The one and only

Collections draw curious to 'shrines' where spinning tops tilt, miniatures are big and gentle Norman reigns

By Jan Uebelherr
of the Journal Sentinel staff

June 20, 1997You can always tell when people love what they do. They put up with incredible odds, they're happy if they can just make ends meet -- and even if they can't. It seems they'll do anything to keep doing what they're doing.

The real fun starts when people love what they do so much that they open their own museum to house a beloved collection, to pay homage to a hobby that nearly swallowed them whole.

These are quirky little places that you might run into on a summer road trip, on your way to somewhere else. In this case, we went out and found them on purpose.

Drivers can hit the highway to hobby heaven Some other worthy kingdoms of quirk: Museum of Woodcarving, Shell Lake: Woodcarvers come from all over the world to see the 100 life-size figures depicting the life of Christ and 400-plus miniatures created by the late Joseph Barta. "That's what put Spooner on the map, his 'Last Supper'," says Maria McKay, whose late husband, Andrew McKay, was Joseph Barta's nephew. Barta's collection started out 32 years ago in Spooner, moved briefly to Florida, then came home to Wisconsin. Joseph Barta "was divinely inspired," she says. The expressions on faces in the Last Supper figures "came to him in his dreams." The museum is open daily 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Oct. 31. Admission is $3.75 for adults, $2 for children under 12. Call (715) 468-7100. The Hamburger Hall of Fame, Seymour: Here's your chance to pay tribute to Charles Nagreen, who claims to have served the first hamburger, in 1885 at the Outagamie County Fair. He's known here as Hamburger Charlie. He was 15 when he came up with the hamburger. The artifacts assembled here include an assortment of hamburger-shaped stuff: A whoopie cushion, a radio, salt and pepper shakers. There's an original Big Boy statue from the restaurant chain of the same name. "The thing most people talk about is a scale model of a future hall of fame," says Ann Westby, a staffer at the hall. The plan calls for a four-story hamburger-shaped building. No construction date is set yet, but you'll want to keep Aug. 2 open for the annual Hamburger Festival with such fun events as the Ketchup Slide, Bun Toss and 10K Bun Run. (Aug. 2 also is National Mustard Day, by the way). In case you're wondering, they don't sell hamburgers at the Hall of Fame, says Westby, "but I can certainly tell you all the best places in town." The Hall of Fame, run by the Hamburger Association in Seymour, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday through Labor Day. It's also open by appointment. Admission is free, but donations are accepted. Call (414) 833-9522. National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, Hayward: It's way way up north, but if you love to fish you won't mind the drive. This is your chance to stand in the jaws of a four-story-tall muskie. You'll also find antique outboard motors, mounted specimens and fishing memorabilia. Open through Nov. 1. Call (715) 634-4440. Wisconsin Concrete Park, Phillips: This concrete forest of folk art has more than 200 figures, including Ben Hur, Abraham Lincoln and Paul Bunyan. It's the work of lumberjack Fred Smith, who began his sculpting in 1950. The figures are inlaid with glass and other found objects. The park is free and open daily year-round during daylight hours. The park is on Highway 13 in Phillips, which is in Price County. Call (800) 269-4505. The National Dairy Shrine, Fort Atkinson: No Wisconsinite's vacation can be too booked up for a stop here. Dairy farming artifacts, butter churns and a photo gallery of champion dairy cows await pilgrims to this shrine, which is part of the Hoard Historical Museum at 407 Merchants Ave. It's open every day except Monday in the summer. Admission is free. Call (414) 563-7769. -- Jan Uebelherr

Now, there are lots of interesting little museums run by historical societies, villages and towns. Take Prairie du Chien's Fort Crawford Medical Museum, with its exhibits of 19th century medicine. It has an exhibit on medical quackery with such quizzical artifacts as a tapeworm trap. It's run by the Prairie du Chien Historical Society, and it's a fine place to see displays on medicine practiced the way we're glad they don't practice it anymore.

But for the most part, the places explored here are run by people who thought to themselves, "I just love mustard (or doilies, or dollies, or spinning tops) and I'm going to devote my life to it." They aren't making a whole lot of money, but they're doing something that gives them great pleasure.

For the rest of us, it means great adventure.

Perhaps the greatest success story in the field of little museums in Wisconsin is Barry Levensen, who decided he liked mustard a whole lot more than he liked being an assistant state attorney general.

He left law and opened the pun-smeared Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb in 1991 and has been making a very nice living ever since. His shop offers more than 2,700 kinds of mustard and has big plans for Aug. 2, which is National Mustard Day.

The secret to success for a small museum, he says, is "we're doing something that is truly different, and we have fun doing it. And people want to share in it."

(The museum is at 109 E. Main St., Mount Horeb. Call (608) 437-3986.)

