"Art Is A Rich Man's Game"

"The Spirit Of The Northwest" by Sidney Bedore, Green Bay, WI 

I found that quote in a story here about Sidney Bedore, a Wisconsin sculptor. Another statue of his (of Jean Nicolet) was supposed to grace the Capitol Building grounds at Madison but never made it. That story is buried here at the end.

La Dolce Salsa

Cross-posted at Trooper York, a speakeasy blog (invitation only) I frequent:

It is sarsa time in Madison. The hot August sun has ripened the tomatoes, and Monona Bay that skirts 'Little Italy' seems congealed in silver silence. It is the season before the gnat invasion.
All along lower Regent Street, in adjoining backyards and open spaces off Milton Street, Italian housewives are vigilantly guarding the sarsa boards from the threat of rain. Within the homes the kettles are boiling—big kettles filled with sliced red tomatoes. When after an hour the cooking has turned the bubbling pulp into a thin red sauce, the contents are strained. Then the squishy mass is poured on clean white sarsa boards and placed in the sun to evaporate. Every hour, or oftener, the thickening nucleus is spread and respread until it takes on a richer shade and becomes a heavy relish. As it is packed away in jars, olive oil is poured on top—enough to form an air-proof covering. The finished product is then ready for use—all fall, all winter, all spring—until another crop of red tomatoes can be harvested.

~from Old World Wisconsin by Fred L. Holmes, published in 1944. Other nationalities are at the "Old World Wisconsin" tag.

"Sarsa" is Sicilian dialect for salsa.

Here's a link to a photo of a woman preparing "sarsa" in Madison. link

I especially like the simple trick of pouring oil over the sarsa to keep out air. That's exactly how commercial sodium and potassium metals (both air and moisture sensitive) are sold--submerged in oil to protect them.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Trooper York!

My gift to Trooper York

From Old World Wisconsin, a book published in 1944 which chronicles the ethnic influences within Wisconsin:

The Irish are good story tellers (shanachies), and few other nationalities can approach them for quick repartee. This may account for the success achieved by Irish attorneys as jury advocates. Simple incidents in life and apposite figures of speech embellish conversations. But the deferential manner of statement accounts for much of the enthralling attention the Irish command. 

Further:

An imaginativeness in thought inclines the Irish to satirize people with characteristic names:

'A nickname fitting better than the name their mother gave'

One fellow suspected of stealing fowls was facetiously called 'Turkey Jim'; the engineer on a threshing rig who seldom washed for meals was 'blackie'; three Irishmen with the same surname were distinguished as 'Big Mike', 'Little Mike', and 'Black Mike', Jerry O'Leary, who lived on the stony ridge, became 'Hog-back Jerry'; Peter Goggins, the saloon keeper, was called 'Whiskey Goggins'; two Norwegians because of their distinctive occupations and physical characteristics were 'Skunk Foot Ole' and 'Big Foot Ole'; the diminutive man who officiously served mass when the altar boys were absent was 'Priestine' Murphy; the paunchy bartender was 'Bullfrog Joe'; the cross old codger laborer was 'Sealion Burke,' and every lad with red hair acquired 'Red' as an added surname. 

Ethnic Germans Reject Kloppenburg?

I noticed the curious swath across the state map of voting results in yesterday's judicial election in Wisconsin:

original here

That orange swath reminded me a little of the orange swath of ethnic Germans who settled the state:

Coinkydink?

St. Patrick's Sons Don The Green In Wisconsin

The ethnic richness of immigrant Wisconsin about which Fred L. Holmes wrote was already fading quickly in 1944 and may have all but vanished by now.  Places like Erin Prairie (population 658 according to the 2000 census) is still 98% white, but I wonder just how Irish it is today.

Holmes, himself of Irish heritage, visited Erin Prairie in the 1940s, interviewed people, and wrote:

'Every monument except one in this cemetery bears an Irish name' said the youthful caretaker, pausing a moment in the mowing, 'and that one is a Norwegian who had married an Irish girl.'

Headstones lettered with birthplaces from every county in Ireland bear names such as Donahue, Kennedy, Padden, Ross, Gherty, Garrity, Maloney, Wells, Stephens, Murta, Riley, Moore, Dean, Mead, Meath, Gill, La Vele, and many more. A roll call of the same names at mass any Sunday would show people answering. It is as if the identical pioneers are still around laughing, joking, praying. I looked upon it all with a feeling of sadness. Here was a sting in my heart that told me this was Ireland in essence; the spirit of love, devotion, and hope.

