When I think of the word America, it means freedom to me. In America we have freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I am very thankful to live in a country where I can believe in any religion I want to; to be able to worship whenever and wherever I want to, is one of the greatest blessings we have.

Three-fifth of the world does not have these privileges . Being an American means caring for other countries and helping them when they need our help. It means giving emergency food relief to countries like Bangladesh and helping Nicaragua after the hurricane. We should all be very proud of this.

Half of the world’s people do not have enough food to eat, but we in America are blessed with plenty of food.

America is a land of opportunity. Unlike other countries, we have several different races and nationalities. Our country has come a long way in being fair to all types of people. We have taken in many Vietnamese orphans and immigrants and given them a home.

We can be proud of the fact that we have put men on the moon and explored space.

I am proud of America’s past but I am also looking forward to America’s future.

I know that we will find America still a better place to live. I am sure we will find new ways of making energy and keeping our country clean and beautiful. I am hopeful about our future because I have seen the amount of energy we can spend on problems when needed.

I take pride in celebrating our 200^th birthday because I live in a country we can all be proud of.

God Bless America!

Dawn Newman (age 13)

Route 1

Unity, Wisconsin 54488

(Written as an essay for the dedication of the Town of Unity Park in Riplinger on July 4, 1976.)

Our yesterdays were far different than our todays. We are in a speed crazy, nervous, up-side-down world. While talking to an old-timer the other day I was reminded how there used to be real meeting of hearts and minds, especially with the folks who lived in the country and small towns.

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When the minister came several times a year for a “gathering” at the country church, he was entertained with chicken, dumplings, hot biscuits, roasting ears, mashed potatoes, string beans, three or four kinds of jam and jelly, crab apple pickles, watermelon pickles, chow-chow, chili sauce---along with apple pie, berries and cream and muskmelon for dessert.

The table was set out-of-doors, under the big soft maple in the front yard; the bees hummed in the branches overhead; the birds sang from the tree tops; the scent of roses and four o’clock was in the air.

Men apologized for being in their shirt sleeves. Mothers and daughters were fresh in their gingham aprons.

They talked of the next “meeting” and the haying and the coming harvest; some talked of Civil War frontier stories; winter storms and things of local interest.

Before anyone realized the day was coming to an end and the frogs and katydids were beginning their chorus. The boys must go down to the woods pasture after the cows for the evening milking, whisking the mosquitoes away from their ears with bits of hazel brush. The evening star came out with the new moon as the sunset faded in the west.

While the women folk cleared away the table, the Elder took of his frock-coat, borrowed a gingham apron from mother and took his pail at the milking.

Then the old sorrel nag was brought around and hitched to the dusty top buggy, and the kind old man drove off under the starts, leaving behind him, if not the thoughts of sanctity, at least the remembrance of human kindness and sympathy of deep hearted wisdom and unselfish service.

Were you there?

Jim Clark

P.O. Box 32

Maple Plain, Minn. 55359

Earl V. Butler and Ottilia Biddle were married on October 5, 1920.

It was that same fall that Earl and his father, Abe Butler, bought and moved a saw mill from Gad (in Taylor County) onto the Earl Butler 160 acres west of Colby.

From the winter of 1920 to the spring of 1972 they sawed logs of their own and did custom sawing. Lumber was planed and finished as materials for homes.

It was in 1922 that Earl Butler built another home on the west 80 of the 160 acres. Here Earl and Ottilia lived until his death on June 4, 1972 at the age of 75 years and 3 months.

During his 51 years of married life he had built more than 100 homes in the area. Most of the homes were ranch style with garage attached. He also built cabins along Mead Lake in western Clark County. In addition to this he had remodeled many homes.

His craftsmanship is a mute monument in his memory.

Information given by Mrs. Earl V. Butler

215 So. 3^rd Street

Colby, Wis. 54421

(written in 1927 with updates)

When the writer attended school at Veefkind, we had no grades, never heard of graduating nor getting a diploma. We studied reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic. A few studied geography and history.

In all my school years I only know of one who studied grammar and that was not I! So don’t be surprised if you find more or less grammatical errors.

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We usually had from 60 to 70 scholars in our winter terms, all handled by one teacher, usually a male. So you see, if there had been as many branches of study as there are now, a teacher would have had to be stepping on the gas all the time in order to make the grade.

Perhaps I can jot down a few things, however, that will be of more or less interest to the old as well as the younger generation.

