Marshfield Holiday Recollections with Don Schnitzler

Monday, December 22nd, 2025 -- 1:00 PM

Dale Erickson spoke with Don Schnitzler, Vice President of North Wood County Historical Society, and he discussed Marshfield holiday memories:

Listen to the interview with Don here!

(AI assisted transcription with Otter.ai)

Don: "When Natalie and I first arranged the December program, it was after we had decided that the Marshfield Memories Book would be done by Christmas. Chris, who wasn't here, Chris Leonard and I had had a meeting and we want to get that book done."

"We started it in 2023; it's 206 pages long right now, there's, I don't know how many pictures in it, but it's not ready to go to print yet. It's still a work in progress. That's the important thing that everybody should know."

"There are some really cool photographs in there, things like the ornaments that hung on Central Avenue during the 1950s that, for those of us who grew up in the 1950s, probably remember those in different locations, on Central Avenue, the candle, the season's greetings."

"I remember the angels or the choirs over there, the Santa Claus, actually, I look at it, I think I can remember all of those at some street corners somewhere when I was a kid, my folks liked to take us for a ride to look at Christmas decorations. I think that was a common thing in town, with a lot of people doing it."

One of the first things I want to kind of make a point of saying is I want you have to recognize different organizations, service clubs, organizations, schools, and people who were the movers and shakers behind the scene to make sure things happened."

"And there were a lot of people that aren't being mentioned right now over the course of Marshfield's history that came in and contributed to the way the downtown looked. And then there's things that are related to the history of Marshfield. Why did this thing happen? Who was involved with it? What did they change? Or what did they build on?"

"There's all these kinds of things that you can, as we're looking at this start, kind of talking about and so we're going to start talking with street decorations. But it builds on things that had happened in the past, and then it also happened because the community was evolving at the time."

"There were things going on to change transportation in Marshfield, and that kind of prompted them to do things to bring people to town so they saw something. So, there's all sorts of things that we can talk about as we go through and look at these pictures."

"So, the first, or the earliest public Christmas event is what's known as the Marshfield Eagles Community Christmas Tree. And this was back in December of 1915. It really kind of surprised me, because they actually held it Christmas night. You'd think that Christmas night would be a night that everybody's family was staying home exhausted from the activities of the day."

"But that night they had over 2000 people on Central Avenue celebrating Christmas. And so if you look at this picture, the building on the right hand side is the old hotel, Blodgett. It's gone today. What's there now is the Blodgett House, which was built to replace that building."

"It actually had been burnt in a fire in 1953 and then it was served as the penny store. Then it became Penny Court and, when it was remodeled, it became the Blodgett House. Anyway, one of the reasons why this event happened in 1915 was because they finished the brick paving project on Central Avenue."

"So, rather than have to tromp around in mud and snow, they had this very nice finished, smooth roadway that they could party on. Now the big event happened between Second and Third street. And so, if you look at this building, it's in the middle of the Second and Third street block and it kind of set a tone for where the community Christmas tree was going to be placed in the upcoming years."

"1915 is the first year, but they did it successively, year after year. The only thing that changed was they talked about moving it between Third and Fourth Street or between First and Second Street. Most of the time it ended up between Second and Third, but it was always in the center of downtown. "

"And boy, I'm not going to remember the total number of lights on that tree. But look at the way that tree glows. It was over 1000 light bulbs on that tree that night. When you think about when Marshfield put in electricity. What was it? 1885 they've had to have some pretty good generators by that time to supply the power to just that tree."

"The other thing that I noticed in this picture, that I think is important, is the light globes. If you look at the light globes, here, you see these round globes. Those would change in a couple years. These were put in in 1912 there was a problem with the wiring, and they went ahead and changed them, darn it, around 1929 or 28 they change all the light posts or the globes on there and the wiring underneath it."

"So, these round globes are a good way of dating things to about this time period, 1915 to 1920; after 1929 they take a different shape. The other thing that's important in this picture that might go unnoticed is over in the lower right hand side, and I don't think you can see my point."

