VACANT AHS BUILDING STILL RINGS WITH
SOUNDS OF PAST



There is something eerie about entering an empty school.

I can recall going into Alexander High School (AHS) after hours, with very few people there. Even though there was always some sort of administration or faculty there if the building was unlocked, it still seemed deserted and you felt very alone in the huge structure.

I remember walking to my locker, through the empty halls, my footsteps echoing back at me from the brick walls and tile floors. You would hear a door slam down the hallway, or the shout of a student on another floor, and you would remember you were not alone.When the school was built in 1913, at a cost of $52,000, it was a two-story square building with a bell steeple on top, and then in 1920 the large gym and athletic field were added. It was 1958 when a larger cafeteria was needed, and another addition was put on the west side of the school, completing it as it stands today.

Although a new high school across town replaced it in the fall of 1970, it still was used as a middle school until 1996, when its doors closed forever to the students of Nekoosa.

I have written before about the students who passed through AHS, and what they did with their lives, but this time I wanted the story to be about the school itself. Ten long years have passed since the official closing, and 41 years have passed since I graduated from school there.I still dream about it, the same dreams I am sure most former students have — you are in school and can’t find your locker or your classroom, or some variation on that theme. Somehow there always is angst involved, maybe because angst was a permanent part of high school life.

Today, however, as I enter Alexander to take photos, the only feeling I have is bewilderment. Nothing looks the same from the northeast entrance. What should have been the shop classrooms are now business offices. And from there, it gets even stranger — classrooms that are either empty, or filled with boxes, junk and stored items; rooms that were cannibalized for built-in cabinets or bookcases; hallways missing lockers; rooms either devoid of furniture or with some incongruous item in the center of it. Areas that once seemed cavernous, like the original study hall, the large (boy’s) gym and the small (girl’s) gym, now seemed small and strange, although as you walked through, you still knew what each room had been.

I still clearly remember being the one to collect the absentee slips for the office my senior year during study hall, and walking down the brightly lit hallways, past each room, to pull the slip off the door frame. Funny how much shorter that walk is now, how much smaller those rooms are, how narrow the halls seem and how tiny the lockers are. The narrow winding hallway from the upper floors to the big gym that once mystified, now seem just sad; areas that once were friendly, now foreign; classrooms that once beckoned, now disturb and repel.

I expected my tour to be nostalgic and slightly melancholy, as it is when you go back to a childhood home, a place you used to work, or any place you spent a good share of your life. Instead, it was as if those school years were all just a dream or something from my imagination. It was hard to reconcile then with now.

Peeling paint, fallen ceiling tiles, graffiti on the walls of the principal’s office — none of that found a place among my memories. Standing on the third floor, looking down into the study hall doors seemed more familiar; stairwells and staircases seemed right. Directly across from my locker, I looked out of the windows down onto the center section with its vents and pipes and it took me back in time instantly. I almost expected to turn around and see Renny, Len, Pat, Chuck and the other guys waiting for me to move so they could stand in front of the windows and talk, arms folded, one foot up against the wall, as they watched the other students pass by during noon hour\ while they waited to meet up with their girlfriends. But as soon as I turned, the dilapidated hallways broke the spell and it was once again 2006, not 1965.There is a hypothesis that even inanimate objects can become infused with whatever happened around them. While I do not subscribe to that theory, there are times, when in a place with a long history, that I almost feel as if something does linger. That some part of the past still exists on some level. That is how Alexander feels. If walls could talk, these bricks would have a lot of stories to tell — stories of the thousands who walked these halls through the years and became better people for their time there. I think of friendships forged, secrets shared, dreams conceived and good times long gone.

Alexander stills stands, although a bit the worse for wear, keeping its secrets and holding the memories of all who ever attended, much like a safe deposit box in a bank vault. Through the years, we each placed memories in that box and each autumn, year after year, we returned to revisit the ones there, to add new ones. Then one day we just walked away — not bothering to close the account — just leaving it there. There are those who say “you can’t go back again” but they are wrong. You can go back — it is just that sometimes it is better not to. Sometimes what is locked in that bank vault is best left to memory.

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GENERATIONS
If Alexander school in Nekoosa could talk, how would it remember the stream of students it has accommodated through the years? Imagine the stories it could tell about the thousands who have passed through its hallways and classrooms. Where have they gone to? What have they become? What of that imposing brick structure did they carry through their lives with them? Most who passed through tried their best to gain an education; some only "put in their time." Some were befriended by teachers who left a lifetime impression on them, and others forged life-long friendships. For some, memories of schooldays are wonderful, for some, they are unsettling, but if you are like most people, they tend to be bittersweet, that rare combination of the two. Time marches on. Generations pass.

