Washington Co., Wi – Washington County Dive Team pauses search for man missing on Pike Lake in Hartford
UPDATE: After this story was published the man’s body was recovered from Pike Lake. Click HERE to read more.
Washington County Dive Team has paused its search of Pike Lake for an 80-year-old man who went missing late Wednesday night, October 18, 2023. According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department the man’s boat was found, and several eyewitnesses stepped forward, however “all leads have been exhausted.”
The Sheriff’s Department said, “Unless we get a credible lead that would provide us an area to search, we won’t be back out. The DNR will continue to check the lake on a daily basis, but the search operation is done.”
Crews were on the lake Thursday until about 3:30 p.m. when dark clouds with possible lightning pushed in. Friday, search crews and boats were on the lake from 9 a.m. until dark.
On Thursday, emergency vehicles from across Washington County, WI peppered the parking lot near the swimming area of Pike Lake State Park as dive teams worked from 9 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m.
Authorities acknowledged as dark clouds and a downpour swept through the area that the rescue effort had changed to a CLICK HERE to read more.Â
Full photo gallery of auction items for Vintage Underground in West Bend, WI
There will be a huge auction on October 28, 2023 at Vintage Underground, 801 W. Washington Street, in West Bend, as the building will be sold Nov. 1, 2023.
Chris Ford received a notice to vacate the premises at the former Chase Bank location, 801 W. Washington Street, in West Bend, WI.
An auction is set for October 28, 2023; doors open at 8 a.m. and bidding starts at 10 a.m. until all items are sold.
“As you may have heard, we are not opening Vintage Underground WB at 801 W Washington St. West Bend, WI 53095. I will be taking a career position and have no place to go with the majority of cool vintage stuff I collected all these years. The auction will be October 28. Would you be able to let your readers know about the auction? Thank you.”
Best,
Chris Ford
Ford’s collection of memorabilia is extensive from celebrity cardboard cutouts of Dolly Parton, Elvis, Madonna, and Pamela Sue Anderson to a life size Michael Myers from “Halloween” fame.
Building owner Jeremy Hahn was set to lease the upper level to Vintage Underground, which had operated out of a building on Highway 28 in St. Michaels.
Now Hahn is selling the building. Closing is set for November 1, 2023. The sale price is reportedly $699,000. A local law firm is the reported buyer.
The shop, run by Chris Ford, has grown quite a following over….CLICK HERE to read more.
Opening day announced for new Chipotle in West Bend, Wi
A time frame has been released regarding the opening of the new Chipotle, a popular Mexican Grill style restaurant.
The fast-food franchise is opening where the old Shell gas station was on the southeast corner of Parkway Drive and W. Paradise Drive in West Bend, Wi.
The Chipotle Mexican Grill is opening its first location in West Bend on Tuesday, October 24. The restaurant will feature the brand’s signature Chipotlane, a drive-thru pickup lane that allows guests to conveniently pick up digital orders without leaving their cars.
Location: 815 W. Paradise Dr., West Bend, WI – Open every day 10:45a – 10pm
Medicare’s Open Enrollment period is October 15 – December 7, 2023 | By Retirement Understood
 Medicare’s Open Enrollment Period is October 15 – December 7, 2023. According to Donna Walbert and Ashley Luplow, retirement advisors and benefits specialists with Retirement Understood, people 65 years and older should be exploring their options.
Wisconsin Nurses Honor Guard pays tribute to fallen nurses/nursing personnel
Wisconsin Nurses Honor Guard (WNHG), paid tribute to a fallen nurse during a recent funeral service. The group of volunteer nurses performed a ceremony inspired by Florence Nightingale. A poem is presented along with a Nightingale Lamp to the family of each fallen nurse.
Kimmy Olson is one of the members of the Honor Guard. The Wisconsin Nurses Honor Guard recognizes nurses at the time of their passing.
WNHG performs ceremonial traditions to honor those nurses for the dedication and contributions made while serving the nursing profession.
WNHG will provide a final tribute, free of charge, to any licensed/registered/advanced practice nurse, active or retired, within the boundaries of the State of Wisconsin.
11th Annual BLOOM 2023 Weekend at MOWA set for Friday through Sunday, Nov. 3-5
Flowers and art will come together for the 11th annual BLOOM weekend November 3-5, 2023, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veteran’s Ave., West Bend, WI.
