Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

June 21, 2017, Page 9

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

June 1917

 

Mr. and Mrs. J. F. Schuster have moved into their new home, which they bought from Fred Rietz and remodeled.  Mr. and Mrs. Herman Carl have moved into the Schuster house on Clay Street, which they have bought.

•••••••••

Sunday afternoon Marshfield will play baseball with the Neillsville team on Kurth’s field.  The locals have been doing hard practice, and have a good team together, which should make things interesting for their opponents.  Game called at 2:30. Grounds will be in shape for fast work.  

 

(Was Kurth’s baseball field located at Kurth Corners, near the intersection of Hwy. 10 and Pray Road?  DZ)                                        

•••••••••

James Campbell returned Sunday morning from his trip to Missouri.  He went there with the expectation of buying a small fruit farm but after he had gone thru three cyclones, looked over the razor back hogs, and poisonous snakes, had tested the cistern water, and encountered various forms of general native shiftlessness, he decided that he didn’t want any Missouri in his life, and took the first train for home.  There are many things, which he found very favorable, but they are over-balanced by the disadvantages he found.                                                          

•••••••••

Carl Rabenstein is preparing to broaden the field of the Equity Garment Co., and will shortly enter the manufacture of lady’s suits, coats, dresses, and waists.  He has secured the services of Helen G. Wilkerson of Chicago, who has had many years of experience in the dress-making business, and in the manufacturing end of that work.  She is an artist in design, and for many years was the instructor in the Chicago College of Designing and Dressmaking, and was also employed in the dress-making department of Marshall Field & Co.  It is the intention of the Equity Garment Co. to open the overall factory, and equip it for the manufacture of up-to-date ladies clothing, and will employ several young lady seamstresses at the outset, for they have been assured of a ready business as soon as the factory is overhauled, and put into shape.                                                                                                                 

•••••••••

Last Thursday Miss Flossie Leason closed her school in the Town of Grant with a picnic.  This is a nine-month school, and the patrons of the district are well please with Miss Leason’s work.  There were 37 pupils enrolled.

•••••••••

Saloonkeepers should not sell liquor to any man wearing the uniform of a sailor or soldier, as they are liable to a year in prison, a fine of $1,000 or both.  The army bill just passed prohibits the sale of liquor to all men in uniform.

•••••••••

A week from Sunday the Wausau baseball team will be here for a game with Neillsville, and a hot contest will be the result of the meeting for Wausau has a strong aggregation of players who have been holding their own in the Wisconsin Valley League.  A good crowd should be out to help the local team out as expenses of this game will be high, and the boys will need all the encouragement the rooters can give them.                                                       

•••••••••

There will be a big Fourth of July celebration at Winters’ Grove.  The program of the day is as follows:

 

Parade at 9:30 a.m., led by a band and a company of Shortville Home Guards; Music by band at 10 a.m.; Program at 10:30 a.m.; Speaking at 11:00 a.m. by Rev. Mallory; Picnic dinner at 12; Foot Races at 1:00 p.m.; Tug of War at 1:30 p.m.; Horse Races at 2:00 p.m.; Baseball Game at 3:00 p.m.

 

Tom Winters took the Shortville winners to Day Corners Sunday afternoon to play baseball with the Levis Nine.  Levis got one score against Shortville’s 12 runs.  How’s that for Shortville?                 

•••••••••

One the evening of June 20th Judge Schoengarth united in marriage Arche V. Smith and Miss Carrie Vanderhoof.  Mr. and Mrs. Smith are prominent young people of the Town of Sherman, and are exceptionally capable and energetic.

•••••••••

Greenwood will celebrate Patriotic Day, Saturday afternoon and evening, June 30th.  The band and parade will feature the afternoon.  The evening will be devoted to patriotic entertainment with band, and ice cream and cake on Armstrong’s lawn.  Show your patriotism by coming.

