Edgerton Post Office Mural

On the same day that I stopped in Stoughton and had all those wonderful surprises I swung through the town of Edgerton first to capture #5 of my Wisconsin Post Office treasures.  This one is titled "Tobacco Harvest" and was painted by Vladimir Rousseff in 1941.  I couldn't find any other information about the artist or this mural on the internet.

If you haven't noticed yet, these murals were usually designed to go above the Postmaster door.  The murals went into new post offices that were being built at that period of time and not into any random one.

At one time there were 40 tobacco warehouses in Edgerton, but I only saw one when I drove through downtown.  I didn't stop to get a shot, so I shamelessly borrowed one from the internet.  I'm sure someone will do the same for the hundreds of photos I've posted as well.



She isn't a pretty building, but right away it did the job of telling me that this obviously used to be a tobacco region.  I never even knew tobacco was grown in Wisconsin, I always thought that was a southern crop.  Sometimes I forget it's not all corn, cows and cheese out here.  I love the episodes of the TV show Frasier when Roz talks about her family in Wisconsin.  Here's a snippet from the transcript of the episode "Dark Victory" when she's talking about her family reunion that she missed:

Roz: Frasier, we always have so much fun.  Like this one time there was this huge cheese party and one of my uncles started speaking in cheese language.  You know, like instead of saying ,"Hello, how are you?" he's say, "Hello, Havardy."  Someone else would say, "Oh, I'm Gouda."  And Uncle Ned has too much to drink and he starts putting pants on all the cows!

Now I don't know what I want more, some Gouda macaroni and cheese or to watch Frasier.  Definitely not tobacco, gave that up 18 years ago!

Tomorrow I'm driving up to Sheboygan to hunt down their P.O. mural, but then I'll be giving the USPS a break for awhile and starting a series of other public murals in Sheboygan.  There are going to be a lot...it's going to be fun finding them all and telling their stories!  Linking up to Mural Monday, enjoy your hobby of choice this fine Monday.