”First, you`ve got to go to the downtown strip. It`s like a magnet; you have to go there. It`s good just walking up and down there, except sometimes you got to watch out for the burnouts (locals) and the slayers (longhairs). The best place is the Penny Arcade. It`s got the best games. Galaxy of Games used to be good, but now they`ve mostly just got Skeeball. Then you go to the Dungeon of Horrors. It`s live! Really good. (John: It scared the hell out of me.) You could go to the recording studio (On Stage), but only if you do a really obnoxious song like, uh, `Tie a Yellow Ribbon `Round the Old Oak Tree` by Tony Orlando. That would be too much! We`ve done the old-time photos, that`s really cool. But don`t eat down there; it`s too expensive. (Andrew:
All the fudge shops taste the same. John: The Swiss Made fudge is the best.) Next you go to Noah`s Ark water park. Spend all day there. It`s great.
(Andrew: Lots of girls. Tell `em you`ll meet `em at the Penny Arcade that night. It`s real easy.) Then you do go-carts at Big Chief. Yeah! It`s the only one to go. Awesome. The new track (Wonder Track) blows `em all away. For miniature golf you go to Pirate`s Cove. It`s the best. If you`re gonna do the boat rides, do the Ducks, the green ones. They`re good. The Dells rides are pretty, like, that`s what the Dells are all about. (John: I been at least 10 times. They always drag me along. It`s good the first couple of times, then it`s boring. Even the dog jump on Stand Rock. A friend of mine jumped it once.) Then there`s always the Tommy Bartlett Show. We haven`t gone yet this year, but we will. It`s awesome.”
Yes, there is a Tommy Bartlett.
His rotund belly girded by a belt whose buckle reads Bush Pilot, clad in an orange Ski, Sky and Stage Show windbreaker, sporting a closely cropped silver beard, Tommy Bartlett is larger than life (though not larger than one of his billboards). He still presides over the 2d-floor offices just above the ticket windows of the Ski, Sky and Stage Show, checking on receipts, planning new stunts and promotions, sometimes even working the front gate of the Ski, Sky and Stage Show when help is scarce (though that can be a problem because a lot of those people not only want a bumper sticker but an autograph as well). Surely, Tommy Bartlett, who has put more bumper stickers on more cars than any political candidate-or as Mike Royko quipped during a close Chicago mayoral race, ”Judging from the bumper stickers, I`d say Chicago`s next mayor will be Tommy Bartlett”-ranks among the world`s greatest hucksters.
Tommy cannot even tell his age without a promo-”I was born July 11, 1914. So I`m celebrating my 75th birthday. I just did a TV commercial in which I`m naked from the waist up. And I say, `Hi, this is Tommy Bartlett in his birthday suit. His 75th diamond-jubilee birthday suit. Normally the person with the birthday gets all the presents. But we have presents for YOU, namely the best Tommy Bartlett Ski, Sky and Stage Show ever . . . .` ”
Then he puts his hands on a Van de Graaff electrostatic generator and sends his silver strands straight up. ”It`s the rage of the local channel here!”
Tommy`s been a rage of the channels before. Back in 1940, at age 26, he was written up in Time for being the silver-tongued ”guiding star of two of the cutest, corniest radio programs in the U.S.” Those shows, originating out of Chicago`s WBBM, were called ”Meet the Missus” and ”The Missus Goes to Market.” As host, Tommy, a kid actor out of Milwaukee who had been in radio since he was 17, asked goofy questions and got goofier answers from housewives.
Working radio and, later, television (Tommy Bartlett`s ”Man on the Street” on WBKB-TV) with people such as Burr Tillstrom and Fran Allison, he got into the water and ski show as ”insurance against being out of work in radio or TV.” In 1952 he brought the road show to the Dells; they liked him and invited him back the next year. He stayed, started slapping on bumper stickers on every customer`s car-”In some neighborhoods in Chicago, it`s a real status symbol”-erecting signs in every pasture and glitzing up the show. Today he grosses in a day what he did in an entire season 35 years ago. That doesn`t count his Robot World, which he opened in 1982. His
”insurance” gig has made him wealthy, the owner of three planes, a collector of fine art, owner of two homes and a Porsche. He currently values his health more than anything. ”I`m lucky to even be alive, being as heavy as I am. In my doctor`s office is a sign saying, `When did you last see an old fat man?` ”
But the fat man is not slowing down. Come April, 1990, Tommy Bartlett`s name will festoon a dog-racing track. That`s right; when Wisconsin legalized dog racing two years ago, did you doubt that Tommy Bartlett would be the first to get a license? With partner Tom Diehl, a $7.2-million greyhound track with 2,600 covered seats will rise from a field just off Int. Hwy. 94`s exit 92, a field that now holds only a giant-what else?-Tommy Bartlett sign. At full schedule, the dogs will be racing eight months a year, extending the Dells`
season even more than it is today and generating, no doubt, dozens of new billboards.
