Appleton is the town that Harry Houdini left and where Joe McCarthy remains. Its award-winning local candy factory is in a mall complex, some of the sites on the Houdini walking tour are used-to-be-heres, and the locals eat breakfast at a strip-mall deli that serves butter and jam in little packets. But the town does still have flowering trees, Queen Anne-style homes (and some stick style and Italianate), and a hand-operated lock system on the Fox River, which offers vistas worth photographing. Several museums opened here in the 1980s, so there’s more to be seen here than there used to be. It’s located in one of the largest paper-making regions in the world, the Fox Cities. And the bathrooms are lovely (women’s only; I can’t vouch for the men’s). The town’s named, by the way, for Samuel Appleton, father-in-law of Amos Lawrence, the Bostonian who founded Lawrence University in 1847.
Well, at least someplace people still notice these things.
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Be sure to save time for the gift shop downstairs; I recommend at least 30 minutes, though you can take a catalog with you to order, for example, one of five different styles of Houdini T-shirts or a cassette tape of Houdini’s short stories. This is the place to buy gifts: marked deck of cards ($2.95), handcuffs ($6), lock-and-key earrings ($11.25), and posters, postcards, magic kits, mugs, videotapes, and magic and historical books. Try the “wate and fate” machine, where for a penny you get a semblance of your weight and a fortune. (“Gossip is your big weakness,” it told me; my weight was equally off base.) If you want more information on Houdini’s life in Appleton, you can buy two booklets, The Young Harry Houdini in Appleton ($2.25) and Presenting Houdini in Appleton ($2.50) and pick up a free Houdini walking tour pamphlet on your way out.
If you’re still in a historical mood, walk on down to Conkey’s Bookstore (226 E. College Ave., 414-735-6223 or 800-279-4623) for general books and books on regional history (open Monday through Friday 9 to 9, Saturday 9 to 5). You can also get antique keys for $1.50 each, which weren’t necessarily used by Houdini but could have been, we were told.
But this is where writer Edna Ferber (1887-1968) worshiped. A block east at 319 N. Drew St. is Ferber’s first Appleton home; she arrived with her family in 1897. North and west a block is 216 E. North St., where she wrote Dawn O’Hara in 1909. Ferber and Houdini’s paths crossed in 1904 when he returned to town and she, the first female reporter for the Appleton Daily Crescent, interviewed him. A little more than a block down, at the corner of Drew and North, is an attractive Richardsonian Romanesque-ish gray and red brick house with a balcony and dormer windows, a nice break from all the Queen Annes. The house was built in the 1880s and nobody famous ever lived there, as far as I know. You can check it out as you’re resting and recapping in lush City Park, which is just across the street.
McCarthy was born eight miles north of Appleton in 1908 and buried in 1957 in Saint Mary’s Church cemetery, on a bluff overlooking the Fox River. The bust has been controversial; in 1987 a county board member lost a fight to move it to the local historical society.
For a hands-on meal try Mongo’s Mongolian Barbecue (231 W. Franklin St., 414-730-8304), the only Mongolian barbecue in town, where you have no one to blame but yourself if there are too many onions in your stir-fry. For $10.95 you get unlimited trips to the buffet, where you can follow the posted recipes or invent your own combination of thinly sliced chicken, beef, lamb, or pork; an array of accoutrements from cabbage to pineapple; and sauces from garlic water to peanut. Then watch the whole thing get quickly sauteed on a huge grill and add crispy noodles and, if you dare, very hot red sauce. The meal comes with white rice and warm pita bread. It’s open for dinner 5 to 9:30 Monday through Thursday and 5 to 10 Friday and Saturday and for lunch Fridays only, from 11 to 2. Seafood is available on Tuesday and Thursday.
