Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

May 26, 2010, Page 13

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

May 1875

 

There was too much snow Saturday to permit our young men and maidens prancing around a telegraph pole as is generally supposed to be their custom on the first day of May.  Queens were not in great demand that day, now were flowers abundant.

••••••••••

John Thayer left for Pigeon Creek Wednesday afternoon.  Pigeon Creek is supposed to be located in Jackson County, but we do not know that John so understood that.

••••••••••

Neverman & Company will furnish the first lager beer of the season next Wednesday.  It will be on tap at all the saloons in the village and at their brewery.

••••••••••

The school board of No. 1 Levis and Pine Valley, are evidently wide-awake and know how to prosecute business with dispatch.  Under the direction of Mr. Satterlee, work was begun on the new schoolhouse site. Stumps were removed, logs rolled away, brush burned and cleaned up.  That was the first day’s work.  On the 20th, after eight days of hard labor, the District had a neat and comfortable schoolhouse built on the ground; school organized; Miss Emma Berrien installed as teacher and the students at work studying. (Note: I wonder where this school was actually located and the name of it.)

••••••••••

The logging boys on the East Fork drive, all old residents, unite in pronouncing Ed Stanley as the best cook on the river.

••••••••••

Fires in the woods are becoming quite general and unless we have rain, soon, great damage to timber and possibly to other property will be occasioned thereby.

••••••••••

Robert French still keeps the best rooming house in this part of the country at Mormon Ripple.  No one who has ever stopped there is ever in a hurry to go on by, or likely to do so without calling and partaking of his hospitality.

••••••••••

Last Monday evening it was reported that a jam of logs had formed at Mormon Ripple, which far exceeded anything ever before seen on Black River.  The water at that point, where the jam formed and for several miles above was very swift and consequently, drove logs into the jam with great force.  The jam was about two miles long, and it is stated, that, in places they were piled fifty feet high by the force of the current.  On Monday night every available man was sent to that point and on Tuesday, they succeeded in settling the jam about forty rods up the river.  It was finally broken on Wednesday forenoon, the logs moving out in a body and lodging in an abrupt bend of the river about two miles below, near the head of  the angles, forming another jam. This jam being in slack water was nothing like the first and will not be difficult to remove.  In company with Mr. Boardman and Mr. Henry Myers, we visited the jam last mentioned Wednesday afternoon.  Capt. Tolford and Mr. Frank Kirkland were there, also, to see the sights.  That was between one-and-a-half to two miles in length, the river-bed being completely full and in many places logs were piled 15 or 20 feet above the water.  They succeeded in starting to break the jam twice during the time we were there, with the entire body of logs being carried down from forty to eighty rods, when it again lodged at the same place the jam was first formed.  Logs that would cut out a thousand feet of lumber were forced out of the groaning, shrieking mass, and thrown into the air as lightly as if they were mere twigs.

••••••••••

Clark County beef is in great demand by bologna sausage makers.  The cattle feed on leeks during the spring months and no onions are required in flavoring.  A few thousand steers may yet be found for the sausage maker, if attended to at once.

 

(As a kid, when our family’s cows found and ate leeks in the pasture each spring their milk would have an onion flavor and none of us liked “onion-flavored-milk.” D. Z.)

••••••••••

Last Monday evening we were blessed with a most refreshing shower.  The shooting of foliage from the bud to almost full leaf in a few days, and the rapid growth of vegetation, attest its benefit.

••••••••••

Potts and Myers are doing an extensive business in fanning mills and milk-safes the present season. Their fanning mill has no superior and since its introduction they have only to find a man in need of a mill to insure a sale.  The mill has been in use in the territory they are canvassing, at present, for the past two years.

 

May 1900

 

The well drillers are in the York Center neighborhood. A. Benedict, R. Free and Mrs. Mortimer had wells drilled.

••••••••••

The Sereno Wren sawmill, a few miles east of town, burned to the ground Monday.  The mill was owned jointly by Mr. Wren and two sons.  The proprietors were not there, but were in court having a lawsuit at the time.

