What I like best about the Northside is simply that it was exactly that simple. It wasn't any the classification of people and stuff. And we had some people that that lived there in the 40s and 50s that had some money. And one person the neighbor down the street owned service transfer company and lived in a nice brick house a block down the street from me and his son was my best friend. There was no we got you don't got kind of feeling between anybody and there was the shop owners and there was the factory workers and the one I didn't mention about when we were driving around the old Pilat line company processing the tobacco from Vernon County mostly making cigars and chewing tobacco and that's a big brick building that is now an apartment building by the North Side beach.

And when we first came back from my military my wife and I looking for apartments decided we'd go in there and see what it like well that tobacco smell was still so bad in that particular the hallways and stairways. We climbed up two floors and climbed back down to the floors and went out. But that was another place that employed quite a few people. Most of those you know like I said as we were driving around people tended to live closer to where they worked. Then people do today of course.

So anyway the simplicity and the acceptance. For instance right across the street from my father's small meat market grocery store was a few canned goods was the extent and produce right was that but right across the street was a very nice very good liquor store.

And the fellow who and the liquor store had a sedan and he also had a pickup truck. Twice a week my brothers sister mom and dad would get in the back of a pickup truck. They didn't get in the seat in as kids for kids and we go as far go and see to the river Black River comes under the river road bridges then. And fish all day and have meals and stuff. And then at 5 o'clock or so we all piled back in the back of the pickup truck and and back to George Street.

Let me ask you this when you guys were in your car were you wearing seatbelts.

There were no seatbelts and we didn't have a car. That's the other thing about it. Many people like my next door neighbor he had a car but it was in the garage. 90 percent of the time he worked as a custodian at the post office and he would simply get on the bus and go to daughters work downtown. The only powerful post office in those days and that the car would come out of the garage once in a while.

When the family would maybe go for a Sunday drive that was a nice big deal and they didn't fight me because I was a good friend of one of the sons and they invite me to ride along with them. But to cars just were not used either no longer from the south side to the extent they are now. But the South Side was much more car oriented. First of all it was spread out over a lot more a lot more area. So using the car was more of a sense like the old Trane company was a way to south ditches of the La Crosse and in fact you know the Village Shopping Center what was called The Village Shopping Center. Yup. Before that was built.

There was one small restaurant which would be back about where the Central High School football field is. A little path road going back there. Nothing else was anywhere around there because there was a there was a teacher at the time of the 40s in the early 50s. And so I really enjoyed growing up in that environment.

Was it called the North Side back when you were younger.

Yeah yeah. In fact the idea of it being a separate community that died many years before that and and then they built. A Lang drive to connect could your eyes actually lit up when you said that. So you recall when they built lane drive this year before that and you know you meet you where you over the causeway which wasn't that big of a deal. That's where you got from one to the other for many years and then there is just a kind of road or a bench. And then they actually built a lane drive built it up so that it was the 12 season or 12 months all season road.

So before they had the bridge then did you have to wait for all the trains to get through. Absolutely.

Yeah. In fact those overpasses both the George Street narrow street ones were put in very late in the game in the 50s and the 60s you know you had to wait for trains and that kind of an interesting one that I've enjoyed here that I was president of the Board of Education when we built the new logo. Well. If you can remember that that street going out had to go over all of the railroad tracks you know eventually to get out to. I was 16 and I thought the city was great about it talked him into putting that overpass over the railroad tracks.

So your your as the Board of Education was able to talk the city into that. Yes. And they were very co-operative.

And they they knew me pretty well in fact. I mean I can tell you a story you can use if you want to and that is when we were building the new Logan the school where it just becoming a fiscally independent operation and the city no longer had to approve everything. But we took it to the city the building of it and present you what we're going to do and what we had done in research and all that to know what we are building in life and they really bought into it and so on. But when we're done with the first thing on the agenda when you are done walked onto that rotunda area the outside the city or outside the council chambers or right the wrong thing and I'm standing there for just a minute. One Two Three Four Five Six aldermen came up the hill to tell me what my father meant to them as they were growing up.

So your dad made a difference to these gentlemen. Absolutely. Wow that's awesome.

In fact one of the fellows names initials were shot in the ceiling of the back room with a 22. That was but but he was just that kind of a person who would see people who needed and help them with groceries with a lot of things.

What's the story behind the 22.

Well I don't know they were just fooling around back there and no no big deal just having fun and some laughter time I guess. But you know nothing this liquor store across the street was the only place with them. Oh there's that. St James and St John's directly St James they could come and get their communion wine. Well. Several times my father would meet them in the middle George Street. Bring him back to the back room and feed him some food and so on so that he could nicely get back to their rectory.

Back on Caledonia's street what was the name of your father's grocery store just Temtes market.

How was it was the grocery store back in those states similar to what a bar or a church is now where people get together and it with a little bit a little bit but most of it is just there.

My father was so welcoming and great. Another little story about this there was a family on the north side who lost their home that kicked out of renting or whatever. And they had a couple kids and there was an old.

We called it the little holes behind our house and our house had all of 620 square feet and this was the little house.

I must have been a tiny house because he showed me the house he grew up in.

Yeah. Well this house of course is no longer there. But what he did is he moved the family in there and got some business furniture and stuff for them that they needed above what they could bring from their apartment or whatever. And he lived in there for several years until he got them things together and could move into another real house.

I didn't know about this until one of the sons who was very much involved with refereeing in youth sports and stuff saw me and told me the story and like the Six aldermen outside in the vestibule area there there were seven crying men to hear their stories to tell of what my father meant when my father passed away when I was a young man. 13 I guess i was. So I never knew him as a full adult. But he did because he was 50 when he passed away and he had to tell me their story. And you were so moving the stories that every one of them said they're not weeping tears of joy telling their story in the same way that this other young man who was given peace with his father and other family to live for a couple of years by my father who was always giving that kind of a temporary legacy.

Yeah I learned a lot from him and I built my lifestyle around what I didn't know about him and that's the way it is right.

Were you close with your mother.

Well after my father passed. Yes in fact we saw my wife and I we saw my mother through the end. She was a worker all to keep the family together and stuff but then she moved into storyteller's we got her in there when she was in her 60s and she lived to 83 and I had the good fortune because I worked at Tech I was vice president of Tech at the time and I would if I was running around don't I would stop and check on my mother.

Well one day I did. And she'd gotten up got half or three fourths crest sat on the bed and just laid herself back down. And that was the end of it. And I walked in and saw so I called Nine one one. It wasn't that number of them. But anyway he said to Doc what time you left here. He was the coroner and I don't know if it was still his way but if somebody died outside of a hospital the coroner had to come to make sure that everything was fine.

And Doc would tell you I've always had a cigar never left hanging out of his mouth and I side of the bed and I'm on this side.

Right. And he looking at Earnhardt rolls the price of Mr. temte he said he died peacefully. He never suffered a movement that was good.

Oh yeah I bet. As a son that's probably great to hear.

Yeah yeah it was. So anyway and. The variety of people on the north side like I say this one family owned service transfer finally bought out by what was the big gave we transfer which was the other. The other big one and other people were very much. We had a doctor and Denis that sort of thing