'Erin Prairie has changed mightily since I was a boy,' explained the township assessor, who had paused at the church. 'Then the overwhelming majority of the people were native-born Irish or first generation descent. So many of the younger have gone to St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Irish ways are dying out.'

Holmes went on to describe "Irish politics" in Wisconsin's largest city, Milwaukee, and a tragedy still unsurpassed:

Traditionally the Irish are Democrats in politics. Politics attracted them, like moths to candlelight, from the first. Five native-born Irish took prominent part in the convention that drafted the Wisconsin Constitution of 1848. They were the largest nationalistic group, exceeding all the others in membership combined. Early attachment to the Democratic party came from a feeling that the Jacksonians were more sympathetic to the hardships of the immigrant.

One of the most tragic incidents in the history of the state arose from a display of their lively interest in politics. During the Lincoln-Douglas presidential campaign of 1860, a group of young Irish boys, members of the Union Guard of the Third Ward in Milwaukee, chartered the 'Lady Elgin,' one of the finest boats on Lake Michigan, for a round trip tour to Chicago. They wanted to hear their favorite, Senator Stephen Douglas, speak. They took their sweethearts along for the holiday outing of singing Irish songs and dancing. On the return trip at night their excursion boat was rammed in the dark by a lumber freighter. The 'Lady Elgin' soon foundered and sank quickly off the shore at Winnetka, Illinois, with a loss of nearly half of the six hundred passengers.[1] That tragedy cast a pall of such mourning over the state that the disaster was remembered for generations in both stories and in song. It is still recalled by an annual requiem mass at St. John's Cathedral, Milwaukee, on September 8.  

~Fred L. Holmes, "St. Patrick's Sons Don The Green" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

Sign commemorating the sinking of the "Lady Elgin" in 1860

The Paddle Steamer "Lady Elgin"

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[1] The wreck was located in 1989. Link

Oktoberfest!

The end of summer brings a gradual respite from arduous work. October, with its golden days and hazy blue atmosphere, is signalized in some German communities with a harvest festival on the first Sunday of the month. For forty-five years such an event has been observed annually in Sheboygan and Milwaukee by Bavarian societies. Less regularly but over a longer period smaller German settlements have kept up the custom. It is a Thanksgiving event, religious in background, colorful with Old World civic ceremonials. Among the older Germans it is still known as the 'Münchner October Fest.'

~Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

The Tavern

Among the Germans the tavern is a community club house. After church, the whole family, before returning to the farm, is likely to enter to drink beer, while sitting around a table talking with friends and neighbors. These taverns are different in atmosphere from the crowded bar familiar to other communities. They have the attributes of family sociability rather than commercial activity.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

More from the Wiki:

In Germania (the German-American districts of cities) a beer culture flourished in 19th-century America in taverns, saloons, and especially beer-gardens which operated on Sundays and attracted entire families. Germans operated nearly all the nations brewries, and demand was high until prohibition arrived in 1920. German immigrants acquired a reputation rivaling the Irish for heavy drinking and alcohol-associated violence. By the late 19th century family-oriented beer gardens provided all day recreation on Sundays. German newspapers promoted temperance but not abstinence. From the German perspective the issue was less the ill effects of alcohol than its benefits in promoting social life. For American Germans, the pub stood alongside the church as one of the two pillars of German social and spiritual life.

Rural Italy maintains such a family tavern culture, or least they did 30 years ago when I spent some time there.  Ironically the Italians don't call taverns "taverns"--they call them bars--il bar--a word and custom which I always thought strange but never bothered to fathom.

Old World Wisconsin: Deutschtum Über Allis-(Chalmers)

Blatz-Milwaukee's Finest Beer

Many German "Forty-Eighters" settled in Milwaukee, helping establish that city's progressive politics and decades-long flirtation with Sewer Socialism. Milwaukee's tradition is distinct from Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr.'s Wisconsin Idea, which for the most part was a wholly Madison-based idea.

Holmes observed:

Meantime, among the German immigrants, leaders arose to found new industries that were to make Wisconsin known through the nation. Every German community had its Braumeister. The names of Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Rahr became synonymous for malt beverages; Kohler for plumbing fixtures; Vollrath for porcelain enamel ware; Vits for aluminum products; Pritzlaff for wholesale hardware; Heil for oil burners; Reiss for Great Lakes coal shipments; Pfister, Vogel and Rueping for leather; Harnischfeger for heavy machinery; Lauson for tractor engines; Stoppenbach for sausage. The list might be extended indefinitely. Perhaps it is the German example of thrift that has resulted in Wisconsin attaining the second highest percentage of homeownership in the United States.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit ist meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

The President chose to speak from Milwaukee last Labor Day and I suppose he was hoping to resonate with the crowds there. I was secretly hoping that he would run into Ron Weisflog of Pewaukee or Michael_Haz (from an undisclosed location) when he was there.  You remember Ron Weisflog:



I salute Ron Weisflog and Michael_Haz and hope that their legacy is not fading anytime soon.
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The title is a pun on Deutschland Über Alles. Allis-Chalmers is a huge manufacturing firm in Milwaukee. The word Deutschtum literally translates as "Germandom" but the word is more germane to "German-ness" and is typically applied outside of Germany to designate a region with predominantly German culture.

