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Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin July 16, 2008, Page 12 Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press" Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon. Index of "Oldies" Articles
Compiled and contributed by Dee Zimmerman
Clark County News |
July 1928
E. Bruhn and M. Feuerstein of Marshfield have opened a machine and repair shop in what was formerly the Randall blacksmith shop on East Sixth Street, next door to Gassen’s welding shop.
Mr. Bruhn and Mr. Feuerstein were formerly with the Lang and Scharman machine shops in Marshfield, for six years. They have had a wide and varied experience in machine work, cabinetwork, and all lines of repairing in both lines, as well as grinding, etc. They have put in an excellent line of equipment and are thorough mechanics, inviting all who need any work or service in their lines, to come in. They guarantee satisfaction.
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Rev. J. C. Patey left Neillsville on Wednesday, June 7th for Lake City, South Dakota, where he will preach on Sunday, July 1st, at the church where the was formerly pastor, and where at one time, he baptized 40 persons at a single service.
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F. Stange and son, I. H. Stange of Tenino, Wash., are here for a visit at the home of Frank’s brother, Carl Stange. They traveled overland in a covered truck, which made a very comfortable vehicle. Mr. Stange lived here and attended school in Neillsville 50 years ago, going West 44 years ago and had not been back since.
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John Steward of Durand, the general contractor for construction of the new Masonic Temple, arrived in Neillsville Friday and began work with a crew of several men, which numbers will be increased as the work progresses. He did some preliminary excavation so as to get the footings down to solid ground and will begin to pour concrete Wednesday.
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The Pittsville Canning Company will again undertake to can cranberries this season. After the beans and beets are canned, the canning of cranberries will begin.
It was announced last year that this concern was the first in the world to attempt to can whole berries. And it was also announced that the same company was the second in the world to attempt to can sauce, the first to be in Massachusetts.
Some special machinery and equipment will be added this year for the canning of cranberries. This canning was attempted last year without special equipment, and while it was successful, the company believes that they can make better goods at a far less chance of spoilage if they add some special equipment for canning this sort of berry.
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Louis Krom, the prominent Owen merchant, nearly lost his life at the local tourist park last Wednesday afternoon while swimming. Mr. Krom had just got into the water and was swimming across to the sand bar when he suddenly felt sharp pains in his chest. Try as he would, he could not take a stroke and went down, when he came up again he yelled for help and Fred Behrens, who was near at hand, jumped in clothes and all, and brought him safely to shore. Mr. Krom feels very grateful to Fred for the risk he took to save him and rewarded Fred with a brand new suit of clothes, shoes and other wearing apparel.
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The Humbird Enterprise received reports from the vast blueberry districts with lack of the fruit, and say that pies are likely to be filled mostly with bluing and cornstarch this fall. While predicting the worst, we are hoping for the best. Some pickers are finding a few ripe berries.
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Last week, Clarence Hell brought the Joe Hanus property at Hatfield and took possession at once. The property includes the store at Hatfield, the big dance pavilion, the Hanus home and a considerable amount of land upon which the various buildings stand.
Joe has been in business at Hatfield for many years. His genial and courteous treatment has been instrumental in building up a nice business. He and his wife will take a vacation before deciding on their future activities.
Mr. Hell had rented the dance pavilion this year and made quite a success of it. He takes over the business with renewed vigor and great plans for the future and expects to make Hatfield a vital part of Lake Arbutus as a popular summer resort.
He is planning on building bathhouses on the bathing beach with boats available and other improvements on the grounds, which will make added interest and attraction throughout the summer months. Clarence is a hustler and will certainly make a great success of this summer resort.
July 1958
Principal LaVern Rick of Granton High School reports that he has hired a commercial teacher, Mrs. Bernice Lange, of Auburndale. She has had 12 years of experience, and is a graduate of Whitewater State College. With the securing of Mrs. Jesse Richmond, of the Town of Grant, as head cook in the hot lunch program, all faculty and staff vacancies are now filled, Mr. Rick said.
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Mr. and Mrs. Leo Korth have purchased from Roger Ingold, the stone house a short distance north of the Ingold farm home and expect to make it their home after making repairs. The purchase involved a small piece of land.
