McGregor Mural

McGregor through the eyes of Angie Soulli

1. Trains

Trains were just an everyday, all day and night thing, just, they’re always there. There’s always trains, there’s always trucks, and there’s always barges, except for when the river freezes over, of course. It’s been that way my whole life. Trains come and go every day in McGregor.

4. River Life

Every little kid in town had their own Tackle Box. They'd ride their bikes down the river and sit on the edge and just go fishing all the time. There's catfish, there is bluegill, bass, largemouth, smallmouth, sunfish, just all kinds. There's northerns, I think. There's quite a few.

2. Join The Pepsi Generation

The Join the Pepsi generation represents the Pepsi commercial shot on the Wyalusing beach, South of McGregor, in the 1970s. I remember LOTS of people auditioning for a part of the commercial. The beach also represents all the fun good times created on the beaches of the Mississippi River during the summer months. That was our paradise!

5. The Barge

The barge across the bottom represents all the river traffic 24 hours a day. That company happens to go by all the time. See there's a name on there too? They named their barges, like a human name. They named their barges. I actually saw one one time that was Angela K and that's my name. And, of course, they only had one L on it. And my name has two L's. It’s Angelala because the nurse spelled my name wrong on my birth certificate. Yeah, just another barge that goes up and down all the time, and it's just different companies that own the barges. That's where they paint their names.

3. The Mighty Mississippi

When you live around here, you're considered a river rat. If you like the river, you're considered a river rat. Especially if you go out on it. And I'm telling you, once you go on that river, it's like paradise. There's just no other feeling. It's just amazing. It's just the place to be. There's so much fun!

  • I mean, it's just so nice and warm and the water, but you got to be careful out there, because the current is so strong. We were always taught don't ever trust that river, because the river will always win. We used to go out there all time with our little kids and everything. And you know, kids fight you to put their life jackets on. Well, you know, nobody ever fights with life jacket on him in the river. On the river, you should be very careful. It's a great time. It's paradise, but it can be dangerous too. You don't mess with the Mississippi. That is still taught to the kids today.

    The dragonflies are actually "Fish flies" or "Chad flies" that would hatch multiple times in the summer. They actually hatch straight from the river. They live only 24 hours. They smell horrific, they are drawn to the lights. The towns would turn all the lights off until they were done hatching. Sometimes they would be so thick, I have seen snowplow truck plow them off the streets. They made the cement very slippery. It has always been said that a good hatch means the river was very healthy. All the bikes represent the 193,654,751 miles we put on our bikes every year!

6. The Delta Queen

When the Delta Queen would go by up or down, it would play that Calliope. And you could hear the Calliope all over town. And it didn't matter what, of course, if we were sleeping, we didn't go but it didn't matter what time that would go by, all the kids would jump on their bikes. No matter what we were doing, we'd jump on our bikes and race down to the river to watch it just, just watch it go by. And of course, we'd wave, and all the people on the Delta Queen would wave back to us. It was the neatest thing. I remember the Calliope playing. And it was just beautiful. I don't know who played it, but then, of course, the wheel that would spin through the water – the paddle wheel. It was so neat.

7. Library

We are at the library all the time as kids. A lot of times, it would be our “meeting point.” There wasn't a lot to do with McGregor, but the library had so many books. And of course, we all were in there, went there. Also, there was an amazing librarian. Her name was Charlotte Franz. She was the most patient person in the world.

  • And I put that library card file on there. It’s because she taught us all how to use that. You just couldn't go in there and say, “Where's this book?” My favorite book was 10 Pennies. And she made you learn how to use that card library to go find the book instead of asking her all the time. And you don't see those anymore. You had to have a library card to get books. Little card there was filled out when you took it and when you had to bring it back. Everybody had two weeks. I think the fine was a penny a day when you didn't take it back. And then the Book-a-thon, I just remember doing a book-a-thon. Every summer she had a book-a-thon. You read so many books, and you got this sticker, you had to lick it. Ew I can still taste it. And you put it on this little paper, and the one with the most stickers at the end gets a prize.

    The record player – those were just things in the library room when we went there. And they actually had a record player that you could listen to, but you had to have, of course, the headphones on. It was actually an actual record player.

8. Rainbow Girls

That's that rainbow group that Jen was in. I was never in the group. I wasn't good enough, I guess. (laughs) But my cousin Jolene was in it, and Jeni, and a lot of Jeni’s friends were in it. I still have a friend that's actually still in it. It's kind of like the Masons. I really don't know what it was about because everything was such a secret. They couldn't tell anybody. It was like, “You're so lucky, you're a rainbow girl.” And then, “what's it about?” “Can't tell you. Can't tell you.”

