Profile of Oshkosh, "Wisconsin Communities"

MAN: Years ago, Oshkosh was a byword, and this was [unintelligible] always at Oshkosh, and the name, people thought it was a joke, you know. I recollect one time I got into Oswego, Kansas, and I registered, and the clerk kinda looked up at first, and I went and sat down, and a little while he comes to say, "I see you registered Oshkosh. Is there such a town?" I says, "For a man's a clerk in a hotel ought to know that." I said, "Yes, it's quite a lively town."

ANNOUNCER: The Wisconsin College of the Air presents the Oshkosh profile, the story of a city in transition, another documentary in a series about Wisconsin people and places, prepared by a State Station Production Team using a tape recorder. Your narrator is Ray Stanley.

[music box playing]

STANLEY: Twelve miniature apostles paying homage to a figure of Christ.

[motor boat engine]

STANLEY: A motor boat cruising across the largest lake within Wisconsin's borders.

[sound of home run]

STANLEY: A baseball team winning a championship.

[kids playing on beach]

STANLEY: Listen to the kids having fun on the beach.

[sounds of machinery]

STANLEY: Thin strips of paper turning into a rug by a mechanical whirlwind.

[sounds of machinery]

STANLEY: When you associate sounds and situations, you get a certain significance, a significance which grows when one combination of sounds and situations is related to another. By a similar process, voice takes on meaning when tongue and lips carve it into words, and words gain significance when related to objects and to other words. Such are the tools of communication. Listen now as we use these tools to form a profile in sound of a Wisconsin community.

[saw running]

STANLEY: That's the sound of a sawmill in action, and that's how the story begins. Like many Wisconsin communities during the late 1800s, Oshkosh was a 00:03:00sawdust city. The pines grew tall and thick in Wisconsin and they came from the east, the sturdy men and their hardy women, to view their homes in the wilderness and to fell those giant pines.

MEDBERRY: I think the Sawyers came from up in Maine; so did the Meads and the Steinhilbers, the Amoses; quite a few of the people from Maine came up here to do timbering, you see.

STANLEY: And they stayed to build an empire on logs and sawdust. Fanny Medberry's grandmother was one who came in the earliest days, and Miss Medberry can remember her mother's stories of how it used to be in the beginning.

MEDBERRY: She used to tell me how, when she was a very small child living down in, as I understand it, the community was down in the valley, and looked down, down where the lake and the river join. She--they lived down there, and she used to tell me, she told me about how the Indians used to come and want to stay all 00:04:00night, and they didn't dare refuse them, and they'd let them come in, and my grandmother would get out all the blankets and comforters, and feather beds and hay beds, and things like that, put them on the floor and let the Indians sleep in the kitchen. She said she got to know--they got to know them all, and they got to be friendly, and after a while, they didn't have that fear at all.

STANLEY: Fanny Medberry's grandfather came to Winnebago land from New York State, and built the town's first sawmill. Her family has lived there ever since. She tells us how the town got its name.

MEDBERRY: They called a meeting one time of the certain men in town, and the Indians, to decide on what they'd name the town. I think there was fifteen people at that meeting and part of them were Indians, I think seven of them were Indians. They had different names proposed. Oh, one of them was Athens, and one 00:05:00was Metropolis, and one was something else, and something else. And then someone proposed that it be called Oshkosh, after the chief of the Menomonee Indians, and when the vote was taken, Oshkosh had one vote more than any other name. And from then on it was named Oshkosh; and that's how the town got its name.

STANLEY: We're told there have been attempts from time to time to change that name, without perceptible success.

MEDBERRY: I think personally, and I know a lot of people agree, that it's a good thing to keep these Indian names. And another thing, this is known all over the world, this town of Oshkosh. Out here, when they first used to label the highways, the signs put up said, "There's only one Oshkosh, and you're in it."

STANLEY: Otto Conrad is another lifelong resident. He's lived in Winnebago land eighty-one years, and still manufactures furniture over on Ceape Street. Otto 00:06:00can remember the whine and scream of more than thirty sawmills that made Oshkosh the sawdust city.

CONRAD: There was the Paines, and there was Sawyer, MacMillans, Pratt, Peck, Williamson Livy, the Connellys, and Weeds, Radfords.

STANLEY: It's a long list, the names of men who built the mills, and they made Oshkosh a boom town in lumber products.

CONRAD: Our river used to be so full of logs that you couldn't, you couldn't hardly run a row boat through sometimes.

