Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

December 4, 2013, Page 9

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

 November 1908

 

For the purpose of getting into the hands of people who appreciate good butter that is made under sanitary conditions, Youmans’ Extra Dairy Butter will be sold at Hemp’s store for Elgin Price until November 15th.  The difference in the butter made under our condition and that made at the creameries should be appreciated. The cream comes from one clean herd instead of many indifferently kept herds.  Our barn is one of the best in the state and we know that the bacterial count of our milk is less than any herd in this vicinity. Quality and cleanliness are our watchwords.

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Last week a party of Neillsville sportsmen received 100 pounds of wild rice, which was planted in the upper end of Lake Arbutus. The rice cost $22 and was paid by subscription among a few gentlemen who delight in lying in the duck blinds and shooting over the decoys. The rice came packed in wet moss and was immediately planed in the shallow waters. When it grows and bears a crop, the rice fields will be favorite feeding grounds for wild water fowl, and at which time Neillsville duck hunters will get busy and reap the harvest, which they have sown.

•••••••••

The Pine Valley Creamery Association’s creamery at Sidney was opened last week for operation. This creamery is one of the most substantially and scientifically built in the county and is having a very fair run of milk.

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Cream 31¢ Today! Bring your cream to the F. J. Mumm Co. cream receiving station opposite Merchants Hotel in Neillsville, where you can get your cream carefully weighed.

 

Samples are accurately taken and tested; then you get your cash for each lot as it is delivered, this way you take no chances of poor management, poor batches of butter that go on the market and sell below market. We also pay spot cash for veal, poultry and eggs.                                                                                    

•••••••••

The new porch on the Dewhurst residence is being rapidly pushed and will add greatly to its appearance.

•••••••••

Wm. Welsch of Loyal was a caller at the newspaper office recently.  In conversation, he said that he landed in Clark County October 1, 1864, and at one time he knew everybody in the end of the county.  He has prospered and is now content to rest and reap the result of his labors.  Mr. Welsch promised to live many more years to watch the advancement of Clark County.                                                                                

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Tragsdorf, Zimmerman & Co. have just received fine large German dill pickles, which are 15¢ a dozen, but you get twice the quantity.                                                                                               

•••••••••

Public Auction! At public auction Saturday, Nov. 29, 1908 a team of horses, 8years old will be sold in front of Holverson’s shop at 2 p.m., to be sold to the highest bidder.                                          

•••••••••

The wedding of Walter Gerhardt and Miss Elsie Eisentraut will occur this evening, November 26 at 7 o’clock.  The ceremony will be performed by Rev. Burrows at the home of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. Eisentraut, east of the city. Willard Gerhardt and Miss Ida Counsell will attend the bridal couple.

•••••••••

Oyster shells are only 75¢ per 100 pounds at Tragsdorf, Zimmerman & Co.  Farmers, it will pay you to keep your chicken hens in good condition when you get 25¢ per dozen for eggs.         

•••••••••

One of the largest, if not the largest, logging contracts ever given in Wisconsin has been awarded by the Weyerhauser syndicate to A. M. Riley & Sons of Rhinelander. The contract calls for cutting and delivering about 350,000,000 feet of hardwood to the syndicate in Park Falls. This is the largest body of timber in the state and it will require fifteen years to cut it.  Over twenty miles of logging railway will be built.                     

•••••••••

Theo Kissling, of Shortville, is buying up a carload of fresh milk cows for a party in Illinois.

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A foundation is being laid for a new church on the corner near the Reed School.

•••••••••

Roy Sischo, Will Gerhardt, Merril Sischo and two of Henry Sischo’s boys went hunting and it is reported that they shot three deer.

 

November 1953

 

A flaming truck sped at 60-mile-an-hour speeds into Neillsville late Monday night with $6,000 worth of stainless steel restaurant equipment aboard and left a trail of blazing grass fires along four to five miles of its route.

 

The episode ended with the city fire department extinguishing the blazing truck after the driver and his helper jumped from the cab on Highway 10 just before the gasoline tank exploded; and with 40 to 50 farmers and city people fighting a series of grass fires along Highway 73 until 4 o’clock Tuesday morning.   

