Waupaca County Post

October 30, 1947

STORY OF OUR LAKES TO START NEXT WEEK

Fred M. Smith, Long Time Resident, Tells Tales to Ellen Moore

“When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young” to be Printed Serially in County Post.

            We are taking this opportunity to prepare you in advance for a really great article we were most fortunate to obtain, and which will be featured in The Post starting Thursday, November 6^th.

            As you who read us know, it has not been our policy in the past to meddle in the field of feature writing; ordinarily our space is too limited, and your demands for news too extensive to permit it.  But, this article we speak of, is no ordinary article.  It is something we feel you should have – a sort of heritage which belongs to you because you belong to Waupaca.  We think when you read it, you’ll feel just that way about it, - at least that’s what happened to us.

            For a long time now, we of The Post, have felt more should be told of Waupaca in its youth, it’s pioneers, it’s beautiful lakes, even the country which surrounds it.  We felt that for our oldsters such a story would bring back many pleasant memories, and to our youngsters many a surprise.

            But, as so often happens when there is no pressing need for action, we only toyed with the idea now and then, - most of the time it lay pigeon-holed for future reference.  Then one day last summer we received a letter.  It was from a woman, native-born, but for years now a Chicagoan, and she wrote of the tales her old Uncle had to tell about the way this country had changed in the last seventy some odd years.  She mentioned George Lake at the Chain by it’s original name.  The Hog Hole, and said it was so-called because in those early days monstrous pike fought like hogs there over anything thrown in the water!  She told us of the skies being darkened by the flights of wild duck, geese and pigeon, and how from early spring until late fall the dawn was filled with the whistling of quail, drumming of partridge, and the crowing of prairie chicken.  Her uncle, said she, remembered our Lakes when they were virgin – not a building on their shores, not a boat on their waters.  She said she thought the story ought to be told.

            And that’s how we were able to give you this outstanding feature.

            Mrs. Ellen Moore, who writes under the pen-name of MEPA, but who finally agreed to a more satisfying introduction here, is the author.  An interesting little sidelight on her pseudonym is the fact that the name is comprised of the initials of her two young daughters, Mary Ellen, and Penelope Ann!

            Mrs. Moore is the niece of Fred M. Smith who is the source of her information, and who for 81 years has been a resident of The Chain, a man well qualified, we think, for the role of narrator in her article.

            How many of us now, can remember a hotel standing where the Light Company is, and being owned and run by an old colored man named Bob Scott?  Or Winsel Chady’s little shop, then part of Glover’s corner, where the first post office operated, and groceries and jewelry laid side by side waiting to be bought?

            All these things, and many more, we are now in a position to give you.  We want you to enjoy these tales of long years ago.  It’s the story of your home and your people.

            Read “When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young” by MEPA, in your Waupaca County Post, starting on Thursday, November 6.  We can’t praise it too highly.

November 6, 1947

In All the World No Lakes Like These

“When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young” by MEPA

A County Post Serial Being the Observations of Fred M. Smith, Lakes Patriarch,

For 81 Years a Resident of The Chain.

FORWARD

            The author of this article, being relatively unimportant chooses for the time being to remain anonymous, and to introduce instead the narrator, whose homely and beloved tales of the Waupaca Chain o’ lakes and surrounding country, date back over a period of seventy some odd years.

            Meet then, Mr. Fred M. Smith, who celebrated his eighty-first birthday last June 23^rd, and was one of the six sons born to the pioneers, William and Elizabeth Smith, on their original home site now known as The Hill, on Smith Lane, just off Highway 54.

            The following is a short resume of the lives of Fred and his brothers:

            Each of these sons was given sixty acres of land in the vicinity of The Chain, by their father.  On his, Fred built a summer resort in 1891 and named it Brinsmere Inn, which meant an inn on the rim or brink of a lake.  It became one of the finest resorts of its kind in this part of the country.

            Alfred, though he kept his inheritance, chose to live elsewhere, and for about fifty years was employed by the Consolidated Milling Company in Minneapolis. When he retired approximately six years ago, he returned to The Lakes, and built the home he now lives in on The Hill.

            Dave farmed the land he was given and will be remembered by many of the older residents, as a happy, lovable, hospitable man, with an enviable sense of humor, and a sharp and ready wit.  He died of the flu, at home on his farm, in the winter of 1931.

            Edwin, the baby of the family, inherited Locksley Hall, a resort which had been built a few years prior to Brinsmere, by his father, and which was also the family home.  This place was one of the last big resorts of that era to close; it operated until 1920.  Edwin died in 1940.

            There were two other sons, the first born, who never reached manhood, William, the oldest died of diphtheria at the age of six.  Henry, the second so, was killed at the age of fourteen, when a load of logs he was hauling, slipped and rolled from the wagon, pinning him beneath them.

            Just Fred and Alfred left now, - and Fred is our “teller of tales”.

            It was jut the right sort of an evening for memories, - Freddie’s memories.  It was quiet, and softly gentle, yet gay with the happy singing of the “little brogas” in the swamp.  Through the woods, from our rockers on his snug little porch, we could hear the swish, and catch the glitter of headlights, from Point Comfort traffic. Across the marsh from Nestling Lake, came the faint whirr of speed boats, cutting the channel into McCrossen. Farther away, and fainter still, came the trains of the Casino dance band at the Indian Crossing, between Limekiln and Columbia.  A world of sounds fenced partly out by the woods surrounding us, creeping thru when they could, but passing by unheeded in their alien efforts to be noticed.

            Freddie chuckled and settled back comfortably in his high-backed rocking chair.  We were full of his excellent sour milk pancakes, Mr. Mortenson’s very good salt pork, and last, but not least, pig gravy – a combination that is hard to beat!  He was ready to talk, - I, to listen.

            “Yessir,” he began, “I’ve lived here all my life, man and boy for eighty-one years and it’s a funny thing the way this country’s changed.  Why, I can remember when there wasn’t a building anywhere, on any of these lakes.  Just think of that, - not a SINGLE BUILDING ANYWHERE – and now look at them!  I remember the first one put up, too.  It was a little red boathouse, old Myron Reid – he was about the best lawyer Waupaca ever had – built over on Lake Park, on Hicks Lake.  Of course there isn’t any Hicks Lake now, but those days it took in all of what they call Sunset and Rainbow Lakes today. Well anyhow, us boys went down to Hicks Lake fishing one day just as he was finishing it and it scared us pretty near to death!  We heard the hammering away off, and when we finally got to the shore and peeked through the bushes, there was that little old boathouse sticking out over the water. Well sir, I’ll never forget it.  We threw our fish poles and worms to hellandgone (sic), and ran all the way home.  We told Father INDIANS were building a house down there!

            “Yessir, that was the first building ever put up on these lakes, old Myron Reid’s red boathouse.  He was a great fellow to be alone and fish, and for a couple of years he’d come out there whenever he had time.  Then old Doc Calkins, who had a drug store where the Palace Theatre is now, discovered those springs over at Lake Park, and decided to bottle the water and sell it.  He made pop out of it too, and put up a little building there to work in.  Not long after that Major Roberts, he was president of the Old National Ban, built the first cottage there, and right after him, Ed Gordon built his. Old Gordon was connected with The Pot, I’ve forgotten just how, but it seems to me he was editor about then.  Well, anyhow, all this was too much for old Reid – too many people and buildings around I guess – so he moved his boathouse over on the island to get away from all the hubbub.  By the holy-jumped-up!  I wonder what he’d say if he could see these lakes now?”

            Right here there was a slight pause, while Freddie, who is an inveterate chewer of tobacco, stepped to the door and back.

            “Now THAT,” he continued, “must have been about seventy years ago, maybe a little more. I know I was just a little cuss.  What a country it was, then.  The lakes were full of fish, not the kind we catch now, but great big old things that would scare a fellow almost to death!  You know that little lake they call George Lake now – it’s between Rainbow and Taylor?  Well sir, for years and years, we called it The Hog Hole, because there was nothing else in it but great big old monstrous Pike, that fought like hogs over anything we threw in the water.  Now you wouldn’t  believe that maybe, but it’s the truth.  I remember from ten tot twenty-five pounds apiece, got them toted town, and sold them for five dollars.

            But of course that wasn’t anything to catch those kind of Pike those days, you could get as many as you wanted of them anytime you went out, and just about as fast as you could pull them in, too.  But I’ll tell you there were some awful things in these Lakes then, that us boys didn’t want to catch – like the one Father and old Philo Barton speared over in the west bay of Round Lake one time.  Judas Priest, what a monster that was!  They got him at night up in shallow water, and they couldn’t lift him into the boat, so they got into the lake and dragged him to shore.  Then they ran the spear handle thru his jaws, and put one end of it on each of their shoulders, and carried him home between them that way, and his tail dragged on the ground!  Now that fish must have weighed all of seventy-five or eighty pounds, we never knew because we didn’t have a scale big enough to weigh him, - but there were others caught and weighed around here then that ran as high as ninety.  Old Dave Taylor, the one Taylor’s Lake is name after, got one that weighed ninety pounds, on the east shore there, right by the island.  And one night when I went spearing with old man Howlett, a carpenter downtown, and Fred Guard, the one they called Guard’s Corners after, I got something on I was awful glad got off, I can tell you!  We were just going under Indian Crossing when we saw him, and he looked as long as the boat down there in the water.  Well sir, I nailed him on the first throw, and you should have seen that channel churn!  I tried to lift him, but I couldn’t hold him of course, and his weight pulled him right off the spear.  He went under the boat, then started for Columbia, and just as he reached deep water I threw again, but I only ticked his tail. We went up there three times after that to see if we could find him floating around somewhere dead, he couldn’t live of course with the hole he had in him, but we never saw hide nor hair of him again.  Now that fish must have weighed eighty or ninety pounds – maybe more, but then, there were lots of them here those days.  We used to find great big old heads, with jaws eight or ten inches long, washed upon the shore lots of times.  I suppose they were fish that had died of old age – or maybe been killed and eaten by something bigger than they were!  But you don’t see them anymore, maybe there’s still some here but they stay down deep.  I know I’d like to see one, just once more.”

            For a time Freddie sat quietly rocking, reliving for a moment I suppose, the thrills of those early days, while I not wanting to step in where angels fear to tread, quietly held my peace.  Then –

            “And the bass we had here those days,” he fairly snorted.  “You never saw such bass!  Small mouth and Oswego – beautiful fish.  We used to do a lot of spearing, there weren’t any laws here then, and we had an old iron jack that set up as high as your head in the front of the boat filled with burning pitch wood for light.  My!  What a beautiful sight it was to see those old bass laying upon the shallows, didn’t make any difference where you went, there were hundreds of them, big and small.  We used to spear, us boys, till we got tired, just the big ones of course, that ran from four to six pounds, and when we got through there were just as many left as when we’d started!

            I’ll never forget though, one old bass I caught, years before we ever had a boat, in fact before there’d ever been a boat on any of these Lakes.  It was on a Fourth of July, and Alfred and I had done our chores early and gone down to The Narrows (Browne’s Point) to fish.  All we had for a pole and line was a sapling we’d cut in the woods, and a good strong piece of twine.  Well sir, I was standing on this old log that day out over the water, when that old bass grabbed my bait and away he went, and I with him!  I hung onto my pole though, and I finally landed him, and just as I was hauling him up on shore, the first rowboat we ever saw, came round the Point.  We forgot all about the fish, we were so excited about that boat, until the people paddled over and asked if they could buy it.  So we sold them the pole and our worms and the bass for ten cents, and got a good look at the boat at the same time.  It belonged to Petersen’s who had a farm up past the end of Long Lake, and they’d built it out of big thick, wide boards, and painted it red.  There weren’t any seats in it, so they’d put a lot of hay in the bottom and sat on that.  It looked just like an old wagon box floating around!  Of course nobody’d give it hellroom now, but it looked pretty nice to us boys right then.

            Anyway, after we’d watched them until they’d paddled out of sight, we ran all the way home with our ten cents, and asked Father to let us go to town and get his paper.  Then we walked all the way to Waupaca; got the paper and two packages of firecrackers, and I’ll bet we had those firecrackers for at least a month!  Yessir!  We’d shoot off one, or maybe two, every day, then we’d smell of them and put them in our pockets and carry them around until they didn’t smell any more!  Kids were different those days, I’ll tell you.  They appreciated things. They had to.

            I’ll bet you won’t believe it, but I must have been about ten years old before I ever had a suit of regular underwear!  And it wasn’t because we were poor either.  We were as well off as anyone around this country, better than some, but that sort of stuff just wasn’t to be had those days.  I remember Mother bought the red flannel from Uncle John Evans, and made suits for all us boys.  I forget what she paid for it, but it wasn’t much, just a little more than calico – and that was only two cents a yard then!

            Uncle John had a nice little mill then.  It was on the Crystal River, right where the Cary oil burner plant is now. The Baldwins had built it, but they weren’t woolen mill people, and they sold out to him after he came from New York to work for them. I remember Father working there one winter when they were short of spinners, and Mother running the farm with old Lars Larsen to help her.  He’d just come over from Denmark then, and the only thing he could say in English was “please pas the sugar!”  He was a big, strong, husky fellow, and just fourteen years old, and took good care of the farm while Father was away.  The mill finally burned down, and that was one of the smokingest fires Waupaca ever had.  They couldn’t stop it once it got started, because the floors and everything in that old place was just black with oil from the raw wool they handled.

            Yessir, while Father was gone that year, us boys had a lot of fun with old Lars Larsen.  He was crazy about hunting, even then, when he was only fourteen.  Got to be one of the hunters in this country later on, and I guess it must have run in the family because after he got married and had kids, all the boys grew up to be crack shots.  There was Charlie and Oscar and Fred and everyone of them good with a gun. Charlie was known all over the country.  He won the Grand American Handicap in Chicago one year.

            But I’ll never forget old Lars one day when a flock of great big Canadian geese came honking over the house, circled around and finally settled down on Bostick’s Marsh.  He came yelling like an Indian on the warpath, and what ever he was saying made just as much sense to us, across the barnyard and into the kitchen after an old muzzle-loading gun he had there.  Well, sir, he had enough wadding and powder and fine shot to load that thing, but he didn’t have any big shot, and he knew he couldn’t kill those geese without it.  So he looked all around, awful excited he was and jabbering every minute, ‘til he spied a lead knob the size and shape of an acorn on Mother’s tea kettle, and nothing would do but he have it.  When she understood finally, what he wanted, she told him to go ahead and cut it off, and he did.  Then he cut it up in four big pieces, and loaded the musket with that and the rest of the stuff, and off he went, hellbent on destruction!  Well sir, he got three of those great big old geese, and you never saw a happier Dane in your life.  That night at supper, he said “please pass the sugar” for us boys every time we asked him!

            Now that was down on Bostick’s Marsh – it’s nothing but a mud-hole now, but those days you could go down there any time in the spring or fall and get all the ducks or geese you could carry.  What a country it was for game, then.  Why!  There were times when the sky would be just black with birds; great big, beautiful old mallards, pigeon, all kinds of them.  When they rose up off the water it sounded like thunder – and there wasn’t a morning you got up that you didn’t hear the quail whistling, and partridge drumming, and prairie chicken crowing.  Now, there’s nothing left but crows and angleworms.!”

            Freddie stretched and yawned, and looked at his watch.  “Jumped up!” he exclaimed.  “It’s nine o’clock, way past my bed time. Come on Pat (this to his little black and white cocker) we got to go to bed, we can’t stay up all night like this. We got to sleep!”

Waupaca County Post

November 13, 1947

            There is something awfully nice about Freddie’s yard with its comfortable old chairs and funny old pump, and the workshop to the back where he does boat repairs – when he feels like it!  It’s just a little open spot, guarded by woods and sprinkled with sun and shade, but there’s always a feeling of welcome and comfortable informality there, that is not so easy to find these days.

            We were sitting in the yard and it was hot, and no matter where Freddie moved his chair, the brightly eager sun would find him.  For the umptieth time he got up, jerked it into a shady spot and said in disgust, “Sun!  A lot of these people nowadays are crazy for it, they’ll find out how good it is, it’ll kill them, that’s what!”

            He settled again, and looking down the road toward Rainbow Lake, was reminded of Senator Norris, who, before his death, spent many summers in his cottage on Point Comfort.  He used to enjoy the walk thru the woods between his place and Freddie’s, and their mutual interest in politics and the state of the nation in general, afforded them many pleasant hours together.

            “What a fine old fellow he was,” pondered Freddie.  “I guess you’d never believe it, if you didn’t know him pretty well, but he was a great lover of birds, and animals – well, just a lover of nature, I guess is what you’d call it.  He used to tell me lots of things that surprised me, things I never knew about before – and I thought I knew a lot about nature.  Yessir, what a smart old man he was – and now he’s gone. And Ed Browne, too – there was another smart man – and he’s gone.  He used to come over quite a bit in the summer time. He’d take their path through the woods, and then always cut across the field to get here.

            You know old Ed was in Congress down in Washington for eighteen years, I think it was, and a mighty good man in his job.  He did a lot of good things for this State, and one of them was to get good roads laid.  I knew Ed from the time we were kids, we were just about the same age – and I remember he got to be a lawyer pretty young and wanted to look older, so he grew whiskers.  I’ll never forget those whiskers – they turned out red as could be!

            Ed used to tell a lot of jokes on himself, sort of “dry” he used to be – and I remember him telling about meeting some old fellow from Lind on the street one day, who wanted some legal advice.  Seems he didn’t have time to come to the office and talk it over – wanted it right there – so Ed gave it to him, and later sent him a bill for services rendered.  Sometime afterwards, he met the same old fellow on the street again, stopped and held out his hand – but the old man backed up a little and said, “Now, wait a minute Ed, - before I shake hands with you, I want to know how much it’s going to cost me!”

            Ed’s father, old E.L. Browne, was the first state senator we ever had from here; he was elected before I was born, along about 1860 I guess.  He was quite a politician and used to make a lot of talks around the country during presidential election time. I forget now who was running one time when Father and John Hearn went to hear him, and took me along, but I know the meeting was held in old Music Hall, where they had all the big doings like that, those days.  It was upstairs in an old wooden building, where that theatre is now on Main Street.  Well anyhow, Father was a Democrat, and that meant something then, and E.L. Browne, who was a Republican, said that the Democratic candidate didn’t know as much as a chickadee-dee-dee-dee!  Yessir, - a chickadee-dee-dee-dee!  I’ll never forget the way he dragged that out – and Father jumped right up, right there in that meeting, and shouted, “That’s a d--- lie,” and turned around to John Hearn, and said, “Come on John, we’re going!”  They certainly used to get het up over politics those days.  There wasn’t any such thing as ‘campaign talk’ – they believed in their candidates, and everything they said about them.

            A truck grumbled down the hill and into the yard.  It was Ole Thompson, with ice.  The heat was killing the corn.  He’d just heard over the radio that the whole Iowa crop was as good as dead, corn had shot out of sight on the stock market, and pork and beef would go so high this winter a fellow just couldn’t afford to eat it!

            When he’d gone Freddie told me why they couldn’t raise corn now, like they used to years ago.  “If the farmers would plant it,” he began, “like we used to, four feet apart in the rows and then make the rows four feet apart too, they’d have plenty of corn no matter how hot it got.  But that takes up too much land, the way they figure now. They want lots of stalks for silage, so they plant all they can squeeze in, and then when we get a hot dry spell like this, there’s so much of it, it drains off every bit of moisture in the field – and your crop goes pftt! 

My goodness, how we used to work, and the crops we used to have. Did all our plowing with oxen for years and years. Everybody did.  I remember one team Father had.  Great big old red ones, so big they had to turn their heads to get their horns thru the barn door!  Well sir, one day when I was just a little cuss, Father was busy with something else and set me to plowing.  I recollect the plow handles were as high as my head, and I had to reach up to hang onto them.  There wasn’t anything to it of course, the old oxen pulled the plow, I just had to hang on to keep it in line behind them.  It was hot, terrible hot, and I don’t know how many rows I’d done, not many I guess, when all of a sudden those danged old things ran away.  Didn’t get scared of anything, nothing like that, just got sick of plowing in the heat, and ran away. They smashed the plow all to smithereens, bouncing it across the field after them, and then down the hill they went and into the swamp.  And when I got there, there they stood, like nothing had happened, drinking, and switching flies!  Judas priest, but Father was mad.  He went to Oshkosh the next day and bought his first team, a beautiful pair of white colts, and do you know he walked and let those colts, the whole fifty miles home.  Didn’t think anything of it either. People had to help themselves those days I’ll tell you, or go without.  And that was the third team in these parts.  Old John Hearn’s father had the first, and old Philo Barton, that’s the one Barton’s School is named after, the second.

Now, if I remember rightly, it was just after Father broke that team, he raised his first potatoes to sell. You know we didn’t raise them for market those days – people were ashamed to draw anything to town but wheat!  And it’s a funny thing when you think of how things are now, that we didn’t raise carrots and veggies and things like that to eat, then.  Oh we ate a few of them of course, but mostly they were feed for the stock. Anyway, those potatoes he raised that year for market, were called Peach Blows, and my! what potatoes they were.  He got a dollar a bushel for them, and nobody’d ever heard of such a thing.  Why! we thought we were rich. Before that if anyone ever did get up the nerve to haul potatoes to town, they got around seven cents a bushel for them!  Just think of it – and now they’re danged close to four dollars.

Then, just about that time Major Roberts and Uncle John Evans, and a couple of other business men, got together and built some starch factories around the country – I think it was three of them, anyhow two. I know there was one at Rice Lake, and one in Waupaca across the river from the school house, where the County Shops are now.  And after that lots of people raised potatoes and hauled tem there and sold them. 