STANLEY: Or put it another way. We talked with George Nevitt in his offices at the Paine Company, and get another impression of the giant that was the lumber business in Wisconsin.

NEVITT: The mill men here in Oshkosh, including some in Fond du Lac, and Omro, organized what they called the Boom Company, and the logs were floated down the Wolf River to Bay Boom, which is still called by that name at the end of Lake 00:07:00Poygan, and there they maintained a crew of several hundred men, that started out the logs according to the marks that they had put on the end of the logs. And at one time, I understand, or I am told, that more lumber went through that one point at Bay Boom than any other place in the world.

STANLEY: That's the way it used to be in Oshkosh, the sawdust city, a giant in a giant industry. But we know the rest of that story. The forests were not limitless. Man in his eagerness to reap the wooden harvest outstripped nature, and the giant cut down to man's size became a stripling and soon wasted away. The screaming saws hummed quietly to silence and stood still. You can find them yet some places, rusty skeletons standing lonely vigil over lonely streams. And if today the people are still there, they too stand vigil over memories of an 00:08:00era that has passed away. And how is it with Oshkosh now, now that the giant has been laid low?

HANSON: We're so highly industrialized in Oshkosh that, according to recent surveys, three out of every four working people in Oshkosh are working either in our plants or offices of those plants.

STANLEY: The voice belongs to Les Hanson, relative newcomer and spokesman for Associated Industries. And in his office against a background of traffic, he gives us an important clue.

HANSON: There is considerable diversification of industry. I believe the Diamond Match plant here in Oshkosh is one of the largest units in the Diamond Match chain, as a matter of fact, one of the largest match factories in the world. We have a firm here which makes or manufactures four wheel drive trucks, one of the six companies, I believe, in the United States, that's in that field. 00:09:00Everybody's heard of Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls; many people have heard of the rugs which are made in this community, by two well-known organizations throughout the country. We have a large plant here which makes marine motors.

STANLEY: And Fanny Medberry continues to list them--

MEDBERRY: --Oshkosh Luggage Company, trunks and luggage, which has become one of the industries which puts Oshkosh on the map. No matter where you go, you can find Oshkosh luggage. The Morgan Company, their greatest product, I think, is Morgan doors. You see them advertised in every magazine. In fact, you can get anything you want made in Oshkosh, and that's the truth.

STANLEY: Again the list is long, not sawmills now but industry. From grass rugs to overalls, from matches to marine motors and boats, from milled lumber to four wheel drive, diversified industry keeps the paychecks coming in to three out of 00:10:00four working people. No lonely vigils to stand in Oshkosh. The town's too busy.

[loom sounds]

STANLEY: Come with us for a quick visit to see some of those industries and to sample the diversity. The sound you hear in the background is made by one of man's oldest and most useful machines--the loom. We are in the plant of the Deltox Rug Company and the looms are making rugs out of paper. Carl Steiger briefs us on how the industry got started.

STEIGER: The story, as I get it, is that several gentlemen were driving along a country road near Fremont, Wisconsin, and as they passed a load of hay, some of the hay dropped into the buggy, and one of the gentlemen picked it up, and found 00:11:00that it appeared to be rather tough. And from that he conceived the idea that it could be used for binder twine, and so as a result of that, a machine was developed, a spinning machine, and they made some twine out of grass, winding it with a cotton yarn. Unfortunately, the crickets ate the cotton yarn and the bundles fell apart. Then another man by the name of Keck here in Oshkosh conceived the idea of taking a hand loom and weaving a piece of matting with a cotton binder as a warp, and that was done, and from that began the grass rug industry, right here in Oshkosh.

STANLEY: But wire grass couldn't compete with Japanese rice straw, and in Oshkosh they switched to paper and fiber. In a maze of machinery, guided by 00:12:00skilled men and women, huge rolls of tissue thin paper are cut into strips, which are tightly twisted and rolled onto spools and shuttles. The spools go onto a rack and the fiber feeds into the loom. Where the threads converge, a shuttle slams across at right angles to inject the binding thread.

STEIGER: Our paper is purchased from mills here in Wisconsin. Paper comes to us in large rolls, sixty inches in width, twenty-four inches in diameter, weighing about five hundred pounds. This paper is slit into narrow strips, twisted on our twisting equipment, made into warp or into [unintelligible] for weaving, and from a roll for paper weighing approximately five hundred pounds, we'll get about fifteen 9 x 12 rugs.

