlie Toy operated his laundry on northeast corner of Dodge and Harrison Streets years earlier.

Platted as Lots 5 and 6 of Block 1 of Youngs and Steele Plat, the property has had somewhat of a storied past. Early resident David Youngs – one of the men who platted most of what became downtown Algoma and one for whom the Youngs and Steele is named - built his home there in 1854. His store was just to the east. Caroline Witte was 12 when she arrived in Wolf River (now Algoma) in1856 with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Berndt. In a 1925 interview she remembered the Young buildings being of slab construction and told about slabs found along the beach being stood on end to provide temporary shelters. Before Youngs’ untimely death in 1873, he was a prominent business force in both Kewaunee and Door Counties.

Time marches on, and today there is no evidence of the steam laundry or David Youngs’ in Algoma. Youngs’ descendants can be found from San Antonio to Washington. Depending on the size of a community, there might be coin operated laundromats and, perhaps, even a dry cleaners. Gone from Algoma are the mangles and other huge presses. A younger generation has no idea what an iron is, let alone a mangle. Easy care fabrics and dryers with sensors have eliminated most ironing. And steam washers? Today they would be sold in appliance stores, but they wouldn't weigh two tons.

 Photographs are taken from Commercial History of Algoma, WI, Vol. 1, c. 2006, and Vol. 2 c. 2012, and are used with permission. Information comes from Algoma Record Herald.

George Grimmer, Citizen and Businessman

If there are any Grimmers left in Kewaunee, the name does not appear in the White Pages. Mentioned 100 years ago, the name was one everybody knew. George Grimmer was a highly respected, prominent resident of the City of Kewaunee and the county beyond. As one whose formal education ended at age 14, he was a successful businessman, served as postmaster of Kewaunee, served as Director of the State Bank of Kewaunee, and served on both the town and county board. The public spirited Grimmer served as a state senator, representing Wisconsin’s First Senatorial District, which covered most of Northeast Wisconsin, and took an active part in Kewaunee’s educational system.

Grimmer’s lumbering interests are well documented in Kewaunee County, and elsewhere. Detailed records indicate that he dealt mostly in oak that came from beyond Kewaunee County. Though he was associated with mining in Colorado, it was the lumbering interests that made him wealthy. To read his accounts is to question if Mr. Grimmer ever had time to sleep. The seemingly Type-A personality never became ruthless and was always held in the highest esteem. Grimmer associated with Racine’s Murray and Kelley, and then Kelly and Weeks. Murray eventually joined Grimmer’s one-time business partner George Slausson in a Two Rivers lumber venture. When D. Smith of Oconto Co. had 12 million board feet of pine on the Peshtigo and Oconto Rivers to sell, he contacted Grimmer.  Slausson and Grimmer discontinued their Kewaunee business in 1877 when their source of pine was exhausted. Their mill was along the north side of the Kewaunee River, about where the Life Saving Station would later be, just a bit east of the old ferry dock.

Correspondence indicates that Grimmer was the go-to person in Kewaunee, for both business endeavors and personal reasons. When George Slausson needed a good pair of oxen in July 1881, he wrote to Grimmer telling, not asking, him to find a good pair, as he (Slausson) was traveling from Racine and expected a good pair “right off” when he left the boat. In At about the same time Chris Gaynor wanted to buy land near the Scarboro River and wanted Grimmer’s help, but not for the land purchase. Gaynor had land to sell near Brookfield in Waukesha Co. because he wanted to “move back to Kewaunee Co. where the land was cheaper.”

As a state senator, Grimmer seemed to be associated with the thick of things, possibly because he held so many mortgages. Correspondence with DeWayne Stebbins indicated a mortgage relationship with Philitus Sawyer, the U.S. Senator, and lumberman, from Oshkosh. There were other things. Charles Fellows and Franz Swaty owned the pier at Foscoro. Tufts and Paarman wanted to length their Clay Banks pier, something Swaty was against. He wrote to Grimmer asking help in securing a denial for Tufts. Apparently that didn’t work because a few weeks later Swaty again wrote. This time he was looking for a good, sturdy man to run a pile driver like Grimmer’s because his company was doing “Tufts and Paarmann’s Pierage.” Charles Fellows applied to Grimmer for a position as a fish warden saying he had fished for years and knew all about it. He also said he could use the salary.