Yessir, people raised most everything they needed for the table those days.  About all we ever bought was brown sugar and green tea.  Brown sugar!  My, how us boys used to like the hard lumps that were in it.  It wasn’t smooth and fine like it is now, and it was a real dark color.  I never think of brown sugar but what I remember old Ben Fenn.  He always used to have some on a little dish by his plate at the table, and he’s spread it on his bread – but none of the rest of them could have any.  He used to watch things, I can tell you.  I remember they could only use one match a day there, and that was to start the fire in the morning.  After that they had to get a light from the stove on little hickory sticks, that he kept hanging in a bundle in the kitchen.  One night when I was there, his girl Mae, lit the lamp with a match, and he sent her to bed without any supper – and she was a big girl then too!  What a funny old fellow he was, but it paid him to be careful and saving I guess.  He had an awful nice home there for those times, and he always had fine stock, and raised wonderful crops.

Yessir, brown sugar and green tea was about all we ever bought for the table.  Never thought of drinking coffee those days, nobody did, it cost too much.  Oh, I guess a few of the Danes around here then had it, they’re great coffee drinkers you know, but not all of them either. Most people drank tea. And flour, we never bought flour in a store like they do now. We used to tote our own wheat down to one of the grist mills, and have it ground into flour.  There were two of those mills in Waupaca then, M.R. Baldwin’s and G.L. Lord’s.  They were down there by the river, where the feed company is now, and right across the road from each other.  Father did a lot of trading with Lord’s, and I remember the head miller there for years, was a fellow by the name of Lawrence Johnson, who was a swell dresser!  Yessir, tote your wheat to the mill, and bring home your flour – and all they used those days, was just the heart of the kernel.  You know the outside of the shell is what they make bran of now.  Well, they threw that in the river then, I suppose tons and tons of it every year, and the same way with the shorts and middlings!  They didn’t know anything about fancy breakfast foods and the likes of them, those days – they all went down the river.

SOUTH MAIN STREET, 1871                                     COURTHOUSE SQUARE 1871

South Main Street, 1871

Through the courtesy of Mrs. Glennie Stetson, 326 S. Main, the County Post is able to bring to its readers a picture from the dim, distant past.  At the bottom right, notice the tree, where now thousands of motor cars whiz around the corner of Laux Chevrolet Garage.  Look closely at the sign, which say “Billiards”.  The County Post building stands just about there now.

Across the street (bottom left) is where Loberg’s Garage and the bar side of Simpson’s building now stands.  Now, reverting back to 1871, you see the Lewis Hotel, mentioned in our serial story, “When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young”.  The next building is a residence, then a store building, followed by the Stetson building on the corner where the Gamble Store now is.  Across the street north stands the Roberts’ Store, present site of the First National Bank.  Farther up the street are the business houses of Waupaca’s early history.

Courthouse Square, 1871

            Not many of our readers will remember the above picture, but almost everyone over 50 can remember some such scene years ago.  Note the spindly trees, long since grown to maturity on our court-house lawn.  According to Mrs. Glennie Stetson, through whose courtesy the above picture is depicted, the third building (from left to right) is the G. Stetson property, now the Leader Hardware building.  The next two buildings belonged to the Parish estate and the last two structures in the picture were the property of the Lea estate.  Looking at the photo in general we judge the season to be late spring, with some ice still on the ground.  One team is blanketed and the man across the street wears an overcoat.  Parking was no problem in the ‘70’s, farmers simply driving off the street from whichever direction they came.  Some unhitched, maybe to get the horses shod.  At the bottom left is a scene to cogitate on. The wagon box is up-sided.  Was it to feed the horses or did the farmer have a runaway?  The gray horse beside the wagon looks sort of fagged out.

Waupaca County Post

November 20, 1947

Supplies Hard to Get.

            Of course I’ve been talking about the way the farmers used to live, but there were other people who had to buy things from stores, and there were lots of lumber camps around the country then, that had to have supplies. Now just think of what an awful job it was to get staples and hardware, and lots of other things that were needed, up into this country and farther west to the lumber sections, like Stevens Point, before the railroad came.  It was all shipped up the river as far as Gill’s Landing, and then toted from there in big old wagons drawn by two teams of horses, the rest of the way.  It used to take them three days and two nights to make the trip from Gill’s Landing to Stevens Point – just think of it!  Of course they never drove at night, they stayed at taverns along the road, and I remember the first tavern they always stayed at on that trip, was on the old Emmond farm, an the other one was where that old Catholic Church was for many years, up on 54.  Yessir, those old tote teams were on the road all the time, going back and forth from Gill’s Landing – that is until the railroad came – the old Wisconsin Central.

Railroad Comes to Waupaca.

            My, but wasn’t that a big day for Waupaca – the day the tracks were laid hat far, going west!  I was just a little shaver, about seven or eight years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was in the middle of the winter on a terrible cold day!  Mother bundled me all up in buffalo robes, and Father and I drove to town in the sleigh.  The depot wasn’t where it is now up on the hill; it was down the hill on this side of the tracks and the same side of the street, and everybody from all over the country was there to see that train pull in. That is, if you could call it a train.  There was only a great big old steam engine with a smoke stack about eight feet high, and one car – but there was plenty of excitement I can tell you.  We could hear it coming long before we saw it, because it started whistling when it left Weyauwega, so everybody had a chance to get all worked up before it ever came in sight, and of all the hollering and yelling you ever heard, that was the worst.  And fights!  I don’t know how they got started – just the excitement I guess, but there were plenty of them, regular rough and tumble ones too, with lots of bloody noses thrown in!  You know Waupaca very nearly didn’t get that railroad. It was surveyed to go through Rural in the first place and it took a lot of arguing and I guess, a lot of wire-pulling, to get the company to change the route, but they finally did.  Yessir, the old Wisconsin Central – my, what a fine railroad that used to be – well! it was one of the finest in the Northwest for many, many years.

Circus with Electric Lights.

            Think how different things are now. Who’d ever have thought then, that there’d be electric trains sometime!  Why! no  one in this country even had electric lights then.  I’ll never forget the first one I ever saw – and didn’t I think that was something though!  It was at Sells Brothers Circus in Waupaca, and I was about sixteen years old.  They’d let it be known all over, in advance of course, that their tent would be lighted by electricity at night – and that was their biggest attraction that year.  Well sir, Neil MacArthur, who later became a famous internal revenue man, and Alfred and I wanted to go the worst way, but we only had a dollar, and the tickets were fifty cents apiece.  We argued around about it, but couldn’t figure out how to get any more money, and finally decided to go down there and see if we could work our way in.  How they could harness lightning and see and use it instead of lamps, was something we just had to see, or thought we did, so when we found out there weren’t any jobs to be had, we were mighty discouraged. Finally Neil took the money, and said he’d either get us in, or get us thrown off the grounds, one or the two – and away he went.  He ran over and pushed his way into the crowd that was waiting to buy tickets, got two, and then right away, before the fellow had time to think, started hollering about how he’d paid for three, and he wanted three, not two!  Well sir, for a few minutes there, Alfred and I were getting ready to run, cause it looked like we’d get thrown out sure – then the people waiting behind Neil commenced to holler and push, and the fellow got all excited and threw another ticket at Neil, and told him to get the blazes out of there!  So we all got into the show, and the tent was all lit up with electric lights, just like they’d said it would be – and my! we thought that was pretty good.

            Yessir, old Neil MacArthur, what a fellow he was, full of gimp, and he wasn’t afraid of anything.  They used to live on that little farm on 54, right across from where Loberg’s place is now.  He was around with us a lot, and I remember we tried awful hard to get him to join our band, but that was too tame for Neil!

Band Gets Started

            We had a pretty good little band for a school band, that is, and it was funny how us boys got it started. You remember me telling how we got $5.00 for those pike we caught in The Hog Hole.  Well sir, we knew old George Oakes, he clerked in Oakes Dry Goods Store, where Hansen’s Tavern is now, had a pretty good cornet he wanted to sell and as soon as we got that money we went over there and bought it.  Then we were afraid to take it home because we thought Father would be mad, so we hid it in the woods, and every day when we went to Barton School the four of us would take turns blowing on it a couple of times apiece!  Then when we figured we were pretty good, we started that band, and we used to practice in Barton school house, where we all went to school.

            Now there was something else different in those days.  We didn’t go to school from September to June, like they do now.  We went for about three months in the summer, and about four months in the winter – the kids had to help with planting and crops the rest of the time.

Like Spelling

            Jumped up!  How I hated arithmetic – I’ll never forget the old book we had to study out of.  It was called Thompson’s Practical Arithmetic!  I can see it yet!  Spelling was about the only thing I did like, and I guess that was because I was pretty good at it – or maybe it was because we had spell-downs those days, and our teacher, Belle Buchanan, used to give the one who stood up the longest a little prize of some kind. I remember Emma Ottman and Kit Beardsmore were the best girl spellers, and “Toot”, that was Arthur Hicks, and I were the best boy spellers.  Just think of that – and now I can’t spell anything!

            And another thing.  We didn’t go, most of us, from the first grade through the eighth and then graduate like they do now, either.  We went until we could read and write pretty good, and do a little arithmetic – then mostly, we were sick of it and quit!  I remember I graduated quick, after a fight I had with Frank Hicks over a girl.  I came home with a bloody nose and both my eyes blacked and cut up, and my lunch-pail all mashed to pieces, and scared to death Father would give me another licking!  He didn’t though – all he said was, “Did you lick whoever did that to you?”  And when I said yes, he just walked off, and I never went back to school!

            But anyhow that band was started there at Barton School, when I was sixteen, and there were us four boys and twelve others in it. We got old Lee Dana to teach us, and we paid him $3 a week to do it. Besides us, there were Plim and Frank Greene, Will Perry, Frank and Took Hicks, Will Wilson, Will Hearn, George Caldwell, John Jensen, Orlando Bills, Chas. Cheshier, and Henry Anderson. And some-times, Frank Fisher, old Fred’s brother, used to play with us, but not right along.

            I remember Henry Anderson was our first leader, Orlan Bills the drum-major, and Toot Hicks was the treasurer.  We played together all over the country for seven years and made good money for those times, for a bunch of kids.

Band Boys Get Help

            When we first got started we didn’t have anything in the treasury – oh, maybe a few dollars, but it didn’t amount to beans – and we wanted uniforms awful bad, but we didn’t know how in the world to raise the money to pay for them.  Then one night when we were practicing, we got to arguing about it in front of old Noble Brundage, who had a big farm across the road from the schoolhouse, and always come to hear us play.  Well sir, I’ll never forget it, we weren’t even thinking about him sitting there at a desk, when he spoke up and said he’d loan us the money for uniforms – we were good players and he’d like to help us!  Didn’t that tickle us though. So we ordered them right away from a big mail order place in Chicago, I think it was, and they were mighty pretty too.  The coats were bright red with brass buttons, and had big gold braid epaulets trimmed with gold fringe on the shoulders.  There were helmets to match with an ostrich plume in them, and the pants were blue with a strip of gold braid down the sides.  I’ll be teetotally chawed up, if we didn’t think we were something!

Play at Iola

            Yessir, that was quite a band we had.  That first winter I remember lots of times when us boys took turns blowing that old cornet on the way home from school, it was so cold our tongues got stuck to the mouthpiece, and the skin peeled right off!  We played at a lot of little things right around here at first, then the next Fourth of July, got our first big job up at Iola.  At least we thought it was big, because it was out of town, I guess.  I remember we had quite a time figuring out how we’d get there, and finally talked old F.B. Vosburg into letting us rent his hotel bus, and then hired a beautiful team of dapple-grays from old Fred Fisher’s father to pull it!  That old bus was funny looking thing, something like a stagecoach, only bigger of course. I remember there was only one door in it, at the back, and the seat where the driver sat, was up in the front on the roof.  It held a lot of people though; and old Vosburg used it to take people from and to the trains.  You know he owned Vosburg House then, that’s the Delavan Hotel now, he’d built it just a few years before that, and it was the best hotel in town.  There were two others in Waupaca at that time; one was called The Lewis House and stood right where the vacant lot it, next to Behnke’s market, and the other was on the corner where the Light Company is now, and was owned by an old colored fellow, named Bob Scott, who came up here right after the Civil War.

            Well anyhow, we rented that bus from old Vosburg, and made our first trip out of town in it, and after that we played concerts and county fairs.  Stevens Point used to have wonderful fairs those days, big ones, and I’ll never forget one year when we played up there for four straight days, and then went right from there to the Weyauwega Fair and played another three days.  It was right in the middle of potato digging time, and all four of us boys gone for a whole week.  Judas priest! but Father was mad!

            OXEN  ON  WAUPACA  STREETS                         SMITH  HOTEL – 1866

Oxen on Waupaca Streets.

            Through the courtesy of C.M. Sutton, Waupaca County pioneer, we are able to present two old-time pictures of early Waupaca history.  The above picture is similar to the one printed last week, except that it was photographed a year earlier – 1870 – and shows oxen hitched on the courthouse square instead of horses.

Smith Hotel, 1866.

            This hostelry, situated on the present site of the Delavan Hotel, burned down many years ago.  The picture was taken from the First National Bank corner and shows the corner of Main and Union.  Note the driving horse and single-seater buggy.  Such an outfit was indeed a pride and joy in the early days.

Waupaca County Post

November 27, 1947

            Yessir, all the little towns around here had fairs those days.  There was a time when Waupaca had them too, but I don’t remember much about them, I was just a little cuss.  I know the fairgrounds was that field, in back of the Home Market, where you turn to go to Weyauwega, and I remember it was the only doings Father ever shaved for.  Yessir, once a year, for the Waupaca Fair, he’d shave – and the rest of the time he wore whiskers.

            Now I don’t know why, but I think us fellows like playing at those county fairs, better than any-where else.  It meant trips out of town, all over the country, and there was lots of fun and excitement.  I know I certainly must have liked to play at them.  I threw away a million dollars one year (Oh, maybe not a million, but danged close to it) so I could be at the Weyauwega Fair, playing with our band!

            That was a funny thing, when you think of it.  Just goes to show how much sense a blooming kid has.  Kid-poot!  I was a man.  I’d be twenty-one come June.

            You know we’d been playing a lot that winter, and we made the trips by sleigh.  Judas!  I can hear those sleigh bells yet!  Well, anyhow, it was pretty slow, cold business, and we’d be out all night, lots of times and when we got home in the morning we’d just have time to change our clothes, and get ready to do the chores.  Finally, along about spring, I got sick.  I wasn’t in bed or anything, but I’d gotten awfully thin, and cough!  Well, you never heard such a cough as I had.  So Father called old Dr. Pelton, and after he looked me over, he got two other doctors in, and they said if I didn’t quit smoking and going out nights, I’d be dead in side of six months!

            Well, I knew I couldn’t do it if I stayed around here – I loved that band too much – but I didn’t know where to go.  Then one day old Pete Peterson and I went fishing (he lived on a farm about a mile from us) and we got to thinking about people staking claims, up around Iron River, in the timber country.  All you had to do then, to prove one up, was to live on it for six months, and it was yours.  And a week later, we were up there on two million feet of the finest white pine you ever saw!

            Our claim was in Bayfield County, and the old Iron River ran right across it, kitty-corner.  Now just think what that would have meant, if I’d have stuck it out.  There’d have been no trouble getting our timber off – there was that old river, waiting to take it away.  Why!  I’d have been rich in no time.  Couldn’t help it, the way things were then.

            I stayed four months though, and I’ll never forget it.  It was awful wild country, and a fellow had to be pretty careful, especially at night.  We didn’t have a cabin, all we built was an old lean-to and we kept a fire burning all night long, to keep the wolves from coming in!

            We always had plenty to eat though.  All we had to do was step outside the door, and shoot something!  We ate a lot of bear and deer, and of course, all kinds of rabbit and squirrel.  Lots of birds, too – and that reminds me of one old partridge we ate.

            You know the game up there, those days, wasn’t afraid of people.  Just more curious than any-thing else, and sometimes practically tame. Well anyhow, this old partridge built her nest in a hollow tree, right next to the “door” of our lean-to.  We used to almost brush against it, when we went outside, but she’d never budge an inch. Well sir, she sat there for thirteen days, and she laid an egg for every single day.  We kept track of them.  Then on the thirteenth day, old Pete said, “Now, that’s all she’ll lay.  They only lay thirteen.  Let’s hit her on the head and make a stew!”  So we hit her on the head and had stew for supper.  And we took the thirteen eggs and boiled them – and they were as good as any eggs you’d ever want to eat!

            Yessir, we had plenty of meat up there, all we could eat – and just think of it, FOR NOTHING. We had plenty of fish, too.  Most always, we’d have those for breakfast.  I remember old Pete would say, ”You start the fire Fred, and get that spider good and hot.  I’m going down and get us some trout.”  And off he’d go, and it wouldn’t be twenty minutes before he’d be back with six or eight of the most beautiful, great, big, old brook-trout, you ever saw.  And we could do that EVERY morning.  Doesn’t seem possible now, but it’s a fact!

            Of course it was sort of lonesome, and pretty quiet up there, for Pete and me.  When we first went up, we didn’t even see an Indian, but later on, during the blueberry season, they were thicker than fleas on a dog.  We got a lot of laughs, watching those old Indians.  The old squaws had to work like blazes, raking the berries from the bushes into buckets, with little old wooden rakes – while the old bucks, they sat in the shade, and picked the berries over!

            The nearest town to us, if you could call it that, those days, was Iron River.  There was nothing there then, but a great big old log building, and a fellow named Pettingill owned it.  He ran a store in the front part, and in the back, he had about ten rooms to let.  I never did know why he had those rooms, he couldn’t rent one to save his life!

            Now there was a tough old geezer, old Pettingill.  Of course he had to be, he was running a regular backwoods trading post, and his customers were tough.  Most of them, that is.  I’ll never forget one row he had, with a fellow from up on the Brule River.  Pete and I were in the store at the time, and this fellow claimed he’d been short-changed.  Now old Pettingill never short-changed anyone intentionally.  He was just as apt to give you too much, as too little – he just couldn’t make change, that’s all.  But this fellow didn’t know that, and he got pretty nasty, and finally old Pettingill got so mad, he grabbed his gun from under the counter, and took a shot at him.  Well sir, that fellow had on an old white duster (you know, sort of a light-weight linen coat) and I’m telling you, he lit out of that store and down the road, SO FAST, that the old white coat just stood out STRAIGHT, behind him!

            Yessir, old Pettingill’s place was the only thing there, those days, outside of the depot – and that was only a boxcar. Iron River was a junction then, for the Northern Pacific and the South Shore Atlantic, and the agent’s name there was Brookins.  I used to hang around the depot a lot, and old Brookins taught me quite a bit about telegraphy.  Before I left my claim, I was taking messages on the S.S.&A. but the N.P. was too fast for me!

            Then I got acquainted with a girl.  Her name was Lilly Hendrickson, and my! she was a pretty thing.  She had the next claim to ours, and I saw a lot of her, all summer long. She had a million feet of pine on her land, and I remember I used to kid her, about pooling it with mine!  I guess I got pretty serious about it too, not that I wanted her pine – but, well, I’d come to think a lot of Lilly.

            But all the time, I guess, at the back of my mind – was our band!  I missed the good times, I missed the boys, but most of all, I missed the music.  Then, as the summer drew to a close, it got worse. Sometimes I could almost hear the notes rolling out of my old baritone.  I knew the fairs would be open-ing, all over the country, back home – and I knew the first one would be at Weyauwega.  And that’s how I threw away a million dollars.  I played at the Weyauwega Fair!

            Yessir, we like the fairs best, but there were other things we played for, that I guess were more important. Certainly the 5^th of June, was more important to the Danes, and we played at all those celebrations, “Fideeoon”, we used to call it – that’s the way it sounded when they said it fast.

            I remember one year when “Fideeoon” was held in Oshkosh, and there were hundreds of Danes, from all over the country there. We marched and played all over town during the day, then at night there was a big meeting in the old West Turner Hall.  They served a big lunch, and there were lots of speeches.  Old Knute Jensen, a blacksmith from Waupaca made one of the most important talks.

            After that, came a concert, by the different bands.  Not altogether of course – they took turns – and when our turn came, Dave played a solo on his tuba.  It was “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep”, and he got a lot of applause. It was good, and everybody like it.  THEN – Edwin played.  He played “Serenade – Pleasant Dreams”, and my! what a beautiful thing it was to hear.  The place went wild!  I’ll never forget the Aryan Band throwing their hats in the air, and cheering to the tops of their voices. Everybody did.  And poor Ed, he was such a little cuss, only ten years old – he didn’t know what to make of it all.  By the time “Fideeoon” was over that night he was sound asleep, and I had to carry him, in my arms, to the train.

                       CHAIN  O’  LAKES  BAND

                                                                                          THE  MUSICAL  SMITH  BROTHERS

Chain O’ Lakes Band.

            Through the Courtesy of Mr. F.W. Green, old timer of the Chain o’ Lakes, and resident of Wauwatosa, we are able to picture the band now being featured in the County Post’s serial story, “When the Chain o’ Lakes Were Young”.  In the above picture Fred Smith, narrator of our story, is the second musician from the left, bottom row. Alfred Smith, a brother, is the first man on the left, top row.  Alfred Smith, a brother, is the first man on the left, top row.  Another brother, Dave, is shown (we believe) in the bottom row, third from the left. The fourth brother, Edwin, could be pictured second from the left or second from the right, top row, but we are unable to positively identify him from another picture of the four Smith brothers.

            We are sorry that we were unable to find anyone able to give us the entire roster of the above band, before we published this week.  However, this remarkable photo of long ago, when bands were uni-formed in all splendor, with all the known trappings, will bear close study by young and old alike. It is a page from the history of almost every town, when the “cornet band” was the pride and joy of the community and the bright spot in all celebrations.

The Musical Smith Brothers.

