Clark County Press, Neillsville, WI, April 17, 2013, Page 9

 

Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

April 17, 2013, Page 9

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

April 1883

 

Mr. Howard, of Pleasant Ridge, expects to clear five acres on his land that is near the Cunningham Creek, this week.

•••••••••

The saw mill that has been moved up to Washburn is at work there, using up more logs than it has ever sawed before.

 

David Carter has moved his housekeeping effects up to the mill and now he sits under his own vine and fig tree. He will work there for Schuster at present.                                                    

•••••••••

County Clerk Charles F. Grow has taken possession of the residence attached to the jail at the court house and will supply the prisoners with food at the rate fixed upon by the County board.  The rent he offered to pay the county made it very desirable for the county to accept.                                                        

•••••••••

Stop in at John Hoffman’s Bakery & Lunch House on Second Street in Neillsville.

 

There will be “Fresh Bread, Pies, Cakes, Rolls & other bakery, along with Lunch Accommodations.  Hot Coffee & Tea”

 

Farmers visiting town will find this a good place to take dinner. Terms reasonable

•••••••••

Early this week, the gates on Dells Dam on Black River were all carried away by the flood and it was by the merest good luck that the bridge superstructure was left standing.  Residents along the river down in Levis were compelled to move to higher ground. The damage to the dam is roughly estimated to be $2,000.

•••••••••

Last Sunday, April 8, a few fortunate ones beheld the spectacle of the O’Neill Creek breakup.  It was a grand site. Standing on the Main Street Bridge and looking down, the ice seemed as firm, fixed and solid as it had all winter.  Gradually the ice appeared to rise.  Up at the creek’s bend quite a commotion was seen and heard. Great pressure was evidently bearing against the firm ice near the bridge, suddenly the ice cracked into separate sheets, which began crushing and battering against each other.

 

With a big sweep the flood came down from upstream and within ten minutes the tame looking ice covered creek had become a swift and turbulent torrent, hurling blocks of ice against the bridge guards, bulging, bellowing, breaking and pouring logs, ice, roots and muddy water along the creek channel, making a stormy and lively rout. The piers just below the bridge were dismantled and soon looked as if in need of repair. When the creek flood reached Black River that stream was covered with smooth ice. Three quarters of an hour later there was not a bit of fast ice to be seen below the mouth of the creek.  Logs will be running soon.

 

Colburn’s flouring mill was compelled to suspend work several days on account of the O’Neill Creek flood.

•••••••••

Since Arthur Hutchinson, formerly postmaster at Pleasant Ridge has moved away that office has caused a little inconvenience, but we are happy to state that at last matters have been arranged to the satisfaction of all.  Mr. Fred Vine, town clerk of Grant, has become postmaster and the Department has changed the mail route, so that instead of going by way of Kurth’s Corners the stage hereafter will turn northward at the Ridge Church and then to Mr. Vine’s, striking the old route at the corner near Howard’s. The distance is the same, but with a little more hill-climbing to do, perhaps.

•••••••••

Saturday morning while the locomotive was on the turntable at the depot, the turntable wheels ran off the circular track nearly upsetting the engine, causing a delay of two hours.                

•••••••••

What might be called a double stick occurred Saturday afternoon on Third Street, in front of the Bradshaw residence, the participants therein being Mr. C. Krumway with his grays hauling a load of sawdust, and Mr. Wm. Cornick, with a span of horses and a load of hay. The mud at this time was deep as “Dives in his crimes” and for a short time mud, bywords, horses, cattle drivers, sawdust and hay were made to fly, but finally they all got out and drove away serenely. A few minutes before this happened a wagonload of beer kegs got stuck there, but, not being too full of beer, the kegs that is, the driver got out all right.                                                                            

•••••••••

Sol F. Jaseph has sold his neat little cottage adjoining the Presbyterian Church to Mr. H. A. North, one of our new hardware firm owners, for $1,000 and bought the Everett Bacon residence and lot for $1,500.

•••••••••

A quartette of young dudes of Fond du Lac wasted their sweetness for two mortal hours in trying to draw a response to their serenade from a vacant house, where formerly lived a lady fair.

