Clark County News

March 23, 1939

Neillsville plays host to visitors; enjoy tours, shows

Neillsville residents and businesspeople enjoyed playing host to an estimated 1,000 children and adults brought here Monday and Tuesday for the 10th annual Clark County Rural Grain Judging contest

And the visitors enjoyed the hospitality afforded them in the county seat city, if the smiles on their faces and the happy, incessant chatter they made was any indication. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves while gathering education they never would get inside of school rooms.

Make tours

After finishing their judging, the children were divided into groups of from 20 to 25 each and were conducted on tours through several of the city’s business and industrial institutions as well as the county courthouse and the county jail.

On these trips they saw behind the scenes activities at the American Stores Dairy Co. Condensary plant and the Milk Pool Cooperative, the Neillsville and First National banks, the Model Laundry, The Clark County Press, the Badger State Telephone Co., and the Neillsville Public Library, as well as the county buildings.

Each tour required about three hours, and time prevented several groups from making complete rounds. They were guided by a group of Future Farmer members of the Neillsville High School, the organization which sponsored the contest.

Without exception the children were well-mannered and showed great interest in the things that were being done for their education and entertainment. Special arrangements Special preparations were made by the business houses and county offices for the tours. In the office of The Clark County Press a public address system was specially installed so that the editor and publisher could sit at his desk and describe to the touring groups the work which was done to make a newspaper. The public address system carried the explanations of the editor above the noise and clatter of machinery and was effective in that every person in each group was able to follow the description without difficulty.

With all the excitement, there was one man in Neillsville who was “played out” at the end of the second day. He was John W. Perkins, Neillsville High School agricultural teacher and advisor to the Future Farmer group. For it was on him that the burden of administration of the event fell. And, at the same time, Mr. Perkins’ attention was claimed in part by a Future Farmers basketball tournament, which was concluded Monday night - the first day of the grain judging.

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Col. William L. Smith to wed Miss Corson

The marriage of William L. Smith of this city and Miss Mary Corson of Minneapolis will take place Saturday noon, April 1, at Minneapolis.

Relatives of Mr. Smith and Miss Corson and a few close friends will witness the ceremony, among them Mr. and Mrs. Wm. L. Smith, Jr., son, William and daughter Mary Ann, of Neillsville.

Miss Corson is well known in Neillsville and community, having served as librarian here for several years.

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Special meeting

Boys high school age interested in conservation work have been invited to attend an organization meeting of the 4-H Forestry Club in the Neillsville High School at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 30, Billy Schiller, club reporter, has announced.

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County Holstein breeders to receive recognition

The Imig brothers, Arthur and William, of Neillsville, route three, and H.C. Portz, of Chili, route one, will be honored at a special silver anniversary banquet of Holstein breeders at Oconomowoc March 29. The honor is being extended to the Clark County farmers and other long-time Holstein breeders of the state for 25 years or more of breeding activities. According to records, there are more than 250 Wisconsin farmers who have been active as Holstein breeders for a quarter-century or longer. All of them have been invited to the banquet and will be feted there.

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Conservation meeting planned for March 27

The next meeting of the Southern Clark County Conservation Club will be held at 8 p.m., March 27, in the Grant Town Hall half mile north of Club 10.

An interesting program, including the showing of several reels of entirely new conservation pictures by George Kopinghorn of the state game and fur farm at Poynette, has been arranged, Donald Braatz, secretary, announced. A Dutch lunch will be served following the program.

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When logging on the Black River was approaching the end

The Galesville Independent gives an interesting picture

Editor’s Note: The following story about logging on the Black River as the end was approaching is taken from an edition of the Galesville Independent which was printed in 1898.

The days of the logging industry on the Black River are numbered. The supply of standing pine has been diminishing year after year and now, today, a comparatively small portion of it remains. Whole towns in Jackson, Taylor, and Clark counties, which were once covered with pine forests, are now barren and desolate; black, pine stumps only remain.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago the lumbering business on Black River was in its prime. Lumbering camps dotted the whole of the Black River country. Fully 2,500 men cut and rolled into the river 200,000,000 feet of logs annually.

