Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

August 5, 2009, Page 14

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

August 1909

 

Verily Neillsville is a dry town, some places of which are eagerly sought by certain citizens, but all seem to unite in wanting a wet town just now. A good rain is being sincerely hoped for, that the city may no longer remain dry.  Tuesday it looked as though the drought would be broken, but the rain clouds split and gave Neillsville a wide birth.

 

Never mind, we are having a little dry spell just now, but the great rainmaker, the Clark County Fair is due here Sept. 1 and will break the drought.

•••••••••

W. H. Woodworth, wife and daughter, Ruth, left Friday for their Monroe County farm.  Mr. and Mrs. Woodworth drove their family horse with buggy, and Ruth rode her pony.

•••••••••

There will be a dance at Pray August 9, good music, with refreshments to be served at midnight.  Tickets 25’

•••••••••

The Wisconsin Furniture Manufacturing Co. of Neillsville will give a special fair premium, $35 bedroom suite to a couple who will get married in front of the Clark County Fair Grandstand during the fair, Friday at 2 p.m.

•••••••••

An automobile destroyed by fire near Loyal, a week ago Sunday, was a Rambler owned by Dan Becker of Athens. Frank Hubing and wife of Athens, Miss Cecelia Dagenhart and Miss Stutte of Granton had been in the car but escaped. The fire was caused by the transmission running hot. The car was a total loss.

•••••••••

Mrs. Joe Baer was thrown out of Knorr’s automobile near Granton Sunday, when the machine struck a rut in the road.  Mrs. Baer was thrown into a ditch, but aside from a hard shaking up, was not injured.

•••••••••

A short man with small shoulders thinks the following property is too big a load for him to carry and wants to dispose of it at reduced figures: three houses, a store, 360 acres of land, an automobile and an interest in a ginseng farm.  Ask at the Press.

•••••••••

Wednesday evening, Aug. 19, the ladies of the Methodist Church will serve an excellent chicken pie supper in the basement of the church.  At 8 p.m. the new concrete porch, which has been built on the church, will be unveiled to the public, with appropriate ceremonies. There will be short speeches, good singing and the dedication of the new structure. An invitation is extended to all to participate.  Tickets for supper and dedicatory exercises are 50’ each.

•••••••••

Belle Fourche Valley Irrigated Lands in the Black Hills District of South Dakota are now open for settlement. The Belle Fourche Valley land is watered by the U. S. Government with a sufficient amount of water being assured at all times.  They are quickly and conveniently reached via the Northwestern Rail Line.  While visiting Belle Fourche and the Black Hills, plan to visit Hot Springs also.  The springs are well and favorably known throughout the United States for the wonderful benefits they offer to sufferers from rheumatism and other diseases.

 

Hot Springs is the site of the U. S. Government Sanitarium for Disabled Soldiers, which is a strong recommendation of the health-giving properties of the Hot Springs waters and climate.

 

Excursion Tickets are on sale daily to Deadwood, Lead, Rapid City and Hot Springs and every 1st and 3rd Tuesday to Belle Fourche.  For tickets, see H. A. O’Brien, Railroad Agent, at Neillsville, Wis.

•••••••••

Charles, Thomas and Oscar Northup, Will Hurlburt and John Richardson and son, Hal, of West York, went to Tioga on a blueberry picking trip.  They got five bushels of berries, but report is that it was hard work as they had to take turns fighting mosquitoes.  Also they had to use stumps and the buggy tongue for beds to sleep on.  The berries were worth going after just the same.

•••••••••

The rain Sunday night in the Dells Dam area did a great deal of good to the growing crops and put out the fires that did so much damage to the young timber and hay.  One man lost 10 tons of hay and another 8 tons and with all the grain that was burned, feed will be short in this part of the county.

•••••••••

Those attending the Marshfield Fair Aug. 24-27 will find Penny’s Red Hot Chicken and Lunch Stand in the Empire Saloon, during Fair Week. Get hungry and stop in for some of that every-good chicken.

•••••••••

Nick Bey of Loyal and Joe Schecklman of Heintown are working for Charles Northup, repairing his threshing machine.

 

August 1939

 

About 3,000 yards of dirt are being used to improve the courthouse on the north and east sides.

