NEW GLARUS - Elda Schiesser, 92, has been involved with Cheese Days for 75 years, dating back to 1935 when she was one of two Cheese Days princesses.
As a teenager, she was excited to be part of the Cheese Days festivities, she said. The highlight was taking part in the Cheese Days parade. She and fellow princess Kathryn Baltzer rode on the first parade float with Cheese Days queen Vilah Sommerfeldt.
Schiesser described the float as "attractive." It had purple feathers and satin and velvet decorations.
An estimated 50,000 people attended the parade. People lined the sidewalks to see the royalty and the other floats as they made their way from the Green County Fairgrounds to the downtown. According to a Monroe Evening Times Cheese Days souvenir edition, published in 1940, there were 125 units in the parade, along with 16 bands.
Schiesser laughed as she thought about the parade and said she remembered a rough ride, due to the wooden wheels on the wagon, which was pulled by four horses along the route.
She also remembered the costume she had to wear: She wore a rented sequined-covered jacket and a long satin dress.
"Our faces were covered with make-up so it didn't feel like ourselves," she laughed.
Cheese days has remained a part of her life.
In 1950, she got to watch as her daughter, Linda, was one of four children who dressed in Swiss costumes and drank milk on a float in the Cheese Days parade.
In 1955, Schiesser and three other women made Swiss dishes in the Wisconsin Power and Light front window as crowds stood on the sidewalk to watching through the window.
She has demonstrated her traditional Swiss paper-cutting for visitors to Cheese Days for several years and plans to do so again this year at the Cheese Days cultural exhibit at Turner Hall on Cheese Days weekend.
Cheese Days is a weekend she looks forward to, she said.
"It takes a lot of people to put this on," she said. "It puts Green County on the map."
As a teenager, she was excited to be part of the Cheese Days festivities, she said. The highlight was taking part in the Cheese Days parade. She and fellow princess Kathryn Baltzer rode on the first parade float with Cheese Days queen Vilah Sommerfeldt.
Schiesser described the float as "attractive." It had purple feathers and satin and velvet decorations.
An estimated 50,000 people attended the parade. People lined the sidewalks to see the royalty and the other floats as they made their way from the Green County Fairgrounds to the downtown. According to a Monroe Evening Times Cheese Days souvenir edition, published in 1940, there were 125 units in the parade, along with 16 bands.
Schiesser laughed as she thought about the parade and said she remembered a rough ride, due to the wooden wheels on the wagon, which was pulled by four horses along the route.
She also remembered the costume she had to wear: She wore a rented sequined-covered jacket and a long satin dress.
"Our faces were covered with make-up so it didn't feel like ourselves," she laughed.
Cheese days has remained a part of her life.
In 1950, she got to watch as her daughter, Linda, was one of four children who dressed in Swiss costumes and drank milk on a float in the Cheese Days parade.
In 1955, Schiesser and three other women made Swiss dishes in the Wisconsin Power and Light front window as crowds stood on the sidewalk to watching through the window.
She has demonstrated her traditional Swiss paper-cutting for visitors to Cheese Days for several years and plans to do so again this year at the Cheese Days cultural exhibit at Turner Hall on Cheese Days weekend.
Cheese Days is a weekend she looks forward to, she said.
"It takes a lot of people to put this on," she said. "It puts Green County on the map."