Having only lived in the district 48 years, I can go back no further that the year 1879. The School District, I think, was organized sometime in the early seventies. It originally comprised the following territory: Sections 21 to 28, inclusive; an sections 33 to 36, inclusive. The number of settlers in the district in 1879 was 12. They were a Mr. Haase where August Rahm now lives (Leland Dietsche lives there today); A Mr. Gosline where Albert Tews was living (now his son Melvin Tews); John Fisher on the Albert Diets place; C. C. Miles was on the Ernest Krasselt place (now his son, Siegert Krasselt); Ben Dietsche on the Dietsche place down next to the road running north and south. Bill Malchow where Dietsche now lives (Ray Mueller is on this farm); Chas. Mueller where John his son now lives (Owned by Everett Smith); Mr. Griffith where his son James lives (torn down); Obe Denson where W. J. Lyle farm is (torn down); W. B. McPherson where Mr. Gufford lives (E. M. Brue now); a man by the name of Field where Philip Horn lives (owned by Esther Peterson) and Herman Ebbs where Herman Krahn now lived (Daniel Coblentz now). Denson, McPherson, Field and Miles were all homesteaders.

There were no autos those days yet sometimes the homesteaders broke the speed limit.

As the writer remembers, the pine timber on the Gosling place was sold, cut and skidded before a patent was issued by the government. Uncle Sam interfered, and the logs, about one million feet, all rotted on the skids.

The only piece of turnpike road in the area was about 40 or 50 rods along about where Ray Mueller now lives.

These twelve families all lived in log houses mostly round logs with bark on. John Fisher and, I think, Ben Dietsche were the only two who had horses, the rest had oxen.

That reminds me that I omitted one settler by the name of Waneger who had lived on the SE quarter of Sec. 28 which now is part of the Ben Dietsche (Marvin Dietsche) farm. This man died in October 1879, the writer acting as one of the pallbearers.

To give you some idea what our roads were like at that time, Mr. Gosline drove to the Waneger house with a yoke of a steer and a jumper. He brought the corpse out to the 26 Road where the Lutheran Church now stands (vacant now). Mr. C. D. French was waiting here with a hose team and milk wagon to receive the casket. From here we proceeded to the Sherman Cemetery at the Cole School House where Mr. French, who was a local M. E. preacher, preached the funeral sermon. The most of us walked all the way (three miles), as I remember it. The team that hauled the casket was the only one in the procession.

The first school house built in the area was of logs about 14 x 20 in size. This stood where the present one now stands. (Later a new one was built one-half mile south.) I think it was the winter of 1880, a Miss Grey of Colby taught the school. She had but one scholar all winter, Chancy Miles by name, who is at present an operator in a depot at Tennant, Iowa, a position he occupied a good many years.

Of the parents of the original 12 families, John Fisher and wife, Ben Dietsche and wife, Bill Malchow and C. C. Miles and wife are all that are now living. The others having passed on. (Now all have.) The present old school house building was built in 1881. Philip Werle and J. H. ? Etta did the work.

The first mowing machine and rake off reaper in the area was owned by Ben Dietsche.

The first frame house was either built by Peter Rahm or Henry Born Veefkind, about the year 1882. The first large frame barn was built by the writer in 1885. Mr. Born Veefkind bought the first full blooded stock, namely, two heifers and one sire of the famous Ayshire breed, and also a full blooded Poland China pig.

There were about 300 acres under cultivation in 1879, this mostly being in hay, which all had to be harvested by hand. It being no unusual sight to see hay hanging on stumps and rail fences to dry. Wire fences were unknown.

Just imagine some of our present young generation starting out now as the first settlers did between 1870 and 1880, all the tools they had to work with was an axe, a hoe, a sythe and swath. Strange

to say, those people were really happier and enjoyed life more than they do now with the automobiles, phonographs, radios and all the other conveniences of life.

About the year 1885. The Griffith School District was organized, Sec. 21-28-33 and part of Sec. 27 were taken from Dist. 8 to help form this district.

In 1890 the Sherman Cheese Factory was built by the farmers of the Town of Sherman. It was organized as a cooperative company by name, The Sherman Dairy Company.

Mr. Born Veefkind being the prime mover in this enterprise, he taking ten shares of stock at $10 per share and about 25 or 30 farmers subscribing for one to three each. Very few of these farmers were able to pay cash for their stock, put paid on the installment plan as the milk checks came due. All the money you could scrape up in the whole area wouldn’t have bought one Tin Lizzie. (This was an automobile.)