I sit here with my annual from Alexander, where I graduated from in 1965, open in front of me, reading all the things that were written so many years ago. One person composes a poem with a sly sense of humor, another evokes nostalgic thoughts, and still another tersely signs a name and date only. There are serious notations, off-the-cuff comments and much humor. "May your future bring you happiness." "Hope you have a great life." "If you ever get to Milwaukee, look me up." "Always remember the fun we had, especially on final exam days." Although most entries would be cryptic to others, all are incredibly clear to me. As I read the inscriptions, I can still hear their individual voices, voices filled with so much promise and hope.

Our rather ambiguous class motto of "Memories past--hope begins" at least rang of the possibility of making a difference--and I think we did. Never before had one single generation made such an impact on such a rapidly changing world. Our adolescence was left behind when even we could not escape the tension felt during the Cuban missile crisis, and our innocence was shattered when a rifle was fired in Dallas on a cold November day. Our passage into the world of adulthood was heralded not by trumpet fanfare, but rather the sound of M-16 rifle fire from deep in the jungles of Viet Nam. Between the state of world affairs and the growing civil unrest in our own country, we knew that it was up to us to make the necessary changes, and we have tried. We tried like all the generations before us and like all those to still come. And now, as we wind up the decade of the ‘90s, not to mention the 20th century, we baby boomers find ourselves aging, but still filled with a passion for the life that is now half passed and rapidly dwindling. We look back and see what we have accomplished, but shake our heads at where we missed out.

We were just kids playing with hoola-hoops and marbles in the ‘50s, teens dancing to rock-and-roll during noon dances in the gym in the ‘60s. We conscientiously worked for peace and settled in with young families in the ‘70s. When the late ‘80s came around with their "Thirty-Something" angst, we just shook our heads in amusement as we were already forty-something. We didn’t worry about "keeping up with the Joneses"--we were the Joneses. We set the trends. We called the shots. The baby-boomers led and the world followed.

The hot topic when we were children was the Cold War and bomb shelters. Our parents may have worried about whom we were playing with, but not what drugs we were on, what gang we ran with and if we carried guns. We didn’t live with the threat of car-jackings, drive-by shootings and AIDS. Where did we mess up? Where did the sanity of life slip through our fingers? Believe it or not, I can answer that. Like every generation before, and all those to follow, we decided not to make the same mistakes our parents did, and in the process we created entire new problems, problems far more serious. What a shame we have to reach our forties and fifties to really appreciate how precious and short the human life span is?

Time moves along and things change. In its declining years, Alexander housed middle-school students, that nondescript age of "preteen," who for the most part, I am fairly certain, cared nothing for the traditions and the glory of that grand old school. To them Alexander was simply a stepping stone from childhood into teenage years. Rather than appreciating the school, it was their goal to move on, as quickly as possible, to the "new" high school and leave the deteriorating building behind. And, I am even more sure they did not understand their parents desire, when attending an after-school function, to linger in doorways and reminisce about the "good ol’ days." I could have researched the history of Alexander, but that would have given you only cold, rather meaningless facts. Quoting dates and feeding you data won’t tell you what that school was really all about. Lives were molded there, life courses plotted, destinies shaped--partially by the students and teachers, yes, but also by the school itself.

As I look back, it is interesting to realize the impact one brick building has had on me and my family. I went to school for ten years in that building, attending only kindergarten and sixth grade at the elementary school, and my earliest memories of Alexander were of my first grade teacher, Mrs. Mayer, a sweet, gentle lady who had the patience of a saint and the wisdom of King Solomon. I always felt awed, as a child, at the size of the building, especially since as grade school children, we were only on one floor, in one small section. I can remember the rare times we had cause to venture into some of the other areas where there were immense ceilings, long shadowy corridors and a dark, eery silence; which was broken only by the sound of our small feet hurriedly shuffling along the marbled floors. I would gaze in wonder at the double staircase leading to the upper floors and think surely if I ever had to traverse the entire building I would get lost and never find my way back. Even as a teen, attending junior high in the newer section, there were areas that still seemed strange and intimidating, hallways that wound around and descended, much like a maze; small little "cubby hole" areas that held nothing but lockers; a balcony encompassing the small gym, which except for rare occasions was off limits to students and usually was packed with items in storage. And the strangest of all was that one area seen only on the rarest of occasion--the boiler room with its curious mechanical monstrosities with pipes and conduit snaking off in all directions creating a totally alien environment.

