Bill Wangemann escorts us through the “Neighborhoods back in 1951”

Wouldn’t it be great to live in a community where a grocer was just a block or so away, a drug store on the next corner, and there was a barber was just down the block If you needed meat you just picked up the phone and called the butcher and a short time later he brought your order right to your door. Every morning you opened your back door and a fresh quart of milk or other dairy product had been delivered, as you had ordered. Mail was delivered twice a day in some areas. If you wanted to shop in the downtown shopping area you just walked to the corner and waited for the bus, which ran every 12 minutes and cost a dime.

In every neighborhood, there was the local drug store that not only filled your prescriptions; the pharmacist oftentimes gave people advice as to which patent medicine they should take to cure their ills. The drug store probably had a soda fountain and sold perfume, candy and other items such as suntan lotion and sunglasses and developed your latest exposed roll of film.

Does what I have just described sound like an ideal place to live? Well it was, and you and I used to live there … it was called your old neighborhood!

Just to refresh your memory, back in the “good old days” in Sheboygan County there were just over 70 corner filling stations, most of them privately owned. There were six in Sheboygan Falls, six in Plymouth, even tiny Greenbush and Oostburg each had one. Sheboygan residents could fill their cars up at any one of 56 service stations. Do you remember driving into one of them and sometimes two men would come out to “service” your car? If the station was owned by one of the larger oil companies, the attendants oftentimes wore neat uniforms complete with a leather bow tie and a hat bearing the company logo. While one attendant filled your tank the other washed your windshield, checked your oil, battery, water in your radiator and the air in your tires. Inside the service station spotless restrooms and free road maps were available. For all of this we paid the princely sum of 27.9 cents per gallon of gas.

Today, with the price of gasoline hovering close to $3 per gallon, we get to perform all these tasks ourselves, while standing out in the cold.

Ahh progress – we’ve come a long way – haven’t we?

Some of the service stations you may remember, most of which are long gone, areVanEngen Bros. Service Station in Sheboygan Falls, Ed’s Service Station in Cedar Grove, Myers Texaco Station in Plymouth and Weber’s Shell Service in Sheboygan, just to mention a few.

To show you how we’ve progressed, when we need groceries we have the opportunity to go to any one of the large supermarkets in our area. If the store is busy you get to park your car half a block or threefourths of a block away and with the winter months coming you will have the additional treat of trudging through sleet, snow or rain.

Once inside the store you’re faced with the daunting task of trying to free a shopping cart from a long line of other carts that seemed to have mysteriously grown together. Then comes the shopping trip itself. We’re confronted with what seems to be miles of shelves stocked with every conceivable item known to mankind.

Once you’ve competed your shopping you have another privilege that your grandmother never knew at the corner “mom-and-pop” store, which is standing at the end of a very long line to check out your purchases.

But even before you can check out, you’re faced with an awesome decision, paper or plastic?

Then it’s back to the car through the wind, sleet and snow. Load them into the car and drive home then lug it all into the house.

Now grandma, she didn’t have the opportunity to do all this when she needed groceries. She had to sit down at the kitchen table, make out a list and then phone her favorite grocer with her order. A few hours later a young lad would appear at the back door with several boxes containing her order which he carried into the house and set on the kitchen table. In fact some of the larger markets in those days, such as Piggly Wiggly and the Prange Company, delivered your order after you came to their store and made your selections, all with no charge. Isn’t it sad, all the fun that grandma missed by not being able to battle her way through a crowded supermarket?

Back in her day, a mom-and-pop store could be found in every neighborhood probably no more than a block or two from where you lived. Stores such as Clore’s Grocery in Plymouth, Daane Food Market in Oostburg, Erbstoesser Grocery in Sheboygan and the Red and White Grocery in Elkhart Lake are remembered by many. In 1951, there were 135grocery stores in Sheboygan County with 16 in Plymouth, 5 in Sheboygan Falls and 103 in the city of Sheboygan!

And, of course, especially in Sheboygan, there was the friendly neighborhood tavern. In fact, in Sheboygan there were 138 corner taverns. It was almost to the point where we ran out of corners to put them on. Indiana Avenue in Sheboygan from South 7th Street to South 23rd Street could boast of 22 taverns alone. Plymouth, on the other hand, had only 11, Sheboygan Falls, 7, but tiny Cascade had 5. Even the good people of Oostburg and Adell each had one.

It’s really amazing how much progress we’ve made over the past 50 or more years. We have made progress –haven’t we? Today’s Snippet: There were 52 barbershops in the county, 41 of them in the city of Sheboygan, many of which were attached to taverns that could be entered from the barbershop. When the barber wanted his next patron, he would pound on the common wall between him and the tavern to indicate the barber chair was empty.