The lumbering industry was immense - there were millions in it. Cities and towns sprung up along the Black and employment was offered to all who came. Every year, about the middle or first of November men made their way “to the woods,” where the winter days were spent in hard work. From 3 in the morning until 8 or 9 o’clock the men toiled until spring opened. This has been going on for 30 years, but a halt will soon come. This year only 80,000,000 feet of logs will be taken out, while the available amount of timber left is only 225,000,000 feet. This seems to be a big lot, but when one glances back over the records and finds the “Bill” Price and his crew of 500 men cut and “drove” down the Black in one season 100,000,000 feet of logs, the remaining amount of pine seems almost insignificant. Bill was quite a lumberman, though, and his season’s work is considered a big one.

Lumbering on the Black is practically over, but the good old stream has made thousands of men rich and no less than a score of millionaires. Trow, Bright, Paine, Birchard, Elliot, Brockway, Nichols, Mills, and others grew rich at “the Falls,” but the bigger ones posted themselves at the mouth of the Black. Of these, the most noted are Withee, Coleman, Gile, Sawyer, Austin and Washburn.

In getting rich, these men, as “The Black River Improvement Co.,” transformed the once deep, beautiful stream to a shallow river filled with sandbars. They have literally spoiled the Black forever. Cities and towns now situated upon it are generally dead. It was a blessing that the founders of this city (Galesville) built the first foundation two miles away from the then beautiful stream.

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Weigert duck has reason to quack Lays two complete, fully matured eggs - one inside of the other. Outer shell 10 inches around

Mrs. W.H. Weigert’s white Peking duck had something to “quack” about the other day.

It laid two complete, matured eggs - one inside of the other.

Both eggs were complete in every respect. The smaller egg, which measured seven inches in circumference the long way around, was completely within the large egg. The yolk and white of the larger egg were packed between the shell of the inner egg and its own shell. The larger egg was 10 inches in circumference the long way around.

The outer shell of the freak double-egg broke when Mrs. Weigert gathered it. She took it inside the house and put it in a saucer. As the white and yolk drained from the outer shell, the second, inner egg, became visible.

“I guess I must be seeing things,” Mrs. Weigert told her husband. The Weigerts live in the town of Mentor.

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Willard News

Frank Plautz is a patient at St. Joseph’s hospital at Marshfield.

Ernest Laykovich came from Fort Snelling, Minn., for a visit with relatives and friends in this vicinity.

Mrs. Anna Zaller and Mrs. George Rauen are well at this writing.

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Deich and family of Chicago visited at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Prebil, Jr., Sunday. Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lunka and daughter, Avis, Mrs. Frank Lunka, Sr., and Anton Debevec, Sr., visited Sunday afternoon with Frank Lunka, Sr., who is a patient at Sacred Heart Hospital at Eau Claire.

Mrs. Hans Schmidt and Mrs. Elmer Severson and children visited at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Vern Severson of Greenwood Tuesday.

Frank Perovsek, Sr., entered Sacred Heart Hospital at Eau Claire for treatment Monday.

Otto Voie is dehorning cattle in this vicinity.

Miss Antonia Krainz returned home Thursday from West Allis, where she visited relatives and friends.

Matt Malnar and L.S. Butcher attended a conservation meeting at Curtiss Monday evening.

Frank Zevnik of Thorp visited at the home of his mother, Mrs. Anna Zallar, Sunday.

*****

Senior class play

The Senior class of the Granton High School will present a three-act farce entitled “Look Who’s Here” March 24 at the Granton Opera House.

The cast of characters includes Lyman Winchell, Algernon Breseman, Estelle Winchell, Lorraine Garbisch, Tommy Rotana, Harold Behnke, Grace Sterling, Edna Hasz, Alice Bainbridge, Margaret Beeckler, Jennie and Ethelyn Lindow, Jimmie and Paul Foemmel, Irene Andrews, Leolene Grassman, Rose Standiford, Evelyn Elmhorst.

The synopsis: The entire action of the play takes place in the living room of the Winchell home in a suburban town in the east. Aunt Alice, a rich aunt, wills all her property to her nephew, Lyman Winchell, providing he stays single. He disobeys her will and causes a mix-up between his wife and her friend, but all turns out well in the end.

*****

Weston

We had another bad storm last week (March 15), rain, snow, and a bad blizzard. Everything was glazed with ice and no mail or milk trucks for a couple days. 

Champions All

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