Come along as we take a closer look at three of these kingdoms of quirk that are a few hours away from Milwaukee.

LaReau's World of Miniature Buildings, Pardeeville.

This place is a testimonial to what can happen if you spend too much time in school.

It was in 1972, just after he finished work on his master's degree in education, that Paul LaReau turned to his wife Clarice and said, "Can I play as hard as I went to school?" Why sure, my husband, she replied.

Soon Paul LaReau was hard at work on a castle. Today, the LaReaus -- both retired from their jobs as elementary school teachers in the Poynette School District -- run an ever-growing garden of pint-sized monuments. They now have 130 little replicas. Clarice's mother, Sadie Spalding, 78, helps out by painting the replicas and weeding.

On a clear and bright June afternoon, Paul LaReau gave a tour of the manicured little kingdom he and his wife opened 15 years ago on Highway 22.

It's a fascinating little world that makes you wonder, "Paul, Clarice -- just what were you thinking?"

"Ever since I was little, I liked to build things," Paul LaReau explained. "And then I got away from it for quite a few years. You know -- school, college and all that garbage."

As he navigated a web of gravel pathways in a golf cart, LaReau pointed out monuments. Weaving his way among ponds, hedges and windmills, he says, "This the Taj Mahal. This is the House of the Seven Gables. That's the United Nations Complex. These are the great pyramids of Egypt." Nearby is the miniature version of the Great Wall of China. Pointing to a little Kentucky Fried Chicken stand, Paul LaReau says, "I did it as a joke, and now I don't have the heart to throw it away."

What do people say while they're strolling among the great monuments of the world? "I hear people arguing about which is the White House," says Paul. "My God, if they don't know what their White House looks like, something's wrong."

People ask which one is his favorite, and he's got to admit he's partial to the Statue of Liberty that watches over all of this.

"Isn't she neat? There's 51/2 bedsheets in there," he says, pointing to her robe.

The LaReaus just finished Tara, Scarlett O'Hara's home in "Gone With the Wind." That's right, they'll always have Tara.

Most of the replicas are built from Styrofoam, but some also have stucco, plaster and wood. All are painstakingly detailed. The U.S. Capitol Building took 1,400 hours of work and is made of 87,000 pieces. The Lincoln Memorial, the product of 585 hours of labor, has a little Lincoln seated inside. He's really a GI Joe figure with a suit made from a bedsheet. After they close for the season on Oct. 1, the LaReaus store the buildings in a barn on their property -- but they just might need a bigger barn.

More Far East and Egyptian replicas are planned. Oh yes, and Paul's laying track for a train that will choo-choo through the grounds.

Is this some kind of summertime history lesson? "Yeah, sort of," says Paul.

After the tour, he pointed out, "You've gone to Egypt, to China, to Washington, D.C. You've been cruising around. You've been in a lot of places."

Yes, and you're back in time for lunch.

The details: LaReau's World of Miniature Buildings is open through Sept. 30. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is $4 for adults, $2 for children age 6 to 18. Children younger than 6 get in free. Groups are welcome, but it's wise to call ahead. Call (608) 429-2848. You're welcome to picnic here, but you have to clean up after yourself.

Getting there: LaReau's is between Highways 33 and 16, about 20 miles east of I-90. From Milwaukee, take the interstate west toward Madison. Or you can take idyllic Highway 16, a two-lane country road that cuts through farm country.

Museum of Norman Rockwell Art, Reedsburg.

Thank an Easterner named Norton Garfinkle for bringing the museum of Rockwell art to the heartland. Thank Joyce Devore for keeping it here.

About 15 years ago, Devore answered an ad in a trade magazine seeking someone to run a Rockwell museum in the Midwest. Garfinkle, who had taught shop at a trade school in Pennsylvania, had earlier opened a Norman Rockwell museum in Rutland, Vt.

"He was looking for a tourist place. I told him about the Dells. He thought it'd be an instant success," Devore says.

It wasn't. "He was only here one season," says Devore. But by then, Devore was hooked. "I got engrossed in it," says Devore, who had opened the museum for Garfinkle in a former chapel built in 1920. Devore had bought the building in 1978 (the same year Rockwell died, by the way) and used it for her antiques business, holding auctions there.

She found herself wrapped up in Rockwell. She calls him Norman now. The museum's motto: "Some People Own Rockwell Paintings. We Live in Them."

"Norman had a great sense of humor," she says. "Norman painted love. Norman painted compassion."

Garfinkle had brought 800 pieces of published Rockwell art, most of it laminated. That ruins old paper, says Devore, who had specialized in antique paper. "Half of them needed to be replaced."

Under her guidance, the museum's collection has grown to an orderly display of more than 4,000 pieces.