"You can right there. It's like a little hut and it's just all pine trees stacked up. They had six people. They had Santa Claus and five helpers that night to distribute candy. But I think this might have been set up as Santa's castle or Santa's home that night to kind of start that celebration off."

"Now, what did they do? They got together about 5:30, they sang Christmas carols. Then they had Santa Claus distribute toys. They had a presentation by Mark Hanson, actually a 15 to 20 minute lecture about something and it just says that it's appropriate and interesting. So, I don't know the title the topic, or anything like that, but it was a community event that was more than just Santa Claus popping in to distribute candy and toys to the kids."

And they talk about it, the next picture is the comment that was in the paper the next day; was a joyous event. And then they talk about 2000 kids received gifts. Now, Marshfield wasn't that big. Then the Christmas tree, they said it was 40 feet tall, and it took a 12 foot platform underneath it to hold it in place so that if it got windy, it wouldn't tip over."

"And they left that tree lit until January 6, I think it was, it was taken down, or was reported as being taken down in the newspaper. So, it kind of set a trend right there. You know, this is our first community event. And if you think about how we do Christmas decorations now. They stay up until after the first of the year and then, within a couple days of the first of the year, depending on what day it lands on in the week, those decorations come down real quickly."

"But it strikes me as being a really cool event for a community our size in Marshfield and to think about attracting several thousand people is pretty amazing. Robert Connor donated the tree. Now he was WD Connor's brother, Connor Lumber Industries, or Connor Forest Industries, so he had access to standing trees or standing timber. I don't know where he got it from, but it came from the Connor family anyway."

"So, what this community Christmas tree idea was, was not something that was specific to just Marshfield it wasn't like we came up with it on our own. It was a movement that was kind of spreading across the country at the time."

"It started in New York City and the idea was that it was going to bring people together and develop a community spirit. And if you think about having 3000 people there, everybody celebrating the same things, it does seem to fit the bill that that was going to work."

"There's evidence in the newspapers that it became an annual event. I don't know if it was every year, but, I will show you in a minute, where the years are that I know that there was a community tree. The one thing they changed was the way they referred to it."

"First, it was a Community Christmas Tree. Then in the 20's, it became a Community Yield High Tree, just enough to, you know, when you're trying to do research, with a search engine, that it makes it a little bit more difficult to find. You have to try a couple different ways. Anyway, so they got together and this was nationwide, wherever. They had a community Christmas tree."

"They had Santa Claus come and hand out toys and candy to the kids, some type of presentation, and then community singing. Now, when it came to proving that it continued, we know that it existed in Marshfield, in different locations."

"They were going ahead and doing it in this advertisement on the left. Louis Lemley had a clothing store on the corner of Third and Central. He's talking about the Community Christmas Tree. If you look at the center story, that's eight years later, the Legion is taking care of the festival, then the Eagles, and they're talking about distributing 2000 sacks of candy."

"I didn't see a lot in the paper ahead of time, but they were talking about it after the fact. So, you see between 1915 and 1923, for sure, they had the community Christmas tree. And then I mentioned that they changed the name. They started calling it the Yuletide Tree. So, I lost it the first time."

"I had to go back and find out if it was still existed. And so when we looked for Yuletide Community Tree. I found it in 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 29. 28 was still missing. I thought, well, that's odd that they would skip one year and that year they just referred to it as the Community Tree."

"So, when I should mention that in 1924 they made a point in the paper of scheduling it so that it ended early enough so the churches and other lodges could plan programs. So, I think there it almost kind of suggested that they might have been interfering with other things going on and they were cognizant of it and they wanted to change the hours enough so that whatever they were doing would would not interfere with others plans."

"So, here's the story about the 1928 Christmas Tree, Community Tree, and here we know that it's a balsam that was placed between Third and Fourth Street, so it's a block down this time. And then it talks about each holiday season, the city's Main Street thoroughfare has been decked with a Christmas tree, which is kind of cool when you think about it, because this is really the start of us decorating for the holidays."