••••••••••

The arborvitae hedge planted last week in front of the Crothers farmhouse is a great improvement to South Grand Avenue. By the way, it has been determined that Grand Avenue now extends south to the Ross Eddy gate.

••••••••••

Towns should adopt stringent fence ordinances and punish the down-at-heel duffers who allow their stock to run at large.

 

May 1950

 

Three hundred fifty pounds of fresh smelt were cleaned, washed and iced at the American Legion Memorial Hall Tuesday night in preparation for the organization’s annual smelt fry on Friday night.

 

Last year, in the second annual fry of the legion, 350 pounds of smelt were done away with; and officers of the Legion Post believe appetites will be exactly as good this year.

 

The smelt cleaning and preparations were done by members of the Legion post and auxiliary.

 

(What a record! Through time various members of the Neillsville American Legion post and its auxiliary have been serving a smelt fry every spring for 61 years.  D. Z.)

••••••••••

Gene Christie, veteran player-manager of the Neillsville Athletics, will pilot the team’s destinies in the coming season.  He was re-elected manager of the team at a meeting of players held in the council room of the city hall Monday evening. The team will play in two leagues this year: the Cloverbelt league, which plays Sunday; and in the new Mid-Week Night league, which will begin operations this season.

••••••••••

Twelve persons were received into the Congregational Church Sunday, May 7, nine by confirmation and three by transfer. Those received by confirmation were these young people: Irving Earl Metcalf, Charlotte Mary Covell, Joanne Schultz, Betty Ann Zank, Mary Kathryne Cummings, Joanne Cummings, Roberta Louise Kurth, Judith Paulson, and Judy Bruhn. 

 

Those received by transfer were: Stella H. Davis, Mary Elizabeth Benson and Nina Mae Bardell.

••••••••••

Someone told us he had seen Listemans bowling the final league frames, Kurt on Tuesday, Marguerite on Thursday night.  If true, each played in full the 100 games of the ninth Neillsville bowling season; each played 900 consecutive games since the Neillsville Recreation opened up back in 1941.

 

Together, one thousand eight hundred games without one miss!      

••••••••••

E. T. Hale has retired after 45 years as publisher of the Humbird Enterprise.  He started his career in 1890 setting type in Elroy.  He was married there to a schoolmate.  On September 14, 1948, Mr. and Mrs. Hale observed their golden wedding anniversary.

••••••••••

The Bethany Lutheran Church of Owen will celebrate its thirty-fifth anniversary May 18 to 21.  Guest speaker will be the Rev. Carl Tamminan of Calumet, Mich., once pastor at Owen.  Worship services in Finnish Thursday and Friday evenings.

 

Services will also be held on Sunday.  Dinner will be served at noon Sunday.

••••••••••

A powerful home run blow by Bob Kunze scored three runs for the Neillsville High School baseball nine in their opening game at Black River Falls last Friday afternoon; but the Lukesmen fell before the Jackson County-seaters, 11 to 6.

 

The Lukesmen rallied again in the seventh, scoring two runs, singles by Petersen, Kunze and “Chicken” Bush, followed by a double slugged out by Jess Richmond.  But the rally died there, and Black River went on to score three more runs in the last half of the inning to complete the scoring.

 

Coach Hank Lukes opened with Louie Kessler on the mound and Richmond behind the plate.  Kessler worked well for the first three innings, allowing a run in the second.  Wagner relieved Kessler in the fifth.

••••••••••

Saturday, May 13, Free Wedding Dance; Ervin Steiger (Ertz), the Sturtz Orchestra Trombone Player and Dorothy Kauffman with music by the Howard Sturtz Orchestra, at the Silver Dome Ballroom.

••••••••••

The Condensery smoke stack is not the solid thing you thought it was.  It weaves in the wind and changes its girth.  Instead of an inert thing, which spews out smoke and gases, it stands out in the community this week as the important instrument that it is. What brings it to attention are the two men working upon it, ascending little by little to repair it. 

