Secured with corner tabs in the black pages of an old album is a photo of a boy facing the camera with splotches of snow stuck to the front of his outdoor clothing. In 1930, before the days of water repellent snow suits, snow adhered well to flannel, wool and corduroy. “I must have been about four years old in that picture,” says well-known lifetime Pewaukee Village resident Al Hansen.
Hansen grew up in the village and never lived more than a block from school. His parents Alfred E. Hansen and Irene Simmons were married in 1924 and had 8 children in 10 years, 4 boys and 4 girls. Then, according to Al, “They figured out what was causing it.” The family first lived on Orchard St. and in 1935 moved to Prospect Ave.
In remembering Pewaukee in wintry days gone by, it seemed that the boundaries between traffic and non traffic areas became somewhat blurred, especially during times of heavy snowfall. One such example was the regular closing of Lake Street where it met Prospect Ave. Only delivery trucks were allowed through. This was done so that the village children, sometimes numbering 50 to 100, could gather to enjoy unimpeded and safe sledding down the entire road. On a good day you could get going on your Flexible Flyer or Red Arrow runner sled and make in all the way down to the river after turning right on Prospect and right again past the Clark House. On a really good day the old water tower might have overflowed, leaving an ice river on the right hand side for the extra daring. This practice continued on until about 1943. Most roads had at least several inches of hard packed snow during the season. No sand was used except at the intersections.
In about 1939 or ’40 Hansen also recalls ice skating with some buddies on old Hwy. 19 past the airport to Waukesha and back. “Just to see how far we could get,’ he says.
An especially memorable winter for Hansen was in 1937. In February there were 20 days straight when it did not get up to 0°. At 10 years old he took a trip with his father in the 1930 Willys Knight to check on his Grandpa Hansen’s farm in Kenosha County. On Hwy. 45 the snow was piled up so high that only the very tops of the electric poles were showing. There was one-lane traffic with a wider area every quarter mile or so to allow two vehicles to pass through. On the return trip the last several miles were done with a team of horses. The cold temperatures and high winds combined to pack the fallen snow into a hard surface The snow was so hard that the horses could walk on top of it without breaking through. So extreme were the weather conditions that Ryan Road in the hollow north of Hwy. 16 where the Ryan farm was located was closed for three weeks. A bulldozer had to be used to clear it out.
Of course the lake added another dimension to winter. There were memories of the ice harvest and the lake being full of people fishing. “People went fishing to eat in those days,” Hansen recalls. He himself never got into ice fishing but remembers going out on the ice in search of his father when he was six years old. “I stepped into an ice fishing hole and cried all the way home.”
There was ice skating on the Village Park pond and on the lakefront. The high school principal, Bill Raymond, taught math, science, coached sports and also took charge of winter sports on the lake. There would be a yearly county ice skating meet in front of Buroughs tavern where an oval track was cleared. It was pack racing and one of the competitors, Connie Stark, was to become an Olympic skater.
A less glorified skating memory for Hansen was at around age 12 when he was showing off for some girls. “I was skating backwards and fell and hit my head pretty hard and was kind of semi-conscious for the next 3 days. But I guess it didn’t rattle my brain too much.”
In the 1930s and 40s there were many ice boats on the lake. Hansen rode in one only once but said it was quite a thrill. The boat belonged to a neighbor, Willard Bartlett. Ice boating has declined, in part because the ice does not freeze as solidly or for as long as in the past.
Winter activities for teens included bobsled parties and hay rides at the homes of farm families. Basketball practice typically took place in a hay loft. Sports were very seasonal because there simply wasn’t the availability of indoor facilities and activities. Whatever you wanted to do you had to do for yourself on foot or bicycle. On the other hand, there was a lot of open space to roam and parents did not manage children’s time as in the present.
In 1945 and ’46 Hansen was in Japan during the occupation after WWII. It seems even then he could not get away from snow. A couple of inches fell in Yokihama, much to the amazement of the children there who had never seen it before.
During the winter of 1947 Hansen was attending school in Milwaukee and had taken the Interurban train from there to Waukesha. A heavy snowfall prevented the train from continuing on so he stayed the night in the Waukesha Hotel in a room with nine other men. The next day he struck out for home on foot. “Every step of the way I’d go in about 2 feet, then lift that foot out and move it ahead. It was a tough walk but I was young, I could do it.”
Unable to return to school, he stayed and helped his dad on an oil delivery to Rocky Point Road at a home that was out of oil. Because of the deep snow, the truck only got in about 50’ and then he and his dad had to carry 50 gallons of oil by hand in 5-gallon buckets to the residence. “Bud Meyer, I think was out of oil, and it was cold. So we had to carry it. No extra charge,” he says with a smile and shrug.
Hansen Oil had a system of keeping “degree days” with a high/low thermometer and a magnet to determine how much oil a household had used and when a fill would be needed. The only time it didn’t predict closely was on Park Ave. when the wind was coming across the lake and those homes used a lot more fuel. No computers took over in those days, yet it was very accurate and came so close that fill trips were kept to a minimum.
Being in the oil business, the Hansen family probably had a little closer relationship with winter over the years. In 1951, Hansen remembers a temperature of -37°. The No. 2 fuel wouldn’t run out of the tank into the trucks. They had to wrap rags on wire, soak them in kerosene, light them and hold them under the pipes to get the oil to flow down.
Another oil truck episode occurred in 1973 when Al was making an oil delivery in Brookfield and tried to barrel through a snow bank and the truck became stuck. The next day when he and his brother Don had it almost completely shoveled out they found that a 2’ square of snow was under the center of the truck and the wheels were an inch off the ground.
In looking back, Hansen remembers working out in some pretty tough winters for 30 years. He enjoyed it but is presently glad to enjoy the great indoors during the cold months. He believes the average winter now, for whatever reason, is much milder. As for Global Warming, he simply says. “It’s there. Whether it’s man made or just natural, I don’t know.” The winter of 2007/ 2008 though, according to Hansen, “Was a good old fashioned winter.”
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