STANLEY: And there are Deltox rugs, says Mr. Steiger, for just about every room 00:13:00in the house.

[loom sounds]

STANLEY: Over at U.S. Motors, we find another example of diversification in Oshkosh industry, and another reason for Fanny Medberry to say that this town is known all over the world. In business since 1890, they make marine motors and electrical generating equipment over at U.S. Motors, and about thirty percent of their business is done overseas. R.K. Schreiber illustrates the relationship between Oshkosh and faraway places.

SCHREIBER: We have several installations on a Norwegian shipping concern, on the boats of a Norwegian shipping concern. We supply power for their electrical apparatus and refrigeration. And we have installations for the Belgian Telephone Company, which we recently installed. We have installations in Sears Roebuck's 00:14:00new stores in South America. We have small portable units that were used prior to the present Korean situation for radio broadcast and sound equipment in China.

STANLEY: And during World War II, U.S. Motors turned out equipment for the Armed Forces. As the world grows smaller, its people grow more interdependent, and armatures, brushes, and commutators assembled in Oshkosh become matters of consequence to Norwegian sailors, Belgian telephone operators, and men with guns in their hands.

[sawmill sounds]

STANLEY: Here again is the sound the sawmill makes, and its presence here signifies not a ghostly echo from the past, but another demonstration of 00:15:00industry in transition. It may no longer be the sawdust city, but there's still plenty of sawdust in Oshkosh. We've already mentioned several firms, the Paine Company, the Morgan Company, who were here in lumbering's boom days and are still going strong. Wood and wood products are the prime concern also of many other firms. With Wisconsin's pine forest gone, the only available and satisfactory wood had to come from the Pacific Northwest. Shipping costs were high, and you wonder how lumber concerns were able to continue operating in the Midwest. Over at the Morgan Company, we got the answer from R.D. Scammerhorn.

SCAMMERHORN: There had to be some way of keeping those plants in this area where they had been, or else that industry was going to be lost forever to those cities in which they were located. And so by combination of their efforts on the part of the industry, they worked out a rate structure with the railroads, 00:16:00whereby there's a milled and [transit?] freight rate available which permits lumber to start on the Northwest Coast and be shipped to the manufacturing plants along the river, and in Wisconsin, and be fabricated or converted into millwork, and then shipped on to destinations at a combination freight rate that includes the low-class freight rate applicable to lumber only, meaning that we have a very low freight rate from the time the lumber leaves the West Coast, until the finished product, converted into sash and doors, is delivered in the East Coast.

STANLEY: And if you manufacture millwork on the West Coast, your rate going east naturally is higher, which means that Midwest millwork companies can still compete. And so the saw still screams in Winnebago land.

[sawmill sounds]

WYMAN: Well, the first original company was formed in 1895, with ten or twelve employees. A year later they were organized--the AF of L--the United Garment Workers, and since then it's just grown and grown, until today we have close to six hundred employees.

STANLEY: That's E.W. Wyman talking, and you're rubbing elbows now with one of the country's most famous slogans. Mr. Wyman is the president of a certain company that has earned a fabulous reputation manufacturing a certain type of work garment. It's--

WYMAN: Oshkosh B'Gosh.

STANLEY: Yes, Oshkosh B'Gosh; almost anywhere you go it's a catchphrase. You wonder naturally how the slogan got its start. Like Koshkonong in Kalamazoo, 00:18:00Oshkosh used to be a favorite with comedians on the vaudeville stage, and back in 1910, the management of the company decided to capitalize on its popularity. The result: one of the world's leading manufacturers of work clothing. The company's treasurer, C.E. Whitmack, puts it this way:

WHITMACK: We like to look at ourselves as the Cadillac of the work clothes industry.

STANLEY: "The Cadillac of the work clothes industry." Starting as a manufacturer of the bib overall your grandfather and father used to wear, the line now includes the blue jeans, shirts, caps and gloves, with specialties that include catering to the taste of painters and miners. As you leave the plant, Mr. Wyman makes another statement that sounds good to ears tuned to sounds of harmony in the community. Remember the AF of L union that got started the year after the company was founded?

WYMAN: Fifty-five years, we've dealt with the union, and it's been very, very harmonious. We're proud of our garments carrying the union label.

FOSTER: Undoubtedly, Ray, you're not technical. You don't know the difference between a phenol, a urea, a melamine, and a polyester, which we have to know.

