Shoe Column: Stevens Point is a special place
Get ‘Wired In’, help a local nonprofit
By Tim “Shoe” Sullivan
Stevens Point, Wisconsin has always been a great place to call home.
That was especially true “back in the day”. Our fair city was always vibrant and interesting. This town located on the banks of the Wisconsin River had so much to offer. It’s always fun to take a trip down memory lane.
As a kid, you could walk downtown and hear Christmas songs playing during the winter. The only holiday tune that I could never quite figure out was “Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire”. When we sat around a fire, our family would usually roast marshmallows, or an occasional wienie. Nobody roasted chestnuts. I don’t even know what one looks like.
Our town was so innocent. The biggest highlight one year was when they put up stop-and-go lights at the corner of Main and Division. My buddies and I would stand at that corner for hours, and we thought Frankie Paukert was a genius.
He’d say, “Look, guys. see where that light turns red? I bet the next car coming will stop.” And he was right! Frankie was a smart dude.
We built forts all over the neighborhood. It was just something fun to do. Our gang made a couple behind Garbers which was close to the water tower, and we made several more in the cement blocks near Brietenstein’s Coal Company. There were always a lot of forts around. They had no redeeming social value, and the forts only purpose was to allow kids to sit inside them.
If you were one of the lucky kids to sit in a fort, man, that was cool beans. And if you didn’t want to sit in your fort, you could always go sit in someone else’s. I mean, those forts never had doors or anything. Those forts especially came in handy for hide-and-seek games. The only problem was that everyone would hide in the forts, and nobody ever went out to actually look for someone.
What fun we had! For a few years, usually around Krazy Days, a plane would fly overhead and drop paper plates or ping pong balls. When you picked one up, it indicated that you won something. How cool was that?
You could go to school and the teacher would give you a goiter pill. Those pills were like candy. To this day, I have no idea what a goiter is, but I think all the kids in our school had good ones.
We were always playing with the kids across the street, and their mom was something else. Every day, she would tell Johnny, Larry, and Jimmy to “wear their anklets”.
After hearing that countless times, I asked one of them, “What the heck is she talking about?”
Larry replied, “She means we should put on our socks.”
We used to play with cap guns and tinker toys. Do kids even do that any more?
Kids would roller-skate down the sidewalk or run around the neighborhood wearing Davy Crockett coonskin hats or Mickey Mouse ears. Then you could go inside and watch the Mouseketeers and Annette Funicello on TV. M-I-C …K-E-Y…Why? Because we like you!…M-O-U-S-E.
Sometimes you could go snipe hunting at night. You would take a glass jar and walk outside hoping to catch a snipe. Nobody ever actually caught one. It was unheard of to catch a snipe. You had a better chance roasting chestnuts than capturing the dreaded snipe.
Back in the day, you could walk down to the Southside and peek into a store window and look at baby chicks. I think the place was Moeschler’s. It was a perfect way to kill an hour or so.
In the hot summer, you could go to the Municipal Pool and do cannonballs off the high-dive. Or you could jump off the diving boards at Mead, Bukolt, and Iverson Parks. Mead and Bukolt had docks or rafts or whatever they were called. The lifeguards were always there to see that you came out of the water okay, and the swimming beaches were always packed. If you were at Iverson, you could stand on the bridge and look north. You would likely see kids swinging on a rope hanging from a tree while they were jumping in. Great fun!
Kids in our neighborhood played touch football in the streets all the time. In the ’60s, one of the big things to do was play .45 records and albums on your little record players. In 1962, we must’ve played Brian Hyland’s “Sealed With A Kiss” and Bobby Vinton’s “Roses Are Red” a thousand times. A few years later, all you heard was “Rag Doll” and “Sherry” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” by Neil Sedaka. And then there was that new band from England called “The Beatles”. They all had long hair and talked kinda funny.
If you went to the grocery store, there was no such thing as “paper or plastic”. All you got were paper bags.
Back then, you could walk over to the Bake-Rite on Wood Street and watch Jack Ellenz and the Southsiders playing wiffleball.
In later years, it was a treat to buy a case of that delicious Quality Beverage soda. Such great flavors! Grape, cream soda, root beer, and the terrific Orange Crush in the small brown bottles. You could play in the softball leagues at the south end of Goerke Park where light poles were still in the outfield. Pacelli High School was for boys only, and the girls went to Maria. Pacelli later became the YMCA, and Maria became Pacelli. Are you writing this down? There might be a quiz later.
A lot of people rode around in Volkswagons. You rarely see them anymore. Another fun thing to do was to turn on the black and white tv and watch “The Andy Griffith Show”. Otis Campbell was usually getting locked up, and Barney Fife frequently shot his one bullet by accident.
So many things to do as the years sailed by. Bill’s Pizza Shop was close to Wanta’s Lanes. Terrific food. One could admire the marble pillars in front of the old post office. (Or was it the old library?) They ended up in the river.
Those were the days when softball only used wood bats. Main Street was two-way, and the bullheads were biting behind Pagel Mill at the end of Arlington. The Clark Gas Station was next to the American Legion, and the Legion usually had Friday Night dances. The Flame played 60s tunes on Thursday nights, and there were sandboxes on many corners. The Black Bridge was supposedly haunted, and going to the 10-51 outdoor was a must.
Man, were we spoiled! What a great town. We had a Red Owl and a Piggly Wiggly. One year, the “Pig” had a promotion. When you bought something, they gave you a ticket. The ticket had a letter. You were supposed to fill in some words (kinda like bingo), and you might win a cash prize. I went there every day for a month and bought a pack of gum or a candy bar. It eventually dawned on me that the toughest part was getting a ticket with the letter “R”. Finally, after many, many tries, I got the “R”!! Took my entry into the Pig, and they gave me a check for $1,000. One thousand big ones! I think Al Kruzicki, one of the best softball players ever, was the assistant manager.
“50 Degree” parties at Iverson were a must in the spring, and I easily crashed at least a hundred weddings at the upstairs of Skipps. Even knew a couple of the people who got hitched.
In the 70s, it was fun of epic proportions to head over to Goerke and watch the “Pointer” football team in action. From 1972-76, the UWSP football team was coached by Monte Charles, the “Ringmaster of the Aerial Circus”. Stevens Point led the nation and NAIA Division 1 in passing and total offense. Reed Giordana was the quarterback (1974-77), and he set 25 school passing records. Then in 1987, Kirk Baumgartner came along and led the Pointers to the National Championship. He still holds a bunch of Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference records. In the late ’90s, one could watch the Pointers’ linebacker Clint Kriewaldt in action on the gridiron. Clint made the opening tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers against Seattle in Super Bowl XL.
What a booming town! JFK was here. Lee Sherman Dreyfus. Jim the Blind Man had his popcorn stand. Dixie Sarchet was Miss America. Kathy Kinney was “Mimi”. Bill Clinton gave a speech at the Legion and signed autographs. The first President Bush dropped by the railroad depot to talk to the people. I was so excited I never left the Dewey.
We still have a trolley but I never see it. You just can’t beat the people who make up our fine city. The other day, when it was freezing outside, I looked out the window and saw my neighbor “Minnow” Shimek shoveling my front sidewalk. Nobody asked him to do it. And a day or two later, I heard a noise coming from out back. It was Ian and Lisa Grasshoff, my neighbors, who dropped by to chip all the six-inch ice away from the back patio.
Yeah, some people ask: “Why don’t you move from Stevens Point?”
And I reply: “Why? And miss all the fun?”
Next time I’m in the store, I’ll see if they got any chestnuts.