Looking Back; Unity, WI History 1

In the time span covered by the preceding epistle there has been some action on this planet. There have been wars, depressions and a lot of “police” actions, some of which will probably continue for many years. In spite of it all, our generation has managed to reach the year 2000.

The hazards we encountered in the twenties, thirties and forties we were blissfully unaware of – things like lead paint, pesticides, air pollution, ozone holes, mercury poisoning, radiation poisoning, fats, cholesterol, smoking hazards, salt and air pollution didn’t worry us much, we just survived. We also survived with outdoor privies, coal or wood burning stoves and no hot lunches at school. We just didn’t know how much we were missing.

In Unity, Wisconsin, the place of my birth, there were people of many nationalities assembled in a small rural community, there were Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, English, Irish and Scots. In the surrounding townships they had tended to segregate into little ethnic enclaves in the original settlements, but by the time I was a teenager the dividing lines between these groups were fast disappearing. Schools, inter-marriage and just plain neighborliness seemed to make the lines become blurred.

In school we seemed to have few problems with rowdiness and misbehavior, for usually a child receiving punishment in school could look forward to more of the same when he or she got home. We heard of no shootings or stabbings and the teachers or principal quickly took care of any scuffles among the boys who misbehaved on the school grounds at recess time. It was very unlike the school of today.

I am proud of the generation of which I am a part. We did much, some good, some less than good, but in the overall picture a lot has been accomplished but there is still a long way to go.

Unity was a farming community in the thirties and had been so for some time. The two saw mills which had spurred its growth in the late eighteen hundreds were only heaps of rubble emitting wisps of smoke from smoldering sawdust piles. The businesses in town were almost totally dependent on the goods and services they supplied to the farm community which surrounded it.

During this period, Unity had a population of about three hundred, well down from the five hundred it had needed to become an incorporated village. The only paved road in the area was Wis. St. Hwy. 13 which bisected the little community. The streets and town roads were surfaced with crushed granite from nearby pits and subject to breakup and mud holes in the spring and to muddy surfaces after every appreciable rain.

Unity had no water or sewer system and, as a consequence, most homes had an old-fashioned pump beside the house and an outdoor privy somewhere out back. There were some exceptions, of course, but the Fuller home was not one of them. In residential areas there were no curbs and gutters, the crowned streets drained into ditches which led eventually into the small streams both north and south of town. Most of Unity did have concrete sidewalks, but many were in less than top condition.

Businesses in the community included the following: one general store, two grocery stores, a post office, a bank, a blacksmith shop, a meat market, a barber or two, a shoe and harness repair shop, a feed and seed store, two or three saloons (called taverns since 1933), a cheese factory, a hotel, two auto repair shops, a hardware store and two gas stations. (No malls – no supermarkets) For medical, dental and legal services, residents had to go either to Colby, four miles north, or to Spencer, seven miles south.

One school building served as both grade and high school for the village and much of the surrounding farm area. Most of the children more than two miles from Unity attended small one room schools nearer their homes. These little schools accommodated grades one through eight.

Unity had “The Unity Opera House” and, though I personally can not recall an opera ever playing there, it was a well utilized old frame structure. The high school used it for basketball practice and games, there were usually once a week movies, a few dances, it was the polling place, the Unity Tigers played basketball in it, there was roller skating and, on a few occasions, a touring “dramatic” company would show up for a one night stand.

Two churches served the community, the Methodist Episcopal Church and Trinity Lutheran of the Augustana Synod. Catholics in town traveled to Colby for their worship services.

The Soo Line provided rail service in that area and its tracks through town ran parallel to Highway 13 and about forty or fifty yards to the west of it. There was a fair amount of freight traffic on the line then and four passenger trains daily, two northbound and two southbound. Northbound trains stopped about three A.M. and one thirty P.M. and the southbound stops were around ten-thirty A.M. and exactly at ten-thirty eight P.M. The “ten-thirty eight” was almost my personal “go to bed” signal for some years as it whistled for the crossing marker a half mile south of town.

Of course the most important asset to Unity was its people, it could not have existed without them. Among the approximately three hundred citizens were school children, retired farmers, teachers, retailers and their workers, housewives, husbands, busy people and those who did nothing much in particular. I suspect they represented a pretty good cross-section of small town America of that day, but, I doubt that it had the personality extremes of the present day. Perhaps it was because of the simpler way of life. No one possessed great wealth, by today’s standards, most lived at or below the poverty level, but in that particular era, I doubt that anyone was aware of it or really cared a great deal.

In a community of that size, almost everyone knew everyone else, usually on a first name basis, so there was little that went into the social fabric of the town that was not common knowledge or, at least, part of the gossip. There were quiet scandals and skeletons in closets, but, there were also lofty goals and good deeds.

On the basis of national origin, Unity, even then, was quite diversified, English, Welsh and Scotch had migrated into town from the townships of Brighton, Hull and Spencer to the east, and Germans, Swedes and Norwegians had come in from the Town of Unity to the west. In the early settlement of the rural areas around Unity, settlers tended to locate in blocks according to country of origin, but after a couple of generations of fraternization and inter-marriage, these self-imposed boundaries began crumbling.

This was Unity in the Thirties, a small, quiet village, beginning to feel the Great Depression in 1930 and surviving it for the full decade without major disruption of its way of life.

In delving into a distant past, I find that I can recall a myriad of events and images, but they are fragmented and without continuity and, I suspect, the chronology of these early memories may be less than precise.

The first of my recollections, that I can place in a reasonably accurate time frame, is a vivid mental image of a woman, dressed in white, sitting in a dark, straight backed chair, holding a baby. I presume the baby was Rodney, born 22 May 1923. The woman dressed in white was a nurse, Mrs. Swenson, who came to help Mother when Rod was born.

Somewhat later, apparently early the following fall, a man came to the house to take pictures of Rod. He had a few bright lights and some colored lights, which I suspect, were to interest the photographic subject. What the lights did for Rod, I do not know, but they apparently interested me to the point of being a pest, so I was dressed in my cap and jacket and put outside to get me out of the way.