 

The dirt is being used as a fill to make a more gentle slope to the sidewalk and a retaining wall recently built in the rear of the forestry department building, to permit landscaping and mowing.  The dirt is being taken from the bed of Goose Creek, just east of the flood control dam.  The county is getting the dirt hauled for 18 cents a yard, according to Clark County Clerk Calvin Mills.

•••••••••

Out on the Farm News:

 

The pioneering of the Henry Dittner family is well known in various parts of Clark County. The family consists of five persons and they reside in a log house on Section 13, Butler, the farm being just on the town line between Butler and Mead.  Much of their land is covered with brush and trees, making that vicinity sufficient to invite deer.  One deer has become friendly enough to come up into the cow yard and share the salt block with the herd.  A trout stream runs through their land, fed by splendid springs.

 

Mr. Dittner was a long time cheesemaker but was impelled to give up this work because of rheumatism.  His first factory was on the Carl Nelson place, northeast of Greenwood, being there four years.  For a short time he was at the Cloverleaf factory in the Town of Eaton, near the Hendren line; then he was at the Daisy Factory six miles north of Neillsville, which burned.  After a short residence at Riplinger, the family operated the Bonnie Vale Factory north of Loyal, but that burned while they were there.  Then they were for a time at a Colby area factory.  Now the family has been pioneering in Butler for seven years.

 

Mrs. Dittner taught school for ten years prior to her marriage, having first taught in the Butler School north of Loyal, in the Center School, Town of Beaver, and the Benjamin School at Eaton Center.  Mrs. Dittner is a daughter of Dr. B. A. Cole, who now lives in Butlerville.  Dr. Cole, age 83, has been a practitioner in Medicine for 20 years, still able to work at his profession and do a little gardening.

•••••••••

Art Levanduske, working on a farm in the Town of York, is alive to the need of thrift.  Lacking a seeder, he made one in the winter season, using parts from junk heaps. The cost of the material needed in making the seeder, was around $7, including the wheels.  It is a good practical seeder, for which he has been offered $45, and which if bought new would cost $70 or so.

•••••••••

Daryl Wittke has returned from a trip to Seattle, Wash., done on freight trains for a vacation thrill.  He made the trip to the coast and back, 4,600 miles, walking but 32 miles of the way. He earned his meals enroute.  At Fargo, N.Dak. the young man had his first experience with racketeers.  An employment agency guaranteed him a job in exchange for a $1.50 deposit. He was sent to the harvest fields where he was given a day’s work and two meals for which he received $1.50.  At a mission restaurant in Fargo, however, he received better treatment and worked there for three days.  He picked cherries for several days at Yakima and saw a little of that section of the country before starting home. Daryl stated that being a bum once is enough and that he failed to see the “Hallelujah” in it.

•••••••••

The new booster station to be erected in Neillsville by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company will cost approximately $20,000 and will provide employment for one or two men, when the cable line is completed between Stevens Point and Minneapolis about July 1, 1940.

 

Official confirmation that the building will be erected this year and details of the plans for the building and new cable line were received this week in a letter from W. J. Lempke, division plant superintendent of the company, in Chicago.

 

Construction of the building to house the amplifying equipment with associated power supply equipment and testing apparatus is expected to start early in September, according to Mr. Lempke.  Contracts for the work probably will be awarded some time this month.

 

The one-story building, without basement, will be of face brick exterior and face tile interior.  It will be of Cape Cod design with a composition roof.  Site of the building will be on the now-vacant lot, corner of Fifth and State Streets, opposite the county Jail.

•••••••••

An increase in the official family of Clark County came recently when Lady Luck, bloodhound belonging to Fred Dangers of the county’s criminal investigation department, presented Mr. Dangers with eight fine, wrinkle-faced, purebred bloodhounds with ears as long as their bodies.  Lady Luck is the daughter of Lady McBeth, which now is owned by England’s Scotland Yard.

•••••••••

Billie Lowe, Theodore Kunze and Louis Seif left Monday morning for Whitehall, Montana, to spend two weeks and to bring the Lowe trailer home.

•••••••••

Attention!  On or after August 10, the price of milk at the stores and delivery routes of Neillsville will be 8’ per quart.