            Here are the four Smith brothers, arrayed in splendid band uniforms so popular 45 to 60 years ago.  And what fine looking fellows they were!  Even young Edwin, boy that he was, wears his Hussar helmet with dignity.  He is the young fellow who played the cornet solo at Oshkosh and brought down the house. You read about it in last weeks’ installment of “When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young,” by MEPA.  This picture was taken after the G.A.R. reunion in Milwaukee about 1887.  Above pictured from left to right, sitting, are: Edwin, age 10, father of MEPA (Mrs. Ellen Moore); Dave, age 15, who played the tuba solo, “Asleep in the Deep” at Oshkosh; Alfred, age 19, another cornetist with the Veterans Home band.  Notice the fine and ornate belt worn by Alfred.  And standing behind his brother is Fred, age 21, baritone player, the narrator of our popular serial story, now 81, and patriarch of the Chain.

Waupaca County Post

December 4, 1947

            But I guess the biggest thing we ever played at was a reunion or maybe you’d call it a convention, the G.A.R. held at Milwaukee.  That must have been about sixty years ago, and the big drawing card was General Sherman.  Of course he was an old man then, but that didn’t make any difference, people came from all over the United States to hear him talk.  There were fifty-two bands there, and fifty-three drum corps, and people! Thousands upon thousands of them.  Well! Milwaukee couldn’t house them; they put up tents all along the Lake in Juno Park, and all along Wisconsin Avenue – it was just prairie then – and well, all over the city, so’s people could have a place to sleep!  I remember we slept in a tent on Wiscon-sin Avenue, and ate in another tent, a regular mess tent, it was, about a block away.  Some of the boys got sick the first day or so, and the people in charge figured it might be the water, so they told us not to drink any more of it, and set big tanks around packed with ice, and filled with bottles of milk and beer, and we drank that instead.

            We were there about a week altogether, and there wasn’t much doing the first two or three days, but after that we were busy all the time playing some place.  I remember the big parade they had, it was miles long but I’ve forgotten just how many – when we marched from 9 o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, without ever getting off our feet. We had to walk in the tracks of the old horse-cars they used there then, and that night our feet were like raw meat on the bottoms, and most of us could just hobble about and that was all!

            Just think of it – fifty-two bands and fifty-three drum corps, and thousands and thousands of people in that parade.  And my! what beautiful bands some of them were. I never forgot the one from Topeka, Kansas – there were sixty-six men in it, and how they could play.

            Of course we had no business being there at all I guess, just a bunch of punk-kids is all we were, but old Orlan Bills, our drum-major, was a young Civil War Veteran, and he got us in through the Soldier’s Home somehow.  That’s how we happened to call ourselves the Soldier’s Home Band.  Waupaca had sent it’s band down there too, but we weren’t part of that.

            The biggest day of all of course, was the day General Sherman spoke.  I remember it was in an old wooden building, four stories high, and he started at the top and spoke on each floor all the way down. It was really nothing but four great, big, old halls, and every one of them jammed ‘til the people were hanging out of the doors and windows.  But the funniest part of that whole thing, was our band being chosen out of those fifty-two beautiful bands, to play with old Sherman that day. Yessir! we went right along with him, while the rest of them stayed outside, and we played on each floor before and after he spoke.  Jumped up! but didn’t we think that was something.  We didn’t get anything.  We’d made a name for ourselves right there!

            Yessir, the sixteen of us played together seven years in all, and we had a lot of fun.  Then I remember when we finally broke up, most of us were getting married, or going away, or something – we had ninety-five dollars left in the treasury and we gave fifty of it to old Will Perry who was studying to be a Methodist preacher, and the rest to old “Toot” Hicks for being a good treasurer all those years!

            Just then the whistle at the Home blew.  Five o’clock … time to get supper.  Freddie pulled him-self up from his chair sputtering blankety-blank old men, the minute they reach sixty.  “You know,” he concluded, “I’d be in pretty good shape, -- if my legs would work, and I could see, and hear!”

*  *  *

            When up here, away from the city, I’ve always been an early riser … I like to watch the dawn. To me, it’s the nicest part of the day, that part before the world is awake.  The Lakes are like green opalescent glass, and you need no anchor for your boat.

            The fish I catch then, mostly small but legal, Freddie disdains as “minnies,” but that bothers me a little, for I’ve caught something else … the beauty with which to start a new day.

            Now, breakfast at Freddie’s is quite an occasion.  No “fruit juice, coffee and cigarette” affair.  He’s an excellent cook in a big white apron, - but the stories which always follow, are the best part of all.

            One morning, he was going to town later on, and I told him to bring back some lemons, I wanted to bake a pie.

            “Lemons!” he chuckled, “I’ll never forget the first lemons I ever saw!  Now you know there’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it, - I was fourteen years old before that happened.  I remember it so well because it was on my birthday and we were all invited down to Uncle John’s for dinner.

            Well sir, on our way out there, we stopped in town while father went to see Old Dave Parrish, about some boots he was having made.  Old Dave owned the business, but he wasn’t a shoemaker himself; there was an old man there for years and years, by the name of Emerson, who did all that work.  After we’d hitched the horses, across the street in front of the Courthouse (Parrish had his store where Krueger’s is now) I decided to walk around a while, and look in the windows.  I didn’t mean to buy any-thing, tho I did have a quarter I’d been carrying around in a little old tin cap-box, for about a year.  Some-body’d given it to me, I forget now, who, and I’d never spent it, just carried it around in that little old box, and looked at it once or twice everyday!

            Well, I wandered down Main Street, then off onto Union, and finally I came to Winsel Chady’s little store.  It was right on the corner, where Glover’s is now, a little bit of an old place, and he sold everything you could think of – from tobacco to jewelry! That’s where Charlie Hoffman went to work, when he first came here from Chicago, nothing but a kid of course, but that’s where he started.

            Anyhow, when I reached Chady’s, I stopped dead in my tracks.  His window was piled full of the prettiest yellow things I’d ever seen, and my! but I thought they looked good.  I remember I stood there quite a while and the more I looked at them, the hungrier I got, and I commenced to wonder if my quarter would be enough to buy one!  Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went in and asked how much they were.  Old Chady said a nickel, and I bought FIVE quick, before he could change his mind.

            Then, when I got outside, I hid them in my pockets, and I couldn’t wait to get to Uncle John’s to eat them.  All the way out I kept thinking about them, and I’ll never forget how long that ride seemed.  When we finally got there (I didn’t think we ever would) I ran down to the old mill, and cut into the room where they carded wool.  Then, after I was sure there was no one around to see me, and ask for a bit, I bit into one, and Judas priest!  I’ll remember that as long as I live!

            That wasn’t the worst part of it though.  I didn’t know it, but old man Whitney, who worked for Uncle John, had been watching me all the time, and he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.  Now wasn’t that awful, fourteen years old, and I didn’t know what a lemon was ‘til then.

            Yessir, kids were different those days. They knew  lot less in some ways, I guess and a lot more in others.  Just think what they have now, to amuse them.  And how little we had then.  Yet we were a happy and contented lot.

            We had so much to keep us busy, things that were fun, like our trap lines in the winter.  Of course we didn’t have many traps, about twenty I think it was, but we’d set them around first on one lake, and then another, and before the winter was over we’d have a lot of pelts.

            There were lots of otter in Otter Lake then, that’s where it got it’s name.  Now here’s a funny little animal, got some funny little habits.  Did you ever know that they build slides along the banks, over spring-holes?  Well, they do. They make them out of snow, keep them iced with their wet bodies, and slide down them like a bunch of kids on a shoot-t-shoots!  The shores of Otter Lake were full of those slides, those days, and we boys used to have lots of fun, watching those little old otter go down them!

            Coons are another funny animal.  There were lots of them here too, years ago.  You could find them most any place, in the fields, or in the woods, or around the water.  It didn’t make much difference.  Of course we didn’t trap for them.  You hunt them mostly with a dog.  But we caught a lot of coon, just the same, just by accident.  They’d get into the traps we’d set for mink and muskrat, under the banks or in the runways, when they were catching fish, or washing other food they had to eat.  You know they wash everything, doesn’t make any difference what it is, before they eat it!

            But of course we caught more rats and mink than anything else – outside of skunk, that is – and we’d skin them, and dry and stretch the hides, and then sell them downtown at the tannery.  Old Alfred Johnson owned the tannery then, and I think his grandson runs it now. I know it’s still in the same old place down there on the river, where the feed mills are.  Then once in a while, we’d sell a few to the Sterns boys, who had a seed store, where McLean’s Restaurant is today. But we never got much for them, that is when you think of what they bring now.  I remember muskrats brought from five to fifteen cents a piece, and the mink around two dollars.  There was one year though, that mink were higher than I’ve ever seen them – before or since.  We got from twenty-five to thirty dollars for a skin!

            Yessir, us boys had a lot of fun trapping, and just think of the miles and miles we used to walk. Sometimes we’d have our lines set way up in the upper Lakes – Beasley and Pope and Knight – and we’d walk every foot of the way there and back.  And have fun!  Wouldn’t these kids nowadays think that was awful?  Oh well, they wouldn’t do it, that’s all.  They’d have to have a car to make a trip like that!

            Then of course, there was lots of bigger game here too, those days.  The country was full of coyotes.  Now you hear people say they won’t attack a human being, but I’m telling you they will.  You get a pack of them together, and they’re just as bad as wolves.  We couldn’t go out at night, when we were little fellows, they hang around the house, and they’d have jumped us in a minute.  I remember we used to have an old swill-barrel, setting on the ground at the end of the kitchen porch, and we could look out of the kitchen windows anytime after dark, and see a hundred eyes all moving around it!  Well, they got so bad finally, that Father got rid of his sheep.  He HAD to.  Out of every three hundred he’d get, those varmints would kill a hundred.

            Then there were wolves, great big old gray timber wolves, in the swamps.  Not so many of course, but enough of them.  I’ll never forget one old lobo, that had been killing off our sheep one fall.  He pretty near got me too – would have if it hadn’t been for our old dog, Jack.

            We were still living upon The Hill then, and Father pastured the sheep down in the woods, between Round and Rainbow Lakes, and us boys had to watch them.  Well sir, this day, Alfred was over near Rainbow, and I was on the east side of Round, right where we built Locksley Hall, years later. Of course, it was all heavy timber there, then, no fields, or even a road anywhere around.  The sheep had been quiet, just grazing about, then all of a sudden something scared them, and they started to run.  For a few minutes I couldn’t imagine what had caused the rumpus – then way back in the woods, I could just barely see what I thought was a dog.  He was so far away he looked something like Jack, so I ran in that direction, and whistled to him.

            Well sir, for a while he just stood still, but I kept on whistling and calling, and then all of a sudden he started to come.  And he hadn’t gotten far when I knew WHAT he was!  Judas priest!  I was so scared for a minute or two, I couldn’t move – then up a tree I went, the nearest one around, just like a danged squirrel.  Way up, just as high as I could climb, and the only trouble with it was that I hadn’t picked a very big tree – I didn’t have time – and it bent towards the top, with my weight!  Well sir, that old wolf would back off a ways, and then run, and it seemed to me he’d run half way up that little old tree, every time he did it. I kept screaming for Jack, but he was an old dog then, and sort of deaf, and I don’t suppose he ever did hear me.  I don’t know how long that went on, but I know I was hoarse from hollering, when old Jack finally came trotting into sight, with his nose to the ground – on the trail of a rabbit!

            Now you’d think there’d have been a fight, wouldn’t you? Well, there wasn’t.  In fact, I don’t think old Jack ever saw the wolf – but when that old wolf saw Jack, he lit out for the woods in nothing flat – and I, FELL OUT OF THE TREE!

            The Brown boys (Fred and Oliver) got that old wolf, early the next morning.  They’d been tracking him for some time, but he’d been a tough one to catch.  They shot him on Point Comfort, and I’ll never forget what a mess that was.  Blood, oh Judas!  He’d killed seventeen of our sheep during the night – was still at it when they got him – and they were laying dead all over, with just their throats torn out. There were five of them floating around in the lake!  I can see them yet!

            My! but those were great days, I’ll tell you.  And it wasn’t only coyotes and wolves we had trouble with – we had plenty of bear trouble too!  Why, I remember one old bear –“

            At this point a car came purring in, and a door slammed beneath the dining room window.

            “Oh, poot!” said Freddie.  “Now who do you suppose that is, at this time of the morning.  I’m going to put a fence across that road, down there, one of these days – that’s what I’m going to do!”

            He scraped back his chair, mumbling about his legs, and lumbered out on the porch, to see who his company was.

Waupaca County Post

December 11, 1947

            A year ago, at the age of eighty, Freddie decided to remodel!  Now that in itself was not so surprising – he is full of surprises, is Freddie – but that he should pick on the living room, was more than I could understand.  No one EVER sits in the living room. It’s just a place you go through to get to the bedrooms.

            But his kitchen?  Well now, that’s different!  Such a friendly room, with it’s bright yellow walls, old fashioned range, and the morris-chair by the window where Freddie hold forth – king of all he surveys!  No, no one ever gets much farther than the kitchen.  It sort of reaches out and seats you, when you come in through the door.  And I know there’s been more fish caught, and deer shot, around that old stove, than were ever taken from the streams, or woods.

            The old tea-kettle was singing, and I got the dish-pan out.  We’d had corn fritters for supper (a specialty of Freddie’s) and I’d eaten too many, as usual.  I was so full, I guess I looked lazy, as I shook some flakes into the water, and as he watched me, I heard him grunt, “Isn’t it awful the way they adver-tise that stuff these days?  Makes the dishes sparkle – you don’t want to scald them, or wipe them or nothing. It’s a wonder they don’t walk right into the cupboard, by themselves, when you use it!

            Soap!  Why, I can remember when everybody made their own soap.  You couldn’t buy it in the stores here, seventy years ago.  Mother made ours.  She had a great big iron pot, about three feet wide, and just as deep, that she filled with all her old grease.  Then she’d pour water over ashes, to make what lye she needed, and drain it off, and mix it with the fat – and that was our soap.

            I’ll never forget one batch she’d just made. An old bear upset it, and it ran all over the yard!

            Now there was a funny thing.  We had lots of black bear here then. In the fall, you could run across one or two of these old fellows, in your cornfield any day.  Mostly, they weren’t much trouble, but once in a while, there’d be a bad one.  Like this old bear, that spilled Mothers’ soap.  He was a killer. He’d been slaughtering sheep all over the country that year, and a lot of people were after him.  I know the Brown boys, and Pope boys and the Bartons, were among them.

            Well sir, on the day they got him, I’d gone over to Fenn’s on an errand for Father.  I was only about twelve at the time, and it was a long walk, through pretty thick woods. Just after I left home, Vet Barton’s dogs, with old Vet following them, chased that bear into our yard.  Of course they were a long way behind him, but he was running from them.  He came lumbering out of the woods into our place, and by the time Father and mother got out on the porch, the old bear was chasing our dog, Jack, around that soap.  Well, Father was afraid he’d catch Jack, and crush him to death – so Father grabbed an ax (he never owned a gun) and ran out towards them.  That upset the old bear, because when he saw Father coming, he stopped chasing Jack, raised up on his hind legs, and came down in Mother’s soap and turned it over. Then, he turned around and beat it, into the woods, towards Fenns!

            When he went in that direction, Father was afraid I’d meet him, on my way home, so Father took the ax and Jack, and followed.  Well sir, I’ll never forget it.  I’d just reached the rail fence between our two places, when I heard all the barking and hollering – and then that old bear made the fence, and tried to climb it.  But he couldn’t quite get over. Every time he’d try it, Jack would grab him by a hind leg, and pull him back.  By then, he was dangerous, and Father knew he’d turn, and fight, any minute.  So he step-ped in close, to get good aim with the ax, and was just going to swing it when someone yelled to get out of the way – and there were the Pope boys, with their guns!  Well sir, Father jumped back, and they shot, but just as they shot that old bear went over the fence, and before they could climb it, he was out of sight.  Jack went after him though, and we followed as fast as we could.  We could hear Jack barking, of course, and we found them down in old Vet Barton’s cornfield.  The old bear was doing his best to corner Jack, between himself and some corn shocks, so he could squeeze him to death, but Jack had been too smart for him, and kept out of the way.

            Henry Pope shot him, then they skinned him, and they gave Father the heart and a big hunk of meat besides, to take home.  We were just going to leave, when old Vet Barton got there – and Judas priest! what a row he and the Pope boys had over that old bear.  He claimed he’d been running him since daylight, and the Pope boys claimed the same thing.  They finally settled it, but old Vet got half the meat and the hide, before he left.  I guess he was probably right though.  He swore he’d started that old bear up, over where Loyola Villa is now, but his dogs had lost the track, when the bear swam Hicks Lake.

            Yessir, there’d be bad ones, every once in a while.  I can just barely remember Father telling about a bear old man Hicks killed on Onaway Island.  Old man Hicks was “Toot” and Frank Hicks’ grandfather – and a tough old fellow, if there ever was one. Well sir, it seems he was out in his cornfield, cutting corn, when the old bear lumbered right past him, headed for Hick’s Lake. The old man didn’t have time to go back to the house, for his gun, if he wanted to catch him – so he followed with his corn-knife. When the bear reached the lake, in he went, and swam for the island.  And old man Hicks, with the knife between his teeth, swam right after him!  I don’t remember much about the details, but I guess the story’s true. At least Father claimed Hicks killed that bear, when they reached the island.  Now you have to be pretty tough, to do something like that, but like I said, old Hicks WAS tough.  I KNOW he killed a panther one time – I was old enough then, to remember THAT!

            He and his son, Milt, had been up on the old tote-team tavern, on the Emmons place, for supplies, and it was on the way home they saw the panther.  They had their dog with them, and they were walking along on the west side of the creek – you know where that real wide place is?  Well sir, they’d just reached that, and there was that panther laying on the limb of a big, old tree, that leaned out over the water.  They didn’t have a gun along, and I guess for a while, they didn’t know what to do. Then old Hicks told Milt to go home and get the gun.  He’d wait right there, until he got back.  And do you know that old fellow, sat right under THAT tree, with the dog, until Milt brought his gun!  Then he killed the panther. THAT’S how tough old man Hicks was.

            But then, everybody knew how to take care of themselves those days. They had to. It was an awful wild country.  Not a single building on any of the lakes, just a lot of heavy timber, and thick under-brush.  There weren’t any roads running any place near them, just a little old path now and then, left over from the Indians.  We had a road of course, running down from The Hill, to the north-shore of Round Lake. It was on that road, I shot my first deer.

            Now you wouldn’t believe it maybe, but there’s just as many deer here, as there ever was.  You don’t see them of course, like we did, but there’s just as many here.  This never was what you’d call deer-country.  We could get one whenever we wanted too – but they weren’t thick here, like they were up around Galloway and Eldron. THAT was real DEER-COUNTRY.  Well! it was plumb full of them.

            But, I was going to tell you about the first deer I ever shot.  Shot AT, I guess would be more like it. I didn’t kill him – I darn near killed myself!

            I’ll never forget it. We were drawing grain, out in the field south of the house, when I saw three deer go along the edge of the woods, and turn into that road running down to Round Lake.  Well sir, I beat it to the house, as fast as I could go, for an old muzzle-loading musket us boys had just bought.  It wasn’t new, we’d got it second-hand, but we were mighty proud of it, just the same.  I was so excited, I guess I didn’t know what I was doing – anyhow I loaded that old thing, with everything we had.  I remember I poured all our powder and all our fine-shot into it, and besides that, I had it stuffed with wad-ding.  Well! it must have had a load, at least a foot long!

            Then I beat it down the road towards the lake.  I didn’t get far though, just down by the swamp, and there, right in front of me almost, stood a great big, beautiful old buck.  Well sir, I hauled up that old musket, and let her go – and of all the noise you ever heard, THAT was the worst!  Of course, it knocked me out cold, and I don’t know how long I laid there on the ground, but when I came to, I was certainly an awful mess.  My face and hands and hair, were black with powder – and that gun was blown all to pieces!

            Then I got to figuring I must have hit that buck.  He’d been so close, I couldn’t see how I could miss.  So I went over to Brown’s and told Oliver about it, and he set out to track him.  He got them too – and it was funny the way he did it.  You know those Brown boys were great bear and deer hunters, and sometimes it seemed they’d know just what an animal was going to do before he did it!  Anyhow old Oliver sure figured this one out right.  He figured that old buck would go over the Indian Crossing, and then follow the shore down to Taylor’s Lake, and swim from there to the other side.  And that’s just what he did.  He went into the water, right where Edmund’s boathouse is now, swam the lake, and came in at the mouth of Otter Creek.  And Oliver was right there, sitting in the brush, waiting for him!  It was the same old buck too. He was plumb full of fine shot!

            Yessir, this country sure has changed,” sighed Freddie.  “Oh well – I wonder what the Russians have been up to, today?  It’s just eight o’clock.  Turn on old Gabriel, and we’ll see what he’s got to say!”

                                                 WHEN WAUPACA HAD STREETCARS

When Waupaca Had Streetcars.

            The above photo, taken about 1905, is presented through the courtesy of Harry Peterson of Waupaca.  The picture, taken from the extreme north end of Main Street shows the main thoroughfare of our city far into the residential district to the south.  Gravel streets were the vogue in those days and the street sprinkler was needed to settle the dust.  The sprinkler wagon can be seen in the left foreground, getting a load of awua pura.  The interesting part of the picture is the street car, which carried thousands of passengers to the lakes.  Starting at the Soo depot the car line ran to King and the Grandview Hotel beyond.  The old hotel, a landmark and home of many tourists during the horse and buggy days, was torn down and the last remains were removed in 1946.  The Soo Line ran summer excursions to Waupaca for years and the street car line was the popular mode of transportation to the lakes at the turn off the century.

Waupaca County Post

December 18, 1947

            Freddie is not a man of half-way measures.  When he approves of things, he does it thoroughly, whole-heartedly, AND with reason.  When he disapproves of things, it is of course in like manner.

            Take his attitude, for instance, toward the speed-boats now so numerous on our Lakes.  It is one of almost rabid distaste.  He claims they’re destroying not ONLY our fishing, but our peace of mind, and safety on the water, as well.  He’ll tell you WHY too, and what’s more, he’s MOST convincing!