"And 1929 the Commercial Club, forerunner to Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce, is involved. That gets Bill Uthmeyer involved. Bill was a mover and shaker, involved with lots of different things, but when it comes to the Christmas stuff, it seems like he was always there promoting things happening."

"This is also an important year, because it's the first year that, rather than doing everything, you know, the Eagles or the Legion or the Chamber of Commerce or the Marshfield Commercial Club, saying, 'this is what we're going to do.' They started inviting others to participate."

"And so in this particular year, they asked or encouraged all the businesses on Central Avenue to take a role in it, which I think is pretty cool and that's continued today. I mean, we have the holiday parade from Main Street. The library puts in a float. The Girl Scouts are in there. The Boy Scouts are in there. Different different grocery stores or businesses in town are contributing to that."

"It's a community type event and here they were asking the store owners on Central Avenue to get involved. Now, the clothing store would have been located about where the St. Claire page building is. That would have been where the clothing store would have been located and they used them as an example in this ad, as far as what people were supposed to do."

"Now, I didn't know it until I read this, that there in the sidewalk, they had placed flag sockets so that at certain times of the year they could put up a flag on Central Avenue in front of their storefront. Here they were telling people or suggesting that people put in small Balsam trees and decorate them with lights, so that the street was starting to be decorated up and down Central Avenue in front of stores, which a year later is going to be what they start doing and what we continue to do today."

"So, in 1930 is the first year they really decorated Central Avenue, kind of the way we think about it. Garland's going across Central Avenue. The lights going down central avenue that happened in 1930 for the first time. And it's disappointing that I don't have a picture of it, but what they say is that what they did was they ran wires between, across Central Avenue, two to three per block, between the 100 block and the 400 block of Central Avenue."

"So, three blocks of Central had these garlands, kind of festooning across the street and then hanging from the center was a balsam star. So, it suggests that someone locally made the stars, just because it's made out of Balsam. I don't think they could have bought a pre-made one and then they also would have put the garlands together to run across the street."

"Now, the next year, they changed it a little, and there is a picture of that. This is the 1930 picture. And what I think is cool about this picture is Marshfield didn't think enough to take a picture of it themselves or haven't kept it. This one appeared in the Milwaukee Journal in 1930 and, if I had my notes in front of me, I could read to you what it basically said."

"And you can see that they got the garlands going across Central Avenue, when I was a kid, up and down Central Avenue. You probably remember them too. They had those garlands running across and then down the entire center section were bells that blinked on it looked almost like they were in sync, but they really weren't."

"So, we had those garlands running across Central Avenue until buildings started to disappear and then, between Third and Fourth Street, when the bank building was built, the M&I bank, when the Old Central State came down, and all the buildings in that row, is when they stopped running the garlands across to the best of my knowledge knowledge, is when they stopped running those across Central Avenue because they needed to anchor those garlands to the buildings."

"They weren't anchored to the light post. They were anchored to the buildings. Now, the other thing in this picture doesn't show up well, and I wanted to be able to show it to you, is there are two, two things, the community Christmas tree is in this picture."

"Again, if you look in the center, this would probably be the community Christmas tree, but standing in front of it is an old fashioned ornamental windmill. For as long as I've known about that windmill, I do not know why we have a windmill, but there was a windmill on Central Avenue until it got hit by several cars, and then it was moved to City Hall, but there's one picture of it that we have when it was in front of the old City Hall."

"It's, you know, where the fire department doors were. It sat right next to that shelter as you walked up the stairs. It was in that corner. And we have one picture of it, but it's always made me wonder, why do we have a windmill? It's not like we have a big Dutch community here."

"So, anyway, this was 1930 and things continued to change after that. What I wanted to do was just show you an assortment of pictures of Christmas decorations, because I figured that would jog some memories."

"Now, this picture is 1966. You can see the buildings are still there. You can see how the garland goes out all the way to the buildings, rather than to the flagpoles or the light poles. This is, again, a picture of 1969 and what I wanted to be able to show with this picture, and, it's not great, is the garlands running across Central Avenue."

