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Finding more than old cars at the Iola, Wisconsin, Car Show

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Jul 21, 2024

There is something you need to know before continuing on with reading this week’s Editor’s Notebook.

That something is that I am pretty well-known by my family and friends as always bumping into someone who I know or who knows me.

Perhaps that is because I have lived in several different places and even different states. Perhaps it is because I like to visit with people. And probably it is mainly because of my job, which is being a newspaper guy who is always out in the community – no matter what community I happen to live in.

Now to this week’s column.

Recently, my wife, Pam, and I traveled to northeast Wisconsin to visit my brother Randy and his wife, Shirley, and my other brother, Bill.

We had not seen them for quite some time, and we decided to get together at Randy and Shirley’s cabin on Island Lake near Gresham, Wisconsin, a pretty small lake and a very small town. It is about an hour’s drive northwest of Green Bay.

It was Randy and Shirley’s 20th wedding anniversary two weeks ago, and also the 20th anniversary of our younger brother Tim’s death from cancer, at the age of 42.

In fact, those two events happened just days apart from each other, 20 years ago.

Shirley was Tim’s neighbor in Brillion, Wisconsin. Randy was living in Ocala, Florida. Both were single and Tim decided, while he was battling cancer, that they should meet and that they would be perfect for each other.

Turns out, he was right.

On our route to Gresham, there is the small town of Iola, Wisconsin. By small, I mean the population is right around 1,200 people.

But Iola grows in size to many thousands of people one weekend every year. Maybe you know why. But if you don’t, here is the reason. It is home to the Iola Car Show, held every July.

My brothers had gone to it in the past and were always telling me how big it is and how amazing. So we decided to meet there, so that I could experience it for myself.

They were right. It is impressive. It is absolutely massive, with 10 huge areas for all the thousands of cars, another huge area for a craft fair (of sorts), and an even larger area for a swap meet. The swap meet mainly has old car parts but there is a ton of other items. This is a junk yard come to life.

There are bands playing, old TV stars (like from Happy Days) signing autographs, food, beer and pop concessions and a whole lot more.

It was incredible. It is three days long and it might take you that long to see it all. They also bring in fresh, new old cars each day. Now, I am not the biggest car nut around, but I have to admit, this was a car show on steroids. There is even a fleet of golf carts, and you can rent one to get around all the acres of rows of cars.

As I wandered around, I saw a building that had a sign on it that made me stop in my tracks. “Model Railroad Exhibit.”

As I have confessed before, I am a model railroad enthusiast. And sure enough, inside the building a couple of model railroad clubs had set up huge model railroad layouts. I took a break from looking at cars and trucks and started looking at train cars.

When my brothers had had enough trains and wanted to go back to cars, we left the layout room and went through a side room with vendors in it.

One of those vendors had model railroad items for sale, and I recognized him and he recognized me.

John Teskey owns a business called Teskey’s Trains in Waseca. In other words, he sells a lot of model train items.

He doesn’t have a store building, but he does travel around going to model train shows and swap meets. A lot of those are in Wisconsin, which, apparently, has a lot of model railroad enthusiasts.

John is a retired teacher, and he is a graduate of Blue Earth High School.

We spent quite a while visiting about Blue Earth in the “olden days” when members of his extended Teskey family owned businesses in town. We talked about Bev Teskey, who used to write our Register Reflections for years. We also talked about current happenings in Blue Earth, as John reads the Register and comes back to visit quite a bit.

My brothers, of course, had wandered off to look at more cars by this time.

Now for the big news. I bought a car at the Iola Car Show. It is a beautiful cardinal maroon colored 1938 Buick Special convertible. Now, before you get too excited and wonder if it will be on display at the car show in Blue Earth next year, I should mention that it is a two-inch long, 1:87 scale model that will go on my HO model railroad.

But, I can honestly say I did buy it at the Iola Car Show – from Teskey’s Trains, of course.