            There had been a discussion of this subject, one afternoon when Bill Roach, Irv Cook, and Irv’s brother, “old Carl” were here. It was mostly one-sided but heated, nevertheless.  And after they’d gone, Freddie compared these boats, with those of long ago.

            “My what a difference there is,” he began, “between the speedboats we have now, and the old steamboats of sixty years ago.  How nice they were, those old boats.  Slow of course, but plenty fast for these little lakes of ours.  When you made a trip around the lakes in one of them, you SAW the Lakes, and that’s the way it should be. You can’t see them in a speedboat.  All you see  is a blur, and get sopping wet besides!

            “I can remember the first steamboat ever put on these waters.  Old Hank Mumbro built it. It had a great big old flat bottom, with a paddle wheel on the back, and a railing all around to keep the people in.  Old A.M. Hansen ran it for him, and I’ll never forget the uniform he wore.  It was blue, trimmed with gold braid and lots of brass buttons, and his cap had gold braid on it, too.  My!  Wasn’t he togged out, though.  He looked just like an officer in the United States Navy.

            “Now, when old Mumbro built that boat, there wasn’t any summer resorts around yet, and there were very few cottages.  People had started to come out here though, lots of them, on picnics, especially on weekends.  And that “trip around the Lakes” went over big.  In those days it started at Clem Lake (Taylor) and went to the Indian Crossing and back.  That boat couldn’t get under the Crossing then. It was nothing but a low, wooden bride, the Indians had built.

            I remember old Mumbro got lots of passengers from where King is now.  That was such a pretty spot, people flocked there from all over, for all kinds of outings. It was nothing but woods then, of course, but they pitched tents to sleep in, and hitched their teams in the trees, and sometimes they’d stay several days, or even a week.

            “Old Will Bendickson built the first building on that shore.  It was a little old wooden affair, and looked just like a hencoop.  He had it down near the lake, and he sold pop, peanuts and candy to the picnickers.

            “Then another place old Mumbro got a lot of passengers from, was the “Camp Meetings,” on Clem Lake.  Those “Meetings” used to be big doings for the Methodists.  There’d be hundreds of them there, and they’d stay for two weeks.  Their tents would be pitched all along the north shore, and they led a regular business too, because they used to keep old Mumbro’s boat pretty busy, while they were there.

            “Funny, the stories you hear about such things. I’ll never forget one that got around.  You know they’d been coming to that same spot for years, and they’d always got their water from old Dave Taylor’s well.  It was the only place near enough for them to get it.  Then, this one summer I’m speaking of, they couldn’t use that water, a skunk had fallen in the well, and the stench was something awful!  Now, I don’t know how true it is, but people said old Dave threw that skunk down there, ON PURPOSE.  Anyhow, it was that same year that he’d built a nice, new stand, and had pop for sale.

            “Yessir, old Hank Mumbro had the first steamboat on these Lakes, and he made a lot of money, at ten cents a trip!

            “Then, the next two boats that were built here, were built by Old Jim Jensen, and my! what a boat builder he was.  There wasn’t anyone around here THEN, and I don’t think NOW, who could do that job like he could.  Those boats were beauties, both of them.  The first one he named, ‘The Queen.’  I remem-ber it was long and sort of slim, and it would cut the water with the softest, prettiest ripple you ever saw.

            “The second one he called ‘Sunrise’ and it was prettier than the other, in a different sort of way. ‘The Queen’ was a big boat, but this one was bigger yet, and a lot more fancy.  It had a big gallery all around the back, set off by a fancy iron railing, and that was where all the people used to fight to sit!

            “Both these boats had a flag in front and in back, and short, fancy awnings trimmed with fringe, all around their roofs.  Of course some boats have that now, too, but it looked different then. We’d never seen boats like that before, and my! we thought they were nice.

            “Old Jim sold the two of them to Major Roberts, and he turned them over to an old soldier named Foster, who ran them for him for a couple of years.  Then father bought them from the major, and he changed the name of the ‘Sunrise’ to ‘Lady of the Lake’.  I remember father put old Shanks (one of our hired men) on ‘The Queen’.  He fired it and steered it and collected the fares.  ‘The Lady’ was a bigger job to handle.  Father put Edwin on her as pilot, and John Marshall (he worked for us too, then) ran the engine.  And we had both of those boats for many, many years.

            “Of course us boys were growing up then.  And things were happening to the Lakes.  People with money had commenced to sit up and take notice, and ever so often, there’d be a new cottage here or there.

            “Then came the time, when the first summer resort was built.  A few wealthy people in Waupaca, Major Roberts and the Nordvi’s among them, formed a stock company for that purpose, and put up the Greenwood Park hotel.  They had about eighty acres of land, where King is now, and the hotel itself, was on the site of old Marden Hall. It was quite a big building, and very stylish for those times.  Then besides that, they had several little cottages, in connection with the place, for guests who wanted a lot of privacy.

            “It was a pretty spot, right where the picnic groves used to be, up high on that hill, overlooking the Lakes.  There was lots of excitement and talk about it, and everybody thought it would make a lot of money.  But it’s a funny thing the way some things turn out. From the time they opened they had nothing but trouble!

            “Well sir, they had trouble with her about this and that,, but the big trouble was over the help she had. When she came up here she’d brought her help with her, a lot of colored men.  They did EVERY-THING, those fellows.  They cooked and waited table, and cleaned and ran all the errands.  Well, every-thing that was done on that big place, those colored fellows did.

            “I can remember them coming to our place, upon The Hill, to buy fresh vegetables.  Father always had a great, big, beautiful garden, and people used to like to get things from him, if they could.  Now, he wouldn’t sell to everyone, but he like Mrs. Andre.  He thought she was doing a good job over there, so he helped her out, whenever he could.

            “Anyhow, these old colored fellows, a couple of them that is, would come over everyday, for vegetables. And I’ll never forget how us boys used to love to hear them laugh and talk.  I can still remember how one of them used to look up at the sky, on a sunny day, and say ‘Mah goodness me! What balmy weathah, you-all does have heah!’  Of course it didn’t sound like that, it was sort of pretty and soft, the way he’d say it, and he’d laugh all over like he was tickled to death!

            “They always looked so neat and clean too. We used to wonder if they had some special kind of soap, that made them shine.  They had regular uniforms to work in, with short white jackets, but the waiters at mealtimes, wore claw-hammer coats!

            “Oh, it was a stylish place alright, but it just wouldn’t work.  Like I said, Mrs. Andre had trouble, the very first summer, because of the colored help.  If I remember rightly, she was only there about two months, then she packed them all back to the South and quit! She had an assistant though, by the name of Mrs. Stickney, and she took over when Mrs. Andre left.

            Mrs. Stickney was there for the rest of that summer, but when they opened the next year, Mrs. Nordvi was in charge.  The Nordvis, like I said before, were stockholders in the Greenwood Park Association, and I guess they figured by that time, that if they ran the place themselves, they’d be farther ahead.

            “But that didn’t work either. They had people, sure, but not enough of them to make it pay.  Now, I didn’t know whether the Lakes weren’t ready for something like that yet, or what the trouble was.  Of course it was hard to advertise those days, and people who might have come, had they known about the place, just never heard of it. Then too, traveling was a drawback.  You couldn’t just jump into a car say in Chicago and be up here in about four hours.  You had to take a long ride, I mean it took a long time, on a train.  So the people who came didn’t come for a week or two, they brought trunks, and stayed for the summer.

            “Yessir, the old Greenwood Park hotel, was our first summer resort, and it lasted just two years!  Then the whole thing was sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Wisconsin Veteran’s Home Association.  And I guess maybe that was the best thing that could have happened to it.  I know the home they built there for our soldiers , was the finest in this state.  Or maybe anywhere.  Certainly the prettiest.

            But just think now, how funny it is, the way things happen. If Mrs. Andre hadn’t left that hotel, I guess father would never have built Locksley Hall. You see when she left there, after all that trouble, she …

            Right here the kitchen door flew open with a bang, and a tiny, well-known voice, piped, “Aunt Ellen, is Penny home?  I’ve got something for Penny!”

            And Mary Gay Robert had burst in upon us, in her own inimitable fashion.

                                                                                                            WAUPACA MILL BURNS

Waupaca Mill Burns.

            It was in October , 1891, that the people of Waupaca got a real fire thrill as the Waupaca Mills building became an inferno of flames.  A goodly crowd gathered to witness the conflagration and the wearing apparel of that period is interesting to note.  This photo is furnished us through the courtesy of W.G. Johnson, proprietor of the Old Tannery, and Mr. Johnson’s present location can be seen at the right center in the above picture.  In the distance, past the burning mill, can be seen a church, which was later remodeled into the present Green Bay and Western depot, now abandoned.  Note the rapt attention of the fire audience.  Very few people were moving when the picture was taken, attesting to the great interest of the audience.  Photographic emulsion was “slow”, back in 1891, and such a picture as this was not taken with a “fast” camera shutter.

Waupaca County Post

January 1, 1948

            Once upon a time, there was an old tree upon The Hill.  It was gnarled and twisted, yet sturdy and strong.  It’s thick trunk ran up at a gentle slope, and the big limbs sprawled out in the friendliest fashion. I can still remember the steps nailed to it, and the seats in its crotches, high up above.  It was a children’s tree, made to climb, and play in – a jolly old Oak, in an apple orchard.  It was Freddie’s and Alfred’s and Dave’s and Edwin’s – with plenty of room for all.

            My sister and I used to sit in its branches, long after those boys were grown and gone.  Some-times we “played house” there, or again, in fancy, we’d be hiding from Indians, or treed by wolves. And sometimes, we’d just sit and wonder about the fire that had burned Grandpa’s house to the ground.

            The ruins were almost beneath that old tree – just a little off to one side. The hole was still there, where the cellar had been, and rocks were strewn all around.

            Of course there are no traces left now, of the ruins or the tree.  No traces that is, except, in Freddie’s memories.

            “Do you remember that old oak, up in the orchard?” he asked one day, as he whittled away on a stout little stick.  “My! what a nice old tree that was. Us boys used to call it our “blue tree”, because in the spring it was BLUE with wild pigeons!  Now, there’s a bird you don’t see anymore, but there were thou-sands and thousands of them here, then.  I wonder what happens to birds like those?  Some people say horrible storms killed them off, but how could they kill them all?

            And, if storms DID KILL the pigeon – what happened to the whip-o-wills?  Why, when we lived up on The Hill, before the house burned down, there’d be hundreds of them calling every evening – all summer long!  You don’t hear them anymore.  Now where do you suppose THEY’VE gone?

            What a pretty place that old hill was, and how hard Father and Mother worked up there.  Nothing was easy or convenient in those days, I guess, and yet they never seemed to mind.

            I remember before we had a cellar, we had to keep our vegetables in the ground.  Every fall one of the first things we did, was dig a great big old hole, out at the edge of the woods.  Then we’d cover it with logs, and pack leaves and dirt on top of them – and that was our cellar!  It kept the vegetables nice, too, almost like out of the garden.

            And just think of the work it was to dig the well we had up there.  Old Ben Fenn helped Father dig that well. They went down FIFTY-TWO FEET before they found water! They’d dig a little ways, then curb it with boards, then dig a little deeper and curb it again.  They couldn’t take chances on it caving in – they’d never have gotten out, if it had.

            We pulled the water up in old wooden buckets, hand over hand, with a rope.  I remember one of those old buckets was always full, down in the well, and the other one was empty, at the top.  When you pulled the full one up, the empty one went down.  Yessir, up down, up down!  Us boys used to like to draw the water. We thought it was lots of fun.

            But then we thought lots of things were fun, that wouldn’t appeal to kids today. When I think back on it now, I know we MADE fun for ourselves, even out of chores we didn’t like to do. Like the trip we had to make to old Cleveland’s every night after school, all one winter.  Old Cleveland came from Minneapolis, and bought the land where Fern Terrace is now. The main building of that hotel, is the same one he put up and lived in, with his family.  It was the FIRST building ever built on Round, or McCrossen Lakes.  He had a chicken farm there, but it didn’t last long.  He lost a lot of money and went back to Minneapolis.

            Well anyhow, like I was saying, we had to go down there every night after school, that winter and it was a pretty long, cold walk, from The Hill and back.  He bought two quarts of milk from Father, at five cents a quart, and us boys took it to him, and collected the dime.

            Now, Edwin was the only one of us, who didn’t make those trips.  He was such a little shaver.  Mother kept him pretty close to home. But we had our cornet then, and while we walked down there and back, he’d stand on The Hill, and play.  And what a sweet, clear tone he had – and how we used to love to hear him.  That music carried all over, on that cold, crisp air.  It was a beautiful thing.”

            Freddie sighed, and fell to thinking. The little pile of shavings grew.

            “Yessir, things certainly have changed,” he resumed, aloud.  We lived on that old hill a good many years, thirty all told, before the house burned down. It was up there Father and Mother took in their first boarders.

            I guess you remember me telling about Mrs. Andre, and her trouble with the Greenwood Park Hotel. Well sir, when she left there, she came to Father, and asked if she could stay with us the rest of that summer. She liked the Lakes, and she didn’t want to go back south, until fall.

            I remember Father and Mother talking it over. They both liked Mrs. Andre, and wanted to help her out, but we’d never had people living with us, and they were afraid it wouldn’t work.  Besides, she wasn’t alone. She had her three children, and a colored maid, with her.

            The house was plenty big enough, it wasn’t that.  The part we lived in right along, was all finished nice.  It had three great big bedrooms upstairs, and another big one downstairs, besides the living room, dining room and kitchen.  Then there was the new addition Father had built just the winter before that – a great big parlor, with a bedroom the same size, above it.  Lumber didn’t cost anything those days, so when people built a house, ALL the rooms were big.

            The addition hadn’t been plastered yet, but that didn’t bother Mrs. Andre.  She wanted the up-stairs part, just as it was, so Father finally let her have it. I remember she paid $5.00 a week, apiece, for herself and the children, but there wasn’t any charge for the colored maid, because she helped Mother with the work.

            I’ll never forget that old colored woman. She’d been born into their family, before the Civil War, and my! how she used to look after them all.  Now you wouldn’t believe it maybe, but on rainy days, she’d CARRY them, even Mrs. Andre, to the “little-house” and back, so they wouldn’t get their feet wet and catch cold.

            Yessir, Mrs. Andre was Father’s first boarders.  That’s why I say it’s funny how tings happen.  I don’t suppose he’d ever have taken in boarders, or built Locksley Hall, later, if she hadn’t come to him, and begged so hard, to stay with us that summer.  It was funny too, how a couple of weeks later, he took in two more people, from the Greenwood Park Hotel.  He’d gotten sort of used to the idea by that time though, because he didn’t put up nearly so much fuss!

            Those people were old Professor Venice and his wife.  They were from Bloomington, Indiana, and he taught chemistry there, in the University.  Father gave them the parlor, in the new addition, just as it was, unplastered and all, and they were just as satisfied as Mrs. Andre.

            The next winter, Father built two cottages, up there on The Hill.  And the following year, two more.  All the people he had were from the South, and it was just by word of mouth, he’d get them.

            I remember Mr. and Mrs. W.E. Barnes, from St. Louis, were the first to have one of the cottages.  Old Barnes was publisher of The Age of Steel, a lumberman’s paper.  They were very wealthy people, and they loved the water.  At one time, a few years later, they had THIRTEEN beautiful rowboats, down at our docks, on Round Lake!

            Mrs. Barnes gave us boys the first peaches we ever saw.  They brought a box with them, when they came up from Missouri, the second year.  Of course she told us what they were, and how good they were, to eat, but we couldn’t get over how soft they felt – and we’d always rub them against our faces before we ate them!

            Yessir, those were pretty busy years, after Father started taking boarders. Not only for us, though, but for everyone around us. The Lakes were growing up.

            It was along about 1887, when the Soldier’s Home was built.  Now, if I remember correctly, the State didn’t own it at that time. The G.A.R. got the right people interested, and I guess, deserved the credit for the purchase of the land and buildings of the old Greenwood Park Hotel.

            They went right to work too, once they got it. They remodeled the old hotel, to suit its new use, and they built a new hospital, and an assembly hall. Then various cities, that were interested, donated money to build cottages there, for the use of their veterans.  I think there were about five or six of these cottages built the first year.

            Of course, there’d never been anything like it before, in this State.  There were homes for soldiers – but that’s all they were, just homes for SOLDIERS.  Their wives weren’t accepted in those places. HERE, they were – and my! people thought that was pretty nice.

            I remember Col. Turner was the first Commandant. He hired our band to play at the dedication. Now that was quite an affair.

            It took place a year after they’d bought the old hotel, and was on an awful hot day, in August.  They said afterwards, that there were five or six thousand people there, and I guess it’s true, because there were horses pulling buggies and teams pulling wagons, hitched halfway to Waupaca!

            We still called our band, the Farmington Band then, and besides us, they had the Omro and Waupaca bands there, and a drum corps from Weyauwega.  I can still remember that old Omro Band, playing during dinner in the dining hall.  They were good musicians, all of them, and they booked pretty slick, in gray suits, trimmed with red.

            All the soldiers wore blue there, then, and my! they used to look nice and neat.  Funny how old though, they seemed to us boys. I suppose there wasn’t ONE of them, as old as I AM NOW!”

            With a grunt of disgust, Freddie stopped reminiscing, and for the first time, saw the pile of shavings at his feet.

            “Judas priest!” he exclaimed, in chagrin.  “Just look at the mess I’ve made.  All over your clean floor too!”

            With a smile, I went for the broom. I can’t scold Freddie when he gets to telling tales.

Waupaca County Post

January 8, 1948

            There are people here, I suppose, who don’t like the snow, but could they spend an hour in the sooty, gray slush of Chicago, they’d be glad to claim this as their own. As a child, I loved the winters in Waupaca.  I still do.  To me, it seems the snow here, wraps itself about the earth, like a soft, white cloak, made of comfort – and only dulls, when melting into spring.

            I’d been out in the yard, helping Penny build a snowman, and if I may say so he was quite a work of art.  He had smudgy eyes of black briquets, a bulgy carrot for a nose, and the red, cynical slash of his mouth, was made from bright apple-peel.  He wore a battered old hat with trout flies in its brim, pulled down at a desperate angle, and around his throat, in true Apache style, was a very “loud” bandana.  Then to satisfy Penny, who insisted he smoke, I lit a cigarette and stuck it in one corner of his mouth.  He was truly a desperado!

            Going back to the house, I found Freddie ensconced on his “throne”, by the kitchen window.  Said I, “You should see the snowman we just built.  He’d frighten you out of your wits!”

            It seemed however, there was ANOTHER snowman, long years ago, who really did JUST THAT.  But, I’ll let Freddie tell you about HIM.

            “A snowman, hmm?  Judas!  I’ll never forget one old snowman us boys built. Father and Mother went to town that afternoon, and left Alfred and I, to take care of the place. There were five hundred bushel of oats, spread out on the barn floor to dry, and we were supposed to watch and see that the cows didn’t get in there and trample them.

            Well sir, we’d had a lot of snow the night before, and we were just sitting around doing nothing, so we decided to build a snowman, out in the front yard.  We hadn’t made on in a long time, and I guess we got so interested in that old fellow, we didn’t think about anything else.  Just worked and worked on him ‘til it started to get dark. I remember we’d just gotten him finished, and gone into the house to get warm when Father and Mother turned into the yard.  We knew they were coming, because we could hear the sleigh-bells ringing, and we ran out on the porch to meet them.

            Father was driving a team of young colts that day, and my! what beauties they were. He never let anyone else take them out though because they were too high-spirited, and hard to handle.

            Well sir, those old colts came prancing into the yard, as pretty as could be – then all of a sudden, they saw that old snowman, and they reared straight up, on their hind legs.  And of all the commotion you ever saw, for a few minutes – THAT was the worst!  They came down, and swerved, and started for the road, hell-bent on destruction.  Even Father, as strong as he was, couldn’t’ hold them.  They tipped over the sleigh, broke their harness, kicked themselves loose, and away they went.  Back towards Waupaca.  Judas priest, but Father was mad!  Of course it’s a wonder he and Mother weren’t killed, but they weren’t even hurt.  They’d been thrown clear, when the sleigh tipped over, and were just shaken up a bit, that’s all.

            Well sir, Alfred and I were SO scared, we didn’t know WHAT to do, and when Father made a lunge for us, I guess Alfred couldn’t move!  Anyhow, Father caught him, and I’ll bet he still remembers the strapping he got.

            It was while Father was whipping Alfred, that I got away.  I ran out to the barnyard, and dove into the hog’s nest, in the haystack.  I crawled way back in, just as far as I could go, and I guess I was there for hours. I know at first, when Father started calling me, he was still mad as a hornet. But after he’d looked and looked, and then Mother came out and started calling me too, I knew they were getting worried.  I didn’t come out though, not until they were good and worried.  I could hear them talking later on, and they thought I’d run away!  It was when Mother started to cry, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I decided to crawl out, and take my licking. But, that was one time, I didn’t get licked.  They were so glad to see me, Father never said a word – not even when he found all the cows in the barn, trampling down those fine hundred bushel of oats!

            Yessir, just think of it, ALL that trouble, on account of a snowman.

            Afterwards, I helped Father pick up the things he’d brought back from town. They’d been thrown from the sleigh, all over the yard.  I remember old Roberts (Major Roberts’ father) had given him four hogs heads that day, and there were four great big holes in the snow, where they’d gone through, when they lit!

            Now, there’s something, that doesn’t happen anymore.  Who’d give you four hog heads, today?  Yet in those days, old Roberts used to give them all away. He had a “general” store, on the corner where the old National Bank is, and you could buy almost anything in there.  I remember he used to keep his meat, in the back of the place.  Whole critters dressed, and hanging from great big, old hooks.  Of course, they didn’t sell things like hog heads and feet, or liver and hearts, then.  Most people didn’t know they were good to eat. But old Roberts knew Father liked hog heads, and I remember he used to say, “I’ve got some nice ones today, William.  Get back there, and help yourself!”

