BRODHEAD - It's hard to imagine now in this era of car travel, but at one time a passenger train ran between Brodhead and Monroe.
Paul Douglas remembers taking that train as a kid in the early 1960s.
Along the way, he and his friends kept themselves entertained by singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Since the train traveled only 30 miles per hour, as he remembers it, they could get through all 99 verses of the song on the trip.
Passenger rail travel is long gone from Green County, but a new mural unveiled over the weekend in downtown Brodhead tributes the train depot that started the town of about 3,300 in the 1800s.
Brodhead "grew up around the depot," said John Winters, a member of the mural committee who introduced the 32-foot-by-12-foot painting during Covered Bridge Days on Saturday, Aug. 10.
"This is an historic occurrence," Winters told the crowd. "We hope to see more murals proliferate in this town."
The $10,000 project was funded through the Chamber of Commerce, Brodhead Business Improvement District and donations from three families whose ancestors - Truman Olin, Christine Skolas Gombar and Glen Condon - are depicted in the mural.
"I think it's great. When he said the names, I thought, 'Oh God, I remember those names,'" said Marie Evans, who stopped to check out the mural unveiling. She was in town from Lubbock, Texas, for the Brodhead High School Class of 1953 reunion that night. Back then, her classmates knew her by her maiden name, Marie Hoff.
The name "Olin" in particular brought back memories for Evans. Her eighth-grade teacher Thelma Olin was a relative of Truman Olin, the lifelong Brodhead resident depicted in the mural. He lived from 1909 to 1996, worked as a mechanic his whole life and served as the city's fire chief for 20 years.
Elvin Busjahn, a Brodhead resident since 1952 via Lena, Ill., fondly remembers Olin as a good mechanic and a giving person. Olin worked afterhours to fix a broken window on Busjahn's car one cold night in the early 1980s. It was the middle of winter, about zero degrees, and Busjahn and his wife needed to get to O'Hare Airport that night to pick up their son.
In the mural, Truman Olin is shown smiling broadly and fixing the train at the depot as it prepares for departure.
The genesis of a mural as a way to honor Brodhead's past came from a Chamber of Commerce member's connection to another small train town, Rock Rapids, Iowa.
Here the Brodhead mural committee found a depot-themed mural by artist Mathew Sharum, and invited him to do a similar mural for Brodhead. Sharum, 39, is a self-taught painter based in the Detroit area who has done murals for jazz clubs, Whole Foods, children's bedrooms and more.
Sharum started sketching the Brodhead mural on his iPad in June and by July was painting it fulltime, panel by panel, in his studio. He worked with old photographs of Olin, Gombar and Condon to include their faces in the mural. On Aug. 6, he arrived in Brodhead to hang the mural's 12 panels of sturdy aluminum composite material (ACM) board and finish detailing. Once in Brodhead, he worked 15 hours days and overnighted at the nearby Go-inn Home Bed and Breakfast.
Train depot-themed art may be a growing business niche for muralists, Sharum said.
A lot of small Midwestern towns that, like Brodhead, owe their existence to early rail stops, are now interested in commemorating that past.
Rock River, Iowa is an "almost carbon copy" of Brodhead, he said.
Paul Douglas remembers taking that train as a kid in the early 1960s.
Along the way, he and his friends kept themselves entertained by singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Since the train traveled only 30 miles per hour, as he remembers it, they could get through all 99 verses of the song on the trip.
Passenger rail travel is long gone from Green County, but a new mural unveiled over the weekend in downtown Brodhead tributes the train depot that started the town of about 3,300 in the 1800s.
Brodhead "grew up around the depot," said John Winters, a member of the mural committee who introduced the 32-foot-by-12-foot painting during Covered Bridge Days on Saturday, Aug. 10.
"This is an historic occurrence," Winters told the crowd. "We hope to see more murals proliferate in this town."
The $10,000 project was funded through the Chamber of Commerce, Brodhead Business Improvement District and donations from three families whose ancestors - Truman Olin, Christine Skolas Gombar and Glen Condon - are depicted in the mural.
"I think it's great. When he said the names, I thought, 'Oh God, I remember those names,'" said Marie Evans, who stopped to check out the mural unveiling. She was in town from Lubbock, Texas, for the Brodhead High School Class of 1953 reunion that night. Back then, her classmates knew her by her maiden name, Marie Hoff.
The name "Olin" in particular brought back memories for Evans. Her eighth-grade teacher Thelma Olin was a relative of Truman Olin, the lifelong Brodhead resident depicted in the mural. He lived from 1909 to 1996, worked as a mechanic his whole life and served as the city's fire chief for 20 years.
Elvin Busjahn, a Brodhead resident since 1952 via Lena, Ill., fondly remembers Olin as a good mechanic and a giving person. Olin worked afterhours to fix a broken window on Busjahn's car one cold night in the early 1980s. It was the middle of winter, about zero degrees, and Busjahn and his wife needed to get to O'Hare Airport that night to pick up their son.
In the mural, Truman Olin is shown smiling broadly and fixing the train at the depot as it prepares for departure.
The genesis of a mural as a way to honor Brodhead's past came from a Chamber of Commerce member's connection to another small train town, Rock Rapids, Iowa.
Here the Brodhead mural committee found a depot-themed mural by artist Mathew Sharum, and invited him to do a similar mural for Brodhead. Sharum, 39, is a self-taught painter based in the Detroit area who has done murals for jazz clubs, Whole Foods, children's bedrooms and more.
Sharum started sketching the Brodhead mural on his iPad in June and by July was painting it fulltime, panel by panel, in his studio. He worked with old photographs of Olin, Gombar and Condon to include their faces in the mural. On Aug. 6, he arrived in Brodhead to hang the mural's 12 panels of sturdy aluminum composite material (ACM) board and finish detailing. Once in Brodhead, he worked 15 hours days and overnighted at the nearby Go-inn Home Bed and Breakfast.
Train depot-themed art may be a growing business niche for muralists, Sharum said.
A lot of small Midwestern towns that, like Brodhead, owe their existence to early rail stops, are now interested in commemorating that past.
Rock River, Iowa is an "almost carbon copy" of Brodhead, he said.