Clark County Press, Neillsville, WI

September 20, 2006, Page 12

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Good Old Days" Articles 

 


The Good Old Days 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

September 1922

 

The Cheese Makers Manufacturing Company is the big industry that has put Riplinger on the map, as a payroll town as well as an exceptional market for forest products.  The cheese-box manufacturing company was promoted by local interests, and its stockholders are the leading cheese makers of Marathon, Clark, Wood, and Taylor counties.  Besides the factory there, they maintain branches at Auburndale, Stetsonville, Granton and Vesper.

 

This is one of the most modern and best-equipped cheese box factories in the United States.  It has a daily capacity for 6,000 boxes.  This equals one and a-half carloads.

 

At the present time, they are building a warehouse, which will have a capacity for 20 carloads of boxes.

 

Employment is now furnished to over 50 hands and it is only a question of a very short time when the number will be increased to 125.

 

The factory occupies a building of the latest type of cement construction covering over 15,000 sq. ft. of ground space.

 

This industry requires an immense supply of birch and elm logs and all kinds of bolts.  The bolts are used for heading.

 

(A bolt was a block of timber to be sawed or cut. D.Z.)

 

The plant represents an actual investment of over $75,000.  We understand that its operation has resulted in maintaining a very reasonable price level for cheese boxes.

 

The officers of the company are: B. F. Riplinger, president; O. F. Greuke, vice president; R. M. Jenks, treasurer; F. H. Sturner, secretary and Floyd Winn, production manager.

•••••

Willis Enhelder reports the recent sale of the Jones Tompkins farm south of Greenwood, 120 acres for $19,000 cash.  It was owned by Mace Ross and was sold to August Kent of Dodge County; the White farm on the Twenty-Six Road in Loyal, 160 acres, $24,000; the Wm. Lyons farm in the same vicinity, 120 acres, sold for $17,000 to August Lambert, and the Somerfeld farm in Town of Loyal sold to August Dutesen of Stanley, 120 acres sold for $24,000.

 

•••••

Bring in your potatoes!  A. B. Marsh will open the potato warehouse for business Monday, October 2nd.

•••••

A new Howe ball-bearing auto-truck scale is being installed at the Bruley Elevator.  The platform is 22 feet in length, so that a team and wagon can stand on it at the same time, the only reliable method of weighting team-hauled loads.  The scale will weigh accurately, up to ten tons, and is the latest and most approved model.

 

Michigan Pears, $1.35 per standard bushel at Bruley’s Elevator.

•••••

Prohibition Officer Harry Hewett conducted a raid and search on the Rondeau soft drink place, last Wednesday afternoon.  The search of the place was not productive in results, but a quart of moon was found in the Rondeau living rooms, above the place of business.  Rondeau was fined $200 for having the moon in his possession, on Monday.

•••••

Arthur Lindow, Alvin Lindow and Ferdinand Schilling were among those who had corn husking bees in the Spring Creek Valley neighborhood.

 

Several farmers in the area went together to purchase a hay-baling rig, which George Lindow hauled from Spencer the other day.

•••••

P. M. Warlum has sold his present residence on the street east of the courthouse to Marcus Hoesly, Jr. About 30 acres of land goes with the place, making it quite a farm.  Mr. Hoesly will take possession next week.  Mr. Warlum and family are moving to their new residence on East Sixth Street.

 

September 1946

 

Millard F. Cole has purchased, from Mrs. Rose Schiller, the property at the southwest corner of Court and Fourth.  He will continue to occupy it as a funeral home and as the family residence.  The purchase included the goodwill of the business.

•••••

A three-day Veteran’s Homecoming and Festival will be held in Neillsville Saturday, Sunday and Monday, November 9, 10 and 11.  The event will be sponsored by the Wilson-Heintz Veterans of foreign Wars, Post 2241, Neillsville, with the cooperation of other local service clubs and service organizations throughout the county.

 

William B. Tufts, Neillsville, has been named general chairman.  Tufts will be aided by citizens of the county, and the coordinating committees.