My two daughters also attended Alexander, but as a middle school, when its glory was fading.

Alexander saw generations of students pass through its doors and out into society, most the better for their experience there. More than once it saw the young men go off to fight a war on foreign soil, in the name of freedom. It saw us go off to work in large cities, and off to college in new towns. It saw some of us stay right here and raise yet another generation that would attend Alexander. More than once there were three generations of Alexander graduates in attendance at games or graduation ceremonies, each with their own special memories of days past.

I was always glad I wasn’t a "townie" who had to attend the elementary school with its one floor design and no character to the building. There was no mystery, no history, no mystique; just a plain, ordinary, modern structure. Those of us who were bussed and attended Alexander were allowed to develop our imaginations along with our intellect, just by virtue of being part of a school with so much history, and personality.

I have spoken with many who graduated from Alexander before me and all have many of the same type of fond memories I do. Still others do not understand the nostalgia. But all of life is like that--you get only what you want take from it. Nostalgia is a wonderful emotion. It keeps us grounded in what we were that was good and basic. From the fifties "duck and cover" exercises we performed, to the memories of "hanging in the halls" with friends; from Christmas extravaganzas where grades one through twelve all participated to Friday pep rallies, from study hall passes to working on homecoming floats, from lunches of cherry cokes and hamburgers at Holmes’ Restaurant to lunches of vanilla phosphates and cheese potato chips at Dennis’ Rexall drugstore, each moment of our past has brought us to where we are now. Every one of us has our own memories, and even those we shared as school friends, we each remember slightly differently. That’s one of the reasons I personally don’t attend class reunions. I want my memories to stay there, in the past, mine alone, not to be colored by whom or what someone may have become 20, 30, or 40 years later. I don’t care who became the most successful, who married the most times or who flopped in life. I want to remember each person in the context of whom they were at the time we were friends. I want to look at my annual and recall the faces and feelings of the time we shared together. And even those who left us early, and the class of ‘65 had more than our share, shall remain forever young and flawless in our memories, because their lives did not extend much past that world of high school. I think that is the way Alexander would remember each of us, each generation that passed through and out into life. It would remember us the way we were then, filled with hopes and dreams and the desire to change the world. And some of us did. I know us baby boomers did.

No future generations will attend Alexander as it has had its doors forever closed as a school. The sound of students running through the hallways, late for class, are nothing now but empty echoes. The sight of girls sharing secrets next to lockers during noon hour are simply ghostly images conjured up in the memory. And so they shall forever remain. Which is as it should be. Time marches on. Generations pass.

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JACK WHETSTONE & HIS GARAGE




It is hard to say which is more of an institution, the building itself which still remains standing or the man who built and owned it for all those years, who is no longer here.

No fancy names for his place–Whetstone's Hi-Way 73 Garage said it all, who owned it where it was located, and what its purpose was. That pretty much summed up the man in some ways too . . . he was direct and to the point, said what had to be said and went on about business. That is unless he was telling a story–then he never rushed and those who sat listening, never wanted him to. This was the art he had crafted since childhood and no one did it better. The proof of this was shown in the way he held court in the office of his shop . . . with his loyal subjects of all ages, drawn into his stories night after night. Truth be told, there might have been more stories told than cars repaired there.

The year was 1950 when Lawrence "Jack" Whetstone, then 41, built his Standard service station on Highway 73, just three miles east of Nekoosa, in Saratoga Township. He purchased 120 acres of land from his father-in-law, John Tesser Sr.

The building of the garage was the result of a lifetime of working on motors and cars. As a teenager, he helped work on vehicles in his native Bedford, PA, and after highschool he had his own shop there in a rented building. After serving in England in the Air Force in WWII, as an airplane mechanic, he settled south of Nekoosa and found a job working for Chet Korbol at Korbol's garage. It did not take Whetstone long to figure out that having his own business might be a better idea, and the location was a good one with no other shops close by.

Whetstone's Garage was typical of many of the service stations built at that time, made of concrete blocks, painted white. The wood trim color varied through the years, from red, to green to black, depending upon whose gas he was selling. What began as a Standard Oil station eventually became Mobil, and then Zephyr. From the big glass-crowned pumps to the sleek squared ones, it evolved.

