Be aware, the "Message Forum" is NOT password protected.  Unlike profiles that are password protected, anybody who gets to this webpage can see what is written here.  Nobody can contact you directly based on this forum unless you reveal your personal contact information.  Use the "Message Center" for sharing personal contact information with another classmate.

This message forum is an ongoing discussion about anything and just about everything ... within reason.  One thing our class was good at was having opinions.  Almost 70 years of life experience certainly qualifies us as experts on most everything!   Ask a question ... give an opinion ... share some insights ... it's our web site, it's our forum.  That said, it's probably not a good idea to get into arguments about politics, religion, and the like.  While we're experts on everything, we also have a wide range of values and beliefs. This site belongs to all of us ... the whole range ... and we are not here to isolate, alienate, or subjugate anybody.  Of course insults, humiliation, sophomoric barraggadocio, and demented humor is expected behavior among some of us less mature people.
 

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Terri, you are not "losing it"; Schuster's at Capitol Court (and the older one on Third Street, a few miles from where we both lived when we attended Robert M. LaFollette grade school) became Gimbel's. The old Third Street Schuster's on the first floor was always a bustle of activity, especially around the counter which sold their wonderful little white cardboard cartons of take-out potato salad that went so well with Usinger weiners.

Marian Schopp (Bringe)

Hi Garry - I would LOVE to see the Browning 6th grade photo also - or any Browning and any Edison. For some reason I have more fond memories of grade school and middle school than high school.  I guess the older a brain gets the better it is at remembering years gone by than what happened yesterday :)  I will wait in hopes that you can get the site working and that people will contribute.  Thanks again for all your work. This must be your new day job :)

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

James - Do I remember correctly, it was 7 cents to ride the streetcar if you were less than 12 years old?

I remember the old bus transfers.....flimsy little papers with a punch hole in to show how long they were valid.

Anyone remember air raid drills ?  (The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!)

Jim Cejka

You are correct Nancy, 7 cents to ride the street car (a real non-polluting vehicle).

And 10 cents for the Saturday matinee at the Ritz Theater on Villard, or you could by a card with  "season tickets" (12 movies) for $1.

Marian Schopp (Bringe)

The day I turned 16 I started working at the Ben Franklin near our house. I could walk both ways. I earned less than $1/hr. As a senior I asked my dad if I could go to college like my brothers. Dad said college was for boys, not for girls. We’ve come a long way baby   I took the highest paying secretarial job I was offered and worked my way up the corporate ladder taking dictation and transcribing my notes on that new invention called the Selectric typewriter. After my high school boyfriend and I broke up I remember having my work car pool driver drop me off at Capitol Court so I could buy one more pair of shoes from Baker’s, I think it was named, because an un-named boy from our class worked there.  Nice patent leather pumps for work were $5.00.

Garry Sellers

Ummm Sally - Porn on this website?  Hmmm.  Let me discuss that with some of the guys first (yes, we're still accomplished sexists but at least we know it now).  We, of course, would need to see it before posting it and then would reserve the copyrights.  I hope you're not referring to that obscene fight that broke out among the scantily clad ladies who danced for quarters in front of our classmates. It was not pretty the way they struck each other with canes and walkers while "scrambling" for the quarters thrown by a few appreciative, although legally blind viewers.

We'll have some info on where and how to post old time photos on this website in a day or two.  I still can't get it to work.  I also want to start a tab for people to share interesting links to other websites ... like the ones Jeanne posted yesterday or Retro Milwaukee.

Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)

Nancy, I do remember taking the bus to Schuster's on Third St. with my mom who probably had 3 kids in tow, and I do remember the lunch counter there. You have a great memory! Even the potato salad in little white cardboard boxes! It was always a treat to go there because she often took us to the lunch counter. I am reading a fascinating and funny book borrowed from my uncle called "Bucket Boy" A Milwaukee Legend by Ernest Ludwig Meyer. It is a fictionalized account of his childhood life in early-1900s Milwaukee with his German-born parents. If your forebears were German-American immigrants living on the north side of Milwaukee in the 2-flats with a tavern on every corner, you will get an idea of what life was like for them, and a feeling for why they came to America. It's full of humorous stories and descriptions of life back then. I liked it so much, I ordered my own copy from Amazon. It's published by the Milwaukee County Historical Society on "910 North Old World Third Street" . 

