Summer Jobs Then and Now
G.G. Paschke Shares 1950s Memories
Glenore Gass, known since kindergarten as G.G., arrived in Ephraim in June 1950. Originally from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, she was still in high school when a friend she knew from the Manitowoc Riding Academy became ill. Her friend was working that summer at Cornils Riding Academy. Ted Cornils (1886-1964, Ephraim Moravian Cemetery), owner of the Fish Creek establishment, needed help and fast. G.G. got the job. Though she had vacationed with family in Sister Bay and Fish Creek, this was the first time she would stay and work in Door County without her parents.
Cornils Riding Academy was located on Hwy 42 at the intersection of County A. G.G. was hired as a trail guide and riding instructor. She brought her Saddlebred horses along for the adventure, “Easter Echo” a 3-gaited show horse and “LeDette” a small mare.
G.G. with her show horse Easter Echo
in front of the Cornils home, c. 1950
Easter Echo was ridden with an English saddle, reflecting the riding style taught at Cornils in the early 1950s. G.G. wears trousers and a plaid shirt, a typical outfit for leading trail rides. In shows G.G. wore classic jodhpurs and boots.
Note Easter Echo’s long, arching neck and and elegant appearance. Like other Saddlebreds, her movement in performance featured animated, high-steps.
Working Girl
On rainy days, she and other employees rubbed all of the saddles with saddlesoap to bring out the luster of the leather. They mucked stalls and “soaked the bits from bridles in Coca-Cola to remove the bad stains,” said G.G.
In fair weather, G.G. led trail rides in the fields and woods near Cornils dairy farm, located near the intersection of Maple Grove and Gibraltar roads. She also led rides at Peninsula State Park. Peninsula’s horse trails were near Highland Road where mountain bike trails are today.
Crossing Highway 42 from Cornils’ stable with up to a dozen young equestrians felt harrowing at times. It involved dismounting in the middle of the highway to stop traffic while the children, sitting astride a clippity-clopping line of chestnuts and bays, smiled happily and unconcerned.
Cabin Mates at Cornils
Male staff, including Ted Cornils’ German nephews Werner and Freddy, bunked at his nearby dairy farm. Women lodged in cabins that were close to the stable. The cabins had no running water so girls cleaned up in the main house and took their meals there as well. G.G.’s first cabin mate was June, a young school teacher from Iowa who was working in Door County for the summer. Another year, she roomed with a local girl hired to cook and do laundry. One day G.G. returned to the cabin and saw smoke. A very small fire was quickly extinguished. It had started from a stray wooden match, sparked by a gnawing mouse. The match belonged to G.G.’s cabin mate who had it to light her cigarettes, a vice forbidden in her home. The cabin was saved but, lamented G.G., “all my sweaters burned up.”
G.G. with her mare LeDette, c. 1950.
G.G. taught English riding and trail rides to several EHF members, including sisters Cindy and Prilla (Beadell) Larsen.
She also gave riding instruction to the children of Carolyn Fisher who founded Peninsula Players of Fish Creek with her brother Richard. These riders were the grandchildren of Hollywood star Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes). To see Peninsula Players historical podcasts and read more, click on underlined phrases.
G.G. Encounters an Apple Tree
When asked what she learned by working at Cornils, G.G. answered by describing a riding accident. It was customary to saddle up new horses and take them through their paces in Cornils large riding ring, before young children rode them. One summer, a new horse arrived so G.G., her hair set in pin curls with bobby pins for an upcoming date, took a spin around the ring several times. While heading back to the stable, the horse jumped a fence and bolted straight towards an apple tree. G.G. collided with the tree and was soon riding in the only ambulance available at the time, the one owned by the Casperson Funeral Home. The ambulance, which easily converted to a hearse, was a beautiful shade of Buckingham gray with a black vinyl top. The vehicle’s low-hung frame prevented tipping on the curvy, harbor town hills heading south so G.G.’s pin curl hair set was still intact when she arrived at the hospital. There she met the newly hired Dr. Sheets. G.G. was one of his first patients. He told her that she had broken her arm and needed to stay overnight because she’d developed a hematoma, which needed time to clear up. G.G. ended her story by saying wryly, “I learned I couldn’t trust every horse.”
Though sidelined, she didn’t lose her job at Cornils but was instead reassigned to work in the office the rest of the summer. She began learning about bookkeeping, cash handling, and administrative skills which proved fortuitous in later years. She still worked in the tack room and also registered riders arriving for trail rides and lessons.
College Girl
By the mid-1950s, G.G. was attending the National College of Education (today’s National Lewis University) in Evanston, Illinois. She had grown up needing to earn her own money to buy her horses’ hay (food) and straw (bedding) by babysitting and working many other jobs. Knowing she would be away at school the horses, Easter Echo and LeDette, had to be sold.