9. Information Booth/Phone Booth

The phone booth! God, I remember checking that phone booth every day for change that people may have forgotten in there, in the little coin return. Thelma Vick took care of the information booth. She was down there every single day, rain or shine, she was so proud of that. And then she’d sit and talk to people about the community. She was like our welcoming hostess. She was a nice, nice person. She knew the area. She knew the things around the area. They sold little postcards there and little brochures. I remember clearly that one little light bulb in back hanging there. It wasn’t a very big building at all. It was right in the corner of Triangle Park.

10. Woerms Wiggle Inn

“Woerms Wiggle Inn" represents the coolest Hamburger, ice-cream shop EVER!!! It was a very popular place to hang out with all your friends, and the place to be. I clearly remember the jumping jukebox, along with the dinging of the pinball machine at all hours of the night. I remember the frosty mugs of the best root beer in the world and getting a dime to go get an ice-cream cone made from Borden's Dairy!

  • Oh boy, here we go. What I remember from it, it was the music that played from the jukebox in the back, and then there was a pinball machine right next to the jukebox that was played. I swear somebody was playing that at all times. Sometimes they had two pinball machines but not always. I never knew why or why not about that. And of course, they served food. They had girls come out on roller skates right to your car. Set the tray on your window, and then they’d serve the food to you. I clearly remember the root beer. When you say Woerms Wiggle Inn, you think of three things. You think of the ice cream. You think of cheeseburgers. Then you think of frosty root beer. The mugs were little mugs, and they got bigger mugs. I actually have a little mug from there. It was frosty root beer. It was the best root beer. It was so good. Ice cream! I remember going over there, my mom giving us a dime for an ice cream cone, and you got a big ice cream cone for that. Personally, I never ate there. I ate there, maybe one time in my life. But we never went over there because my mom never had a lot of money. We didn't have anything growing up, so that's why we had to make our own fun.

    The Woerms -- Marge was the wife and Kenny was the husband. Very nice people. Kenny, he looked like Santa Claus. He had long hair, long white hair, and a real long white beard. And I never remember having it like in a hairnet or anything. But Marge was the sweetest little thing. She was there, always was down there all the time. I do know their kid grandkids very well. They live around the area still. Their daughter, Rita. I did know Rita too. We used to play in their yard. That was one of the things I wish I had room for on the mural. They just lived up in the next block. And of course, we all lived in the same area, just different blocks. And we used to go up to Lang’s, which would be Woerms’ daughter’s house with her husband and kids, and play baseball and kickball and stuff like that. That was another meeting spot in McGregor, the Langs.

    Borden was the milk. Borden Dairy. Borden was the name of the dairy that provided the ice cream. And, you know, there’s dairy dreme and dairy creme. And actually, I was confused myself, and the way they he spelled things, C-R-E-M-E. I went exactly by what the pictures were. Back then, you could tell that Kenny made all of his signs, most of them. Like the hot dog and the hamburger. If you look at those two words, it’s a capital H for hot dog, and then it's a little O, and then there's a capital T. The way he did all that was not correctly, but it was his way. And I think at one point he spells “Inn”, at one point I-N, instead of I-N-N. I think he spelled everything right on the menu, but again, there was capital and lowercase and uppercase. And that's the stuff that I notice. That’s just what I noticed, because I took calligraphy in school. Yeah, that was just the place to hang out. I remember laying in bed, we lived on Ann Street, and they were on Main Street, and in the summer months, you could just hear that music playing, people talking, cars coming and going. I went to sleep many, many nights listening to that jukebox.

11. Swingset/Crown

The swing set, that's what our park was like when we were growing up. The "older" kids in the block would get in the center of it and push as fast as they could! Enter at your own risk! The swing set was an old metal swing set and the slide. It was one of those real silver slides. And of course, it was so hot in the summer, but we didn't care. Sometimes you could almost feel like you burnt yourself sitting on it. And it was fast. It was always fast. I don't know why, but it was just all one piece swing set. It had two swings on each side, and then the slide down the middle. And it was a big slide. It wasn't just a six footer, it was a big slide.

