Clark County Press, Neillsville,

May 31, 2006, Page 12

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

 

Clark County News

May 1911

 

C. E. Vease, of Chicago, has purchased the O’Neill House property and arrived here Saturday to look the place over with the view of making extensive improvements.  He will take possession of the hotel next week.  Mr. Vease is an experienced hotel man, but has primarily purchased the hotel to make a permanent home for himself and his family.  He expects to remodel it entirely and equip it into a modern hostelry.  He returns to Chicago today to bring his family here.

••••••••••

The Sunday mail service at Neillsville, Wis. Post Office has been arranged as follows, effective May 14, 1911.  The heavy Sunday morning mail carrying Sunday paper will arrive as usual, and the general delivery window will be open from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m.  The small mail pouch going and coming at noon has been taken off.

 

Sundays, there will have one incoming mail delivery and one evening outgoing mail delivery.  The night mail takes only letters.  Letters to go out Sunday, in the night mail, should be in the office by 15 minutes to 8 p.m.

••••••••••

P. N. Nelson, Dr. J. H. Brooks, C. Krumrey and Herman North all bought Buick automobiles.  Mr. Krumrey went to Eau Claire, Friday, to get his new automobile, as they happened to have it in stock there.

••••••••••

Henry Wallace has finished building a concrete basement for Fred Hohenstine’s (Hohenstein’s) barn, in East Weston.

••••••••••

On the afternoon of May 17 at 3 p.m. at the Globe Lutheran Church, Rev. Brandt united in marriage Rev. A. B. Korn and Miss Clara M. Scheel.  The couple was attended by Misses Elsie Scheel and Elizabeth Hagedorn, and Theo. W. Korn and Louis Scheel.  The ceremony was witnessed by a large number of friends and relatives and the event was befittingly celebrated at the home of the bride’s parents.  Mr. and Mrs. Korn left for Burlington and Chicago for a brief wedding trip before going to their home at Shickley, Neb.

 

Rev. Korn has a pastorate at Shickley, Neb.  He is a young man of great promise and earnest purposes.  His bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Scheel, who are prominent in the Globe neighborhood.  She is a lady of unusual ability and womanly characteristics.

••••••••••

Chas Cornelius has the plans drawn for a modern building adjoining the First National Bank and now occupied by Kutchera & Albright.  The new Bedford stone front structure will be built to correspond with the design of the bank building.  The second floor will be fitted up into commodious office rooms, reached from the bank lobby.  Mr. Cornelius expects to begin work on the new building in about a month.

 

August Schoengarth is also preparing to erect a small office building on his lot just north of the O’Neill House.

••••••••••

Some of those local automobilists, who delight in a clear stretch of road and the power of 60 horses under them, should have been down to the railroad track, Monday afternoon.  A railroad velocipede with three men aboard it went through on high gear, and whether the sheriff or their mother-in-law were after them all amounts to the same thing, because they went fast.

 

As they passed the depot, one of them waved his hand at Harry O’Brien, and when Harry waved back the velocipede was back of Ring’s farm.  Sherman’s cow mooed a pleased reply to Harry’s greeting.  Stub Masters heard them coming and he thought to run out and see what the noise was.  He moved medium fast on his feet but when he got out of his front door, the motor had disappeared, taking its noise with it but leaving its smell.  Stub scratched his head as though he had been caught dreaming and went back to his job of figuring out water rents.

••••••••••

Mrs. S. Morse is selling ice cream at the Christie store.  She will also do dressmaking there this summer, satisfaction guaranteed.

••••••••••

Secretary of State Frear has, so far this year, issued 2,768 licenses for automobiles and 479 for motorcycles, making a total of 18,600 automobiles and 1,790 motorcycle licenses issued since the law went into effect six years ago.  The fee for an automobile license is $2, and for motorcycle $1.

 

May 1951

 

When the Clark County Board elected H. R. Baird of Greenwood as chairman at the beginning of the spring session, two weeks ago, they chose a man known to his associates in the county as a businessman and political figure.

