The Face of Old Milwaukee
As a young child, my mother worked in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. I have fond memories of riding in the car to pick her up from work every day — always at 4:45 PM, sharp. We'd embark on a drive to get her, driving past landmarks such as the Miller brewery, the abandoned Pabst brewery, and the Bradley Center along the way.
One road we often traveled on the way over to my mother's workplace was "Old World 3rd Street", so named because it's either a tribute to Milwaukee's sizable German heritage or an early attempt by the city's segregated Caucasian plurality to avoid naming a street for Martin Luther King, Jr., depending on whom you ask. Old World 3rd Street has its own share of Milwaukee landmarks — the Usinger's headquarters and the former Donges glove shop to name two.
On Old World 3rd Street — 1137 North Old World 3rd Street, to be exact — there also stood a building of average height that had an advertisement painted on the brick wall that composed one of its sides. This particular advertisement dated back to around World War II, and was for a pest control service called "The House of Sanitation" or "Killer Klein", depending on what part of the ad you were looking at. (A later Google search indicates that the company's name was "Klein Kleen-All Corporation".)
Apparently, "Killer Klein" thought that the best way to hawk his pesticides was with an elf that looked like it was pulled straight from some little kid's worst nightmares. As such, Klein's ad featured a man of indeterminate profession — a cop, perhaps? — and the elf, doing something that sort of looks like ice skating whilst spraying pesticides out of a tube.
I don't remember when I first saw this "Killer Klein" weirdness, but it was probably around the age of three, as that's when my father started regularly taking me along with him to pick up my mother from work. Either way, the first time I saw that happy elf, I was shell-shocked.
I was so absolutely freaked out, in fact, that I came up with a name for this elf: The Face!
No, not "Bob", "Joe", or some other similarly random given name. Apparently, the first and last name I ever came up with for this ice skating elf was "The Face".
The Face ItselfSeriously, look at The Face:
The Face as of 2008
I honestly don't know what's freakier: The Face's crazy elf hat, his weird pesticide stick thing, or the fact that his business appears to have at least three different names. Whatever the reason, The Face had me freaked for my life from the moment I first laid my little-kid eyes on it, freaking me out enough by the age of four that I would hide my eyes in the car's back seat to avoid having to glimpse at this elfin wonder and his equally bizarre comrade.
Eventually, around the time I turned five, I was scared shitless enough by The Face's smiling visage that my father would take alternate routes through downtown Milwaukee just to avoid it for my sake, leading me to continually ask my father if we were still avoiding The Face.
My insanely-high fear of The Face continued to at least the age of eight, as I distinctly remember asking my parents about the Brew City BBQ's proximity to The Face around then. I don't exactly remember when I stopped living in irascible fear of The Face, but it was probably around the third grade, when I eventually learned to stop living in fear of cheesy corporate art from World War II.
The Face, revisitedMy mother left her downtown office job about seven years after my first fateful encounter with The Face, bringing an end to my continual Face paranoia due to a lack of exposure to it.
About five years after that — the summer of 2008, to be exact — I randomly thought about my old elfin adversary once more, for reasons unknown to myself. I suggested to my father that we take a trip downtown to get some pictures of The Face, just in case the building was to be demolished for whatever reason in the future.
He agreed, and we proceeded to take a memorable drive to downtown Milwaukee for the sole purpose of taking Face photographs. I took about twenty, one of which is the photo of The Face in this article. It was also at this point that I discovered that The Face was cheesy corporate art for a pest control service; I ended up looking up "Killer Klein" that same day, and it appears that they went out of business around 1995, leaving behind The Face and a few outdated listings in Internet directories as the only traces of their past existence. The Face's building is currently occupied by a moderate-scale Italian restaurant called "Vecchio Bar and Grille".
The Face's end?When I walked out onto the vacant grassy lot beneath The Face in 2008, I noticed a set of orange question marked-shape sculptures — about four feet in height — and a construction trailer.
I should've known that that trailer was up to something. It turns out that said question marks and trailer were there for the construction of "The Moderne", a glitzy condominium intended for the twelve or so obscenely wealthy residents of Milwaukee. When completed, the tower will stand directly next to its neighboring Italian restaurant, completely obscuring The Face. (I'm not sure what's freakier: The Face, or The Face walled off by an adjacent skyscraper for all of time.)
The Moderne was originally scheduled to be either completed or near completion by now, but with the stock market crash in 2008, it was put on hold for an indefinite period of time until the developer could find feasible financial backing for his building.
Whether The Moderne will be finished or not is anybody's guess, but a recent article in the Wisconsin Business Journal indicated that it was indeed back on track for construction as of November of 2009. When I went back to Old World 3rd Street a few weeks ago, a large banner proclaiming The Moderne's pending construction stood on the side of the Italian restaurant, completely obscuring The Face's sterling visage.
Whatever ends up happening next, The Face has a permanent place in my heart, both as an object of my irascible fear in early childhood and a reminder of all the weird things I did as a child in relation to the present day. He'll live on for as long as time allows, even if it requires living forever behind the wall of a glitzy condominium high-rise.
FOREVER!
What's your opinion of "The Face"? Send an email to captainnosebleed (at) electronicrenaissance (dot) com, and your comments could end up in the next edition of Captain's Mailbox.
