Memories & Stories from early Lugerville

Please share your family's stories & memories

Updated April 27, 2014

** CLICK HERE to view Averill Family Stories & Memories (PDF) updated 4/27/14

** CLICK HERE to view Tarcon Family Stories & Memories (PDF) updated 2/23/14

Below are some excerpts

 "The Outhouse", by Cindy Tarcon Capra

     The smell of Pine-Sol brings me instantly back to my days as a child living in Lugerville. That powerful smell memory is linked to the cleaning of the family outhouse. This wasn't just ANY outhouse, it was a very unique outhouse with historic significance.
     When the mill was dismantled the Tarcon family, somehow, ended up with the steam heated outhouse. It had been attached to the cook shanty by steam pipes, intending to give some measure of warmth to the current occupant. Double wall construction made this warmth possible. The inner wall had good-sized holes all over, allowing the heat to enter the inner chamber. Once relocated to our farm it lost its warming capability but still had the pipes protruding from its side.
     Squirrels found their way into this unusual, but totally functional building and stored pine cones between the walls. There was always a dusting of pine cone parts covering everything. We simply brushed them off and carried on with business. Summertime, those hot humid days, was the time for the annual cleaning. That was my job. The smell of Pine-Sol still takes me back.

Notice the steam pipes protruding from the right side.

** CLICK HERE to view more Tarcon Family Stories & Memories (PDF) Updated 2/23/14

House WORK, by Dorothy Averill

     The Saturday night bath – in a wash tub – with water from the stove reservoir was a weekly ritual.  All three of us girls bathed in the same water.  The shades were drawn, and the doors were shut, and the room became hot and steamy, and smelled of Palmolive soap.  A hot fire was put in the stove so we wouldn’t get a chill – then the tub was placed in front of the open oven door, giving us more warmth. 

     A snapping fire in the stove was just the thing to get us moving on cold mornings before school.  Sometimes the house would go below freezing and our water pail would freeze.  We grabbed our clothes and ran near the stove to dress. 

     Monday was wash day.  A hot fire and lots of hot water was needed to clean the clothes.  The copper boiler sat on the stove and when the water was ready, the whites were put in the boiling water with Fels-Naptha Soap.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fels-Naptha   Then the clothes were scrubbed on a washboard and rinsed and wrung by hand.  It was long hard work for our mother, but no woman hung out her wash unless it was white as the neighbors.

     Tuesday was ironing day.  There was no ‘wash n wear’ so ironing was essential.  Flat irons were heated on top of the stove.  You used one until it cooled, then released the heavy iron from its handle, then you exchanged a cool iron for a hot one by clamping the wooden handle onto another iron onto the stove. 

     Once in a while you had to let the stove cool, so you could put on a coat of ‘stove blacking’, which gave the old stove a like-new look.  It took washing and re-washing to get the ‘stove blacking’ off your hands.  Then, the chrome trim of the stove was polished with Bon Ami – this had to buffed and buffed with an old rag til the chrome had a nice shine.  Cleaning and maintaining those old stoves took a lot of work.  The first time a fire was started in the stove after the stove blacking was put on, the house smelled to high heaven until the blacking burned off. 
Note:  The stoves were also used to heat rocks to warm other areas of the house.

** CLICK HERE to view more Averill Family Stories & Memories (PDF) updated 2/22/14

"Muskie in the Flambeau River", by Frank Smetak
Great Grandson of Anton & Antonia Smetak

I still remember back in 1958, my dad Willis & I went down to the Flambeau river in Lugerville around dusk. Dad caught his first Muskie. Also, my great Uncle Eman, took us up the Flambeau to where the rocks start & hooked a Muskie, then proceeded to shoot it right between the eyes. He looked like Ernest Hemmingway to me. Being 11 years old, I was quite impressed.

Publications and memoirs about early Lugerville

"Lugerville, Town of Flambeau 1904-1954" A Term Paper by HelenMary S. Greene, 1954

"Wildlife Exhibit" by Dale Warren, February 1985

"If Popple Hill School Could Speak" by Gladys Pippenger, December 25, 1958 in THE BEE, Phillips, WI

"Flambeau" by Ira A. Kenyon, July 1976

"The Life & Times of Dewey Wheeler", by Dewey Wheeler

"Yesterday and Today, Recall With Us", by Therese and Ed Trojak