October 9, 2019, Page 10

Pat Loy got back Tuesday from a successful ginseng cruise in the woods for the Clark County Ginseng Company, of which he is general manager.

During the storm Monday night, October, some half a dozen barns were set on fire by lightning and destroyed; Dankemyer barn in Town of Fremont, and old log barn on the Joe Green Place in Levis and some barns in the Town of Eaton.

J.F. O’Hara, a gentleman of leisure, who has recently been detained by important matters in the county jail, sawed a couple of bars in a north window of the jail and dropped out, making good his escape. In fact, he was the burglar, who was brought back from Chicago last week by Sheriff Brooks with a partner for a come committed at Dorchester. They were examined last week, with the partner being released. O’Hara was missed Tuesday, just before supper. How long he had been gone can be only surmised. No trace of him has been found. It is likely that the steel-saw he used, was supplied by his pal on the outside. He sawed through two bars one horizontal and one perpendicular at the intersection, the four ends then being pried apart. He had to drop a considerable distance but evidently landed on his feet. Every effort is being made to recapture him.

The high school building committee opened bids yesterday afternoon for building the new high school, and everyone, nine in all, was too high for the appropriation. The architect was present, and a dozen or more contractors from away. An effort is being made to modify the plans and specifications as to get inside the appropriation.

Irving Ayers and Miss Julia Carlson were united in marriage Saturday evening, Oct. 8th, by the Rev. G.W. Longenecker, at the home of the bride on the North Side. There was a large company present to witness the ceremony and participate in the congratulatory festivities. The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ayers and industrious, young man. The bride is a well-known and popular young lady of the first ward.

Last Saturday, the Black River Falls high School football team came up and met Neillsville in a friendly struggle for pigskin honor. The score of 0 to 0 tells the story. The ream were evenly balanced, and the warm weather was against great exertion. The boys on both sides played well. Johnson was hurt and retired, Will Wood being substituted. The ball was fought back and forth over the field and a few drop kicks taken.

The new rifle range for Company A, which is being built west of the Black River, is going to be a dandy when completed. Considerable clearing and grading has been done. The state purchased the land for the company, some 19 acres, where an ideal range has been laid out. A stone walled pit has been built, and a high hill at the rear of the target is a perfect backstop. The range is 600 yards in length, the land varying in width, having been purchased of different parties, but at narrowest is over 100 feet wide. The pit is 45 feet long, and the stone wall eight feet high, furnishing, with the earth works on front, complete protection to the target men. It is intended to put in four targets.

The ”Company A” rifle range was located one-half mile west on Hill Road the first gravel road to the left, after driving north over the Grand Avenue Bridge. It is now a gravel pit. DZ)

(The Minneapolis Gold Medal flour mill business was started by C.C. Washburn, an early Clark County lumberman, who had harvested timber on the land now known as Washburn Township. He also served one term as governor of Wisconsin. DZ)

On Molly Pitcher Day, which was observed in Neillsville September 30, the Women’s Auxiliary, aided by the younger girl scouts, sold War bonds totaling $175, and stamps totaling more than $100.

The football game last Friday at the North Side School grounds, between the squads from St. Mary’s Catholic School and the South Side grades resulted in a score of 30 and 6 in favor of the South Side players. Charles Wasserburger and Wallace Gault were referees, Robert Eggeman, timekeeper, Leonard Vandehey made the only touchdown for the Catholic School, and Bradley Larsen was the high scoring player for the South Side.

(During that era, it was popular for a future bride to have a 12-place setting of sterling silverware, along with the accessory pieces before she was married. Upon the purchase of the completed sterling silverware set, a velvet-lined wooden case was included in which to store the silverware o help keep it from tarnishing. DZ)

Lieut. Arthur R. Wagner of Neillsville, according to local surmise, could not have been far from participation in the surrender of 20,000 Germans in one batch. This surrender is one of the dramatic incidents of the war, according to reports from the fighting front. The surrender was induced, according to the reports, by a small contingent commanded by Lieut. Sam Magill of Ohio. He had 18 American soldiers with him. The nineteen American soldiers captured the group of 20,000 Germans.

The Lieut. Magill belongs to the same Service Company as does Lieut. Arthur R. (“Stir”) Wagner of Neillsville. The Wagner family knew him ell at Camp Atterbury and Camp Breckenridge when the outfit was being trained in this country. Mrs. Wagner, waiting the war out, in Neillsville, is naturally without information as to the location of her husband, or his military doings. Presumably, he is still in the same outfit as Lieut. Magill, and in that case he was probably not far away when the 20,000 Germans called it a day.

W.C. Wells, revisiting Neillsville after many years, started in the dairy business here more than 50 years ago. His first work was to drive a team of mules and gather up the cream for the S.A. Walker Creamery. That plant was a frame structure, located eastward from the present side of the Indian School.

Mr. Wells worked at this job three days of the week and worked inside the plant the rest of the time. He recalled conditions of dairying then, upon inquiry of the Clark County Press reporter.

The Walker plant was without competition in Neillsville and for miles around. Hence its operation gives a fair picture of the volume of milk in the 1890s. In that plant there was a churn of about 600 lbs. capacity, they usually churned about three times a week, making about 300 lbs. of butter at a time.

