Trane Company Safety Glasses

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Amy Vach

Catalog Number: 1986.035.01

More than 300,000 employees each year are sent to the hospital due to eye injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And 90% of these injuries would have been preventable if the employee had been wearing protective eyewear.

These might look like ordinary glasses, but they are not.

While they look a bit different from today’s variety of safety glasses, that is indeed what they are.

These glasses used by Trane employee Marvin Bremer feature thick lenses that are almost circular and temple tips that contour around the wearer’s ear. The glasses, made by American Optical Company, are signified by the initials AO on the lenses.

In 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created to circumvent accidents in the workplace. However, by the 1940s, most companies made safety glasses mandatory for employees working in woodworking and machining.

How do we know that these safety glasses were used by Bremer?

In 1986, Gene Gunderson, the supervisor of safety and health at Trane Company, donated these safety glasses to La Crosse County Historical Society.

In addition to donating the glasses and their metal case, Gunderson also donated the tool order slip and carbon copy that Bremer completed to check out the department-owned glasses.

The details on the receipt indicate that Bremer checked out these glasses the same year that he started working at Trane Company. In 1956, Marvin Bremer moved his family to La Crosse and began working at Trane. Bremer worked as a machinist in the tool and die department at Trane Company for 30 years.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on July 28, 2019.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Pleasoning Shaker Bottle

Ken Brekke

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Catalog Number: 2019.023.01

The message on this shaker bottle suggests it contains “the flavor of a lifetime.”

Apparently, that message was accurate, because the Pleasoning brand of gourmet seasoning is still thriving, 67 years after the company was established in La Crosse.

Frank J. Italiano’s teaching career kept him busy during the week, but on weekends he experimented with blends of herbs and spices that were designed to be tasty while containing less sodium than table salt. He gave some of his spicy creations to his fellow teachers, “and they kept coming back for more,” according to the Pleasoning website. A business was born in 1952.

Italiano and his wife, Lenore, grew the Pleasoning business for many decades, with help from family members. He died in 2006, but worked the business until he was 83. Lenore retired from her Pleasoning responsibilities in 2007. Their daughter, Kathy, and her husband, Paul Boarman, currently own and operate the business, now called Pleasoning Gourmet Seasonings, at 2109 Ward Ave. They and their son, Dominic, are the company’s only employees.

The shaker was donated to the La Crosse County Historical Society by Frank and Lenore’s son, George, who also worked in the family business as a youngster. 

Its label, which bears a copyright date of 1956, claims Pleasoning is “famous for improving food flavors.”  It should be used “in place of all seasoning,” the label adds, along with a final bit of advice -- “Note: This is a true blend. Add salt if you like your food saltier.”

George says this shaker sold for 39 cents back in 1956. He remembers mixing some product and filling shakers along with other family members back when the business was just getting started. “Family always helped,” he explains. He also credits Kathy and Paul for greatly growing the business through Internet marketing.

Frank combined his musical expertise and chemistry background to create taste sensations, according to the company’s website, although it adds that “his Italian mother’s use of herbs and spices helped.”

Pleasoning products, which have grown to include 36 different blends, are now shipped all over the country. Pleasoning also follows America’s troops to military installations all over the world. The blends of herbs and spices, still low in sodium, are sold to the military, which in turn ships them to “where the troops are,” according to Paul. 

Some customers have been buying Pleasoning for 50 years or so, Paul reports.

The original Pleasoning blend still follows “exactly the same recipe” originally created by Frank, according to Paul. That recipe, by the way, is very much a secret.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on July 20, 2019.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Sewing Notions

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Peggy Derrick

Needlework skills are deeply associated with femininity in Western culture.

Just one glance at the photograph tells you that all these items were made and or used by women. Quilting bees and sewing circles are distinctly female activities, and skill with a needle and thread was once an important feminine quality.

Ironically, the image we have of a Victorian lady demurely sitting with her tatting shuttle or embroidery hoop is an image that coexisted with the increasing industrialization of textile manufacturing: as more and more fabrics and laces were actually made in factories, the notion of the “feminine arts” became more and more romanticized.

At the same time, women’s magazines of the late 19th century exhorted them to use their skills to decorate their homes with artistic handiwork because the aesthetically pleasing home would encourage their children to grow up to be better educated, and to value the arts.

Victorian women took their responsibilities to heart and covered every possible surface with doilies, crazy patchwork, embroidery, netting and any number of hand-crafted textiles.

Historians argue that 19th century needlecrafts helped women develop social networks, gave them social standing and a means to express themselves artistically, cope with grief, participate in their religion, and raise money for social and religious causes.

The sewing notions pictured here span roughly 100 years, from the early 20th century through its end.

They are mostly anonymous donations because years ago they were not deemed important enough to catalog.

I only know the provenance of the pin cushion in the upper left-hand corner because I made that myself.

Continuing clockwise from there, they consist of spools of thread and a thimble, an example of lace tatting with two celluloid tatting shuttles, a pair of “stork” embroidery scissors with a handmade case, a small sample of needlepoint on canvas, a tapestry needle and a folding ruler.

Today, everything we can possibly need, want or use can be manufactured and purchased. Yet the human need to make things with our hands is still alive, and old-time crafts are still practiced as a means of personal expression or relaxation.

Hand work may go through cycles of popularity, but it never disappears, because it still satisfies our need to beautify our surroundings, and to express ourselves through physical manipulation of materials.

When we learn and practice these old-time crafts we participate in a living tradition, and experience connections to makers in the past.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on July 13, 2019.