•••••••••

(Last week’s oldies column was listed June 1917 in error, it was supposed to be 1907.  Sorry! D Z.  Readers, I the transcriber noted that and made the change. DMK)

 

June 1952

 

A temperature of 27 degrees was recorded Saturday morning, May 24, government thermometer, kept by the Mark Vornholts on the Indian School farm near the Black River.  A temperature of 32 was recorded on May 26.  

 

These official records meant frost in low places and frost actually did some damage to the more tender vegetation.                                                                                            

•••••••••

You don’t sell the ideas of a small family and an easy life to Mrs. Harold Prock of Neillsville.  She is one of the 12 living children of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hansen, long-time, of the Shortville community.  She has five children, and these five are numbered among the 39 grandchildren of the Harry Hansens.  The Hansens and their children are a working family, and they feel that they get something out of life.

 

“We had to work and to take responsibility,” says Mrs. Prock.  “We did not get as much schooling as would have liked, but we learned to help in the family, and to take responsibility.  Those are good things to know when one is married, and takes on family burdens.”

 

Genevieve, the oldest child began to take on household responsibilities almost as soon as she could walk.  She is now Mrs. Robert Jackson of the Greenwood area.  Her mother was seriously sick when she was about 13.  She took over and mothered the smaller children, especially Pearl, Mrs. Prock, who was just emerging from babyhood.  She did everything for the family, and acquired high competence.  “We all look up to her still,” is Mrs. Prock’s word for it.

 

When Pearl was ten, her brother Everett was a baby, and she mothered him.  She fed him, put him to sleep and taught him to walk.  She is still a sort of a second mother to him.

 

So, it went all through the family.  The older ones looked after the smaller ones, and boys, as soon as they could do anything, turned in and helped their father.

 

Schooling was a job to the Hansens.  They walked back and froth to and from district school.  Mrs. Prock recalls that the distance was six miles each way, and sometimes the temperatures registered 40 below.  She did not worry about it then, not as much as she worries about her own children running across the street to St. Mary’s School.

 

Only four of the Hansens’ children went to high school.  In those days there were no school buses, and no easy public provision.  None of the boys graduated from high school.  The first break for high school, was made by Belle.  She was the pupil in district school of Mrs. Free Carleton, who saw possibilities in her and spurred her on.  For quite some time Mrs. Carleton took Belle into her own home in Neillsville, and for two years Belle walked six miles night and morning.  She graduated from Neillsville High School and took a Normal Course.  She is now the teacher of the Mayflower School; has taught for 12 years in the rural schools of Clark County.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hansen have not had an easy time of it.  For most of their active lives they have lived on rented farms, and have had limited resources.  At the age of 67 Mr. Hansen is retiring; has sold his farm near Shortville, plans to build a small place on piece of land near Neillsville. But on May 18 he had opportunity to make an inventory of his treasures, and he with Mrs. Hansen, really got a thrill out of it.  The inventory showed 50 present, children, and grandchildren, plus three who couldn’t make it.  The reunion was held at the farm of Kenneth Seelow in the Neillsville area.  The provender, which came on a potluck basis, spoke for a family of good providers.

 

The 50 Hansens couldn’t eat all of it.

 

For Tom Harry Hansen and his wife, the family has been the big thing.  Mr. Hansen didn’t have much for himself, but he was always giving the boys something.  He wanted them to have horses, and, in the later days, cars.  He understood their yearnings, and shared their enthusiasms.  His attitude invited their cooperation.

 

Oldest boy in the family is Melnard, now a company mail clerk in Milwaukee.  He began doing chores as soon as he could toddle.  Other members of the family recall him drawing water from an open well when the bucket was almost as large as he was.  He helped with the chores, and took on more and more.  In the early years he took over at home while his father went in the winter to work in the logging camps.  He acquired competence, and remained long with his father as the right-hand man.

 

Mrs. Hansen has not ben strong during most of her years.  In the face of weakness and sickness, she has borne and reared 12 children.  Despite a back injury, which requires a brace, she is of competence, which surprises her children.