•••••••••

Tuesday, a person with a loathsome disease of a dangerous character applied to poor commissioner Wm. Campbell for assistance. That evening overseer Fike loaded the youth into the poor farm wagon and took him over the hill. An attempt to get him boarded in the city was unsuccessful.  His advent into poor farm society makes the total number of paupers ten.

 

April 1943

 

What the Neillsville public schools are doing for the war was told to the Rotary club Tuesday evening by Walter Scott, a Victory speaker from the high School. Walter was demonstrating to Rotarians that the schools are functioning importantly and paying their way.  H instanced the following activities: course in pre-flight aeronautics, saving time in later training; new courses in mathematics; practical instruction in welding, with two machines available for work; instruction in radio code; course to develop physical fitness; making model airplanes; help with the lab or problem; cooperation with the Red Cross; organization of extension classes for adults; the Victory speakers.

•••••••••

O’Neill Creek went on a rampage, ice and water, Tuesday at noon, March 30.  The ice broke up and moved out, on the high and rising waters. Great ice floes smashed high up on the banks, pushing the old bathhouse aside on the south, and smashing the siding and underpinning of the Ghent building on the north side.

 

The damage to the Ghent building was threatening, as he ice tore away supporting members.  It became necessary to place temporary beams under the south wall.

 

The water in the creek and river was approaching flood levels, with considerable loose ice moving downstream. Out of the river, however, the main body of the ice had gone some time ago.

 

As a precaution, vehicular traffic over the Grand Avenue Bridge was suspended.

 

The O’Neill Creek at flood stage, when the water rose within inches of the Grand Avenue Bridge’s platform; happening more than once throughout the years of that bridge’s existence.

  

•••••••••

Fred Bullard once asked his father for twenty cents to buy skate straps. He got the money.  It was the first and last time he ever asked his father for money.  Sometimes his mother gave him a little and she generally looked after his needs, but from the time he was thirteen years of age he bought his own clothes and it was not long before he was on his own altogether.

 

The Bullard family, including the son, was of the old style. The father, Warren C., worked in the Neillsville saw mills and factories.  When he was going steady, he made $1.50 per day.  Somehow the Bullard got along, but Fred grew up with a healthful idea of the value of a penny.  He was assisted in this endeavor by the rate of pay, which he earned when at the age of 15 he worked eleven hours a day for the Hein Stave mill.  The pay was 50 cents a day.  He was also assisted by the rate he received when he went into the old electric light plant, with the purpose of learning how to run it.  He was paid $6 per month and they threw in the chance to learn for good measure.

 

The modest scale of earnings of his youth taught Fred V. Bullard the necessity of managing.  If returns could not be large, the way must be found to stretch what came and to supplement it.  One of the best ways, both to stretch and supplement was to tend garden.  When the Bullards lived on Seventh Street, not far from the present Clark County hatchery, there were gardens on the surrounding areas, including the present site of The Press building.  Young Fred, then 13, went to work in those gardens.  It was his first whack at gardens and he has been whacking away at them ever since.  Each summer he has a big garden, adjoining his home on the North Side.  He finds it a good way to keep out of mischief and to furnish food for the tight Wisconsin winters.

 

Early learning to work, Fred Bullard had relatively little time for formal education.  He worked and went to school.  He cared for cows and horses.  One winter he worked for Judge O’Neill. He stuck it out until he had finished the seventh grade.  Most of the time since he has wished that he could have gone farther; but work was on his trail, or he was on its trail and he had to let the long hours of labor take the place of hours of formal education.

 

If Fred Bullard learned less from books then he would have liked, he learned more about machinery.  He was one of the first to know about an electric light plant, Neillsville being the third city in the United States to have electric lights.  He worked there 10 years or more and he learned a lot, not only about electricity but also about steam, for in Neillsville the electricity was then generated by steam.  Always he has worked with machinery since.  If his work was not directly with machinery, he found machines to work with as a hobby.  He now has, in the basement of the North Side School, of which he is janitor, a veritable machine shop, consisting almost wholly of machines, which he has pieced together with odds and ends.  In this way he has provided himself with a sander, a wood-turning lathe, a drill press, a jig saw and a hand saw.

