The first is the HOTEL BURLINGTON sign shown in the 1906 photo at left. In the photo, the "HOTEL BURLINGTON" sign hangs from the canopy over the front door of the hotel on Pine Street. The building is now occupied by the Sci Fi Café. Shown are fishermen Ed Petrie, Gus Heublein, Henry Kortendick, Edwin Caldwell, and Oscar "Hooty" Konst (not necessarily in that order), who brought their 1-day catch from Duck Lake – 89 pickerel, 3 bass, 76 perch, a croppy, and a bullhead – and strung them up on three lines at the hotel.

The sign, donated to the Society by member and former president, Nick King, is shown in the photo at left. It is now housed in the Society’s storage building near the Whitman School.

The other sign, reading F. A. SCHWALLER LAND CO., stretched nearly 20 feet across the front of the Schwaller building, also on Pine Street. The sign is shown between the 2nd and 3nd floors of the second building from the left in the circa 1915 photo at left below. At that time, businesses on the ground floors of these Pine Street buildings were Jacob Wien’s clothing store, Al Reuschlein’s shoe store, Egizo Giannini’s fruit and confectionery store, and C. B. Wagner’s hardware Store.

The sign, which had been stored on the Schwaller building’s upper floor, was donated to the Society by Connie Stellmacher, who owned the building and formerly had a law office there. The sign was moved, with help from the Wanasek Co., to the Society’s storage building, where it is shown in the photo at right below.

And Away We Go . . . . .
                  Contributed by Priscilla Crowley

Here it is the middle of February – we have finally gotten our first snowstorm of the season and all I can think of is summer vacation. Thinking of summer and vacation just naturally brings back the memories of those beloved "family vacations" we all took in our much younger years. Our family never went anywhere too fancy; most of the time our vacations consisted of visiting relatives we didn’t see very often or staying in a cabin "up North" and once we went to the Wisconsin Dells. It’s not really important whether we stayed at the finest resort available with all the amenities or stayed in a simple cabin in northern Wisconsin. What was important was that we were all together as a family, sharing an experience.

I would like to be able to tell you that our vacations were organized and calm with no hint of chaos at all. Unfortunately, we never did things that way. Most of our travels were accompanied by a certain amount of disorganization, a little hysteria, a certain amount of squabbling and a whole lot of chaos. We always had a great time; after all what’s a family vacation without chaos and a little hysteria?

Getting ready to go on vacation was almost as much fun as being on vacation. It was always a "Murphy’s Law" kind of a thing. If something could go wrong – it did. Mom would spend weeks trying to figure out how many and what kind of clothes to pack for all of us, how to pack, should we take our own pillows and bedding?, what about food?, and how could everything possibly fit in the car? One year we even took our dog – now that was a vacation!

Eventually the crying stopped, the bleeding stopped, the toe was washed out with soap and water and peroxided with everything we had and iodine added for good measure. The toe was wrapped and the decision was made to not go to the Doctor that night but to wait and see what it looked like in the morning. I was always surprised at the amount of faith that was put into the plan of "Let’s sleep on it and see what it looks like in the morning." With that statement we were all sent to bed and told to go right to sleep – no fooling around – we all had to be up and out of the house early in the morning.

Of course we girls were all sympathy for our brother’s suffering. It was really more like, "Good going moron – now we’ll probably have to stay home, what a klutz!" or "Great, just great – now I suppose your toe will turn black and fall off!" It’s just wonderful how brothers and sisters always pull together in a crisis.

Well, morning came, his toe had not turned black or fallen off as predicted; it looked ok, so it was decided to take a chance on "lockjaw" and /or blood poisoning and head for the North Woods anyway. We were gamblers at heart. We girls were good with that, after all it wasn’t our toe. A fresh bandage was put on the toe, we managed to get his foot into a tennis shoe without laces, Dad started stuffing the car with various suitcases, boxes, bags, pillows, food, maps, drinks, dog food, blankets, extra jackets, sweatshirts, Mom, brother, sister, me and Dad and the dog and away we went.

It wasn’t quite the early, early start the parents wanted but we did manage to get out of town before 8:30 a.m. Not bad, but of course that doesn’t count the time spent coming back home to check and make sure that all the doors and windows had been closed and locked and that the stove was turned off.

