Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood

by Dave Crehore

  Big Chip. A nickname for the Chippewa Flowage, located in northwest Wisconsin near the city of Hayward. Formed by the damming of the Chippewa and Chief rivers in 1923, it is Wisconsin’s third-largest lake and covers 15,300 acres or about 24 square miles. A labyrinth of peninsulas, bays, islands, and floating bogs, it can be hard to navigate but affords excellent fishing and wildlife viewing.

  car ferry. Car ferries were large steel ships that crossed Lake Michigan between Wisconsin and Michigan. Primarily, they carried railroad cars around the Chicago bottleneck, but they also carried automobiles and passengers. One ferry, the S. S. Badger, still sails out of Manitowoc, but it no longer carries railroad cars.

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  CCC. The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most popular and effective New Deal programs enacted to fight the effects of the Great Depression. From 1933 to about 1941, the CCC provided work, lodging, and food for hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men.

  They did forestry work, planted trees, worked in national, state, and local parks, and constructed many miles of roads and trails. The program was estimated to cost $1,000 per man per year. “CCC boys” were paid $30 a month, of which $25 had to be sent home.

  Checkers speech. On September 23, 1952, Richard M. Nixon, the Republican candidate for vice president, made one of the first political speeches to be televised nationally. He had been accused of accepting $16,000 (some said $18,000) in illegal campaign contributions; Demo-crats and some Republicans called for him to leave the ticket. Nixon used the speech to rebut the charges, calling the accusations a smear and claiming that he had spent the money not for personal needs but for office and travel expenses. In the speech, Nixon threw mud at his political opponents and summarized an audit of his personal finances, which showed modest assets and liabilities. He denied the assertion that his wife, Pat, had a fur coat, claiming that she wore a “respectable Republican cloth coat.”

  Nixon did, however, admit to accepting one personal gift, a black-and-white cocker spaniel, which his little girls named Checkers. In the most memorable lines of the speech, Nixon said his girls loved the dog and that he was going to keep it, no matter what. No one, of course, had ever suggested that the Nixons should return the dog, but the use of Checkers as a “straw dog” worked and Nixon stayed on the ticket.

  cigarette machine. Now almost extinct, cigarette machines were once a fixture of every bar, restaurant, lunch counter, and bus station. Customers in the early ’50s would insert a quarter, or at the most 35 cents, pull a knob, and receive a pack. Knowledgeable smokers confined their choices to the most popular brands—Camel, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, 194

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  Philip Morris, Old Gold, and Chesterfield—because they were the

  most likely to be fresh. Slower-selling brands like Fatima, Kool, and Herbert Tareyton sometimes dried out in the machine.

  DeSoto. The DeSoto was a medium-priced, moderately successful automobile sold by Chrysler from 1929 until 1961. For some reason, it was named after the early Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto. During its first years, the DeSoto was an upright and boxy car, but in the late 1930s it was given low-slung, streamlined styling. The DeSoto may have been doomed from the outset because it had to compete with its Chrysler stablemate Dodge, as well as Studebaker, Willys-Knight, and various General Motors cars. The 1961 DeSoto was pathetically ugly, with tail fins, four headlights in a slanted configuration, and two grilles, one above the other.

  Door County. The peninsular “thumb” of northeast Wisconsin, extending into Lake Michigan. Once a bucolic place of cherry orchards, small farms, cozy clapboard villages, and commercial fishermen, it has been extensively citified and commercialized by upscale tourists, retired people, and the canny locals who cater to them. Its scenic beauty, most of it preserved within five state parks, is still worth a look. But pack a lunch; Door County is widely known as the home of the nine-dollar hamburger.

  enso. A northeast Wisconsin word that means “Isn’t it so?” Pronounced en-SO, with a rising inflection at the end.

  fedora. A soft wool felt men’s hat, popular from the late 1800s through about 1960. A fedora had a brim of varying width, a lengthwise crease down the center of the crown, and dual pinches in front. You can see fedoras in action on the heads of such classic film heroes as Humphrey Bogart ( The Maltese Falcon), Clark Gable ( It Happened One Night), Spencer Tracy ( Bad Day at Black Rock), and Jimmy Stewart ( Vertigo).