            Yessir, things CERTAINLY have changed!  NOWADAYS, when you go to town, you’ve got to have at least $10, or you’re better off to stay to home. And $10 won’t get you any more than you can carry on one arm.

            But speaking about hogs, reminds me of some suckling pigs old Dan Nichols tried to sell, on time.  This was years ago, too, of course.  He had a nice farm then, just northwest of Waupaca, on High-way 49.

            Well sir, he took those little pigs to town one day, and he tried ALL OVER, to get rid of them. They were NICE little pigs, and he wanted $1 a piece for them.  JUST THINK OF IT - $1 was all he was asking – and nobody would pay it!  Now, he had is wagon hitched on the courthouse square, and when he finally got back there, he was SO mad and disgusted, he took those pigs out, one at a time, and knocked their brains out, on a wagon wheel!  But that wasn’t the worst part of it. People thought old Dan had gone crazy – and somebody ran for the police.  He was arrested for destroying personal property, and I THINK he was fined $5 and costs. I KNOW, he never raised another pig to sell!”

            Freddie chuckled and gazed out the window, studying the snowbirds that were hopping about.  This seemed to be a day for short, unrelated tales – and I wondered where his thought would lead him next.

            “Birds,” he mused.  “I never think of birds around The Lakes I guess, without remembering old Carter, at The Home.  My, how he used to love the Martins, we had here long ago.  He ran the store, on the Soldiers’ Home dock for years, and he used to feed those birds all kinds of grain.

            What a smart old fellow he was, well red, and mighty interesting too. Us boys always stopped down there, every chance we got.  We had lots of fun, listening to old Carter.

            I’ll never forget one time when I was there, and an old fellow came in, and asked for some tobac-co.  I’ve forgotten his name, but I know he wasn’t very smart – not near so smart as old Carter.  Well any-how, it seemed he owed an old bill, $6 I think it was, and he hadn’t made any effort to pay it.

            Now, I don’t suppose old Carter was half as mad as he sounded, but what a dressing-down he did give him. Judas, it was awful!  And I’ll never forget hi, ending up with:  “Now get out of here, but remember what I told you. If you aren’t back, inside of a half an hour, to pay that bill – I’m going to serve you with a MEMORANDUM!  And if THAT don’t work, I’ll get out a DUPLICATE against you!

            Well sir, that old fellow was scared to death.  He went through that door, like a bat out of hell – was back in ten minutes, and paid the bill, in full!

            Yessir, old Carter was a funny one. I remember us boys used to call him, old “Beback”.  He’d be out of that store, more than he was in, just gossiping around with the other old soldiers, and he’d always have a sign, stuck up on the door – “Be Back in 10 Minutes”.  So we called him, old “Beback”.

            Of course those old fellows are all gone now.  There’s some of their widows still living, but not one of the men.  Old Duffy Beutan was the last to go, of those Civil War veterans.

            It was Duffy who always claimed, enlisted men weren’t much good in a war!  At least in that one he fought.  He said they were all adventurers, fellows that wanted to travel, and were looking for excite-ment. He’s swear we wouldn’t have won the war, if it hadn’t been for the men who were drafted.  It made pretty good sense, too, the way he explained it.  He claimed those drafted men had homes and families they wanted to get back to, so they fought like blazes, to win, and get it over with!

            Yessir, old Duffy Beutan was the last of those men in blue. They enjoyed that Home for a good many years though, all those old fellows, and their wives.  It was a great place for dances, and band-concerts, and things like that.

            Our band started playing there right after it was first built.  They didn’t have a bandstand then, and we weren’t even hired, but we liked to practice before an audience, and that was a good place to get one!  For a long time, we used to play there every Sunday afternoon, just for the fun of it.  We made money there though, after while.  Those old soldiers and their wives, got so they looked forward to our concerts and they started taking up a collection to pay us.  Some Sundays we’d get as much as thirty or forty dollars – and we’d never asked them for a cent!  Then after we played at that G.A.R. reunion, we called ourselves the Veteran’s Home Band – and we kept that name until the band broke up!

            There is a box on Freddie’s porch, full of bread crusts, for the snowbirds, and their pecking irritates Pat.  He’s just a little cocker, but he can raise a rumpus.  I don’t think it’s all his fault though, because when he races through the door, Freddie cheers him on. “Go get those old birds, Pat,” he’ll say. “They’ve got no business on our porch. Chase them away – you’re a regular old snowbird dog!”

Waupaca County Post

January 15, 1948

            I bought some apples in town one day. They were good apples, and prices being what they are, I’d paid a pretty penny.  I don’t want anymore right away though, because I had to eat them all.  There is nothing Freddie enjoys more than a good apple, but those he wouldn’t touch.  Not at that price. It’s a matter of principle with him. He’d starve first!”

            “Judas!  I wonder what this country’s coming to?”  he growled.  “Why, I can remember when Father could buy a good, fat heifer, for what you paid for those apples.  I can remember too, when you couldn’t sell apples, no matter how cheap you’d let them go. In fact there were times, years ago, when you couldn’t GIVE THEM AWAY.

            “Take when Father bought the Bostick farm, for instance. That was the eighty acres across the road, going east from The Hill.  There was a great big orchard on the place, and the trees in it were loaded with beautiful apples.  People didn’t have any trouble raising them those days.  Didn’t know what it meant to use a spray.

            “Well anyhow, we had to pick those apples that year, and I remember we got over two hundred bushels. There were Tallmon Sweets, and Russets and New York Greenings – all of them just as fine eating as you could possibly want. But we didn’t know what in the world to do with them!

            “We couldn’t sell them for any price.  There just wasn’t any demand for them. And we couldn’t give them away to the people we knew, because they all had orchards of their own, and all the apples they could eat!

            “Well sir, we finally ended up by hauling them to our barn and dumping in an empty hay mow over the horse stable, to get them out of the way.  Just think of it!  The whole two hundred bushels – and they laid up there and froze up.

            “Yessir, those apples came off the old Bostick farm. I’ll never forget the old man and his wife. They had a pretty nice house there, but they never sat anywhere except in the kitchen.  They were both old people when I was a kid, and I can see them yet, smoking their clay pipes.  You know women didn’t smoke those days, and us boys didn’t know what to think of Mrs. Bostick smoking the way she did!  I wonder what SHE’D think of women now?”

            It is with little asides such as this, that Freddie vents his disapproval of me smoking. I, in turn, pass cursory remarks about people who chew.  Our wrangling at such times, is rather vague and friendly.  It is always with the mutual understanding that present company is excluded!”

            “Wasn’t that Bostick farm part of Brinsmere Inn, later on?”  I asked, to change the subject.

            “Yes,” said Freddie, with prompt cooperation.  “The east forty acres of it.

            “My! but it’s a long time ago since Father bought that land.  I was twenty-four years old then, and I wanted to get married. About a year before that I’d met a girl by the name of Minnie Hansen.  She was a dressmaker, and she worked for Mrs. White and Lydia Chamberlain, in their shop in Waupaca.  The first time I ever saw here was at a dance where I was playing. I’ve forgotten who introduced us, but I know I couldn’t wait to meet her.  She was a wonderful dancer, and I found out later, one of the best figure skaters in this part of the country.  And my! how she could wear clothes.

            “Well anyhow, we wanted to get married, and I wanted to build a resort on the west shore of Hicks Lake.  Father and Mother were running the only place of that kind around here then, and they were packed all the time, and turning people away.  It looked like it was about the best business a fellow could possibly go into, and I was awfully anxious to get started.

            “So Father bought the Bostick farm and gave me the east forty of it. Then he bought another twenty acres to go with it, from old Tom Pipe, and that covered the shoreline.  I remember us boys always called that twenty acres “Pipesfield”, like it was the name of a town or something.  I don’t know why.  We just did – for years and years.

            “Min and I got married in March of 1891, and while I was building Brinsmere, we lived with the folks up on The Hill.  When we opened in the spring of ’92 all we had was the main building and the dining hall. The cottages were all built later on.

            “Our place was filled the very first summer, with people Father couldn’t take. And once they’d been there, they most always came back – some of them for many, many years.

            “It was easier to handle people then. When they came to a place like these lakes, they didn’t expect the world with a fence around it. Most of them, that is.  If they had good beds and good food and a lot of fun, that seemed to be about all they wanted.  They didn’t miss electric lights or running water or inside toilets.  Those things would have spoiled a vacation up here then.

            “Of course sometimes we’d get some funny ones. Like a couple we had the second summer we were open.  They’d never been in the country before, and they did not have the least idea what it was like.  They were very particular and sort of squeamish. I could see that the minute I laid eyes on them.

            “Well sir, after supper, the first night they were there, they took a long walk around the lake. Most of the people did that when they first came, so I thought nothing of it at the time.  But the next morning, right after the rising bell, that man came looking for me and he was madder than a hornet. He started shouting the minute he saw me. Wanted to know what I meant by representing my place, as a nice clean place.  He said they’d been eaten alive by bed-bugs the night before!

            “About that time I commenced to get mad.  He was making so much racket you could hear him for forty miles.  I wasn’t sure what they’d found in their rooms, but I had a pretty good idea – and I KNEW it wasn’t bed-bugs.  When he said he’d pinned the biggest one to the head of the bed – just to prove it to me – I told him to wait while I got my gun.  I said if they were as big and as thick as he claimed, I’d probably have to shoot my way in. Then, I told him to SHUT UP!

            “I must have looked pretty sore because he backed up and made a funny noise like a balloon fizzling out, and stopped talking.  Then we went to their room and I found just what I thought I would.

            “There was a bug pinned to the head of the bed alright, but it wasn’t a bed-bug. It was a great big old woodtick, and it was plumb full of blood.  Those people were just covered with woodticks. I remember I got Min, and we worked for an hour getting rid of the things. They got them on that walk along the shore of course.  They must have gone through brush that was alive with ticks.

            “Now that fellow was just excitable.  If he’d known anything about the country, he wouldn’t have acted the way he did.  It taught him a lesson though.  They stayed all summer, and I never had another bit of trouble with him.  Fact is, I got to like him.  He was a darn nice little fellow.

            “Yessir, some funny things happen when you’re running a hotel. I remember one woman who came up there, that I never did get to like. She was just downright ornery from beginning to end, and you couldn’t tell her a thing.  Not even for her own good.

            “She was there with her two little girls, and they couldn’t any of them seem to get enough to eat.  They were wealthy people so it wasn’t a case of starving to death, it was just a funny quirk they all had.

            “They’d just clean their table and send for more, three times a day. And if they found they couldn’t eat all they’d ordered, they’d pack it up and take it to their cottage, and finish it there.  Now, we liked to see people eat and we prided  ourselves on the table we set, but there was such a thing as going too far.  And that’s what that woman finally did.

            “On tope of all that food, she made the children drink cream with their meals.  Not cream like you see today, but heavy, yellow cream from Jersey cows, that was so thick it poured slow from the pitcher. Now you know enough of that will kill an ordinary person.  It’s too rich for the blood, the system can’t stand it. And there she was, pouring it down her children.

            “Well sir, I told her about it two or three times, but like I said she wouldn’t listen.  She probably figured I didn’t want them to use so much cream.  So I just let nature take it’s course.

            “That went on for about three weeks, then those girls got AWFUL sick.  Of course I knew what was the matter, but I didn’t say anything.  Just got the doctor for them. And when he found out they’d been drinking that cream, he wouldn’t even let them have whole-milk to drink.  For a while all they got was water, and after that, all they had was skimmed milk!

            “But like I said, for every one we’d get who was hard to handle there’d be a hundred nice ones.  I’ll never forget old Mr. Hucking and his wife.  They owned the Hucking Hotels, a whole string of them all over the United States.

            “Well sir, they were among our first boarders, and I guess it didn’t take him long to see that I was pretty new at the business.  We used to serve a great big breakfast, and everything went on the table at once – country style, I guess you’d call it.

            “We didn’t serve a strip or two of bacon with one egg, and a roll on the side. Everything was sent in on big platters, and the people helped themselves.

            “Anyhow, old Hucking hadn’t been there long, when he called me aside one day, and said he’d like to give me some advice.  He said he didn’t want to butt into my business, but he’d like to see me save some money on my food.

            “’Fred,’ he said, ‘those rolls you serve mornings, are about the best I’ve ever tasted. If you’ll just put a big plate of those of first, with plenty of butter, you’ll cut your bacon bill in half.  The people like them, and they’ll fill up on them. Just try it and see!’

            “I suppose it was true, but I didn’t try it to find out. Like I said, we liked to see our people eat.”

            I had a happy thought just then, about the peck of apples I’d just bought. Talking of food always whets Freddie’s appetite.

            “Come on honey,” I urged. “Just try one of these apples.  They’re really very good.”

            “Good!” he exploded. “Good for what?  To mount and hang on the wall?”

            “Shhh!” said I, “your thinking of fish.”  And gave up!

Waupaca County Post

January 22, 1948

            In Freddie’s life, as in the lives of most of us, tribulation and grief have played their parts.  But you won’t find it out from him, they’ve left no frustration or bitterness in their wake.  Instead, he’s be-come the philosopher, calm, wise and unbigoted.

            When looking back on his life he is happily disposed to disregard the trials and afflictions woven in and about it, and to remember instead, the beauty and humor worked into the pattern.  This character-istic is responsible, I presume, for his indisputable skill in the art of story telling.

            Now, there is quite a difference you know, between a storyteller and a speechmaker.  I got to thinking about this one day and wondered if Freddie had ever made a speech.  I asked him, and he had.  Just one. It was short and humorous, and in the form of a toast.  The occasion was a club dinner in Shreveport, La., where he was spending he winter with his old friend, Ed Dickinson.

            “Gentlemen,” said Freddie rising from the place of honor and making a little bow.  “I’m no speechmaker, but I’ve got a few words I’d like to say to you fellows. It’s about brush piles. I’ve hunted partridge, quail and grouse in them, all over the United States.  But, DOWN HERE, is the first place I’ve ever FISHED in them.”

            Chuckling over the memory, his mind flashed back to forty-some odd years ago.

            “My!” he exclaimed, “it’s a long time ago since I first met Dick and Carp.  Just think, they came to Brinsmere around the turn of the century, and I’ve seen them every single summer since.

            “Carp and his wife came up here first. They were on their honeymoon.  I remember they hadn’t been with us long before they asked for a room for a very good friend of theirs, a Mr. Ed Dickinson, from Shreveport.  Well sir, we were pretty well filled up, and I told them so, but they felt so bad I finally made room.  So Dick came up that summer, and every summer afterwards, as long as I ran Brinsmere.

            Carpenter was the first person to bring an automobile up to these Lakes.  He didn’t drive it either, not all the way.  They started out in it alright, but they blew a tire about every mile, and ended up by ship-ping it, and finishing the trip by train.

            “I don’t recall what kind of a car that was, but it certainly was an awful thing.  You could see it coming for forty miles. It had a thousand dollars worth of brass on it!

            There weren’t many cars around these parts then. Just a few in town, and none in the country.  I remember Harry Slater who was head of the telephone company, had the first car in Waupaca.  It was a little red thing, a Haynes, I guess.  Then later on John Gordon bought the second one to come here.  People were afraid of cars those days.  They never knew for sure what a car was going to do!

            “And by the holy-jumped-up!  You should have seen the “rigs” they wore, to take a ride in one.  They’d be covered from head to feet with all kinds of things.  Long white linen coats, and gauntlet gloves, and great big old goggles.  And the women were worse than the men.  Besides all that other stuff, they’d have so many veils wrapped around their heads you couldn’t tell who in the world they were!

            “I remember we had a lot of trouble with that car of Carp’s that summer.  About every time he’d get ready to go some place it wouldn’t start. He’d crank it until he got tired, then I’d crank it until I got tired, and we’d most always end up by calling old Hank Wagner to help give it a push!

            “There was a funny old fellow, about the best hired-man I ever had, but there was something the matter with him.  I don’t know what it was, but he wasn’t exactly bright, even when he first came to Brinsmere.  I remember I paid old Hank $12 a month, and when he got his wages he’d go to town and buy candy with it for kids.  Not any kids in particular, just all the kids he could find to give it to!  He just plain liked kids, and as long as he had money he’d spend it on candy for them.

            “I finally got so I wouldn’t give him all his wages, just a dollar or two at a time, then I’d put the rest away and save it for him until he needed shoes or a suit or something like that.  But he never minded, he’d just take whatever I gave him, and go to town and buy candy for the kids.

            “Yessir, old Hank was a funny one. He worked for me for 20 years, and I never had a better hand. After he left Brinsmere the poor old fellow lost his mind. The last time I ever saw him wasn’t too long before he died. He was in a hospital and Carp and I went to see him, together.

            “I’ll never forget that visit.  He didn’t know either of us and yet it was a funny thing the way he remember Brinsmere, and the names of people he’d known there. But the funniest thing of all was what he had to say about me.

            “Carp asked him if he remembered a man by the name of Fred Smith, and old Hank thought a minute, and then said he did.  ‘Sure, I remember Fred Smith,’ he said. ‘He owned a big hotel out at the Lakes, and I worked for him a long time. He was a nice man. It’s too bad about what happened to him.’

            Of course Carp and I were surprised. There we sat, both of us perfectly all right, and we couldn’t’ imagine what he meant.  We did not have to wait long though to find out.

            “’Yessir, I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘You know he made me awful mad one day, so I threw him in the well, and filled it up with rocks!’

            “And the poor old fellow really BELIEVED that.  We could see he felt pretty bad. Now, wasn’t that awful.

            “It was old Hank who used to sort of watch thing for me. I’ll never forget one time when I’d been having a little trouble with old ‘Cap’ Merriam.  We were good enough friends as a rule, but sometimes during the summer months, he’d interfere with my boat business, and then we’d get into some pretty hot arguments.  He ran a passenger boat those days, and he’d pick up people all over the Lakes, but I’d told him to stay away from the Brinsmere dock.  I had boats of my own and I took care of my own people.

            “This one summer though, we had an awful time. Old Hank had seen old ‘Cap’ glide into our dock, pick up passengers, and get away so fast we couldn’t possibly catch him. It didn’t do any good to talk to him either.  I’d met  him at The Home one day, and told him I’d throw him in the lake if he came near my place again, but he’d wait for a chance, then in he’d come.

            “Now I couldn’t see him because I was behind the boat house, and I couldn’t hear him because he’d shut his engine off and was gliding in, but when his boat hit the dock, it jarred it and out I jumped!  And of all the surprised people you EVER saw, HE was the worst.

            Of course he knew I’d throw him in the lake, I’d warned him often enough.  He’d have done the same thing to me, for taking people off his dock.  But when I grabbed him by his collar and the seat of his pants, and started running him towards deep water, you should have heard him holler!  Judas, how he hollered.

            “It was a good thing for him that he did, too.  It sure saved him from a whale of a ducking.  Old Judge Parks was sitting on top of the hill, watching the whole thing, and he yelled at me just in time.  ‘Don’t throw him in, Fred,’ he yelled.  ‘Everything’s fair in love and business!’

            “So, old ‘Cap’ Merriam climbed back in his boat and off he went. But he was back again, in a week or so.  AND TAKING PASSENGERS OFF MY DOCK!  Yessir, he sure was a character, old ‘Cap’ Merriam.

            “But talking about characters, I guess the funniest one we ever had around here, was old ‘Dud’ Carr.  Douglas, his name was, but every one called him just plain ‘Dud’, and for some reason or other, it seemed to fit him pretty well.

            “Old Dud worked for me too, for a long time.  Not the year around like old Hank Wagner, he wasn’t with us in the winter.  But just as sure as spring came, Dud came with it!  We never had a definite understanding.  He’d just show up, and I’d take him on.

            “Now, there was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known.  His father was a big doctor somewhere in the east, and Dud had started out to be one.  But he got to drinking a little too much, and left school the year he was to graduate.

            “Everyone like Dud those years at Brinsmere.  He was a great big, good-looking fellow and plumb full of laughs.  All around good company, I guess is what you’d call it, besides being about the finest trout-fisher that ever hit this part of the country.

            “He used to do a lot of ‘guiding’ for me.  He could catch more fish than anyone I’ve ever known, and of course this made him popular with the guests at our place.  They used to like to have Dud take them upon the streams.  They knew they’d come back with their baskets full.

            “I’ll never forget one date he had to go fishing. It was the only one I ever knew him not to keep.

            “The man he was going to take on that trip was a minister and an awfully nice fellow.  He’d never done any fishing before, but he was very anxious to learn how and Dud promised to teach him.

            “Well sir, that minister had been planning on that trip for a week.  My! how he was looking for-ward to it, couldn’t talk about anything else.  But the morning they were supposed to go, Dud got side-tracked in the icehouse.  It was awful hot, and he’d gone there for a couple of bottles of cold beer, thinking it would cool him off before they started. The only trouble with it was, he stayed there too long.  And when that minister came looking for him, Dud was ‘lit’ to the gills!

            “I’ll never forget it.  The minister wanted to be nice about the thing, but he was so disappointed he couldn’t help being a little sharp. So when Dud insisted on going, he said ‘We’ll talk this over tomor-row, Douglas.  You’re too drunk now!’

            “Well sir, sometimes when Dud was drinking he’d get awful dignified, especially when he’d done something wrong, and knew it.  And this was one of those times.  He pulled himself up, and looked that minister straight in the eye, and said, ‘So you think I’m drunk, do you?  Well, maybe I am, but that’s all right.  I’ll get over being drunk.  But you know, you’re a danged fool, and you WON’T get over THAT!’

            “And do you know, even that minister had to laugh!

            “Later on Dud taught him how to fish, and they were the best of friends, the rest of the summer.  But then, like I said, everyone liked Dud, he sort of kept us all on our toes around Brinsmere.”