•••••••••

Fires rage with the countryside in tinder-like conditions through abnormally low precipitation, fire fighters throughout the area were being kept on the jump early this week.

 

In Clark County at least two large fires were battled; in the Town of Hoard, northeast of Owen; and in the Town of Beaver, north of Loyal.

 

The blaze in Hoard was extinguished Tuesday night; but county forestry workers and others still were struggling Wednesday to bring the fire in Beaver under control.

 

There, the entire county’s equipment, including a D-4 caterpillar truck with bulldozing equipment, and truck with water equipment as well as the three members of the county crew under Forester Arthur Schroeder, were on the job.

•••••••••

Jacob’s Dairy, Guernsey Milk, Delivered in Sterile Glass Bottles.  Ph: X6921

•••••••••

Four Willard area hunters left Friday on a 10-day trip to North Dakota to hunt elk. Those making the trip were Rev. F. Svete, Frank Lesar, Stanley Pekol and Tony Petkovsek.                                

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A fire was discovered 3 a.m. last Thursday morning, which destroyed the Hohl Brothers Radiator Service building on Main Street, Greenwood, together with a large share of contents.

 

The building housed a radiator and welding shop, an automobile agency and service station. It was a one-story cinder block structure, with the business owned and operated by Fred and Walter Hohl.

 

The fire is thought to have started in the office, wither from a faulty electric motor in a soft drink dispensing machine or from a mechanism that controlled an outdoor electric sign.

 

The building was out up in 1949. Rebuilding will begin as soon as possible.

•••••••••

Approximately 80 characters from storybook land will come alive for the boys and girls, and old folks, too, when the first Fairyland Parade is held in Neillsville on Saturday afternoon December 5th.

•••••••••

Tinder-like dry conditions in Wisconsin woodlands Wednesday morning brought the postponement of the deer-hunting season.

 

Announcement that the season will open Saturday, November 28, was made through official channels shortly after 10 a.m. last Wednesday. While it was not specifically stated, it is presumed that the change in dates will be the only change.

 

The decision was made by Walter J. Kohler, after consultation with Ernest Swift, conservation department head and head of the department’s forestry division. The department and the governor were urged by many groups to postpone the season. Included among them was a communication from the Clark County Forestry and Zoning committee, transmitted by County Clerk, Mike Krultz, Jr., urging such action.                                        

•••••••••

Two armed bandits held up the Curtiss State Bank at Curtiss in northeastern Clark County shortly before closing time Tuesday afternoon and made their escape with $18,518.75 in cash.

 

Alone in the bank, when the bandits entered were Mrs. Dorothy Hawks, bookkeeper and Eugene Lindau, assistant cashier; they were made to lie flat on the floor, and then Lindau was ordered to accompany one of the holdup men into the vault and help stuff bills into money bags. 

 

Then men escaped going north on County Trunk E toward Medford.  A. M. Erickson, cashier, who parked his car beside the bank just as the holdup men were getting into their old-model get-away car, and Lindau gave chase, but lost them after about five miles.

 

Almost completely cleaned out the Curtiss State Bank was carrying more currency on hand Tuesday than usual.  That morning they had taken $10,000 from the Colby State Bank. Another $5,000 had been taken by the Curtiss bank’s branch at Owen.

 

The loss was insured under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

•••••••••

Kuester’s market on North Grand Avenue can have your Meat Cut & Wrapped, Ready for Deep Freezer or Locker on short notice.  No need to call for appointment, just bring it in to us.

 

Attention Deer Hunters! Bring your deer kill here to be cut & wrapped.

•••••••••

Shocked by the sudden death of James H. Fradette, the county board of supervisors of Clark County last Friday provided for the building of a motel-type old folks home, adopted a budget calling for a total county levy of $664,427.55 and appointed a new county treasurer.