The factory started to make cheese May 15, 1890, and operated until November 1 when they closed down until the next May. The daily average of milk the first season was 1500 pounds, part of this being hauled seven miles. After paying for making and supplies, the patrons received from 50 to 60 cents per 100 for their milk. I’m wondering how many of you would be willing to pull pickles twice a day for 60 cents per 100! Count your Blessings one by one and stop your kicking.

The Sherman Cheese Factory was one of the first built in Clark County. There are now 136, with an output of about 20 million pounds of cheese per year.

The Soo Line Branch Railroad from Marshfield was built in 1891.

Mr. Born Veefkind built a large stave mill and heading mill about this time.

Veefkind was first christened Bornville, but the next station beyond Spokeville, it was later changed to its present name.

Mr. Born Veefkind also operated a general store, the post office being connected with it. He also erected a large boarding house to accommodate the workmen at the mill. Veefkind was quite a busy little burgh for about ten years while the mill was in operation. It made a good market for the farmers’ oak, elm and basswood timbers.

The rural mail route was established about 1902.

The Presbyterian Church was built in 1903 and the Lutheran Church in 1909.

The first automobile in the area was owned by George Fisher, Jr. A little later the Rahm Brother’s also purchased an automobile.

Notwithstanding the fact that there was only one scholar one whole term, the country has increased so that at times there has been over 50 scholars enrolled.

The flood dam across the Yellow River on Section 25 was built in the fall of 1879, and the following year a logging camp on Section 35 just where the gravel pit on the Kibble farm is now. (Owned by Beals.) The same year three more camps were built by the Necedah Lumber Company, one on Section 25 near the county line now the Charles Rue farm (now owned by his son, Howard Rue.) and one on Section 23, now the Dickenson Farm. Also one where the Drew school house now stands. The latter was known as the Dixon Camp, so named after the foreman by that name.

The first was called the Kinny Camp, named after its foreman, a big Irishman by the name of Kinny. The other two were looked after by one man by the name of Hale and were known as the Hale Camps. They also were numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Each camp employed from 30 to 50 men, who worked from October til the spring breakup. A jolly old time, these lumberjacks would have after the evening meal playing cards, cracking jokes, and such.

The cook had to be running on high most of the time to prepare the grub for those fellows.

It was no unusual sight to see from four to ten million feet of logs banked from the dam for a mile down stream. The rollways being 20 to 30 feet high. Then when the ice began to break, the flood gates were closed and the water held back til near the top of the dam when the gates were raised, the first head of water was to clear the ice out of the river, so it would not interfere with the flooding of the logs. Then the logs were loosened by discharging dynamite under the rollways.

The drive now commenced in earnest, the water being held back twice a day, and let out as often, the men or drivers, as they were called, rolling the logs in the main stream with cant hooks and pike

poles. Usually a man with a pike pole was an expert driver who could ride a log like a mud turtle and if the logs formed what was called a jam, this was where one or more logs got hung up crosswise in the stream so no logs could pass. If a jam was not opened in 10 or 15 minutes after being formed, there would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of logs held back. Now it was the duty of the expert driver to break the jams with a pike pole or peevy. This was a cant hook with an iron spike in the end. The log that caused the jam was called a wedge.

Breaking a jam was a hazardous and dangerous job, because when the wedge was loosened the whole mass went rushing downstream and if a driver lost his footing and fell in, nine times out of ten, it meant sure death. It usually took from a week to ten days to get the logs all started down stream and about four to five weeks to get them down to Necedah where they were sawed into lumber. From the time the cutting of this timber started, the settlers’ taxes commenced to go up and they are still on the upgrade. When the speculators cut off a piece of timber he was rewarded by lowering his assessment and when a settler cut off a piece he was fined by raising his assessment.

Just a few words about taxes. Since the world war (I) there is no question that has been argued or talked about as much as the tax question. It is often said taxes are getting higher and higher every year. Now I wonder what are the real facts of the matter. In 1880 this writer paid $7.00 tax on 80 acres that just previously her had paid $500 for. This $7.00 did not include the Highway mill tax, which was about $2.00 that makes $9.00 tax or $18.00 on $1000 valuation. In 1918, if this 80 aces was put on the market, it would have sold for at least $12,000 to $14,000. However, to be conservative we’ll call it $12,000. The tax at no time was more than $150. This would be $12.50 per $1,000 valuation and in 1927 this 80 actually sold for $10,000 and the tax was $134 or $13.40 for $1,000 valuation. In 1918 and 1919 they were %5.50 less per $1,000 than in 1880 and in 1927 they were $4.60 less per $1,000.

