I didn’t know until recently that back in their heyday, my old neighbors, Maggie and Scotty Swan, couldn’t go anywhere without fans recognizing them. Starting in 1948, the couple hosted a weekly program, Chippewa Valley Barn Dance, on WEAU-Radio. Later the show transitioned to WEAU-TV. Then for the next two decades, they toured the country performing country songs crossed with hillbilly inspired by artists like the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, and Hank Williams. They were billed as Wisconsin’s favorite vocal duo.

When I was a kid, every few months they returned to their Southside Chippewa Falls home across the alley from ours. Maggie was always glad to interact with us, perhaps because she didn’t have her own children. “Oh, a little See girl,” she’d yell to me as I rode my bike up and down the gravel that divided our backyards. Her voice dripped with affection. I’m sure she couldn’t tell apart Joe and Virgie See’s six daughters any more than we could distinguish one of her many cats from the other.

At home, the couple also made money as booking agents for other acts performing at county fairs throughout the United States. In 1957, they launched Culbert-Swan Productions, which planned centennial celebrations and manufactured dinner plates and photo albums for churches, schools, hospitals, towns, and other municipalities. Some of these are now collectors’ items, including the set of 12 plates I use every day.

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They were billed as Wisconsin's favorite local duo.

Patti see

author

Great niece Mary Bundy remembers, “For a small-town girl, I thought they were like movie stars.” Even now their scrapbooks, filled with touring photos, remind her of “old Hollywood.” She laments, “I wish Maggie could have told us more of her stories.”

On stage, Maggie and Scotty might have had a comic banter, like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, but Scotty carried himself with the coolness of Clark Gable, and Maggie was bad-girl bawdy, like Mae West.

Once in her backyard, Maggie used a phrase that impressed my 7-year-old self. I knew “son-of-a-gun” and my mother’s favorite “son-of-a-buck,” but this one unfurled from Maggie, exotic and powerful. Mom caught it spill from my mouth and demanded to know where I’d heard it. I gave up Maggie in a heartbeat. When Dad got home, he laughed and then warned, “Don’t ever say that again.” Sometimes when this phrase comes to mind, I still recognize it’s the perfect one.

Maggie and Scotty attended Holy Ghost Church regularly: every Christmas and Easter. Maggie wore a fur stole with the mouth “biting” the tail around her shoulders; Scotty wore a dark suit. Two things that stuck with me. She’s wearing a fox?! And: you only have to go to church twice a year?!

For a time, Scotty sported a perfectly waxed handlebar mustache. When he mowed the lawn that grew in tall tufts around their old vehicles, often with a cat draped around the back of his neck, the scene was as surreal as a Salvador Dalí painting. Eventually, they were home more often, and their household exploded with kittens and strays. Their cat population varied from “so many” to “too many.”

My parents were good neighbors. When the pet urine became too pungent, they simply grew their lilac hedge higher. In those later years, it was easy to forget the Swan’s talent and fame. One of their last performances was for my sister’s wedding dance in 1980. Maggie and Scotty honky-tonked the roof off the Eagle’s Club in Lake Hallie.

Scotty died in 1989 at age 71. Dad was one of his pallbearers. Maggie died six years later.

Many years before that, my father did some good deed for Maggie and Scotty – a neighborly gesture, so small no one remembers. In return, Maggie named a cat after him. Late at night, we’d hear her call from her backdoor, a drawn-out, “Joey. Here, Joey.” We all knew how much she adored her cats. This was, perhaps, the ultimate tribute.