  • Then as kids, we would all get going and run up the slide and come back down and keep doing circles. So it was constantly something going down the slide, that was one of our things we used to do. Now, the Crown up on top represents my sister, which Jeni knew her very well. I mean, she was just one of those in town, everybody knew Princess Marth. She made us call her Princess Martha. Otherwise she wouldn't answer. And she passed away. So Jeni just said she wanted two things. She wanted a crown representing Martha somewhere, and then colorful. She wanted colorful. So that's what she got. Martha was the funniest person. I'm telling you. You say Martha Sour to anybody in McGregor, and they'll just start laughing. They go, “Ohhhhhh, Martha.” She had this scream that when she got excited, she would just scream. And I'll never forget, my grandma would take all of us, kids, grandkids, fishing between the bridges when on the old bridge was there, and her thing was, you could go if you were quiet. Well, Martha had never, ever gone fishing with grandma, because she'd get so excited. Grandma’d say, “Who wants to go fishing?” And we'd all say “we do!” And Martha would just be so excited she’d just scream. And then grandma would look at her and said, “You're not going.” It's comical now, but it wasn't then for her.

    The Woerms -- Marge was the wife and Kenny was the husband. Very nice people. Kenny, he looked like Santa Claus. He had long hair, long white hair, and a real long white beard. And I never remember having it like in a hairnet or anything. But Marge was the sweetest little thing. She was there, always was down there all the time. I do know their kid grandkids very well. They live around the area still. Their daughter, Rita. I did know Rita too. We used to play in their yard. That was one of the things I wish I had room for on the mural. They just lived up in the next block. And of course, we all lived in the same area, just different blocks. And we used to go up to Lang’s, which would be Woerms’ daughter’s house with her husband and kids, and play baseball and kickball and stuff like that. That was another meeting spot in McGregor, the Langs.

    Borden was the milk. Borden Dairy. Borden was the name of the dairy that provided the ice cream. And, you know, there’s dairy dreme and dairy creme. And actually, I was confused myself, and the way they he spelled things, C-R-E-M-E. I went exactly by what the pictures were. Back then, you could tell that Kenny made all of his signs, most of them. Like the hot dog and the hamburger. If you look at those two words, it’s a capital H for hot dog, and then it's a little O, and then there's a capital T. The way he did all that was not correctly, but it was his way. And I think at one point he spells “Inn”, at one point I-N, instead of I-N-N. I think he spelled everything right on the menu, but again, there was capital and lowercase and uppercase. And that's the stuff that I notice. That’s just what I noticed, because I took calligraphy in school. Yeah, that was just the place to hang out. I remember laying in bed, we lived on Ann Street, and they were on Main Street, and in the summer months, you could just hear that music playing, people talking, cars coming and going. I went to sleep many, many nights listening to that jukebox.

12. Run!

That was the doorbell ditch. It was always at night. Couldn't be during the day. It was at night when you’d go knock on somebody's door, and then you would just run. So when they answered their door, nobody was there. You would run and you’d go hide and watch them answer the door. That was just an entertainment thing we did. Doorbell ditching.

13. Monument

When we were growing up, it was right in the middle of the yard, the playground. It's actually still there too, but now there's a building real close to it, and other things. James McGregor, which James McGregor was the father of Alexander McGregor, and that's where he's buried.

14. Mar-Mac High

When we were in middle school, you had to take Shop and Home Ec. Home Ec is where you learned how to sew. I remember sewing a pillow. I was so proud of that pillow. You had to sew. You had to cook. I remember making my first coconut cream pie at school. You had to learn all the basics of that, and then you also had to take Shop. It was all mandatory, where you would have to make something using the electric saws and the sanders and the varnish, the whole works.

  • The lightning bugs just represents lightning bugs around the area because they’re just so cool. We used to actually take the butt off the bug, lightning part of it, all the light of it, and we would smear that on our arms like it was perfume. Rub it on our eyelids like it was eye shadow. We were not right growing up.

    The things we used to do, the jump rope, the hopscotch, the hula hoop.

    And then the school, that was the Mar-Mac High School, that was our whole school. I mean, kindergarten through third we went to Marquette, I remember that. But that was our high school. That's what the whole front of it looked like before they put that addition on, where the gym is, where it's all hidden now. It was a beautiful school. We were the Spartans, mighty, mighty Spartans. We didn't have a lot of sports offered to us. We only had basketball, baseball, softball and track was just starting when I was a senior, just starting to get going.