Enjoy the natural beauty of floral arrangements throughout the museum galleries as twenty area florists transform the museum into an enchanted garden. Shop an expanded MOWA Shop to get a jump start on your holiday shopping while supporting Wisconsin artists. Register to take a BLOOM workshop with floral artists and experts.
This year’s theme–Petals and Patterns–is inspired by the concurrent exhibition on view, Lon Michels: Disrupting Patterns, a bold, provocative presentation of color and form. Enjoy the beauty of dramatic floral arrangements featured throughout the museum galleries, including a special installation of floral sculptures in the museum’s WBMI Atrium.
BLOOM is free to existing MOWA members or as low as $15, which includes a complimentary annual museum membership.
MOWA Shop will have extended hours Thursday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Have you shopped The Farm Store in West Bend, WI?
Schmidt Century Farm, 5485 St. Anthony Road, in West Bend is a locally owned farm that sells cuts of meat at its Farm Store on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Place your order for fresh black Angus beef today.
Come take a look at fresh cuts of beef, pork, and poultry. The Farm Store also carries a variety of homemade canned and pickled items, fresh eggs, and locally made clothing.
Horicon Bank says “Thanks for supporting the Stars & Stripes Honor Flight”
Hundreds of people participated in the annual Shred Event at Horicon Bank in September 2023 and neighbors were extremely generous with their donations. Scouts and staff gathered at Horicon Bank in West Bend, Wi to present a check for $3,830 to local veterans for the Stars & Stripes Honor Flight.
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During the Shred Event volunteers spent three hours unloading cars and boxes into onsite shredders to help people in the community safely dispose of their unwanted documents and records.
Milwaukee Dancing Grannies to make appearance in Hartford Christmas Parade
The Milwaukee Dancing Grannies have announced their 2023 winter parade schedule which includes an appearance in the Hartford Parade on Saturday, November 11, 2023.
An SUV tore through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, two years ago, killing three members of the group and injuring several others.
The Milwaukee Dancing Grannies were severely affected by the Waukesha Christmas Parade tragedy. With prayers and perseverance, the group has actually grown and become even more popular.
The Hartford Parade steps off at 3 p.m. on November 11, 2023. The parade route is Highland and Main to Main and Monroe Avenue.
Click HERE for trick-or-treat times across Washington County, WI
Tunnel of Terror at Tommy’s Express Car Wash in West Bend, Wi on October 27 and 28. Opens 7 p.m.Â
Memories of hunting during the Great Depression | By Dave Bohn
For over 15 years, Dave Bohn had been writing down memories of his childhood, growing up on the family farm just south of West Bend on Hwy P.  He hopes his writings will preserve the often-overlooked stories of ordinary farmers and everyday farm life in rural Washington County during the Great Depression through the eyes of a local farm boy. Below is a story about Bohn’s hunting adventures during the Great Depression with his brother, Tom, and his Dad.
A word about when the land of Washington County was in the early stages of being farmed when I was a young boy.  The land was all laid out in 40 acres square parcels, as it is today when land is bought or sold.  Most farms in our area were two 40-acre parcels, so a total of 80 acres.  This is what my dad and mom had as I was growing up.  That was about all a farmer could handle with horsepower.
Boundaries were marked by a surveyor’s steel stake.  Farmers would put a fence of some sort on these boundaries.  Dad had a wire fence on wood posts when I was a little kid.  Early fences in the area were usually about 5 feet in height with wood posts and a mesh of woven wire squares, approximately 5 inches.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, Dad got barbed wire and that was also on wood posts.  In later years after the War, he was able to get steel posts, when metal was more abundant.   It was a transitional time; some farms had the old woven fences, and some had barbed wire fencing.  The woven wire fences were being replaced with barbed wire, but some farmers still used the old fences.  The barbed wire fencing had four single strands of barbed wire with each strand about a foot apart and with the barbs about every 5 inches apart.  The barbed wire was to keep the farm animals within the farm boundaries, and it was an effective means.
The corner posts were almost always wood posts, and they were large, about 10 inches in circumference.  There was also a secondary supporting post, maybe 8 feet from the corner post.  A diagonal brace went from the top of the corner post to the bottom of the supporting posts.  This helped to reduce the tightening pressure of the wire on that corner post.
The fence was called a “line fence;” the fence that marked the boundaries to divide it for different ownerships of the land.  The line fence could be moved if the ownership changed, or the parcel was divided in any way.    The area on either side of the line fence was not tilled and it usually got to be a wider strip of land, maybe 12 feet total.