AN OUTSTANDING EVENT IN WAUPACA HISTORY

An Outstanding Event In Waupaca History.

            An outstanding event in Waupaca history was the first run of the streetcar line from the Wiscon-sin Central railroad station to the old Grand View Hotel, the Fourth of July, 1898.  The lien was operated by the Waupaca Light & Railway Co., and did much to popularize the Chain o’ Lakes and make Waupaca a mecca for tourists.  The cars shown in the picture above are open streetcars, which were replaced by closed cars several years later.  The car in the foreground is turning off Main street to go out West Fulton street.  Above it can be seen the sign of J.A. Versen, who operated a grocery where the Badger Pain store is now located.  The offices above are occupied by J.B. Scott, a dentist, whose sign can be seen in the window.  To the rear and right of the car is the awning of a business operated by Larson E. Palmer. We are indeed sorry that identity of the individuals in the picture cannot be given.

            Freddie, seated in his old form-fitting Morris chair, is a picture of ease and contentment. It isn’t too high, and it isn’t too low; it isn’t too hard, and it isn’t too soft.  It’s JUST RIGHT.  And, he HATES to get out of it!

            I know this, and as a rule I spoil him by waiting on him.  But, there are times when I like to tease him, too, before getting him what he wants. I can be especially tantalizing about his tobacco can.

            He’d finished the story of Dud Carr and the minister, but I knew he wasn’t through with Dud.  He just waned a chew before he went on.  So he looked at the tobacco can, then he looked at me, then he looked out the window and said, “Yessir, old Dud was sure a funny one.”  I agreed, but didn’t move.  So we did it all over gain, only this time he said, “You know there was nothing old Dud like better than a good chew of tobacco.  Looked like he had a baseball in one side of his face most of the time.”

            “Mmmm,” said I, and waited.  I wanted him to ask me for that tobacco can, because when he did, I was going to have a cigarette.  It’s like playing a game.  We both know what the other is thinking, it’s just a case of who gives in first.  On this occasion however, Freddie was more stubborn than usual.  For a while I thought we were both going to give up the tobacco habit!

            With a fine display of complete indifference, Freddie resumed his story.

            “You know when people first met old Dud, they were pretty apt to misjudge him.  He wasn’t too particular about his appearance, working around there the way he did, and it just didn’t occur to people that he was as smart as he was.  But Judas!  If they tried any wise-cracks, did they find out quick.  What a tongue he had, and how foolish he could make a fellow look!

            “I’ll never forget a run-in he had with a cook at Brinsmere.  She was new there that year, and an awful good woman on the job. Only trouble was, she was just a lee-tul bit too particular.  Fussy, awful fussy, about the kitchen, and everyone who came into it.

            Well sir, among other things, she couldn’t stand anyone who chewed tobacco, and of course she spotted Dud right away.  Anytime he came into the kitchen, she’d hammer away at him about it.  Just peck, peck, peck, all the time he was trying to eat his meals.  Dud took it for quite a while, and that was surprising, because he was pretty quick with his tongue, as a rule.  But I guess he figured she was boss there in that kitchen, and there was no use arguing with her on her own ground.

            “Anyhow one day, he caught that cook, out of the kitchen, and I’ll never forget it.  Like I said, old Dud could be pretty crude when he wanted to, and by that time, he was awful mad at her.

            “He and old Hank were out in the barnyard loading manure. We were using it for fertilizer down in one of the fields, and they were both working fast to get done before dinner time.  They didn’t know it, but the cook had already called them to eat, and when they didn’t show up she came out there, mad as a wet hen.  They hadn’t heard her of course, but that didn’t make any difference to her.

            “’Douglas Carr,’ she snapped, ‘I called you to dinner three times and I’m not going to call you again.  And I want to tell you right now, I’d just as leave eat what you’ve got on that fork, as to chew that dirty stuff you’ve got in your mouth!’

            “Well sir, Dud looked at her for a minute, smiled that crooked smile of his and cleared his throat. He always cleared his throat before he spoke. Just a funny little habit he had.

            “’Well now, maybe you would, at that’ he drawled, soft and sarcastic like.  ‘But then, I always say, everybody to his own taste, Mam, everybody to his own taste.’

            “And you should have seen that poor woman. For a minute I thought she was going to explode sure, but all of a sudden she turned, and just flew back to the kitchen.  That settled THAT feud though.  She never as long as she was there, ever again said a thing about chewing, to Dud.

            At this point, our own little feud reared it’s stubborn head again.  The tobacco can, I and the win-dow, were properly scrutinized, in turn.  The situation was weighed and found wanting.  Freddie braced himself and continued.

            “Yessir, what years those were. Great years, especially the early ones. You know when Brinsmere opened, Father had all the people he could possibly care for up there on The Hill.  I suppose he would have stayed there right along, if the place hadn’t burned down. He had lots of lakeshore then, that was better suited to his business, but that was the original home-site and he and Mother loved it.

            “It was around that time that there was a raise in taxes, and I’ll never forget how mad Father was. He had four hundred acres of land, and up until then, the highest tax bill he’d ever received was for $9.00.  The day he got that new one, he came home fit to be tied.  I was there at the time and I remember him storming in to the kitchen, and fairly shouting at Mother.  Her name was Elizabeth, but Father always called her ‘Bet’.

            “’Bet,’ he roared, ‘do you know how much my taxes are THIS year?  They’re THIRTEEN DOL-LARS, and bigod, I’m going to file A PROTEST.’

            “And he did.  Of course it didn’t do him any good, he had to pay the $13 anyway, but I’ll never forget how upset he was.  I wonder what he’d do now, if he had to pay taxes on that much land, at these rates.”

            Freddie chuckled at the memory.  Then the present returned to vex him.  He shot a covetous glance in the direction of his tobacco.  I studied my nails. He sighed, and then went on with new-found determination.

            “You know a fire then, was an awful thing. At least out in the country.  When that place on The Hill burned down, there wasn’t a thing we could do about it!  Of course, we toted buckets of water from the well as fast as we could pull them up, but we might as well have saved ourselves the trouble.

            “That happened in the summer of 1893, and the place was filled with people.  I remember I was on my way to town, when Father passed me driving like mad.  He was standing in the wagon, whipping the horses, and he looked an awful lot like he was crying.  He didn’t even see me, but I turned my rig around of course, and followed him.  Then, I saw the smoke rolling off The Hill.

            When I got there I ran into the house and started throwing things out the windows.  One of the things I threw out was a brand new overcoat I’d gotten the winter before.  I’d cut and hauled wood to Uncle John to pay for the material in that coat, and after that, a lot more to old man Larson, a tailor, to make it for me.  Old Larson had his shop right next to the City Hall and he’d done a beautiful job on that coat.  I sure didn’t want to lose it, but when I threw it out, I didn’t throw it far enough. It caught fire and burned up before I could get downstairs.

            “But then, we didn’t save anything to speak of, in that whole great, big old house.  It just simply burned to the ground, with everything in it.  And the guests stuff went up in smoke, right along with ours.  Judas! what a time that was.

            “Of course just the main building went, the cottages weren’t touched.  But with the main building gone, Father couldn’t feed anybody, so I had to make room at Brinsmere for everybody they had.

            “Then Father and Mother moved into one of the cottages.  They fixed it up so it would be warm in cold weather, and they lived there all that winter. It was then Locksley Hall was built.

            “Father hired me and four other men to build Locksley.  I remember old Tom Price and Henry Spooner were two of the four he had.  We worked there for six months, and by spring, we had the main building with twenty rooms in it, and the dining hall and kitchen done.

            “Now, I don’t think until then, Father had ever really thought of himself as being in the summer resort business.  When he first took people, he’d done it because he was talked into it.  After that, if others wanted to come, and it didn’t inconvenience him, he’d let them come!

            “But when he got down on Round Lake, with a place built for that purpose, he changed.  I remember to begin with, he furnished it with the very best furniture he could buy, from old Asa Holly, in Waupaca.  And when that was done, he gave a lot of thought to a name for the place.

            “You know Father was always a great reader. Not only of the newspapers, but of the Bible, and the classics.  For years he took the Cincinnati Enquirer, reading every issue page for page, and as for the Bible and the classics, he could quote most any passage from them that ever came up in a discussion.  He had a fine memory for everything he read, and he was always reading.

            “Well anyhow, I remember he thought about this name and that and he finally decided on Locks-ley Hall.  It was the name of one of his favorite poems, by Alfred Tennyson, and it seemed to be a pretty good choice.  I don’t remember much of the story, but I know Locksley Hall in it was built on a hill overlooking a beautiful lake.  And Father’s place was like that too, so that was what he called it.

            “He opened in the spring of ’94, and the place was packed, with more people wanting to come all the time. In the next few years he built ten cottages, with from two to four bedrooms each, and just as fast as he put them up, they were taken.

            “There wasn’t any such thing as transient trade then, you know.  All of our people were from the south, and they came by train, with their trunks, and stayed all summer.  Always the same people too, after we’d reached out quota.  I’ve known families who came to our place for the first time, with tiny babies, and never missed a summer afterwards, until those children were grown up!  These Lakes were a wonderful place then, for children, safe and clean and healthy.  For the parents, too.  Well, for everybody, for that matter.”

            By now Freddie’s resistance was ebbing fast.  He looked at me and at his tobacco can. But this time he didn’t look out the window.  Instead, he took a deep breath, and said very nonchalantly, as though it had JUST occurred to him, “Say, Ellen, hand me my tobacco, will you?  I’d get it myself, but I hate to get up!”

            “Oh SURE, dear,” said I.  “Why didn’t you TELL me you wanted a chew?”

Waupaca County Post

February 5, 1948

            “Old Henry” Christian brought us a blueberry pie one day.  He’d had it specially baked by a chef he knew, and it had involved a bit of dickering on Henry’s part to close that deal.  He’d furnished a pint of berries, the sugar, and six nice trout in return for that pie.  We were really anticipating a treat.

            “So that’s blueberry pie, is it?” grimaced Freddie, the first bite as yet unswallowed.  “I’m glad you told me, or I certainly would not have known it!  Isn’t it a caution what people will eat these days?  And think it’s good, too!  Why, that pie never saw a blueberry. Oh, maybe there was one dragged through it, but that’s all.

            “I wish you could have tasted the pies Mother and Min used to make.  My, what pies they were. Plumb full of berries, with the juice running out on top, and the bottom of the crust just like candy.

            “Now, there’s a funny thing when you come to think of it.  There aren’t any blueberries around here anymore. Yet I can remember when they were so thick we used to pick them in water pails and pour them into wash boilers.  Right here, where this shack is now, it was just covered with them.  When we were kids here’s where we picked them for Mother to can. Just think of it, wash boilers full, and there’d be just as many left when we quit, as when we started!  Another place they were thick was over around Loyola Villa. After Min and I were married we used to go there to pick them.  It was closer to Brinsmere, and there were just about as many.

            “Yessir, Loyola Villa.  Now, you know it’s a long time ago since the Jesuits bought that property.  Over fifty years.  That all came about through old General Sherman’s son. He was a Jesuit from St. Louis, and he came up here that first time, to spend a summer at the Grand Army Home. That was two or three years after Brinsmere opened, around 1885, I guess.  But anyhow, he liked these lakes so much he got the other Jesuits interested, and they wound up by buying that place about a year later.  Work was begun on it right away.  I remember old Henry Spooner was on that job. He hung every door there for TWENTY-FIVE CENTS apiece!

            “One of the things I’ll always remember about those Jesuits those days, is the way they used to sing on The Lakes.  They had beautiful voices, and my! how people loved to listen to their concerts.  They’d hire one of the big passenger boats for an evening, and tour The Chain.  Several times every sum-mer.  There’d be twenty-five or thirty of them in the chorus, and the launch would stop on each lake while they sang.  Beautiful songs like ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginy’, and ‘The Rosary’, and things like that.  Their voices would carry over the water as clear as bells, and there wouldn’t be another sound BUT their voices on the Lake where they were singing!  Yessir, people certainly loved to listen to those Jesuits sing.”

            Thinking and talking of music does something to Freddie. That is, the music of long ago.  It doesn’t make him blue, exactly, but I always feel he’s aching a little, somewhere inside. So, I usually change the subject.

            “Weren’t you in a boat race once, with some of those Jesuits?” I prodded hopefully.

            He chuckled.  There now, thought I to myself, that’s better.

            “Yessir, I certainly was, and I’ll never forget it.  You know people don’t do things like that any-more, but it was lots of fun then.  Everyone enjoyed those boat races, even the people who were in them.  There’d always be a prize of some kind, nothing much, but just enough to make it interesting.

            “This one I’m talking about was a row boat race, from Onaway Island to the Grand View Hotel.  Old Irving Lord owned the car line then, and he was giving the prizes that day.  They were two $1 books of street car tickets.

            “There were three boats in that race, with two people rowing each boat.  Two Jesuits from the Villa, old Dud Carr and I from Brinsmere, and Delbert Lean and another fellow.  I’ve forgotten who that other fellow was, but I remember both he and Delbert were young and mighty fine athletes. So were the Jesuits.  And of course with that sort of set-up, Dud and I didn’t think we stood a chance!

            “Well sir, when the starting gun went off, you should have seen those other fellows go. They actually LIFTED their boats right out of the water.  Just whoosh! and Dud and I were left way behind.

            “Old Dud wanted to give up, right then and there.  ‘Fred,’ he yelled, dropping his oars, ‘what in hell are you and I doing in THIS race, anyhow?’

            “’Row Dud, row!’ I shouted back, ‘Just take it steady and easy – BUT ROW!’

            “So we started again, pulling together, with good long, steady strokes, and pretty soon I could see we were gaining.  Just a leetul bit but gaining.  Those fellows were still way ahead of us, but I could tell they were tiring.  Their boats didn’t go plumb out of the water anymore, with every stroke they took.

            “We caught up with them when we reached the middle of the lake and Dud and I weren’t the least bit tired.  We weren’t even breathing hard. But Judas!  You should have seen those other fellows.  Puffing like steam engines, all four of them.  You could hear them for forty miles!

            “They were running neck and neck then, and just as we passed by, they gave one last spurt, and that was all.  Dud and I were in the clear from then on, long before we reached the shore. In fact I’ll never forget old Dud, when we had about two hundred feet to go.

            “He pulled his oars into the boat, and got out a chew of tobacco.  ‘What the hell, Fred,’ he said, ‘you don’t need any help.  You can beat them alone.’

            “So, I rowed in by myself.

            “Later on, when old Lord gave us each a street-car book, Dud handed his to me.  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you can have mine, too.  YOU won THAT race.  I’m going to town, and get drunk!’  And he did.”

            To show my disapproval of such high-jinks, I noisily clacked my tongue.  Tch, tch, tch!  Freddie looked up and grinned, and went on.

            “Yessir, we used to have a lot of fun on the water those days.  Oh, I suppose they do now, too, but ours was such a different kind of fun.

            “Take for instance, the boat parades we had every summer.  My, what pretty things they were.  Lots of work, but they were worth the trouble, because everyone enjoyed them so.

            “Anyone could enter a boat, but it had to be decorated, and the people who rode in it had to wear costumes. Of course the boats were mostly all small ones, skiffs and canoes, and things like that. Sometimes there’d be as many as forty of them, in one of those parades, all tied together and towed in a long line by one of the big launches.  You’ve never seen a prettier sight.

            “I remember one year when your Mother won first prize.  They gave nice prizes for the boat parades. That time it was $50 and she certainly deserved it.

            “You know most people used silks, or flags, or bright colored costumes. But this year your Mother took a skiff and trimmed it with cattails.  Yessir, just great big cattails out of the swamp, with their long green leaves.  Then she dressed like an Indian girl, and it made quite a picture.

            “Another thing people used to enjoy an awful lot, was the Crystal River trips.  At least the people from Locksley Hall and Brinsmere enjoyed them.  Father and I used to handle those trips in a way that made them lots of fun.

            “Of course a trip like that was planned a week or so in advance.  Most of our people would want to make it at least once during a summer, and in order to accommodate them all we had to arrange for several trips.

            “Usually there’d be about twenty-five skiffs and fifty people on one of those excursions. They’d have to have food for all day, so each boat was provided with a big basket of lunch, with lots of fried chicken in it.  Then we’d take them up to the mouth of the river, in the Queen or Lady of the Lake, towing the skiffs behind us.

            “After that, of course, they were on their own.  We did see to it that there was a man in each boat who was capable of handling a paddle, but we didn’t help them down the river.  Naturally a lot of them tipped over, but they were dressed for that, and it was all part of the day’s fun.

            “When they got to Parfreyville in the evening, we’d be there waiting for them. With a great big, old hayrack, plumb full of hay.  They’d all be tired, but happy and laughing.  I can see them yet, scrambling for seats in that hayrack.

            “We always picked evenings with a full moon for those hayrides.  My, how nice they were!  We’d let the horses just jog along, and the people would sing all the way home.”

            The aching was back again.  I had to think fast.  So I called Freddie “Chicken” – that ALWAYS makes him jump!

            “Well, Chicken,” I said brightly, “maybe YOU might have gone to Parfreyville on a hayrack but don’t try to tell me your FATHER ever did!”

            “Father!” he exploded.  “Judas no!  He always sent one of his men, usually old Bill Anderson.

            “Now there was a funny fellow.  Old Bill worked for Father for years.  I remember Father used to say he was the best man he’d ever had when he was around, but he was never around.

            “The first year Bill came there, he pulled something he never did hear the last of.  You know he had quite a temper and sometimes when he got mad, he’d get SO mad he couldn’t talk straight.

            “Well sir, this one time, was a terrible rainy morning.  It was coming down something awful, and when Bill woke up and saw that, he knew he’d have to pick the vegetables that day.  Father picked his own vegetables in nice weather, but Bill had been there just long enough to realize that when it rained HE had to pick them.

            “The more he thought about it, the madder it made him.  By the time he got dressed and down to the kitchen, where Father was, he was fit to be tied.  He came storming in there, with a pail in each hand, banged them down on the floor, and shouted, ‘Well, what’ll it be today, Mr. Smith, PEANS OR BEES!”

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “Old Bill was a funny one.”

            Closing these tale-telling sessions on a happy note is always, of course, desirable.  I stood up with more determination than ambition, and announced I would then do the dishes.

            “Well, don’t save that BLUEBERRY pie!” boomed Freddie, with much sarcasm.

            “Shall I give it to Pat?” I asked. 

“PAT!” he shouted.  “Judas NO!  It would kill him.  THROW IT OUT!”

LOYOLA VILLA

Loyola Villa -                                                   

The above photograph was made around the turn of the century from Loyola Villa, summer home of the Jesuit Fathers, Diocese of St. Louis.  This property, located on the east shore of Sunset Lake, was purchased by the Jesuits in 1896, and building began that same year.  For over fifty years now, Loyola Villa has been the summer retreat of this old and venerable Order of the Religious. Under their zealous guardianship it has retained to a very great extent, it’s rustic shoreline, sylvan glades and virginal solitude.  It is one of the beauty spots of The Chain.

BOAT PARADE

Boat Parade

Above we have a picture of a well-known water sport of fifty years ago.  It is a boat parade made up of small, light, decorated craft, in tow behind a large passenger launch. The parades were one of the highlights of the summer season at The Chain, during the end of the “gay nineties” and well into the present century.  They are reminiscent of the fine old summer resort era, with its rather dignified but wholesome sense of values.

Waupaca County Post

February 12, 1948

            Whimsical … some of these beloved “oldsters” of ours. Freddie for instance, with his nostalgic convictions of the fashions of women; his praise of the clothes worn in by-gone days.

            I suppose when he dwells (if ever he does) on his “loves” of yester-year, they materialize in the bustles, high-buttoned shoes, and leg o’ mutton sleeves.  Also, tier upon tier of starched “unmentionable” demurely secreted beneath billowy, trailing skirts!

            In other words I’m certain they are becomingly covered, albeit smothered, with clothes.  I don’t know of course, this is all pure conjection on my part.  But, I DO know his antipathy towards a woman in “shorts”.  Aye, even a very young woman!

            When my oldest daughter, Ellen, was here last summer, we had a bit of time.  She is fourteen, bubbly with life, and with her smooth, young coat of tan, a pretty picture in the “play-clothes” of today.

            THAT of course, was at the time and still is in MY opinion.  Freddie and his Gibson Girl felt differently!

            “You ought to make that child put more clothes on,” he scolded one day, as Ellen swung gaily off down the road.  “I tell you, I don’t know WHAT this country’s coming to!”

            “Oh, don’t be such an old rain-in-the-face.” I teased.  “Today’s children are the nicest, cleanest, healthiest children anyone could ask for – and YOU know it.”

            “Hmnp!” he hmnped, with a world of expression.  “That part of it might be all right, but wouldn’t they be just as healthy if they put some clothes on?  They remind me of a tribe of danged old Indians – practically neekid, that’s what they are!”

            “Why! when I was a kid, I can remember old Indian bucks coming up on The Hill with nothing but a clout on.  And that’s a fact. Just thinking of it – not a thing on but a little old clout!”

            Honest Injun?” I enthused, anxious to divert his thought, “What in the world did they come to The Hill for?”

            “Oh, to sell things they’d made, or more than likely, swiped, when somebody wasn’t looking!” said Freddie, pigeon-holing his aversion to “shorts” for the time being.  “There used to be a lot of them hereabouts, in the real early days.  Mostly Menominee, if I remember rightly.

            “When I was just a little cuss, they had trails all around these Lakes.  Did you ever see a REAL Indian trail?  Well, they’re funny looking things.  You know when Indians walk they put one foot right ahead of the other, so the trails they make are deep and narrow.  Fact is, they’re so deep and narrow, a white man falls all over himself trying to stay in one!