 

There are the Hansen children in the order of their birth: Genevieve, Mrs. Robert Jackson, living on a farm in the Greenwood area, four children; Melnard, in Milwaukee; Sylvia, Mrs. Francis White, Milwaukee; Leland, Granton; Pearl, Mrs. Harold Prock, Neillsville; Orbert, Town of Sherwood; Belle, Mrs. John Mazola, Neillsville; Evelyn, Mrs. John Flynn, Milwaukee; Eleanor, Mrs. Kenneth Seelow, Neillsville area; Everett (Bud), Milwaukee; Carol, Mrs. Robert Mortenson, Shortville; and Lila, Lake Forest, Ill.

 

(Those of my era knew many large families, such as the Hansens when we were growing up, and can relate to how their lives were then.  The children grew up learning to help by doing whatever chores they were capable of doing at their age.  They also had to learn to share in material things.  I remember a family who had one bicycle that had to be shared, and the children cooperated with that arrangement. DZ.  And I, the transcriber am the oldest of a farm family of 11, same era. DMK)                                                                                                                     

•••••••••

Their 1934 model car loaded high with camping equipment and personal effects, three 1952 graduates of Neillsville High School struck out Monday for the west coast.

 

Making the trip are William Oelke, Walter Wagner, and Dick Harrington.  They plan to work in the orchards of Washington state through the harvest time, and may return just before the opening of schools in the fall.

•••••••••

Arthur Kleinschmidt, sick and confined to a hospital in Minneapolis, is easy in his mind because he knows that the major part of his spring work is done.  When he was obliged to give up and go to the hospital a lot remained to be done on his farm in the Town of Lynn.

 

But through the efforts of his pastor, The Rev. Edgar Milleville, of Grace Lutheran Church, Nasonville, and the church president, Donald Braatz, a bee was organized.  They came early in the morning, June 1, and three crews were organized.

 

The fence crew was the largest consisting of Edgar Fisher, Ray Tyler, Wesley Todd, Emery Albrecht, Russell Bruhn, Silas and Arleigh Kleinschmidt, Wilbur Sanger, Earl Meissner, Pussy Spuhler, Louis Strauman, Alvin Roehl, Wallie Lindow, Guest Hahnu, Emil and Alvin Ott, Mervin Helling, Bill and Clemens Weichelt, and Walter Seehafer.

 

These men moved, and rebuilt fences. The old posts were sawed for wood with Alvin Volker’s saw rig.

 

With Donald Braatz’ new machinery, the manure was loaded, and then hauled by Glen Kleinschmidt, Alvin Voelker, William Behling, Merlin Lindow, Howard Stone, Clarence Weichelt, and Douglas Meissner.

 

Then Bill Hahnu, and Fen Kleinschmidt plowed, and Warren Kleinschmidt followed with the disc, and the drag.  Emeron Christensen, Ed and Norbert Kleinschmidt finished the field by planting corn.

 

The men brought their own lunches, but Mrs. Leslie Todd, Mrs. Bill Hahnu, and Miss Wandae Grottke assisted Elaine Kleinschmidt with the serving of pickles, coffee, and cake.

 

The work was finished the next day by Fred Grottke, Glenn Petersen, Ed and Silas Kleinschmidt, and Emeron Christensen. Mrs. Christensen also helped that day, as Mrs. Kleinschmidt was gone to be with her husband.

 

Later in the week Earl Meissner completed the work on the garden.

 

Times have changed, modern machinery making many things easier for farm people.  But people haven’t changed for the old say, ‘when they so willingly leave their work to help a neighbor in trouble’.

•••••••••

McCain’s Sale Continues on Wash Dresses $4.17; One Group of Handbags Reduced to $1.98 + tax; White Hats $1.98 to $3.98; Plain Sleeveless Blouses $1.98, or Pure White, Trimmed with Rhinestones $2.98.

 

The Neillsville Garage was in the old Howard building, which was to the rear of Stelloh’s Bros. building.  The buildings were located on the north side of West 5th Street, between Grand Avenue and Clay Street, and on the present site of Hansen’s IGA.

 

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