 

Those men are William H. Krull of Syracuse, N. Y., and Red Garland of Massachusetts.  These two are specialists in a hazardous occupation.  They make a business of building and repairing smoke stacks.  Their highest job is the 450-foot stack of the Bell Telephone building in St. Louis.  They climb around up there, and do their work with little except plank under their feet.  Yet Mr. Krull has been at it 45 years, is 67 years of age, and is all in one piece.

 

These men are brought here by breaks in the coping at the very top of the Condensery stack. Those breaks came with the high wind of last summer, detected by L. R. Barton with the help of a spyglass. The necessity was to repair the coping, and at the same time to point up the entire stack, from top to bottom.

 

The break in the coping is due to motion of the stack.  How much motion?  Three inches or there-abouts each way, says Mr. Krull.  The big stacks weave in the wind and must be built to take it.  But that is not the only give in the stack, which expands and contracts with the intense heat from the boilers.  The heat at the bottom of the stack is said by Mr. Krull to be 700 to 800 degrees and at the top around 400 degrees.  The bricks of the stack expand and contract as the temperature varies.

 

The stack at the Condensery is no pigmy.  Its diameter is 14 feet at the base.  Its height is 125 feet.  The wall is 18 inches thick, or there-abouts, at the bottom and about seven inches thick at the top, tapering both inside and outside.

 

The Condensery stack was constructed in 1926.  If it had been built 20 years previously, it would not have been round at all; it would have been rectangular or octagonal in shape.  It was not until 1908 that the Custodis Construction Co. of Chicago and New York patented a perforated brick, fashioned on a curve such that, when brick is laid against brick, the result is a circular chimney. The perforations reduce the weight of the brick one-third; hence reduce the weight and stress.  Mr. Krull began to work for the company in 1914, six years after the brick was invented.  He has been with it steadily ever since.

 

 

Built in the 1920s, the American Stores Condensery was a major industry in Neillsville for several years.  In the beginning of its operation, each area farmer hauled their daily collection of milk with a team of horses and wagon to the Condensery, often waiting in line to unload at the milk intake.  Later, as a convenience for the farmers, milk truck routes were set up to collect the daily milk supply and haul it to the Condensery.

••••••••••

Five babies in one day of 24 hours is the record of Dr. F. P. Foley, to be honored in Dorchester next Saturday on “Dr. Foley Day.”  On that busiest day the Doctor began with the delivery of twins near Stetsonville; then attended another birth near Dorchester; then another near Abbotsford; then, late in the evening, one near Curtiss. This record was made in the early years, when the roads were poor.

 

Edgar Paulson, local garage operator, who often was driver for the Doctor, is authority for another story, of three births in one night, a night in the dead of winter, with the thermometer at 20 below, with a strong wind driving the snow.  The Doctor started with a delivery in the Town of Holton, east of Dorchester; then another case in the Town of Mayville; then a third in the Town of Holway, several miles to the northwest of Dorchester.

 

In his active years Dr. Foley was always open to call, no matter what the difficulties or the conditions.  Before snow plowing was common, he frequently traveled by snowmobile, a car equipped with runners.

 

The strenuous practice is no more for the Doctor.  He confines his work to his office in Dorchester.

 

The community-wide observance of Dr. Foley Day will begin at 1:00 p.m. with a parade, after which there will be a program at the bandstand on Front Street, to be followed by a banquet.  The local Leach-Paulson Post of the American Legion will sponsor a “Dr. Foley Dance” at the Recreation Hall in the evening.

 

The May 27 celebration will be in the nature of a golden jubilee for the Doctor, who began to practice medicine in 1900 upon graduation from Rush Medical College of Chicago, Ill.  Dr. Foley came to Dorchester in 1909 when he purchased the practice of Dr. H. M. Nedry.  The transaction took place on September 17 of that year, and the new doctor moved his family there in the middle of November.  He then began the practice, which has extended to the present time.

 

Prior to locating there, he practiced several years at Neshkoro, Wis., following a two and a half year internship at Cook County Detention Hospital at Chicago.

••••••••••

Special!  June Hatch of Baby Chicks; straight run, $11 per 100; Pullets, $22 per 100; White Rock Pullets, $12 per 100.  Order now for June Delivery at Gaier Hatchery, West Sixth St., Neillsville.

 

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