Grimmer and his family kept abreast of current affairs receiving newspapers from Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Two Rivers, Sturgeon Bay, Marinette and, of course, the county papers. His mind was always working and he built his own snowplow for opening roads and walks around his property. He felt good schools were a must and took an active part in ensuring that Kewaunee schools were. Business associates from well beyond Kewaunee sent recommendations for teachers seeking employment, including one for John O’Hara that was written on U.S. Internal Revenue stationery. O’Hara had applied for the position of principal.

Grimmer lavishly spent money on his family for purchases of the highest quality. When he built his Queen Anne style home at the northwest corner of Rose and Dodge Streets in the 1890s, his furniture and china, and the marble for his fireplace mantle were the best Wisconsin had to offer. A blue china set for the bedroom was purchased from Therras & Massey Importers. Tapestries, or window treatments today, were as much as $35 each and came from Stark Bros. of Milwaukee. Twenty-one dollars for a mattress from Matthews Bros. in Milwaukee seems high when the chandelier from Blair and Andree Co., also of Milwaukee, cost $16. In November 1884, Milwaukee painter W. VerBryck was engaged to paint a portrait of Grimmer’s daughter Laura. The price tag was $95. After Grimmer sent Laura’s picture, VerBryck said it was too pretty and without wrinkles or lines. How could he paint what he did not see? VerBryck wrote that he was happy to report two Manitowoc ladies happened into his shop and immediately recognized the painting, saying it was an excellent likeness and how much Laura looked like her mother. It seems the artist knew where his bread was buttered!

While Mr. Grimmer was so involved, the country witnessed the second of its four presidential assassinations. Ironically, two future assassinated presidents - James Garfield and William McKinley - served in the Civil War while Abraham Lincoln was president. President James Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, a mere 16 years after the assassination of Lincoln. Garfield was in office for only 200 days when he died on September 19, 1881. Though he was shot, it was infection, blood poisoning and pneumonia that caused his death. Probing for the bullet in his body, doctors repeatedly used their unwashed, dirty fingers and instruments. In today’s world, Garfield would have lived, but in 1881, his doctors didn’t know about and/or accept sterilization or just cleanliness. It was his doctors who hastened his death.

By late November 1881, Chester A. Arthur was president and the country was planning a monument to the late Garfield. It was then that the go-to Grimmer was contacted by William E. Smith on stationery inscripted “Executive Department of the State of Wisconsin.” Smith wrote that he was requested by the committee in charge of erecting a monument to Garfield to collect funds. Smith said it was necessary to fix an amount for each county and “to ask someone personally to see that it is raised” to ensure that Wisconsin met its contribution assessment. Kewaunee County’s portion was $50, with the City of Kewaunee responsible for $25.

Smith attached a small subscription book so names, amounts and post offices would be accurately listed. Donors received a personal certificate with pictures of the late president, his wife and his mother. Grimmer immediately dealt with the responsibility and a month after he was asked to help, Smith wrote again. But this time it was to acknowledge the contribution and to comment on its promptness.

Smith’s comments on Grimmer’s promptness was, in part, a summation of his life. If there were complaints about Mr. Grimmer, nobody bothered to record them. It appears that George Grimmer never raised too many eyebrows. A generation or two ago, the adage was, "Don't let grass grow under your feet." Grimmer must have lived by those words.

Note: Candice Millard’s 2012 Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President deals with Garfield’s death. Her remarkable story provides insights into the short presidency of one who many felt had the potential to be one of the greats. How medical treatment of the day caused the president’s death leaves readers aghast.

Kewaunee County and Its Ancient Shorelines

It was during the periods of glaciations and melting that the Great Lakes were born. Not as we know them, however. During glaciations, re-advances of shifting ice altered configurations to give us the lakes we know today. That story is told all along Lake Michigan where shorelines hold records of extinct high level lakes called Nipissing, Algonquin and Chicago. The complicated history of these lakes – especially Nipissing and Algonquin – affects most of what we know as the Great Lakes today.