It became an area for elderberry, wild raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries, different types of nut trees (hickory nut and butternut trees were the most common of wild nut trees) and even apple trees grew there.   Sometimes Mom would send Tom and me down to harvest some berries or nuts, but not too often, as the harvest time was also the time when hunters would be out, and she would worry about us.
This area was also a good habitat for small game animals, such as rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, partridges, and other small game.  In addition, the area along the roadsides was also a good habitat for small game.
Pheasants were planted in our area by the state and the pheasants took hold.  This probably took place in the 1930’s because prior to that time, there wasn’t really much state help for that kind of thing.   There were a lot of pheasants in the 1930s and 1940s.  When we were kids, the farmers harvested their hay only twice each year, the first being in mid-July and the pheasants were done with nesting by that time.
They had a good population until the farmers started cutting their hay three times each season, with the first being in mid-June.  This was the time that the pheasants were nesting and raising their young and they would do this in the hay fields because there was a good crop of bugs available and that was their main source of food.  So, when the farmers started cutting hay earlier, it was detrimental to the pheasant population.
When I was 12 years old, Dad bought Tom and me shotguns for rabbit and pheasant hunting.  Mine was a 16-gauge Iver Johnson single-shot hammer type.  Tom’s was a 20-gauge single-shot hammer type.   He bought them at Barnes Hardware on the north end of downtown West Bend  (I think it was on the NE corner of 33 & Main – there’s a tavern near there now).  I don’t know how much he paid for them.  I would guess $10-15.00 each.  Both my son and my grandson used my Iver Johnson when they were boys for rabbit hunting.  It was my first gun, so it was something special to me and I still have it.
In the fall, during hunting season, my brother and I would take our Iver Johnsons and go hunting two or three times each week.  Sometimes we would go to the swamps and the woods to hunt.  Other times, we would walk down to the line fence on the boundary of our farm.  Tom would walk on one side of the line fence, and I walked the other side.
This would flush the pheasants up so we could get a good shot at them.  Usually, we would only get a pheasant or two, as the state had a limit at that time.  We would bring them home and clean them and Mom would fry them like chicken for dinner.  We had no means of refrigeration at that time, so we ate them right away.
When we started to hunt, Dad bought Tom and me each a beagle hound dog to help track. We gave them a name. Tom’s dog was named Mitzi and mine was named Bowser. Hound dogs would chase rabbits as they had such a keen sense of smell. They would smell where the rabbit had recently been by the smell of the footprints on the grass or the ground. Hound dogs would follow the rabbit by that smell, howling as they followed the rabbit, in order to get the hunter near to the rabbit.
Rabbits always run in a circle and have a small area that they stay in.  They don’t like to leave this area, even when being chased by a hound dog.  Mostly, we hunted rabbits in the swamp or in our neighbor, Louis Schloemer’s woods during the fall.  But the season was open then, so once in a while, if the weather was good, we may have hunted in the winter.
Dad had a beagle hound named Spotty. He was a good hound for chasing rabbits, much better than Mitzi & Bowser. We could only hunt with him for a year or so, as Spotty was too old when Tom and I started hunting.  All our hound dogs were only used for hunting though; they weren’t pets.
Most dogs would also trail skunks and when they got too rough with the skunk, the skunk would release their scent. If the smell got on you, it would last for at least a week, or quite some time. This happened to our hunting dogs. They would smell for a week or more before it would wear off.  Luckily, they were never allowed in the house.  But one time, I do remember our pet dog, Skippy, got sprayed by a skunk, and she was evicted from the house in a hurry.
When we were a little younger, maybe 8 or 9 years old, Dad had bought Tom and me BB guns.  They weren’t strong enough for hunting but we did use them to shoot sparrows because they ate the grain that was for our chickens.  Usually, the bb’s didn’t hurt the sparrows, they just bounced off their feathers, but they did scare the sparrows away.
Earlier in time, during the mid-1930s, Dad and several other guys from the area would drive to Rio, Wisconsin (near Portage) in the early morning to hunt rabbits.  There were many of them in that area and they were damaging the farmers’ crops so they wanted the population reduced.  Dad and several close neighbors, such as Lester Nehrbass, Ray Spaeth, and Hugo Minz, would come back the same day with about 20 -30 rabbits a piece, as there was no limit on them.  I don’t think you needed a license to hunt at that time and it was a good food source for our family.
