Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

March 19, 2014, Page 9

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

March 1899

 

The top half of the front page of the Republican and Press is devoted to an advertisement of a “Great Cash Shoe Sale” of the Kapellan Co.  Jersey Leggings for ladies are advertised at a reduction for $1.25 to 88 cents.  Ladies’ shoes with pointed toe and patent stock tip are reduced from $5.20 to $2.15.  Men’s kangaroo calf shoes, lac and congress, are reduced from $3.50 to $2.25.                                                                                             

•••••••••

Nine youngsters procured a ladder and secured entrance to the opera house Wednesday night the Fisk and Wieden entertainment.  While crawling through the window; two panes were broken.  Marshall Hommel and assistants weeded the youngsters from the crowd, took their names and fired that from the building. Thursday they were summoned to police court and made to pay for the broken panes, amounting to nearly $5. A few days in the county bastille would have been much better, as it would have taught them a good lesson.                        

•••••••••

During the fire Monday night the fire bell was cracked, owing to the excessive heat and is therefore useless.  Tuesday an order was sent in for a new bell and until it arrives the Presbyterian Church bell will be used for curfew and fire purposes.

•••••••••

Hi Hart finished loading two immense flatcar loads of mill machinery, which had been bought here from the old mill at York to be loaded and shipped to the John Hein Company at Tony, Wis.

 

March 1909

 

The German Sewing Club, “Gemuetlichkiet” will meet Wednesday, March 10 at the home of Mrs. Frank Dwyer.

•••••••••

Work has commenced on the store of John Gerdes at Spokeville.  The building is being rushed to completion.  Mr. Gerdes will handle a line of general merchandise.                                      

•••••••••

In the list of county board members it is noted that Neillsville has three wards, the supervisors being H. A. Pitcher, F. T. Tucker, and G. A. Ludington.  The towns Hendren and Foster were not then in existence.  Sherwood was known as Sherwood Forest.                                                                                           

•••••••••

Miss Emma Ruge opened her five months of school today at Dells Dam.

•••••••••

Walter Gerhardt made his first trip hauling cream for the Pleasant Ridge Creamery on Monday.

•••••••••

Last week, in the town of Columbia, Mr. Achenbach solicited among the farmers for a sugar beet company.  He has contracts so far for about 15 acres and if the acres are planted the company will have three cars of beet pulp. Providing the farmers pay the freight.

 

Mr. Achenbach says he is going to plant an acre each of sugar beets, beans, cucumbers and onions and 2 acres of potatoes, this year.                                                                                                   

•••••••••

The East Weston and West York news:

There were a number of men out breaking snowdrifts, Monday.  The Clark Hill was so drifted that they had to make a road through Mr. Forman’s field. 

 

Last week, Mr. Joyce was busy hauling lumber logs.  Jimmie Harper and Meril Sischo were hauling bolts.  There were several others hauling hay and wood to Neillsville.                          

•••••••••

Monday afternoon the roof on one of the ice houses caved in and caught three men beneath it, James Schummel, Ben Wagner and Henry Marg.  Schummel was badly injured, his head being caught between two timbers and he was extricated with considerable difficulty.  Wagner and Marg were also injured but not as badly as was Schummel, who is laid up as a result.  The heavy snow caused the roof to cave in.  It was a close call for the men.

•••••••••

 

Eggs for Hatching! Purebred R. C. Brown Leghorn, 60 cents for 15 eggs.  Mrs. W. C. Shean, R.F.D. No. 2.

•••••••••

Conservative temperance workers recognize beer as a temperance drink. 

 

It contains such a small percentage of alcohol that it cannot cause intoxication in its self, unless, perhaps, an unreasonable excessive quantity be used at one time, even then the result is likely to be less of intoxication than of acute illness caused by the overloading of the stomach, as in over-eating.

 

The alcoholic strength of Neillsville beer is three percent, less than in any cider or wine or patent medicine.

 

We make these statements not by way of apologizing for the presence of alcohol in our beer but to counteract a possible false impression in the minds of some.  The alcohol contained in Neillsville beer constitutes a useful part.  It adds to its nutritive value, aids digestion and is altogether beneficial.

 

Neillsville Beer - Is a wholesome, delicious, refreshing temperance beverage.