By the time we hit Janesville on our way "up North," there were already rumblings from the backseat about "When are we going to stop and eat?, I have to go to the bathroom., The girls are pinching me, tell them to stop pinching me (absolutely not true!), Jon is being a big dummy jerk! (absolutely true!), Tell the dog to stop scratching my legs – stop the car, I think the dog is gonna throw up!" I don’t know how Mom and Dad stood it and still retained any amount of sanity. This wasn’t a vacation, this was a tour through the "Twilight Zone."

After many hours of travel – it seemed like days – we finally arrived at our destination. We were staying in a cabin that belonged to Dad’s boss. Our expectations were that we would be by a lake with a sandy beach where we could swim and play in the water and Dad could do some fishing. The cabin would be a little rustic but very comfortable. What we got was a man’s hideaway cabin really meant only for fishing and hunting. The cabin was dark and musty smelling because it was deep in the woods and the trees blocked out most of the sunlight. It was sort of spooky looking and felt damp, it was on a lake but the lake wasn’t suitable at all for swimming it was full of algae and lily pads and unknown creepy creatures. It was ok for fishing as long as you liked Bullheads. There was a pier and a boat but the woods were thick and there was no open space around the cabin for kids to run and play.

Let’s face it, these kinds of vacations really weren’t much of a vacation for Mom – there was still cooking and cleaning to be done and trying to keep track of three kids and a dog in foreign territory was no easy task. In spite of everything we managed to have a good time, we found a swimming lake close by and Dad did enjoy catching what fish he could from the pier. He helped out with the cooking and we managed to figure out how to play in the "big woods" without getting lost or falling into the icky lake, and we even managed to not be attacked by the swarm of snakes Mom was just sure were lurking just beyond the cabin door.

Thankfully it only rained one day while we were there so we weren’t all penned up in the cabin driving each other crazy. We managed to hang on to the dog without losing her in the big woods. Jon’s toe healed up and none of us acquired any new injuries of gigantic proportions, only the normal run-of-the-mill ones we were used to seeing on a daily basis.

Friday rolled around and the packing started all over again, only this time it seemed as if there was more stuff than we had started out with. It couldn’t have been food, we ate most of that – we didn’t buy that much in souvenirs but somehow the stuff didn’t pack as nicely for going home as it did at the beginning of this adventure. We kids figured it was because we were going home with dirty clothes – everyone knows that dirty clothes pack bigger than clean ones – it’s all the dirt and sand and sweat – it expands the fibers and makes clothes bigger. Somehow everything got crammed into the car for our return journey home. We cleaned up the cabin, made sure it was locked up tight, took our rightful places in the car with hardly any disagreement as to who got to sit by a window and away we went.

If you think the drive up took a long time – it was nothing compared to how long it took to get home. Remember we had all been semi-nice to each other all week and now we were confined in really close quarters – something had to give. We didn’t even make it to the main road before the squabbling began. Bless Mom and Dad for not stopping the car and depositing us by the side of the road with a sign that said, "Free for the taking!" Eventually we ran out of steam and fell asleep – I can only imagine how happy Mom and Dad were – the silence must have been wonderful.

Finally we arrived back home safe and sound. Never had a little house looked so good. We piled out of the car, all five of us, hot, sweaty and a little scruffy around the edges and I swear the first thing out of our mouths was, "Hey Mom, what’s to eat?" Mom didn’t even dignify that with an answer. It was all hands on deck to help unload the car. The bad part about coming home from vacation is putting everything away and doing the laundry that had accumulated all week. It was beans and weenies for supper and Sunday was promoted to wash day.

Home always feels like a fantastic place to be when you’ve been away for a while. To quote Dorothy from the "Wizard of Oz," "There is no place like home!" The memories these family vacations generated are so very important. It’s another part of the "Remember When" game we all play. When you take your family on vacation and the kids are squabbling about whose turn it is to sit by a window, and aren’t we there yet? and when do we eat? and the always popular, Mom tell him or her to quit pinching me – just remember that someday you will look back and remember those days as some of the best ones you ever shared with your family. It may take a lot of years, decades even, but someday it will become a great memory.

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