 

Mr. Baird has been a lifetime resident of this county.  He was born in Greenwood and moved to Loyal when he was very young.  He attended Loyal schools and was graduated from the high school there in 1919.

 

The teachers at school were about the last ones to call him “Hastings;” his given name.  He has used only his initials for years.  “There are people who have known me for a long, long time who don’t know what my first name is,” he says.

 

From high school, he went immediately into what proved to be his life’s work.  He took a job at the general store in Loyal, operated by Ben Picus.  He worked diligently and in a few years was handling much of the management of the store.

 

It was while he was at Loyal, that he met and married Ione Shupe in 1926.  Shortly after that, after seven years in the Loyal store, he moved to Greenwood to take over the management of another store operated there by Ben Picus.  He held that job for two years.

 

After apprenticeship, H. R. Baird decided to strike out on his own.

 

“I started out on a very slim shoestring with a store in Granton, he recounts.  The investment and hard work paid off and he bought another store in Colby, which he had another man manage for him while he remained with his business in Granton.”

 

It was while at Granton that Mr. Baird first took an active part in politics.  He served three years there on the village board and he has been active in community or county government ever since.

 

After seven years at Granton, he decided that he could do better elsewhere, so he returned to Greenwood and bought the same store which he had managed for Ben Picus many years before.  He has operated the store, just across from the Chevrolet garage in Greenwood, for almost 16 years.

 

Shortly after returning to Greenwood, Mr. Baird became the director of the school board, a post which he held in that community for 11 years.

 

His introduction to the county board came as the result of the illness of the late John Wuethrich, Greenwood’s veteran supervisor.  He “pinched hit” for Mr. Wuethrich on the county board for a year and a half.  At the end of that time, he ran for the office himself and was elected.  He has been on the board ever since.

 

Until this year, Greenwood had only one supervisor.  This year, they have re-organized with four wards and now Mr. Baird is of Greenwood’s second ward.

••••••••••

Ground was broken and construction started April 23 on the new four-room school of St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

 

This building will be of fireproof construction and will have a full basement.  It was planned with the help of the Rev. John Novak, the retiring pastor.  The financing and planning of the building has been a major enterprise with Father Novak.  He has labored so earnestly upon it as to bring a strain upon his health, and to play a large part in his retirement from the parish.  The large attendance at the farewell party in his honor gave evidence of the high esteem in which
Father Novak is held in the community.

 

Father Novak was born in Yugoslavia in 1883.  He attended grade school and college at Ljudljana.  In 1904, he entered St. Paul seminary.  He was ordained December 8, 1908, by the Rev. Jon Staria at Lead, South Dakota, and was for two years assistant in the cathedral at Lead.  From there, he was given a charge in Tripp County, where he served 12 missions for four years.

 

In 1914, Father Novak took a trip to Europe.  On his return, he studied sociology under Dr. John Ryan at Catholic University.  He came to Willard in 1917, where he entered at once upon the construction of the new parish house and social hall.  In 1933, he went to St. Bernard’s congregation in Abbotsford and in 1935, came to St. Mary’s congregation in Greenwood.

••••••••••

 

State championships have twice been brought to Neillsville by the Bowlerettes, a team of high school girls.  These girls have bowled together throughout their high school years.  The reward came to them last year, when they were juniors. They then captured the state championship, and they have repeated this year as seniors.  The Bowlerettes are: Mary Ann Smith, Mary Ellen Holt, Midge Audorff, Alice Buchholz and Elva Schaefer.

 

The Bowlerettes were the sixth team in the nation this year, and Alice Buchholz was second high, as individual, in the nation.

 

Another team of girls captured fifth place in the state competition.  All told, 85 girls went out for bowling in the year just closing.  The interest of the boys in bowling is newer.  Thirty of them were out for bowling, this year.  Third highest honors of the state went to them.

 

For coaching of the bowlers, the young people and the school are indebted to the voluntary services of Mrs. Mary Lee and Mrs. Marian Epding.

