Satisfied our curiosity...

Sunday was the annual Art Fair in South Park in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. My sister Barb has been going to this event for 21 years (I think that's what she told me). This is where she usually begins her Christmas shopping  and for the past couple of years she has called me in Arizona while she shopped so I could feel like I was there with her. This year I WAS there and loved every minute! South Park in Oshkosh is more beautiful that I remember. As a kid I grew up right down the street from this park on 10th Ave. In the summer we would walk to the local Piggly Wiggly which was on the corner of 10th and Ohio and the butcher would give us pieces of liver. We would then cross the street to South Park and fish in the lagoons with that liver as the bait. I don't remember if we caught anything or what we were even fishing for...I want to say crawdads but I can't remember. I do however, remember the disgusting liver bits that we had to put on the hook.

What a sight seeing these lagoons again. I will have to return to South Park another day (when there isn't an Art Festival going on) so I can take some more pictures of my favorite park.Maybe I'll try a little fishing, if they still allow that in this park.

One of the artists at the festival was a young woman drawing with chalks on the sidewalk. I was fascinated on how dimensional she made these drawings. I don't understand what a duck and an orange traffic cone have to do with each other but she made them both look great. This was just one of many drawings that she made that day.

As a fund raiser for the Art Festival a local family allowed people to tour their home for a charge. Their home just happens to be a mansion that was built between 1904 and 1908. The mystery of what this mansion looked like inside has always been a curiosity to Oshkosh residents. Three of these curious residents are my two sisters and me. Ever since we were kids we wanted to know who owned this house, what was the history of the house but mostly... what did it look like inside. On Sunday we finally got a chance to find out all of these things. It cost $10 each, but was well worth it.
It took 4 years to build the Lutz mansion. Lutz owned the local quarry and all the stone on the house was taken from that quarry. The house has four floors including the cellar and the attic. All the rooms were surprisingly tiny and most rooms had a fireplace for warmth.  The light switches were buttons that you had to push to turn on and off. All the overhead lights were the original fixtures, they used to be gas but have been converted to electric. The original ice box was in the kitchen, but is being used as a pantry. In my opinion, the most intriguing item in the entire house was the doorbell. The Lutz's house had 4 different doors for guests or delivery men to enter and their maid had to know which door to answer when the bell went off. The original doorbell was a wooden box with 4 lights. Depending on which doorbell was ringing the appropriate light would come on so the maid could answer that door. (I'm just questioning how they lit up if they didn't have electricity.)  The Lutz's had the house built with running water and an inside bathroom. They were an insightful couple. Most people in Oshkosh still had outside toilets until the 1930s or 1940s. And here's a photo of the Mansion...