Bernard Pyron
Photo: Shirley Scholtz and Bernard Pyron, Monkey Island. Early Seventies
Originally posted on Historic Madison Wi. photo group, September 21, 2016
Some friends and I often went to a small area of forest along Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin in the seventies, which we came to call "Monkey Island." These friends included Shirley Schultz. Bob Watt, Justine Dakin, James Zwadlo, John Pflaum, Sandra Weitzman and Charles Schoengrund.
Bob Watt had some role in the naming of this place Monkey Island, but I have forgotten exactly what that role was. Watt hung out in the bohemian district of Milwaukee's East Side, and lived in a house he owned on North Dousman St. in Riverwest. Watt became a fixture of Milwaukee's sixties and seventie's Counterculture, was a Beat poet and often read his poems at the Avante Garde coffeehouse on the east side, writing a column for Kaleidoscope, and made a living as an exterminator with the pest-control business he owned, Rid-O-Pest. . Bob Watt was a younger member of the World War II Generation, and had been in Japan during the era of the U.S. Occupation of Japan. He was a bohemian but not a Marxist, something that is not seen much anymore.
Regularly, Watt motored to Madison in his Wattmobile with his art work on top of his car.
The Madison Bob Watt group often hung out in the early seventies in the Good Karma, a coffee house on upper State Street in Madison.
I remember being there with Jon Reilly and some singer when they talked about making my poem, The Cargo Momma, into a song. Jon Reilly in later years has tried to get Bob Watt 's paintings accepted. Watt died at 86 in January of 2012.
"There was nobody like him," said Bob Reitman, the Milwaukee broadcaster who was once the poetry editor of Kaleidoscope and the organizer of the Avante Garde poetry readings. "Of all the people I know, there was nobody who lived in that universe except Bob Watt."
See: http://milwaukeerecord.com/arts/bob-watt-exhibition-the-last-of-the-bohemians-coming-to-grove-gallery/
"Bob Watt exhibition, “The Last of the Bohemians,” coming to Grove Gallery, Matt Wild, September 23, 2016
"Bob Watt was a Milwaukee poet, artist and provocateur. He was considered the most published Wisconsin poet. At his passing, Watt had produced over 400 canvases. His artwork is in numerous private and public collections including Jimmy Carter Library, Hugh Hefner, Jack Nicholson, John Shimon and the Vatican"A few weeks ago I was looking on Google Earth for a vacant area along Lake Mendota just east of the Edgewater Hotel, which we called "Monkey Island " in the early seventies. The part of it closer to the Edgewater had an old boathouse on the lake and a rock and concrete fence between it and the other vacant lot to the east, which had a lake shore.
Both vacant lots were overgrown with trees and brush in the early seventies, and the vacant lot to the east toward James Madison Park had a lake shore.
The photo shown here is down the hill almost to the lake.shore on the lot to the east.The photo does not show much of the area, except that it was overgrown and like a jungle, hence the name "Monkey Island ." I have two other photos of "Monkey Island ," but they are not scanned.
I lived in an older large house south-west of the Edgewater on the lake side of Langdon St.
I don't know the address of the old rock house I lived in on Langdon Street, which was near the Edgewater and on the same side of the street. The Edgewater was between that house and "Monkey Island ."
George Parrino The old boathouse is still there
Bernard Pyron It looks like a part of the woods of the eastern lot of Monkey Island is still there. I found a house on Google Earth - 104 Langdon on the lake side - that looks a little like the old house I lived in but it is brick, and the one photo I found of the side of the house is light colored stone. 22 Langdon looks like a newer house; the house I lived in is from the late 19th century.
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