Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

June 17, 2015, Page 11

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

June 1895

 

Pleasant Ridge News:

 

The O. F. Walter barn was raised the early part of this week.

 

The Pope house is up and enclosed.

 

Try Wm. Hughs when you want some blacksmithing done.

 

A social hop at Mr. Thomas Huckstead’s was the attraction Monday night.

 

Blackman’s hill was graded down early this week.  Mr. Blackman must now build a huge bridge to get on the level with other people.                                                                                                                 

•••••••••

News of West Weston:

 

Fording Wedges Creek seems like old times.  The bridge is removed for repairs.  Fred Seif is filling in the east end.

 

Another man made Happy!  Tom Bruley and Rosa Jacklin were married.  We wish them a long and happy life.

 

The Weston creamery is doing a flourishing business.

 

Andy Redman from Christie is quite a frequent visitor on this side of late, some attraction up in the woods, probably a dear!

 

The Sunday school is flourishing at the Schwamb schoolhouse.  Over 50 were present last Sunday.

•••••••••

Town of York news:

 

Carpenters have begun work on Joe Rondorf’s new house.

 

A petition has been filed in town clerk’s office for a special town meeting.  Hurrah for the folks.

 

Charles E. Schuster and Miss Mary Madler, both of the Town of York, were married Saturday, May 25, by J. P. Kintzele.

•••••••••

Dr. Pitcher placed 40,000 trout fry in streams near here this week for the state hatchery.

•••••••••

“The darkest hour in a young man’s life,” said Horace Greeley, “is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.”                                                                                                              

•••••••••

A social will come off Friday night at the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. E. Leuthe’s, the B. Dangers house, and arrangements are completed to care for all who honor the occasion with their presence in a most pleasant way.  Ice cream and cake will be 10 cents, and coffee and sandwiches 10 cents, served anytime during the evening.  There will be card playing and other amusements.                                                                                                          

•••••••••

We are offering three excellent bargains in Lady’s Oxfords and Walking Shoes.  They are divided into three lots at $1.00, $1.25 and $1.50.  Don’t buy before you see these on our bargain table.  Marsh Bros.

•••••••••

Black River is as free from logs as it has ever been since the years before logging began.  It is said to be a fact that the two or three years to come will see but scant piles of logs and those mostly of small size, and that this will end the days of this river as a logging stream. Black River has had a notable record as a logging stream and if written up as such a wild and wooly record should be, it would make racy reading.  Still, with the unnumbered millions that have poured from its mouth every spring, it is marvelous how few large fortunes have been built up from the industry.  This circumstance illustrates the greater truth that it is not want of opportunity so much as want of capacity in this new country of ours, which prevents all of us from acquiring wealth.

 

Now that logging is practically a closed chapter on the Black, our energies should be turned to improving its power to turn mill wheels, generate electricity and create a hum of manufacturing industry, which shall make its borders thrive as do the borders of the rivers in New York, Massachusetts and other eastern states.

•••••••••

Mayor S. H. Esch had a Poco Tempo colt, four years old, struck by lightning during the storm Sunday afternoon and was instantly killed.  The colt was the most valued of Doc’s “string” of horses, and it was odd that lightning happened to single that horse out for destruction, as it was standing with others when struck.  It was the metal of the animal, Doc.

•••••••••

C. Krumrey, George and Fred Huntzicker, Ernest O’Neill and Stub Masters go overland on bicycles to Stevens Point today, where all will stop except Krum and George, who will go on to Plymouth.

 

Henry Stangl and Emil Ketel rode their bicycles to Spencer and back Sunday via Marshfield, a distance of 80 miles, getting back about noon.  They started at 3 a.m.                                                   

•••••••••

The cellar excavation and wall work for the new C. C. Sniteman Co. building is well along, and work on the wall will soon be underway, brick therefore having been made.                                                                      

•••••••••

The Granton Creamery reports that on Tuesday morning 6,280 lbs. of milk were received.  The patronage of our Clark County creameries is rapidly increasing.  Let our farmers push and extend this branch of their business, as they should and they could become rich men.  There’s cash in it, every month.              