It`s the Tommy Bartlett billboards, those brazen, outsized, skull-numbing signs, that get people-get many inside the gates and get many irked. Even Tommy, ever the tactician, says he does not like them.
”I`d be the first person to take down my signs if everybody else took their signs down. The best thing this state could ever do would be to pass a sign law, and I could get in trouble saying that because I`ve got a lot of friends in the sign business. But there are certain people who look at those signs as current folk art. They don`t want them down! I don`t know if I agree with them, but there you go.”
In the meantime the signs stay, the shows go on, Robot World and Cyclotron open daily, the spades turn dirt for the dog track.
”I hope to work right up to the very end,” Tommy says.
When he turns 80, who can imagine-apart from the best Tommy Bartlett Ski, Sky and Stage Show ever!-what he`ll cook up?
In the meantime, the Dells boats quietly leave the docks and wind in and out of the shoreline. The Upper Dells tour lasts 3-1/2 hours and makes three stops where riders can get off and walk through the gorges such as the famous ”Fat Man`s Misery” and onto Stand Rock. Though the elements continue to erode the Dells, the incredible rock formations seem the same as when your parents and grandparents came and saw them and when the Indians named them.
At night, boats will take you to the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial, or you can drive there. It is also much the same, with new dances from Aztec and Alaskan tribes as well as the Winnebagos and others. Still, old timers say that the show is not as exciting and dramatic as it once was. Chief Evergreen is dead and gone. They agree, however, that maybe it would seem marvelous to someone new. As far as tours go, the Ducks do the best job of combining fun and scenery. The Ducks are original, World War II amphibious landing crafts. They wheel you through the forests, through the winding hills, the valley of ferns, the steep points, and then plunge into the Wisconsin River for a brief look at the Lower Dells.
The Ducks are pure Dells: one part history and natural beauty, one part corn, one part waterslide and roller coaster and one part hustle. The drivers, those well-scrubbed college kids, have their patter well rehearsed and chocked with data, bad puns and worse jokes-”The wire strung across the cliff will keep us from plunging down the rocks. It may look like chicken wire to you, but don`t worry. The man at the hardware store said that if it can hold a chicken, it surely can hold a duck!”
In the meantime, cliff swallows hover about their mud nests, lazy painted turtles sun themselves on rocks and deer munch grape leaves just yards from the vehicle. Just when you are pleased at how well the hour`s ride has gone, at how this goofy vehicle has captured the double-edged appeal of the Dells, the Duck driver parks in a lot in front of the Duck graveyard and body shop. He turns and earnestly pushes a souvenir picture book on you. He says he gets part of the proceeds and that he needs the money for school. For long, captive minutes you peruse the book, feeling like a homeowner waiting for a vacuum-cleaner salesman to leave. It`s only $3, but when you`ve paid $28 for a family of four, you don`t need the extra freight. But that is the Dells.
As you leave the Original Ducks parking lot, you must drive around a construction truck parked in front of the Flamingo Gift Shop. A crew is erecting a pink flamingo, a glistening, 20-foot-high, shocking but regal pink flamingo that looks like it climbed right off the opening credits of ”Miami Vice.” It is remarkable-everything, no doubt, that its owners, those savvy locals, had hoped for and the one thing the Dells landscape did not yet have. Given the properties of plastic, the proud bird will probably outlast Hawk`s Beak and Stand Rock.
In late June a tornado hit the Wisconsin Dells area. The town and the strips were undamaged, though scores of tall pine and oak trees were snapped off all over the place. A roof of a bathroom at Noah`s Ark was ripped off. Boats and docks in area lakes were thrown about. Though some kids at a local summer camp were injured, nobody was killed.
The most severe damage, however, was suffered by the World of Gifts on U.S. 12 right next door to the House of Embers (the restaurant with the Omar Shariff Room, the Rudolph Valentino Room and the Ben Franklin Room). Though you did not read about it in The Tribune, the World of Gifts was gutted by fire when its electrical boxes blew up. Consumed by the flames were dozens, even hundreds of chenille bedspreads, a World of Gifts mainstay and perhaps the biggest repository of chenille in North America, or, at least, the state of Wisconsin.
It will take time, but locals say the shop will be back and the chenille supply will be replenished. True Dells lovers throughout the world can breathe easier. c8