A Waitress at the Eagle Inn
After her freshman year of college, she returned to Ephraim to work as a summer waitress at the Eagle Inn, owned by Bertha and Ivan Thorp (c. 1895-1975). The Thorps kindly gave her a ticket to a Peninsula Music Festival matinee concert. They were early supporters of the PMA. Click on the underlined phrase to learn more about the PMA.
At the Eagle Inn, female staff lodged in rooms above the laundry building, which was located behind the Inn. G.G. remembers sharing a room with Ruth Herlache (1943-2002), a college girl from Sturgeon Bay. Ruth later married Ranny Nelson, the owner of South Shore Pier. Together, Ruth and Ranny built Ephraim Shores Resort.
Proper and Precise
Evelyn Olson (1919-2010, Epharim Moravian Cemetery) was in charge of the waitresses at the Eagle Inn. She was a task master with an eye for detail. Olson had high standards, perhaps inspired by Eagle Inn’s first owner, the formidable Eugenia Thorp (1869-1952). “You need key people,” said G.G., “to keep high school and college girls in order.”
At the Eagle Inn, G.G. and other staff learned that a quality customer experience included visual details that enhanced a room’s ambiance. Tablecloths and aprons were pristine, not just presentable. Table settings were proper and precise, not slap-dash. A lovely presentation was important, too. “It was the most beautiful hotel,” G.G. reminisced.
So Much to Do at the Eagle Inn
As a waitress, G.G. worked in the Eagle Inn’s elegant dining room, which served breakfast and dinner to over one hundred customers. In the 1950s, the Eagle Inn only served lunch on Sundays. G.G. preferred the breakfast shift, which started at 6 AM. That left the whole afternoon to play 18-holes at the Peninsula Park golf course. She had other duties as well. Gathering wildflowers for table bouquets was a favorite assignment. G.G. and other waitresses drove Ivan Thorp’s car to the Nelson home up the hill on County Q. There, they picked seasonal blooms like sweet pea, daisies, and pink-petaled cornflower.
Another memorable task was babysitting the Thorp’s great-nephews Glenn (Pudgie) Bernik and B.D. Thorp. She took the boys for haircuts at the Village Hall, too. They went to George Jackson’s Barbershop, located where the kitchen is today.
Photo: Glenn Bernik and B.D. Thorp at the Eagle Inn’s south stairway. Photo courtesy of B.D. Thorp.
Excellent Food, Excellent Service
In the 1950s, waitresses at the Eagle Inn wore a white uniform, a freshly ironed white apron, and white shoes. G.G. went to the Anderson Store to buy white tennis shoes but the style they had were high tops, which were not permitted. Her mother sent a pair from Manitowoc, delivered to the Eagle Inn by the Bayview Busline.
Like today, waitresses picked up orders at a counter adjacent to the kitchen. In this photo, Eagle Inn’s Head Chef Walter Scott is broiling Porterhouse Steaks. Scott, remembered as being from Florida, worked at the Eagle Inn the same years as G.G., as well as additional years. “He was a wonderful chef,” she said.
Sweet Work
Staff often worked every day, serving vacationers who usually lodged at the Eagle Inn and its cottages for several weeks. Few stayed less than a week. Patrons sometimes requested one favorite waitress for all their dining service.
Dining room staff were always ready to serve day trippers, too, plus those who routinely disembarked from pleasure boats at the Eagle Inn’s dock, then strolled across the street to sample the Inn’s locally sourced cuisine. In addition to many wonderful pies, a favorite dessert was Sailor’s Duff.
Pictured right is a recipe from the EHF archives for Sailor’s Duff, a steamed flour pudding. There are modern variations but this hand-written recipe from the Eagle Inn includes classic ingredients like molasses, eggs, and vanilla. The dessert is topped with whipped cream.
“Duff” is a dialectical variation of the Scottish word for dough.
In 1962 the Eagle Inn was razed and lumber repurposed as the Eagle Inn Motel. Later, the motel was floated to Fish Creek and placed near the Alibi Dock.
After-hours
In the 1950s, many businesses in Ephraim and across the nation were closed or only open for limited hours on Sunday. Cornils Riding Academy, for example, offered no lessons on Sunday so while working there G.G. had free time that day. She began attending Sunday service at the Ephraim Moravian Church and began to know many people who lived in Ephraim.
Sometimes, employers hosted get-togethers. G.G. recalls Cornils treating staff to watermelon. She remembers racous seed-spitting contests, too. Summer nights, she watched movies at Skyway Drive-in Theater from Cornils’ pasture, sitting astride LeDette or Easter Echo. Later, when she worked at the Eagle Inn, she enjoyed walking to the nearby Anderson Store and Dock.