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  Fabled Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi was one of the last public figures to wear a fedora.

  flat tire. Almost a thing of the past today, “flats” were a common occurrence from the earliest days of motoring until well into the 1960s. Tires in those days were not belted with steel, so it was easy for a nail, a shard of broken glass, or even a sharp stone to penetrate a tire’s tread and soft inner tube. While most flats were caused by slow leaks, some were sudden, explosive, and scary, particularly at highway speed. In addition to a full-sized spare tire, prudent motorists carried a jack, a lug wrench, a tube repair kit, a tire pump, and a tire iron at all times.

  If you got a flat and didn’t have a spare, you had to jack up the appropriate corner of the car, loosen the lug nuts, remove the wheel and tire, use the tire iron to peel the tire off the wheel, pull the inner tube out of the tire casing, find the hole in the tube, and glue a patch over it. When the glue dried, you put the inner tube back into the tire, used the tire iron to put the tire back on the wheel, inflated the tube with the pump, retightened the lug nuts, and let the car down off the jack.

  Ford, Model A. The Model A Ford, produced from 1927 until 1931, replaced the venerable Model T. Almost five million Model A Fords were built. The car sold for $500, had a four-cylinder, 3.3-liter engine that developed 40 horsepower, got 20–30 miles per gallon, and could attain a speed of 65 miles per hour.

  Ford, Model T. The Model T Ford was the first affordable American automobile, “the car that put America on wheels.” It was also known as the Tin Lizzie and the Flivver. With its rugged construction and high ground clearance, the T was ideally suited to American roads; outside cities, most roads at the time were paved with gravel, mud, or snow.

  About fifteen million Model Ts were built between 1908 and 1927. The car had a four-cylinder, 2.9-liter engine that developed 20 horsepower, 196

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  got 20 miles per gallon, and could be driven—cautiously—at speeds up to 45 miles per hour. Because the Model T had no fuel pump and depended on gravity to move gasoline from its tank to the carburetor, it could not go up steep hills in forward gear and had to climb them in reverse. The first Model Ts cost $850, but by 1920, mass production and economies of scale brought the price down to $300.

  Frau. German for “Mrs.”

  Gardner, Ava (1922–90). Back in the ’50s, when a man or boy got a new wallet for Christmas it usually came with a picture of a beautiful movie star inside, behind a little celluloid window. Ava Gardner was one of those stars. From a poor and rural background in North Carolina, Ava was “discovered” in 1941 and signed a contract with MGM. She appeared in about sixty films and was nominated for an Oscar. A brunette with green eyes and a spectacular figure, she overwhelmed men with smoldering half smiles; she could appear powerful and dominating one minute and vulnerable the next. She was married three times, to

  Mickey Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw for about a year apiece and to Frank Sinatra for six years.

  Holstein. The familiar black-and-white dairy cow, the Holstein was first brought to North America from the Netherlands in the 1850s. A mature Holstein weighs about fifteen hundred pounds and can produce two thousand gallons of milk per year.

  Howdy Doody. OK, kids, let’s all sing “It’s Howdy Doody Time,” to the tune of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay”! Howdy Doody was an inane but immensely popular children’s show that aired on NBC-TV from 1947

  until 1960. Howdy was a marionette whose voice was provid
ed by the show’s host, Buffalo Bob, who dressed up as a cowboy. In addition to his scratchy, un-kid-like voice, Howdy had another problem—he

  couldn’t hold still. No matter what he was doing or saying, Howdy was 197

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  in constant motion, tap dancing, shuffling, and waving his hands and arms in fluttering gestures.

  Other marionette characters included Howdy’s sister Heidi Doody

  (clever, enso?), Mayor Phineas T. Bluster, and Princess Summerfall Winterspring. Besides Buffalo Bob, the principal human character of the show was Clarabell, a mute clown who communicated with horns and seltzer bottles like Harpo Marx. I always felt that kids who really enjoyed Howdy Doody were short on self-esteem.

  Hudson. Hudson automobiles were built in Detroit from 1909 until 1954.