 

Hake Dairy, May’s Dairy, Stelloh Dairy, Neillsville Dairy & Hewett Dairy

•••••••••

Harvey Fuller, first Clark County recipient of an old age pension and familiar figure in the city of Neillsville for many years, observed his 94th birthday Monday.  “Harve” trotted out and about town wearing his blue, “Sunday Best” for the occasion.

•••••••••

William E. Breseman, owner of a cheese factory on highway 10, in the Town of Grant, has sold out to Walter Schmidt of Fremont, who takes possession immediately.  Mr. and Mrs. Breseman and son, Algernon, have moved into rooms in the house owned by the Zion Lutheran congregation on the east side of Granton.

•••••••••

Last week Thomas D. Wage, 87, of Granton, saw a Clark County Fair for the 67th consecutive year, and it was the 67th edition of the annual event that he saw.

 

By attending two days of the fair, being there Wednesday and Friday, Mr. Wage continued his unbroken string of attendance, which might well claim for him the title of Nation’s No. 1 Fair Goers.

 

A stockholder in the original fair association, Mr. Wage was 21 years old when he saw the first Clark County Fair.  He bought one share of the association’s stock, face value from $5 to $10, and paid for it by helping to clear off the land, which is the site of the present fair ground.  The wages for clearing the land amounted to about a dollar a day.  Mr. Wage still has that share of stock although it now is worthless because of the four or five reorganizations of the association since the first fair waws presented in 1873.

 

Back in the early days of the fair, goers centered on horse exhibits and horse races.  The racetrack, Mr. Wage recalls, was one of the first projects developed on the grounds.

 

“As the timber slowly disappeared,” Mr. Wage said recently as he traced the trend of exhibits through the passing years, “interest was turned gradually to the raising of beef and dairy cattle.  Now,” he continued, “the 4-H club exhibits and amusements seem to have taken over the center of interest, but it’s still a grand place to meet your old friends and neighbors.

 

Mr. Wage was enthusiastic about the latest edition of the Clark County Fair and declared that it was better than last year’s fair by some.  “But it still isn’t up to the fairs of the days when there were harness races,” he said.

 

•••••••••

Louis Meinholdt, manager of Palm Gardens, lists the following Specials:

 

Breakfast Specials: Bacon & Eggs, 20’; Coffee Cake, Eggs and Sausages, or Bacon 30’; Ham and Eggs, 25’; Orange Juice or Tomato Juice 5’.

 

Dinner and Supper specials: Roast Beef, or Roast Pork, or Pork Chop or Baked Ham, 35’.  Each Special includes potatoes & Gravy, vegetable, beverage, bread & butter, with choice of soup or dessert.

 

Sandwiches: Roast Pork or Beef, or Lettuce and Bacon, 10’ each; Chicken Sandwich 15’.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup, 10’ a bowl.

 

Every Friday Night Special: Fish Fry, 15’.

 

Every Saturday Night Special: Chicken Fry, 25’.

 

(Palm Gardens restaurant is believed to hve been in the 100 block of West 5th St. now a city parking lot. D. Z.)

•••••••••

Congratulations are extended to newlyweds of the Southern Loyal community, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Noeldner, who were married at a candlelight service at the Lutheran Church of Loyal on Wednesday, August 16.

•••••••••

Jean Fluegel of the Town of Sherwood community won first place in judging foods and nutrition at the Clark County Fair and left Tuesday with a group from Neillsville on a free trip to the State Fair in Milwaukee. The persons who get first place there will go to the World’s Fair in San Francisco.

•••••••••

William Schiller, who delivers for the local bakery, built himself a convenient bread wagon to replace the old basket system.  The box was placed on a rubber-tired wheeled frame, containing a large compartment for bread and a shelf for pastries and cakes.

•••••••••

Sunday was the annual Schultz Reunion held at the William Kurth home, located on Pleasant Ridge. The old settlers’ flag waved all day in the breeze over the gathering; it is certainly a grand old flag.

 

 

Clark County had numerous cheese factories in the 1900 to 1950s era, scattered here and there throughout the countryside, such as the Suda Bros. factory in the Willard area.

 

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