STANLEY: The gentleman is discerning, and he's right. He's Carlton Foster, president of the Dunphy Boat Company, and he does know what he's talking about. He's talking about plastics, and plywood, and indirectly about the transitions an industry must make when science and competition threaten to leave it behind. Old John Dunphy came to Wisconsin as a raftsman a long time ago, and he started the boat building business across the state over in Eau Claire. His first craft was a far cry from the company's sleek boats of the present. They were bateaus, log rafting boats, crude and unbeautiful, but in great demand by men who needed 00:20:00to transport logs for long distances.

FOSTER: The lumber companies used to trade two barrels of flour and a side of bacon for bateaus, and old John Dunphy was the man who built them.

STANLEY: From bateaus to pleasure crafts, and when the gasoline engine came along, when Ole Evinrude built the outboard motor, Dunphy built the boats, an important transition. In 1935, Carlton Foster bought the company and moved it to Oshkosh. And what's the company doing now, ninety-six years after it was born?

FOSTER: The Dunphy Boat Corporation today is engaged primarily in the building of outboard boats. Ninety percent of our business is now molded plywood. We are 00:21:00the largest in the United States in building molded plywood boats.

STANLEY: From rough-hewn bateaus to molded plywood, and behind that transition is the whole story of water transportation. A large chapter in that story was written during the last world war, and the Dunphy Company helped write it. They built aircraft rearming boats and seagoing tugs. That's when a lot of the research with plastics and plywoods came into flower. But perhaps their most ambitious project never was realized. If the atom bomb hadn't made unnecessary the invasion of Japan, this would have been one of the most important strategic weapons of the war. Let Carlton Foster describe it.

FOSTER: We built Japanese fishing junks. The O.S.S., through research at the Congressional Library, found the exact patterns of a Japanese fishing junk. 00:22:00Dunphy built twelve of these boats, one hundred feet long. The masts were forty-five feet high and even the planer marks had to be left on these masts because that's the way the Japs did it. They were strictly camouflage. They fit over an aircraft rescue boat, which had a warhead in the front end of it, and was radio controlled by a plane miles--two miles in the air. The theory was that a Japanese fishing fleet would go out and a straggler would follow in, sails patched, even the chocks and cleats were exactly as the Japs built them, and the straggler would get into the harbor; a mile or so in the air, a button would be pushed and the whole thing blown to smithereens.

STANLEY: But before it was needed, the A-bomb superseded it in man's arsenal. Shall we file the technique for future reference?

[male chorus singing]

STANLEY: Let's turn now from the industry to some other characteristics of community life, and see what folks in Oshkosh do when they're not earning a living. Some of them, the menfolks that is, sing in the Apollo male chorus. Folks in Winnebago land are proud of the chorus, and none of them more so than 00:24:00their director, J.A. Griese, who explains how the whole thing began.

GRIESE: Well, it started in the fall of 1929. We had a community chorus of mixed voices around the city and several of the men said, "Why not have a male chorus?" I said, "Well, that's okay by me. When do you want to start?" "Well, let's start right now." That started in the fall of '29, and we've been going on ever since.

STANLEY: That means two concerts every year, local talent in the winter, and a famous guest artist in the spring. Let's pause now to listen to the Apollo male chorus recorded in rehearsal.

[piano accompaniment, male chorus singing]

STANLEY: With the work day shrinking as it has the last few decades, leisure time has grown into a full sized social problem. Many adults have about forty hours a week when they're not working, eating, or sleeping. Forty hours to kill, and if the community doesn't have a recreation program, most of those hours will 00:26:00die a slow death of boredom. And not everybody can sing in the Apollo male chorus.

MILLER: If you were to have a hundred people in a room and you ask them how many would like to play canasta, you'd find fifteen, twenty of them would raise their hands for canasta; if you'd asked how many like to play golf, you'd get another fifteen or twenty. If you'd like to have some--if they're interested in horseshoes, why, you'll find five more, those who like sailing you'll find ten more, and if you offered enough program material, you'd embrace the whole hundred in the room. We find that trying to supply the interest of 40,000 people is a pretty extensive program.

STANLEY: That's Ray Miller. His job reaches into nearly every area in Oshkosh. He's the recreation director, and here's what he means by an extensive program.

