Field Notes01

Waupaca County Post

March 16, 1899

“When in a state of dissipation

You come home late and dimly saw

Two ladies holding a consultation,

Your wedded wife and your mother-in-law,

That was a time for disappearing,

Just take a header and down you go;

When the skies above are clearing,

Bob up serenely, bob up serenely from below.”

That describes the POST’s representative in the field when he came home about the last day in January, and found mercury cavorting away down about the 20 degrees below zero mark. It was a good time for disappearing, so we disappeared, only bobbing up serenely when the weather cleared and all the weather prophets united in saying, “That was the coldest spell we ever saw and we shall never see its like again.”

Starting south Tuesday morning we had the misfortune to break our cutter a few miles out and had to return to Waupaca for repairs, but in the evening reached Crystal Lake, after plowing through deep drifts most of the afternoon. G.W. Riley, an old time POS subscriber was reclaimed from the camp of the Philistines, where he has been pocketed a year or two. Everybody nearly about Crystal Lake was sick and confined to their houses or beds with the grip or some kindred complaints and a number of deaths have occurred about there recently. This we found to be the case with the people from that point nearly all the way to Wild Rose.

At Wild Rose we found everybody talking railroad and considerable excitement worked up over the proposed building of a road from Oshkosh to Stevens Point via Bloomfield, Pine River, Saxeville, Wild Rose and other interior towns. Everybody seems ready to contribute of his own and his neighbor’s property towards the consummation of this project, although many of them realize that it is a case of being skinned before the railroad comes as well as forever afterward. But they argue that it is a choice between two evils, and that while they do not fancy going into their own pockets to help a soulless corporation to get upon its feet, they would rather do so than to haul their potatoes and other produce 15 or 20 miles to market. Still, there seems to be a lingering suspicion with many that with all their liberality they may yet fail to see this road in operation, because of the failure of a number of similar projects in the past. There was a farmer’s institute held at Wild Rose Thursday with a couple of talented theoretical farmers from abroad as the principal attraction of the occasion, and one old farmer sarcastically remarked that those fellows, he reckoned, “Knew more about farming the farmers than they did about real farming.” Their pet theories do no harm, anyway, and these meetings seem to give the farmers an immense amount of satisfaction. They come together and swap ideas, jokes and stories and get a great deal of real social enjoyment out of it, and possibly some valuable additions tot heir stock of knowledge in the pursuit of farming. Wild Rose seems to be the home of the checker fiend. There are probably more checker players there than in any other town of its size in the state. We met many of the people of this nice little inland town, did a nice business among them, and went away satisfied if they ever do get a railroad it will be the finest business point in all that section of country.

Saxeville, eight miles east of Wild Rose is another one of those little country towns so common in Waushara County. Four churches exist here and they say they are nearly all very well attended, drawing their congregations from the country round about. It is also quite a musical place, and sports a band of ten pieces, which has an entertainment advertised next Saturday night for its benefit – a strictly moral entertainment, so the bills read, and we regarded this as prima facie evidence that the band boys were in the habit of attending some of the four churches in town. After doing the town as thoroughly as possible, Friday we drove to Pine River and finished up our day’s work there and on the road between the two places.

Pine River is the most pretentious town of all these little places. Has a very good hotel, three or four stores, and some of them carry big stocks, a saw mill and grist mil. We should call it a flourishing country town and it has the appearance of enjoying considerable social life. Rev. Thomas, the Welch minister, is teaching a large class of singers in the church there, and as the school met the night we were there we went with the crowd and enjoyed the music. This section of country in the summer time is the rendezvous of trout fishers, as it is in the center of the lake and trout stream region.