Old World Wisconsin: Oh the Germanity!

Holmes:

Milwaukee's vocabulary is still replete with adopted German words and expressions. Hannah Jacobson found the city's dialect sufficiently unusual to furnish her theme for a B.A. degree thesis at the University of Wisconsin. She discovered :"Ach" being used as an exclamation in everyday speech. Many Milwaukee children say "tante" for "aunt"; the streetcar bends (turns) the corner"; people "stay to home" (zu Hause) instead of "stay at home"; "I go by my aunt's house" instead of "I go to my aunt's house"; "make my apron shut" is a current idiom for the English "tie my apron"; "nix come eraus" is a customary byword for "nichts kommt heraus"; "set yourself down" is a translation of the request "setzen Sie sich nieder" and "Aufwiedersehen," a friendly farewell word, may be overheard on any Milwaukee street corner as companions part to go different ways.

Near the turn of the [20th] century, with the discontinuance of language papers and decline in the preaching of sermons in German, many of the cities began to lose their Old World flavor. The change is less noticeable in rural communities.*

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

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*I noted a few of my father's own curious rural Germanic idioms expressed in his letters home: here (footnote [2] and here (footnote [1]).

Old World Wisconsin: Freiheit ist Meine!

Revolutions roiled nearly the whole European continent in the late 1840s. Alex de Tocqueville said of that period:

Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror. link

Wisconsin entered the Union in 1848, just as waves of European emigrants sought new lives. The Revolution of 1848 led to a diaspora of German-speaking peoples, some of whom settled in Wisconsin. They were the intellectual seed for the Wisconsin progressive liberal tradition.

Holmes wrote:

Roughly that segment of the state with Madison as the string center of the arc and with Manitowoc County as the upper swing and South Milwaukee as the lower tangent is densely settled by the descendants of people representing every class and community of German society. The first settlers arrived as early as 1839. Some came seeking religious and civic liberty; others for the purpose of improving their economic and social status. Some were Protestants, others were Catholics and a third group, composed mostly of so-called "Forty-eighters," were "Free Thinkers." Before the migration ended, the Germans were so scattered that their settlements dotting the map of Wisconsin looked like a uniform patch-work quilt.

Scattered among the early German settlers were many so-called "Free Thinkers." At one time this group had twenty-three societies in Wisconsin alone. Mayville had one of the leading organizations. These people were mostly "Forty-Eighters" --men of culture and means. Some had exchanged titles of nobility for their freedom. They were sympathizers with the German Liberal revolution of 1848, and were the progressive liberals of their times.

It is difficult accurately to define their dogma. They were not atheists but they held a belief in some godlike principle of nature. They spoke glibly of their followership after Thomas Paine, French-thinker and American revolutionist. Some had their children baptized in "the name of the United States of America." Often at their gatherings they would display the cap of freedom on the top of the liberty pole. [1]

"Freiheit ist meine!" they shouted.

For eighty years the little village of Thiensville on the old Milwaukee River resisted Christianizing influences.  They had their children married without benefit of clergy. They buried their dead in the old Mequon cemetery under memorials to their name only. Rural neighbors looked askance upon these strange townsmen, calling their community "Little Paris" or the "Godforsaken Village." When a non-conformist newcomer attempted a collection for the founding of a church he was met with a double offer of the amount raised if no church be founded. Repeated efforts to establish a church failed.

At Sauk City remains the last active Freie Gemeinde hall and library in Wisconsin. [2] A spacious lawn and spreading trees give it the imposing setting of a rural community social center. As its members die they are buried in the nearby Free-Thinker cemetery in the Town of Honey Creek.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

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[1] The seated Liberty on that 1848 quarter in the photo clutches a phrygian cap on a pole.

[2] Wisconsin author August Derleth (1909-1971) associated with the Freie Gemeinde of his beloved "Sac Prairie." Derleth lived, and was buried, in Sauk City.

Old World Wisconsin: Avant Ouisconsin!