For 25 years Whetstone sold gas, repaired autos, loaned money, gave advice and told his stories, and then in 1975, the "garage" officially became the "shop" when Whetstone closed its large overhead doors to automobiles and started selling antiques. The hours never changed though; Whetstone was out there from early morning until 9 or 10 at night, and usually seven days a week.

In 1955, the garage survived a fire, although there was a lot of damage from the water and the creosote and many areas like the roof, needed repair, but over all the building held up well. It was also struck by lightning once, knocking the people in the shop to the floor, but no structural damage was done.

Locals will laugh when they tell you that Whetstone was a man ahead of his time. In the '50s he was already making people pump their own gas if he was busy . . . and sometimes even when he was not busy. His was probably the first self-service station in existence!

As an antique shop, the building was perfect, with the large overhead doors allowing for easy moving of furniture in and out. The shelves that once held parts, now held bric-a-brac and antiques of all sorts. The glass showcase which once displayed candy and gum now held watches and coins. But the office still remained the office and Whetstone still sat in his rocker and told his stories.

Through the years, Whetstone came in contact with a lot of people, famous and infamous, as well as the ordinary guy. Jimmy Stewart, the actor, was his commanding officer while stationed in England. He spent time with John Wayne on the actor's ranch in Arizona. During his years as a garage owner in WI, he knew Ed Gein, the ghoulish and psychotic murderer and grave robber on which Ray Bloch based his "Psycho" story. More than once Gein stopped by to pick up spare auto parts from Jack and just visit.

There have been numerous stories of how Whetstone loaned someone the money to start a business when even the banks wouldn't, or how he had given to someone in need; how he rushed someone to the hospital or got up in the middle of night to help someone stranded. That's the way life was then.

In his last years in the business, Whetstone's son Tim also operated a motorcycle repair shop and gun store out of the back quarters. Finally, at age 86, Whetstone officially retired, staying in his home under the care of his daughter Anita, until his death two years later in 1998.

It was in 1997 that the business was purchased by Whetstone's son, Cal. He refurbished the front of the building, did much inside work, and opened it as an antique and gift shop. Then in 2001, the younger Whetstone also opened Advantage Home Care, a home health agency, in the front portion of the shop. Advantage Home Care has since moved to offices Wisconsin Rapids and once again the entire garage is an antique store.

If walls could talk, I am not sure of the stories that the 56-year-old garage would tell, but I am certain they would not be any better than the ones told by Jack himself . . . all those years ago.

Photo Links:

Jack's Antique Shop - 1980s

Current Whetstone's Antiques, owned by Cal Whetstone

Brand new Whetstone's Hi-Way 73 Garage - 1950

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Kindergarten Reunion
It's a well-known fact that I have no time for class reunions. Ask anyone from Alexander High School's Class of 1965; I have yet to attend one. I guess my feelings have always been that the classmates I still wish to have contact with I do, and the ones who I was not close to in school have long since ceased to interest me. I wish them all well, but I have no need to have to revisit the past with so much of the future still beckoning.

Therefore, it was with some surprise that I found myself toying with the idea of actually hosting a reunion . . . some 55 years after the fact. After all, these classmates were not the ones I forged close bonds with throughout the latter days of school, they were simply my kindergarten pals, the ones I sallied forth with into that brave new world long years ago. Why on earth did I wax nostalgic over that? Maybe it had something to do with the fact I would be turning 60 in November.

Back in September of 1952, I marched off to kindergarten at Nekoosa. The photo of me standing in front of my house that first day of school shows someone looking quite self-assured, two pencils clutched in my left hand and a tablet and box of crayons in my right hand.

I have many fond memories of kindergarten, bolstered by the fact I still have my class photo taken then, which I have showcased with the dress I was wearing in that very photo. I also have the Christmas gift I gave my parents that year: my hand print in fingerpaint with a calendar for 1953 attached to the bottom of it. I also have a drawing I did of my trip to Chicago, matted and framed and a few other things. Can you tell that my mother was a saver?

When it dawned on me that this year was the 55th anniversary of heading off to school, I decided that it might be fun to get in contact with the seven other little girls who lived in my neighborhood at that time and who rode the bus with me, and see what memories we could dredge up from those days–our first venture into the outside world.