 

Plans for the three-day celebration are still being formulated.  The organization tentatively plans a football game at the fairgrounds.  Saturday, November 9, dancing, etc; a complete program for Sunday, November 10, to include parade of floats, free dancing, sectional parties, banquets and reunions; and the climax of the program on Monday, November 11 (Armistice Day), to be on the military side, with the possibility that the “Frost” division from Camp McCoy will entertain with maneuvers, aided by army planes and bombers from Minneapolis.

 

Also being arranged is a street carnival of rides, shows and concessions, various games and contests, mass band concerts, and other entertainment.

 

All veterans throughout the county will be invited to attend the celebration and homecoming, and service organizations of the county are expected to send delegations to participate in the military parade.  There will be souvenirs for all the veterans attending, and awards and gifts for others are being arranged.

 

It will be the first homecoming event for veterans in Clark County.

•••••

Bears are causing increasing damage to property and the peace of mind in some sections of Clark County, according to Game Warden Alva A. Clumpner.

 

Of late, there have been several escapades in which bears figured prominently.  One recently, was the report of a bear roaming the streets in Greenwood.

 

Another was the killing of a purebred registered Holstein cow on the Chris Christofferson farm, located two miles south of Withee.  This animal was a three-year-old, just fresh, and a claim of $300 has been entered with the State Conservation Department.

 

Latest in the recent series was the report last mid-week by William Joyce, a farmer living 2 ½ miles northeast of Christie.  Mr. Joyce telephoned Game Warden Clumpner at 5 a.m., one morning, to report that a bear had raided his beehives and left them in a mess.

 

Mr. Clumpner advised Mr. Joyce to “get up in the chicken house tonight with a gun.  The bear will be along before 10 o’clock.”

 

Mr. Joyce’s two sons drew the ambush assignment, one armed with a .32 Winchester, the other with a shotgun.

 

Sure enough, about 9 o’clock that night, along came a bear.  From a distance of approximately 30 feet the Joyce boys threw a flashlight beam on him.  That didn’t scare him; but when the guns started to blaze away, the bear headed for the wide-open spaces.

 

The next morning, this time at 6 a.m., Mr. Clumpner’s telephone clanged again.  It was Mr. Joyce.   “Say, he said, do you know where I can get a good dog that will chase bears?”

•••••

A pine tree, four or five feet in height, was planted Saturday, by Lieut. Col. Herbert M. Smith on the shore of Hay Creek Lake.  The occasion was the dedication of the Veterans’ Memorial Forest, which occupies Section 14 of North Foster.

 

Those who were watching the planting, participants in the dedication looked through the drizzle downward to the lake.  There, the flowage had covered the old, black stumps of the virgin growth, stumps when had been left by the cutting of perhaps half a century ago.  The trees, which had grown on those stumps were small trees, like the one planted by Col. Smith, at about the year 1700, roughly half a century before Wisconsin became a state and a century and a-half ago.

 

The planting of the tree, last Saturday, was witnessed by Jerry Smith, son of Lieut. Col. Smith.  Jerry is a lad of 13 years.  If he lives to be 90 years of age, he will see this tree approach merchantable size, ready for cutting.  The actual cutting will probably not be done until Jerry’s race has been run and the torch has been handed to another generation.  By that time, most of the participants in the dedication of last Saturday will have been forgotten, and the Buna campaign of New Guinea, vivid memory of today, will get only two or three sentences in the American history books.

 

Journeying toward the Veterans’ Memorial Forest, the participants in Saturday’s dedication had an uncertain impression of what they would see.  Trees?  Naturally, after all, a forest is a forest, and what is a forest without trees?  What they saw was an old clearing on what is familiarly known as the old “Whiskey” Olson place.  Here on unfriendly soil, an effort was made to establish a farm perhaps half a century ago.  Close by the scene of Saturday’s planting were a few scrub oak, where a few participants took shelter from the drizzling rain.  Here, and there, were a few little pine trees, a foot or so high, which had come from heaven knows where and which had volunteered to do what they could for a barren area, otherwise unused.  A mile or so to the north, not visible from the scene of the dedication, were 250 or so pine trees, planted by the county forest service.  Back in from the lake, on the route of the tour was a clearing upon which the forest service gave a demonstration of machine planting.  That was part of the old Olson place, still clear enough, after perhaps half a century, to permit machine planting.

