With everyone griping and moaning about the unusually chilly-rainy summer we`ve been having, we decided to check with a person who has been intimately involved with summer weather for as long as we`ve been alive.
Tommy Bartlett, who for 40 years has run the Tommy Bartlett Ski, Sky and Stage Show in the Wisconsin Dells, gladly took our call.
”We keep very close records of the weather,” he said. ”And this is the coldest summer we`ve had in 40 years.”
So, business is bad?
”I wouldn`t say it`s bad,” he said. ”But it sure isn`t what it usually is. The weather has something to do with that. But it`s also this depression the country`s in and all those discounted airline tickets that people bought. They`re flying off to Florida and wherever instead of coming to the Dells.”
There was a time, not so many years ago, when a trip to the Wisconsin Dells was almost a rite of vacation passage for city kids: water shows, moccasin stores; an exotic taste of nature coexisting with commercialism. For many it still is, but for many others it represents the unhippest jaunt.
”They are still building new hotels here and the Dells has the world`s largest water park,” Bartlett said. ”The highest-priced hotel rooms are always the first to go. That tells me the Dells is healthy.”
Bartlett`s show-how many times have you seen it advertised on bumper stickers?-has remained a remarkably popular Dells` attraction.
”That`s because we change the theme every year,” Bartlett said. ”It`s not as easy to alter as an ice show. There are only so many things you can do on water. But that`s the secret, to change, even if it`s hard for the fan to notice.”
Bartlett just turned 78 but his enthusiasm and energy are undiminished. When we talked with him, he had just returned from the Calgary Stampede, that annual Canadian rodeo that he has emceed for more than 20 years. He told us that he is on hand every night for the 8:30 p.m. shows at the Dells, greeting people and signing autographs and ”making sure the show goes as smoothly and entertainingly as I want it to.”
”I hope to keep doing it . . . at least until I`m 80. When I get up in the morning I sit on the side of the bed and count my blessings . . . And then I go outside and hope the weather`s getting warmer.”