"So, if you look here, you can see there's a garland right there. And if you look here, you can see there's a garland here. And it kind of does this back and forth, going down the avenue where they could. And when they first started talking about the festooning down Central Avenue, they said where possible."

"So, even then, that depended on what was opposite the other building. Then here they are putting up the following year, a decoration on the north side of town. And remember, on the north side of town, it was always on just the light post. Thee were no buildings to go back and forth between and so: up and down."

"Central Avenue, North Central Avenue, you saw the decorations, whatever they happened to be, being added to the flagstaffs that were on the light post. This is Marshfield Electric and Water Department contributing here. Again, when we look at the history of the lighting, the Marshfield Electric Department, the city crews, a lot of different people, get involved with the decorating, and so, when we think about it, we need to give credit to all the city employees, whether they're with the utility or the city, credit for what they've done over the years."

"This was a very recognizable light that is attached. It's 80 feet tall. It's attached to the Marshfield Electric and Water department on the power plant, which is no longer here, but the employees devised this, or came up with this candle and the candle was lit with different colors. The flame was yellow. The melting wax was white. The candle itself was red. No, the candle itself was green, I think, and the bow was red. And that was lit on Central Avenue during the 60s and 70s, late 60s and 70s."

"And then I had to put this one in, just because it's no longer exists. Five Corners. Everybody recognizes the name Five Corners. Five Corners was down on the south side of town when you went down Central Avenue South to the park. But now it's called Roddice Avenue."

"And then you could take Central Avenue South and it would kind of veer to the left a little bit and it would become Roddice Avenue and there was an intersection there that had Five Corners. And so that area became known as Five Corners."

"And this is probably the closest thing we had to a Community Christmas Tree when I was growing up, when I think about one big tree. I don't remember any activities by it, but it was this really nice sized tree that was decorated. And what's kind of cool about this is if when they took the picture, you get a good shot of what Central Avenue looks like going north."

"And then I just threw some in and one of my problems is this and this was going to be my impassioned plea for help. We have 1000's of pictures at the Northwood County Historical Society. Many have been scanned, but they haven't been indexed yet."

"So, when it comes to pulling slides or images for a talk like this, I need Christmas decorations, but I have to go through 50 pages or 50 books to try to find out where those images are stored. And if you have spare time and want to help, this would be a project worth doing, because we have so many images that would be nice to be able to just locate with a click of a button, and the only way to do it is to get it into a database."

"We have someone who's really good at scanning the images, but creating the database has been falling behind. So, if you people who are listening on the radio want to help, they're more than welcome or anybody else. We do train people what to do up until this point, I was talking a lot about the city crews, the utility I also wanted to put a plug in for the businessmen again, downtown."

"And something happened in the mid, mid to late 1970's in Marshfield. It changed a lot of things about the downtown. We had the North Way Mall develop and the business owners were struggling, trying to keep people coming downtown."

"But you had people, Dave Koepke, Denny Nelson, Guy Belcher, that really, and there were others too, but these guys really worked hard to keep the downtown viable. Denny Nelson, I didn't know him well, but from what I know about him, was an amazing individual for the things he did."

"I mean, every Christmas event downtown ended up with Santa Claus going up to the hospital to visit the sick kids in the hospital. And Denny Nelson was Santa Claus. So, you know, this is a guy who contributed to Marshfield and believed in Marshfield, the businesses downtown, the community itself, and the future generations."

"And I think that's worth remembering. And then here they are decorating the downtown, adding embellishments to it from what we already have. Now I'm going to stop talking about decorations and talk about things that evolved out of it."

"First one is that Christmas party, that community Christmas tree in 1915 had six Santa Clauses. Santa Claus continued to come to Marshfield every year after this. And when we did the Marshfield history book in 1997 for the 125th anniversary, there was a story written about this lady, Norma Slim was her nickname, Reagan Foose."