Jean Nicolet lands at Green Bay in 1634

Every Wisconsin school child learned (and I hope still does learn) that the French were the first Europeans to explore and map that territory. The name Wisconsin derives from an Algonquian language, but there's a story of how the French invented the name: link

Author Fred Holmes waxes nostalgic for traces of les Français, already long disappearing back in 1944:

Would you see historic places, authentic relics, hallowed ground? Would you hear the French folk songs of the first settlers sung by present-day descendants? Would you like to walk in paths bordered by old-fashioned flower gardens? Green Bay has all of them. She was the gateway to the Middle West opened wide by Frenchmen whose ineradicable imprint is still discernible after the passing of nearly two centuries.

Wisconsin is cognizant of its debt to the intrepid French explorer, priest and trader. Soon to stand in the shadow of the capitol dome at Madison will be the Bedore statue of Jean Nicolet,* the first white man to come to Wisconsin, who arrived at the Green Bay entrance in 1634; in the streets of De Pere, a tablet marks the site of the first mission founded by Pere Claude Allouez in 1620; the black-robed Father James Marquette, co-discoverer of the Mississippi in 1673, is one of the two representatives of the Statuary Hall in Washington; Charles de Langlade, "the bravest of the brave," who created the first farm out of the wilderness, is memorialized by a bronze cenotaph in the city of Green Bay; "Villa Louis" at Prairie du Chien and the "Grignon House" at Kaukauna have been rehabilitated to perpetuate the high cultural attainments of the French; and two State parks--Perrot and Brunet Island--designate localities where French fur traders conducted extensive operations. 

The early French who came to Wisconsin were pathfinders rather than empire builders. They preferred to trap; to wander in wilderness solitudes, and to puff a pipe at night around the fire, while telling other loiters of the incidents and exploits of the day. Their observations on the cunning of wild animals, the ingenuity of the beaver, the wariness of the muskrat--interspersed tales of their own courage and fearlessness.  The harsh struggle for existence and the rugged outdoor life gave these people an individuality of their own.

But war shattered the silence of their woodland security. The Black Hawk episode that made a trail across southwest Wisconsin in 1832 was to hasten the decline of the fur industry's supremacy. Soldiers scouting through the brush, around silver lakes, across verdant meadow lands and along fertile valley bottoms in search of the fleeing Sacs came to realize the possibilities for developing a home in such a country of contagious beauty and wild productivity. Their letters back home stirred the East. Soon came the the New Englanders and New Yorkers--typical, farseeing Yankee stock, who were to run the governmental affairs of Wisconsin in pretty much their own way until the end of the [19th] century. The greatest advance in American history had begun to take a form that was to roll westward until the vast continent was subjected to settlement. 

Green Bay and Prairie du Chien still radiate French tone and charm. For more than a century the French influence has been fading. Those who came as soldiers and traders in colonial times turned into farmers as economic conditions changed.

Three epochs of history mark the settlement of the French in Wisconsin. Many of the first to arrive were traders and trappers who came directly from France to engage in fur trade; the second influx came mostly from the French province of Quebec just before the Civil War and became active in the lumbering industry; the third were the remnants of both groups who remained to farm, once the timber had been removed and the log drives ended. This explains the the presence of French settlements along the rivers of Northern Wisconsin.

Four generations of life in Wisconsin have not eliminated the sharp inflection given to the pronunciation of many English words; nor removed, from ordinary conversation, expressions that sound odd though literally translated from the mother tongue. Characteristic among the French-Canadian is an emphasis on the last syllable so that "Frenchman" is pronounced as "French man" and "high school" as "high school"; or they pronounce beginning with a vowel with the letter "h" so that "oil" is articulated as if it were spelt "hoil" and "air" as "hair." Among the less educated "she" is commonly used after masculine nouns,---"Mrs. Demarse said of her dull boy--'my son Dolph, she funny boy.'" Expressions that are perfect in French become awkward when translated into English, "Me, I do not know him" (Moi, je ne le connais pas)--or "You, are you crazy, you?" (Vous, etes vous fou?). Among these people I found that the parents speak the native language to their children when they do not want strangers to know what they are saying. Otherwise, English is used in conversation about the home. Less frequent every year are the occasions for songs and recitations in French at school programs and entertainments.

While the romantic, religious days are fast leaving the lives of the French in Wisconsin, their devotion, respect, courtesy and hospitality to Old World ideals continue as inherited traits. 