    The Woerms -- Marge was the wife and Kenny was the husband. Very nice people. Kenny, he looked like Santa Claus. He had long hair, long white hair, and a real long white beard. And I never remember having it like in a hairnet or anything. But Marge was the sweetest little thing. She was there, always was down there all the time. I do know their kid grandkids very well. They live around the area still. Their daughter, Rita. I did know Rita too. We used to play in their yard. That was one of the things I wish I had room for on the mural. They just lived up in the next block. And of course, we all lived in the same area, just different blocks. And we used to go up to Lang’s, which would be Woerms’ daughter’s house with her husband and kids, and play baseball and kickball and stuff like that. That was another meeting spot in McGregor, the Langs.

    Borden was the milk. Borden Dairy. Borden was the name of the dairy that provided the ice cream. And, you know, there’s dairy dreme and dairy creme. And actually, I was confused myself, and the way they he spelled things, C-R-E-M-E. I went exactly by what the pictures were. Back then, you could tell that Kenny made all of his signs, most of them. Like the hot dog and the hamburger. If you look at those two words, it’s a capital H for hot dog, and then it's a little O, and then there's a capital T. The way he did all that was not correctly, but it was his way. And I think at one point he spells “Inn”, at one point I-N, instead of I-N-N. I think he spelled everything right on the menu, but again, there was capital and lowercase and uppercase. And that's the stuff that I notice. That’s just what I noticed, because I took calligraphy in school. Yeah, that was just the place to hang out. I remember laying in bed, we lived on Ann Street, and they were on Main Street, and in the summer months, you could just hear that music playing, people talking, cars coming and going. I went to sleep many, many nights listening to that jukebox.

15. Bickels Clock

The Bickels Clock is just an icon that has always, always been in McGregor, I mean, for hundreds of years. That clock may have changed or some, but he's right on the corner there. He still, to this day, works on clocks, Dan Bickel. He has a clock collection. That was from his ancestors. I don't even know how far back, at least 100 years. And the park behind it, many hours spent at that park! At one time my Grandpa was the mayor in McGregor, so we took it upon ourselves to decide who could play in "our" park. 🤣🤣

16. Mushrooms

Morel mushrooms, they come up in the spring. It's just some something that everybody does. It's a limited time you go find mushrooms, and then you sell them. Today, you can pay up to $50 for a pound of mushrooms. They’re still all over the area. It's kind of like, don't get on my ground and don’t do mushroom hunting, because I do that myself.

17. Marbles

We just played marbles all the time. I don't think one kid in the area knew the rules of marble, which there are rules of marbles. They still do it to this day. There’s huge competitions, and you can only use your thumb. It was pretty interesting. But we didn't play like that when we were younger. We would just play, and if you hit somebody's marble, you got to keep it. And it was always a big deal if you had a steely which was a big silver marble, big one.

20. Candy Store

18. Bracelets

Right by the marbles, there's like bracelets. They're white and black. We called them booger bracelets growing up. And what a booger bracelet was, is you got a nylon rope, thinner nylon rope. And you would cut it in pieces. You would light the end of it on fire. And then you’d stick it together. It would melt together. And then you wound it around your arm, of course. And that last one, you had to have it on your arm when you melted it together. So you put, like a piece of material down so it wouldn't burn your arm. But those were our booger braces. You had to wear it. I mean, you could never take them off, because you had to cut them to get them off. I never had a booger bracelet. I always wanted a booger bracelet, and I may make one myself one of these days, but I never got a booger bracelet. They were the coolest booger bracelets.

21. Clemens Bottles

I just remember looking at those. They actually had two or three of them in the library right when you walk in the door to the right, it was like a glassed-in area where they would display those. As a kid, I just remember standing at that window and just staring at them, thinking, how does he do that? Andrew Clemens, he was deaf and mute, I believe. And him and his brother would go get sand off the bluffs in the area, and he'd sit and do those bottles. I don’t know how he did it. I'm going to actually order a book, because I've always wanted a Andrew Clemens book, because it's still to me, it's mouth dropping. I just don't know how he did it. He had to have teeny, tiny tools, and everything was so straight. I don't know. It's amazing, isn't it?

24. Eagle

19. Semi-Trucks

The semi-trucks used to haul grain every day. The whole right side of McGregor, in the day, there were semis lined up all the way from the top of the hill, past White Springs, all the way down to the elevator. And it would just move very slowly and unload the grain down there. Turn around, go get their more grain and come back and get in line. It was like continuously from the time the river was open till the time the river froze over.

  • They don’t go through town anymore. There's a staging area up on top of the hill by Maggie's Diner. That big area, that big, whole parking lot, is what was called the staging area for them now. Because something happened where they didn't want them on the streets anymore. My mom actually worked up there. She's the one that sent the trucks down. And there was communication from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill. “Okay, you can send 10 more. You can send two more,” or whatever. But that was where they all stayed. They still, to this day, they stay up there till they're told they can go down.