Natural processes marred and even destroyed those records over millions of years, but there was still much of Lake Michigan's western shore left to investigate during a U.S. geological study in 1907. Changes have been significant in the last 100 years too, but now many of the changes can also be attributed to population growth along the lake.

Those living along the lake shore today recognize changes he or she has experienced within their own lifetime. Cycles are said to be about 50 years, however there are shorter cycles within the longer term. Were Kewaunee County residents of 1850s to return, they’d wonder what happened to the steep banks along Lake Michigan. Most of Kewaunee County is situated above the lake bluffs, just as it always was. It’s just that those bluffs have been so worn down. The bluffs of 1850 or 1900 didn’t compare with those in the narrations of ridges and terrains compiled nearly 200 years earlier by explorers such as Samuel de’ Champlain, Jean Nicolet and Claude Allouez, or even by the captains of sloops Archangel, Welcome and Felicity patrolling Lake Michigan during the War of 1812, less than 50 years before first settlement.

In 1900, the clay bluffs that rose from 20 to 40 feet above the shore in the southern part of Kewaunee County became as high as 80’ near the City of Kewaunee. By 1900, the shorelines detailed in 1834 by surveyors Joshua Hathaway and Sylvester Sibley had disappeared. Those living in Kewaunee County during its first 50 years witnessed that disappearance, probably not thinking much about it in their effort to tame a wilderness and get on with a new life. In fact, the coordinates on the site document request for the post office known as Sandy Bay ll suggest the post office would be in Lake Michigan today. At the time of the 1907 survey, an ancient forest bed was found in the lake near the Manitowoc-Kewaunee County line. Walking the shore today, one can discern trees and stumps in the till. Stream terraces give scientists an indication of lake levels in time gone by, and the creek called Mashek’s near Rostok in the Town of Pierce suggests the lake was at one time 35’ higher than it was during the 1907 U.S. Geological Survey. From what was the community of Alaska Pier, at about the site of the 1870 Alaska post office (now Three Mile Creek), one could look south toward the Rostok shore and see the step-like profile of the old creek.

Before Kewaunee’s first long pier was built in the 1850s, the bluffs were receding. As the piers were built, sand and gravel pushed in thus developing new, flatter areas along the shore. Acres of water and dry land were changing there, a change that became apparent along many places in Kewaunee County’s lake shore. This early 1900s postcard gives an indication of Kewaunee's lake bluffs of the time.

From the southeast corner of Section 9 in Pierce to Algoma, the bluff continues. There were dunes to the north of Pierce’s Section 9 and in Section 3. The shore road, on the bluff, followed a ridge of gravel, illustrated in the photo below.

Most of Algoma is built on a terrace created from lake deposits of gravel and stratified sand, the old delta of the Ahnapee River in a much earlier stage. Steep bluffs enclosed the sand flats north and south of the river, and wave action destroyed the headlands just north of today’s north pier. Bluffs north of Algoma surpassed those to its south.

Moving north toward today’s Door County Town of Clay Banks, the old bluff was 80 to 100’ with a 50 degree slope at the time of the 1907 survey. As the survey points out, there is nowhere in Eastern Wisconsin where there are bluffs to compare with those in Clay Banks. Near the east-west road in Section 6 of the Town of Ahnapee, the shore road descended from the bluff to the sandy terrain at the base. At Foscoro post office ½ mile farther north, a large creek with a broad flood plain entered the lake through a large gap in the bluffs. The village of Foscoro, on the Door-Kewaunee County line, was then on a 70’ bluff.

In so many places gaps in the bluff indicate creek terraces. Those creeks were lost as the bluffs were eaten back. Recorded history tells us about the early Bohemian settlers arriving at Mashek’s Creek in the 1850s. History tells us about the two Carlton settlements called Sandy Bay, one being renamed Carlton.  Casco Pier, now called Three Mile Creek, Silver Creek and Foscoro, now Stony Creek, are other examples of major creeks remaining in 1900. Just as the postal communities at those sites disappeared with the advent of RFD in 1904, by 2014 the creeks have almost disappeared.

