Ashland

Picking up from the last post we continued on to Ashland which is the town that my mother grew up in and we spent a little time there as children (the oldest 5 that is of our large family).  I really do not remember it.  The house I remembered is still there but doesn’t look the same as it did.  Yes I found two places that my mother’s family lived in – we stopped at the historical museum downtown and two very friendly helpful women tracked down records very fast and printed out a list of address that my grandfather had lived in and my mother in the last two addresses before she married.  I got on the phone with my mom to check with her on a few things and relied information to the women and we found things out.

This town is full of fairly new murals painted on the walls of a lot of the old buildings in town.

I do not know who the lady is in this mural I just liked how “modern” she is for the time period!

City Hall – I don’t know how old it is need to check with mom if it is familiar.

Mural of veterans from the WWII era to Vietnam

I am hoping some of these buildings might be familiar to mom, she hasn’t been in this town in so many years.

A very large mural of the old downtown area – now some of this might be what it was like when mom lived here.

Mom worked at the Royal movie theater and I’m not sure how accurate this rendition is she would have been employed there in the mid 40’s and this looks like the 20’s

This house used to be my grandpa’s Ice Cream Confection Store.  The family lived upstairs in 1922 to 1942 (I believe those are the years) – the downstairs was the store.  I looks like a sun porch has been added and of course new roof, siding, windows!  I was just amazed that it was still standing.  I’m sure it doesn’t look anything like it did when Mom lived there.

I couldn’t get a good photo of this house as we were driving past.  This is the last house that my mother lived in for awhile with her parents before she married.  There is supposed to be 4 bedrooms upstairs and they had borders living in them.  After my grandfather died my grandma kept using it as a boarding house and lived there I believe until close to the time she died in the mid to late 60s.  My father and mother and some of us kids lived there for a short while also back in about 1954-55 before moving to the Green Bay area and mom has said that my dad built the sun porch onto the house for her parents – probably in return for them letting us live there for awhile.  There used to be a much wider staircase going up to the door and that was the only thing in my mind that I remembered of the place and it wasn’t there anymore

Then we ended the day and started the drive back to the campground.  This short area was by Lake Superior on the way out of the town.

I hope you all don’t mind all the things that mainly family will be interested in but I just wanted to include it all in the post.

Tomorrow we are moving to a different campground – a KOA – so not a state park (which usually means not all that pretty!) – we should have internet!  This is for just one night as we couldn’t get a spot in a state park – the last weekend or so of busy camping I guess.  That is ok – I have to do laundry again and the town or the campground will have a laundry and we need to stock up on grocery’s again – can only fit a small amount in this little refrigerator at a time you know!  More later!