The place is better known as the old Ernest Grottke farm home. The Korth’s son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Olson, who now live in southern Wisconsin, expect to operate the Korth farm. The Olson’s have four children.
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The Little Brown Jug, which has traveled back and forth between Marshfield and Neillsville since 1950, was won by 30 points Tuesday by the ladies of the Neillsville Country Club and will remain here for another year.
Neillsville club ladies attending and taking part in Marshfield included: Mrs. Haight, Donna Stoll, Lovetta Anderson, Edna Georgas, Doris Eisentraut, Nellie Quicker, Dixie Steinbring, Jeri Magnuson, Lillian Selk, Lois Burchard, Alice Flynn and Mildred Schraufnagel, all of Neillsville; and Pat Davel, Lucille Brussow, Dorie Shier and Ethel Myre, all of Loyal. Special prizes were won by Sadie Haight, Dorie Shier and Nellie Quicker.
This is the third time since 1950 that Neillsville golfers have won the Little Brown Jug and they hope to make it two years in a row in 1959.
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“Where is the little boy,
Who tends the sheep?
Under the haycock,
Fast asleep.”
--Nursery Rhyme
This mechanical age moves apace and nothing under the sun is going to stop it short of an all-consuming nuclear fission.
But, with all the back-breaking labor load that has been lifted from farming and the speed-up provided by machinery; there are still those who prefer the old ways.
Not many, to be sure; but, when it comes to haying, Roy Iverson, venerable chairman of the Town of Dewhurst, by-passes balers, choppers, and blowers in favor of the haycock of long, long ago.
On his farm at the junction of Highway 95 and county trunk J, which leads to Hatfield and Russell Memorial Park, a casual motorist this week will see a sight once common, now rarely seen.
In a 15-acre hayfield are 103 small mounds, or stacks, of hay. These are “haycocks,” the likes of which Little Boy Blue, the favorite farmer of the nursery rhyme set, preferred for his daytime catnaps.
The hay in these cocks was stacked by hand. Assisting in the work was the family of Mr. and Mrs. Rudy Morvak of Milwaukee. Mrs. Morvak is the daughter of Mr. Iverson, and the children are Barbara, Dennis and Carol.
Every year the Morvaks and their children take to their grandparents’ hayfield to help. For them it appears to be the kind of an outing looked forward to from year to year, much like city children look forward to the day or week in camp. And perhaps that is one of the reasons the Iversons have continued to put up their hay the way granddad and great-granddad used to do it. They like the fun of the hay harvest with the whole family pitching in as a unit.
Where modern machinery in use on most farms will clean up the haying in three to four days of good weather, the Iversons plan to spend about a week getting in the 15 acres. Their concession to machinery is the use of a mower and a tedder. That’s as far as it goes. And, like as not, one may find Mr. Iverson sharpening the cutter bar of the mower with a hand stone if he stops in for a few moments during haying time.
Aside from the family working together, Mr. Iverson prefers handling hay in the old-fashioned way. It is his belief that better hay results from the more careful cutting and handling of the old way.
“You don’t have any bales that are molding in the center,” he asserted.
Mr. Iverson estimates that the 15 acre field will yield about 1 ½ tons to the acre this year, or about 22 ½ tons total.
“But the quality is good,” he said. “The cows will eat every bit of it.”
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Mr. and Mrs. Otto J. Warren, who were married July 30, 1908, at Trevor, Kenosha County, will celebrate their golden anniversary with a dinner for the immediate family Saturday evening at the home of their son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Neil Warren and with open house in the dining hall of the Neillsville Congregational Church Sunday, from 2 to 5 p.m.
The wedding ceremony was performed by Rev. Mr. McNamara in the home of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Emery Newell, at Trevor. The groom had been employed as a truck gardener and later as a maintenance man for Knickerbocker Ice Company at 25 cents per hour. He remembers the going wage at the time was $1.25 per day.
In 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Warren moved to Neillsville with her parents Mr. and Mrs. E. L. Warner, the women coming by train via Eland and Marshfield, the men coming by freight car, via Merrillan. In the freight car were two driving horses, “Lady” and “Dot,” two cows, a dog by the name of “Squeak,” “Blossom” the family cat; and their household goods.