-Fred L. Holmes, "Romantic Days Are Fading" Old World Wisconsin (1944)
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*The statue never made it to Madison but was instead placed near the spot where Nicolet came ashore in 1634. link  The statue has since been moved to a different site northeast of Green Bay. link

Old World Wisconsin

-Fred L. Holmes writing in the preface to his Old World Wisconsin (1944):

Through many questionings and wanderings in my native state, I have formed an appreciation, beyond ordinary measure, of the people who are Wisconsin. To know them from their racial backgrounds through their New World cultures is to understand more clearly the reason for our hegemony in the family of states. They came from youthful, youthful stock of many Old World nationalities--seekers after freedom in religion and government; pursuers of opportunities; men and women of pioneering strength and courage, anxious to weave their lives into the warp of national existence. Wisconsin history has been enriched by them.

Wars become universal innovators.  During centuries of peace, customs change but little.  Religion, language, and habits strive to keep alive the past.  While sojourning among the Wisconsin people of racial memories, I have listened to the legends of lands across the sea as handed down from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation; visited scenes of their high emprise and holy devotion; observed customs that time has seen practiced through many decades; enjoyed the pageantry of ancient drama.  No other state has gathered in a melting pot such a diversity of rural and urban foreign groups. With them I turned the pages of living history.

Each little transplanted group has its own individuality.  Ways of dress, eating and worship are all different.  My own wanderings through Europe have been taken by the vicarious method of trodding the byways of newer Wisconsin. The wings I saw and the voices I heard in these Old World-New World communities are here told against a background of Yankee advance.

Holmes' book is still in print as a paperback: link

Sorry Mr. Wright, Cash And Carry Only

My stepfather told me a great story.  In 1948 he was working at a department store on the Capitol Square in Madison. In those days, there were no malls and all the major stores were still downtown on the Square. My stepfather was about 18 or 19 and was working his first job. He worked on the third floor where dry goods were stored and unpacked before moving them down to the retail space on the ground floor and second story. It sounds kind of inefficient but the customers didn't want to climb to the third floor (where it was also hotter in the summer) and so it was used in lieu of a basement for storage.

One day, a rather odd-looking man (a dapper Dan my stepfather called  him) came in with a couple other younger guys. My stepfather's supervisor nudged him and said:

"Hey you know who that is?"
 
"No" 

"That's Frank Lloyd Wright" 

Wright had driven over to Madison on Highway 14 with a couple students and was shopping for housewares for the school he ran back in Spring Green. Wright was dressed in a full-length overcoat and "that hat" (my stepfather called it a "sombrero" and recognized "it" when I showed him the photo that I pasted in above).  [Aside: I'm not sure if that hat was really so different from what other distinguished men wore at the time-Robert Oppenheimer for example was famous for his pork pie hat--so famous that the journal Physics Today honored him by posing a photo of just a pork pie hat for its cover in 1948 (link)].

Wright must have been about 80 years old in 1948. He came up to the third floor, avoiding the retail space and went to where houseware items were stored.  Wright carried a cane too and used it to point out things that he wanted as he moved amongst the shelved housewares. He selected three or four wicker basketfuls of dishes--cups, saucers, plates, silver, cookware, etc. My stepfather watched him and then packed up the stuff for him. Afterwards, his boss nudged him again and said:

 "Watch, I bet they make him pay in cash." 

And they did. Wright had an awful reputation for not paying bills. It seems that in his lifetime, the little people were never grateful enough to forgive him his pecuniary trespasses. Just as well. The townspeople in Richland Center dithered for decades before deciding to even recognize their native son. They still haven't put up any kind of civic memorial that I know of--they're still waiting for the memory of unpaid debts to fade.  So far as I know, the best memorial is the one Wright made himself: the old German Warehouse, which I saw and wondered at many times as a kid when we visited that town.

Sink the Bismark

click on the photo to enlarge your appetite.

The chocolate bismark is a species of Berliner doughnut, available in certain locations throughout southern Wisconsin, for example, here.

I have fond memories of the bismark. As a boy of 13, I delivered the morning Wisconsin State Journal newspaper. One of my customers was a now defunct "micro-bakery," run by an old Bavarian woman. Each morning around 6 o'clock when I stopped by to deliver the news, she would treat me to a freshly baked chocolate bismark. They were especially tasty and appreciated in the dead of winter.

Real chocolate bismarks are becoming hard to find, having been displaced by custard-filled species, and also by bismarks prepared with a lighter-colored dough. I googled around looking for a photo of the real thing, but to no avail. The photo above is the real deal from my trip back. Accept no substitutes.

Greetings From Wisconsin

I'll be in Wisconsin for the next several days, visiting family but also looking for the perfect chocolate bismarck, drinking the occasional pop (as long as there's some brandy in it), and drinking water from bubblers.