Off the Editor’s Desk 1-8-25

Remembering!

Saturday along with my grandson, Zach, we drove to Portage, Wisconsin to a Christmas party with number two son, Alex and his family with grandkids and a couple of great-granddaughters.

On the 190-mile trip to Portage, I was thinking about how we got together at Christmas time as a family. My earliest memory is that we always went to my maternal grandparents home for Christmas Eve.

My grandparents, Oscar and Bertha Stang operated a small grocery store along highway 12 in Hersey. They lived in an apartment at the rear of the store. The apartment had hot and cold running water, but had no toilet in the apartment. If you needed to use the facility, there was a two-hole building out back.

My Grandmothers’ sister, Aunt Martha drove down from Duluth to celebrate Christmas with the family. Aunt Martha was always dressed to what my mother called “to the hilt” as she always had on fine clothes, a fur coat, jewelry, and high heels.

You see, Aunt Martha had to use the facility out back and either on her way to the facility or on her way back, she broke both high heels off her shoes in the snow covered path and grandpa, dressed as Santa, had to carry her back to the family gathering and that is when I found out who Santa was.

Another memory is that one of the staples at Christmas Eve dinner was Lutefisk, and grandmother had it boiling on the stove and you could smell it before you got into the house. I can remember, two of my uncles, Harry and Ronnie, telling grandma to throw the water that the Lutefisk was cooked in under the porch to keep the skunks away.

While visiting Saturday, Alex took me for a drive to view a lot that they had just purchased and we had to travel on the I-39/90/94 bridge over the Wisconsin River and we could view the beginning construction of the new bridges that are underway.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the bridges over the river were constructed in 1961 and are nearing the end of their operational life and need to be replaced.

One new bridge will be located to the east of the existing bridges and the other will be located at approximately the same location as the existing bridges.

Construction also includes reconstruction of about 1.4 miles of the eastbound interstate and 1.8 miles of the westbound interstate to accommodate the new bridge location. The construction is expected to be completed in 2027 at an estimated cost of $135.3 million.

Below is a picture I took of the bridges while boating on the Wisconsin River back in June of 2020.

Thanks for reading!     ~Carlton