  They were reasonably priced and innovative, slightly upscale from the more numerous Fords and Chevrolets. For a time, Hudson also produced the Essex and Terraplane cars. Hudsons were among the first cars to feature dual brakes, oil pressure gauges and ammeters, automatic transmissions, and independent front suspension. With their strong, light bodies and high-compression engines, Hudson “Hornets”

  were NASCAR champions from 1951 through 1954. Hudson merged

  with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to form American Motors Corporation in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

  latakia. A black and pungent pipe tobacco grown in Syria and Cyprus, latakia is cured and seasoned with the smoke from burning pine, cedar, and various herbs. Despite its menacing appearance and heavy aroma, latakia is mild to smoke and low in nicotine. It is a principal ingredient of what are called English or Scottish pipe tobacco mixtures. A little latakia goes a long way.

  Lombardo, Guy (1902–77). A Canadian bandleader who fronted a group known as the Royal Canadians. Famous for “the sweetest music this side of heaven,” Lombardo’s band featured saccharine saxophones playing sentimental dance tunes and “businessman’s bounce.” It had one of the longest-running gigs imaginable, doing a live New Year’s Eve broadcast from the Roosevelt Hotel in New York for thirty years, 1929–

  59, and playing “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight.

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  Lorain, Ohio. A middle-sized shipbuilding and steel mill town on the Lake Erie shore about twenty-five miles west of Cleveland. Compared to Manitowoc in the ’50s, which ran mainly to Germans, Lorain was a bubbling racial and cultural stew of Yankee pioneers, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Poles, and Hungarians. The steel mill produced powerful air pollutants and supplied them to all, regardless of creed or color. Lorain had air with real character—air you could see.

  MacArthur, General Douglas (1880–1964). A lifelong U.S. Army officer, MacArthur was much loved and much hated. His résumé is far too extensive to go into here; suffice it to say that in the early days of World War II, the U.S. and Philippine forces he commanded were driven

  back by the Japanese to the Bataan peninsula and the small fortress island of Corregidor in Manila Bay. Under orders from Washington, MacArthur, with his family and aides, escaped from the island in a PT

  boat and left the trapped soldiers and sailors behind to be captured by the Japanese. Arriving in Australia, he proclaimed, “I came through and I shall return.” The fact that he said “I” rather than “we” is an insight into his character; his military skill was exceeded only by his gran-diosity and showmanship. Eventually, as commander of allied forces in the southwest Pacific, he did return and reconquer the Philippines.

  When the war ended, MacArthur became commander of the

  U.S. occupation of Japan, and then was put in charge of U.S. and U.N. forces in the first year of the Korean War. Disobeying orders, MacArthur called for war with China and in 1951 was dismissed by President Harry S. Truman. In a final address to Congress, MacArthur made the second of his two most famous statements: “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” There was talk of his running for president, but nothing came of it.

  McCarthy, Senator Joseph Raymond. Wisconsin has little to be ashamed of, other than the fact that its citizens repeatedly elected Joe McCarthy, first as a judge and then as a U.S. senator. It is impossible for anyone of any political stripe to be objective about McCarthy, so I won’t even try.

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  McCarthy, a native of Grand Chute near Appleton, Wisconsin, was a scheming, lying, dipso demagogue who led a reign of terror in the 1950s, claiming to know of hundreds of “commanists” in government, precious few of whom were ever discovered or named. He was abetted by the Washington press of the time, which printed his wild specula-tions and slanders without asking any of the obvious questions.

  Because he was a circuit judge, McCarthy received an automatic

  commission as a second lieutenant after he volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1942, although he later claimed to have enlisted as a “buck private.” He served as an intelligence officer with a dive-bomber squad-ron in the South Pacific and flew twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer in the backseat of a dive-bomber. He used a picture of himself in a flying helmet and goggles in his campaign literature, dubbing himself “Tail-Gunner Joe.” After the war he claimed to have flown thirty-two missions, enough to qualify him for the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was awarded to him in 1952. Eventually his excesses caught up with him; he was censured by the Senate in 1954 and died of acute hepatitis in 1957.