Both of my Sheldon grandparents were deceased before I was born, as was my grandmother Fuller. Only a vague recollection of grandpa Fuller exists. There is a memory of a small, elderly woman, wrapped in a blanket or shawl, sitting in a rocking chair that I cannot identify. I had believed this to be grandma Fuller, however, only recently I learned that she had passed away before I was born, so, there’s at least one flaw in my recollections of that era.

At some point in those very early years I had a pet lamb. I do remember that for a brief period it would follow me around and that I would feed it from a bottle and that it was very soft and pettable. I remember its demise and conversation between Mother and others about it, but I don’t recall being greatly distraught by the circumstances.

Apparently my first days in school were not filled with terror or trauma because I remember essentially nothing of the event. Some of the youngsters who started school with me in the first grade remained with me through twelve years in the Unity Public Schools; among them were Delmer Carlson, Bernice Lynn and Lowell Colby. Some moved away, a few slipped a grade along the way and several dropped out after we got into high school.

It was probably as a first grader in the fall of 1926 that I was exposed to a harsher side of reality. With others in the family, I watched from a dining room window as a house, two blocks south and two blocks east of our home, burned completely. Before the flames had totally consumed the house, we learned that two or three children had perished in the fire, including one of my classmates, Clover Colby. It was a terrifying sight and experience for me and the image of that burning house is still vividly imprinted.

In 1927 the stretch of concrete on State Highway 13 was laid down through Unity. I well remember watching the paving machine laying that stretch in front of Klien’s Shoe and Harness Shop for we were permitted to watch from right up close. It was an awesome, wonderful sight for a boy a little over six. (Perhaps some of the awe came from watching the workmen, during a break in the operations, each ate a pint of ice cream.) Prior to paving, Highway 13 had a gravel surface that was subject to gross mudholes during the spring and presented a sloppy, muddy surface after any major rainfall.

School in the grades one through four or five was generally uneventful. We were so busy remembering the alphabet, numbers, spelling, arithmetic, phonics, punctuation and English in general that there was little capacity to recall much else. It seemed that we had flash cards for everything and they were well used. There were several good teachers who left lasting impressions, a Miss Chatfield and Miss Brandt were both beautiful in my eyes and to have them select one for tasks like washing the blackboards or dusting the erasers was a great honor. Oh yes, were had recesses, time to play on the teeter-totters and merry-go-round, marble games in the spring and fall and sliding on little patches of ice in the winter. I suspect that both kids and teachers liked recess the best, except of course, for the teacher assigned to supervise the playground.

One distinct memory from grades one and two was the coatroom confusion during bad weather. Oh, the poor primary teacher, struggling with kids who couldn’t find the right foot for the right boot, who couldn’t button their heavy jackets and who had lost mittens or caps or both. One of my major resentments of that day was the fact that my mittens were attached to a cord running through the sleeves of my coat, I felt that I was not so irresponsible that I’d lose my mittens.

In spite of all the hazards of those early years, mumps, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, etc., etc., most kids survived to move on to the middle grades, a few took longer than others, but eventually most made it.

With each passing year there were changes in both home life and school. At home, our list of tasks to be done (chores) became longer, and at school the problems more demanding. In looking back at it all, I well realize what was occurring, we were growing up, but I’m not too sure that we were particularly aware of how far we’d have to go or how long it would take.

Probably our first real task assigned at home was that of filling the woodbox for the old cast iron range in the kitchen. From there we added carrying water from the well, taking the ashes from the stoves and as soon as we could tell the weeds from the garden plants, hoeing peas, corn, beans, etc. in the garden. Speaking of gardening, as soon as the first potato plant emerged from the ground, there was a potato bug waiting for it and had I gotten a dime for every one I picked, I could have retired at sixteen.

Grades five and six weren’t particularly exciting, at least I recall no momentous developments. I usually won the American Legion poster contests, (a dollar bill or a jackknife) softball became a major playground activity in season and we’d get to shoot a few baskets when we were lucky enough to get a straying rebound from the bigger boys. As for teachers in those grades, well, we had one good one and one who provided all with a learning disability.

By grade seven most of us were starting the difficult transition from childhood to adult. (Seems that some got through high school and beyond before they ever made it and some may still be short of full transition.) I suspect many of us then were almost as obnoxious as some of today’s adolescents but I’m sure none of us would have admitted it at the time. My seventh grade teacher was not one who imparted learning with great proficiency, though she did better with us than she did with the eighth graders. Though not ugly, she was hardly beautiful, but she was very well put together. (I must have been growing up.) In eighth grade I encountered my first male teacher, a Mr. Bartel, who’d have made a first class Marine drill sergeant. With him, assignments had better be done and there was no horseplay in his presence. Just what we needed at that stage of our lives.

As I recall, late in the eighth grade year, I had to shave for the first time. A month later I had to shave again for our graduation ceremony.

The transition from eighth grade to high school involved considerably more than climbing the additional flight of stairs. We had only four classes per day and they were longer classes with a different teacher for each class. The influx of students from the rural grade schools made our class about twice as large and provided a marked change in the cozy atmosphere we had experienced in the lower grades. Also, we were now on the low end of the totem pole, all other classes, the Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors, looked down on us and generally weren’t averse to letting us know it. In retrospect, I think it was good for us, a bunch of know-it-all adolescents, for it probably brought some of us back to earth temporarily.

The school day started promptly at 9:00 A.M. and ended at 4:00 P.M., except for those active in the school sports programs or some other extra-curricular activities. The mid-day lunch break for all started at 12 noon and ended at 1:00 P.M. During this hour it was normal for the students living in town to go home for lunch and that is what I did, usually running the five or six blocks between home and the old red brick schoolhouse.

In general, I remember all of our courses of study, but I will have to concede that there is some confusion on my part as to which I had as a Freshman and which were part of the Sophomore year. I suspect this is due to the fact that we had the same teachers during those two years. The same confusion occurs in my Junior and Senior years for the same reason, for a full new staff of teachers (4) arrived between the Sophomore and Junior years and they taught for us the final two years.

What did we study? English for four years. It may have been grammar, composition or literature at various times, but it was still classified as English. Then there were two history courses, general science, algebra, physics, geometry, economics, band, shorthand, typing, social studies and, almost forgotten, junior business training. It seems that I may have omitted a course or two, but at this point in time it is not of great consequence.

The teaching staff consisted of three teachers and the school principal who also did his share of the teaching. In retrospect, I’d probably evaluate them as to effectiveness much the same as I would have as one of their students. Not all were great teachers, but I suspect that, on average, we were pretty fortunate. Being in a small school in rural Wisconsin with probably a low pay scale, it was our lot to frequently get inexperienced teachers fresh out of college. Usually some aspects of their inexperience would show up, frequently in discipline, but the principal usually took care of that without much problem. For the most part, I felt that my teachers were well versed in the subjects they taught.

High school basketball practice, as well as our games, all took place in the village hall. (Unity Opera House) The practice sessions frequently drew a handful of spectators and kibitzers who, during breaks in practice action, would pick up the basketballs and shoot a few “buckets.” Frequently, Ralph Picus, owner of a nearby general store and dedicated sports fan, would participate in the buckets game. Ralph was not very tall but he was very round, from hips to shoulders, he had the general configuration of a basketball, but in spite of that, he was quite agile, though on this particular day, the agility was not obvious.

We had just completed a break in the practice session and coach Art Sorenson called us back into action. While the rest of the “bucket” brigade headed for the sidelines, Ralph charged down the middle for one last lay-up. He leaped to put the ball to the basket, did a half turn in the air and landed on his heels going backward. In an attempt to regain his balance, he started accelerating backward at a fantastic rate so that when he hit the double doors eight or ten feet down the line, they neither slowed his rate or altered his course. Ten feet further, another set of doors barred his path, doors of considerable mass and also latched, so it might be assumed that Ralph’s mad dash might come to an abrupt halt. Because the first set of doors were spring loaded, they returned quickly to the closed position so no one saw Ralph impact the latched doors, we only heard a resounding crash. All present hurried to the scene to provide aid and comfort to a bruised and battered Ralph.

We found the outer doors fully opened and Ralph flat on his back, two steps down on the entrance way to the hall about six feet from the doors. “Are you hurt?” “Naw, I don’t think so,” and with that he began checking out arms and legs one at a time, finally rolled over to get his feet via hands and knees and then returned to the hall to continue watching practice.

A day or two later, Ralph admitted to having slightly skinned an elbow and said that he was a bit sore in spots. Apparently the most severe damage was to the outer doors, particularly the one equipped with the panic bar latch. The locking rods were slightly bent and the latch plates that had been mortised into threshold and header had been stripped from their mounts as though they had been set balsa.

For the most part, school was easy for me too, too easy, for I don’t recall getting anything worse than a “B” except in typing, in that I managed “C’s” to perhaps an occasional “B.” I could and should have done a bit more real studying to pick up some of the details I know I missed. All too frequently at the age when we are at school, we fail to recognize the importance of fundamental rules of grammar, the significance of history and the absolutely vital roles that the sciences and mathematics play in everyday life.

If memory serves me well, my favorite studies were General Science and Physics. Geometry, Biology and the math-related courses were interesting and relatively easy but for some reason, I found the English and Literature courses a bit tedious, probably because they required written home-work with deadlines for completion. Music (Band) was totally enjoyable and I used to practice all summer to keep my lip in shape on the trombone that I played.

There was, of course, the sports program in high school. The primary sport was basket ball with baseball coming in second. At various times there was boxing, track and touch football, but they did not gain the support necessary for long term survival. In sports, I tried and enjoyed everything, except for boxing where I found that I derived no pleasure from getting bopped on the nose by the left-handed kid of my weight class with whom I most frequently had to spar in practice.

Basketball was the sport where I had most success. After a couple of games with the “B” team as a freshman, I dressed with the “A” team and before the year was out I had managed to acquire enough playing time to win a major letter. (At five feet seven inches and weighing one hundred thirty pounds, I thought it quite a feat.) I never was a really good basketball player, though. While I was an excellent shot, a fair ball handler and was usually the fastest kid on the floor, I fear I lacked the aggressiveness of a really good player.

Baseball was a game I really enjoyed. Comparatively, I was better at baseball than I was at basketball. At fielding and hitting I was pretty good and I did have a good arm from shortstop or third base.

The school lunch program in the Unity schools was very simple, if you lived in the country, you brought your lunch to school with you, if you lived in town, you went home for lunch. (Bear in mind that if you lived in the village of Unity, there was no spot in town where you’d be more than five or six blocks from school.) The lunch at home rule had one major exception, on brutal, blustery winter days we were permitted to go to school with lunch in hand, packaged in a brown paper bag. To my way of thinking then, lunch at school was a real treat.

Our lunches generally consisted of a fried egg or egg salad sandwich, a small glass jar of milk, perhaps a banana, apple or orange and some cookies or a piece of cake. (Often it took several days of Mother’s “prompting” to get the milk jar back home.)

I don’t know why, but for some reason those cold sandwiches, etc., eaten at school tasted better than pie and ice cream at home. I would imagine the novelty of it all was an important factor, but when lunch time rolled around and all of the wrappings came off the egg and garlic sausage sandwiches, the cheese, oranges, apples and bananas, the odor that pervaded the room created an aura of gustatory delight. On further reflection, perhaps it was just because those wonderful food odors negated the normally prevailing odors of the barnyard and unwashed kids.

The first real sign of Spring came with the return of the crows in mid-March. Soon after that things started to happen, warmer days and more minutes of sunshine, from a sun getting higher each day, caused the snow melt to begin in earnest and the Little Eau Pleine started rising into the surrounding marsh. The sounds of water trickling down the sidewalk was a pleasing sound that is still vividly remembered.

Spring – a time of returning robins, redwing blackbirds and meadow larks and a time to hear, “Boys, wipe the mud off your feet before you come in the house.”

The flat boggy area along the creek, a quarter of a mile or so from the house, was well covered with marsh grass. After the snow melt flood has receded, this grass was tinder dry and annually burned off by the Brunkhorsts, who then owned the land. The burning was done in the late afternoon or evening after the winds had died down. It was quite a spectacular sight from the dining room window. Amazingly, in a few days green began showing through the blackened earth and within a week or ten days, the marsh was a lush green. A week or two later, when the first warm evenings arrived, the whole marsh reverberated with the chorus of thousands of frogs.

Muddy, sometimes impassable, roads were another inevitable consequence of this new season. With the exception of Highway 13, all of the village streets and surrounding roads were surfaced with granite and very prone to develop mud filled sinkholes as the frost left the ground. It seemed that Highway “K” west of Unity had several spots that could reliably be predicted to be a mess, one was Kuehling’s hill just west of the Eau Pleine bridge, another was a stretch near Zimmerman’s further west.

With the first dry area of the school grounds came the marble game with the aggies, megs, steelies and bowlers. (Frequently called boulders.) It was a time of dirty knees, dirty fingernails, chapped hands and shoes with worn out toes. All had fun except those who lost their marbles, for in spite of the admonitions of teachers and parents to play for fun, most games of marbles were played “keepers.” Generally, I had a fair supply of marbles.

As a boy in school, the arrival of summer coincided with the first day of summer vacation in late May and our return to school, in early September, marked summer’s end.

Summer was neither all work or all play. From the time we were first able to effectively accomplish something, we were expected to make whatever contribution we could in the care of the lawn and garden. There was raking, hoeing, picking potato bugs, grocery shopping with our “Cannon Ball” coaster wagon, carrying water, etc., etc. Gardening was an important aspect of our summertime “chores.” We got to help plant it, weed it, sometimes water it and eventually help in the harvest. Radishes, beets, and lettuce were not among my favorites to tend, however, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes provided some immediate satisfaction when they matured and were thus more easily tolerated. One of my favorite dishes fresh from the garden was a combination of peas and little early red potatoes in a cream sauce, a combination that helped make gardening worth the effort. It is still enjoyed today for both its flavor and the nostalgia it evokes.

Certainly summer was not all work, there was fishing in “Sausage Creek,” gun battles with homemade rubber band guns, tree houses in the huge willows that once grew on the north lot line, softball and baseball, netting minnows for Dad’s fishing trips, swings from old tires, and a hundred other things for boys to do. Many of our summer hours were spent in making or building things, everything from the rubber band guns to little windmills, boxes, playhouses and on one occasion we even built a boat.

Our construction efforts necessitated procurement of the materials required. Generally materials were acquired by some diligent and persistent scrounging from the grocery and general stores, from our uncle Sam Hause and any loose and unused boards around the Fuller and Olson (Rev. J. A. Olson) homes. In retrospect, I can only express admiration for the tolerance and patience displayed by M. Helestad and T. Domer when confronted with two or three scrounging kids.

Many, many summer hours were spent on the banks of the Little Eau Pleine fishing. The three of us, Bart Olson, Rod and I, had a lot of fun catching shiners, chubs, dace and suckers from that winding little stream. Anything as large as a medium size smelt was a big fish and made our trek across Amy Klien’s field well worth the effort. Our fishing tackle was very basic, a few fish hooks, two or three yards of green linen line, a cane fish pole, (a willow branch also worked well) a bottle cork for a bobber and a Prince Albert can full of garden worms for bait. In the event we needed something to carry our catch home, a twig from the plentiful hazel brush served nicely.

Though I remember thunderstorms in Unity from March through November, summer was the real season for them. Because we were situated on the west slope of the hill and had an almost unobstructed view to the horizon, we could see their approach for a considerable length of time before they hit. Mother had a genuine fear of storms and as they neared they triggered a response in her that sent her scurrying to the little house out back. (Her fear apparently originated in childhood when lightning killed a pet (or pets) under the front porch of their home and injured a neighbor who was working a nearby field.) In any event, when the storm hit, Mother sat in the dining room well away from the telephone with her arms folded so tightly that on occasions her forearms would show bruised spots afterward. When the storm came at night, she’d get us all out of bed and we’d wait out the storm in the dining room where the oil lamp had been lighted and placed on the dining room table in case of power failure. Over the years of storm watching we witnessed some real zingers, saw Amy Klien’s barn blow down, hail bounce off the garden and lots of branches and trash fly through the countryside.

With summer came the Fourth of July with all its trimmings, firecrackers, sparklers, Roman candles, cap guns and rockets. The Fourth was one of Dad’s favorite days and he made certain there was enough firecrackers to last all day, big ones for the bigger kids and himself and little ones for the little kids. It was also the time to get a new set of flags to mount on the radiator cap of the car, unless they had already been purchased for Memorial Day.

Normally summer meant at least one fishing trip to Pike Lake, somewhere north of Cadott, roughly fifty miles from Unity. The evening before, all of the equipment was rounded up and stowed in the car so that we could be under way early enough to get to the lake before sunrise Sunday morning. Our arrival generally coincided with the gray of pre-dawn so by the time the oars were picked up and the boat located and loaded, the sun was soon to rise. With our “June Bug” spinners followed by mud minnows we trolled slowly along the weed banks powered by a sturdy set of wooden oars manned by Dad. A good day of fishing netted a string of crappies perhaps thirty or forty in number. Once in a while we’d get a bass or northern pike to break the monotony. After an hour or so of fishing came time for a sandwich and a cup of coffee from the thermos bottle. Somehow both the sandwich and the coffee tasted better than one would normally anticipate, I suspect the surroundings contributed much to their flavor. Back to fishing ‘til near noon, if the fish were still biting, then in for lunch, pack the fish on ice and head home. By the time the fish were cleaned our Sunday supper was ready and we could look forward to a tasty fish dinner on Monday evening, that is, if we’d brought home a good catch.

As the garden started producing quantities of strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets and beans, etc., Mother set to work in earnest canning the produce. Strawberry jam and preserves, many kinds of pickles and dozens and dozens of cans of tomatoes were laboriously processed and put in glass jars to provide good eating throughout the coming winter months. This meant extra trips to the grocery with the wagon to pick up vinegar, sugar and “Ball” brand jar rubbers and all the rest of the requisites of home canning. As peaches, pears and apples came in season, they’d be purchased by the crate or box and the canning process would continue. One wonders just how many hundreds or thousands of cans of fruit and vegetables Mother contributed to the feeding of the family.

In the week or so prior to the start of school in early September, there was usually a shopping trip to Marshfield to outfit Rod and me with some new clothes for school. Shirts, trousers, perhaps a sweater and usually some new shoes were on the shopping list and it is my recollection that J. C. Penny Co. was the source of most of it. (They had “cords” even then.)

Then came Labor Day closely followed by the start of the new school year, another summer had gone and like most kids, I suspect, we somewhat reluctantly returned to the books.

Our version of autumn did not coincide with that given by the calendar. For me, at least, autumn began with the first day of the new school year, normally the first day after Labor Day, and ended with the weekend following Thanksgiving Day. It started with warm sunny days, the sound of crickets and the sight of soaring night-hawks and finished with fallen leaves and flakes of snow riding a chilled northwest wind.

The first days of each new school year were marked by the restlessness of kids whose summer freedom had been suddenly ended, by encounters with strange new classes, possibly a new teacher and perhaps even a new classmate or two. Within a week or two the newness was fairly well gone and a routine had been established.

At home things changed also to compensate for our absence of six or more hours a day away from home. On arrival from school we heard, “Boys, change your clothes and get your chores done right away,” (We had to take care of those new school clothes we were wearing.) so, we changed, carried in wood and water and did whatever else that was needed. After that, back to what we had done all summer, play at whatever our interests were as dictated by our age at the time, perhaps with toy cars, baseball, football or whatever.

Saturdays in late September usually meant doing some garden work like digging the remaining potatoes, harvesting the cabbage and picking the few apples that grew on a couple of decrepit trees in the back yard. The potatoes were never in great quantity and did not last long, usually most of the cabbage went into sauerkraut and the apples went into pies and applesauce.

The kraut making was an intriguing operation for me. A fifteen or twenty gallon earthenware crock was thoroughly cleaned, the kraut cutter placed on it and the cabbage shredded into it. When a sufficient layer of shredded cabbage had been accumulated, salt was sprinkled on it and then it was carefully tamped with wooden kraut tamp that somewhat resembled an overgrown baseball bat. I was never permitted to use the kraut cutter, the blades were too sharp, but I was permitted to tamp the many layers of shredded cabbage and salt that would, in several weeks, become sauerkraut. When the crock was sufficiently full, the accumulated contents were covered with a clean white cloth which in turn was covered with wooden cover closely fitting the inside diameter of the crock. The last component to be added to the assembly was a well scrubbed rock, the biggest available, to hold the wooden cover down. All that remained was to set it aside until it “worked” its way to sauerkraut.

The woodlot over the creek to the south and west of our house always presented a delightful view at any time of the year and the onset of color in late September and early October only added to its beauty. At six or eight, it was a joy just to walk in those woods through the fallen leaves and perhaps gather a few special ones for home and our teachers. Later we went “hunting” with rubber band guns and slingshots and finally in our teens to really go hunting and extend our expeditions into the heavy evergreen cover in back of the Johnson farm. It was a delightful spot to enjoy the peace and quiet of nature, to contemplate the day and dream of tomorrow.

With late October came Halloween with ghosts, goblins, black cats, etc., but I don’t recall doing any trick or treating. I do remember coloring lots of jack-o-lanterns and carving up a lot of pumpkins. I will have to admit, however, that even as a teenager I don’t recall doing anything more malicious than soaping a few windows.

By mid-November we usually had our first snowfall and in spite of heralding the onset of a long cold winter, there was something enchanting in it for kids. If there was enough of it to collect on the ground to make it practical, there was always a rush to get out and make a snow-man (“Snow-person” these days) and throw a few snowballs. The one big disadvantage to snow was that one had to wear overshoes.

This was the time of year that Dad went hunting. On a few occasions when I was ten or so, I got to go along, not to hunt, just tag along while he hunted grouse, prairie chickens or rabbits. I probably did my first hunting when I was about twelve and, to brag just a bit, I got the first running rabbit I ever shot at. Deer hunting season usually started the first weekend before Thanksgiving and Dad always went when there was a season. He usually started preparations for the hunt at least a week ahead of time and his efforts to round up all his equipment frequently drove Mother to distraction, I can still hear her say, “What are you digging for now, John?”

Thanksgiving was a festive occasion at the Fullers. There were cranberries, sweet potatoes, potatoes, mince and or pumpkin pies, pickles, relishes and lots of goodies to accompany our Thanksgiving goose. I’ve often wondered, why goose? I suspect there may be several reasons, first – turkey was not as prevalent or as tasty then, second – Dad did not like turkey, third – goose seems to have been a tradition in the English festive diet.

After Thanksgiving, the snow and cold generally persisted ‘til well into March, so autumn had gone.

The calendar may place the first day of winter a few days before Christmas, but, by the time Thanksgiving had arrived, one could be sure that we’d have some substantial snow and a taste of near zero weather. As now, winters varied from mild to downright brutal, there was the winter of the big snow, probably the winter of 1931 – ’32, the Christmas Day of 1933 when we played football on bare fields with the temperature well in the fifties and the following day the ground was covered with snow with the temperature -20 degrees. Then there was a period of forty days in January and February of 1936 that the temperature never rose above zero.

The winter snows were a source of much entertainment in the pre-teen years, skiing, sledding, building snow forts and snow houses, snowball fights and just plain having fun in it. In the winter of the big snow, much of the Fuller back yard was honey-combed with tunnels and snow caves, Rod, Bart and I each had our own cave with inter-connecting tunnels. Access to the labyrinth was carved in a snow bank that was probably five to six feet high at the point of entrance but nearer the garage it rose to a height sufficient to permit us to ski onto the garage roof, probably about eight feet. Our caves and tunnels were lighted with little kerosene skating lanterns which today are treasured collector’s items.

Unity had no recreation department, so, when we wanted to go ice skating, we simply took our skates and shovels and trudged across the field to a wide spot on the Little Eau Pleine, shoveled off the snow and skated. No one had shoe skates so a good portion of our skating time was dedicated to retightening our “clamp-on” skates which tended to loosen or come off all too easily.

Winters of that era, as I remember them, seemed to be colder and generally with more snow, but I suspect that one element that added to the seemingly colder weather then was the lack of a thermostatically controlled oil or gas furnace that provided uniformly distributed heat at a present temperature. Our source of heat was either a coal or wood-burning stove that had to be tended frequently to maintain a reasonably constant level of heat. During the night when all were in bed, the fire would almost go out. When morning rolled around no one dawdled getting dressed because it could be pretty cool in the house. As for the quantity of snow in those winters, well, I guess that compared to the Janesville area, the central part of Wisconsin does get more snow than we do here.

Clothing was very much different in the days of my youth. There were no nylons, polyesters, insulated parkas and insulated boots, one kept warm with long underwear, woolen sox, wool or fleece lined jackets, scarves and caps with ear flaps. The heavy clothing not only kept out the cold, the effort required to carry the weight of it all generated heat, too.

The cinder path across the railroad tracks at the south end of Unity’s park was a favorite sliding spot for kids from all over town. A definite, but gentle slope from the street on the west to the tracks made for ideal “belly flopping” on coaster sleds when the path carried a coating of several inches of hard packed snow. I would guess that I was at least nine or ten years old before I could convince Mother that I ought to be permitted to stray that far from home in the evenings, but when permission was finally obtained, Rod got to go too. It was fun, much fun, and somehow one never seemed to notice the cold.

One of winter’s more spectacular sights was the passage of the railroad snowplow through town after a heavy snow and considerable drifting. We would see the plow go through fairly frequently but because of the terrain around the tracks in the Unity area, seldom was there a great deal of snow to remove. However, once in a while, every year or two, at the south end of the park heavy snow and drifting from the right direction would cause long drifts, two or three feet deep to accumulate on the tracks. Under those conditions the snowplow in action would create a sight to behold. The plow, mounted on an ore car pushed by a steam engine, would hit the snow banks at perhaps twenty-five miles per hour or more and the snow would fly upward and outward a hundred feet or so. Quite a memorable scene on a crisp winter day.

In those days, when our house was heated with soft coal or wood, an almost inevitable event of winter was a chimney fire. Though the chimney was cleaned every summer, soot would accumulate during the heating season and about once during the winter would ignite and burn with flames shooting from the chimney top and a roaring sound heard in the house. What the thunderstorm did for Mother in the summer, the chimney fire did for her in the winter. It was a time for fear and it wasn’t ‘til well after it was out that her calm was restored.

While there was no television and radio was in it’s infancy in the late twenties and early thirties, our winter evenings were generally pretty filled with things to do. For us kids there was home-work for school the next day, Dad and Mom did a lot of reading of papers and magazines and frequently there was a bowl of popcorn or batch of fudge to be consumed by all. If there had been a fresh, clean snowfall, Mother would further cook some real maple syrup to the right consistency and pour fine streams of it on a pan of fresh clean snow to cool. The result was a tasty, chewy candy form of maple syrup. Not infrequently when the outlook called for temperatures continuing in the zero or below zero range, Dad would bring home a box of Eskimo Pies for treat material. The low outside temperatures were needed because there were no home freezers for the storage of ice cream, etc., but they would keep well frozen in the woodshed behind the house.

One aspect of winter in those years that does not bring back warm memories was having to use the outdoor privy. It wasn’t warm at any time of the day, but on below zero mornings or late in the evening it was, to put it mildly, exhilarating, putting it bluntly, it was excruciating.

One of Unity’s landmarks was “The Feed Store”, at least that is what we usually called it. Actually, for most of my early years, it was “J. E. Lyons & Company”, a supplier of feed for the variety of livestock raised in the surrounding farm community and the place Dad spent most of his working life.

The rambling, red building, on the north side of Unity, rested on dozens of concrete pillars that brought the floor level of the building to that of the railroad box-cars that carried in the feed and grain that filled the great bins. But feed and grain represented only a portion of the contents of the sprawling building, there was also flour, salt and seeds stored within. A separate, smaller shed, to the south of the main building, housed cement, fertilizer and lime. It had once been a warehouse for potato and apple storage. On the north end of the main warehouse was a coal shed and beyond that were open bins for sand and gravel.

Of course, there was an office, not plush, carpeted and draped, but a plain wooden box about twenty feet square. The office had two doors, one leading to the outside and one opening to the main warehouse area. There were also two functional windows, one facing south near the outside door, the other, facing west, overlooked the large platform scale used to weigh wagon and truck-loads of the commodity being bought or sold.

Furnishings in the office were minimal, a high, hand-made desk with stool to match, a large steel safe, a couple of battered captain’s chairs bearing the remains of worn and chipped gray paint, and a second wooden stool, with back, that roughly matched the one behind the desk. On the unsloped portion of the desk was an upright desk telephone, an ancient Oliver typewriter, a manual adding machine, a container of well sharpened pencils and several stub-point dip-pens, and a bottle of ink. A large, gray canvas covered account book lay open on the desk during business hours.

Behind the desk were some shelves containing miscellaneous office supplies and a Crossley radio. Across the aisle to the right of the desk were more shelves holding the cash register and an assortment of farm type medications and a few hand tools. Heat was provided by a coal-burning stove which stood near the north wall in approximately the middle of the room.

It wouldn’t seem like a place to evoke all that many pleasant memories, but to a kid of ten or twelve or so, it had strong appeal. As a youngster, my opportunities to go to the feed store were limited. If Dad was working after hours unloading a carload of feed or flour to earn some extra money, often the whole family would go down to “help” for a while. Later, I would occasionally get a chance to go during the day if Dad needed something from home, or there were errands to be run. As a teenager, I got chances to work at unloading carloads of everything from flour to cement.

For some reason, the place had an aura about it, the clean, rather pleasant odor of the feed, the long dusty corridors, the constant chirping of the many sparrows that inhabited the place, the parade of farmers with feed to grind and the conversations among the men who came just to visit. Even today, when I go to a local feed store to pick up feed for the wild birds or corn for the squirrels, the odor and the atmosphere bring back vivid memories of those days long past.

Until some time in the mid-thirties, the regulars in the office, besides John Fuller, were Mr. Lyons and his son-in-law Anton (Tony) Umhoefer. Mr. Lyons (Jim), who owned the place, did little other than greet and converse with customers. Often the topic was politics for Jim had been an assemblyman in the Wisconsin Legislature.

When all the customers had departed, Jim would position his high-backed stool between the window and the door, lean back and frequently fall asleep. The relaxation of sleep would cause his jaw to drop and his upper denture would soon follow. The resulting clatter of uppers and lowers would rouse him. After a couple of such interruptions of his nap, he’d lean over to the desk, grasp a wooden pencil and placing it between his teeth in crosswise fashion, proceed to catch an undisturbed forty winks or so.

Perhaps the most pleasant recollections of “The Feed Store” occurred on hot summer afternoons. Business was slow, for farmers needed little feed, planting was done and generally the place was quiet. The radio would be tuned to WBBM, Chicago, where Pat Flanagan would be delivering the play-by-play of the Cubs baseball game. “Tony” was a Cub fan. If they were playing the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cards were winning, Dad would express his joy for he liked the “Gas-House Gang”. I never really did know who Mr. Lyons cheered for, that was nap time for him.

If there was a hot, dry breeze blowing, Dad would occasionally get up and sprinkle the floor with water from the one gallon glass jug that held the drinking water for all. I don’t know how much effect it actually had on the temperature, but it certainly seemed cooler for a few minutes.

As time passed, flies would gather (there were no screens) and become quite annoying, so, Dad would get out the Hudson sprayer filled with “Black Flag” and spray the office down. Usually the place would be closed and deserted for a few minutes while the spray was working, then back to the ball game after the dead flies were swept out the door.

Down the hall, about forty or fifty feet from the office, was the feed mill, an impressive but of machinery which was an important part of the total operation. The oats, barley or corn, etc., brought in by farmers or bought from the feed-store by them, would be dumped into a pit hopper where it was elevated to an upper hopper which fed it into the grinder that reduced it to a coarse flour-like material – food for livestock. The ground feed was again elevated to distribution chutes which permitted filling burlap bags that were trucked out to the loading platform and tossed into the farmer’s wagon, truck or trailer. Still vivid in my mind is the picture of Dad quickly closing the chute, removing the bag of grist, neatly gathering its top and closing it with a Miller’s knot tied with tawny brown twine.

The mill itself was an awesome thing for a boy interested in machinery. I never really knew what the inside of that mass of cast iron looked like, but the outside was painted red and had some levers and hand-wheel controls on it which could be adjusted to determine how fine the grind would be. On either side of the mill were large, gray electric motors (they seemed huge to me at the time) that started with a low hum and increased in pitch and volume to a rather loud whine when running speed was finally attained.

There were some unique aspects to the “Feed Store”. For example, the big safe was never locked and, in fact, bore a hand-printed sign, “This safe is not locked.” The days receipts in checks and cash went home with Dad every night in a roll stuffed into his right hip pocket. However, the big gray account book and the sales books were placed in the safe which was then closed and latched, but not locked, and the cash register was left open with only the pennies, nickels and dimes remaining in the drawer. On one of the few nights the drawer was inadvertently closed, a burglar broke in and wrecked the cash drawer to get approximately one dollar in small change.

The Feed Store had no well or sanitary facilities, drinking water in the glass jug came from a house up the street and the privy of the Soo Line depot across the tracks served as the sanitary facility.

Unity had a hotel. It wasn’t a Hilton, a Holiday Inn or even a Motel 6, but it did provide a weary traveler with a place to stay, if atmosphere and cuisine were of little consideration.

I would guess that it was built about 1900, perhaps little later, and was one of the larger buildings in the village. When it was built, it was probably a fairly impressive structure, but the years had taken their toll and by the time of the event described in the following, it was just another part of Unity.

It was afternoon of a bright autumn day in late October or early November of 1936. School was over for the day and I had dawdled in the assembly hall for some reason or other, probably to try to impress Dorothy Pech with wit or wisdom, when the village fire alarm sounded. Our view from the windows clearly indicated a small column of smoke rising to the northwest, so, off I go.

When I arrived at the scene, it was obvious that I was one of the late arrivals for the activity around the old hotel was like that around an ant hill. For most part, I was content to stay out of the way and spectate.

Smoke was coming from a couple of second floor windows and from under the eaves at about the midpoint of the building on the south side. The volunteer fire department had their two lines out and working. Furniture and furnishings were coming out of the building in streams from second floor windows and the doors of the first floor. The local plumber, one Art Cutts, always identifiable by the pipe wrench hanging from a loop on his striped coveralls, was on the roof diligently chopping a hole to ventilate and access the source of the fire. Art Sorenson, our basketball coach, was circulating in the assembled crowd trying to make certain none of his team members were involved in the effort of saving furniture, etc., and thereby expending energy to be used in the upcoming game just an hour or two away.

Shortly after my arrival at the scene, the Spencer fire department arrived and the newly added manpower provided another surge of confusion to an already hectic situation. In spite of the seeming confusion, in twenty or thirty minutes the fire was out, totally and completely out. Fire damage to the hotel was relatively minor, a couple of partitions needed repairs and so did the hole in the roof. Considerable damage was done to door casings and stops when pieces of furniture and fixtures larger than the door openings came through anyway.

With the fire out, I could stand back, examine the total scene and begin to appreciate all that had taken place. The vacant lot between the hotel and Perschke’s hardware store was strewn with mattresses, bed frames, lamp tables (some of which had become folding tables, at least they had folded on impact) washbowls and chamber pots, some still containing traces of their liquid or solid contents. There were curtains, shades, bed linens and towels to add to the array.

On highway 13, which passed directly in front of the hotel, was a collection of bar stools, some household furniture from living quarters on the first floor, miscellaneous bar equipment, bushel baskets of booze, and, to top it all off, the middle of that road was a pot-bellied stove with a smoldering fire still in it.

To the rear of the building there was more furniture and bags of potatoes and miscellaneous other produce that had once been stored in the basement.

I didn’t stick around to see the clean-up afterward, we had to get ready for the basketball game, but I’m certain that it took much longer to get the things back than it did to take them out.

While I can not say from my own observation, I would suspect that the bar was probably open for business that evening, perhaps a bit the worse for wear, but still providing refreshments to the weary fire-fighters.

P.S.: We won the basketball game, beating Spencer thirty something to less than twenty.

This is a story about the Fuller family’s automobiles and not a summary of technical and performance data about them. Such information should be readily available in some automotive history book available from a good library.

My first recollection of “our” car is that of a Ford “touring” Model “T” vintage of about 1923. (The actual year is not of great consequence for there were few changes made from year to year in the good old Model “T” during that period.) Of course it was black, all Fords were back then. “Touring” meant that is was an open car with “side curtains” to protect the passengers from most of the wind and some of the weather that could be encountered along the way. Our car had several items of special equipment not found in most Model “T’s” of that day, it had an electric starter, a battery and lights that worked off the battery and it had a speedometer with an odometer in it.

While the basic elements of the automobile of that day are still with us even today, the Model T had some unique features which I still well remember, to fill it with gas one had to lift the left front seat, unscrew a threaded gas cap and fill the tank under the seat. The gas gauge was simple and foolproof, a simple marked paddle, much like a paint stirrer from any paint shop, was dipped into the tank to check the gas level. The windshield wiper was manually operated by the driver as need dictated. To check the oil one had to get down on hands and knees, peer under the right side of the car and open a little petcock with a special wrench provided. If oil ran out, there was enough in the crankcase, if it didn’t run out, oil was to be added.

Tires on the old “T” were, as I recall, 30x3 ½ high pressure tires inflated to about 65 psi and were hard as rocks and felt that way on the bumpy, gravel roads of that time. Tire life was extremely short, if they lasted two or three thousand miles the driver was most fortunate.

I never did drive that car and it wasn’t until my late teens that I did have an opportunity to drive a Model T. It was like learning to drive all over again and keeping the thing on the road was a challenge, the steering response was such that it made me feel the linkage to the front wheels consisted of rubber bands.

Most Model Ts were drained of coolant (water) and spent the cold winter months on blocks in their garages.

The Model T gave way to a brand new 1927 Chevrolet two door sedan. It was gray with a black leatherette top and nickel plated radiator shell. I tho’t it a thing of beauty and for that day and age it probably was. It had a gauge for oil pressure, and ammeter to indicate battery charging level, a gas gauge that provided some idea of how much fuel remained. Oh yes, it did have a speedometer with an odometer and it also had a heat gauge for the coolant mounted on the radiator, an extra cost accessory called a “motormeter.”

For passenger comfort that ’27 Chev was a vast improvement over the old Ford, a much better ride, glass windows that were cranked up or down as needed, and a manifold heater that took a bit of the edge off winter weather.

That old Chev took us on a good many fishing trips to Pike Lake and other places, but by today’s standards it was probably primitive. That particular model had a tendency to break rear axles and eat up universal joints at most inappropriate times. Mother also proved that it was subject to denting when backed into the willow trees that bordered the north side of our driveway.

When brother Lyle bought a new 1930 Chevrolet coupe we got the 1928 Chevrolet two door sedan he’d been driving and he traded our old ’27 in on his car. That ’28 model was dark green and perhaps slightly roomier, otherwise in most aspects it was basically the same as the ’27. It did prove to be a pretty dependable vehicle.

That 1928 Chevrolet was the first car I ever drove and, in fact, it was the car in which I learned to drive, though this all took place while Lyle still owned it. Lyle at that time was working on highway construction as a job inspector and on some occasions when his work brought him close to Unity, he’d stop and pick me up to ride with him to those jobs in the vicinity. One day we were riding along a quiet country road and he asked if I wanted to drive a bit. You can be sure that an offer like that wasn’t turned down by a kid of nine, going on ten. After going through the pedals to press and the levers to pull, off I went. After a few practice starts everything went smoothly, probably more smoothly than Lyle expected, but he hadn’t noticed how closely he’d been watched when he was driving.

Dad used to drive to and from work much of the time even though the feed store was only about five blocks from home. (He didn’t need to walk for exercise after tossing bags of feed and shovels full of grain around in his day’s work.) One time the muffler gave out on this old Chev and the sound of its exhaust reverberated through the village each time it was used. We could actually hear when the car was started as he left work and would run in and tell Mother that Dad was on his way home.

Eventually time and miles caught up with that car and Dad traded it for a ’27 or ’28 Hupmobile, a bit larger car with lower mileage and a six cylinder engine. It was a pretty reliable old machine and got us a good many places. It was dark blue in color, had wooden spoke wheels, bigger tires and a considerably better ride than any previous car the family had. It served us well until after I got out of high school in 1938.

It was probably in the fall of 1938 that the Hupmobile was traded for a 1934 Chevrolet 2-door sedan, a trim looking, much more streamlined vehicle than any we had previously had. It was much lower, smoother riding and easier handling, too, and it featured “knee action” independent front suspension. This new front suspension probably accounted for most of the ride improvement but it also provided some major maintenance problems as bushings wore and “O” rings leaked hydraulic fluid from them. All in all, it was still a comfortable car in which to ride and, as I recall, the first car we had that one could enjoy riding in on a cold winter day.

It must have been in late 1940 or early 1941 that Dad traded the ’34 Chev for a 1937 Chevrolet 4 door sedan that caught his eye at a local car dealer. It was a good looking automobile, clean and well equipped and served the family well throughout the war years when anything that ran was a prized item. That car made several trips to Janesville when Dorothy and I were attempting to establish ourselves and find a place to live here.

So much for the automobiles of the Fullers of Unity, nothing sporty, racy or otherwise special to anyone except of the family. The only new car involved was that 1927 Chevrolet which came prior to the 1929 Market Crash and the depression years which followed. In those years personal transportation followed food, clothing and shelter in terms of priorities and we were fortunate to have a dependable auto of any vintage.

The Hauses, uncle Sam and aunt Lillian, lived just one block east of us and a path along the lot lines between our houses was well used. For half its length the path was between vacant lots, then came a “biffy”, next was uncle Sam’s chicken coop, then the barn and then the house.

The chicken coop normally contained sixty to seventy white leghorn chickens which were selected from a lot of a hundred or so pullet chicks acquired every spring. This particular year Sam had trimmed the flock to sixty six and through a lot of tender loving care and good feed had gotten his little flock to produce sixty three to sixty five eggs a day. This had gone on for several weeks and Sam expressed on several occasions that he hoped that some day he could gather sixty six eggs, one from each hen.

Another week or so passed and the hens still came up an egg or two short of sixty six hoped for. One day Mother took a couple of eggs and deposited them in the henhouse as she went down to visit aunt Lillian, her sister.

On the following morning, uncle Sam, with joy and pride announced to all that he had collected sixty six eggs from his sixty six hens.

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