 

But there is one thing in his machine shop, in the basement of the North Side School, which Fred Bullard did not improvise. That is a combination saw, which is the apple of Fred Bullard’s eye.  That saw was the result of the good will of the pupils and teachers of the North Side School. They wanted to give him something for Christmas, in accordance with their usual kindly custom.  They asked him what.  To him the “what” meant the combination saw, which he had wanted, and that’s what it was?

 

This combination saw and three shirts and two sweaters and some other little things from the children and teachers of the North Side School are the best evidence that Fred Bullard has leaned that doesn’t come from books.  Out of the tight experience of hard work he has learned the common touch.  H knows the life of people who work, because he has worked, modestly and earnestly throughout his life in Neillsville of nearly a half century.  He likes to think of himself, in connection with the North Side School, not primarily as the man who keeps the building warm and clean, but rather the friends of 90 or more North Side children who attend there, and the friend and helper of the teachers who work there.

 

One of the things in which Fred Bullard is not educated in is politics.  He never ran for a public office until this spring, when he became a candidate for alderman in the First Ward.  He is diffident about his abilities as a vote-getter, and he does not hold himself as an expert in city affairs. But if the old First Ward can make use of such services as he can render, he would take considerable pride in becoming alderman of the ward, which was once represented by his father-in-law, the late W. W. Taplin, and in which he and the members of his family have spent many years of pleasant associations.

 

Mr. Bullard came to Neillsville in 1886, and he has resided here ever since, except for short absences, the most stirring of which was his service with the local company with the Spanish-American War.  In the war, he went to Puerto Rico, being in active service eight months.                                                          

•••••••••

Axel Sorensen, chairman of the committee rationing farm machinery, has been notified to stop rationing farm fencing.  This item may now be purchased without restriction.                      

•••••••••

Government wheat will be available in Clark County at about $1.14 per bushel.  This is the prospective price, based upon the normal mark-up.  The sales to dealers will be on the current price at the time of shipping, that price today being $1.05 per bushel.

 

At this price Clark County will be taking on a share of the 100 million bushels of wheat now released from the government surplus. Notification of the release of this wheat has been received by Axel Sorensen, chairman of the AAA, pursuant to act of congress.                                                                                         

•••••••••

Approximately 200,000 gardens will be planted this spring by families living upon the rural routes in Wisconsin. 

 

This is the estimate made by O. B. Combs, extension horticulturist at the University of Wisconsin, after conferring with county agents and neighborhood leaders throughout the state on producing the 1943 family food supply.

•••••••••

Vinton Lee has returned from Milwaukee, where he spent the winter, to work as a cheese and buttermaker for the Neillsville Milk Products Cooperative, taking the position formerly held by Harry Schlinsog.  Mr. Schlinsog and his family will move to the Pleasant Ridge Creamery, which he will operate beginning April 15th.

•••••••••

Hart’s South Side Grocery Specials, Soda Crackers 2 lbs. 29’; North Dakota Spuds 100# $3.65; Hamburger, 5 rationing points, 29’ lb.; Sliced Bacon, 8 points, 35’ lb.                                       

•••••••••

The Franklin School, Town of Fremont, will be closed during the next school year.  This was determined at a meeting of the electors of the district last week, the vote being 10 to 6 in favor of the closing.  The decision affects only the coming school year.

 

The pupils of the Franklin School have numbered 10 the current year, with the prospect of perhaps even fewer in the coming year. All of the children with possibly one exception are within walking distance of other schools.

 

The Franklin School thus becomes a war casualty.  The decision has also been reached to reduce the White Eagle State Graded School in the Town of Thorp from two rooms to one. The current enrollment is 28.

 

(The Franklin School was located one mile south and 3½ miles west of Chili. White Eagle State Graded School was 4½ miles west and 3 ½ miles north of Thorp. DZ) 

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