  In the 1990s I attended a series of watershed planning meetings in the Outagamie County Courthouse in Appleton. Entering the building for the first time, I was astounded to find a bust of Tail-Gunner Joe on a pedestal in the vestibule. From then on I brought a paper grocery bag from home and placed it over the bust on my way into the court-house. The bags were always removed by the time I left a couple of hours later. I understand that the bust is now in a museum.

  magazine plug. A wooden or plastic stick that is inserted into the tubular magazine of a pump or semiautomatic shotgun to reduce the total ca-pacity of the gun to three rounds. Required by law for the hunting of migratory birds and waterfowl.

  Manitowoc. In the 1950s, a manufacturing and shipbuilding city of about 25,000 on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, ninety miles north 200

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  of Milwaukee. Was and is one of the neatest, most “kept-up,” and well-governed communities to be found anywhere, with an excellent school and park system. During World War II, the Manitowoc shipyard produced twenty-eight submarines. Pronounced MAN-a-ta-walk.

  Mein Kampf. Adolph Hitler was charged with treason after the Beer Hall Putsch, his abortive attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923. He was sentenced to five years of imprisonment, of which he served about a year. During his time in prison he wrote Mein Kampf ( My Struggle), a book that outlined his past, his view of the world, and his plans for the future. It was all there: the racism and anti-Semitism, the notion of German destiny leading to domination of the world, and a lot of nonsense about the “Aryan” master race. If world leaders had read the book in the 1930s, when Hitler was rising to power in Germany, a lot of death and destruction might have been avoided.

  Mikadow. See WOMT.

  mumblety-peg. A game of skill and luck played with pocketknives, mumblety-peg has hundreds of variations. A basic version involved tossing a pocketknife gently a foot or two into the air and hoping the blade would stick into the ground when it landed. Then the player would try to make the knife rotate twice in the air before landing blade-first, then three times, and so forth.

  New Deal. A system of federal programs, statutes, and regulations that saved capitalism from itself during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

  P-51. Nicknamed the Mustang, the P-51 was World War II’s most successful Allied fighter plane. In the opinion of many, it was also the best looking and best sounding. Mustangs were built by North American Aviation and powered by 12-cylinder, 2,000-horsepower supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin engines manufactured in the United States by the 201

  Glossary
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  Packard Motor Car Company. Advanced versions of the Mustang

  could fly to forty thousand feet and attain speeds of over four hundred miles per hour with the throttle at “war emergency.” Mustangs were designed to escort American bombers such as the B-17 on daylight raids over Germany, and at the time were the only fighters with

  enough range to go there and back. They were also used, with resounding success, for fighter sweeps and ground attack. The P-47 Thunder-bolt, or “Jug,” was in the same league as the Mustang but lacked its panache. Civilian-owned Mustangs are still flying as “warbirds” in air shows.

  Pflueger Supreme. A fishing reel of the type called bait-casting, the original Supreme was made in the United States and featured a transverse spool for the line. It was mounted on the top of the rod grip and con-trolled by the thumb. Failure to thumb it correctly created backlashes of tangled line that could take minutes or hours to pick out. These backlashes would occur only when the fish were biting.

  popple. A familiar Wisconsin name for trees of two species: the quaking aspen, populus tremuloides, and the large-toothed aspen, populus grandi-dentata. Popples are fast growing and short lived, and their wood is used primarily in the manufacture of paper.

  record, 78-rpm. The 78s were large, thick platters with a playing time of only a few minutes per side. Such recordings of classical works came in cardboard boxes called albums, with paper sleeves for as many as ten records. An album containing enough 78s for a long work, such as a Gustav Mahler symphony, would weigh several pounds. Liner notes

  that analyzed the music were pasted inside the albums, and local radio announcers with time to fill sometimes read them over the air, joyfully mispronouncing the Italian, French, and German words.

  respectable Republican cloth coat. See Checkers speech.

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  sheepshead. Of European origin, sheepshead ( Schafkopf in German) is a complex card game for two to eight people using a thirty-two-card deck. I never learned to play sheepshead, but I watched many games.