The Kewaunee and Ahnapee Rivers are the county’s major rivers. They are nothing like they were in 1900, or when the earliest settlers began arriving in 1851. By settlement the rivers had changed from fewer than 20 years before when the area was being surveyed. As for a suspected old river of my youth – I know where it is, but few others could find it today.

This blogger has been studying Algoma’s lakefront and the Ahnapee River for more than 40 years and Kewaunee’s flats more recently. It was a picture of family land found in the 1907 survey that prompted thinking about the old shorelines. I grew up playing on that land, which had been virtually unmarred over all those years. How could I be so sure it was the same area? One recognizes the place in which one spends most of life. Then too, there were the house and farm buildings, identical to family photos. The house that was recently torn down had not changed since the survey picture was taken just after 1900. As an adult I felt that which we called the cattle pass – the huge culvert under the highway allowing cows to go from the lake side to the west side of the highway – was an old river. Imagine my surprise to learn via the accidental discovery of the geologic study that it actually was. Though there have been numerous geological studies, it was the accidental finding of the photo that intrigued me.

For a more detailed description of Foscoro, see the blog "Foscoro: A Village that Was."

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Commercial History of Algoma, Wisconsin Vol. 1, c. 2006;  Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee County c. 2001; The Abandoned Shore Lines of Eastern Wisconsin, c. 1907; postcards and Hathaway’s correspondence in the blogger’s collection.

 

Funeral Jewelry: Keeping a Loved One Close

Morbid, morose, gloomy, or even macabre, is how some would describe it. Several years ago a major news magazine carried an article about a new process turning cremation ashes into diamonds, pointing out such diamonds are considered to be real. A Google search brings up firms producing rings, crosses and other jewelry made using ashes. The idea is to keep one’s loved one close to one’s heart, however such thoughts also prompt some humor.  As one woman said, “He’s been telling me what to do for 50 years, so why would I want him in an earring?”

Before 1900, it was the deceased’s hair that went into the funeral jewelry and, for a time, it was quite fashionable. In addition to jewelry are shadow box-like deep picture frames containing flowers made from women’s long, thick hair. Often, the flowers surround a 4 x 6” funeral card with the woman’s name and a brief bible passage. As the custodian of Great-grandpa’s 8” watch fob, finding pictures of him wearing it was a surprise. Ii was funeral jewelry. As the story was handed down, it was his. It wasn’t possible. More hair was made into a ring for Grandma. Whose hair is it? It was not uncommon to save a lock of the deceased’s hair. Could it have belonged to Great-grandpa’s mother?

Great-grandpa was born in 1845 the small village of Allendorf in Schwarzburg, Rudolstadt, Thuringia. He was almost nine when he boarded the Helene at Bremen to sail to the U.S. with his parents and sisters, aged 9 and 11. An ocean voyage is always especially memorable, but there was more for that little boy. His mother died at sea. However, she wasn’t buried at sea. Being just a day or two out of New York, her body was towed in to be buried in the U.S. Where she was buried, nobody really knew years later. Maybe that was due to shock, turmoil and language in 1854.

Great-grandpa’s father married a widow within months of landing. She needed a man to provide for her and her children. He needed a woman to do for him and his children. They had four more children and then she died. Great-grandpa’s sisters were there to care for the new, younger family. Great-grandpa’s father married another widow, but things didn’t go well and she left him. By then, Great-grandpa had married and had his own family, which also included his father who was in ill health. He died in 1891.

And the funeral jewelry? It is probable, that in 1854, Great-grandpa’s father and sisters would have taken locks of hair from their dearly loved wife and mother. It is not unrealistic to believe that the hair in the watch fob was his mother’s. Pictures of Great-grandpa show him wearing the watch fob well before the death of his father. The ring? It was made for someone with a slim finger. Eventually Grandma wore it. In wearing the watch fob, Great-grandpa did indeed keep his mother close to his heart. Grandma never knew that grandmother, but she held her close of all the days of her life.