Our Garage on Pleasant St. (Written 1-17-'96)
When we moved to Wausau from the farm in 1939, life was much easier for us, already because we then had electric lights, running water, and indoor plumbing. However, all was not "pie", as we had to buy a small, cheap house in need of much repair, with a fallen down garage, due to our circumstances.
We worked at the house piece-meal to improve it with our meager incomes and no manpower, but were never able financially to replace the garage. It was a place to keep our car, even though the doors didn't close, and one corner had sunk "half way down to China". It was a deplorable sight!
Mother was a "neatnik" by nature, and the looking at this fallen down garage "bugged" her. One Sunday afternoon, when we were all home from our jobs, she decided to make use of all her "girl power". This was the day when we were going to raise up the corner of the garage that had sunk down. She dug under that corner and placed the end of a 2x4 there. Hoping that this 2x4 would act like a lever, she had us all lean on the other end with all our might, expecting the garage to raise up. She would then place a block of wood under it and at least it would be straighter. Well, we pushed and leaned, and leaned and pushed, and nothing happened. She had grossly under-estimated how much power it would take to raise a l½ car garage.
Meanwhile, our neighbors next door, who were the Mikkelsons, had company and were sitting and visiting in their back yard. They were watching all this and secretly chuckled as they knew it wouldn't work. Some years later, Lloyd from next door became our brother-in-law, and later my husband. He reminded us about this incident and how they had chuckled at us. He said that we looked like a bunch of mosquitoes perched on the 2x4. Too bad we won't have a picture of that episode, but I do have pictures of that old garage. These pictures were taken in 1969, and even though there is a lot of snow, this decrepit old garage can still be seen. It has now been replaced with a nice-looking new garage by the people
who bought the house. But we owned this old garage from 1939-1976. When we drive past the house on Pleasant Street, we can appreciate the new garage, but still remember the old tumble-down one that we tried to lift up one Sunday afternoon.