This illustration will bear scrutinizing. Count your blessings one by one, and stop your kicking about taxes. If Uncle Sam would abolish taxes for the next five years and agree to pay the farmers back what they paid in taxes the past five years, and take away their roads, their daily mail, their automobiles, their graph phones, their radios, and all other conveniences they didn’t have 40 or 50 years ago, I wonder how many of you would be willing to trade! All that would, please stand up so we can count you. Now you might count your blessings once more one by one. About 75 percent of our taxes are for school and highway purposes and ought not to be called a tax, but an investment, really the best investment we can make.

The Veefkind School has always been considered a very peaceful and orderly school. The board most always being able to get a good teacher. No teacher, I think, ever quit because they could not manage the scholars.

Most of the teachers were females. There being about seven or eight male teachers. One of the things being very conspicuous was most of the female teachers managed to find a life partner in the district or just outside during their term of school or shortly after. In fact some of them even married before their school closed. This seemed to be contagious, the cause is not known unless it be the fact that a marriage ceremony actually took place in the school house. This was sometime in the eighties at a play where two of the actors were to be married in the last act. W. B. McPherson, a justice of the peace, tied the nuptial knot. The young couple living happily ever after.

Not all of the teachers, however, were fortunate enough to find a life partner. This writer has in mind two who taught in the early eighties who are old maids, and no spring chickens anymore, but pretty lively birds just the same. Bit don’t get discouraged girls, another Leap Year will soon be here and if you take advantage of your matrimonial privileges, you may yet be rewarded as we still have a half dozen bachelors in the area.

Very few of the graduates of the school took up teaching.

The fact that none of the scholars turned out to be lawbreakers or criminals reflects credit on the parents, as well as the teachers, for a mental education availeth nothing, if the moral education is neglected.

When we look back fifty years we see many inventions have been perfected. If people who died fifty years ago could wake up now, they certainly would be surprised. Probably nothing has changed as much as the fashions. I can remember when women and girls wore no hats, but all wore sunbonnets or

shakers. Some of you may want to know what a shaker is. Well, it was a contraption made of straw. It is pretty hard to describe on paper but if you’d take a seven-inch stovepipe about twelve inches long, open it up at the joint, then fasten about one-half yard of calico on one end for a cape, fasten a string on either side to tie under the chin and you have a shaker. When this was on the girl or woman’s head one end would project about six inches in front of the face. They didn’t tan much in those days. Their skirts used to be long enough to sweep the streets when they walked along. Look at their skirts now. Why, down here in the sunny south you can’t tell whether they are skirts or shirts and if they keep on cutting them up and down another twenty five years it won’t take a very big fig leaf to make a woman’s wardrobe. If some of these has-bens should wake up in some of these southern cities, they might imagine they were in the Garden of Eden.

(Note: This was written by Wm. Reinheimer while living in Avon Park, Florida, December 7, 1927.)

Yes, there were Indians in the Veefkind area in 1879. This writer, with several others visited two of their wigwams in 1880. One was on the Liebe farm and the other near where Jay Vanderhoof’s barn is standing. (Now the Harold Hansen farm.) A wigwam is the Indian house and is built by setting stakes or small poles about eight feet long, the tops tied together and the covering made of bark and skins of wild animals. An opening is left at the top for a chimney. They have no chairs or tables, their stove is a fire built on the ground in the center of the tent or wigwam. They sit around the fire on the ground with their legs crossed and their feet under like a tailor. In Wigwam No. 2 the squaws were preparing the noon meal. They were roasting porcupine on the fire. Now when our women roast a chicken, they first draw it and then fill it up with some breadcrumbs and sage so it will stay nice and plump. They hadn’t gone you this trouble but roasted it without first drawing and believe me, you never saw a plumper bird than he was. The grease was frying out to beat the band and I was afraid he would burst any minute. They didn’t invite us for dinner and we weren’t a bit sorry.

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Well, I must bring this lingo to a close or you people won’t get to bed tonight.

Let me congratulate you on the completion of your new school building. I presume you have a modern up-to-date school with all the latest equipment.

I Predict that in 50 years it will be as much out of date as the old log building would be today.

