History: Greenwood Memories by Smith Miller #1 (1954 Letter)
Contact: Stan
Email: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
Surnames: Miller, Mathison, Hommel, Andrews
----Source: Greenwood
Gleaner (Greenwood, Clark Co., Wis.) (12 Aug 1954)
To: The Greenwood
Gleaner
By: Smith H. Miller, La Conner, Wash.
I am returning under
separate cover the History of Greenwood and the Gleaner of 1906, which I have
perused most carefully with the greatest pleasure. It surely was very wonderful
of you to think of sending these to me.
I would like to write a whole
book on it all too, but that is out of the question now. However, I did marvel
at the accuracy of the history as I remember things from my boyhood days there
in that fine old town. I still marvel how they garnered all the information.
The pictures in this book are mindful of remarks along. Take Grandma
Mathison for instance. And the picture of the early settler's cabin below it. I
am thinking of those folks and how they came in there to make their homes. Some
of them traveled by foot from Black River Falls on the trail carrying their
earthly belongings and found some settler where they could stay all night and
the next day start to build their cabin. This took some intestinal fortitude.
They asked no favors of anyone. There was no paternal government to dole out the
wherewith to make the big move. All they asked was to be let alone and they
would work out their future in their own way and help to build a great country
that we could be proud of. This they did and then they went on their ways to
infinitum serenely with the thoughts that their efforts would not be in vain.
This is not the place to comment on the final outcome. Suffice to say it is for
the present generation to scan events most carefully and decide for their own.
The next picture is the Schofield House. In my early days I looked with awe
at this mansion and it was a long time before I got to see the inside of it.
Today the staircases still stand out in my memory. It was in that house that I
danced by first square dance. My set was in the kitchen where there was one of
those old flat top kitchen stoves with the damper protruding out in front. In my
zeal to be a good dancer while doing a fancy "Gran Right and Left." I banged my
shin on that damper. That almost broke up that set for a few moments until I
could gain my equilibrium.
There was a great tile barn adjacent to that
house and I remember to clearly in later years the night it burned down. I
watched it from my bedroom window. It was a very big fire.
Then come the
old schoolhouse. This picture offers just too many memories to mention here.
Lots of things happened there in that school outside of the classrooms that
bordered on the devilish. I suppose inside too, come to think of it. I could
talk for hours about it all. Suffice it to say here, one of the top lights was
what happened one Halloween when a bunch of us kids got someone's young calf and
hauled it up in the belfry and tied it to the bell rope where it promptly began
to ring the bell. Ed Hommel was the town marshal then and he went pounding the
grit over there to get it down. Of course it took him and a couple other huskies
to do it. I saw Ed quite some years ago in Seattle one evening and I asked him
if he remembered it. But it seemed that there were so many of those pranks that
he couldn't identify particular ones.
One of my most cherished memories
is having had the honor of having a teacher (my first one) in the name of Mrs.
Eva Andrews, whom you still have with you. Of all the teachers I have had, she
stands out alone. No one ever could personify goodness and love towards us young
folks, as well it would seem, as she did. Mischievous ideas would lose their
identities before they would be accomplished. Mischief just could not function
under her tutelage. Kindness is a most powerful force and a breeder of things
good. I surely hope that this fine old town is most kind to her as she deserves.
Early expressions most always are very acceptable. (...to be continued)
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