"It was written by, I think, her niece and it was referred to as Marshfield's first Santa. I don't know if she was really Marshfield's First Santa, because we know in 1915 she would have only been 10 years old. She probably been one of the kids going to get stuff from Santa."

"But this lady became Santa Claus for a lot of events and a lot of kids. And there she is on the left hand side of that and it reminds us that the image of Santa Claus changed over the years. What we see is Santa Claus today had a totally different look years ago, a same spirit behind it, but a different look. And so it's kind of cool what the city did with Santa Claus."

"And Santa Claus actually made a visit to Marshfield every year. They actually had a day in Marshfield called Santa Claus Day. And they had a parade every year called The Santa Claus Parade and they were doing that with cartoon characters already back in the 30's here in Marshfield."

"And I don't know why they stopped, because, you know, today, the Abbotsford Parade for Christmas is a really big thing. It was something that we were doing already years ago, but for some reason it stopped. And I can't tell you what it was, but Santa Claus came to Marshfield in so many different ways."

"When you're going through and reading the papers here, it says free rides on ponies. Well, Santa Claus supposedly came in on ponies or with ponies pulling them. He also came by the train. He came by automobiles. He came by fire trucks. Santa Claus coming to town was a big deal. And what is kind of cool is they really promoted it."

"I don't have the whole story here, but I'll tell you what it says. The story that's connected with Santa's message. Was a few weeks before Santa Claus showed up, they started running little stories in the paper about Santa Claus writing to the kids in Marshfield and this one tells the story while it's a variation of the story about the Christmas spider."

"You know where the spider comes down from at night while the kids are asleep and spins his web on the tree to make it look pretty. And then Jack Frost comes in and touches his wand to it, and it changes to gold. But he's telling this to the stories being told in the newspaper. It's something that parents could read to their kids and get them kind of anticipating Santa Claus coming."

"And they did a really good job with these stories. And so I could, as I was sitting there reading them, I thought, you know, this is exactly what I would be kind of trying to tell my kid, you got to believe in Santa Claus because, and this is, you know, and the stories all had a message about how Santa Claus was going to come and the good kids would get rewarded, and the bad ones might get missed."

"This particular story on this one, was a kid who didn't want to believe, and so he locked the house up so Santa Claus couldn't get into the house, and he went to bed, and the next morning, he wakes up, and the tree is at the foot of his bed, all decorated with gold webs."

"And then he knew he had to believe because he had locked the door and the Santa Claus couldn't do it, but there was a spider upstairs in the attic, and heard the story, and she came down with her 12 kids and spun the web. So, it's just kind of cute stuff that they did like that."

"I think the important thing is the community was involved with celebrating Christmas. It wasn't just mom and dad, it wasn't just the downtown business district, it was everybody from the newspaper editors to the teachers at school and parents and grandparents."

"Now this is again to kind of emphasize that this is a big deal, Santa Claus Day, there was always a parade at noon or about noon, and they had characters. I don't want to say Disney characters. We don't have any pictures of the characters that are identified at Santa Claus Parade."

"There is one set of kind of weird, and it's the only way to describe them, paper mache heads on kids walking down Central Avenue or people walking down Central Avenue in the 1950's and, just so you know, this went from the 1930's to the mid 1950's that they were doing this."

"So, anyway, Santa Claus Day. Big deal. The other thing again, businessmen in town getting involved. JP Adler owned the movie theaters in town. Every Kid in Marshfield got to go to movies free on Santa Claus Day, and he had three theaters."

"He had the one over on Second Street, the Reld on Central Avenue, between 200 and 300 South Central, and then the new Adler Theater, which is now Roger's Cinema, and the kids had different times that they could go to the movies there and get in for free to watch whatever."

"People doing good things for people in town is one of the cool things about Christmases in the past. Just another story talking about the Santa Claus parade. I think that was one I was going to take out. Now, when it came to Santa Claus visiting Marshfield, he showed up in lots of different locations."