MILLER: Starting in the fall, we have touch football, regulation football for the kids in both the public and parochial schools. We go on from there to where 00:27:00we organize basketball throughout both the school systems, public and parochial. We coach coaches; we coach and train officials to competently handle these teams, provide the play fields, and the motivations to the program. We open up the school buildings and we have the skating rinks in the winter. We have the community motion picture programs in four locations of the city on the weekends, so the kids may have a choice of picture particularly adapted and suitable to youngsters. Then we get into the basketball season for both youngsters and adults, and volleyball league. Our softball program entails about eight hundred games, and our hardball program runs about 275 games, a considerable schedule.

[kids splashing in water]

MILLER: In the first twenty-one years of a child's life, there are fourteen years of leisure time, and the child is not considered to be a problem while in bed, at school, or when they have their knees tucked under Mother's table. It's the spaces in between, and if we were successful in doing our job a hundred percent, I'm sure that the opportunity for delinquency probably would be considerably minimized.

STANLEY: On the August day these recordings were made, it was perfect for swimming, and in the background you can hear one of the spaces in between Ray Miller was talking about, children playing on the beach where Oshkosh's beautiful parks nestle up to Lake Winnebago. Let's listen to a few of these 00:29:00voices. Let's meet three very wet Oshkosh youngsters.

CHILD: What's that for, anyhow?

STANLEY: It's for a program we're going to do. How'd you like to talk to me a little while? Will you do that?

[children talking over each other]

STANLEY: I'll ask you some questions; you give me the answers. What's your name, for instance.

MICKEY: Mickey Roy.

STANLEY: Mickey Roy, where do you live?

MICKEY: Evans Street. 476.

STANLEY: Do you spend a lot of time here on the beach?

MICKEY: Nah, just the second time this week.

STANLEY: What else do you do for fun during the summer?

MICKEY: Baseball, go to camp.

STANLEY: Oh, that's fun. Good! Let's talk to this young lady over here. What's your name?

ANNETTE: Annette Blanchette.

STANLEY: Where do you live, Annette?

ANNETTE: 321 Pearl Street.

STANLEY: Do you come out here often?

ANNETTE: I come out here nearly every day. I usually come about one o'clock and stay until about four.

STANLEY: It gives you a lot of time in the out-of-doors, doesn't it?

ANNETTE: Yeah.

STANLEY: What else do you do for fun in the summertime, besides swim?

ANNETTE: Let's see. I play baseball. I do a lot of things for my mother.

STANLEY: Work around the house?

ANNETTE: Uh huh.

STANLEY: Where do you go to school?

ANNETTE: St. Peter's.

STANLEY: What grade are you in?

ANNETTE: I'm gonna be in seventh.

STANLEY: Well, good for you. Let's talk to some more people around here. How about you? Come on over, you look like you'd say something. What's your name?

NOEL: Noel Batz.

STANLEY: What was it?

NOEL: Noel Batz.

STANLEY: Batz?

NOEL: Mm hmm.

STANLEY: I see, and where do you live?

NOEL: 289 Elmwood Ave.

STANLEY: And do you come out here often? How often do you come out here?

NOEL: Uh, mostly all the time. It's the only place I go swimming 'cause down at the west side, it's all rocky, all muddy.

STANLEY: You like it out here?

NOEL: Uh huh.

STANLEY: What else do you do in the summertime?

NOEL: Oh, I play hardball, softball, and sometimes I play basketball and volleyball.

STANLEY: Mm, that's good. Good enough. Where do you go to school?

NOEL: St. Joseph's.

STANLEY: You go to St. Joseph's.

NOEL: Mm hmm.

STANLEY: You don't go to school in the summertime, of course.

NOEL: No.

STANLEY: Are you just as glad you don't?

NOEL: Yup.

CHILD: [unintelligible]

STANLEY: Yeah, that's good.

[splashing in water]

STANLEY: There are grownups on the beach, too. They don't make much noise and they don't get wet very often. They're busy watching the youngsters and teaching them to watch out for themselves. We talked to a young man by the name of Ben Utick.

UTICK: I got my lifesaving two years ago, and I wanted a job lifeguarding because I like kids and so on. And I passed my water-safety instructions, and I thought I'd like that kind of job with kids, teaching them to swim and so forth.

STANLEY: What do you do when you're not working here in the summertime as an instructor and lifeguard?

UTICK: Well, I go to school. Oshkosh State Teachers College.

[kids playing in water]

STANLEY: Daylight washes away, tired bodies and empty stomachs are drawn to the dinner table and from there to bed. Unless you can stall bedtime long enough to watch the Oshkosh Giants in a night game.