 

And that is the Veterans’ Memorial Forest, a forest with no trees of any size except a few scrub oaks.  It’s not a forest of today, but a forest of the future.  It is a forest which of promise and not a present realization.

 

Except for very recent planting, the “Whiskey” Olson place is fairly typical of the better portions of the county forest.  The clearing there gives this area, certain superiority for easy planting of Norway pine.  But it’s like the rest, in that its development, with unassisted nature, is extremely slow, and in that, it typifies the vast area of wasted opportunity through-out the county forest.

•••••

The OPA ceiling on sugar has been raised two cents.  Retail prices go from about seven cents a pound to about nine cents.  The price boost is estimated to add $200 million to the cost of living in a year for the people in the United States, in the aggregate.

•••••

The Rock Dam Rod & Gun Club has been formed with a charter membership of 32 persons.  Officers are: Gordon A. Wolf, Thorp, president; William Parks, Thorp, vice-president; Ed Pawlak, Thorp, secretary; Charles Fisher, Willard, treasurer. 

 

The directors appointed by President Wolf, are the following:  Art Morrison, Town of Butler; Leonard Rauen, Willard; Frank Klancher, Greenwood; Myron Kasken, Withee; Art Olson, Thorp; Rae Ingham, Willard; Art Baures, Fairchild; Claybourne Bogumill, Thorp; Harry Wasserberger, Neillsville.

 

The organization was perfected September 18, at a meeting held at the Rock Dam resort.  Al Covell called the meeting to order.  Help in organizing was given by Dean Ballett, secretary of the Eau Claire County Conservation League, and by Al Clumpner, game warden of Clark County.  There was a discussion of conservation, wild life, fish and game.  A Dutch lunch was supplied by John S. Bogumill and his son, Claybourne.

•••••

 

Jenni’s Standard Station and Jenni’s Café is a popular place for all who travel and all who eat.  They will service your car with wheel balancing and use Standard accessories.

•••••

All relatives and friends are cordially invited to attend a Coin Shower and Card Party at the York Town Hall, Thursday, October 2, at 8:00 o’clock in honor of Harold Searls and Ruth Krejci.  Will those that have card tables, please bring them?

•••••

The Battle of the Cabbage Patch is over.

 

Winners in this unique contest, between the civilized and deer’s bellies, were the wild, wild deer down in the Columbia country.

 

The “fruits of victory” were some 4,400 cabbage plants, some rutabagas and carrots.  Now, only the nubbins of the cabbage plants stick starkly above the ground to indicate the site of battle on the William Schultz farm.

 

But it was quite a battle while it raged.  When the deer started feeding on the delicate heads of cabbage, Mr. Schultz marshaled his forces.  Game Warden Alva A. Clumpner was called in.

 

After a strategy conference the Schultz forces put out flares, believing that this maneuver would defeat the deer, but, instead of frightening the wild deer off, the flares seemed merely to furnish them light to feed by.

•••••

A double wedding ceremony was performed at Zion Evangelical and Reformed Church Saturday afternoon, September 21, by Pastor N. J. Dechant, in which Miss Edna Fitzmaurice, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Fitzmaurice, married Clifford Walker, son of Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Walker, and Miss Reta Walker, sister of Clifford, married Jerry Koranda.  All of the participants are from Humbird, except Jerry Koranda, whose former home was near Neillsville.  They were attended by Miss Frances Matousch, Chicago, cousin of Jerry Koranda, and Jake Fitzmaurice, cousin of Edna Fitzmaurice, whose home is at Humbird.

 

Following the ceremony, a wedding supper was served at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Fitzmaurice, Humbird.  A dance was held in the evening at the Humbird Town Hall.  The Clifford Walkers have a home near Humbird, where he is a milk hauler.  Mrs. Walker was employed last year as a governess at the Neillsville Indian Mission School.  Mrs. Koranda is a governess, this year at the Indian School, and plans to remain there for the present.  Her husband is serving in the army, and has just recently completed training at Ft. McClellan in Alabama.

•••••

 

A 1920’s view of Hewett Street, Neillsville, from the Fifth Street intersection; Every store had an awning which, could be rolled down to shield out the bright sun’s rays on the front display windows.  (Photo courtesy of Bill Roberts collection)

 

 


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