September 1931

William Schroeder has been appointed night policeman to take the place of Frank Ruddock who resigned last week.  Mr. Schroeder went on duty Tuesday night.                                                   

••••••••••

A deal of great significance to Neillsville was closed last week when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Wisconsin Telephone Company purchased the old R. J. MacBride home from Mrs. Ethel Holway of Madison as a site for a “repeater station” on the Twin Cities – Chicago toll cable, which will be built  through here soon.

The building, the cost which may run more than $50,000 with an additional $100,000 for equipment, is part of a large expansion program of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s toll lines. The repeater stations are located about 60 miles apart and serve the purpose of amplifying the conversation, making the toll lines as clear as local lines.

Buildings have been built at Eau Claire and Baldwin and it is expected that work on the Neillsville unit will be started sometime this winter.

(The AT&T building referred to was built on the southwest corner of State and East 5^th Streets, which in later years was purchased by Schuster-Campman Abstract & Title business. D. Z.)

••••••••••

Dr. Gudex of the State Board of Health was here last week and with County Supt. Margaret Walters visited Mike Horszak who lives near Bruce Mound in the Town of Dewhurst.  Mr. Horszak had been for several weeks in the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium and was later permitted to return home to be cared for by his family.  Some fear had been expressed in the community that the family might not be competent to care for the patient and prevent contagion in the family and neighborhood.  Dr. Gudex and Mrs. Walters, however, report that the directions from the sanitarium are being carefully carried out.

A son of Mr. Horszak, 14 years old, has built a cabin for his father in which he was well cared for during the summer. The doctor and Mrs. Walters were much impressed by the intelligence and skill of the boy in carrying out instructions sent by the state.

A more substantial shelter will be needed for the patient in cold weather and Mrs. Walters is conferring with Town chairman W. L. Murphy to secure this.                                                                                                        

••••••••••

William Farning, Sr., recalled this week, that it was 60 years Sept. 28 that he went into the pine woods to work for John Dwyer on the east branch of Cawley Creek with Tom Hutchins as foeman.  The camps were in Section 17 and the logging operations were conducted on both sections 16 and 17 in the Town of York.  He recalls that it was a very dry season with a great many forest fires forcing them into the creek bottoms for safety while the fire passed over their heads in the tall pine tops. This was the fall of the great Chicago fire.

(Section 17 is on the southwest corner of County Road H & K intersection. D. Z.)

••••••••••

Mr. and Mrs. Ben Picas of Loyal signed a six-year lease on the building formerly occupied by May and Ruchaber’s Sanitary Market on Hewett Street and plan to open a complete ladies’ ready-to-wear store Oct. 10.

Mr. Picas is a well-known merchant in Clark County, operating stores now at Greenwood and Loyal. Recently he acquired an interest in a ladies’ ready-to-wear store at Marshfield.                     

••••••••••

Ernest Mundy, a farmer residing east of Stanley, lost $90 to some gypsies who came to his home to beg food. While delivering the articles of food to them, the gypsies gathered around him with demonstrations of gratitude and relieved him of his purse, taking $90 from it and replacing it in his pocket.  They considerately left him two dollars in change.

••••••••••

Elmer Buddenhagen and family of Levis had an unusual accident on their way to church Sunday morning, which disabled their car for a time but no one was seriously injured.  A knuckle on the steering rod, which attaches to the right front wheel, became loose and the car swerved so close to the ditch near the G. Steffen farm that it tipped over throwing the occupants, Mrs. Buddenhagen, son Leland and her mother, Mrs. Mary Duge, against the side of the car, bruising Mrs. Buddenhagen considerably.                                                                                             

••••••••••

The old story about popcorn popping from the heat while still in the field has been proven at last. Fred Bullard brought in an ear of popcorn from his garden this week, on which nearly a dozen kernels had popped from the sun during the last hot spell. 

••••••••••

There is a decided shortage of cheese in the country, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and Markets. Cold storage buildings of American cheese on Aug. 1, 1931 were 20,233,000 pounds less than on the same date last year and 7,987,000 pounds less than the five-year average.                             

••••••••••

Mr. Jim Vincent and Miss Merrille Winters were married at Rockford, Ill., July 30.  They came back to Beloit, where the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. T. M. Winters, were visiting and after a few days there and at Milwaukee with relatives and friends, the young couple came back to Neillsville going on the next day to Withee where the groom is employed in a garage.

The bride graduated from the teachers’ training course in Neillsville High School, taught successfully for three years in rural schools and attended Eau Claire Teachers’ College for a year.  She is a young lady of culture and quiet home tastes. The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J. F. Vincent of this city.  He was employed for some time with paving contractors, but for the past few months has been working in a garage at Withee where he is still employed.                                                                                              

••••••••••

J. F. Zilk has started work on his new filling station at the south end of Hewett Street.  Mr. Zilk has done considerable traveling about, looking over various plans and models of filling stations and has in mind something of the latest and most convenient plans.                                                                                   

••••••••••

Buy the New Free-Wheeling Studebaker for $845.  It is moments of momentum, those miles of Free-Wheeling, which will give you the grandest thrills that don’t cost, but pay.  About one mile in seven or six or five is free, because you save from a seventh to a fifth of your gas and oil, by Free-Wheeling.                         

••••••••••

Thousands of fish were removed from O’Neill Creek Saturday and Sunday, to be transplanted in Wedges’ Creek to save them from dying in the stagnant pools left since the water has about ceased flowing in O’Neill Creek.

For several days dozens of young boys have been having a royal time gathering fish from the landlocked puddles, picking them up with their hands.  It is required only a few minutes to gather a string of 25 to 30 fish, including suckers, black bass, rock bass, crappies, perch and bullheads. Some of the bass weighed four pounds.