22. Phone & Basketball Hoop

The candy store was Davis's Locker. And Davis's Locker was, and still is, connected to the laundromat. They own both places. Every time you’d go in there and go shopping, you’d go in and you would tell them what you want, a pound of hamburger or whatever, and when you’d check out, Elsie, the mother of the owners. She was probably the owner at one time. I don't even know that for sure. But she would always give us penny candy when you left. She taught you, if you say thank you, you would get a piece of candy. But if you didn't say thank you, she wouldn't give you one. So you’d always come back and say, Thank you.

  • And then I just remember all that different kinds of candy. That's the different kinds of candy that was sold there and in the theater at one time. There was a theater in town. I remember Elsie always saying to me, she'd say, “say yellow,” because I remember when I was younger, I'd say “lallow.” So then she'd give me another piece. And she is the one, of course, that named me angel. She always called me Angel. Yup, “Oh, you're just a little angel,” she'd say.

    The laundromat. I put that on there too, because the whole front of it, you could climb over a little like wooden gate that was there, and we would perform. It was like our stage. We would perform to the kids sitting outside on the sidewalk. It was so much fun. I still remember doing that.

23. Drugstore

There's just eagles around here. It's just another icon. There's Eagles all around here, all the time. And then the colorful leaves behind it, behind the eagle, and between the church, that's just the colored leaves that are in their area, where people would come from miles, just like they do now, to see the colorful changing of the leaves. Once you're here, you just don't forget this area. You just don't forget it.

is your refrigerator running? You better go catch it. -- We used to do prank phone calls all the time. You'd call somebody, back then there was no caller ID, so somebody’d ask “Hello?” and you'd say, “is your refrigerator running?” And they'd say “yes or no” and you’d say, “okay, you better go catch it!” And you'd hang up. And then it would be like, “do you have Prince Albert in a can? You better let him out!” “You know what happened last night?” And they'd say, “what?” “It got dark!” That was our entertainment.

  • We had three phones in our house, which, ooh, that was a big thing. We had one in the basement, one on the middle floor, and one on top. And we're always up in my mom's room doing this, like she couldn't hear us.

    There's a basketball hoop with a gas tank, like an LP gas tank underneath it. That was up by Jeni’s house. That was at Eggens. That was another meeting point. Eggens was their name. The boys would play basketball up there, and us girls would just sit on that tank for hours watching them play. Just sit there and watch them play basketball. That was like our chair. And that's another thing. There's things about Eggens that I never got to draw on there. He had a really cool swing. It was just a board from a really tall tree, and everybody would swing on that swing. We’d get going so hard we would kick ourselves off their garage. Then about the middle of the hill, the Delta fort, the coolest fort ever. They always had the star on at in wintertime in the front of their house, with a star on top of their house, and the string of lights going all into the ground. That was like another icon. This is the first year they didn't do it, because they both passed away and the kids didn't do it. A lot of things on there I could have drawn. I had the best childhood growing up. Jen and I both have said, you know, we never really had a pot to piss in growing up, but we both had the best, best childhood ever.

The drugstore mortar and pestle - That is another icon that's just always been there, and it's still there. I mean, it's still there! It’s hanging right outside in front of the old drugstore.

25. Church

The church always very loud music. I grew up Catholic, so I never went to church there. Well, actually, I shouldn't say that, because sometimes I did go to church there. Us friends, we'd all get together and say, “Who's whose church are we going to tomorrow?” And they picked, and that's where everybody went to church when we're growing up. I remember the music being really loud and beautiful there. And out front, we went on those steps, those green carpet. I remember the green carpet clearly. We would all go there as kids and just play on the steps. Sometimes we'd have races running up and down the steps. We a lot of times took a button up there, and you’d put a button in your hands, and you had to pick which hand it was in. And if you got it right, you got to move up a step, and then you go down the line and have everybody else try to see where the button was. And the first one that got to the top, wins. And then they got to hold a button. And those are some rocks next to it. If we didn't have a button, we would just pick up a rock and do it that way.

About the Artist

Angie Soulli is a creative artist and furniture painter based in Iowa, known for transforming thrifted pieces into colorful, one-of-a-kind works. With a love for flowers, antiques, and giving old items new life, she enjoys community art projects and bringing creativity into everyday spaces. Her work aims to inspire others to see beauty in the unexpected.

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