Phillips 66 in Seymour
The gas station in the photo above was bought by Martin Juergenmeyer in 1932. It was on Highway 54 at the corner with C Road, just at the entrance to the small northern Wisconsin town of Seymour. This original white clapboard building had an office space through the front door and behind the three front windows. An oil room was to the left of the front door. And a mechanic's shop was behind the three large doors on the right. Martin soon added a house on to the back of the building. The house front entrance with a lattice arch was on the left side. There was also a door inside the gas station office to the house and one on the right side of the house out to the garden. To the right of the gas station Martin dug a mechanic's pit with a ramp above.
The house of Marie and Martin Juergenmeyer had two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. In the kitchen sink along with running water there was a water pump. The gas station office is where Marie kept her treadle sewing machine and where she taught her granddaughter Suzanne how to sew doll clothes. The office also had a glass cabinet candy counter and refrigerated ice cream bin. A round brown crock of water with a wooden handled ice cream scoop sat on the counter. (This crock now sits on the kitchen counter of Suzanne Wilson.) The crank party line telephone was in the oil room.
By the time Suzanne came from her home in Milwaukee to visited her grandparents in the 1940's summers large weeping willow trees had grown up in the yard to the left of the gas station. Suzanne would break off the bottom branches and make herself big skirts. Her grandmother Marie would wash Suzanne's hair in water from the rain barrel next to the house. Behind the weeping willow trees was a large flower garden. To the right of the house was a large vegetable garden, a box and screen rack for drying apple slices, and a chicken coop where Suzanne liked to go to eat fresh peas and lick the rainbow ice cream cones her grandfather would scoop up for her. Across the back of the lot the Juergenmeyers planted a 1/2 acre of statis that was sold to the Seymour florist for funeral bouquets. And behind the statis field was a cemetery where the local kids would sit on the tombstones and eat their lunches.
Martin Juergenmeyer ran the Phillips 66 gas station until he died in 1948. Marie then ran it until it was sold and she moved to Kaukauna, Wisconsin.
According to Janice Eick at the Seymour Community Museum in 2001, "the garage was torn town in the "50's and the house was moved around the corner. About in 1996 the house burned down. Now on the corner where the station was located they have a new Mobile station and a new McDonald's."
Seymour Wisconsin should be well known to everyone; the small town west of Green Bay and north of Lake Winnebago is "The Home of the Hamburger". "The Seymour Community Historical Society of Seymour, Wisconsin, credits Charlie Nagreen, now known as "Hamburger Charlie", with the invention of the hamburger. Nagreen was fifteen when he reportedly made sandwiches out of meatballs that he was selling at the 1885 Seymour Fair (now the Outagamie County Fair), so that customers could eat while walking. The Historical Society explains that Nagreen named the hamburger after the Hamburg steak with which local German immigrants were familiar.[6][7]" Wikipedia.Where as Seymour has only a population of 3,474 during the Outagamie County Fair in July 80,000 people attend. And "each August Burger Fest brings thousands of people to the community for the Ketchup Slide, a parade,the Bun Run, and other festivities. The city also hold the world record for the largest burger, creating an 8000 pound monster hamburger." Link.
Demolition: Torn down in the 1950's. Seymour Community Museum.
Photo: Historic photo, photographer unknown, Photoshoped by SW.