•••••••••

Last Friday 30 or 40 girls and boys were bathing at Ross Eddy, not properly dressed, and we protest that parents are not doing their duty in letting their children go out thus unattended.  In fact, their presence at the Eddy has become a nuisance to the public, complaints have been made of indecent language by the boys there, and notice is now given that, in the interest of the general good, bathing will now be prohibited there.

•••••••••

The city Jail is now where it ought to be.  This antique bird-cage is to be sided and painted, we hear, and we hope.  We promise not to yell extravagance if that is done.                                   

 

Clark County’s first jail, crudely constructed, was built in 1866.  It was purchased by the City of Neillsville in 1882; then moved to a site west of Grand Avenue and south of Eighth Street.

 

June 1940

 

Only a few days after state beverage tax division agents swept through Wood County and caught nine tavern keepers in their nets, the recently organized Clark County Tavern Keepers League heard Dist. Atty. Hugh F. Gwin declare that strict adherence to the law served their own best interest.

 

The invited speaker, before the group in Greenwood Monday night, Mr. Gwin declared that, “if your organization helps in the matter of law observance, it will be serving you men who have substantial investments in our business as well as the public.”

 

Pointing out that the public will not long tolerate sales to minors, or other infractions of the law, Mr. Gwin predicted that prohibition will return “in one form or another unless the tavern keepers obey laws relating to their business.”

 

The nine Wood County tavern keepers were arraigned Satruday on charges of keeping their places open for the sale of liquor between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m.                                                            

•••••••••

When King Leopold III of Belgium laid down his arms before Hitler’s Nazi legions last week, Mrs. Julius Ampe of the Town of Eaton predicted the coming of democratic rule for her native Belgium.

 

For 36 years she has enjoyed the freedom and liberty, which are the heritage of all Americans, native and adopted.  Therefore it was not surprising that she should wish similar self-rule for the people of her native land.

 

“They will probably come out of the war with a president,” she commented.  “They should have a government like we have here, don’t you think?  Then, if the president does something they don’t like, they can kick him out every four years!”

 

She apparently gave little heed to the possibility of a German victory when she made her prediction; for it has been said that Leopold will be set up as puppet ruler over Belgium and Holland when, or if, the Nazis are victorious.

 

Mrs. Ampe was not particularly concerned with what has happened to Leopold.  While the Belgian monarch now repudiated by his cabinet, received brickbats and bouquets for his surrender, she was not one to throw either.  Her attitude, rather, seemed to be: “what’s done cannot be undone;” and right or wrong, all that can be done is to make the best of it.

 

But Mrs. Ampe is concerned over what the rest of the world might think of the Belgian soldiers.  “They’re good fighters, and brave,” she declared.  Undoubtedly a picture of the heroic stand at Liege in 1914 flashed through her mind; and possibly a picture of King Albert, father of Leopold, as he led the men in a mighty defense of his country.

 

Mrs. Ampe is one of the three native Belgians living in Clark County.  The others are Mr. Ampe, who preceded her to the United States by a year in 1903, and Mr. Ampe’s brother, Acheel, a resident of Loyal.  Several other members of the family took up their homes in America; but they have settled in other parts of the country.

 

They came from their parental home, on a farm near Thourout, a city in West Flanders, near Bruges.  Eighteen years old when she crossed the Atlantic, she was doing something that few Belgians do. Children are usually born, grow up, and die in one place, she said.  Seldom do they travel more than a few miles from the place of their birth.

 

What of the poppies, which “grow in profusion” on the fields of Flanders, and which have become symbolic to Americans of the thousands of the somber white markings, which criss-cross in endless rows?  Thirty-six years is a long time to remember such a thing, and Mrs. Ampe had to pause a brief minute.

 

“Yes,” she said, “there were poppies.”  And she explained that to the hard-working Belgian farmers those self-same poppies of Flanders were undesirables, weeds, which suckled from grain and had to be picked out by hand.