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Garry - What an insult!

Are you suggesting that the "legally blind" part was a factor in the appreciative response?

Kenneth Pallaske

Sally,

I think the name of the park on Silver Spring was McGovern Park. I remember swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter. I lived north of Silver Spring, too. Remember the A&P store on the corner of 60th and Silver Spring?

The first grade school I attended was Morgandale. I will post one of the class pictures, if I can find it. The school was on 18th street and Morgan, just a few blocks from Wilson Park on the south side. Does anyone know if it is still there? We lived in post-WWII housing at that time. I think there is an olympic swimming pool there now. If my folks would have stayed on the south side, my brothers and I would have attended Pulaski H.S.

Garry,

The quarters actually fell through the holes in Mitch Heinrick's pockets. Don't ask me why he had pockets full of quarters. Sandy had a hard time with her walker after that episode.

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Oh, Terri…..the 2-flats! Now you’ve taken me WAY back - back to grade school when we lived in one of them in the city. It had a front porch with two entry doors – one for the downstairs flat and one for the upstairs. Our downstairs one entered into a tiny room with black and white tiles (where your boots could drip) and a small area for coats, then another doorway (with glass panes) into the living room. That little vestibule was great for keeping out the winter air, but it also kept the coats really cold. And if you played hide and seek and chose that spot to hide, you didn’t want to be waiting there for too long. Some things from that house would seem bizarre to our children: the green porcelain gas stove with the oven on one side which was two feet taller than the level of the burners and stood on legs about three feet tall; the coal bin in the basement, into which the delivery man shoveled coal through the basement window; the curling iron that my mom heated on the gas burners and then (sometimes) burned my ear with; the cement ash can in the back yard which emptied at the alley through a small iron door.

Oh, brother, we’re bordering on ancient!

Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)

Nancy, two years ago a friend drove our family to our 2-flat so I could show them where we lived. A young teenage girl was sitting on the steps next door, and approached the car suspiciously:  "Why are you looking at my Grandmama's house?" I told her I once lived there, and went on to describe to her the foyer with high beveled glass windows, the parlor with the sliding pocket door, the dining room with the built-in buffet, the layout of the kitchen and bedrooms (I was sure they'd replaced the old gas stove on legs :-) She nodded in approval, and asked, "What about upstairs?" I told her about my favorite hiding place, the attic, accessed by a winding stairway, which contained a finished room at the front window. Convinced, she then asked me the saddest question: "Was it a nice neighborhood then?"  

But recalling hiding places, it wasn't too good to hide in the coal bin. Coming out sooty was a dead giveaway as to where you'd been.

Garry Sellers

Terri and co-conspirators - Your Oldtime Photo page has been added.  I am now going to lay my tired body down and let the buzzards take what's left.  Put on my tombstone "Yet another victim of the Computer Age".  I have no idea why that was so difficult.

Art Perez

MORGANDALE SCHOOL?. I went there.  WOW! Does that bring back memories.

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Terri - yes, it was a nice neighborhood then.

Another grade school memory (I don't know if they still have these....) is of the huge metal tube that curved around on the outside of the school building. It was used for fire drills - just slide right down!

I wonder if those old schools still smell the same - soggy mittens and melting snow dripping on the oak floors in the coatroom ?

Christopher Marx

 Gary, Thats because you are not 12 !

Marian Schopp (Bringe)

McGovern Park was great for swimming and ice-skating and playing tennis and watching boys play baseball.  I walked there with a girlfriend many summer days. In the winter they put barricades over the parts of the ice where you might fall through.  I think of that when I watch It's A Wonderful Life.

