WAUPACA COUNTY POST

1976

"Old-Timer" Recalls Early Days in Waupaca

(Editor’s Note: Several members of the Waupaca Historical Society taped the following interview with Irving E. Hansen, 202 E. Lake Street, as a Bicentennial feature for the Waupaca County Post. For 12 years Irv was assistant cashier at the First National Bank and for 40 years he was affiliated with the Waupaca Abstract and Title Company. An athlete in "his days" Irv was one of the original curlers in Waupaca, a founder of the Waupaca Country Club and at one time an inter-county tennis champ. The "old abstracter" continues his interest in sports and has good recall about Waupaca’s pasts.)

IRVING HANSEN

Note: This interview was made by members of the Waupaca Historical Society. Parts of it were in a "Souvenir Brochure", published by the First National Bank in 1973 to commemorate its new bank facilities.

I was born in Waupaca in 1889 and have lived here most of my life, so you can say that I’ve lived through a great deal of Waupaca history.

Question, by Ken Poulton: Did you attend school in Waupaca?

Answer: Yes, beginning with Waupaca Grade School. It was in the same site it is today. High school in my time was equivalent to going to college today; only a small proportion of the kids made it.

Question, by Father William Donnelly: What are some of the changes since the turn of the century?

Answer: Well, take transportation. Those were the horse and buggy days. But in some ways we had transportation facilities that were better than today. For instance, we could always take a passenger train to Neenah, Marshfield, Stevens Point, Oshkosh, or Milwaukee and Chicago for that matter. Six passenger trains used to pass through Waupaca on the Wisconsin tracks. We used to board at four p.m., go to the Hotel Athearn in Oshkosh for dinner, go to a show at the Opera House, and catch a train back to Waupaca. We’d be home by midnight.

Question, by George Jeffers: Do you remember the street cars we used to have?

Answer: Oh, yes, our own "Toonerville Trolley" that met all the trains from the Soo Line depot and ran to the Chain o’ Lakes and the Grandview Hotel. This hotel, plus Locksley Lodge and Pines Inn, were the vacation places of the "swells" from Chicago and especially St. Louis for some reason. People came from what at that time seemed very long distances to enjoy the unspoiled beauty and serenity of the Chain o Lakes.

Question, by George Jeffers: Do you remember some of the early industries in Waupaca?

Answer: Yes. You see, I was in the Abstract Office for a number of years. The original survey of Waupaca County was made in 1850. Waupaca Falls was the original name for our settlement. There were four falls. The first was where Brainard Bridge is. A grist mill was built there. The second was at the Waupaca Power Plant. The third was at the city power mills, and the fourth was below where the Fallgatter Building stands. The river was a very good trout stream. When the dams were built for harnessing the power, the fishing was not as good. With the dams out it could be a beautiful river with a mile of fast flowing water through the City of Waupaca.

Some beautiful granite pillars were quarried at the granite quarry four miles North of Waupaca and appear in the early pictures of the former First National Bank building, and of our former City Hall. Waupaca granite also is in the State Capitol at Madison.

Question, by John Holzman: Did you attend some of the early Chautauqua meetings?

Answer: Oh, yes. There were temperance lectures. At one Chautauqua meeting I hear William Jennings Bryan say, "It’s perfectly all right to take a drink, but it should be missed in a barrel of water." There were a lot of campaign speeches. I remember when Bob LaFollette made a speech at Danes’ Home which lasted past midnight.

The football field was on Wisconsin Street. There were lots of stones on the field and the kids who helped pick off stones were given tickets. The team used the "flying wedge" formation. It was rugged.

We had four tennis courts and a clubhouse on Wisconsin Street. Tennis flourished in Waupaca from 1907 to 1917. We held week long tournament each summer and players participated from Wausau, Stevens Point, and Green Bay. Also we had entries from Neenah and Oshkosh which included Mowry and Carlton Smith and George Gilbert and Ted and George Gilbert from Neenah, and the Paine Brothers from Oshkosh. (Reports say that Irving Hansen was a very accomplished player.)

The boys played basketball and we also had a girls’ team. The girls dressed differently than we do now, with their bloomers and middies.