 

The Ampe’s returned to their native West Flanders in 1914, just before World War I broke out.  When they told their family and friends that they were farming 80 acres of land, eyes popped n amazement.  They thought the relatives and friends were veritable lad barons.  “Why, they thought that we must have from 50 to 60 people working for us,” Mrs. Ampe laughed.

 

Farming in Belgium, when there is peace, is done with an intensiveness that farmers of Clark County can hardly realize.  The average farm is from one to two acres.  And that is all a man and his family have time to work.  Fields are weeded by hand, and every weed is taken.  Weather conditions allow three crops annually, and for this reason the Belgian farmers fertilized heavily to replenish the soils.

 

A crop of grain usually followed by a field of beets, Mrs. Ampe said, and it is the beets that take the place of corn as the “winter” feed for livestock.  The weather in Belgium is not suitable for corn, for the temperature is more even the year around.  Rarely do the Belgians experience the hot weather so necessary for good corn growth.

 

And if Clark County farmers think their milking chores tie them to the farms, they may find some consolation in the knowledge that most Belgian farmers milk not twice a day, but six times!  This, in part, is one of the reasons for high milk production in the country, Mrs. Ampe says.

 

Other reasons, of course, are careful culling, breeding and the liberal use of concentrates in feed.

 

But for the time being, at least, miseries of war have erased all thoughts of peacetime pursuits from the minds of the land-loving Belgians.  And, after the holocaust is over they will return once more to reconstruct their villages and farms.

 

When that time comes, Mrs. Ampe is one who would like to return for a visit.

•••••••••

Through the initiative of Otto W. Lewerenz, Neillsville now has a community refrigerator and locker system.  Mr. Lewerenz is today completing the installation of a modern refrigerating plant, equipped to perform that wonder of the modern food worlds, “sharp freezing.”  By the use of this plan it becomes possible for patrons to store fresh food with the freshness “frozen in,” and to enjoy this fresh food in the dead of the following winter.

 

The plant will operate somewhat after the order of the safe deposit department of a bank.  Each patron will have his own locker, with his individual key.  In this locker he will store whatever he pleases, for future use.  He will have access to his locker freely and with practically no restriction as to hours. Thus the modern  housewife, learning Sunday morning, that she will have company for dinner and being unable to purchase at the stores, may go to her locker and take from it the fresh vegetables fruit, meat and chicken, which have been frozen and stored there months before.

•••••••••

Mr. and Mrs. August Dux of West Pine Valley celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary Friday evening, June 7.  About 60 friends and relatives gathered at the old home and spent the evening at cards and recalling incidents of the olden days.  Some old-time songs were sung and at about midnight, a wonderful lunch was served.  It was a gathering long to be remembered by all who were there.                                                     

•••••••••

Nineteen members of the Olson family gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Oluf Olson, Sr., here Sunday for a family reunion.  Those present besides Mr. and Mrs. Olson were: Mr. and Mrs. David Daniel and son of Cambria, Mr. and Mrs. Ewald Schwarz and two children of Greenwood, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Holt and four children, Mr and Mrs. Lowell Dorn, and Kenneth and Oluf, Jr.  Also present was Miss Agnes Hed.             

•••••••••

Silver Dome Ballroom of Neillsville: Wed. June 19, Free Wedding Dance in Honor of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Francel; Thurs. June 20, Free Wedding Dance in Honor of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hoffman; Fri. June 21, Free Wedding Dance in Honor of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Strey.                                                                     

•••••••••

The Neillsville Boy Scouts and their leader, Earl Ruedy, held their annual campfire and visitors’ night at Camp Higichara last Thursday evening.  The new 30-foot signaling tower, built this summer by Richard and Heron Van Gorden, James Hauge and Calvin Swenson, was dedicated to William Coates, scout executive of Rice Lake.  A beautiful part of the ceremony was the displaying of the American flag, from atop the tower, by Eugene Church, while the troop sang: “God Bless America,” as Donald Cummings displayed the Scout flag.  The scene was made more touching by the mellow glow of the campfire and spotlight illumination on the flag.

 

There were stunts, songs and talks.  For the closing number each member of the troop carried a lighted candle and recited the Scout Oath and Law in unison.

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