"It's the largest collection that's open to the public," says Devore.

These are not originals but published pieces. "It wasn't through the originals that people came to know Norman," she notes.

You'll find covers of the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Literary Digest, Country Gentleman and Colliers by Rockwell. You'll also find bound books containing ads done by Rockwell for a wide and sometimes unlikely range of products: McDonald's and Maxwell House Coffee; Shredded Wheat and Skippy Peanut Butter; Kellogg's and Jello and Campbell soups. There are calendars, story illustrations, even a video that runs hourly. There's the Mahalia Jackson album cover by Rockwell.

"It just boggled my mind, all the things he'd done -- like advertisements for Lifebuoy soap," says Devore. "I started doing research and it totally amazed me."

All this is assembled in what once was the worship area of the old chapel. Downstairs, an extensive gift shop holds everything Rockwell that you could possibly think of, and more. There are plates, playing cards, puzzles, mugs, refrigerator magnets, and a wide variety of prints.

The shop specializes in finding out-of-production items. "We have a request file. We find things for people," says Devore. On one side of the gift shop is a place for kids to sit while their parents roam. Her grandchildren sometimes have tea parties there.

All of this fits in nicely in Reedsburg, says Devore, who also sits on the Chamber of Commerce board. When Reedsburg needed a new library, she says, people raised money to help pay for it.

"He painted middle-class America, and that's one reason he fits here. We're as middle-class as you can get. Reedsburg is a Norman Rockwell town," says Devore.

"He painted me. He painted you. He painted us -- plain, ordinary people. And I think that's what gets a lot of the people," says Devore. "They can recognize themselves in the pictures."

For her part, Devore likes talking to people about Rockwell. "I love to talk about something I love. I think people need to be reminded there's love, there's compassion. They're still here."

The details: Admission to the Museum of Norman Rockwell Art is $5. It gets you a season pass that's good for one year, plus a discount of 10% to 50% in the gift shop (most items there are on consignment). Group rates are available. The museum is open daily during the summer. Hours are 9 to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Winter hours vary. Call (608) 524-2123.

Getting there: From Milwaukee, take I-94 toward Madison and take the Reedsburg exit (Highway 23). Follow Highway 23 into Reedsburg. That turns into Main St. Turn left on S. Park St. The museum is at 227 S. Park St.

The Spinning Top Exploratory Museum, Burlington.

An acorn is a top. So is a sea shell. These might be considered our oldest spinning tops, says Judith Schulz, proprietor of the Spinning Top Exploratory Museum. You could use these items in a pinch, but there are lots of other man-made tops -- some of them more than 100 years old -- at her museum, which is part of the non-profit Teacher Place and Parent Resource Center.

Schulz, an educator first and last, took to tops as a science teacher. She served as a top consultant for the film "My Summer Story," which was a sequel to the 1983 film "A Christmas Story." For "Summer Story," starring Mary Steenburgen and Kieran Culkin (brother of Macaulay) as Ralphie, she schooled the young stars on how to spin tops. The film has a memorable battling tops segment.

"I didn't set out to collect tops," she insists. "I just had a collection of toys." At some point she realized she had more than three tops, and that apparently qualified as a collection, she says. That was 24 years ago. She has 5,000 tops now, but of course this is one exhibit that definitely needs to be rotated. She usually has about 2,000 on display at any one time.

She has a dreidel-like top made in 1792 and an 1876 top made as a American centennial souvenir. She bought it at an antique show from "someone who didn't know it was a top."

She likes tops because they're magical and mechanical and low-tech.

"There is such a common thread and universality. It defies logic, in some ways, that something has to move to be upright. It's a paradox," she says. "The simplicity is such a contrast to the drama of what they do."

She has tops that perform optical illusions and tops that turn upside down as they spin.

She'll show you this and more in a two-hour presentation at the Spinning Top Museum. Schulz set it up that way because she's always been frustrated at museums that had no one around to answer questions.

Museum shows start out with a session of play. Then Schulz goes into the top talk.

"It crosses cultures in more ways that I ever expected it to," says Schulz, who notes that Native American children played with top-like toys. "We're all kind of alike in our amazement of things."

If you think you're pretty smart, stop off in the nearby Hall of Puzzles, which has puzzles that require dexterity, logic and planning. "These are diabolic," she says. "I'm always amazed that somebody thought of these."

The details: Admission to the Spinning Top Exploratory Museum is $5. This is not a drop-in museum. You must call ahead for reservations, since presentations are scheduled based on group size. Call (414) 763-3946.

Getting there: Take I-894 to the Loomis Road exit. Take Loomis into Burlington. (Loomis becomes Highway 36). The Spinning Top Museum is at 533 Milwaukee Ave.