[sound of home run and crowds cheering]

STANLEY: Baseball, when you total up the spectators and participants, probably uses up more spare time than any other sport in Oshkosh. At least, it has generated more pride than any other sport during the past two years. Meet the man chiefly responsible for this pride. His name?

GARCIA: Dave Garcia.

STANLEY: And what's your position here with the Oshkosh Giants?

GARCIA: Well, I manage them. I'm the playing manager of the Oshkosh Giants and I play second base.

STANLEY: I understand there is a parent organization, a farm club of the New York Giants.

GARCIA: That's right. The New York Giants.

STANLEY: Yeah. What's it like being the manager of a farm club?

GARCIA: It's alright when you're winning; it gets pretty rough when you're losing.

STANLEY: Uh huh.

GARCIA: It's a lot of fun; it's a lot of work, though. We've got a nice ball club this year.

STANLEY: What kind of baseball town is Oshkosh?

GARCIA: Oshkosh's a good baseball town. We drew 120,000 people here last year, 00:33:00which is probably the outstanding attendance of any B-league in the country, of any B-ball club in the country, because we only played something like 57 games at home. So that's darn good.

STANLEY: And that good too, is the fact that the Oshkosh Giants won the Wisconsin State League Championship. That's two in a row for Dave, and grateful Oshkosh held a Dave Garcia night in September, and showered him with gifts.

[sounds of band rehearsal]

STANLEY: Over at the high school, there's another kind of recreation: a bit more formally associated with education, but still a lot of fun. There, Fred Leist was busy during the last several weeks rehearsing the high school acapella chorus for its annual operetta. This year it was "Sweethearts" by Victor Herbert. And members of the Oshkosh Civic Symphony furnished the orchestra. We're proud to have our state audience sit in on a rehearsal on one of the numbers. That's Doris Meixel singing in the role of Sylvia.

[Meixel singing]

[chorus sings]

STANLEY: Now let's leave the high school and go west on Algoma Street. We're on our way to the Public Museum. There's a lot of education located on Algoma. And if we happen to enter the Museum on the half hour, this is what we're likely to hear.

[clock music box playing]

STANLEY: You're standing in front of a clock. In its base is the music box, and as you listen, a tiny door in the top opens and a tiny man in a robe emerges. He is followed by eleven others. They march past a figure of Christ. All of them bow their heads in reverence. All except the last one, and he turns his back. He carries a bag of gold. He is Judas.

[clock music box playing]

STANLEY: This is the Apostle Clock. Probably the most popular single item in the museum. It was built 50 years ago by Mathias Kitz, and now occupies its proud place along with other relics in one of the most unusual museums anywhere. Its director, Nile Behnke, tells us about it.

BEHNKE: Well, this is the home, the former home of Edgar Sawyer. He was the son 00:38:00of Philetus Sawyer the senator, and this home was given to Oshkosh in 1923. They had quite an argument of what it'll be used for; should it be an old ladies' home, or an old man's home, children's home, a hospital. Oh, many things came up, so there were many arguments, and finally the city appointed a board, and the board recommended that it be used as a museum. And, of course, we've gone on as a museum, as a local museum. We only have the material of our own locality, Oshkosh, but we do take in the Fox River Valley. So it makes it a unique museum, and one of the most outstanding one of its kind in the United States.

STANLEY: What kind of attendance do you have?

BEHNKE: Very good attendance, very good attendance. I might say that our attendance has been for 1949 was around 75,000 people. 'Course, we work with the schools. A great deal. We work with the schools from all parts of the state, as far away as Antigo and Rhinelander. They come down here in buses. Groups come 00:39:00and they want lectures on Indian life, pioneer life or art, anything in the museum, and then we give the lecture. A record of school classes held there was 395 classes.

STANLEY: And that's better than a class a day, including Sundays. Near the Museum there's another institution that attracts people to Oshkosh: the Paine Art Center and Arboretum. They might come just to see the art collections and shrubbery displays, or they might come to find out what trees to plant in their own backyards. Earlier on the program, you heard George Nevitt in connection with the Paine Sash and Door Company. He also manages the Art Center and the Arboretum. And here he outlines the idea behind the institution.

NEVITT: Well, the Art Center is a building for the purpose used in its name. It covers art, and all of its angles: paintings, oriental rugs, period furniture, 00:40:00glass, china, silverware, and tries to have examples of the finest artisans in each of those branches. As far as the grounds go, Mr. Paine's objective was to have plantings of shrubs and flowers, which people could look at and admire with the idea of selecting individual plants or groups of plants for their own yard, and by example that would be set in the arboretum, improve Oshkosh in general from a horticultural standpoint.