Garry Sellers

Chris - How right you are sir!

Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)

Marian, I loved swimming and skating at McGovern Park too. I loved the smell in the warming house - didn't they have sawdust on the floors? That was practically all I did for fun -and tried to learn to play tennis there. Isn't it funny how our childhood experiences just "pop up" in life -- like when you watched "It's a  Wonderful Life"?

Nancy, I didn't go to LaFollette long enough to ever use the spiral slide- I think you had to be on the top floor.  But my older  brother got to go down it - and I was so jealous!

I was just remembering the Fourth of July parades: we would gather at the school, walk to the park and get a Dixie Cup when we got there. Kids would decorate their bikes, strollers, etc. Our fireworks repertoire was very limited, though - I think only cap guns were legal. If we didn't have a gun,  we'd throw a stone on them to ignite them.

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Terri, as I remember, what we ignited with a stone was the little blisters of powder on the long, narrow strips of paper that came in a roll.

Speaking of long strips of paper, remember buying (for a penny?) those strips of paper with little bumps of colored sugar on them? You tore off the bump and popped it into your mouth, along with whatever paper shreds may have clung to the sugar.

Kenneth Pallaske

Art,

Now I know I will have to find that class photo and post it. Could we have been in the same class?

Art Perez

If I remember correctly one of my teachers was Ms checker or something like that. I was at Morgandale school until the 2nd grade.

Garry Sellers

Pallaske, you change photos more often than Sauer does wives!

Barbara Blair (Brenzel)

Sally,

I remember the tobaggon slide at Brown Deer Park - it was soooo scary when it shot out & you thought you were going to end up in space & then a crash!  Ice skating there was awesome & going in the warming house was so neat.

All these posts are making me remember so much that I hadn't thought about in years & years (like 50!!)

Barb

Garry Sellers

I've uploaded 100+ photos to the "Chronicle Photos" gallery under "Old-Time Photos" tab that Roger Pederson scanned from the 3 years of Custer Chronicles he found in his attic.  We had these playing on a continuous loop at the reunion.

As I recall that after the Brown Deer toboggan "tower" was removed, wasn't it Currie Park, or whatever near Hwy 100 and Capitol that had a natural sledding/toboggan hill on which you were as likely to get killed trying to climb back up as you were on the way down!

The "big kids" went to Lincoln or Brown Deer to skate ... little kids like me walked to the flooded pond at Smith park on 35th street between Silver Spring and Villard to skate.  At one point it had a two foot deep "wading pool" in the summers that parents came for miles to let their pre-schoolers urinate in the communal toilet!  I remember I couldn't wait for Mama to take me there!  (I held it for as long as I could ...  I really did.) I wonder why it was removed?

Rag man and knife sharpeners!  But do you also remember the coal trucks?  The bins in the back lifted up, the coal man put his basket under a chute and filled his basket ... metal frame covered with leather.  He then carried it on this shoulder to the coal chute in your house.  I can still hear the sound of that coal being dumped and sliding down the chute ... time after time .. trip after trip.  Can you imagine how hard those men worked for what was probably minimum wage, whatever that was in the 1940's.  I remember them with leather pads on their shoulders and leather aprons ... and covered in soot.  Shoot, now that I think about it, maybe it was at my Grandma's house!

I was watching a story about Johnny Carson's life on PBS last night and they mentioned the advent of television.  They talked about the few hours of programming at first and how some people sat mesmerized watching the test pattern for hours!  Those stupid people!!!  (Our entire household was among them!  We'd even detect the slightest change in the pattern.  No wonder I have no mind left!)

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Garry, what did you watch on t.v. in the 50's? I watched The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans ("Happy Trails to you..................."), Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and Howdy Doody. Sure wish I still had the black and white Lone Ranger sweater now - it would probably fund a nice cruise for us this winter.