Terry Collins
Terry Collins and his firm partners wanted to expand their office building, so they bought the dress shop on the other half of their building. Located on Caledonia Street, they always interacted with other businesses on their street. Due to being a North sider and a member of the only law firm on the North side, Terry joked with other North siders about the South side.
Transcript
Location: 1206 Caledonia St.
Terry Collins: The address is 1206 Caledonia Street. I was tending bar at a cocktail party where there were a lot of lawyers, and this lawyer, Alex Cameron, came up to me and said, “Me and my partner have broken up, I wonder if you’d be interested in coming here when you graduated?” and I thought about it for a while, and I said, “Yes!”, and we were the only law firm on the Northside, and when I first started there, [chuckles] it was divided into two sides. One was a little law office, then, on the other side, was a women’s dress shop. And, after, I don’t know, a half a year or so, we made a deal with the lady who owned the dress shop; she was retiring, and we not only had to pay for the half of the building, but we had to assume all of her stocking goods, so girdles, brassieres, so on and so forth. I think we gave them all to, maybe, the Salvation Army or GoodWill or something like that. There was a restaurant just down the street you could have lunch at every day. The Sweet Shop was up there interacted with all the other business owners on our street. It was kind of unique! I’ve always had this affinity for the Northside, I consider myself a Northsider. You know, you just meet people, say, having a beer, and they’d say, “Ah, saw you in the paper, you kicking those South siders’ butts” and stuff like that. My name is Terence R. Collins, people call me Terry. I’m a retired lawyer. I’m kind of an amateur historian about La Crosse. So, I think it’s important that all these things be preserved and recorded, and that’s what I’m here for.