"This is a picture from the WDLB Photograph Collection. It's not dated, looking at the clothes and knowing a little bit about the building, it's mid 1950s probably can't find anything in the newspapers that says WDLB sponsored something or an event at the old armory building, or the armory building."

"And so it's kind of up in the air. But this is a classic example of what some of the pictures would look like from that time. You'd have kids milling around Santa Claus. This one, what I notice is there's not a lot of folks. There's an older guy in the back, but most of this is kids, and so I wonder if it was something connected to the schools."

"So, anyway, Santa Claus has changed over the years. This is one of my favorites, because I still remember that set up. If you look at this, this was on Third Street at the old, pretty building when it was the vocational school."

"The School, it had stopped being used as a junior high school in 1968, so there were fewer people there, and the high school in Marshfield, actually, the students out there built this set and set it up in front of the Purdy School for Santa Claus. I look at it, I think it's really a cool setup."

"As far as how they did it, problem is it's still outside and it's still cold, and if you're Santa Claus, when it's 20 below zero, it's miserable. And you can see he was out there quite a bit. Castle hours are listed there, and he was there every week, quite a while."

"So, one of the things that I get a kick out of is the newspaper, where they pick pictures of or put pictures in the paper of kids with Santa Claus. They're almost always from out of town, because I always thought these pictures would be cool to identify someone from town 50 years ago."

"Well, this is a kid from Illinois, I think, and there's another picture, and it was somebody from Minnesota. So, I'm not sure if they did that on purpose, because why don't you pick my child? But it's cool that this is the way we celebrated Christmas. And it's also cool again, that you've got other people involved."

"The high school students are involved, doing things also. I think the best things about the Christmas celebrations are actually where there's there's this collaboration between organizations and individuals, all right. And then again, there was these changes in town downtown."

"When we had the North Way Mall come into town, pretty soon, we were dividing ourselves between downtown activities and North Way Mall activities. And I thought the paper did a really good job on the one day Santa arrives in Marshfield. They've got pictures of Santa Claus downtown in what was known as Central Square Mall at the time and that was where Billy Mitten's Furniture Store is now."

"And then also out of the North Way Mall with Santa Claus. And if you look, there's a duck in that picture, which you see, see that upper right hand picture there was, there was a duck, a clown and Mickey Mouse that were in all of the images."

"Now that one of the things about this there are, when the News-Herald took pictures, they took lots of pictures. And in this case, there's three pictures that made it in the paper over the two weeks, and there's probably about 10 or 11 pictures of Santa Claus with kids in those two locations."

"And so we get to pick and see lots of other things in there, all right? And then today, you know, I'm just kind of thinking about our our Santa Claus Day parade of the past, and what they do today. You know, 20-25 years ago, the Holiday Parade started."

Now, Sheila Nyberg was the director of Main Street when they started it. And it was, it was bringing back something that had been done. And I don't know if Sheila knew that it had been done in the past or not, but I think it's kind of a cool idea that things continue on and it will continue on because the Holiday Parade seems to get better every year."

"So, we're going to talk about the alternative Santa Claus: St Nicholas. My dad was a member of the Knights of Columbus and the Knights of Columbus between 1944 and at least 2005 would have St. Nicholas and Black Pete come to Marshfield and entertain kids."

"And, generally, what they did was, we met at Columbus High School, St John's Church, Sacred Heart. And then after they put up the new Casey Hall on Upham Street, it would be out there. Generally there was either a movie or some type of program and then St. Nicholas and Black Pete would show up."

"And I wanted to get hold of the Seidel kids, because Paul Seidel played Black Pete for all of those years. Everybody familiar with the Black Pete story, okay, well, St. Nicholas, kind of a Dutch tradition, again, had his counterpart who took care of the bad kids and that was Black Pete."

"And he was supposed to be a Spaniard, there was this issue between the Spanish and the Dutch at one time, and so he had a bad reputation. He generally carried switches along and he also carried the book that had the list of all the good kids and all the bad kids."

