KimW
Newbie
Posts: 3
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« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2014, 11:42:15 AM » |
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Thank you all for the information.
The location of this motel/motor inn would have been the Oak Creek part of the Milwaukee/Franklin/Oak Creek/Greenfield four city 27th & College intersection, probably why it might not be listed in a Milwaukee city directory. (Yet the area was always referred to as "Tri-City." I never got that.
I do recall the laundromat on 27th & College - it was directly adjacent to a small bakery shop. As a child, my family used both businesses -- and the Chickland restaurant. Both of these would have been about a five minute walk from the "mystery motel" I was wondering about, which would have been perhaps two blocks or so south of the bakery/laundromat, directly to the south of the Tri-City (IGA, Cardinal, etc.) grocery store, (now a Pick & Save) the former "Fedderly's drug store (which had a full fountain) and the hardware store.
I do recall Berka's Bar, 27th & Morgan...I used to stop by and have a beer there from time to time as a young guy on the way to work. (2nd shift, Harnischfeger) I kinda liked it. A nice, quiet, modest place, serving mostly older, neighborhood folks. A nice place to relax a few minutes before work, and not a place to raise hell!
Other nearby stuff I remember...Again, 27th & College, Franklin corner, there was a gas station, maybe a Sinclair/Citgo, on the SW corner (later a KFC, and now a Goodwill store I think) and directly to the north of that, a really cool little antique shop, gone 40 years now, with its frontage on Hwy 41 just FILLED with cool old machinery and farm implements and other stuff of incredible interest to an eight year old Franklin boy. I knew how to use and spell the word "antique" at a very young age, thanks to that long forgotten antique shop! And there was "Mud Lake," now Grobschmidt Park, where, as the story always went, years before, seven kids drowned on a raft in that lake, which was said to be bottomless, (I poled 18 feet - not quite bottomless) AND there was said to be quicksand there, and thus forbidden territory to me as a young boy...which explains why I lived out there in the woods, marshes, and the unusually clean and clear Mud Lake waters more than at home as a kid. In the 1960's, even into the 70's, one could (if one wanted to, and I always did) take a well chosen hike from Mud Lake, about 31st & College, west, through oak/maple woods, swamps, marshes, fields, sheep grazing, finally into Root River Parkway, through Whitnall Park, past the "parachuting place" between 92 & 108th St, where one could watch a skydiving club do its thing on a Sunday afternoon, a rather long walk, which, again, if one's path was carefully chosen, would lead one its entire length with not so much as a glimpse of a man made structure, with only quick crossings of 51st street, Loomis Road, 76th St., 84th St., and 92nd St. to remind you you weren't way the hell up north.
Just as a matter of interest perhaps, when I first moved here, (near Redding, California) people were VERY aware of my "Milwaukee accent," though most of them thought I was a Canadian! (Most natives here have a kind of "Okie" accent, due to the huge numbers of them who move here during the construction of Shasta Dam.) I have NEVER been able to stop saying "bubbler" for "drinking fountain," and I haven't heard the word "ainna" since I left M'waukee...sadly.
I DO love this site! Being from Milwaukee is kind of a state of mind, especially if you're from a family with deep roots there. (I do. German/Polish/Harnischfeger/Harley for generations - retired from Harny.) I never really left it in some ways. The closest thing to Milwaukee near here would be San Francisco, which, like it or not, has a VERY distinct personality, and one which never quite leaves natives, wherever they end up. It reminds me, in some small ways, of home.
Keep up the great work, everyone!
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