            “It was the Indians who built the first bridge over that channel between Limekiln and Columbia Lakes.  That’s where they always crossed from one side of The Lakes to the other, when they were afoot.  I guess that’s why we always called it The Indian Crossing.  Of course it didn’t’ look anything like it does today.  That first bridge was just sort of a make-sift, jiggily, old contraption, made mostly of trees and some old lumber.  I remember it hung awful low over the water, and the only way you could go under it, was to use a small boat and duck your head!

            “Now, I don’t know how right he was, but Father always thought the Indians had another crossing too; one they’d used years and years before the one we knew about.  He figured they bridged that channel between Nestling and McCrossen Lakes, at sometime, way back, and I’ll tell you why.  You know when the water’s clear, like in the spring and fall, if you look down deep between those two points of land, you can just barely see a lot of heavy old timber sticking up from the bottom.  It was there when I was a kid, and it’s still there.  Nobody knows why, of course, but like I said, Father used to think it was the wreckage left from another old bridge built by the Indians.

            “Yessir, there used to be a lot of Indians around these parts.  Especially during the summer.  I mean we saw more of them then, than we did at any other time.  That was when they used to come up to The Hill and try to sell things.  They’d be just loaded down with some of the funniest looking parapher-nalia you ever did see.

            “I’ll never forget one old buck, and a basket he tried to sell to Mother.  It was something his squaw had made, and I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since!

            “It had four parts to it.  There was a big basket at the bottom with a tall back on one side of it, and then three smaller baskets fastened to that back, one above the other.  And at the very top, right over the smallest basket, there was a little looking glass glued to the straw!

            “Well sir, it was such a funny looking affair, so clumsy and all, it caught Mother’s eye, and she asked the old buck what it was for.  He seemed awful surprised. I guess he thought she ought to know. I remember he got all excited, and jabbered away about lots of people using them.

            “Anyhow, when he finally calmed down, he explained it to Mother, and this was the way it worked.  The big basket on the bottom was for knives, the next one above it for forks, and the one above that for spoons, and the TOP one for a HAIRBRUSH and COMB!

            “Of course Mother didn’t buy it, but for awhile she let Father think she did.  I can still remember how she teased him.  She said it was going to be an awful handy thing to have around.  ‘Just think of the steps it’ll save us, William,’ she said, just as serious as could be.  ‘It’ll be mighty nice to have the silverware and brush and comb, ALL TOGETHER, that way, and that little mirror right there to look in, when we fix our hair!’”

            “Ugh!” said I, coming to with a start; my mental romancing with bright beads, vivid feathers, and brave, tawny teepees, a miserable shambles.  But Freddie didn’t know I’d played truant, and went blithely on.

            “Yessir,” he said, “those old Indians were a caution, all right.  They used to camp all over these Lakes, from early spring until late fall.  One of their favorite spots, in those real early days, was where the Grand View Hotel stood later on.

            “Now, just think how long ago it is since THAT hotel was built.  Yet, I can remember it like yesterday.

            “My, what a lot happened to these Lakes in about ten year’s time. Once they started to grow, they couldn’t seem to stop.  The old Greenwood Park Hotel was the first one put up, and Grand View was the last. But in between them, the G.A.R. Home, Brinsmere, Locksley Hall, and Loyola Villa were all built.  And a whole lot of privately owned cottages besides at this end of The Chain.  Yessir, those were great years, for these Lakes!

            “There was a stock company formed to build Grand View, along about 1896 I think it was.  I remember I was approached for money.  The fellow that came to see me asked me for $100, and said I could use my money for a better purpose. He went on at a great rate about what a wonderful thing that hotel was going to be for The Lakes.  He said it would be different from anything we’d had so far, the finest in this part of the country!

            “Well of course I was running Brinsmere at the time, so all that guff didn’t set so well, but I remember telling him when he finally ran down that I’d be glad to help them out.  I said I’d put $100 into their place, if they’d put $200 into mine!  And when he saw I meant it, he didn’t bother me anymore.

            “Anyhow, they built that hotel, and it certainly was a pretty place.  Old Hill and Nessling ran it, two of the nicest fellows you’d ever want to meet.  They were both retired railroad men.  If I remember rightly, one of them was a conductor and the other an engineer, on the old Wisconsin Central.  And they put all the money they had into that place.

            “For awhile they did an awful business, but it never bothered us. We stayed filled up, year after year, with the people we started with.  They got new ones all the time.

            “It was a real swell place of course, maybe a little bit too swell.  Maybe their people didn’t feel like they were on a vacation, the way that hotel was run.  It was just like a place in the city, with every-body dressed up all the time.

            “Now you know at Locksley and Brinsmere, we expected people to be clean, but we didn’t tell them what to wear into the dining room. But at Grand View they had to DRESS to eat.  Why! a man couldn’t get a meal unless he had a coat on, and it didn’t make any difference HOW hot the weather was!

            “They really had things nice though, if you liked that sort of thing.  Take for instance, the orchestra they had there right along. There were three men and a girl in it.  I remember that girl was red-headed, with a mighty fine violinist.  They played every evening, all during dinner hour, and then afterwards if people wanted to dance, they played for that, too.

            “Yessir, it was a real swell place, and like I say, it went along fine for the first few years.  One thing that helped it a lot, was the street-car line going in. That happened about two years after Grand View opened, and of course those cars ran right from the depot in Waupaca out to the hotel.  It was awful convenient for their guests, I can tell you.

            “I guess I said Grand View never bothered us, but I DID lose one fellow to old Hill and Nessling. It was the only time it ever happened, and he had plenty of reason for doing what he did.  Now, there was a funny thing when you come to think of it. Judas!  What a lot of TROUBLE that old fellow had.”

            At this point I had troubles of my own, however, coming down the road. My Ellen was back, in her “shorts”.

            I saw Freddie bristle, and said with asperity, “You just HUSH now, hear?”

            And MUCH to my surprise, he did – with a rumbly sort of a sigh.  Could this be resignation I asked myself?  Or had he suddenly seen for the first time, what I saw – the loveliness of TODAY’S children!”

WAUPACA’S OPEN STREETCAR

Waupaca’s Open Streetcar 

            The first cars to operate on the Waupaca Electric Light & Railway Company line which served Chain o’ Lakes, the Veterans Home and the old Grand View Hotel, were of the open type, brought here from Milwaukee.  Here is an excellent picture of one, showing the conductor and motorman.  They are, from left to right, Johnny Ross and Alden Dutten.  These men alternated jobs as conductor and motorman.  Walter Nelson, brother of Chas. Nelson of Granite Street, was also motorman on the streetcar line.

Waupaca County Post

February 19, 1948

            Keeping the house of a bachelor, is in itself, a liberal education.  In no other instance I’m sure, can it be more truly said, “a man’s home is his castle” – yea verily.

            When first I took up abode with Freddie, my penchant for tidy shelves and cupboards was almost my undoing.  Being, at that time, much impressed with his obvious need for a woman’s touch around his house, I’d set gleefully about the task of putting things in order.  That is, MY sort of order.

            The only trouble with it was, Freddie couldn’t find things when I’d finished.  Thinks like an old brown shoestring, a large glass fish eye, a light green shirt with extra long tails – all among the missing, and much, much more.

            But, everything is back in its place now.  The fish eye stares at the ceiling from a corner of the highest kitchen shelf; the shoestring and shirt hang limp and forgotten on nails behind the pantry door.  Even the kettle cover, that which was to resign me finally, to a fate of clean but studied disorder, is backing its proper place.

            Oh! that kettle cover.

            The day IT disappeared, I’d rearranged the cabinet beneath the sink, stacking thirty year’s worth of accumulated pots and pans neatly and precisely, according to size and shape.  It wasn’t any little job, and when at last I’d mastered it, I viewed it with much pride and satisfaction.

            My joy however, had a short life, and died a violent death about dinner-time the same day.

            One of the first things Freddie “looked” for in his meal-time preparations was that kettle cover.  Bending over, he searched by touch rather than sight, in that cabinet beneath the sink.  This stack of that, and that stack of this, rocked and crashed as his hand flailed about.  I sat as though glued to my chair in the midst of the din, but the worst was yet to come.

            “By Judas!” puffed Freddie in high dudgeon, “if that thing is in there, it’s coming out.”

            And his word was as good as his bond. Pots, pans, pie tins, and covers, out they flew, one after the other.  All over the kitchen floor.  Then at long last, with the cupboard all but bare. Freddie emerged purple but pleased, with the errant kettle cover!

            I put everything back of course, but THIS time, a la Freddie.  Then quickly closed the door to forestall an avalanche.

            “Now, wasn’t that awful?” said he, with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s too bad to put you to all that trouble.”

            “Oh, it’s no trouble – or won’t be, after this!” I assured him with assiduity.  “But speaking of trouble, who was the fellow who had so much of it when he left Brinsmere for Grand View?”

            “You mean old Eastman?”

            “I don’t know what his name was. You’d just started to tell me about him when Ellen came home this afternoon.”

            “Oh sure, that was old man Eastman.  Well sir, he came up here from Chicago one summer. He’d never been here before, but he’d been recommended by some people who’d been with us for years, as a nice old bachelor and retired railroad man.

            “The day I drove down to the depot to meet him, we had quite a time.  He had two trunks with him; one little old flat thing that didn’t weigh anything, and a great monstrous turtle-back that was SO heavy it took four men to lift it.  I couldn’t imagine what was in that trunk, but he certainly was awful particular about the way we handled it, and I figured it must be mighty valuable.

            “Anyhow, when we finally got out to Brinsmere, and got his things into his room, he asked me to wait while he unlocked that old turtle-back.  Said he had something to give me. And do you now what was in that great big old trunk?  Whiskey!  Nothing but whiskey.  Just bottles and bottles of the very best you could buy those days.

            “The little trunk had his clothes in it!

            “Well sir, old Eastman was at my place for about two weeks.  He seemed to be a nice sort of fellow, and I thought he liked it there a lot.  Then one day he went to town, and when he came back he told me he was leaving. Said he was going over to Grand View to stay.

            “Of course for a minute I was pretty upset, but as it turned out, he had nothing against Brinsmere.  While he was in Waupaca that day, he’d run into old Hill and Nessling, and it seemed they’d been buddies on the railroad for years.  He’d sort of lost track of them after they retired, and he hadn’t known a thing about the hotel they had up here.

            “After he explained all about it, I didn’t blame him for going over there to stay, but I guess later on the poor old fellow wished he hadn’t.  You know he’d managed to save about $5,000 during all those years on the railroad, and he put every cent of it into Grand View.  He bought all the stock he could in the place, and he built the waterworks for it besides.  Then, when it went bankrupt around 1900 he and Hill and Nessling all went broke!

            “Yessir, poor old Eastman lost everything he had in a couple of years.  After that he just drifted around this part of the country for a while, and picked up a little money here and there taking pictures.  He knew something about photography, and he finally ended up by opening a gallery in Waupaca.  It wasn’t much of a place, just a little old wooden shack that stood right where the County Post building is today.  And that’s where he stayed until he died.

            “The poor old fellow had an awful death too.  He was inside his place, asleep, I guess, and some-how or other it caught fire. It burned right to the ground, and him with it. Now, wasn’t that an awful thing?”

            Dinner was doing nicely by this time, then the need for a pan hove in sight.  I beat Freddie to the cupboard, eased one carefully out, then shot the bolt to prevent the intrusion of our other tin friends!  My apprehension passed unnoticed.

            “Yessir,” said Freddie, “all that happened a long time ago.  But like they say, when somebody loses, somebody wins. In that case I guess it was the Lords.  Anyhow old Irving and Wallace Lord took over Grand View when those other people lost it.  Irving owned the car-line then too, so they had a pretty nice thing there for a good many years.

            “They didn’t change the style of the place either.  It was run just about the same way as when old Hill and Nessling had it.  Dressy and sort of citified, almost to the last.

            “You know they had a great long “T” shaped dock there those days, just like we had at Locksley Hall and Brinsmere.  Those docks ran way out into deep water so the big passenger boats could land.  But anyhow, on this one at Grand View they had a little store, where people could buy pop, ice cream, candy and things like that.  And I’ll never forget a fellow who ran it for them one summer.

            “His name was Wayne Tully, and what a fellow he was!  Always up to something – you never knew what to expect.

            “This one time though, that I’m thinking of, he had the people around these Lakes just scared to death for weeks.  You wouldn’t think anyone could get away with the pranks he pulled.  You’d think people would be too smart to fall for such stuff, but old Wayne sure could hoodwink them.  Well, I’ve never seen anyone like him.

            “He made a sea serpent, a great big old thing that looked just as real as anything could when you saw it off in the distance.  He had it on pulleys, anchored out in the middle of Rainbow Lake, and he controlled it from that shore on the Grand View dock.

            “Now you might not believe it, but for awhile after that thing was first seen, people didn’t go out on the water.  Like I said, they were scared to death.  Some of them might have thought it was a joke of some kind, but they weren’t taking any chances.  That serpent looked too real!

            “Not only that, but it acted too real.  It would come to the top, way out there in the middle of that lake, when there wasn’t a thing on the water.  It would “swim” around for a while, and then sort of dive, and disappear!

            “Well, it got so bad finally, that old Wayne himself got scared! That is, scared of what people might do, if they found out he was to blame for all that uproar.  Everybody around the Lakes was upset, and I guess he figured they might treat him pretty rough, if they caught him red-handed.  Anyhow, he finally hauled the thing in and destroyed it.

            “The truth did leak out later on, but by that time people had cooled off quite a bit, and besides Tully wasn’t around here anymore.  But he sure had a lot of fun while he was, especially there at the Grand View dock, with that sea serpent.  There’s a lot of people I guess, who won’t ever forget old Wayne Tully!”

            “Well honey,” said I, “what say we forget him?  At least long enough to eat dinner.  Me, I’m starved!”

OLD TIME LOGGING SCENE

Old Time Logging Scene

            The above picture, taken by C.A. Sawyer, father of Mrs. Lester M. Clark of here, shows the manner in which logs were hauled to the paper mill in 1902.  This picture was photographed near Wausau, where a large paper mill is located.  At the turn of the century logs were prolific, but the mode of transportation was exceedingly slow compared to present day methods.  Nowdays good logs are few and far between due to the unrestricted slaughter which took place during the years when logging scenes such as above were common.

Waupaca County Post

February 26, 1948

NOTICE TO READERS:

            Due to unforeseen circumstances this week we are unable to publish the County Post serial story, “When Chain o’ Lakes Were Young,” and the old time picture.  However it will pick up its regular sequence again next week.

            All society, locals and correspondence which had to be held out of this week’s issue will appear next week.

Waupaca County Post

March 4, 1948

            Ole Thompson, Freddie’s friend and neighbor, is off on his annual wood-cutting spree.  I say “spree” because Webster applies the term to a merry frolic, and such is what Freddie would have one be-lieve, takes place on those jaunts into the woods. To hear him tell it, it’s fun to cut wood.  Not hard, back-breaking work, but fun.  And just as surely as the time rolls around, he’s out in the woods with Ole.

            In spirit!

            “Yessir,” he’ll muse, from his rocking chair, a picture of wistful though benign resignation, “It’s an awful lot of fun to cut wood.  My! what times we used to have, and how I did enjoy them.

            “But, I can’t do those things anymore.  Nor any of the other things I always liked to do.  That’s what old age does to a fellow.  All I can do now is to rock, and remember!

            “Judas, the things I remember.  Lots of funny ones, and some awful ones as well.  Take my brother Henry’s death, for instance.  Now there was an awful thing.  It happened in woodcutting time, too.

            “You know Henry was the oldest of us boys, and just fourteen that winter. He was a big, strong, husky fellow, and right then doing the work of a man twice his age.  My! how proud Father was of Henry, and the way he could handle himself.  He’d tackle any job that came his way, and to it mighty well.

            “That time he was hauling logs for Father, from Round Lake up to The Hill.  It was a beautiful, bright, cold day, and I teased so hard to go along, he finally said I could. It was lots of fun riding those old bobsleds, behind old Jim and Prince with their sleigh bells on, and their whiskers white with frost. At least for a little cuss like I was, just eight years old, and full of gimp.

            “We’d made three trips that morning, and were on our way home for dinner when it happened.  We were going down that hill west of Bostick’s marsh, when something gave way, and the logs commenced to slip.

            “Henry yelled at me to jump, and I did, just before the whole load commenced to roll.  He jumped too, but off the other side, the way the logs were going.  I ran around to him as fast as I could, but there he lay, pinned to the ground!

            “He could just barely talk and he said to run for help, but I remember trying to lift the logs off him, first.  Tug as I would, they wouldn’t budge, so I finally ran screaming for Father.  And when we got back, Henry was dead.  His life crushed out by those old logs.

            “I’ll never forget what a blow that was to Father.  He never did a tap of work for two whole years after it happened. Not one single tap.  He sort of blamed himself I guess, for letting Henry do that kind of work.  I know he was mighty particular about the rest of us boys, afterwards.”

            “Say, Chicken!” I interjected, “didn’t he go on a woodcutting spree himself, one time?  On the hill in front of Locksley Hall?”

            “You mean Father?” chuckled Freddie.  “Yessir, he certainly did!  Now there was a funny thing.

            “You know when he was tired and wanted to rest, he’d always sit out in front of the place, at the top of The Hill, where he could watch the water. You could always find him there in the evening, and sometimes in the afternoon.  And usually old Reverend Brown, or Father Hearst, or Bishop Morrison would be with him.

            “Well sir, this time I’m speaking of, old Bishop Morrison was there with Father.  They were always arguing, and you wouldn’t know to hear them, that they’d been good friends for years.  Just seemed to enjoy arguing, about anything and everything, and sometimes they’d both get pretty hot under the collar.

            “And that day, it was Father who lost his temper.

            “They’d been talking about views from different places around The Lakes, when the Bishop said he thought Grand View was pretty nice.  He liked the way they’d cleared that hill, so people could see the water.

            “Of course he might have been needling Father, nobody could be [?] place to his.  And when he got mad when the Bishop compared that place to his.  And when he got mad something usually happened.

            I remember he got up without another word, and went for the axe. When the Bishop saw what an uproar he’d caused he felt pretty bad. He almost begged Father not to cut those beautiful pines and birches, but Father said if it was a view he wanted, THAT was what he was going to get.  And went to work!

            “He started right at the top of The Hill, clearing a strip about twelve feet wide, then he cut down every tree from there on down to the lake!

            “They often laughed about it afterwards, and they always called it The Bishop’s View!  Even Father, later on though, had to admit it was nicer for them.  That way they could see clear to Indian Cross-ing.  But my! how mad he was at the time.

            “Yessir, old Bishop Morrison was quite a fellow.  He and his wife were at Locksley for years.  Well, they raised seven children there!  He was Bishop of Iowa if I remember rightly, and one summer when he came up here, he brought three other bishops with him.

            “I never forgot about that, because it was then your father came home.

            “Edwin had been gone a long time, about nine years all told.  He’d been in Grand Forks, ND, with a man named Blackburn, who was a photographer there. And he was going well for himself.

            “I’ll never forget how father hated to send for him.  But Father was sick and needed Edwin to run Locksley Hall.  So he and your mother came home that summer, and lived there from then on.

            “And it’s a good thing they did.  Edwin was a lot of help on that big place, and the folks were getting old. You know Father always called him a “policy” man.  It’s a funny expression, and I don’t think I ever heard anyone else use it, but what he meant was that Ed got along well with people.  And he certainly did, there at Locksley.  Everybody liked him, all the guests and all the help.

            “Now that was in 1900, and the next summer, 1901, always stood out in my mind because it was when President McKinley was assassinated.  The Chief of the U.S. Secret Service was at Brinsmere when that happened.  His name was John E. Wilke, and he’d been coming up here for about five years, with his wife and two children.

            “I’ll never forget when the news of McKinley’s death came from Washington.  If you’ve ever seen a wild-man, it was old John Wilke.  My! he felt terrible, I can tell you, to think he was away on a vacation and a thing like that had happened.

            “The worst part of it though, was him having to wait until the next afternoon before he could get a train out of here.  You see the news had come too late to catch the midnight, and of course we didn’t have automobiles those days.

            “He didn’t sleep a wink, and he wouldn’t take a bit to eat, from the time he got that message till he left for Washington.  Judas! I felt sorry for that fellow, pacing up and down the lakeshore in front of Brinsmere, all that night, and all the next day, until I took him to the afternoon train.

            “Yessir, old John E. Wilke was an awful nice fellow. And he had an awful nice family.  I did have a little trouble with their daughter, the first summer they came here, but it’s funny when I think back on it now.

            “She was a pretty thing, somewhere in her teens, but just a lee-tul bit spoiled and uppity.  Like lots of girls that age are apt to be.  Don’t like to be told much, you know how it is.

            “Well sir, when they first came every single morning at breakfast, she’d waste about five or six of those great, big, beautiful rolls we served.  All she’d eat would be a little pinch, right out of the middle, then she’d leave the rest lay by the side of her plate.

            “That went on for quite a while before I talked to her about it and after that, it went on just the same!  I spoke to her twice, then I spoke to her mother, but none of it did any good.  And I commenced to get mad.  Like I said before, we liked to see our people eat, but we didn’t like to see food wasted, and she certainly was wasting dozens of those rolls.

            “So I had Edith Larson, who took care of their table, keep track of the rolls she threw away. Then the next time I billed old John for their board, I charged him 5¢ apiece, for every single one of them.  I’ve forgotten what it came to, but it was quite a tidy little sum, and of course I didn’t know how he’d take it.  I don’t suppose I cared much, one way or the other, but as it turned out, he was tickled to death!

            “Yessir, we had quite a laugh over the thing, and he said maybe between us, we could teach her a lesson.  He told me to bill him every time she did it; that he’d pay the bill, and then take it out of her allowance.  And do you know that put a stop to her pinching the middle out of those rolls!  Right away too.  If I remember correctly, she only paid for them once, and after that she never wasted a crumb.”

            “Well,” said I, shaking up the fire and bringing out the flour, “you sure asked for it, honey!”