"So, it's kind of the Santa Claus story, but a different version of it, but Black Pete and Santa Claus would come to Marshfield and, if anybody knew Paul Seidel, he was just, he was a card his entire life and he did a fantastic job as Black Pete. He scared the bejesus out of me."

"But anyway, it was kind of the same principle. They would get bags of candy and it was always done just before St. Nicholas Day, December 6th. And the kids that were worried about being in the bad book, they had to watch for Black Pete. So, anyway, St. Nicholas parties went on at least until 2005 actually must be 2006 because this is one that says that."

"This is the calendar for 2006 and then after that, I don't know what happened. Now, part of this talk was going to be about sights and sounds. I didn't get to the sounds, but I wanted to mention here we got Doc Schrader with the Madrigal Singers from Senior High."

"They just celebrated their 60th anniversary and they've been providing entertainment for Marshfield for Christmas time here at the library, the Madrigal Dinner, different events ever since they founded and Doc Schrader had his hand in that, the Central Chamber Chorale, the Christmas Oratorio concerts, you name it."

"There was lots of musical things that were going on because of people like him. And then, the other thing that I always thought was real current, real contemporary, was the Keep Christ and Christmas theme. And back in 1954 already, the Knights of Columbus were talking about that as a program or as something that was going on."

"And it made me think about something I wanted to include in the talk, and it has to do with, oh, the nativity scene, the missing picture, 1937. Oops! I should go back to that story. 1937, The city put up its first Christmas nativity scene in a park and we probably would go over like a fart in church today."

"But, in 1937, in the Memorial Park, was a hand painted nativity scene that was done by the school teacher, two of the school teachers at Marshfield Senior High School. And then in 37 and 38 it was put in Veterans Park or the Memorial Park down on Park Street."

"And in 39 I couldn't find where it was put up. And then in 40 it was put up on the school grounds, on Central Avenue, facing Central Avenue, south of the Washington School. But that would be the first account of a Nativity scene being included in Christmas decorations outside of churches."

"So, I thought that was kind of cool, and it made me start thinking about, if you had a chance to go to Rotary Winter Wonderland, as you come out of rotary Winter Wonderland, and you come up on Central Avenue, you'll see this mural in front of the statue of Jesus Christ Guide Us On the Way Statue that was painted in 1966, by a guy who would turn 100 years old this year, in the basement of my childhood home."

"And my dad had it painted and it's been in the family since 1966. It's probably the last time it will be on display, because it's going to be given away. It's given to paint. It's going to go back to the family soon that painted it."

"Larry White was the painter, and I was 12 or 13-years-old the year he painted it and I, my dad, had built a frame in the basement and the thing was standing up against the west wall of the basement. And I watched this guy paint, and he'd look at the card. He'd pick up a paint brush, and it's it's eight panels, and they're all separated."

"It was made so that you could raise the garage door up. Little did we know how heavy it was going to be. We broke some springs on the garage door more than once because it was just weighed that much. It's all on Masonite, but it's 60 years old. It's on display this year at the project Park."

"While my dad was still living he had it down there a couple times, but it is going to be the last time that it's displayed in Marshfield. The scene actually was from a Christmas card that my folks got from friends during the height of the Vietnam War and it's got that message about peace on earth."

"And so, when I look at it, I can think about friends. I can think about Larry, because I watched him paint it. But it was, it was the talent that this guy had to be able to put that on, on the boards to make it look cool. That brings us to the next thing, and that was in the 1950's."

"I want to say it was earlier than this, but Marshfield started holding holiday house decorating contests, and again, my folks were really big on getting us all in the car. We went and looked at everybody's house and see how it was decorated."

"And then when we built the house on Cal State Street, my dad wanted to enter that contest and, it wasn't a big deal about entering the contest, but he wanted to do something, and so it was run through the Chamber of Commerce. And originally it was, you would enter your house in the contest, and they would come and judge it."

