Transcript

Location: 624 Gillette Street

Denis Richmond: Yeah, we’re standing on the front entrance to the Auto-Lite Company. We’re looking West towards Rose Street. Well, the story is when I was a little boy, my Dad was a guard at that factory. It was a munitions factory and they made gauges there. And, he was a 4F for the draft because he had lost an eye in a wood-cutting accident, but he had to pull guard duty as a civil defense, and he pulled a two-hour shift at night. My mother and I would take this 1932 Chevrolet, and we’d drive over to the factory there, and we’d watch for him right in front of this door. Those cars were built so that the windshield and the dash were straight up and down, and I was just old enough that I could stand there. And I could just put my hands on the dash, and look over and watch for Dad when he got off duty, and he’d come, and he’d have this Doughboy-type helmet on, and he’d turn it in at the gate, and the gate was surrounded by concertina wire which is a coiled barbed wire on top of a chain link fence. All the way around this plant, and I’d watch for him, and he’d come, and we’d pick him up, and he’d pick me up and put me on his lap, and I was the big shot sitting on Dad’s lap, and we’d go home. This was probably the year of—er—1944-1945, and that was one of my fondest memories of that factory up there at that time. I’m Denis Richmond, I was born in 1941 here in La Crosse, and I’ve lived here all but three years of my life.