They probably will have a machine to take the place of the teacher. All the scholars will have to do is press a button and the answers will appear to any question they wish to ask. The automobiles will be so plentiful it won’t be safe to let kids walk to school. Then they may have an apparatus similar to what they have in large stores, wires running from every house to the school house. All the kids have to do is get in a chair or basket, touch a button and away they’ll go. In two or three minutes they’ll jump out at the school. No cold feet or fingers. Won’t that be nice. But hold on you youngsters, don’t be so tickled, you will all be grandpas and grandmas by that time.

Now, if some of you youngsters will preserve this writeup and write another fifty years hence, you will find it very interesting to compare with this.

Written by Wm. Reinheimer

Note: This was written for the dedication of the “new” Veefkind School which later was closed with consolidation and now stands in shambles. Mr. Reinheimer has gone to his reward quite a few years back.

The story of THE VEEFKIND AREA was submitted by Mrs. Alvin (Ruth) Kissinger, Chili, Wisconsin 54420. The following are her comments on the “fifty years hence” which Mr. Reinheimer mentioned.

Where has Veefkind gone? No churches, no school, no factories, no Indians, no sawmills and very little timber is left. The train still goes twice a week.

“A tree, whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth’s sweet, flowing breast-----”

Those are beautiful lines from a beautiful poem. Except for a few species of trees, the network of roots spreads out in a circle equal to the circumference of its branches. We learned this early in 1913 on that little forty acre farm on Black River.

Early loggers had cut down the huge pine which covered this area and floated them down river. In the second growth hardwood were reminders of the size and thickness of the original trees.

Rugged rocks on the Black River.

In those days of plenty, there was no need to conserve nor cut trees near the ground. Or perhaps the deep snows of winter dictated the height of the stump. Be that as it may, the stumps stood almost shoulder to shoulder, up to four feet high and varied in size from two, three or even four feet in diameter. What a magnificent forest they must have been.

These stumps then had to be eliminated before we could use the one-horse plow of the early 1900’s. Dynamite (TNT) was a favorite method of blowing apart these tough monsters. A hole was dug deep under the stump with an auger. Then several sticks of dynamite were pushed in. Dad had a long slender pole especially for this. Next came the copper colored “cap” or detonator -- like a slim cigarette attached top a long fuse that reached to the dynamite from ground level. A match lit the fuse which slowly burned to the cap which set off the dynamite.

The “boom” echoed for miles and told which neighbors were “blowing” stumps. In the explosion the stump split into sections and pieces flew high and far. The farmers ran for safety as soon as he had lighted the fuse.

Blasting stumps was dangerous. How well I remember when our nearest neighbor, Matt Maki, blew his arm off. The nearest neighbor who had a car lived almost a mile away. There were no phones, and the nearest hospital was about thirty-five miles away in Chippewa Falls. Matt survived and Dad Nieminen being a blacksmith fashioned an iron hook which served as a hand for half a century.

Not so lucky was John Ruotsi of Longwood who, one day did not come home for lunch. They found him lying by the stump. Could it have been a defective fuse that caused the premature blast before he had time to run? No one will ever know.

The stump puller, a type of winch, was a favorite remover. One end of a steel cable was wrapped around the stump. The other end wound around and around a heavy drum as horses pulled the long arm attached to it. As the cable tightened, the stump was forced to let go of mother earth and tumble on its side exposing the huge network of roots. This too, had its dangers. Uncle Otto Santala took the scars of a smashed face and broken nose to the grave. The cable broke or let go and hit him in the face as he guided the horse on its circular path.

When the pine stump was tipped over, it lay with its head down--like a turkey eating with its huge fan of a tail spread behind it. If the soil was dry, some of the turf dropped off, but if moist, the humus of centuries clung to the network. These stumps would not dry or burn. Fire was the easiest method of getting rid of the stumps that ere not placed in long rows for a fence.

This is where we three girls, Gertrude, Tyrnie and I, came in handy even as pre-schoolers. Dad fashioned us each a tool in the shop. It was somewhat like a blunt dagger with a wooden handle. Through the long summer days and evenings we poked and pushed dirt from the maze of roots and left them much as a vulture leaves white bones bleaching in the sun.

Dad and we girls started fires with the aid of Kerosene to scar away the mosquitoes from the cows and to get rid of the stumps.

Some of the pine roots were used for quick kindling under the Finnish copper coffee pot that set down into the stove lid. The black tarry smoke smudged the pots and kettles and filled the stove pipes and chimney with soot that often caused a roaring chimney fire.

Hugh piles of roots were also hauled up for the steam threshing machine at harvest time. I recall the chug-chug, the chaff covered sweaty men, and the shrill whistle of the steam engine as exciting, on a fall threshing day.