CUDAHY, Wis. -- For years, Rick Serocki has worked to convert the yard of his house into an unofficial museum of Wisconsin history.
The antique gas pump on his front lawn is something he rescued from an old Monroe County barn. The police call box in the back yard is a repainted downtown Milwaukee relic. The tractor is a 1946 Farmall McCormick.But the 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood, neighbors say, is the last straw.
After years without complaints, Serocki's recent decision to partly bury the classic Caddy in his front yard caused critics to surface.
Harry Wood, a 74-year-old who lives two blocks from Serocki, is urging city officials to say enough is enough.
"I think it's very unfair; he's taking advantage of people," Wood says. "He put it in, and I don't think he asked anybody what they thought."
Wood contends that many other neighbors agree with him.
Serocki, 47, shrugs off the criticism.
"Everybody's got their own opinion," he says. "What I'm trying to do is make Cudahy fun again."
Serocki began his collection about five years ago after a friend mentioned that an abandoned tractor was sitting at his parents' farm. Serocki thought a tractor in his front lawn would offer Cudahy a popular conversation piece.
And it did. Curious strangers began stopping at the house to take pictures. Some knocked on his door, remembering the tractors they used on their farms. For others, the antiques sparked memories of their family members.
"You just get kind of like the chills -- they remember," says Serocki. "I think I'm doing the community good."
In the next few years, Serocki added to his exhibit rapidly and randomly. He found old Milwaukee downtown street bricks and created a walkway. He spent hundreds of dollars buying lightning rods from Waukesha County barns, farm equipment from Racine County and even a large gazebo from a former West Allis bookstore.
The collection has attracted so much attention that Serocki has grown to look forward to Sunday afternoons chatting with strangers about their memories.
"We slow down every week just to see it," says Gene Guszkowski, a 77-year-old West Allis resident who was driving by Serocki's property recently.
Wood does not deny that Serocki keeps his collection in order. But he doesn't understand why Serocki was allowed to add all the obstructions to the neighborhood without having to first get a city permit.
He believes all the slowed traffic and gawkers are bound to cause an accident at the intersection. And property values will no doubt be lowered as a result of the spectacle, he says.
In recent letters to Alder a Phillip Dobberfuhl and Mayor Raymond Glowacki, Wood asks city officials why Serocki had been allowed to create such an exhibit.
Dobberfuhl said he has received about a dozen complaints about the display since a letter from Wood appeared in a community newspaper.
Others have called supporting Serocki and, without more expressions of public disapproval, the display would probably not be declared a public nuisance, Dobberfuhl said.
He added, however: "Up until now, I thought it was nice, kind of cute. But I think this goes a little too far."