CURIOSITIES

The Totem at Peninsula Golf Course

As you tee up on the ninth hole of the Peninsula Golf Course, the primary hazard in your vision isn’t a sand trap or a pond, but a 40-foot-tall totem pole and monument. Good golfers have no trouble avoiding it, but bad golfers will either be drawn into it or find themselves in the adjacent driving range trying to avoid it.

The pole has stood there for almost as long as the course has existed. The brainchild of Door County historian Hjalmar Holand, the pole was erected in 1927 to honor the Potawatomi tribe, some of the earliest inhabitants of the peninsula.

Holand proposed the design of 26 different scenes interspersed with Potawatomi symbols laid out in horizontal bands representing important segments of the tribe’s history. A Belgian artist named C.M. Lesaar carved the pole, and at the top, master carver Robert Petschneider placed a small bear, positioned to look over the Ephraim Harbor.

The pole was dedicated Aug. 14, 1927, during an elaborate program attended by 32 Potawatomi and thousands of others. After the ceremony, Potawatomi Chief Simon Onanguisse Kahquados (1851-Nov. 27, 1930), the last descendant in a line of chiefs who ruled the tribe for several centuries, worked with the Door County Historical Society to arrange for his burial near the pole.

When Kahquados died near Blackwell, Wisconsin, he was living on just $10 per month in government assistance. But when he was interred beneath a nine-ton boulder near the pole on Memorial Day, 1931, the ceremony was attended by a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 people.

In 1970, the pole was replaced by a laminated pine replica created by Adlai Hardin. The new pole features an additional band designed by Chief Roy Oshkosh to honor the Menominee tribe.

When Peninsula Golf Course was looking for a new logo in 2000, it leaned on this history as well, adopting a design featuring the bear at the top of the totem.

(Top and right) The totem pole near the 9th fairway at Peninsula State Park Golf Course honors Chief Simon Onanguisse Kahquados. Photos by Brett Kosmider.

JJ’s Best Customers

James “JJ” Johnson is known to have such an eye for a deal that he has a hard time passing them up. That’s how he once ended up coming back from a restaurant auction not with a cooler or a pizza oven, but with the whole darned restaurant.

Early in his days as a restaurateur, Johnson worked a much smaller deal that has brought him his most consistent customers.

“This guy in a motorhome pulled up and had some brochures and wanted to sell me one of these characters, as he called them,” Johnson said. “Well, I go out there with him and step inside and the whole motorhome is full of these things.”

JJ being JJ, he worked a deal and stepped out with two characters: a pirate and an old man named Mallard. They were the first of several to come that became hallmarks of the JJ’s La Puerta experience.

Diners love taking photos with the mannequins at the bar, and sometimes they like to do more. One female mannequin was broken when a regular decided to take her dancing in the street. And on slow nights at the bar, the exotic blonde character named Wanda has helped to drum up business.

“Sometimes, when it’s slow, we’ll sit Wanda at the corner of the bar,” JJ said. “Well, guys think it’s a chick, and they will drive by and do a U-turn. They come in and give her an eye down the bar for a few minutes before they realize she’s not real.”

Then there’s a disappointed “Pfff” and maybe a choice word or two, but by then, they’ve already bought a drink, and another JJ deal has paid off once again.

James “JJ” Johnson cozies up to Wanda at the end of the bar at JJ’s La Puerta. Photo by Brett Kosmider.

The Pine Grove Resort at left sticks out amidst the white buildings of Ephraim. Photo by Myles Dannhausen Jr.

Ephraim’s Brown Thumb

Picture Ephraim, and you’ll certainly conjure up an image of white buildings lining the shoreline, the two white steeples of the Ephraim Moravian and Bethany Lutheran churches popping out of the treeline, and sailboats moored in Ephraim Harbor.

A handful of buildings add splashes of color to the palette. There’s the quaint Firehouse Museum nestled into the hillside, the red-and-white awning of Wilson’s Ice Cream Parlor, the graffiti on the Hardy Gallery on Anderson Dock. Then there’s the Pine Grove Resort on the north end of the village: two stories of brown pine standing on the edge like an ostracized sibling in a family photo.

So what gives? How did that splash of brown slip through the cracks?

The uniformity of the village look is by design. The Ephraim Historic District Ordinance (governing property between Highway 42 and Moravia Street and extending to the southern end of the village along the highway) calls for all buildings to be white or naturally weathered wood. That last point — “naturally weathered wood” — is the caveat that allowed Pine Grove to buck Ephraim’s trend.

“Surprisingly, I don’t remember it being much of an issue,” recalled longtime clerk Dianne Kirkland, who was at the start of a 26-year career with the village when the resort was built.

For the staff at Pine Grove, it does offer one added benefit: When people ask how to find the resort, they just tell them to look for the only brown building in town.