 

Neillsville Bock Beer is brewed from the finest hops and malt money can buy, stored six months in ice-cold cellars, now ready in bottles; 24 bottles for $1.25 delivered. Phone #4, Neillsville Brewery

 

The Neillsville Brewery was established in 1869 when its first owner, Wm. Neverman, purchased land for the site from James O’Neill, then started making beer there.  Later owners were: Louis Sontag, Herman Schuster, Ernest Eilert, and last Kurt Listeman.  The brewery closed after 56 years in business Sept. 21, 1925, due to the Prohibition Act not allowing the sale of alcoholic beverages. The above photo is believed to be taken in the brewery building in 1913. (Photo courtesy of Steve Roberts)

 

•••••••••

You can get beautiful St. Patrick’s Easter floral souvenirs and all kinds of postal cards for 1 cent each at Tragsdorf, Zimmerman & Co., the same items you have paying 5 cents for.        

•••••••••

Max Opelt grinds feed Tuesdays and Thursdays in Lynn.

                     

March 1949

 

Sadness entered the hearts of the Peter Shaer family last week for “Bambi” was taken away.

 

“Bambi” was a buck fawn, which had been raised and cared for by the family for several weeks; had been nursed back to health.  He had become quite a favorite and an object of curiosity among Greenwood people.

 

The buck fawn was found in a drainage ditch near Greenwood by a member of the Shaer family.  He was nearly dead, according to the story told to Warden Frick.

 

Last Thursday Warden Frick loaded the fawn into a carrier and took him to the conservation department’s district headquarters at Black River Falls.  From there he was taken to Poynette, to the state game and fur farm.

 

The fear of conservation authorities is that an animal, which has not been shifting for itself for a long time, will not be able to care for itself in the wilds.                                                                      

•••••••••

“Have you ever looked down two eight-foot concrete culverts?”  That is the way Albert Turl, 27, described the sensation he felt when he looked into the business end of a double barreled shotgun at his Wagon Wheel Inn at 2 a.m., last Thursday.

 

The Inn, located at the “Y” junction of highways 10 and 12, was where Turl was held up by two armed bandits who leisurely searched the place and made away with money estimated at from $170 to $240, and seven cartons of cigarettes.

•••••••••

Frank Lunka, of the Gorman community, is having his well dug deeper due to the shortage of water.

 

The Gorman Cooperative Dairy cheese factory had trouble with its well; Likewise Joseph Slemec’s, Frank Aumann, Jr’s, and Paul Klancher’s wells all are drying up due to the severe drought of last summer.

•••••••••

The first hearing test program, through which the hearing of all pupils in Neillsville schools will be tested, got under way Tuesday, Supt. D. E. Peters announced.

 

Mr. Marks of the state department of public instruction instructed 30 Neillsville women in the use of the audiometer.  All were given an opportunity to use the machine, which tests hearing and were able to make hearing tests with it.  They are now prepared to start the actual testing, which will begin in about two weeks Mr. Peters said.

•••••••••

In addition of a new fifth ward to Neillsville was made officially by the city council Tuesday night when it adopted unanimously an ordinance redistricting the city.

 

Residents of the area comprising the new ward will elect their alderman and supervisor at the spring election.

 

The area included in the new fifth ward is carved from present first and second wards.  It includes; all the portion east of Hewett Street, between fifth and 16th streets, and east of North Grand Avenue, between O’Neill Creek and west 10th Street.

 

The ordinance also provides for minor adjustments in the boundaries of the third and fourth wards.

 

The move to establish a fifth ward was inaugurated by Alderman Arne Matheson of the fourth ward late last fall.  The first step was the taking of a census of the city, which was done by the civics class of the Neillsville High School, working under the direction of Earl Ruedy and the supervision of Supt. D. E. Peters.

 

When the population was established at slightly more than 2,700 by this census, Alderman Matheson drew up an outline redistricting.                                                                                        

•••••••••

Seventeen letter “N” awards and 21 numeral awards were made to high school boys at a general assembly in the high school last Friday afternoon.  The awards were made for participation in football, basketball and crop judging.

 

Those receiving the “N” award, as announced by Supt. D. E. Peters, were:

 

For football; Leonard DeMert, Donald Hantke, Marvin Klann, Irvin Marg, Harris Schoengarth, Frederick Seelow, Richard Tibbett, James Vincent, Karl Petersen and Keith Counsell

 

For basketball: Leonard DeMert, Donald Hantke, Robert Scott, James Walters and Manager Jerry Smith

 

For crop judging: Glen Phillips and Charles Sydorowicz.                            