Beginning October 1, the newsprint paper used for the production of The Clark County Press is rationed. This means that this newspaper is proceeding under a limitation by government order, being allotted a prescribed maximum in accordance with government regulations.

Heretofore newspapers like The Press, those using a modest amount of paper, have not been restricted. By the new regulations, these rural newspapers are now brought under rationing.

(Th Clark County Press was allotted eight pages, or four sheets of newsprint, printed on both sides under the new rationing regulations. DZ)

Lieut. Herbert Humke has been killed in action in the European theater, according to word received by his wife. He was 26 years of age, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Humke of the Greenwood community.

The city council passed an ordinance Tuesday evening intended to make legal without question the housing of old age pensioners within the residential zone of the city of Neillsville. This was done by specifying that the provisions of the ordinance should not be considered as applying to a dwelling house maintained and used exclusively for persons receiving old age pensions from Clark County.

The city ordinance had been prepared in advance by City Attorney C.R. Sturdevant.

The ordinance, being passed, clears the way for purchasing the MacMillan property by the county and to remove the possibility of objection based upon the zoning ordinance. The welfare committee of the county board has entered into an arrangement with Mr. and Mrs. William Plummer to manage the home. The Plummers have for years conducted the county farm in the Town of York.

The above photo is of the Clark County Poor Farm and Alms house that was located in the southwest corner of Section 32, Town of York, corner of CTH C and intersection with Fremont Road and Cardinal Avenue. The land was purchased in 1867 for the sum of $1,000. The Poor Farm residence was built in 1882, at the beginning of its operation. Mr. and Mrs. William Plummer managed the farm and home for several years during its existence.

Pvt. William Neville of the anti-air-craft, who has been in training at Camp Stewart, Ga., since last May, has been here on furlough, with his wife and children. He left Tuesday for a California training center. Pvt. Neville is the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Neville, Sr.

Pvt. Thomas Lloyd of the Army Medical Corps stationed at Roswell, N.M., was here last week on a visit with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ed Lloyd, South Grand Avenue. He has been in the service for two years.

Pvt. Clayton Boon, son of Mr. and Mrs. Len Boon, Town of Weston, is a trucker with the Quartermaster’s Corp in India, where he has been in the service since December 1943. Pvt. Boon will complete two years of service in January.

Lt. H.M. Vindahl, son of Christ Vindahl of Hixton, was wounded in action in France and is being cared for in England.

Four major battles are also in the record of the Corp. Donald Boardman, son of Mr. and Mrs. M.C. Boardman of the Thorp community. He was in the Pacific fighting Guadalcanal, Saipan and Tarawa.

Navy Day will be observed in Clark County, as all over the United States, on Friday, Oct. 27. Locally the chief attention to the observance will be on the part of the schools. There the coming generation will participate in the exercises, which emphasize the importance of the Navy.

The immediate purpose of the 1944 observance is to strengthen the purpose of the American people to maintain a strong Navy, and not to let it run down, or to junk it, as was done after World War I.

Friday and Saturday, October 27 and 28, are the dates when milkweed pods will be marketed in Clark County. Clark County. Local schools, which are making collections, will bring their collected sacks of milkweed pods, to be marketed at a price of 20 1/2 cents per sack. It is very important that those who collected the milkweed pods market them on those designated dates, as there will not be any purchases made after these dates in Clark County.

(The collected milkweed pods were to be used for insulation in the flight jackets worn by the military pilots who were overseas. The milkweed pods I collected that year were pooled together with those that had been collected by my schoolmates in out rural school. The money received from the sacks of milkweed pods went toward buying some needed items within our schoolhouse. DZ)

Condensed milk from the American Stores Dairy Co., Neillsville Condensery, is doing its duty over in the Marshall Islands, Pacific Ocean. Evidence of this comes in the form of a label taken from a can of evaporated milk, which reached W. R. Balch on Kajalein Island. He is there as a member of the air force, and he sent the label to his father H.C. Balch, of Madison, who is the son of Fred Balch, a one-time hardware merchant of Neillsville.

(Canned condensed milk was shipped overseas to our servicemen. A great amount of condensed milk was also consumed in America during those years. I remember condensed milk being used in making babies’ formula. Condensed milk also served as a creamer in cups of coffee, as not everyone bought fresh cream daily for that purpose. Some homes, such as those on the farms, didn’t have refrigerators, due to no electricity; milk and cream had to be consumed the same day, as it soured quickly, especially in the summer.

At our farm home, we had two dug wells. One was near the barn for the livestock’s drinking water and the other well, with a hand pump, was located about 12 feet from the backdoor of the house. A hinged trap door that could be opened up was on one side of the well’s platform. We had a large bucket with the end of a rope tied onto the bucket handle and the other end of the rope tied to one of the well’s canopy posts. During the warm weather, each morning, a jug of fresh milk, some butter and a pint of “skimmed from the top milk-can-cream” were placed into the bucket then lowered down about eight feet, within the well’s walls and near the cold-water pipe at the center, that kept the items cool. Shortly before mealtime, the bucket was pulled up from the well; milk, butter and cream ere taken out to be placed on the dining table with the other menu items. DZ)

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