[chorus humming]

STANLEY: We're still talking about education. Not necessarily music education 00:41:00either, but readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. That's the Oshkosh State Teachers College acapella chorus in the background. Their director is J.A. Griese, who also directs the Apollo male chorus you recall. Most of the members of that chorus will be teaching in the high schools and elementary schools of the state within a few years. That's one of the services our teachers colleges provide us in the state. Let's look, for example, at some placement statistics.

EVANS: We're very proud of our placement record at Oshkosh. They're in the kindergarten primary, the primary, intermediate and grammar grades. We place them, one hundred percent of all the available candidates, and that was true in the rurals too. And another fact that we're very proud of as far as rurals are concerned, is that those who went out, three fourths of them, received above the 00:42:00state average in salary. Only two were below.

STANLEY: Faculty member Maysel Evans gives us these facts.

EVANS: Well, for grade school teachers, in fact the highest salary that was given, was given to an elementary man, and that was $4,000 last year. Of course, he had had some previous experience. And the lowest was $2,100. As far as the rurals are concerned, their maximum is $300 a month, and the minimum was $225 a month.

JAMES: We might add that one hundred thirty three of our Oshkosh Teachers College graduates are now teaching in the Oshkosh public schools. That nine secondary graduates are teaching out of state, out of a total of sixty. Three elementary teachers are in work out of state, out of a total of fifty two 00:43:00graduates. The total of out of state is about nine percent of the number being graduated. The others are teaching right here in Wisconsin.

STANLEY: The addition is made by N.S. James, Chairman of the English Department. Forty Wisconsin counties are represented at Oshkosh, but most of the students are from Winnebago land. Three hundred seventy four from the city of Oshkosh alone. As are all teacher training institutions, they're quite concerned over teacher shortages at the college, especially in the primary and elementary grades. Mr. James tells us what they're doing about it.

JAMES: This college, like a number of the other teachers' colleges, is engaged in in-service training of teachers, at the present time is operating extension classes in seven counties in the state. For example, there are evening classes at Coleman, Fond du Lac, Juneau, Manitowoc, Menasha, Shawano, and Winnebago, at 00:44:00the present time.

STANLEY: Who attends these classes?

JAMES: The teachers actually in-service, who are working towards certification or a renewal of certificate privileges. And, of course, the objective is exactly that of meeting the problem of teacher shortage in elementary schools, because the in-service teachers attending these night sessions are elementary teachers in rural and in city schools.

STANLEY: And there's more service to the community and to the state. Before we leave the campus, let's listen to the acapella chorus, and "Hospo Dipo Milwi."

[chorus singing]

[chorus singing]

CONRAD: I think we've got a mighty good police department. They're very obliging to anybody that asks questions. They don't bawl you out if you happen to just make a little mistake on your turning a corner.

STANLEY: That's Otto Conrad again, and that remark is echoed everywhere you go in Oshkosh. They're proud of their police force, its efficiency, and its attitude of friendly cooperativeness. And here's the man chiefly responsible for that attitude, Police Chief Golz.

GOLZ: I like my work here, because I've got a police department here that I'm really proud of. The boys are all gentlemen, and they're good workers, and they're neat dressers, they keep themselves neat and clean, and I don't hesitate a minute to put them as high as any police department in the state as far as appearance is concerned, and as far as knowledge is concerned.

STANLEY: The police department's biggest job these days is traffic, and here's why.

LOWELL: The streets don't intersect properly, too many of them are too narrow. The streets are the same width, the same cut of the streets as they were when they had horse and buggy. And the cars have multiplied twenty times as fast as the conditions are that we're dealing with in regard to making streets wider, making them one-way streets, making the parking facilities so that the moving traffic don't conflict with the parking traffic, and so the people can get in and out in a faster movement.

STANLEY: That was traffic officer Bud Lowe, one of the most popular members of the department. Maintaining harmonious relations with the public is probably harder for the police department than for any other civic institution. Because police officers have to do things, sometimes, that are likely to make us, uh, to make people unhappy. That is, unless they know they had it coming.

LOWE: I don't believe any of the public at large, the majority of them, have any ill feelings toward us. They know if they violate and they have a ticket or they are arrested, they have it because the officer has given them all that they've got coming, and a little bit more, and when they do get arrested, they know that they had it coming. And that's for sure.