•••••••••

More than 2,500 railroad ties have been piled up beside the tracks at the Omaha depot here in recent weeks, and the number is growing.

 

The ties will be used on the Omaha road, between Merrillan and the eastern terminal.  They are hardwood and are coming from two locations with a few miles of Neillsville.                             

•••••••••

“Operation Spuds” is grinding to a close in Clark County, which will have received 492 carloads of surplus potatoes during the winter and spring thus far.  Approximately 138 carloads have been unloaded in Neillsville.  They were intended for cattle and livestock feed.  (I recall my Dad getting loads of potatoes for cow feeding purposes. DMK)                                                                  

•••••••••

“Sam’s Daisy Far,” is a peculiar name for a farm.  As a matter of fact, it is just faintly nostalgic.     

 

Probably more than one person driving by the place, 3 ½ miles south of Neillsville on Highway 95, has seen the name painted on the silo and wondered what it was all about.

 

But Sam Mosiman and the neighbors know.  They know that the farm once was the best local example of how to grow a tremendous crop of daisies.

 

When the Mosiman family: Sam, Mrs. Mosiman, and Leland the son, came in October of 1946 and settled there, the farm was growing nothing but daises , and doing a wonderful job of it.

 

The neighbors twitted Sam about his daisy farm, and told him he would be able to grow nothing but daisies there, ever.

 

The Mosimans took the chiding with good humor.  After all they were city-bred folks who had known nothing but city life and industrial work.  But they tackled the fields of daisies the next spring with determination.

 

Mrs. Mosiman took as her special province the 12-acre field, which was to be put into oats.  She pulled every daisy by hand and it took her two weeks, and however many steps she will never know.

 

They plowed, disked, cultivated and fertilized.  The oats came up evenly and without a daisy.

 

In the 10-acre cornfield, they cultivated that first year as long as they could.  Then the Mosimans took after the field with hand hoes.  All through that laborious summer they hoed and hoed.

 

“We found nine daisies that first year,” Sam recalls ruefully.  Last year that field was free of flowers.

 

Asked whether it might have been easier to use a commercial week killer, Sam told of talking with a farmer from near Black River Falls.  This farmer had a three or four-acre patch loaded with daisies on which he experimented.  When he used commercial weed killer the daisies died.  So did everything else.  And the next year the only things to come back were the daisies.

 

At present there are about 35 acres of the “front 40” under plow.  Sam doesn’t go so far as to say that he won’t have daisies on any of it this year; but one can tell that he believes he has them whipped.

 

The “back 40,” is another proposition, there are a few daisies there, Sam admits; but the Mosimans haven’t done much with the back 40 yet, although they expect to this spring.

 

There is a touch of pride in Sam’s bearing when he tells about a conversation he overheard in a Neillsville tavern when the speaker didn’t know who he was. 

 

As Sam told it the statement went something like this:

 

“It beats h--- how some guy can come out here from the city and show up us yokels.”

 

He chuckles when he tells that all the feed he has had to buy this winter is $5 worth of corn.  “I like to have a little corn to mix with the oats for feeding the cows,” he explains.

 

Otherwise, while people all around have had to buy hay, Sam has been free of that worry this winter.

 

“And I have enough to carry me through,” he says.

 

The advent of the Mosimans into dairy, or daisy, farming was not planned.  For 30 years prior to moving into the Town of Levis Mr. Mosiman had been employed in the Globe Steel Tube Company in Milwaukee.  For the last 20 years of that time he has held the position of head heater. 

 

But, like so many city dwellers, Sam was advised by his doctor that he had a little trouble with his heart, and that he ought to get out into the country.  If his doctor knew what sort of back breaking labor Sam has gone through since, he might have become concerned.

 

As they were looking about for a country location, the saw the old Palmer farm for sale in a Milwaukee paper.  Leland was dispatched to look over the ground. What Leland saw was to his liking, and told his parents, “You’ve got to buy that place or nothing.”  So they bought the place.

 

But all in all, if Sam had it do over again, knowing what he does now about farming, he probably would make the same choice.                                                                                           

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