"A couple years later, they broke it into categories. There was religious versus general. And then later on, they had the contest downtown, also for the businesses. And so the first winner, I don't have a picture of, this is a picture that appeared in the paper in 1958 it was Walter Radlinger."

"This is the Edward Jones building on St. Joseph Avenue. Now, if you go up St. Joseph Avenue, it's at the intersection of St. Joseph and Blodgett Street and that was the winner the second year. And this is again. The house at the top is Charles, Charlie Rose house."

"And then the picture on the bottom is the year my dad won for the religious category with the poster or with the garage door scene, all right? And then I thought, I can't talk about Christmas without talking about some helpers. And some of you will recognize these people right away."

"The fire department did wonderful things. The Elks did wonderful things. Everybody did wonderful things. But I've got pictures of the firemen. They would take old toys and refurbish them, and then needy kids would get Christmas presents from the work that they did."

"You got Bob Cult. It looks like one of the planes. Oh, Dennis Berg, there was a cut off of December 15 of submitting toys and then they would refinish them. And then I don't know who delivered them. I don't think they did themselves."

"And I see Marv Stroman on the other side, but they did this for probably 10-15, years. And then I think when they moved to the new Fire Department, at some point, there was less space to do that. And then there is this picture. I mentioned having 1000s of pictures and trying to get them indexed."

"One of the problems with some of the pictures at the Historical Society is they're unidentified. And this is a picture that falls into that unidentified category. Looking at it, I know that they are three explorer scouts. I don't know who the gentleman is with them, but I can tell that those are explorer Boy Scouts with explorer uniforms based on the toys that are around it."

"I assume it has something to do with Christmas, but we can't find the picture in the newspapers that it was ever printed. And so this is one of those things. I was hoping that if, if this was going to be recorded and broadcast, as far as images go, that maybe somebody would recognize somebody in there."

"Because good chance it was taken in the 1950's any one of those three guys could still be alive and might recognize the picture. So, I mentioned, you know, when you're doing or looking at this stuff, you're trying to answer the question, Who, what, when and why?"

"The why probably had to do within the 1930's there were already changes in railroad traffic, you know, until, until the railroad, while the railroad was here, it was a major means of transportation into Marshfield and people would get on the train, come to Marshfield and shop, and then take off and go back home."

"You couldn't go to anywhere in the state without coming to Marshfield because the lines all came to Marshfield and that's why we got the nickname "Hub city". And people would come here to shop. But when people started driving all at once, well, not all at once. Between 1910 and 1930 you could get in a car and drive to Wausau."

"You could get in a car and drive to Stevens Point or Wisconsin Rapids, someplace else. You wanted something that would make people want to come to Marshfield. And I think that's what they were trying to do with the Central Avenue street scenes or the decorations."

"The biggest draw, of course, is Rotary Winter Wonderland. And that was, that was started by Ben Lee, who was in West Bend, and was part of that in West Bend. And if you go to West Bend, it's the same thing. It's the same beautiful go through a park there and so he brought that idea here from West Bend."

"Well, Rotary has done a wonderful job with that. And one of the things about the Rotary Winter Wonderland, again, is this collaboration. I know that when I worked at the clinic, the clinic would let us know they're going to need help and people would go down there and volunteer."

"There's different service clubs, there's different youth groups. Everybody's going down there and pitching in. And I think that's one of the things that's unique about Marshfield, is people pitch in to make things happen."

"Someone asked how the Depression played a part in the Christmas celebrations in Marshfield. I can say I don't know a lot about the Depression, because a lot of this stuff was going on 1930. 1929 is the crash. 1930, 31, 32 is during the Depression and these things are still growing and going on."

"So, I think that they were making things happen regardless. When I was in the service, I was in the service from 72 to 75 it was during that time there was the energy crunch and they were turning the lights down. I don't remember if they lit the lights all night long or if there was something they turned off."

"Just seems to me, they did something because of the energy with the lights. Yeah, and I don't and Yeah, and so that part, you know, I know that there have been national trends have affected how we did things, but I don't think it ever got rid of them completely."

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