STANLEY: But giving a ticket or making an arrest is not a black on white affair. It involves good judgment by the officer.

LOWE: A person who willfully violates, you can tell them ninety-nine out of a hundred.

STANLEY: Besides being a good officer, Bud finds time for a lot of civic 00:49:00activity that makes friends for him all over town. One of his favorite off-duty pastimes is to referee the kids' games. The kids call him by his first name. There's one more place folks say we mustn't miss. And that's Schroeder's Drugstore on Washington Boulevard. It's an unofficial coffee club sort of a place, they tell us. Here, you're likely to meet almost anyone who lives in Oshkosh. The manager is Wendell Ihde, Wendy for short. Here's how Wendy describes the place.

IHDE: Well, it's congenial, it's a place that has been built up on friendship entirely. Shall I say off the cuff, nothing is formal. Joe knows Schmoe and Schmoe knows Joe.

STANLEY: And they get to know each other over a cup of coffee.

IHDE: This is a second-coffee club, you see.

STANLEY: Uh huh.

IHDE: The first coffee at home tastes lousy. It's one of those things, morning after cup of coffee.

STANLEY: [laughs]

IHDE: The second one tastes better.

STANLEY: Yeah.

IHDE: I can't say our coffee's any good, but it's hot.

STANLEY: Hot!

IHDE: You get it in the saucer, or, half and half if you like.

STANLEY: The chances are, every important issue in Oshkosh is either resolved or dissolved in Wendy's coffee.

IHDE: If there's anything to be discussed, like, we need a new ball park in town, why, you'll find that discussed in the third booth.

STANLEY: And one of the things they've been talking about lately is the parking meter.

IHDE: That's a very delicate question with me because I'm partial. No parking meters, please!

STANLEY: Now here's a chance to add fuel to a little dispute. Are you listening, Wendy? Here's Bud Lowe, traffic officer.

LOWE: Personally, I think parking meters are a very good thing. They are a solution to a problem which the police department hasn't any--can't cope with, 00:51:00and this is the people that are watching the policemen when they're marking their cars, more than they do their jobs.

STANLEY: Have a cup of coffee, Bud. It's on the house. Uh, maybe. Now before we leave the spell of the Schroeder Drugstore's opinion-generating atmosphere, let's listen to some composite opinion of Oshkosh. Here are the people of Oshkosh talking about their hometown. First, Boyd Jordan, president of the New American Bank.

JORDAN: They never will set anything on fire. We'll never, I don't think we'll ever hit the heights, but we'll never ever be down in the depths either. It goes along on a pretty even keel. New people are constantly coming here looking for opportunities, and they're willing to bet their dollars on it.

STANLEY: Here's Nile Behnke, Museum Director.

BEHNKE: It's a lovely hometown. People are friendly here. It isn't a boom town, goes up one day and down the next. It's a stable sort of a town.

STANLEY: R.D. Scammerhorn of the Morgan Door Company.

SCAMMERHORN: I like Oshkosh. I think it's a good city. Frankly, I think there are some phases of it that could be made a little more progressive.

STANLEY: And here's Miss Fanny Medberry.

MEDBERRY: Oshkosh is not a boom town. It-- the growth has been slow, but solid. See what I mean? We aren't any better than any other town, but we're just good [unintelligible].

STANLEY: Carlton Foster of the Dunphy Boat Company.

FOSTER: I have no brothers or sisters, father or mother, and I've wandered all over the world. I still came back to Oshkosh because I think it's the finest damn town to live in you ever saw.

STANLEY: And finally, Otto Conrad, who's lived in Oshkosh 81 years.

CONRAD: Well, sir, I'll tell ya. I've travelled around quite a little, and I finally decided Oshkosh was the best town in the United States.

STANLEY: Why?

CONRAD: Well, I argue it this way. It's the best town in the county. I figured 00:53:00Winnebago County was as good as any in the state, and I don't think there's any better state than Wisconsin is.

STANLEY: And who are we to argue with him?

ANNOUNCER: You've heard "Profile of Oshkosh," another in a series of broadcasts documenting the story of Wisconsin communities, with tape recordings made on the spot. Narrated and produced by Ray Stanley. Technical assistance by Ben Rosse. Two weeks from today, the profile of Sauk Prairie, and you're invited to join us next week at this same time for a community concert, featuring the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra. This is the Wisconsin College of the Air.