 

The old folk’s home is to be built in Greenwood at a cost not to exceed $55,000, according to the board’s resolution.  The cost will not include the site, for that is being provided by the City of Greenwood. The prospective site is located two blocks east of the theater in Greenwood and slightly south; or, as Supervisor William Kavanaugh of Greenwood explained it, “in back of Art Buker’s house.”                                                       

•••••••••

The McKinley schoolhouse has been purchased by Peter Bogdonovich and was moved last week onto his farm. The schoolhouse has been closed for some time and children of the district ware taken to the Willard School. The building was located in the middle of the Gorman community.                                      

•••••••••

Frank Arbelovsky, formerly of the Riverside Community, is leaving Wednesday for Chicago and from there will report to a camp in New Jersey. He will then wait for a call to go to Labrador, where he will be stationed. He has spent a 33-day leave with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Arbelovsky, enroute from his former camp in Oklahoma.  Sunday dinner guests at the Otto Svoboda home were Mr. and Mrs. Joe Arbelovsky, sons Joe, Jr. and Frank, Donna Handrick of Stratford and Ardith Lindow of Chili.                                                                                          

•••••••••

The curiosity of a Town of Hixon farmer last Thursday afternoon brought about the first break in the $18,518 holdup of the Curtiss State Bank, which occurred November 17.

 

All but about $256 of the loot was found at the bottom of a pile of debris in a corner of an old basement foundation on an abandoned farm, northwest of Withee. Dave Peterson uncovered the cache of bills where the two holdup men had secreted them Tuesday night.  The money was in the original bank wrappers and crammed the canvas money bag so full that that the top could not be drawn shut over the bills.

 

But while the officers beat the woods Dave Peterson, on his farm six miles northwest of Withee, knew nothing of the events which had transpired. About 8:30 on the night of the holdup he heard a car drive along an old stub road in front of his farmhouse leading to the abandoned farm now owned by Joe Plautz of Willard.

 

“Some fellows going up to poach beaver on the pond on that old farm,” Peterson thought to himself.

 

The next morning he had completed his barn chores about 5:30 when he heard a car sputtering and coughing as it came along the road from the abandoned farm.  It was so dark outside; he could not see the car, although it passed only 150 feet away from him.  He was still unaware of the Curtiss State Bank holdup.

 

That morning he joined a group on another farm for wood sawing. There the topic of conversation was, of course, about how two men had held up Eugene Lindau and Mrs. Dorothy Hawks in the Curtiss bank and made a get-away with $18,518 in a 1941 model car.

 

Then he spun his yarn about poachers up on the abandoned farm in section five of Hixon, when Wallace Wood, a neighbor suggested that “they could have been the bank robbers.”

 

It was the following day before time and curiosity got the better of Peterson and he went up to the abandoned farm to look around.  On the ground near the weather beaten house he found an emptied condensed milk can, some cigarette butts and a package match cover. He searched the house and dilapidated shed nearby, and found nothing.

 

He then retraced his steps.  He noticed fresh tire racks proceeding north along a grass lane, which extends beyond the stub road.  Then he thought of an old basement foundation a hundred or more yards along the lane, upon which once had stood a house in which the late James H. Fradette, county treasurer, had lived for a short time. A tornado had taken away the house years ago; but the foundation remained.

 

He nosed through the old foundation carefully, looking for evidence of a stone having been moved, but found nothing.  He was about to give up when he saw a mound of crumbled mortar in one corner.  He dug into it with his hands and came upon the bag of money, $18,262.75 of it.

 

Now thoroughly excited, he hastily pushed the debris back over the bag and went to the Wood’s house. They hurried to Owen, reaching there just as the Owen branch of the Curtiss Bank was about to close. They told Paul Ricks, assistant cashier of the branch.  He called Officer Haavisto, who went with them to retrieve the money.  They were joined at the farm by Sheriff Frank Dobes and Capt. William Nelson of the traffic police. When the check was made it was found that all but $256 was there.  This was believed to be about the amount that one of the holdup men stuffed into his pocket while staging the holdup in the bank.

 

The Gorman School was located one and one-half miles north of County Road I, on Gorman Avenue. The above photo of students and teacher was taken in 1911. Two students were Frank Lesar and Frank Volk, Jr. (Photo submitted by Albert Volk)

 

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