Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Saturday, July 19, 2008
What’s in a name?
A bluff by any other name would be just as grand, but would the story behind it be as interesting?
Mormon Coulee Road
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Road wouldn’t fit on the sign.
Just kidding. Actually, this stretch of Hwy. 61/14 takes its name from the city’s southernmost valley, which was settled — briefly — by Mormons.
Though myth has swirled around the accounts of these early settlers, it appears that in the fall of 1844, when La Crosse was little more than a trading post, a band of Joseph Smith’s followers came up from Nauvoo, Ill., and built shelters in the valley. The next spring, they burned down their cabins and headed back down river.
Beef & Etc.
Twelve years ago, when Ed and Deb Pisarik moved to La Crosse to open a restaurant specializing in the hot dogs and Italian beef of their native Chicago, they got some problematic advice. Their real estate agent warned them not to put Chicago in the restaurant name.
“We were told not to because there might be some animosity,” Ed Pisarik said.
What do you call a Chicago beef restaurant with no Chicago?
“We could not come up with anything,” Pisarik said. “We were wracking our brains.”
Soon the deadline came for drawing up corporate papers.
“We’ve got beef to push,” Pisarik said. “And we’ve got other things.”
Thus, Beef & Etc.
After about five years, Pisarik started calling it Chicago Beef & Etc. but never changed the sign.
These days, he said, his customers have come up with their own vernacular: “On the street, we’re known as ‘The Beef.’”
Green Bay Street
No, this south side thoroughfare isn’t named for its legions of Packers fans but for the Green Bay railroad.
The Green Bay & Minnesota, later the Green Bay & Western, came into La Crosse in 1876 on trestles through the La Crosse River marsh, along what is now East Avenue, to a station that was situated near where Trane Co. is today. The GB&W stopped service to La Crosse in 1922.
Grandad Bluff
There are two theories on how La Crosse’s monolith got its moniker, said Bill Petersen of the La Crosse Public Library Archives.
One is that it was just the grandest bluff around. The other is that the limestone façade resembled the visage of an old man.
In 1935, there was even some dispute as to which part of the bluff might have inspired the name. The Tribune ran photos of two profiles — one viewed from the north, the other from Cass Street — that, with some imagination, could look like a face.
Of course, there’s no record of just whose grandpa it looked like.
Liberty Street
In 1918, after the United States entered World War I, some folks on the homefront became self-conscious about celebrating their German heritage.
That year, the La Crosse City Council voted to rename the north side’s Berlin Street to something a bit more patriotic: Liberty Street.
The vote was spurred by a letter from a soldier who wrote of “shame and humiliation” when his tent-mates noticed his home address on an envelope.
One council member who opposed the measure argued it would stir up “hatred and strife” among Germans and that it would make just as much sense to change every German name in the city.
Tom’s Speedometer Shop
A glance around this Main Street locksmith shop might lead you to wonder where all the speedometers went.
“Once upon a time, way back when, we did,” said co-owner Bert Goetzinger.
Tom Keenan opened his speedometer repair business back in 1928 in the back of a Second Street garage. At the time, it was called Tom the Speedometer Man. It later moved to Main Street, and the second owner updated the name, adding “and Locksmith” to reflect that growing part of the business.
Goetzinger started working there in the 1960s when they still worked on some speedometers. That ended in 1989, when GM switched to electronic gauges.
These days, even the lock business is going electric.
“We’re on the downhill push,” said Bert Goetzinger, who is 68 and thinking about retirement. His brother and co-owner, Keith Goetzinger, is 66.
“I’m too old to spend $30,000 or $40,000 on equipment,” Bert Goetzinger said. “You’ve got to be computer-oriented. … I don’t even know how to start
one, and I don’t plan on learning.”
All stories copyright 2000 - 2006 La Crosse Tribune and other attributed sources.