Santa Potholder

By Kaley Brown

Catalog Number: 2010.007.13     

This time of the year, holiday advertisements are everywhere. From toys to clothes to cars, they are impossible to escape. Even in the mid-20th century, commercialism was inescapable. Carl Gegenfurtner, a local restaurateur, distributed this potholder to promote his businesses during the mid-1960s. The potholder is only about 5 inches by 5 inches and shows Santa warming himself on an old-fashioned potbelly stove. The text reads “Warmest Greetings.  Carl Gegenfurtner’s Blue Moon-Onalaska Wis. Uncle Carl’s Oaks”

Carl Gegenfurter was born in La Crosse April 27th, 1912 and owned several of the most popular restaurants and bars from the 1940s through the 1960s.  Gegenfurtner was a WWII veteran and was active in the community as part of the Onalaska Legion Post 336, the Winona Elks Club, and the Goodview Lions Club. He opened his first business, a bar called “The Mint” shortly after returning from service in 1944. The Mint, located in the space Qdoba now occupies downtown, operated from 1944-1955. He also owned the famous Cerise Club from 1947-1959. After this endeavor, he opened the original Blue Moon in Onalaska in 1957 and the renowned Oaks Supper Club in Minnesota City in 1959. During this later era, his newspaper advertisements invited people to come and join him for dinner. He operated both of the restaurants until his death in 1967.   

Useful items, like this potholder, were a popular way to advertise one’s business because the customer would repeatedly see the business name every time they used the item. With the increasing presence of mass media and the Internet, advertisements now show up briefly as pop ups in the corner of your screen or as useless junk mail. At least Carl Gegenfurtner’s were on a handy object, and perhaps much more memorable. The Christmas motif is probably a nod to Christmas gift-giving, as Gegenfurtner was making a gift of these pot holders to his customers, presumably at Christmas.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on December 3, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Christmas Tree Lights

By Sam Steingraeber

Catalog Number: 1990.075.03

Being in the middle of the holiday season and living in the Coulee Region, one of the major events I cannot wait for is Rotary Lights and the amazing light show that is put on every year in Riverside Park. This brilliant extravaganza of lights would not be possible without the invention and improvements of the electric lights used to light up the park. The NOMA Company was one company that pushed the envelope for Christmas lights. The La Crosse County Historical Society has a set of NOMA lights in its collection that were used to light up Christmas trees during the 1950s.

 The first time electric lights that were used on a Christmas tree to celebrate the season was in 1882 by Edward Hibberd Johnson. Johnson at the time was the vice president of the Edison Illuminating Company. Johnson had a very impressive Christmas tree set-up that year, with 80 bulbs lighting up a tree that was set to rotate six times a minute.  Before electric lights became common place in the 1930s, people would use candles to light up their trees. This was a major fire hazard and often led to house fires. General Electric created strands of lights that consisted of a string of 8 light sockets; they were very expensive and therefore unavailable to most people.

Some of the first wide-spread Christmas lights that were affordable, and therefore used by the public, were made by the National Outfit Manufacturer’s Association, or NOMA for short. NOMA was founded in 1925 in New York City and was a trade group made of 13 to 15 smaller manufactures who were trying to grow by combining their marketing and buying power. Shortly after, in 1926, the businesses in the association agreed to merge into one company named NOMA Electric Corporation. They quickly became top sellers and innovators of electric Christmas lights. In 1934 NOVA rolled out parallel wired lights so that if one light broke or burned out it would not break the circuit and the rest of the lights would stay illuminated. In 1940 they used all rubber cords for insulation on their lights. NOMA was also credited with being the first company to manufacture bubble lights in 1946, and in 1951 they introduced fused safety plugs into their Christmas lights. The fuses in the plug protect the light’s wires and lowered the chance of the lights starting a fire.   

This set of NOMA Company Safety Plug Christmas Lights includes a string of seven lights, with fasteners to hang them on a tree. There are also extra fuses for the plug in case a fuse blew out. The set appears used: two of the painted bulbs are missing, and there are bits of old pine needles in the box. But they have been carefully stored in their original colorful package that includes an endorsement from Santa himself, “For a safer and brighter Christmas.”

Now when you take a break from trying to untangle the unsolvable puzzle that is your collection of Christmas lights, you can appreciate the innovations that went into the string of lights causing your frustration.   

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on November 26, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Ellen Hixon’s Gravy Boat

By Peggy Derrick

Five days from now people all over the country will go into their cabinets and china cupboards and get out a serving dish similar to this one to use on their Thanksgiving table. Many of us don’t use a gravy boat on a daily basis, or eat gravy all that often, but what would Thanksgiving dinner be without gravy? Naked, that’s what.

This gravy boat belonged to Mrs. Ellen Hixon, wife of lumber baron and wealthy businessman Gideon Hixon. It is French Limoge porcelain, decorated with transfer images of flowers and butterflies which have been additionally highlighted with touches painted by hand. Part of a late 19th century set that includes over a dozen serving pieces and eighteen dinner plates, this isn’t stuff you put in the dishwasher. But then, Mrs. Hixon had servants to wash it for her.

The gravy boat shows the most wear of any piece in this set of dishes, with a telling chip at the spot where the gravy ladle would have rested, and another on one corner of the saucer. My own gravy boat, passed down from my husband’s grandmother, has exactly the same pattern of chips.

As the matriarch of a large family with five sons, and lots of social and business contacts, I suspect Ellen Hixon had some of the same challenges around the dinner table at Thanksgiving as the rest of us. Societal expectations of harmony and gratitude can butt up against personality differences, family dynamics and politics.

We know that Frank, the eldest Hixon son, married a woman that Ellen could not stand. And that the middle son, William, dreamed of studying music and literature but was obliged to follow his father and older brothers in the lumber business.

And between 1885 and 1895 a populist upstart and political outsider named Dr. Frank Powell was elected mayor of La Crosse. This colorful and unorthodox figure may well have polarized voters and created discord between family members, just like someone else has done more recently.

Thanksgiving at the Hixon table may well have been in just as much need of the balm of gravy, poured over the slights and indignations of family life, as our own. It is one meal where the gravy boat still matters, a soothing family tradition we can all take comfort in.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on November 19, 2016.