“At Merrillan,” said Mr. Warren, “We opened the freight car door as we traveled toward Neillsville, the nearer we came, the less of civilization we saw. Then we drew up at the railroad station to see only the ruins of the Neillsville Furniture Factory. On that particular day, if we had had enough money to pay the return freight, we would never have unloaded. But we didn’t and we have never regretted locating in Clark County.”
They spent their first night at the O’Neill House, Neillsville’s finest hotel of the day.
The year of 1910 was one of severe drought. The Warrens and Warners farming 80 acres just east of the present Neillsville golf course sold butterfat for 21 cents per pound but had to pay $20 per ton for hay. The following year, 1911, was the year of the Black River flood, when nearly everything washed away, including the dam on the Popple River, Dells Dam, Hatfield Dam and the downtown area of Black River Falls.
“In the spring of 1911 and again in 1912,” continued Mr. Warren, “I planted corn on the land now occupied by the Nelson Muffler Factory. The first year, the neighbor’s cows got into the field one night in the early summer and ate off most of the stalks. But it came up again and we harvested a fair crop. We also had lots of tomatoes in the garden that wet year but we lost our grain in the shocks, the oats sprouting and growing six to eight inches tall as we waited for it to get dry enough to thresh.”
In the fall of 1911 Mr. Warren sold 14 hogs, dressed, at the John Wolff meat market, then located in the building now occupied by Kearns Drug Store, for five and one-half cents a pound. He says he made money on them. He purchased buttermilk for feed from Vint Lee, who then operated the Pleasant Ridge Cheese and Butter factory, and was able to raise enough rye to bring the hogs to maturity.
As they reminisced, Mrs. Warren recalled that as they made their first trip to the farm, they stopped their wagon on Division Street near the spot where the Charles C. Hansen home recently burned, to enjoy the scenery looking north and especially the view of the mound. Mr. Warren remembers getting stuck with six sacks of grain on his high-wheeled wagon in front of the Armory and of having the late Herman Yankee, drayman and later father of Arnold Yankee, pull the wagon out with a big team of horses. Mr. Yankee did not charge him a cent.
The only meat they had in the house the first winter was raccoon meat, trapped by Mrs. Warren’s father. There was no work available and if men took a job cutting wood, they were paid in wood that brought only 50 cents per cord. Mr. Warren assisted his brother-in-law, Ed Warner, in cutting some basswood that they sold at Kemmeter’s heading mill at Granton and was able thereby to bring home some needed groceries. At that time, if one had money, he could take his pick of cows for $25 to $40 each. They sold 200 gallons of maple syrup at $1.10 per gallon in 1911.
“I have never regretted coming to Clark County,” said Zayda Warren who for many years served as a correspondent for The Clark County Press,” and I never came to Neillsville without a feeling of excitement.
“When folks ask my recipe for successful living, I tell them, “A Sense of Humor,” she said.
In 1912 Mr. and Mrs. Warren rented the 80-acre John Wildish farm now occupied by the Robert Poler family, south of the fairgrounds. In 1917, they purchased an 80-acre farm in the Town of York of the late William Radtke. In 1918, they added 80 acres from the late William Imig; and in 1946 they purchased 80 acres across the road in the Town of Grant from Mrs. Ben Brown. In 1951, with their son taking over the farm, they moved into Neillsville, locating on West 5th Street, where they have continued to make their home.
While a resident of the Town of York, Mr. Warren served several years as chairman of his township and as vice-chairman of the Clark County Board of Supervisors. He has been employed for several years as a custodian at Neillsville High School.
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An early Clark County lumberman, John Currier built the above Neillsville home on the corner of State and East Fourth Street, in 1880. Currier was born in Skowhegan, Maine, where he lived until he was 23 years old, coming to Clark County in 1853, where he worked largely in lumbering on the Black River and as a log scaler. He was also a carpenter who supervised the construction off many buildings in Neillsville. (Photo courtesy of Mel and Lynette Mueller, who presently own and live in the 404 State Street home)
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