Shopping at the Anderson Store
In 1949, Mr. and Mrs. George Nau Burridge, who owned a women’s apparel store in Green Bay, visited Peninsula Players and Door County with flamenco dancer Gladys Flores O’Brien and her daughter, Hollywood star Margaret O’Brien, then age twelve. In 1950, the first year G.G. worked in Door County, Nau’s of Green Bay set up shop in a refurbished wing of the Anderson Store. Nau’s featured fashionable women’s apparel, handbags, perfume, and jewelry. G.G. saved her tip money from waitressing to purchase stylish clothes to take back to college. She remembers that Nau’s store manager stayed at the Eagle Inn and also took her meals in the kitchen at the family dining table. (“Nau’s Plan ‘Branch’ Store in Ephraim,” June 1, 1950, Door County Advocate.)
Ephraim correspondent Verra Sauer described the new shop as “a revelation.” The shed at the Anderson Store had been “rebuilt with the ceiling and walls covered with the knotty pine saved from a log taken from the [newly rebuilt] Anderson Dock.” The log had been underwater for almost 83 years. (“New Shop, Airplane Travel Mark Progress at Ephraim,” by Verra Sauer, July 6, 1950, Door County Advocate.)
Adolph Anderson
While working at Cornils and the Eagle Inn, Nau’s and the Anderson Store was handy for various sundries. But chatting with people like Adolph Anderson (1866-1961), an elderly merchant and dockmaster whose father, Aslag, built the original dock, became a more treasured memory for G.G.
Photo by Frank Jacobson of Sheboygan Wisconsin, c. 1930s.
In the 1950s, the tourist season ended on Labor Day. G.G. found out just how firm the end-date was. “I remember riding my horse to Wilson’s on Labor Day,” she said. “I was going to order the Wilson Basket Special for lunch: a hamburger, coleslaw, and french fries. Wilson’s was closed for the season.”
G.G. feels fortunate to have made her home in Ephraim and considers it the most pristine and beautiful village of all, with the open waterfront and scenic vistas of Eagle Harbor’s rugged shoreline. She met her husband while working at Cornils in the 1950s and they raised their three children in the village she loves. G.G. Paschke was named 2023 Fyr Bal Chieftan and has been an EHF member for over sixty years. G.G. is a long-time docent, too, and in summer can be found at the Anderson Store sharing village history with visitors. She recently said, “If we don’t keep up with history, all is lost.”
First Jobs Today - Similar and Different
In 2022, when Gibraltar High School student Logan joined Door County’s seasonal workforce, COVID was still affecting health and safety protocol in the hospitality industry. For Logan and other young adults, the worldwide pandemic of the early 2020s shaped choices and experiences. “I wanted a place to work that was primarily outside,” he said, so joined Ephraim’s Firehouse Marina.
In 2023, with the pandemic in the rear view mirror, Logan switched things up by working nights at the Skyway Drive-in Theater. A favorite venue for tourists and locals since 1950, the family-owned Skyway also had terrific bosses according to Logan. Dale and Jeff Jacobson offered free popcorn and movies to the staff, something Logan appreciated.
Though Logan worked every day the summer of 2023 (weather permitting), he took pride in knowing he worked at a place that created fun memories for so many. And, despite the hectic schedule, Logan still found time to enjoy Ephraim sunsets.
Logan, pictured right, crews for Wisconsin Water Wings Parasail Rides which operates out of South Shore Pier in Ephraim.
In August 2023, just before beginning her first year at college, Amelie Doneff reflected on her summer work experience . “I’ve worked as a babysitter, as a housekeeper, and a cashier. This summer I worked as a museum attendant at the EHF, one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever held. I’ve learned so much about history, and also the incredible impact a small village and its people can have on others. As a young adult, I think it’s important to realize the necessity of work and the meaningful ways you can contribute to society around you.”
Working in Ephraim - Closing Thoughts
G.G. Paschke, Fyr Bal Chieftan 2023
Thanks to all for sharing memories of first summer jobs. Then as now, such experiences offer the chance to learn life-long skills like integrity, teamwork, and accountability. It’s clear from G.G., Logan, and Amelie's experiences that tourism work can be challenging. At the same time, helping others discover new pastimes such as horseback riding or parasailing can be its own reward. And when things don’t work out exactly as planned, knowledge gained always offsets disappointment. From visiting the Anderson Store to sailing adventures, Ephraim has always been a village where people make memories!
“Summer Jobs Then and Now” was submitted in 2024 by Kathleen Harris with contributions from G.G. Paschke, Amelie Doneff, Logan Mitterman, Greg Casperson, and B.D. Thorp.
Photos courtesy of G.G. Paschke, B.B. Thorp, and the EHF archives.