Saturday William Farning, Everett Kleckner, John Mattson and C. E. Elliott seined out a large number of fish, placed them in stock tanks and took them to Wedges Creek. Sunday, the same crew with the additional help of Ernest Snyder, Claude Ayers, Louis Kurth, Leo Miller, and Archie Stockwell seined out more than 100,000 fish, it was estimated, and planted them in Wedges Creek.

Permission for the transfer was obtained from the State Conservation Commission in Madison.

No one in Neillsville and vicinity remembers O’Neill Creek as low as it is now.  In the upper waters it is still flowing, but before it reaches Neillsville so much of the water has evaporated that is mostly a dry bed.

September 1956

Because the Evangelical and Reformed Church is in the same block, Mayor Herman J. Olson has vetoed an order of the city council granting a retail package liquor license  to the IGA food market now under construction on West Fifth between Grand Ave and Clay Street.

The council unanimously adopted a motion to permit the sale of packaged liquors there after an appearance by William Helmingski, who will manage the store.  He said the purpose was to sell beer for off-premises consumption, in the same way as is done in many super markets today.

However, the following morning local men interested in beer distribution and the tavern business of the city voiced objection. Two of them, Edgar Ott and Kenneth Karnitz, measured off the distance from the new super market to the church. They found it was less than 300 feet required by statute, and an objection was formally registered at a meeting with the mayor and Donald W. Johnson, city attorney.                                          

••••••••••

The Ordie Marshall apartment building, an old landmark of the city, which once housed the “laundry” and later was known as “the old Monk building,” will be razed or removed.

The property, at the corner of Grand Avenue and West 6^th Street, has been purchased as an addition to the parking lot for the new IGA supermarket, which will soon open here. Bids are now being sought for the building, which must be removed or torn down.                                                                                                    

••••••••••

The Rev. Idar J. Tanner has accepted a call to become pastor of the new church in Neillsville, Calvary Lutheran.  The pastorate will begin January 1.  Mr. Tanner comes from a 13-year pastorate in Oconomowoc.  Under his leadership Our Savior’s Lutheran Church there grew from a membership of 450 to more than 900, and was completed three years ago a modern church plant costing $220,000.

Mr. Tanner had had three pastorates.  His first was at Proctor, Minn.   Then he went to Ulen, Minn.  In each of these places he served seven years. Then he went to Oconomowoc.                         

••••••••••

Two young men from Neillsville enlisted in the air force at Eau Claire September 18, Jerry L. Quicker, son of Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Quicker, and Ronald O. Yankee, son of Mrs. Gilbert Yankee.  

••••••••••

Alfred Boon of the Christie community suffered two cracked ribs last week Tuesday when he jumped from his truck, striking his side on the truck box.                                                       

••••••••••

Community Drive-In Theatre on Highway 73, at Christie is open only on Friday, Saturday & Sunday; admission is Never More than a Buck a Car!  Sept. 21-22-23 there will be a Double Feature, “Hell’s Horizon” & “Massacre Canyon.”

Farm shortages rather than farm surpluses are likely to be the worry of the future, according to Murry R. Benedict, son of Clark County and leader in farm economics. Mr. Benedict, long chairman of the department of economics at the University of California and professor of agricultural economics, passed through Neillsville a few days ago, paused briefly to greet relatives and old friends, and rushed on to Berkley, where he was to start his work Tuesday of this week.

Prof. Benedict left behind his estimate of the long-range farm prospect.  That estimate is that the world of the future is far more likely to be concerned over shortages than over surpluses.  This estimate is given upon the last page of his monumental book on Farm Policies of the United States, an authoritative history, which has been published by the Twentieth Century Fund.

In his book Prof. Benedict does not venture an estimate as to the exact time when the farm problem will change from surplus to shortage, but he does say that the farmers and the country have been constantly engaged in hindsight rather than foresight, worrying about the dangers, which are practically in the past and failing to reach for the opportunities lying just ahead.

The publication of the book by the Twentieth Century Fund speaks for the eminence of Murray Benedict, who in the old days went to the old Reed School, studying there and being with his cousins, Harold and Dorothy Huckstead, the latter now being Mrs. Jess W. Scott.

Murray went on to Neillsville High School and then to institutions of higher learning.  Brought up on the Benedict farm immediately south of the present Huckstead place; his continuing interest was in farming and farmers and their welfare.  He taught for a time in the Agricultural College of South Dakota of Brookings, then became a member of the faculty at Harvard; then went, 25 years ago to the University of California, estimating that this university would become the great school, which it now is.

During his service at Berkley, Prof. Benedict has been called frequently to Washington to advise with the various administrations about farm policies.  These calls have come to him without references to politics, for he has maintained what a reviewer says of his book, “an impeccable objectivity.”  This reviewer calls his book “The work of an economic scientist, rather than of a special pleader or dogmatist.”

The past year has been a Sabbatical for Prof. Benedict.  Part of it has been spent lecturing at a seminar at Salzburg, Austria, where he was instructing advanced students from 16 European countries. This seminar was housed in a former royal palace, only 10 miles from Berchtesgaden, the mountain retreat of Adolph Hitler. Professor Benedict with his wife and daughter, lived in this palace, and each day Prof. Benedict climbed the elaborate circular stairway to the dance hall of royalty on the third floor. What the dance hall lacked in convenience and scholarly atmosphere it made up in decoration and unique interest.

The Benedicts did a lot of traveling around Europe, with Prof. Benedict keeping an eye upon the prosperity and reverse as becomes an economist.  He was making a survey of trade conditions, seeking opportunity to market some of the surplus products of the United States.

€€€€€€€€€€