"Over the last hundred years, this town built more industry for itself than any town its size in the country. And there are some good reasons for it. At least I've come up with some."
Dick Ammann was in his basement office of the Racine Heritage Museum. The windowless wall behind him was lined with look-alike filing cabinets. Manila folders, which probably belonged inside, were | stacked on top of them. Dick wore jeans and a dark pullover shirt that his wife had brought him from a research trip to Nigeria. She is an anthropology professor. Dick is the archivist here, and has a Ph.D in education. I was listening carefully to his theories.
"Like all of Wisconsin, Racine has an easily identifiable ethnic mix. In the early days, 1900-1910, it was German and Danish - two nationalities that have a strong work ethic. That, I think, was the basis for their success as an industrial powerhouse. The Germans, known as inventive industrialists, probably were the biggest contributors."
Dick paused and raised his coffee mug as if to salute me. "But then, as a kringle fan, you're right saying that it's kringle that puts Racine on the map these days. What can compete with a flaky pastry layered with butter?"
I'd had some earlier, and mentioned to Dick that I have never seen a kringle anywhere else. Like a croissant, its culinary cousin, kringle is an oval ring, generously filled and iced, that Danish-American bakers developed here.
The word means pretzel in Danish. In the prosperous post-WWII years, sweet-toothed Wisconsinites demanded less dough and more filling from their kringle makers. Hence the Danish bakers got innovative. They stuffed a lot more into its tubelike design than the traditional slender ribbon of almond paste. Adding liberal fruit or nut fillings, they re-created the Danish kringle into a unique American pastry that is found almost exclusively here in Racine.
"As things were invented here," Dick continued, "they were picked up by local entrepreneurs who ingeniously incorporated them into commercially doable products. And those things led to other things. Take, for example, the fractional-horsepower motor. It wasn't Westinghouse that developed it, by the way. It was the likes of Chester Beach of Hamilton Beach, a local company.
"Then a gent named S.C. Johnson came to town and incorporated that little motor into a floor polisher. He was making parquet floors. They were called wooden carpets, quite the rage then. I am not sure which came first -the buffer or the wax. But we sure know which one came out the winner. Then he put out Johnson's Glo-Coat - no rubbing, no polishing. Remember that stuff? What home or business today doesn't have in it at least one Johnson's Wax product?"
"More like two or three," I said.
"Exactly! Same for Western Printing and Lithographing Company, which, I'm sad to say, is gone now. They published the Big Little Books, popular in the 1940s, plus all the Dell comic books and paperbacks. And what kid didn't, or doesn't, have some Golden Books around? Western published all those, plus everything from Walt Disney, beginning with the first days of Mickey Mouse.
"If you saw the movie A League of Their Own, then you remember the Racine Belles. They were a championship women's baseball team of the all American Girls Baseball League of the early 1940s. Major League Baseball closed down during World War II. Baseball lovers, like Bill Wadewitz at Western, put together a league of women ball players so baseball didn't shut down altogether."
On the shores of Lake Michigan, Racine is 25 miles south of Milwaukee. With a population of 85,000, it has the largest privately owned marina on the Great Lakes, and one of the few remaining zoos in the country that does not charge admission.
Its architectural legacy includes five buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Among them is the landmark S.C.Johnson Wax Administration Center, completed in 1939. Wright's largest commercial project, its Great Workroom, utilizes a half-acre of floor space with a ceiling supported by huge golf-tee-shape columns, 31 feet high. The Wax folks offer free tours.
The Wingspread Conference Center, another Wright creation, is now a local landmark. It was built in 1938 as a private home for H.F.Johnson and turned into a conference center in 1960. Its gate was open, so I walked its grounds, which are gorgeous.
Covering 30 acres on Wind Point, Wingspread is noted as the last of Wright's "Prairie Houses." Why is it called that? I couldn't find anyone who knew. A prairie house by my definition is made of sod, with floor space somewhat less than 14,000 square feet.
As far as local landmarks go, I was more intrigued by the Wind Point Lighthouse. Built in 1880, it's supposed to be the oldest and tallest working lighthouse on Lake Michigan. This brick tower is 112 feet tall, allowing sailors to see its beam 19 miles away. For its first 44 years, a keeper hauled cans of kerosene up the tower's 140 iron steps.
When the U.S. Coast Guard took out the kerosene lamp in 1924, it became only the second light on the Great Lakes operated by electricity - a 300-wattbulb. Awraparound lens, made of 100 prisms, tocused its light into a single sharp beam. Today it has a 1,000-watt airport-style beacon.
The day I was there, a wedding was taking place on the lawn overlooking the lake - a beautiful spot for making long-term memories.
Bill's e-mail address: roadscribe@aol.com.
Copyright T L Enterprises, Inc. Apr 2004
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