Curling has been popular in Waupaca for over seventy-five years. It was first played on a rink next to the [Waupaca] River at the rear of the old City Hall at the end of Main Street [with imitation stones made of wood]. One year the curlers won the Pfister Trophy in Milwaukee, and were met on their return by the City Band at the railway station. [Tom Holly was very active in this sport.]

During the depression years the W.P.A. workers straightened the channel of the Waupaca River, which moved it back from the Main Street where it had been. [Previously some of the toilet seats were over the edge of the beautiful Waupaca.]

We had wonderful times on the Chain. An Old Town canoe cost about thirty-five dollars. Some of us owned a canoe and kept it in the boathouse of a member of the Grand Army Home. We’d take the streetcar, hop off at King, take our canoe out on the lake, and we were on our own in a natural wilderness. There were practically no cottages and we rarely saw anyone else on the lakes. Every canoe trip was an adventure and a pleasure I will never forget.

What about excitement? Excitement is relative. People find it hard to get excited about anything.

In the Waupaca of the early 1900’s, a runaway horse would excite the whole town, and the town’s single policeman would be responsible for catching it. We participated in the excitement; we didn’t have it delivered artificially to us. Although I recall there was excitement brought in by the Idle Hour Movie Theatre here in Waupaca. This was the first movie house, when the flickers really flickered. We had sound too – a piano player.

I recall when the wooden sidewalks in the city were torn up, lifted up by the roots, to be replaced by concrete sidewalks. Every kid in Waupaca, myself included, knew that this was a golden opportunity. Those wooden sidewalks had cracks, and over the years coins had fallen through them. We kids were in there like demons, sifting the dirt, looking for coins. Unfortunately, the workmen knew the score too. But the kids found some and the workmen found some, and I suppose everybody was happy.

Question: What do you consider the biggest annual event in the early days of Waupaca?

Answer: The Fourth of July was anticipated with excitement by the whole population for weeks. The day would start with one hundred salutes at sunrise from an ancient muzzle loader cannon. Band concerts went on all day. Firecrackers, from the smallest to the "big bangs" exploded from dawn through the night. A special attraction was a visiting big-wig who would deliver an hour long oration from the bandstand. [Half the town would come and cheer.]

Taverns were called saloons. They did a land-office business. They had sawdust on the floors, with beer flowing freely. You could smell the beer aroma out on the sidewalk during the hot weather of the Fourth..

Fires were announced by tolling a bell on the city hall. Volunteers would then go to the designated area and put out the fire.

The first telephone office was in a building owned by Chady in the middle of the block South of the Court House Square.

The Fourth of July was a very special day for the kids. There were races of all kinds. And every once in a while pennies mixed with flour would be scattered on Main Street and all of us kids scrambled for them. There was a balloon ascension. The kids would follow the balloonist all over the countryside until he landed.

Sometimes the kids would place explosives on the streetcar tracks. The streetcar conductor knew that this was a day for harmless pranks, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Probably one of the most exciting races was between the Fire Engine Company and the Hook and Ladder Company. Both had horse drawn vehicles. There would be dances in the evenings at both the Danes’ Home and Odd Fellows Hall. There are some old-marrieds in Waupaca today who met at those dances, I’m sure.

Question: What were the grocery stores and the drug store like?

Answer: They were family businesses – small, friendly, and neighborly. As kids we liked the grocery stores because they all carried our favorite candy, licorice sticks and jaw breakers. Spencer’s, Truesdell’s, and Dr. McNaughton’s were the drug stores.

Question: Where was the post office?

Answer: In my young days it was at 212 South Main Street in about the middle of the block [where Culligan’s is now]. My brother Charles Hansen established some kind of a record. He worked for the Waupaca post office from age 14 until he retired at 65. That would be from 1889 to 1940, fifty-one years!

Question: How about the banks of Waupaca?

From 1908 to 1920 I worked for the predecessor of the First National Bank. I started as an office boy at twelve dollars a week. The bank had only 4 employees. I had risen to assistant cashier when I left in 1920 to work for the Waupaca Abstract and Loan Company.

Question: Were those times in Old Waupaca really "the good old days"?

Answer: My wife and I have always enjoyed living here. We love Waupaca today as much as we ever did. My wife is Ethel Johnson; she is a native Waupacan. We have been married 56 years. We’ve traveled a lot, to Europe and the Caribbean for example. It’s always a good feeling to come back to Waupaca.