From the annals of history: Raccoon District as it was

Former Spring House

was in the Waukesha Sewer Raccoon District

Before this aged editor's time, but not much, the Arcadian spring house of the great Waukesha spring water era stood kitty-corner across the street from today's Sewer Raccoon News headquarters. The dual photo above is from historian John Schoenknecht's collection of stereopticon renderings culled from today's instalment of his series of Waukesha history appearing periodically in the Waukesha Freeman newspaper.

The spring house is shown in this picture from the intersection of Arcadian and Hartwell Avenues, looking northeast, across from the Roxo Bottling Co., now Roxo apartments. After the spring house was dismantled, the land eventually became part of the gardens of the head doctor & administrator manse of what became of the resort at the top of the hill (behind and to the right of the range of the photo). That incarnation was known as Resthaven Hospital. The spring house stood where the BP gas and convenience store is now.

It was the "Resthaven Hill" on which we boys and girls frolicked with our skis sleds in the wintertime and where we would go to find grass-snakes in the summer. Up that still-bricked hilly lane leading to what is now known as New Tribes Institute, visitors and occupants climbed by often-parasoled foot, or by jitney.

Now, it is also a thoroughfare for the local raccoons who, sometimes ascending from their underground digs, go to take sightings of Waukesha from a good look-out promontory. There, they mix with murders of crows who are also still found in the trees on Resthaven hill. Unlike the furtive and quiet raccoons, the crows are historically unabashed and noisy, and provided the district with the sort of disturbance that was primary, our loudest clarion. But now, the crow-cawings have become far-removed in decibels from the train horns now blaring frighteningly, and the unmuffled motorcycles roaring out from the "front yard" interesection.

The arcade of interlaced elm trees going from Oakland Ave to St Joseph's church at the end of Arcadian was a corridor of unblemished arborial beauty, the tree branches were like green, joyfully-crossed swords at a military wedding. Those trees were, alas, cut down, diseased by beetle, and the street became widened.

My grandfather, Haynes Bunker, walked for years from this address daily to his job in the pharmacy at the old Clark's drug store, now being renovated for a restaurant and hostel. Sometimes Grandpa would be joined on his walks to work by former and long-time Register of Deeds, Marie Lattner, who lived three doors from this house. Marie was headed on Haynes' route to the old court house where her office was.

The two popular individuals would wave at passing or sitting-on-their-porches friends and strangers so often that they looked like a couple of smiling windmills.

Prescriptions of medicines in Waukesha were more likely than not handed out by Haynes Bunker at Clark's, but he also played banjo avocationally at Kavanaugh and Democheetz' saloon after work, near E. Main and Barstow Streets. It was on his well-worn way back home. With his purple-lined banjo case, closed and black, he was a tall and modest strolling minstrel.

(to be continued; for more info on Wauakesha springs see: http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/07/waukesha-man-large-sense-of-word.html