Kenosha, WI

A couple of weeks ago we visited my cousin Don who lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and his mom, my Auntie Pat.  I couldn’t remember visiting Kenosha as a kid, though we often drove from the Chicago suburbs to Wisconsin on one of my Dad’s “drive-abouts”.  Well during our visit this month, the history of Kenosha became apparent…it was a “car town”…having both the big AMC plant and also a plant that made Chrysler motors.  My Dad was into the picturesque escape, not the urban/manufacturing experience.

The plants are all closed and gone, scraped off the landscape totally.  Kenosha is reinventing itself in an interesting way and has become a very nice little city…one my Dad probably would have taken us to, back in the day.  I got sort of fascinated with the story.  My cousin Don lives in a condo on the AMC site, a beautiful site jutting out into Lake Michigan…now filled with parks and bike paths and marinas.

In 1902 Thomas Jeffrey made the second assembly line car, the Rambler (Oldsmobile was first, Ford was third)…a year before the first Ford.  The plant grew on it’s lake-side site with it’s best production years in the 1960’s with over 1 and one half million cars made and over 16,000 people employed.  It looked like this…with the plant on the top left out into the lake…

here’s the AMC site after the plant was demolished in the late 1980’s (Don and I found this photo on the wall at Tenuto’s—a terrific Italian Deli—not very clear due to reflections..but you get the idea…)

today it looks like this…

The plant closed in December of 1988 and the land was cleared, replaced by bike trails, park, marina and condos…

One reason Don lives here is to be close to the marina, where his boat is moored…the sail boat Kokopelli…named for the trickster god who represents the spirit of music…(and also fertility, but I don’t know about that, Don.)

Don himself is filled with the spirit of music, and a tiny bit of a trickster.  By day he owns and runs a company that designs and manufactures instruments that test the heat of metals, he’s a father and a grandfather, a gifted skier and snowboarder…

and by night a musician…one half of a duo called Acoustic Soul.  I’d been wanting to see Acoustic Soul in action, and during our visit they played an open mike at TG’s…a session where Don and Rick were joined by Larry on the guitar and Marty on the Mandolin…too much fun!

But then there was family time too…

which included some family photos I’d never seen…my maternal grandmother Irene Leming on the left and her grandmother Susan Petty Young on the right, about 1913…

My Mom Martha June Stone, her grandmother Emma Young Leming, my grandmother Irene Leming Stone, and my Mom’s sister Edith Patricia  (the girls were called June and Pat)

and this fun shot of Pat and Nana…

Pat married John Zurmuehlen…mischief maker and favorite of mine…

and after WWII they bought a house in Clarendon Hills…a small suburban classic…

and proceeded to raise the roof and make a new room…themselves…

Uncle John is gone, and now Pat runs an antique Store in Richmond, Illinois (Solid Brass if you’re out that way), but lives on the lovely Powers Lake…just over the line into Wisconsin.  We had several long visits…

and took a long and wonderful boat ride around the lake…then watched the storm roll in…

sirens starting going off and look what was happening back in Kenosha…

but the weather cleared, we had a nice dinner at Twin Lakes, and headed back…

One last breakfast, hug, goodbye…

We headed on to Chicago, eventually wending our way home….and happy to be here…