Since I have managed to end up only two blocks from where I lived when I hopped that big yellow bus for school, even though I have lived other places in my adult life, I thought it fitting to hold the reunion in the old neighborhood, hoping even more memories would be rekindled by that.

I did not expect everyone to show, and indeed that was the case. Some have moved away and could not make it back. Another was out of town on the chosen date. But four of us were there and somehow, that seemed like the perfect number.

Never one to do things the usual way, the invitations to the reunion were a work of art in themselves–24 pages of photos, memories, and thought-provoking questions. The reactions to the book alone were worth all the trouble though.

And so the day arrived, and with probably as much enthusiasm as we went off to school that first day, we gathered again at my house, eager to share stories of our childhoods and reminisce about school days and other classmates.

My fears of it turning into a discussion of highschool times and present-day life were unfounded. We enjoyed looking back and laughing over the things we recalled and days long since past.

Sandy Jackson Kautzer, Kathy Gray Jinkerson and Linda Howland Sorenson were the ones who came to the reunion, all having lived within half a mile of me as children. While time had aged us all in appearance, the inner child was still to be easily found, evidenced by Sandy actually playing on the hopscotch grid I had chalked on my sidewalk before the gathering.

We laughed about loving the taste of goiter pills, except Linda who hated them. We remembered the smell of the mimeographed papers and the taste of the paste. We talked about the playground and the teachers. We recalled antics each of us had pulled, and we discussed home life and how it impacted our school days.

No one asked if we were retired, how many kids we had, how many times we had been married. No one cared if anyone had grey hair, was fat, or had wrinkles. It did not matter who would become the cheerleader or marry the football captain. It was not about highschool, it was not about now . . . it was about then.

And what a grand a glorious "then" was. I am glad we could recapture that time in our lives again . . . even if just briefly.

I have always said that I never want to grow up because when you grow up, you grow old. How much better to stay forever young in heart and in mind. Besides, 1952 was a very good year. We were all much more innocent then.

Written October 18, 2007 by Rhonda Whetstone Neibauer for the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune. Rhonda lives in Saratoga, and in her spare time tries to think up projects that take half a year to complete, just so she can whine about never having enough free time, and insists she will never grow up, much to the consternation of her daughters and husband---and to the delight of her grandchildren!

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Now, Just where is that?
Suppose I wanted to direct you from my house down to Rabbit Rock. I might say "Turn right at Smoky Joe's and go down past Deer Lodge Lake and the Bentley Hills and watch for it on your right."

Okay, so it is possible that some of you don't even know where Rabbit Rock is (Hint: It is a huge climbing rock, that used to have a sign saying not to climb it, on the west side of Highway 13 between Rapids and Adams and is shaped like a rabbit. Well, sort of.), let alone Deer Lodge Lake (which is long gone) and Smoky Joe's. But a lot of us do, especially us older folks.

No matter how much times change, there are always enough people passing down local names, that it is doubtful they will disappear entirely. Although none will ever be found on a map, originally they were a way of giving directions when little else was available, including road signs.

Score a point for each one of these you already knew.

The Bentley Hills south of Rapids on Highway 13; Devil's Elbow down on County Road Z; Eight Corners and Seneca Corners north of Rapids; Lover's Lane between Port and Nekoosa; the Portage Road; Smoky Joe's at the intersection of Highways 13 and 73 south of Rapids; Bearrs Marsh on 173 near Babcock; and of course, the unfortunately named Bed Bug Avenue (location sympathetically withheld).

You will not see signs for any of these. You just have to know.

I was recently telling a friend that if you called me and said you had a flat tire over on Z, I would head south on County Road Z just outside of Nekoosa and on to the Adams County line and you might not be there at all! If you had that flat on Z between the airport and Highway 73, you had better say "I am on the 'marsh' road," and if you are on Z between 13 and Kellner, that is Griffith. Confuse me and your tire does not get changed.

I will admit, if not in my home area, these obscure directions serve as well for me as saying to me on a cloudy day in a strange area, "Go north a mile and then head west." That means nothing to me. Tell me to "Take a right and when you see the red silo with the star on it, turn left and look for the house just two drives past the mailbox that looks like a John Deere tractor." That I can find.

So, how did you score? If you knew none of them, you either just moved to this area, you are very young person, or you just never get out much.

If you knew them all, condolences to you because that probably means you are past 60, just like me. In that case, stay off Rabbit Rock. At our age, bones are brittle and we have no business climbing anything.

©Rhonda Whetstone Neibauer/September 4, 2008 for the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune