Looking Back; Unity, WI History 5

1. The stockyards run by Wm. Schultz. He leased the facility from the railroad. Once a week the RR ran a special stock train on the Spencer-Ashland line to pick up stock at each stockyards along the line and deliver the stock to So. St. Paul, Cudahy or Chicago. The yards were pens made from 4 X 6 timbers with a shed for the office and scale (to weigh the incoming stock).

As children we would dare each other to walk around the top edges of the pens. If you failed the least you could expect was to fall into the manure below. To my knowledge no one was ever injured by the cattle in the pens but sometimes there were bull or wild stump jumper cows that made an awful fuss when we were around.

After WWI I the raiIroad discontinued the stock trains and "Doc" Kuehling hauled the cattle via truck. His first t.ruck as I recollect was a sleeper cab Chev. with a "big" (for that time) 28 foot traiIer. It was al ways a real treat for us kids to get to ride to Eau Claire with him to deliver cattle. Later he had a KBB6, 7 or 8 International.

2. The depot. Edward.J. Feit was the agent. There were 2 passenger trains and several freight trains each way daily. The day passenger was a local that went south at 10:15 AM and north at 12:23 PM. The night train went south at 10:43 PM and north at 4:02 AM. Herman Leffel was the night depot caretaker. He opened the depot about an hour before train times, stoked the fires in winter, swept the floor and carried the mail from the post office to the depot and put in on the train. Later he met the earl y morning train and took the mail up to the post office. They had a high wheeled 2 wheel cart to carry the mail in summer and a bob sled in the winter. Later caretakers were a Mr. Flink and Clyde Pirkus. The depot provided carload and less-than carload freight, Railway Express and Western Union Telegraph service.

I became a railway agent in 1951 and worked the Unity depot several times when Ed was on vacation or sick.

3. The O&N Lumber yard. It was a large orange-colored shed with an office built into the south-west corner. There were big roll-open doors on the east and west end with an ally down the middle. Lumber was piled on rack on each side of the ally.

There was a cement slab and with a rusty old machine fastened to it just north of this building that people called the shingle mill but it was not in operation.

4. Sam’s Silver Coach, a tavern run by Sam Stark and his wife Ella. It was made from an old railway passenger coach. There was a short bar on the south end, then walk through curtains and booths using the original railroad coach seats with tables in between. They served good malts and hamburgers as I remember. We used to meet in the booths behind the coach after basketball games. Later they added another coach running east from the north-east corner of the original coach. They also had 3 or 4 tourist cabins painted silver that they rented to travelers.

Sam sold to a man named Johnson in about 1949. It was called Johnny's Silver Coach.

5. The Shell station was owned by L.L.Felker Co. of Marshfield and operated by Ernest E. Capes. It was a building about 12 feet square with windows on the north, west and south side. The toilets were 2 holers "out back". There was a ramp about 3 feet high on the north side of the station used as a grease rack. It took a really brave fellow to go out there in the winter and do an oil change and grease job.

Felker replaced the current 2 bay station between 1951 and 1954 and Ray Benning managed the station.

6. The E. E. Capes residence. He owned a '40 Oldsmobile which was the first auto I remember with an automatic transmission. He also owned a '38 International school bus (about 32 passenger) which he operated for the Unity school District. Someone pumped the gas at he station while he was on the bus route. He had a garage for the car and bus behind his house. The school also owned a bus. One bus picked up west of Hy 13 and the other east of Hy 13.

During the war Capes also carried people from the neighboring towns to Marshfield to work in the canning factory and shoe factory. Gas was in short supply and it was patriotic to take the bus. Then he picked up German prisoners of war from the camp which I think was near Marshfield and carried them to various farms and the canning company at Loyal to work for the day. The Germans used to shout war slogans when they went through town on the bus. A quite a few people talked German and would yell back. In the evening he reversed the trips and got everybody back home. With the school route, the station and these runs it must have made very long days.

6. The Ed. Feit home. His wife was Edith, they had one daughter named Jean, who would have graduated from high school about 1947 or so.

7. The Runge Dairy. Mr. & Mrs Runge ran the 1oca1 dairy and delivered milk, cream, etc. to the stores and to homes around the village. There should still be a few quart milk bottles in basements or garages around town that say Runge Dairy. Before 1950 the route was taken over by Frome's Dairy of Colby.

8. The Wm. Schultz farm. Originally there was a large t-shaped brick house where the ranch house is now, a barn and to the east sheds to shelter the 2 trucks Bill used to pick up cattle locally.

9. The George Cook farm. George was a Captain of the Wis. State Patrol and lived in back half of the house. His son Sewell (not sure of spelling) lived in the front half with wife Marlea and sons Bob & Ray. Sewell had been a pharmacist but wanted outside work so he took a job a surveyor for the State of Wisconsin. Marlea (Thayer) had been a school teacher and would sometimes sub at the grade school. Ray was in my class in school. Bob was about 5 years ahead of me in school.

George drove a big maroon '40 Chrysler with State Patrol insignias on each front door and always waved to everybody he saw. He knew some of us were driving before we had a license but never said anything unless we cut up too much.

It always amazed my dad, when the fire whistle blew Sewell was the first one to the fire hall even though he lived out of town.

Thayer's lived on a small farm across the road from cooks and towards town a bit. Later Bud Schultz bought the land.

10. Mandel's Cheese factory. Harry & Leona bought the factory from Mr. Tapplin in the mid-'30's. Originally it had an open whey tank on stilts on the west side and huge piles of cord wood because the boiler was wood fired. My uncle Harold Hardrath was a journeyman cheese-maker there before WWII. They had 3 cheese vats about 20 X 5 foot and a couple cheese presses. The cheese was dipped in wax and stored in a room on the south-east corner of the factory that was not refrigerated. Later Harry added refrigeration and a coal fired boiler.

Their daughter Julaine and I were in the same class at school and used to play together as children so we would stop by to pick up curd from the vats on the way home from school. The salt was in a bag in the hallway towards the house. One time we dipped into a bag of cleaning powder instead of salt on the way out. I though the stuff was going to eat my tongue off.

Harry worked long hours and was a very innovative cheese maker. He managed to keep the factory going when most small factories were closing. He expanded the facility and prospered by learning to make more expensive specialty cheeses. Two brands that I remember were smoked Italian (Oseogo) and a brown Finnish cheese.

About 1940 Harry got two long telephone posts and built a swing for Julaine west of the house. The posts were higher than the house and when you would get straight out from the center post you could see all over town. It was a real ride.

Harry & Leona drove a '36 Ford 2 door and I never remember seeing it with a spot of dirt on it. Not many people could afford a new car during the peak of the depression.

11. Frank Jordan's blacksmith shop. Originally this was a long, low wood building running north to south with doors on the north and west. The building was too small for the township Catapiller snow plow to fit in so he would be welding up the cleats on the

Catapiller tracks on the west side out in the cold. We could see the arc from the welder until late at night. In the spring the farmers would bring in plow shares to be re-pointed and his forge and trip hammer would go all night so he could finish all the work.

Jordan's lived in a house east of the shop but moved to the house north of the Lutheran Church when Helsted moved out. I don't have a recollection of the old house and it must have been demolished in the early '40s. Frank had the current house east of the shop moved in by a house mover named Bredeson of Greenwood after the war. Frank told me he had been a blacksmith in the lumber camps around Mellen in his early years. They made and repaired chain from metal rods. He said he probably made a couple miles of chain, all welded in a forge. Then he was in the U.S. Navy during WWI. Once after I returned from Korea we discussed the weapons we used. He said in his day the ships were built to ram each other, now they just put in the name and address and boom!

I needed some hooks put on wrecker chains and he did it in the forge because it was stronger than a welded link. He knew metal and could look a piece of metal and scratch it and then tell you if it was good or brittle.

11A. The Village Jail and Fire Station was across Main St. from the Blacksmith Shop and about 70 or 100 feet south of the County Trunk. The jail (north of the fire hall) was a building about 14 foot square and the cell was made of 2/4's laid flat. Furniture in the cell consisted of a cot. Outside the cell was a chair and a pot-belly stove. The inside window was bars stuck in holes drilled into the 2 X 4's, the outside window had an additional glass pane.

The fire station was about 20' X 28'. It held the fire equipment which was a '31 Model A Ford pick up with ladders and water tank on the back. The pressure pump that supplied the fire hoses (2 3/4 inch garden hoses) ran off the engine fan belt. There was also a small trailer with about a 75 gal. chemical tank on it hooked to another garden hose. There was a crank on the back of the tank. When they got to the fire they gave the crank a twist. and it spilled acid into the soda water in the tank. The reaction put pressure on the hose. The chemical was supposed to be better than regular water because it gave off C02 gas when it hit the fire. The fire station also held a supply of fire buckets, axes, etc. There was a large metal rod bent into the shape of a triangle hanging in a tower at the front of the building. When someone pulled the chain to the triangle you could hear it ring for about 3 blocks.

12. The hotel. This was a square two-story brick veneer building. Leo Hebert operated it and lived in apartments in the south-east corner of the downstairs. People occasionally stayed in the upstairs rooms. The bar was in the north-west corner and Van Meissner rented the south-west corner for his barber shop.

To get more business they installed a TV in the bar. They put a windmill tower on top of the building to hold the antenna and were able to receive TV programs from the Twin Cities and Milwaukee (the closest stations then). They opened a restaurant in the south-west room of the building and the barber shop moved to the north-east corner. Eckes' wives operated the restaurant first, then Mrs. Rucks operated it and Rucks' lived upstairs in the hotel building.

About 1950 there was a big wind storm. The tower on top caused the old building to sway back and forth and large parts of the brick veneer peeled off. Some of it fell on the sidewalk and Hy 13 demolishing a car (Johnny Rueden's?) parked in front but luckily no one was injured. They covered it with tin sheets or imitation brick.

Hebert and the Eckes Bros. used to hold weekly Skat games and tournaments in the spring. It brought in a lot of bar-trade because people carne from miles around to take part. While gambling wasn't legal my dad said a lot of money changed hands during the games.

There was no ally running from behind the garage to the county trunk, the area was grassy with a few small trees and a couple of stone barn basement walls about 2 to 3 feet high. The barns had been livery stables for the Hotel. We used to catch huge yellow spiders with black hour-glasses on them in the stone walls. We thought they were highly poisonous and very dangerous. It was also a great area to play cowboy.

13. Perschke Bros. Hardware. A one story brick building. There was an open balcony inside along the south wall which made part of the building 2 story. They carried the usual hardware supplies, bolts, nails, cookware, lanterns & lamps, jack knives, harness repairs, etc. Mr. Cutts was the tin smith and also did furnace installations and repairs. He had the equipment to make stove and furnace pipes in a room at the back of the store. There were piles of water tanks and farm implements outside along the north side of the store. The Bros. had to chase us kids out of the water tanks about 3 times a day. I think they enjoyed it.

About 20 feet behind the store was an outhouse and a small building where they stored a small supply of dynamite which was a standard item for hardware stores then. Further back about 20 feet from Main St. they had a large wooden shed where they stored their store pickup truck (a 34 or 36 Dodge as I remember) more farm equipment, wash machines, etc. The north side of this shed was about 2 feet from the fire hall.

During the depression they took cord wood in payment for money owed. There was a tremendous pile of wood between the store and the back shed. It must have been 5 feet high, 30 feet wide and 50 feet long. We used to dig down into the wood and pile up pieces around the holes like forts. They also chased us out of the wood pile about twice a day I think.

Somewhere in the mid 40's Floyd & Alva Benning bought the Hardware. When they retired they sold it to Bud Fischer.

14. The garage. I don't know who owned the building. Art Steinke rented the upstairs and lived above the garage with his wife and son, Dale. The last I heard Dale lived in Medford and worked for Hurd Millwork. Art worked in the box-factory at Colby and only occasionally did any repair work on cars. The people around town with no garage rented space to store their cars. In the winter the garage was nearly full. There was an office about 12 feet square in the front north-west corner of the garage with a heater. The rest of garage was not heated but stayed fairly warm because of the hardware on one side and the store on the other. We played tag or hide and seek between and under the cars. Those days you could crawl under a car easily.

One of the front rooms upstairs had been the Central office for the unity Telephone Co. There were still insulators and wires on the outside wall above the hardware store. Amy Klein said she had been one of the telephone operators. This operation was combined with the Colby office moved to Colby.

Stienke's rented a front room and provided board to Oscar Wiede, the retired village butcher. Oscar had been in the Kaiser's army and for exercise used to do marching and close order drill with a broom in the garage. We thought that was pretty funny but it was a good way for an old man to get exercise during cold weather.

Dale was a year older then me and we played together a lot. Before the war there were a few old dilapidated 1920's cars parked behind the garage and we had a great time playing in them. When the war came the price of scrap went up and the cars were sent off to fight Hitler.

About 1943 Steinke's moved to Colby. Jewitt’s moved into the quarters above the garage. They had two sons (Elmer about my age) and one older (Harold) who became a telegrapher at Marshfield on the Soo Line RR).

Oscar continued to live in the front rooms but boarded at Bill Schultz's. One day Oscar didn't come for dinner and Bud Schultz went to see if he was OK. He had hanged himself in the door-way between the two front rooms above the garage. Bud was pretty shook up about that.

Later John Olson bought the building and opened a garage. John had a semi and a straight truck of his own and did some logging in the Tripoli area and general hauling. He also had a farm south-west of Unity. Ralph Leonard and one of the Schoeneman brothers were mechanics, Ernie Schoeneman was the welder. Vehicles were scarce after the war so they did a lot of work overhaul ing cars and rebuilding and lengthening trucks and trailers. There were 2 gas pumps on the sidewalk in front of the garage and tanks under the garage floor.

John was a investor in the St. Croix Corp. with the Johnson Bros. (his cousins) and the building was converted for fish pole manufacturing. The 6 front rooms upstairs were used as office for St. Croix. They build about a 40 ft addition at the rear of the garage. When St.. Croix moved to Park Falls, John's wife Sida continued to live upstairs. Forest Johnson rented the downstairs for his American Motors dealership. Forest also operated the garage on Hy 13 on top of the hill.

15. The store. When we moved to Unity this was called the Unity Mercantile Co. The building was built (1909) and owned by Peter Fritz (who had returned to Canada) and was operated by Martin Helsted. Helsted rented and lived in the first house north of the Luth. Church. The upstairs of the store was vacant. Dale Steinke and I crawled from their back porch onto the flat roof of the store and looked in the upstairs windows. The rooms were a wreck, Helsted sold groceries, candy, dry goods, ready-to-wear clothes, shoes, overshoes, cut plug, lamp wicks, and maintained a line of prepared drugs and cattle cures.

Helsted sold to Graham Thayer and moved back to south-central Wisconsin. Graham married and moved into the quarters above the store. I think he was only in the store 1 or 2 years.

Thayer's purchased a resort off what is now I-90/94 between Sparta and Eau Claire.

Albert Wiedenhoeft (father of Gilbert Sr.) bought the store building from Pete Fritz in May 1942. At the same time Gilbert Wiedenhoeft Sr. bought the stock and store fixtures from Thayer. All the Wiedenhoeft relatives came on a Saturday afternoon and helped Gib dis-assemble the walk-in cooler and move it, the small supply of canned goods and other equipment to the store. The cooler was immediately re-assembled. The compressor stood on a wooden rack in the basement. Herman Franceen immediately hooked up the cooler compressor. On Sunday they all helped move the household items from the meat market upstairs above the store. He changed the name of the store to Gib's Market.

The warehouse behind the store was tin-covered wood with a wood floor. Gib Sr. and his dad built a sausage kitchen in the south-east corner of warehouse for his wood-fired kettle, silent cutter, pepper grinder, meat grinder and work bench with a small hand-crank stuffer mounted on the right end. He continued to rent the brick smoke house and slaughter house behind the meat market. After the first winter they built a small wooden smokehouse and cut a doorway through the south east corner of the sausage kitchen.

There was a tin-covered wooden entry to the basement where the current basement entrance is now. The upstairs porch was the width it is now but only about 10 feet long. There was al so a very rickety steps running from the back of the porch that reached almost to the side basement entrance. I think this was so people living upstairs had a shorter trip to the out-house which was across the ditch at the south-east corner of the building. The back steps was removed because it was such a hazard.

The front of the store had a canvas awning all the way across with a crank to roll it up and down on the south-west corner of the building. The store entrance was in the middle. There was one concrete step in front of the door and then a big steel plate the depth of the display windows. Originally the show windows were not partitioned from the store. Heat for the whole store was a single pipeless furnace in the center of the store about 25 feet from the front door. It was not adequate, the clerks had to wear overshoes in the winter to keep their feet warm.

The wall between the front windows and store was installed by Franz & Wiedenhoeft about '46 or '47.

I don't recollect when the front door was moved from center to the north corner, probably after 1958.

In the winter there was a wooden storm porch that reached out onto the sidewalk and covered the cement step to help keep the drafts out of the store when people came and went. I remember the door pull for the storm door was a big handle on a black and white sign that said Bake-rite bread. Because there were so many Scandinavians in the area fish was a staple good of the business. Booth Fisheries and a man named Johnson from Bayfield used to deliver frozen, smoked and dried fish during the winter months. The fish were stored in the storm porch. Before holidays the fish were displayed by standing them nose down on the ledge along the front of the store. They were usually cod or halibut and would be 2 to 3 feet long. Smelt, herring and oysters were big towards spring.

Because the warehouse wasn't heated all the perishables had to be put on the shelves or moved to the basement in winter. The inside entrance to the basement was a long trap door at the north east corner of the store. Every time you needed a case of something or had to fire the furnace you had to raise that big door. The basement was only about 5 1/2 feet deep and had a dirt floor. There were ditches cut across it to drain the water that seeped in over to the south east corner where it was pumped out. Things stored in the basement had to be piled on boards to keep it from the dampness.

Stuff like flour, sugar, cereal, rice, dried fruit, barrels of white and brown vinegar could be stored in the warehouse all year. There was also a large wooden box lined with tin that held kerosene. The pump on top of the box measured out one gallon of kerosene for each cycle of the pump. A lot of people still used kerosene lamps and had lanterns for barn work so the store handled kerosene. Some people also had one-room Perfection heaters and 2 or 3 burner cook stoves that used kerosene.

Because there were so many sheds and wood piles around the rat.s had good places to hide. When they were hungry they headed for the warehouse. The first year Gib Sr. spent a lot of time nailing tin over rat holes and shooting, trapping and poisoning rats. A single rat could damage several bags of flour or sugar.

In spite of the war shortages Gib Sr. found a used hot water heating system from a building being demolished in Chicago. There were more pipes and radiators than needed. Because of the shortage of meta1 the Guenther Bros. of Stratford installed it in the summer of 1943 for the excess. Once this heating system was installed the building was warm upstairs and down.

The two-stall garage that was behind the store had been a chicken coop on the LaMont farm (which was on the hill across from the Mid-way Wrecking yard between Colby and Unity). In the fall of 1944 the building carpenters Al Franz and Herman Wiedenhoeft cut it into sections and half was moved behind the store, the other half was moved to Colby where it was also used as a garage.

In 1946 Gib Sr. got together a crew, jacked up the warehouse roof and tore out the walls and floor. He also dug the basement deeper and put down a cement floor and foot-walls in the basement, a stairs into the warehouse and a floor and footings for a new warehouse. Gus Ryberg (a retired farmer who did mason work and lived in the house where Joe Olson lives currently) laid up the cement block walls and Gib .Jr. was the mason tender. The block came from Johnson Block on the south end of Colby.

In 1947 he contracted with a cement man from Colby to do the cement work for the slaughterhouse behind the store. Unfortunately the cement man poured the slab and went down to the Hotel for a drink. He forgot about the job and the cement hardened without being finished-troweled. The floor was never as smooth as it should have been. Franz & Wiedenhoeft built the roof and doors. Mr. Wilke, a local woodworker, built the windless used to raise the cattle. I remember painting the woodwork. It must have been war-surplus paint because a couple weeks later it rained and paint washed off onto the ground.

The current outside brick basement stairway was added in about 1950. Gib Sr. & Jr. did the cement and brick work.

Graham and Cleo. Thayer had lived above to store and repaired and cleaned up the rooms. The Wiedenhoeft's had only to do some painting and papering to have adequate living quarters. Heat was supplied by a wood fired cook stove in the kitchen and a wood-coal Heatrolla in the dining room with a pipe running through to the chimney in the north-east bedroom. Water, wood and coal had to be carried up and ashes and waste down. There were no storm windows for the big windows on the west and south sides and when winter came the temperature in the house dropped to less than comfortable. Gib Sr. closed off the archway between the living room and dinning room and the family lived in the 3 east rooms. The next summer the windows were caulked, painted and storm windows and screens were fitted. The painters parked a big truck in front of the store and ran the ladders from the truck box up to the windows. Then the living quarters were comfortable summer and winter. The storm windows were huge and putting them on every fall was a major task. First they had to be carried up from the basement and cleaned. Then the window was opened top and bottom, a rope with a hook went out the top of the window and hooked to the top of the storm. The storm was then slid out through the bottom and pulled up into position and hooked in place. Not a job for a windy day.

The first year there was a floor to ceiling cupboard in the north-west corner of the kitchen. A standard kitchen cupboard, the kind with the doors and flow sifter in the top half, a slide out enamel work area and a door and drawers in the bottom half stood in the north east corner against the dinning room wall. There were two windows in the east kitchen wall evenly spaced and overlooking the roof. The one furthest south was on hinges and there was a narrow steps from almost the center of kitchen to the window. One could walk up the steps, unhook the window and go out onto the roof. A 4 burner gas stove for summer cooking was between the two windows and the sink was against the east wall in the south east corner. A pipe from the sink ran through the wall and eve conductor pipe on the outside took waste to the ditch in back of the building. The kitchen wood range stood in front of the two south windows and the pipe ran through the west wall into the chimney across the hall. The next year when the boiler was working the wood range was sold. There was no well on the property. In the summer of '43 Gib Sr. made arrangements with the hardware store (who had a shallow dug well) to run a pipe under the garage. Then the Guenther Bros. installed the bathroom and running water in the kitchen and basement for doing clothes washing. There was also a pipe to the sausage kitchen which had to be shut off in really cold weather or it would freeze. Hot water in summer was provided by a small coal fired water heater hooked to a storage tank in the basement. A coil in the boiler provided hot water in the winter.

Bredesen of Greenwood drilled the well south of the store in the fall of '44 or '45. John Olson wanted running water for his garage and living quarters so he agreed to buy and maintain the pump in exchange for running water from the store well. A pipe was also run to the hardware and later to the bank. When we started using water from the new well the well at Mandel's factory started to dry up and Harry had to drill his well deeper.

Later improvements included a stoker (no more trips to the basement in the middle of a cold night to stoke the boiler), a water softener and a kerosene water heater.

16. The Unity Branch, Colby Security State Bank. Melvin Tennis was the cashier for a long time, then Corwin Dallmann. There used to be an outhouse at the back of the little grassy area behind the bank. When it was removed I planted a rose bush on the site. I never saw anything grow so fast and it had the biggest sweetest flowers.

17. The Unity Meat Market. I don't know who owned this building. Gilbert Wiedenhoeft Sr. bought the equipment from August Wiede and took over the business in about 1937. The facility consisted of a cement block building on Front St. as the shop, a building behind it used as a sausage kitchen, behind that a wood shed, a smoke house, ice house and the slaughter house backed up against Main St. The equipment in the sausage kitchen was pretty old-fashioned and powered by a gas engine and a system of overhead shafts and pulleys. The chopper was a set of knives that beat against a rotating wooden block. Gib Sr. moved the equipment into the back of shop and purchased a new grinder and a used electric motor to run the grinder, pepper grinder and silent cutter. He converted the sausage kitchen into a garage for his Model A.

The walk-in cooler in the shop is the same one that was moved to the store but it had an addition area at the top to hold ice. The marble-top counter in the store was also part of the equipment purchased from Wiede.

Gib Sr. never used the ice house. Winter was a slow time for the butcher shop. He and his brother Art used to help Art Wersig (the iceman from Colby) cut ice on the creek that ran thru the Albert Wiedenhoeft farm (just north of the sub-station west of Colby). In return, Art Wersig supplied ice for the cooler. A set of metal track were laid from the cement block on the north side of the building through the double doors to a wooden lift that was placed next to the cooler. The 300# blocks of ice were slid along the track to the lift and then cranked up to the top of the cooler and slid in. The cooler held 8 to 12 blocks depending on how they were cut. After we moved into the north side of the shop the ice blocks were slid right thru our living-room. When the job was done the tracks and lift had to be moved out of the way. The cooler was converted to electric refrigeration after a couple years.

Gib Sr. raised and sold trained beagle hounds for a few years. The theory was it was a good way to realize cash from the meat scraps and bones. He used the old ice house for as a dog kennel. After a couple years the butcher business picked up and he sold the dogs to a kennel in Johnson Creek.

When they moved to Unity the Wiedehoeft's rented the second to last house on the south end of Church Street, west side of the street. The Depression being in full force Gib Sr. was probably short of cash and so divided the shop with a wall and moved into the shop the following summer. The north side of the building was living quarters, (Kitchen in the east end, living-room and bedroom on the west end) the south side shop and sausage kitchen.

18. The Post Office. This was a long one-story wood building with a wood awning out over the sidewalk. Niel (Bunk) Creed was the postmaster. There was a waiting room in the front (west end) with a row of mail boxes (some rental boxes accessible from the front, the free box patrons had to ask for their mail but the boxes had a glass front so they could see if they had mail) and 2 mail windows. When the mail was sorted Bunk would open the windows. Half the town would be waiting and visiting in the lobby. The regulars exchanged a lot of town gossip waiting for their mail every morning. If the mail was heavy and took longer there were a lot or remarks from those waiting about how slow the sorter was and "hasn't he finish reading the post cards yet".

Mr. Ralph Vaughn had been the rural route mail carrier but Martin "Dad" Evenson was the mail carrier during my memory. Those mail carriers were really dedicated. Herman Hardrath told me that once after a big blizzard Mr. Vaughn was delivering the mail with a horse and sled. The sled had a cabin made of wainscot on it with a charcoal stove in it. The sled tipped over and started on fire when he was turning around near Herman's farm. Herman rushed out to help him out but Vaughn insisted they get the mail out first, then he got out and put out the fire.

During the spring road break-up the roads turned to mush. Dad Evenson's car would be coated with mud. He sometimes delivered the mail from a trailer behind a Ford tractor.

Mr. Messer owned the building and published the Marathon County Register newspaper in the back room of the building. When he was getting the paper out it was fascinating to watch the old lino-type machine with its long arms going this way and that and clinking and clanking away or the press going. On hot days you could smell the hot lead from the lino-type.

There was a vacant lot south of the post office with 4 to 6 inch trees growing on it. People said there was a drug store there but it burned.

19. The Luchterhand house, a brick house with a gambrel roof. Mr. & Mrs. Luchterhand were old folks and spent a lot of time on the big enclosed front porch watching the town go by. They kept a large garden between the house and barn. Mr. Luchterhand drove a black '40 Oldsmobile with an automatic transmission. It was always carefully tucked away in their barn, (a converted horse barn) which was on Main St. They had a daughter (Evelyn I think) who was about my folks age. She taught school somewhere far away and only came home for long holidays and summers. It seems there was also a son with a family who used to come to visit occasionally. When the folks were too old to take care of themselves the daughter came home to stay and care for them. She didn't drive and because autos were scarce during the war she offered to sell the car to Gib Sr. He pointed out that without an auto she and the folks would be dependent on others. Gib Sr. & Edyth taught her how to drive and George Cook issued a license. I remember she was a very careful driver but did not hesitate to take long trips. In the late 40's the folks died and she only came to visit occasionally.

There was a huge house across Main St. from Luchterhand's barn. It must have been a grand thing in its day because the living room was 2 story's high with a stairs and balcony along the east side to get to the bedrooms upstairs. It was vacant but still had furniture in it. This made it spooky and the children used to dare each other to go in. This house was moved out into the country and later Corwin Dahlman built a home on the spot.

20. This was a vacant lot with the basement of a house on it. There were 4-6 inch trees growing in the basement so it must have burned down a long time before 1940. A steps ran down from the east end which made for easy access. Sometimes it had 2 or 3 feet of water in it. We had boat made from a pea viner box and had great adventure paddling around in it. There were also all kinds of snakes and spiders in the stone walls which added to the adventure.

21. Theodore Dommer 1ived in this house with his wife and 2 daughters. It had been the Ralph Vaughn house. I think Mr. Vaughn also lived with the Domer's for a while.

22. The Clover Farm store, operated by Ted. Dommer. They handled a line of groceries, fruits, vegetables and had a small refrigerated meat case for sausage, lunch meats, etc. They also handled some clothing items like stockings and gloves and a rack of comic books and I used to get comics there sometimes. This store had been operated by Ralph Vaughn. Mrs. Dommer was a daughter of Mr. Vaughn.

23. The Nelson Hotel. A long narrow, white, wooden two-story building. There was a porch all along the west side of the building. The words Nelson Hotel were set in brass letter in the step in front of the hotel. I don't remember a Mr. Nelson. Mrs. Nelson ran the Hotel and took in roomers. Andy Kaiser bought the building in the mid 40's when his family got too big for the house next to the filling station.

There were a couple of smaller homes between the Hotel and filling station but I don't remember who lived there.

24. Kaisers Filling station. Andy Kaiser and his wife Amanda ran the station. There was a small building for the station and a small wood garage big enough to hold 2 autos one ahead of the other to the south of it. Kaisers lived in a small house to the north of the station. They sold gas, tires, used autos and did some repair work. They had three children, Mercedes, Donald and Kathaline who were all about my age so we spent a lot of time at each other’s place.

During the war Andy had an Austin auto which was great because it went forever on a gallon of gas but he was a pretty big guy and it was a joke to see him climb out of that little car.

In the late '40s they added a large cement block garage to the station. Later Forest Johnson took it over and Andy built the station on the south side of Colby.

25. Mrs. Clark's house. This house had two large black walnut trees in front of it. She was a little old lady who sat on the porch a lot. If we went by and picked up some black walnuts she would yell at us for taking the nuts. To my knowledge she never used the nuts, I think she just liked the fun of scaring us. Her husband had been a doctor and there was an office at the rear (east end) of the house. When Robert R.J. Johnson was school principal he moved into the house and cleaned out all the old stuff. I helped move boxes of pill and medicine bottles and trunks of doctor equipment out to the dump.

The two-story house south of this was moved in by Ted Dahlmann in the mid 40' s. Ted had operated a tavern and dance hall in Riplinger. He had two sons, Corwin and Dennis (who was my age). Later Dahlmann's moved to the farm across and east of the Romeo Church.

26. The Klein Shoe Shop. I don't remember Mr. Klein but when I first visited his daughter, Amy (who clerked in the Mercantile) the west end still had shoe repair equipment in it. Later Amy converted the whole building to living quarters. The building burned in about 2000 but was rebuilt. Amy had a big heart and gave almost every child in town presents for birthdays, etc.

27. My earliest recollection of this was a gas station operated by a fellow named Snowberg. He also did auto and tire repair. Later he started a bar in the station and had fish fries on Friday nights and chicken on Saturdays nights. He quit the car repair, turned the garage into a dinning area and went full time to the bar operation but continued to sell gas for a long time. Steve Beszak owned the building and added on to it, Stan Koskta ran it around 1950. Beszak moved to Abbotsford, Koskta took a brakeman’s job with the railroad and moved to Stevens Point.

28. The Salter House. A large two-story Victorian. Salter's had three daughters about my age, Maxine, Elizabeth and Sally.

29. Perschke's house. One of the brothers (Otto I think) was married and he, his wife and daughter Mildred (who was the 3-4-5 grade teacher at the school) 1ived here along with the other brother.

30. The Creed house. Mrs. Creed was in her 90's and we would go there and listen to stories of the early times in Unity. There was a barn across from the house and they had farmed 40 acres or so.

32. There was a church here but it was torn down during the war. I think Mr. Cutts (who lived in the next house north) demolished it and salvaged the lumber.

33. The Unity School. A two-story brick building with a large attic. There was a Y shaped sidewalk out. to the multi-hole out-houses east of the building. There were two sets of stairs in the middle of the building from basement to second floor, the front steps (west side) were the "Girls Stairs" and the rear (East) stairs were the "boys stairs".

The basement extended above ground level so the basement windows let in a lot of light. The basement had 4 main rooms with a wide hallway between them. The furnace room was in the north-east and had a big coal-fired steam boiler. The band practice room was in the south east, later this was converted to a shop training room and the band practiced in the new village hall. The north-west room was a exercise room but later when a hot lunch program was initiated and the room was converted into a lunch room with tables. A wall was added between the furnace room and lunch room and the kitchen was between them. Mrs. Melvin Tennis was the first cook as I remember. The program also received USDA surplus goods so lunches were very reasonable.

In the mid 40's inside toilets were added and they were in the south-west corner of the building.

The south-east corner of the first floor was for grades 1 & 2. Miss Brookerd was my teacher, when she returned after Christmas during my second grade she had married a soldier and was Mrs. Bacon. Grade 3-4-5, Miss Perschke, was in the northeast corner of the building and grades 6-7-8 were in the north west corner. My 6th grade teacher was Mrs. Schoengarth, whose husband was a judge in Neillsville. She developed TB and we all had tests to see if anyone had caught it. Then we had a series of temporary teachers. Some of the 8th graders were 15-16 year old farm-boys and became hard to manage. A war-vet named Mr. Stien came in and restored order with an iron hand. I remember he caught one of them up to something in the storage closet. Stien twisted his arm up behind his back and also grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out of the closet and up to the principals office. There was law and order in that room after that.

The south-west corner room was for high-school English and biology. When the bell rang and high-school classes changed some of the boys came down the back steps 4 at a time. It is amazing some of the 1-2nd graders weren't trampled.

On the second floor the Main room (study hall) took the whole north side of the building. The principals office was next (south) to the stairs on the west side. The c1ass room on the south-west corner was for business, math, geometry. The room on the south-east corner was divided so there was a narrow room along the south wall with two rows of typewriters for typing class. The remaining room was for chemistry, physics, earth science, etc.

The attic was used for storage, old books, basketball uniforms, left-over scenery from school plays, etc.

34. The Methodist Church. This was a handsome building, typical Methodist design, and I was sorry to see it torn down. The early English settlers were Methodist. This included the Cooks, Creed's (except Neil), Taplins, Salters, Capes'. The pastor also served the Colby church. There was a long wooden shed (open on the south side) north-east of the church where the parishioners could keep their horses out of the weather during services. "Dad” Evenson must have purchased the mail delivery equipment from Mr. Vaughn when he took over the mail route because he stored a cutter, the enclosed mail sled and a top buggy in it until it was torn down in the early 40's.

35. The Wells Harvey house. Mr. Harvey lived in the home and there was a garage and storage shed to the south. He was the dray-man and had exclusive authority to deliver motor freight in the village. Later Steve Besak lived there and had a shoe repair shop in the storage shed. It is possible that. Mrs. Besak was Mr.'s daughter.

Harry and Leona Mandel lived in a house south of the factory. South of that was a lot with fruit trees on it and then Floyd & Elva Bennings house. Floyd worked in the cheese factory, Elva was Leona's sister. An old lady lived in the 2 story frame house across (east side of street) from Benning but I don't recall her name. There was a vacant lot between Bennings and a 2 story four-square house where Niel Creed lived. Later Elmer Carlson moved into that house and had an insurance agency. There was a bungalow type house across from Carlson's. There was a vacant lot south of Carlsons and then a frame house where Kock's lived. Cutts' lived in the frame house across from Kock's. Tennis's lived in the frame house on the corner across from the school. Later they moved to the house across from the Methodist Church and Len Nichols lived in the house.

There were no houses in the block across from the school. The Sornson's lived in the house just south of the school. He was a cattle dealer and also the village marshall for the Marathon County side of town. He had polio as a boy and his left arm was smaller but he was very strong. Gib. Sr. used to borrow his 2 wheel cattle trailer. Sornson could pick up the tongue with one hand where everyone else needed both hands. Once during a village carnival while he was working as marshall two farm boys were going to give a hard time. He had them on the ground in seconds. Before the war his brother lived with them and was a teacher and coach at the High School.

There was a large frame house on the north of the Methodist Church apartments. Mrs. Baumgard lived in one side and her son (who ran a gas station and later a tavern in Colby) and his daughter Donna lived in the other side.

The street from Dommer’s Clover Farm store to the school: On the north side just east of the store was the Salter house.

East across Main from Salters were Wilke's. They had come from Germany after WWI with one son. Mr. Wilke was a very good carpenter/cabinet maker and built the windless in the slaughter house and some children's folding chairs for our children.

The house across (south) from Wilkey's was a 2 apartment rental house and no one lived there very long. After the war Mr. Flink bought it. He was the night caretaker at the depot and also had a panel van and sold McNess products around the country. He remodeled the house and it caught fire and burned before he moved in. I remember it was a very cold night the Spencer Fire Dept. came but their pump froze. Mrs. Wilke came over with a teakettle of boiling water and thawed it. Because the Unity FD Model A had the pump under the hood next to the engine it worked OK but only had 2 garden hoses which were not too effective. Flink rebuilt again then and lived there.

Ewert's built a house on the north-east corner of this street and Main. They lived there with their son (Myron, I think) and his daughter

Clyde Pirkus built a house East of Ewert's. Clyde was also the depot caretaker for a while.

The Shoe Shop was on the west end, south side west to Hy 13. Across and next to Main St. was the Korntved house.

Across Main (the north east quarter) was Cal Cooks. An old couple lived in the house at the end of the street on the north side. I remember my dad complaining that they never would pay to have their chimney cleaned and on the coldest day each winter the fire department would have to go up and put out a chimney fire. After the war the Dept. started dropping CO2 grenades down the chimneys to put out the fire. It also caused a lot of soot to blow into the house. After that they never got called there any more. About 1948 Melvin Tennis and family moved from the house across from the school to this house.

Mr. Messer owned the house across (south) from Tennis' and he and Tom Loughead's lived there. He also ran the Marathon County Register.

Martin Evenson lived on the north-east corner of the street running east & west south of the Redwood. Across and east was a small log house where Wes. Brenaman lived. The Leonard's lived across the street to the east on the south side.

A guy named Bo Peep lived on one, he worked in Chicago and was only there part time. I don't know who lived in the other one·

There was one house on the north-south street furthest east. Henrikson's lived there during the 40's.

Hardly anyone used the sidewalks if they could cut across the block. There were shortcut paths all over the town. One ran west from the cheese factory to Main St., about where Gurtners garage is now. Another ran from the four-square house where Bunk Creed lived to the post office. There was usually a plank over the ditches for easier access.

36. The Unity Feed Co. Owned by Mr. Lyons of Colby, it was managed by John Fuller (who lived in the last house, south end of Church St., west side). The building sat up on cement blocks about 3 feet off the ground and had a platform at wagon/truck height all along the west side. There was a wagon scale next to the platform, (west) about midway along the main building, which was covered and later there was a wall to the west side of the scale. The office was in the south-west corner of the main building. A walkway connected the office with an addition shed where they stored bag cement, mortar, fertilizer, etc. The rear (east side) of the building was against a rail spur where carloads of feed, fertilizer and cement came in. There were coal sheds on the north end of the building.

Mr. Fuller always had a curved pipe in his mouth and smoked Prince Albert tobacco. Every other day he came to the store for a new can of tobacco. There was a big pile of empty tobacco cans beside the walkway between the office and next building to the south.

The field on the west side of the tracks north of the County Trunk and east of Madison St. was never occupied during my recollection. About 1950 the city graded an area smooth with low banks around the edge across the road (east) of the city hall and in the winter the fire department flooded it to be used as an ice skating rink.

John Olson/St. Croix built a pole shed for some of their operations across the street (west) of the feed store. The south end of the building had a cement floor and was used for manufacturing fish dip nets and cutting and shaping brass tubing for pole ferrules. John had purchased some machinery from a Mr. Barber of Butternut. The north end had these machines for making round wood dowels for plugging the open end of the cane pole sections. There was also a machine for making wire and wood lath snow fence. John or St. Croix had contracts around several states to supply snow fence. His brother Joe did most of the delivery by truck.

Mr. Barber’s son, Milton Barber came along with the deal to show them how to operate the machinery. He worked for St. Croix for several years and when St. Croix moved to Park Falls he returned to Butternut.

After St. Croix moved out Fred Kaufmann manufactured juvenile furniture (potty chairs, etc.) in the south end of the building.

There used to be 3 bungalow type houses across the street and south from the feed store. One burned in the late ‘30s. I remember my dad helped fight the fire and wore his waterproof canvas duck hunting coat, it hung out on the cloths line for weeks before it lost the smoke smell. I don't know who owned them but to my recollection these were always rental houses.

The John Kuehnau house was just north of the city hall. This was a large house with porches on the east and south side. There was a 1 car garage at the rear, south side where Mrs. Kuehnau kept her Willys-Knight. It. was a big black 4 door, about. 1927 model I would guess. Cal Ewert worked on it and would remember the year. One day she was going north on Hy 13, making a turn west on the County Trunk. A large truck was passing her. The truck went up over the left front fender, totaling the car. Luckily no one was injured. Cal said Mrs. Kuehnau was very lady-like but clearly let the truck driver know he was not much of a person.

Mrs. Kuehnau (Maud) was friends with my sister Anita and told her about her early life. She had come from Maine in a covered wagon with folks. She was educated and taught school. When her husband died she closed up the furniture store and became withdrawn. The heating and water in the house must have failed because for a while she didn't look washed and always wore a couple sweaters, coats and big rubber boots.

Some time after 1952 the house caught on fire. Gib Sr. said it was just a few minutes before noon and when the whistle blew everyone thought Corwin (the banker) was a bit early on the noon whistle. When it. blew again everyone ran for the fire hall. They were getting ready to spray water on the fire when Gib Sr. (the Fire Chief) and some others went. into the basement.. They saw several cans of carbide (used to make gas for gas lamps in the old days). He said if the water would have hit that much carbide it would have blown up the whole block. They had to carry out the carbide and by then the house was badly damaged. Mrs. Kuehnau lived with the Segrist's for a while, then I don't know where she lived. After the fire she looked much better and looked after the local office of the Marathon County Library for a long time. She was an avid reader and really seemed to enjoy the library job.

37. The Unity Opera House - City Hall. The original Opera House was a wood building and shown on page 19 of the Unity Centennial book. There was a raised stage on the west end of the building. A canvas curtain rolled down to close off the stage. It had a picture of a log cabin in the woods in the center and advertising of each of the Unity businesses around the edge. There was a tall stove in the south-west corner of the hall. Once a ball player fell against it and was burned. Then they put a 2X4 and chicken wire wall around it. The main floor was also the basket ball court but was so small that 5 players could join hands and reach across it. The center circle touched the free shot circles. Long shots would hit the ceiling. For ball games they put chairs along the north and south sides, on the stage and in the gallery. The east end had the entrance, a ticket booth and a furnace room on the ground floor. Upstairs there was a gallery and a steel fireproof room for showing movies. There was also a door from upstairs out onto the outside balcony. In summer the school or city band used to play from the balcony on holidays.

In addition to basketball the school used the hall for the grade school Christmas play and the high school had class plays, graduation and the a prom there each year.

There was a lean-to about 12 by 15 feet on the south-east corner of the hall. It was the village offices. There was a table, some chairs, a coal stove and a safe to hold the village "important records". Once a month the village council (known around town as the "Village Fathers") met there to decide village policy. One day a year the treasurer was there to collect taxes. The safe wasn’t too secure. We used the room as a dressing room for ball games. I turned the dial a few times and the safe door opened.

There was a vacant. lot south of the old hall. In summer the merchants hired a couple from Marshfield to show a double feature movie on Saturday night in this lot after dark. The screen was a large sheet hooked from the wall of Pikus' store (now a tavern) on one end and to the hall on the other. This couple also sold popcorn. Everyone would come to town, do their shopping and then sit on blankets and watch the show, usually some cartoons, a western and then a comedy or mystery. The Tarzan and Dracula series were also favorites. Often the men went to the bars and the women and children watched the show. On Saturday night. the town would be packed with autos and people.

The village fathers built the new hall on the cheap. A contractor built the cement floor, walls & roof. They hired local people and used village volunteers to do the inside carpenter work. Gib Sr. & I helped lay the floor and assemble the bleachers. The cement block came from Portage because they had to be state certified and Johnson Block Co. in Colby did not meet. the requirements. John Olson had the contract to haul the block and Joe was the driver. It was a back-haul and the truck usually returned late in the afternoon. Everyone who had time came down and helped unload the block in the field east of the hall. When the contractor had finished the building Sewall Cook (who was a state surveyor) found the building was not straight on the lot. The village threatened to sue unless the contractor straightened the building or reduced the cost. The village got the reduction. Ed Mews (who had been a horse trader and farmer) and Vince Hederer (a farmer from a mile east of Unity) were hired as carpenters and to supervise the inside work. They didn't get along well. In one of the arguments Ed said Hederer didn't know how to build a stairs but when I checked a couple years ago Vince's stairs still were there and doing the job. The two carpenters also supervised putting down the wood flooring. They were not acquainted with the technique of a floor that size. They laid it too tight and nailed it in too many places. In addition the village decided not to heat the building when there was no activity. This meant there was no humidity control. The second fall or winter the wood expanded. The floor humped up in about a 10 inch high strip in about the center, running north to south. The school used the hall for a gym. Playing basketball over that hump was a real challenge. They finely got carpenters with power saws to saw slices out of the hump and let it down.

Also a fellow named Thorson from Withee rented the hall Saturday nights for roller skating. For a quarter you could skate from 8 to 11. Skaters carne from as far as Medford and Marshfield. He and his wife rented skates, sold snacks, showed skating technique and played music to skate by. If you skated around the outside edge of the floor it went well but if you were going fast and cut across the center of the hall you could become airborne.

The Unity Tigers basketball team were good for a team from a small town. They also played in the hall and got good crowds. They played other city teams from Medford, Marathon City, etc. They even played teams like the Minneapolis Lakes and Harlem Globetrotters. I had a public address system and provided music for the events so I got to meet some of the managers and players of those teams. The manager of the Globetrotters was a real character. The high school proms in the new hall were a challenge. In the old hall it was easy to decorate on a small budget and 20 couples on the floor looked cozy. In the new hall 20 couples on the floor made it look like no one came.

The village park from the County trunk south. There used to be a 6 or 8 sided band stand in the north-west corner of the park across the street and slightly south of the barber shop. The village band consisting of the Justman Bros., Madds Larsen and a few other old timers played there on special occasions like July 4th. They would also get students from the high school band to play with them. Herman Leffel was the west side constable and was also custodian of the park, later it was Mr. George Miller. Miller was a very tall man. The village got a riding mower and Miller looked really funny on it, his knees were higher than the tractor hood.

There was a tall wood flagpole next to the band stand. I remember once on Halloween some local ruffian pulled an old bed spring and some other junk up the pole. The rope got caught and because the pole was such old wood they couldn't find a steeple jack to climb it. I don't recollect how they got it down but some of the older boys in school were having quite a laugh over it.

The children made a ball diamond between the flagpole and the WW-I cannon. It was just a diamond worn into the grass. Herman tried to chase us off but the parents made such a fuss we continued to play there. We also played football between the WW-I cannon and the Civil War cannon to the south. Except for a few bushes there was no other things in the park. The row of trees along Madison were named Mr. Cook, Mr. Salter, Mr. Duvaul, etc. after local settlers.

Some of the old timers like Walter Cook used to tell of how they loaded the Civil War cannon with black powder and catalogs on July 4th and Halloween. It made quite a blast and spread shredded paper allover the south end of the park. One time they overloaded it and the wood gun carriage collapsed and one of the arms broke off the barrel. After that the igniting hole was closed and it was put on the cement stands.

When the new hall was completed the free shows were moved to the park just west and north of the WW-2 cannon. The screen was held by a pole about 30 feet from the row of trees on one side and a tree on the other. This created a lot of traffic between the Park and the stores across Hy 13. It worked out OK except when trains went by they had to stop the movie and there was a lot of worry about children or someone being struck by the train.

We had an ice cream counter in the store that sold soda, sundays and floats. There were several flavors and special glasses for each type of treat and larger for 2 scoop, 3 scoop, etc. This counter had it's own change drawer and 4 or 5 round swivel stools bolted to the floor where people could sit and eat. When I was older it was my job to run the ice cream counter. Some show nights it kept me busy for a couple hours until the shows started.

The path from Wood Street to Hy 13 in front of Dommer's Clover Farm Store was called the cinder path. Each year the train would bring in a gondola of cinders and the section men would coat it with a new layer of cinders. They also recovered the depot platform each year. After the advent of diesel engines the city had to maintain the path and used gravel.

Except for the village siren the area south of the park never had any buildings on it. There was a small section house on the west side of the track west of Amy Klein' s house. Originally the railroad cut was very steep, one could barely climb up the sides. In winter the children used to ski and sled down the steep bank, sometimes out onto the track. The railroad looked upon this as a hazard and the railroad detective (A Mr. Boyington from Stevens Point) would come by regularly and chase us off. We could all recognize his car and as soon as he was gone we were back there. About 1950 the railroad brought in a contractor with big earthmovers and gave the cut a more gentle slope on both sides all the way from the section house to about 75 foot of the south end of the park.

There was talk of a bridge over the track west what is now the garage on top of the hill but I have never seen a picture or talked to anyone who really saw the bridge. The wind always seemed to blow on the hill top west of the track and it was a great place to fly kites. We spent a lot of time up there in spring.

41. The Fuller Barber Shop. This was a long wood 2 story building, and it got lower as it went on towards the west. I think once the western end was used for shops but can only remember people renting the west end for residence. Lyle Fuller operated a barber shop in the front (east end) of the building and lived upstairs. My dad & I took turns getting haircuts here or from Van Meisner's (in the Hotel) because both were customers at the store. Fuller had at least 2 chairs in the shop. Saturday nights the place would be packed with men exchanging news and telling stories. Some would dash over to one of the bars or a drink while waiting. The barber shop would stay open until everyone was served, which was sometimes midnight or later.

After the war Fuller left the business and Abie Misener (son of Van Misener, the barber in the hotel) had a barber shop there. He lived upstairs also. He had 2 sons, Leroy & Wayne and a daughter Maryann. Abie split the front from east to west and had a sporting goods store on the north side and the barber shop on the south side for a while. Abie moved his shop to Abbotsford about 1960.

There was a large vacant lot south of Fuller’s to a T-shaped house about 250 feet to the south. After the war Wesley Jewett (who had been a farmer south east of town took a job on railroad section crew) moved in a two story house. They had an older daughter who married Ralph Leonard, a son Ervin about 2 years older then me and a daughter Merle. You might talk to Mrs. Leonard to see if I have the first names of all the Jewett's correct and for more on this house.

An older widow lived in the T-shaped house. When she left Mrs. Jewitt's sister, Mrs. Gronevelt (not sure of spelling) from Chicago moved into this house. She had one son Arnold who was about my age. He was a really good artist and did a nice picture of the park with the trees in fall color. He went back to Chicago to work when he got older and was killed in the Korean conflict. Stepped on a mine.

The next house south was a low bungalow owned by Ed. Maas. He was well respected around town and involved in village politics. When he died there were a couple renters in the house. Then Emil Johnson bought the place. This house was almost directly across from the store. There was a huge elm tree just north of this house it was the one I saw the lightening strike.

There were two pointed roof houses south of Maas'. Leo Hebert moved his family out of the hotel-tavern into one of them. Ray Binning lived in the other for a while. Leo had a son, Robert and a daughter Ruby. Mrs. Hebert was a sister to Mrs. Jewitt and Mrs. Gronevelt up the street.

The last house in the block belonged to Walter Cook. He was a state assemblyman, a village board member and also an auctioneer, a great storyteller and very diplomatic talker. The Cook's had two daughters several years older than me but I don't remember the names. (Later, the one who lived at home was Harriet.)

There were no buildings in the next block until the top of the hill about across from the siren. It was the International Order of Odd Fellows hall, a two story building with a steps inside and up the back. The organization was a fraternal group and did charitable works around the country. It dwindled in size and they did not keep the hall up. The stone foundation was crumbling. During the war my buddy Paul Erickson used to snare rabbits by the cracks in the foundation. Between 1949 and before st. Croix moved to Park Falls they used the building for storage.

Madds Larsen lived in the next house south. I don't know what he did for a living because he was retired before we moved to town. He did some odd jobs like street repair, kept up the fires in the village hall and some park maintenance. He drove a Model T Ford. Every morning he went down his street, across the tracks on the county trunk, south on Hy 13 and made a u-turn to park in front of the Post Office. There were a lot of jokes about hi s driving because he never looked around much. One day he made a U-turn in front of a truck and it was the end of his T-Model. Fortunately he wasn’t seriously injured.

The next house south was along narrow 2 story house that was rented by Mr. Erickson, a WW-l veteran on disability. His wife had died. He had a step-daughter (Dorothy Snowberg) several years older than me and a son Paul a year older than me. Paul and I played together a lot and he is the boy on the near side of the wagon in the June calendar picture.

Mr. & Mrs Holibitz and their daughter (Olga) 1ived in the next house south. They had an accent and may have been immigrants after WW-I but am not sure. They also had a son living in Wausau. Mr. Holibitz must have been a clock maker or repairman because he had a lot of really unusual old-country clocks with chimes, music boxes, revolving horses & soldiers, etc.

Amy Klein owned 40 acres south of Fuller Street. The trailer court and roads south and west of the trailer court of it did not exist. The land had once belonged to Peter Fritz (and probably a lot of others) and there was still a mound about 6 feet high and 50 feet across on the south end of the field about south of where the VFW is now. She said it was the remains of the sawdust mound from the sawmill that had been there. They dammed the creek at the railroad bridge and used the pond for a hot-pond to wash the dirt off the loges before sawing them. The spillway had washed a huge hole between the railroad bridge and the Hy 13 bridge. The dam was gone but local lads used to swim in the hole until one drowned. Then the Marathon County highway crew (Tony Korntved and Tom Loughead Sr.) filled it up.

Where Madison St. curved to cross the track a road went straight south (west of the tracks) almost down to the creek. There was a turn-around in the swamp there and it was used as the village dump. We used to have target practice there shooting bottle and rats, lots of rats ...

This street had one house on the north side, with an outhouse and a small shed behind it. A family named Bauer lived there. Mr. was out of work and collected junk and sold it to bring in some cash. There was always junk piled all around the north and east side of the house. They had several boys who were real tuffs, they and the Mews boys were always at war. Money was scarce there, the boys used to take bags and walk down the railroad track picking up coal that fell off the tender (it was still steam trains then) to heat their house. They also had one daughter, Shirley who was my age. About 1942 after the war started and there were jobs available Mr. Bauer got a factory job they moved to Wisconsin Rapids.

A family named Buetsch lived there in the late 40' s and early 50's. They must still be in town because I saw Mrs. Buetsch in church.

I don't know who lived there during the war but Elmer Djerf who had owned the tavern on the curve south of Unity moved to this house. The tavern burned about 1956 and I think that's when he moved to Unity.

I covered Fullers barber shop and the vacant lot/city hall earlier. When we moved to town the brick building west of the village hall was the Pikus Grocery. We were still in the meat market and shopped locally for groceries but didn't go over there a lot. It. seems like it was a Clover Farm Store. Maybe when Pikus moved Dommer took the Clover Farm franchise. Ralph Pikus and family lived at the back above the store. They had 2 daughters, one (Darlene maybe) about my age and one younger. About 1940 they moved to Spencer where he had a store on the south side of Main St. After Pikus left, the store was empty for a while then Hudson's moved their tavern into the building. Ike was the father and his son Harold also worked in the bar until he died. I notice the building is still a tavern.

There was a brick lean-to on the west side of this building. Before the war Ralph Leonard and another fellow repaired autos in it. Somewhere around 1948 Mrs. Ed Feit (wife of the depot agent) started a grocery store there. I remember the two other grocers in town had supported the depot when there was talk it would be closed, they felt Feit's were not too considerate. After 1956 there was a juke box/Pinball machine sales and repair shop in the building.

Across the street was a cement block building which also had been a garage. After about 1946 C. J. Baine from Colby used it in his livestock buying operation. He was in competition to Schultz's so Bud could tell you about this. For a while Eric Erickson, who had been a technical man building special machinery for St. Croix used the shop for his fiberglass business which was called Viking Plastics. Among other things he manufactured an attractive fiberglass water ski that could be used behind low horsepower motors. The skis were wider and ribbed. They were hollow for floatation used to fill with water and sink. I to put foam in them and tried to market them but by then high horsepower motors were so common there was no call for such an item. The wider ski was too difficult to maneuver at higher speed. The building is now a grocery and farm goods store.

There was an ally running north from the Cty Trunk on the west side of the Pikus building. The wood building west of the ally was Ike Hudson's Saloon. There were several card tables and on weekends they had tournaments. Ike ran the place on the old fashioned rules. No women or children allowed in the bar. There was a long lean-to about 12 feet wide on the west side of the saloon for the women and children to wait. Soda and food only was served in the family side.

When they moved east to the brick building the Veterans of Foreign Wars bought the building and for years it was their meeting hall. Once they hosted a pancake breakfast fund raiser for the scouts to go on a trip. They also had other events in their hall.

There was a tall old pine tree in the vacant lots between the tavern and Kuehnau store. There were persistent rumors that a horse thief had been hanged there. The Clark county historian said he could find no record of the event but then that's not the kind of thing that would be reported.

John R. Kuehnau ran a furniture store and undertaking parlor in the two story wood building on the north-east corner of the county trunk and Washington St. He died before we moved to town but he was a very dynamic type of person from all reports. A real "go-getter". The store was a distinctive building because it had a balcony across the front and a outside stairs down the east side. The undertaking parlor was upstairs, there was a room about 10 X 12 in the north east corner for body preparation, a rope/windlass operated elevator in the middle and a room to show caskets in the north-west corner. The front was the room where bodies could be "laid out" prior to the funeral. Access for mourners was by the stairs from the sidewalk up the east side of the building.

Most of the building downstairs was showroom. There was 2 rooms across the back (And the elevator) that Kuehnau used for an office and storage I would guess. There was also a one-car garage in the back which might have been for the hearse.

My mother and I were in the building during the war. Mrs. Kuehnau had kept everything just as it was when Mr. K had died. There were phonographs, records (by the latest artists of the time, I bought. one featuring a singing group including "B. Crosby"), all kinds of chairs, tables and furniture.

About 1946-47 she cleaned out the merchandise and rented to two men (Flink and Vail) who operated a furnace and sheet metal business there. Either before or after the sheet metal business they also had a business buying eggs locally and selling them in Chicago where they had both had lived and had connections. Gib Sr. sold them eggs. The talk was that organized crime in Chicago had a corner on the egg market and made it clear they didn't want any competition. I don't remember the first names of Flink or Vail but Irene Flink might have some information on them. I remember Vail had a daughter about 2 years ahead of me in school.

St Croix used the building for storage and the back part downstairs was where they had their shipping room. Fred Kaufman was the shipping manager. I worked there in fall of 1951 spring of 52. My job was filling orders and hauling stuff from the manufacturing plants in the garage and across from the feed store to the Odd Fellows hall and Kuehnau building or down to the depot. The elevator was still working and we used it to take cart loads of fishing poles and nets up to the second floor for storage. There were still a few silver name plates and handles for caskets in one of the upstairs back rooms. Kuehnau must have customized the caskets as upgrades for customers of more means.

Most of St. Croix's goods were shipped by Albrent Truck Lines from Wausau, Nuendorf from Medford or by the Soo Line RR. The big (for those days) trucks would back up to the door on the rear, west side and we would load them up.

There was the stone walls about 4 feet high across from the Kuehnau building but I never heard what it was.

The houses on the north side of the county trunk west of the Kuehnau building were out of my reach at that time. One of the first two houses belonged to C. J. Vogt. C . J. and his brother Herman (who later retired to the house east of Unity where Ray Benning lives) were into all kinds of things, land speculation, politics, road building and they owned several shoe and glove factories around the state. Gib Sr. was the executor of Herman's estate and it was a real tangle.

Albert Wiedenhoeft bought the first house across Washington and lived there from about 1952 to 1956.

Further up the street was a bungalow where Mr. Gus Rhyberg, a retired farmer and stone mason lived (Joe Olsen lives thee now). The big 4-square house was the "Morgan House". Mr. Morgan had been in land speculation, was well off and also owned the farm on the county truck across the street from their house.

I don't recollect who owned the small farm east of the Kuehling place but Ed Mews moved there in the late 40's.

The last farm on the north side of the county trunk was owned by the Smokey family. They moved out and a Kuehling bought the farm.

On the south west corner of Washington and the County trunk there was a small building that was a shoe shop for a while. Streichart, a German immigrant (who later operated the door factory in Abbotsford) was the shoe repairman for a while. To the south was an area fenced with a wooden fence where Ed. Mews displayed his stud horses and south and adjacent to the fence a small horse barn.

Ed Mews & family lived in the house about 100 feet west of Washington on the south side of the county trunk. Later he moved to the small farm west and across the road. Mews' had a large family and several children were in school with me.

Then Clarence Eblom lived in the house for a while and was the custodian at the Unity school. His son-in-law (a Mr. Dearth) built the Prairie style house on the corner. There is a picture of Clarence in the 1951 Unity HS annual.

The next house west belonged to a old couple. When they died Herman Franceen and his wife moved from their farm a mile west and 1/2 mile north of Unity to this house. Mr. Franceen was a tall, slim man. He was self taught and operated a radio repair shop and did electrical work in the area. Much of the early wiring in the store and upstairs was his handiwork. I used to help him out sometimes. He was a good electrician but had some odd habits. He reused friction tape when ever possible because he claimed it never wore out. He hardly ever turned off a circuit when working on it, he felt 110 volt was not that dangerous. He wasn't able to handle the heavy amperage and newer circuitry of the larger refrigerators so Gib. Sr. got Cal Schultz or another guy from Colby to do this work.

There was a short street running south off the county trunk past Franceen's with 3 pointed-roof houses on it. They were rentals. A Jewett (Harley possibly) who had been gassed in the war and was on a pension lived in the first one. Some people named Greening lived in one of the next ones. Mr. Greening had been a farmer but worked on the WPA crew. I think another Jewett lived on the other for a while and then moved upstairs above the garage next to the store.

Cook’s house was on the north-west corner and there was a vacant lot on the south-west corner. Yahr's lived in a large house on the south side of the street. It had porches and a screen porch around the east and north side. They rented rooms to the single school teachers.

I don't remember who owned the house on the south-east corner of Washington and Wood.

There was also a small house and a barn on the North-east corner of Washington and Wood. I think Mr. s Wood 1ived there. Later Mr. Tapplin lived there. For a while he raised rabbits in the barn and shipped them to Chicago. He also raised turnips and waxed them but guessed the market wrong and the turnips froze and spoiled.

There were no buildings on Fuller Street on the south end of town. (This was before the addition of the trailer court, extension of Washington and east west road where the VFW is located were added.)

There was a bungalow on the north-west corner of Washington and the street that went down to the feed store. Mr. & Mrs. Creed and Mr. Creed’s brother lived there. The place was always well kept, had an arbor with vines over it and a peaceful, almost sedentary atmosphere. When Creeds passed on one of the Johnson's from St. Croix lived there a while. Wilber "Babe" Witte and his wife Bonnie (Ewert) lived there too.

There were no buildings on the east side of Washington between the county trunk and Wood St.

I don't know the order but Herman Leffel, Johnny Johnson and Victor Josephson lived on the west. side of the street. As I mentioned Martin Helstad had lived in the house just north of the Lutheran Church. Frank Jordan also lived there a while. Later Melvin Swan, the school principal lived there.

There were no houses on the east-side of Washington St. between Wood St., and the south end of town.

On the west side of the street the parsonage was next to the Lutheran church. The Rev. J. A. Olson lived there most of the time When he took a job in Upper Michigan for a while there were a series of other preachers living there. Olson's son Paul (who was 4 years older than I) & I spent a lot of time together for a while before and after Paul was in the army. Sharon is the only Olson child still living and resides in Wisconsin Rapids. I saw her at the Unity Church reunion two years ago.

There was a vacant lot and then the Safemaster house. They died about 1940 I think. During the war the house was standing derelict and empty with the doors open and windows missing. Their daughter was a missionary in Africa so there was all kinds of spooky things like wooden war masks, spears, huge long snake skins, etc. in the house for children to explore. We used to dare each other to enter it. Later the artifacts were moved to the church basement and someone fixed up the house and moved in but I can't remember who. Anita & I took piano lessons there from the wife so she may remember. I will check.

There was a long vacant space and two houses on the south end of Washington before it turned down towards Madison. As mentioned when Gib Sr. moved to Unity we lived in the second house from the corner for about a year. It was before I was in school and my mother would put me in my wagon and pull me down to meat market when she took Gib Sr. his lunch. I also remember the house was very drafty and cold.

John Fuller and his wife lived jn the last house on the south end, west side of the street. John managed the feed store. Mrs. Fuller was a large jolly woman interested in Unity history and instrumental in the first Unity History of 1933. They had several children, their daughter Dorthey used to baby sit me sometimes. One son lives in Janesville. I saw him briefly at the Unity school reunion 2 years ago. I intend to contact him to see what. he remembers.

Unity had gangs. Before we moved there some local boys broke into stores and taverns at night and took cash left in cash drawers. The story was that one New Year’s Eve they stole a box of dynamite from the shed behind the hardware and tied it to a fence post across the street from the depot. They lit the fuse and hid in the depot to watch. The ground was frozen and the blast was not absorbed by the ground. To their surprise it nearly tipped over the depot and carried through the frozen ground breaking windows as far as Klein’s Shoe Shop. They were caught and their parents had to bail them out of the Marathon County jail and make restitution. When I was in 1-2 & 3rd grade there were the Mews gang (Marvin, Levi & Jimmy) and Bauer gang (Billy & his brothers), boys about. my age. Out of protection the south and east side boys formed a gang (Dale Steinke, Tom Loughead, Paul Erickson, myself) but it was never as cohesive as the other two gangs because of their brotherly ties. Besides they were better fighters than we were.

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