History: Greenwood Memories by Smith Miller #1 (1954 Letter)

Contact: Stan
Email: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Miller, Mathison, Hommel, Andrews

----Source: Greenwood Gleaner (Greenwood, Clark Co., Wis.) (12 Aug 1954)

To: The Greenwood Gleaner
By: Smith H. Miller, La Conner, Wash.

I am returning under separate cover the History of Greenwood and the Gleaner of 1906, which I have perused most carefully with the greatest pleasure. It surely was very wonderful of you to think of sending these to me.

I would like to write a whole book on it all too, but that is out of the question now. However, I did marvel at the accuracy of the history as I remember things from my boyhood days there in that fine old town. I still marvel how they garnered all the information.

The pictures in this book are mindful of remarks along. Take Grandma Mathison for instance. And the picture of the early settler's cabin below it. I am thinking of those folks and how they came in there to make their homes. Some of them traveled by foot from Black River Falls on the trail carrying their earthly belongings and found some settler where they could stay all night and the next day start to build their cabin. This took some intestinal fortitude. They asked no favors of anyone. There was no paternal government to dole out the wherewith to make the big move. All they asked was to be let alone and they would work out their future in their own way and help to build a great country that we could be proud of. This they did and then they went on their ways to infinitum serenely with the thoughts that their efforts would not be in vain. This is not the place to comment on the final outcome. Suffice to say it is for the present generation to scan events most carefully and decide for their own.

The next picture is the Schofield House. In my early days I looked with awe at this mansion and it was a long time before I got to see the inside of it. Today the staircases still stand out in my memory. It was in that house that I danced by first square dance. My set was in the kitchen where there was one of those old flat top kitchen stoves with the damper protruding out in front. In my zeal to be a good dancer while doing a fancy "Gran Right and Left." I banged my shin on that damper. That almost broke up that set for a few moments until I could gain my equilibrium.

There was a great tile barn adjacent to that house and I remember to clearly in later years the night it burned down. I watched it from my bedroom window. It was a very big fire.

Then come the old schoolhouse. This picture offers just too many memories to mention here. Lots of things happened there in that school outside of the classrooms that bordered on the devilish. I suppose inside too, come to think of it. I could talk for hours about it all. Suffice it to say here, one of the top lights was what happened one Halloween when a bunch of us kids got someone's young calf and hauled it up in the belfry and tied it to the bell rope where it promptly began to ring the bell. Ed Hommel was the town marshal then and he went pounding the grit over there to get it down. Of course it took him and a couple other huskies to do it. I saw Ed quite some years ago in Seattle one evening and I asked him if he remembered it. But it seemed that there were so many of those pranks that he couldn't identify particular ones.

One of my most cherished memories is having had the honor of having a teacher (my first one) in the name of Mrs. Eva Andrews, whom you still have with you. Of all the teachers I have had, she stands out alone. No one ever could personify goodness and love towards us young folks, as well it would seem, as she did. Mischievous ideas would lose their identities before they would be accomplished. Mischief just could not function under her tutelage. Kindness is a most powerful force and a breeder of things good. I surely hope that this fine old town is most kind to her as she deserves. Early expressions most always are very acceptable. (...to be continued)

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