•••••••••••

Two consecutive no-hit performances, an unusual record, were made by Jerry Schmitz, Granton High School’s ace pitcher who is leading the Bulldogs to a 3-C conference championship.

 

Jerry hurled his second consecutive no-hit game against Greenwood Monday afternoon, winning 2-0.  The performance followed his 17-1 no-hitter against Loyal, last week.

••••••••••

Pink Van Gorden and Jim Hauge caught their limit of brook trout last Sunday, and then proceeded to Lake Arbutus and caught their limit of crappies.  With 10 trout apiece and 25 crappies apiece, the young men figured that they qualified as real fishermen.

 

Sometimes the boys, like others, are not quite so lucky, and this is well known to Cal Swenson, who has also fished vainly for trout.  So Calvin figured that he would sleep out the trout expedition, but he was up and around for the crappy end of the party, and got his limit, also.

••••••••••

 

“Taps” – Twenty-four Notes on a Bugle

 

Although not strictly a hymn, the strains of “Taps” are probably the most recognizable twenty-four notes in our country’s musical history.  The eloquent and haunting melody has drifted over the graves of soldiers since it was first played by a lone bugler on a Civil War battlefield, in 1862.

 

It was mid-summer and the Union and Confederate armies had been fighting for seven long days at Harrison’s Landing in Virginia.  Brigadier General Daniel A. Butterfield was serving as commander of a brigade of the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac.  The fighting had been brutal and the troops on each side had suffered considerable loss.  At that time, the only efficient way for leaders to communicate with their troops was with the use of bugle calls designated for specific purposes.  There were calls for charge, retreat, lights out, and other orders.  On this particular evening, Butter-field contemplated the traditional tattoo, or taps, used to signal lights out.  He felt it was too rigid and not melodic enough to signal the end of the day.  Unable to write music, he composed a variation of the tattoo in his head, called in someone who could write down the notes as he whistled them, and had him jot down the melody on the back of an envelope.  Then Butterfield sent for his brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton.  Together, they tinkered with the melodic line until the general was satisfied.  At the end of their meeting, Butterfield directed Norton to substitute the new call for taps, from that evening on.  Norton wrote in a letter to a reporter several years later:

 

“The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of our Brigade.  The next day, I was visited by several buglers from neighboring brigades, asking for copies of the music, which I gladly furnished.  I think no general order was issued from army headquarters authorizing the substitution of this for the regulation call, but as each brigade commander exercised his own discretion in such minor matters, the call was gradually taken up through the Army of the Potomac.”

 

The bugle call was initially intended to signal the setting of the sun, but the tradition of playing “Taps” at military funerals began very shortly after its composition.  Captain John C. Tidball, of the Union Army, was charged with supervising the burial of his cannoneer killed in action during the Peninsular Campaign at Harrison’s Landing.  At that time, the custom was to fire three rifle shots over the grave at the close of the funeral service.  But Tidball’s troops were concealed in the woods in an advanced position.  He feared that the firing of three volleys so near enemy forces, might renew fighting and so decided to substitute the sounding of “Taps” as a tribute to the fallen comrade.  Before long, the custom was carried throughout the Army of the Potomac until it was eventually confirmed by orders as the official tribute at the grave of any fallen serviceman.

 

It seems fitting that a melody played most often at times of great human drama, be sung both to mark the close of a day to reflect on the close of life.  At the end of the day, as well as at the end of life, there is the longing for assurance that “all is well for God is nigh.”

 

“Taps”

Day is done, gone the sun, from the hills, from the lake, from the skies.

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep, May the soldier or sailor God keep.

On the land or the deep, Safe in sleep.

Thanks and praise, for our days, ‘Neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky.

As we go, this w e know, God is nigh.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

 

A Neillsville Guard Unit circa 1900, as pictured, (standing left to right) Riley Sherman, Allen Wildish, Paul Rindfleisch, George Rude, Bert Hart, Leo Redmond (seated) Bob Glass and Don Brewster.  (Photo courtesy of Bill Roberts’ Collection)

 

 


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