            “Asked for it?” puzzled Freddie, “Asked for what?”

            “Oh, you just talked yourself right into a pan of my baking powder biscuits!  And what’s more, you’ll please eat them, without comparing them to Min’s.”

Waupaca County Post

March 11, 1948

            Every community in every age has always possessed and hugged to its breast, its unique “human-highlights”.  Both living and legendary. These bits of humanity, fondly dubbed “characters”, are a part of life’s scheme, and have always been with us. For Freddie however, they live only in the past, numerous and colorful as the wild pigeon, and now, quite extinct!

            I smile to myself when he speaks in this manner, for there is no guile or duplicity in Freddie’s nature.  He just doesn’t know himself, for what he is, a “character”.

            Born with a zest for living, and marked for the out-of-doors, his life from the very beginning has been sharp, and full of tang. The life of a sportsman, with keen and varied interests.

            His hunting began when bear lumbered over our cornfields, and deer ran close to our lonely, scat-tered farms.  When our skies were black with wild geese in flight, and our lakes, motley with duck.  Fishing, however, was his forte.  At six, he was a barefooted fisher, with a slender young sapling for a pole; while at sixty, with a fly-rod in his hand, he knew no peer on quiet, wood-banked streams, or roaring, white-capped rivers.

            It was said of him once, by someone, not too many years ago:  “If you stood Fred Smith on the corner in front of the Old National Bank and put a fly-rod in his hand, he’d catch all the trout you could eat, bigod.”

            Yes, Freddie is garbed in character color, though blind to the fact, himself.  But how brightly the others stand out in his memory, and how he loves to talk about them.

            “My!” he’ll revel in fond delight, “what fellows we used to have around here.  Great fellows, and such a lot of them.

            “Take old Soren Hoy, for instance.  Now THERE was a character.  Just as fine a Dane as ever lived, and everybody liked him.  But what a time he DID have with the English language!  You couldn’t help laughing when you listened to him talk, but he never got mad, he laughed right along with you. Or maybe AT you, for all I know.  He was pretty smart in most things, old Soren was.

            “I remember one time though, when he got mixed up in something he knew nothing about.  And people talk about it to this day!

            “It was a poker game downtown, at Old Castle Hall. Soren hadn’t wanted to get into the thing because he hardly knew one card from another; he just did it to please four other fellows who wanted to play awful bad. Of course they knew he never played poker, and when the game got started, they figured he’d drop out of each hand, quick.  But the never played more than ONE hand with old Soren, and they couldn’t even SCARE him out of THAT.  He not only stayed, but he UPPED all their raises, and finally drove THEM all out!

            “’Well, what in blazes did you have, Hoy?’ one of the fellows shouted.

            “Old Soren smiled, and looked up kind of sly.

            “’Ka-veens,’ he said, soft like.

            “’Queens?’ yelled the fellow, ‘How MANY Queens?’

            “’Vun!’ said Soren, pleased as punch, and raked in a great big pot.

            “Well sir, I wish you could have seen the expressions on the faces around that table. Funny, oh Judas!  But that was old Soren for you.  No one ever knew WHAT he was going to say or do, next.

            “Out at A.M. Penney’s shooting park, he did another awful funny thing. People still talk about that, too.

            “You know in those days, we used to have a lot of “shoots” around here. Big ones, with a hundred men and sometimes more, taking part in them.  It didn’t cost anything to enter, and as a rule we just shot for the sport of shooting, and hearing the crowd cheer!

            “This one time though, was a special occasion.  It was held on Thanksgiving Day, and the losers had to buy the winners a great big turkey dinner.  So of course, there was plenty of excitement in the air.

            “Each fellow had a chance at 25 birds.  Blue-rocks, we called them, they’re the same as clay-pigeons.  And when old Soren Hoy got up to take his turn, you could have heard the people boo and yell.  He was an awful shot, Soren was, and they tried to rattle him, but he didn’t seem to mind one bit.  That is, we thought he didn’t, until he took his first shot, and MISSED by a mile!

            “After that the crowd really howled.  They smelled blood, and were out for the kill.  But they couldn’t stampede old Soren.  No sir-ree!  He put his gun down real slow-like, then he turned around and faced them.

            “’Shentlemun,’ he said, holding up his hand for quiet, ‘deyah twenty-foah moah bairds, ah deyah not?’

            “Then he turned back, picked up his gun, signaled for the pigeons, and shot down every last one of the remaining 24!”

            “He must have been quite a fellow,” I enthused.  “Wasn’t it he who said it made him shudder to think of what the American people were doing to the English language?”

            “No, no,” laughed Freddie.  “They talked a lot alike, but it was C.W. Jensen, Sandy Stratton’s father-in-law, who said that.  It almost made him famous, too, at least around these parts.  That and his order, in the old Blue Front Restaurant.  Two doughnut and one cups of coffee, was what he always called for, and I’ll bet more people knew about those two things than knew about him being City Engineer!

            “Yessir, people like to remember the funny things they see and hear, best of all.  At least I do, and I think that’s the way with most of us.

            “Now, you take old Jim McCullough.  I have to laugh every time I think about him, and the funny things that happened when he led Waupaca’s band.  He was a mighty fine musician, and an awful strict leader. He taught us fellows a thing or two, you bet!  And I was number one, on his list.

            “You know when Jim first took over, I was pretty cocky.  I’d played in bands for years by then, and I just thought I was pretty good. I wouldn’t stick to by baritone, either. When I didn’t feel like playing it, I simply switched to a slide-trombone.  And up until then, nobody’d tried to stop me!

            At the end of our first concert under Jim, though, I learned a lot I didn’t know before. When we started to leave the bandstand, he told me to stay, so I stuck around waiting, for a slap on the back.  I’d done a little improvising, just like I always did, and I thought he wanted to tell me how good I was. And Judas, didn’t he tell me, though!

            “’Fred,’ he said, just as nice as pie, ‘how long have you been playing that slide-trombone?’

            “I tried not to look too proud.

            “’Oh, a couple of years, or so,’ I told him.

            “’Well,’ he said, looking me smack in the eye, ‘do you know what I’d do, if I were you?  I’d take it down here to the tinsmith, pull that slide out just as far as it will go, and have it SOLDERED, RIGHT THERE!’

            “Yessir, old Jim sure set me back on my haunches.  But after that I stuck to my baritone, and I never did another bit of improvising.

            “We had a mighty fine band under Jim McCullough; about the best Waupaca ever had, I guess.  There were a lot of good fellows as well, like old Joe Hudson, and Dell Wright.

            “I’ll never forget those two, one time, when we played in Stevens Point at a fair.  Both of them got in bad with Jim, right off the bat!  And all because of the morning parade.

            “It had rained something awful the night before, and we marched down Main Street in mud up to our ankles.  That is, all of us except Joe Hudson.  His shoes were brand new, and there was nothing Jim could do or say, to keep him in line in that parade.  He played all right, and he marched right along, but he did both by himself, on the sidewalk!

            “It was while we were marching down Main Street, too, that old Dell made his blunder. There were two pretty girls looking out a window on a second floor, and instead of watching Jim, old Dell was watching them, and he played right through a big, long rest!  All by himself!  When he got past the girls he came too, of course, but by that time McCullough was fit to be tied.  For a minute we didn’t know what to expect, then old Dell spoke up and made everybody laugh.

            “’Well, Jim’, he grinned, all red and sheepish, ‘you got to admit, it was a beautiful tone!’

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “Those were great days, and great fellows.  But they are all gone now. Where could you find fellows like those anymore?”

            “I know one, so they’re still in existence!”

            Freddie didn’t’ catch, so I went a bit further.

            “He lives with his dog, in a house by a swamp, and he’s got too much mileage on one knee.”

            “Oh, poot!” grinned Freddie.

Waupaca County Post

March 18, 1948

Chain o’ Lakes Narrator, Fred M. Smith, Passes

Waupaca Pioneer Buried on ‘The Hill” Looking Over Beloved Lake Area

            Fred M. Smith, 81, the grand old sage of the Chain o’ Lakes, whose memoirs have been related in a County Post serial story, died Friday, March 12, at his lake home.  He was buried Monday on The Hill in a private burial grounds overlooking the Chain.

            He was born June 23, 1866.  Death brought an end to long months of illness, and came to him in the little home he loved so well, at the Chain o’ Lakes.  With Fred at the time was his niece, Mrs. Ellen Moore, who had been in constant attendance since her uncle’s return from City Hospital February 19.

            Fred, whose memoirs are being published in County Post, had always enjoyed the best of health.  It was not until last October, at the age of 81, that he commenced to ail. On December 16 he entered Community Hospital in New London, for observation, and a week later was admitted to City Hospital here.  He remained at the local hospital until he returned home in February.

Born At The Chain

            Born at the Chain o’ Lakes, Fred knew and loved this country in his youth.  His parents, William and Elizabeth Smith were pioneers at The Chain.  They had come from Wales in the early 50’s and after a brief stay in Syracuse, N.Y., traveled east to Wisconsin where they built their home at Chain o’ Lakes.  There they raised their family.

            Fred had five brothers, William, Henry, Alfred, Dave and Edwin.  He also had an adopted sister, Ellen.  Only one of these survive him, Alfred Smith of The Hill.

            At the age of 26, Fred was married by the Rev. Enoch Perry to Miss Minnie Hansen of Waupaca.  Together they built and operated Brinsmere Inn on Sunset Lake, one of our finest old summer resorts in the era before the automobile.

            This was a favorite vacation spot for people from the South, and for 20 years it was both prosperous and successful.  With the advent of the horseless carriage, trade became transient, and the popularity of such hotels began to fade.

Went West For Period

            After deeding Brinsmere to his wife, Fred went west searching for adventure.  In the company of his long time and very good friend Ed Dickinson of Shreveport, La., he followed the trails of gun and rod for almost twenty years.  Many fine trophies adorn his walls, silent testimonials to his skill.

            But for Fred there was no place like home, and eventually he came back.  Back to Emmond, Radley, and Burgoyne for brook trout; Long, Beasly and Knight for bluegills.

            He built a little home, fondly known as “The Shack”, on the old Point Comfort Road.  It is surrounded by woods, and in it he died at 3:20 last Friday afternoon.

Buried On The Hill

            Services were held at Holly’s Funeral Home at 2 p.m. Monday.  It was there he received a wish long expressed, Miss Vera Lean singing “The End of a Perfect Day”.  Many years ago she had sung it on the water, and Fred had always wanted her to sing it once again.

            Fred was buried with his people on The Hill, in a little cemetery in the woods.  Many years ago his father had set aside this sylvan glade as a final resting place for members of his family.  Most of them are there now, and Fred at last has joined them.

Waupaca County Post

March 25, 1948

            I’d been scolding about not having a dust-mop, but for all the satisfaction I got, Freddie might have been deaf and dumb.  He was sitting in his chair by the window, stabbing the sill with his pack-knife.  It’s full of deep and jagged scars.

            Finally I stamped my foot with impatience.

            “Freddie!” said I, “will you listen to me?  I’m giving you fair warning.  If you don’t buy me a dust-mop, I’m going to put a handle on Pat!”

            Pat, who had been asleep in his favorite position with his curly blackhead across Freddie’s feet, wagged his tail without bothering to open his eyes.

            They didn’t scare well, either master or dog, but Freddie, at least, came out of his reverie.

            “That little old cocker dog,” he said with affection.  “He’s a regular one, I’ll tell you, and an ugly one, too! What makes you so ugly, Pat?”

            “Don’t change the subject,” I persisted.  “Do I get that dust-mop or don’t I?”

            “Dust-mop?” he puzzled.  “What dust-mop?”

            He hadn’t heard a word I’d said!  I sighed, and bowed to the train of his thoughts.

            “You know I think the ugliest dog I ever saw, was that little old pug-dog of Father’s.  Muggins was his name. You don’t remember him, do you?”

            “Nope!” I said, and settled down to listen to a tale or two.

            “Well sir, he was a funny one.  Homely, oh Judas!  There were great rolls of fat around his neck and ears. When you looked at him from the front, you’d think he’d poked his head through three or four small tires, and you couldn’t see the rest of him at all!  He was the first dog Father ever had down there at Locksley and he’d come all the way from Wales.  You don’t see those dogs very often in this country but they used to have a lot of them over there.

            Such a faithful little cuss as Muggins was though, and strictly a one-man dog.  He was nice enough to all of us in a distant sort of way, but he idolized Father, and the two of them were always together.

            “I’ll never forget one time when Father was awful sick.  He had something wrong with his stomach, and he couldn’t eat one solitary thing. Muggins laid at the foot of the bed, and refused to touch any food. It was no use to coax him, or try to force him.  He just simply would not eat.  I guess he’d have starved himself to death if Father had been sick much longer.  I know he was an awful sight; nothing but skin and bones.  But Judas!  When Father took his first mouthful you should have seen Muggins make up for lost time.  In a week he had those tires back around his neck, and you couldn’t see a bone in his body!

            “Now an awful thing happened to that little dog, and my how bad we all felt.  Somehow he got under the house one day, probably after a rabbit, and he couldn’t back out.  When we missed him and started calling, he barked, but it was so faint we couldn’t’ tell where it was coming from.  Not in that great big old place.

            “Well sir, for days while we could still hear him, we did everything we could to get him out.  We even tore up floors in three different rooms, but none of it helped a bit.  After a while he stopped his whining.  Then of course, we knew he was dead.  But we never knew where he died, just that it was some place underneath that great big house.

            “The next spring Father got two St. Bernard, pups, of course, but eating like they did, it didn’t take them long to grow up!  He named one of them Meg and the other one Blanche.  They were mighty fine dogs for a place like Locksley Hall.

            “You know, when you were just a little tyke old Meg took care of you.  Just as good as any nurse girl could have done it too.  Maybe better.  The minute our mother would let you out, you were bound to make for the lake.  But she didn’t have to worry because old Meg was always with you.

            “It was funny to watch the two of you.  The same thing happened day after day.  You’d skedaddled down that hill, just as tight as you could go.  Then, just before you reached the dock, old Meg would lie down across it!  You’d try to crawl over her and she’d stand up. Then you’d try to crawl under her, and she’d lie down.  And that would go on, until you got tired.  Then you’d both come back up the hill.

            “Yessir, they were great dogs for children, especially around the water.  Powerful swimmers and just as good as lifeguards as anyone could want.

            “I’ll never forget one time though, when old Meg ‘saved’ a fellow – and lost Father a guest!

            “This guest was just a little fellow, about the size of a 10-year old boy.  He’d just arrived that day, and as soon as he unpacked he got ready for a swim.  He went by old Meg, who was lying near the dock, like a shot from a gun, and dove into deep water. He must have surprised her because for a minute she didn’t move.  Then all of a sudden she took after him, and you never saw 200 pounds of dog move faster!

            “When she reached him, where he was swimming way out in deep water, they had quite a tussle. He tried to fight her off, of course, so they both went down a couple of times.  But he couldn’t discourage old Meg!  She finally got him by the back of his suit, and swam proudly in.  He hollered and pounded her every foot of the way, but she never let go until she’d dragged him up on the shore.

            “Well sir, you’ve never seen anyone as mad as that fellow was!  And yelling the way he did only made it worse.  All the other guests heard him, and had come down to the dock to see what was the matter.  It was funny, of course, and they couldn’t help laughing.

            “It didn’t take that poor fellow an hour to pack and leave after that.  Even your father couldn’t talk him into staying another minute!  And poor old Meg never did understand the scolding she got for her part in that trouble.  She was sure she’d saved a drowning child!

            “Yessir, those St. Bernards were great dogs, and they were at Locksley Hall for many years.  But finally they had to be shot.  You know, they’d be in the water from the time the ice broke up in the spring until the lake froze over in the fall, and they got rheumatism awful bad. There was nothing to do but put them out of their misery!”

            “Who shot them?” I asked, feeling sure it wasn’t Freddie or for that matter, any member of the family.

            “Old George Stillman, though he had no liking for the job.  Do you remember him?

            “I don’t remember him,” I said, “but I’ve heard a lot of stories about funny things he did.  Wasn’t he the one who used to call Grandpa, Uncle Billy?”

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “and how mad that used to make Father.  Seemed like every time George got in bad, and it was pretty often, he’d make it worse by calling Father, Uncle Billy. You just didn’t talk to Father that way.  At least no one ever did, but George.

            “I’ll never forget one time when George came as close to getting fired as he ever did in all the years he worked at Locksley.  Father was going to town that day, and before he left he told George to tie up a calf that was running loose in the barn.  He didn’t want it to get in with the horses.  You know a calf will eat the tail off a horse if he gets the chance, and Father didn’t want that happening.

            “Well sir, old George was busy with something else and he plumb forgot all about that calf.  Fact is, he never thought about it from the time Father told him to tie it up until Father came looking for him, hours later.  And wasn’t he mad, though.  Oh Judas!

            “’George Stillman,’ he roared, ‘I thought I told you to tie up that calf.  He’d eaten off every bit of the tail on that beautiful sorrel.  Now, you pack your things, sir, and get off of my place!’

            “For a minute, of course, old George was dumbfounded.  Then he grinned at Father in that slow comical way he had and drawled, ‘Oh come now, Uncle Billy, why can’t you and me talk this over like brothers?’

            “That was too much for Father.  I guess he couldn’t trust himself to say another word.  He turned around and stamped back to the house, and by supper time he was all over his huff.  And George stayed on like nothing had happened.  He sure knew how to handle Father and weathered many a storm there at Locksley.

            “It was old George who always used to warn the rest of the help when father was on the war-path about something.  He’d saunter through the kitchen with a grin on his face and say to no one in particular, ‘There’s a storm cloud gathering out by the barn and it’s headed this way’.  Then everybody’d be working like blazes by the time Father got there!

            “Yessir, old George was quite a fellow, and he got to be like a member of the family.  But then, all the help we had in those days were almost like members of the family.  They were with us for years and years, and we got to think an awful lot of most of them.

            “Take girls like Maud Hyatt (Corp. Dake’s daughter), Elizabeth Kreeger, Hattie Wolfgram, and Alice Codding.  They were with Mother so many summers it almost seemed like they belonged at Locks-ley and she wouldn’t have known what to do without them.

            “The girl we had the longest at Brinsmere, I guess, was Edith Larson. She started working for us when she was just a kid.  I went to town and brought her back with me in the lumber wagon.  I can still remember how straight she sat up there beside me on that high old seat!

            “If I remember rightly, Edith was one of the girls who got a bonus I paid for 10 years of service.  I used to give a girl $10 when she’d been with us ten years.  Just think of it!  A dollar for every year!  My, wouldn’t they laugh at that now, though, with the wages they draw these days?”

            “Hmn!” said I with a Scrooge-like squint.  “I ought to have quite a little money due me.  What do you pay these days, Mr. Smith, for a housekeeper, secretary and a butler, for Pat?”

GRANDMA SMITH AND THE LOCKSLEY HALL GIRLS

Grandma Smith and the Locksley Hall Girls

            The above picture, taken about 1905, shows Mrs. Wm. Smith (second from left, seated) and part of the girls employed at Locksley Hall – Chain o’ Lakes summer resort so popular at the turn of the century. Mrs. Smith was the mother of Fred M. Smith, now deceased, the narrator of County Post’s popular serial story of early days at The Chain.  The young ladies of today should be interested in this picture.  After 43 long years the style cycle is returning.  Notice the “shirt-waists”, hair styles, etc.  When summer comes you’ll see present day misses on Waupaca streets dressed almost like the young girls in this picture.

Waupaca County Post

April 1, 1948

            A good basketball game between Notre Dame and DePaul was being broadcast over the radio. Nonchalantly I turned it on, knowing full well, I’d never hear the final score.  If you don’t succeed the first time, there is no use to try again.  Not with Freddie!  And I’d tried this before.

            “Judas, Ellen!” he exploded.  “Turn that danged thing off.  A lot of nonsense, that’s what it is, for grown men to chase a ball around a room, like that!  All they get for their pains is heart trouble.  Same thing with golf.

            “Now THAT’s about the silliest game a fellow could possibly play no matter HOW hard he tried!  Just think of it.  Walking miles and miles, pushing a little white ball around!  And they think it’s good exercise for them.  Why, there’s more people drop dead on golf courses, than anywhere else.  It just don’t get in the papers.

            “Why don’t they do the things we used to do, if they want to have fun?  Things like stick-twisting, and weight-lifting, or for that matter, good old-fashioned fist fighting.  They develop the right kind of muscles.  Or if it’s skill they’re after, why don’t they play horseshoes.  Now, THAT was some-thing all the fellows used to do.

            “My the quoits we used to play at Brinsmere and Locksley.  Regular teams we had, and regular matches. Plenty of excitement, too.  There was always a little betting going on, and a real nice “kitty” for the champs at the end of the summer.

            I remember one year when old Jack Chady was champion at Locksley.  Horseshoes was about all Jack cared for, outside of trout fishing, and he was mighty good at both!”

            “Oh,” said I pointedly, “I can remember people playing quoits there, but I can ALSO remember them playing baseball!”

            “Why sure,” agreed Freddie, not the least bit on the defensive.  “But THAT’S different.”

            “And how, please is it different?” I asked, still a bit miffed about the basketball game. “Doesn’t it consist of chasing a ball around?”

            “Judas, no!” Freddie was vexed and surprised.  “Don’t you KNOW anything about baseball?”

            “Okay, Chicken, you win,” I laughed, and swallowed my huff.  “But what about baseball in those days?”

            “Well sir,” he mused, settling back in his chair, “we used to have some mighty fine teams around here, both at The Lakes and in Waupaca.

            “I remember one time when Locksley had a humdinger.  Nobody beat them at all, that summer.  But they had two pro’s on that team, by the names of Roger Schenk and Ray Maple.  If I remember rightly, they’d been with the Cleveland Indians, but they weren’t signed up that year.  They spent three months there, at Locksley, and they certainly could play ball.  Those were pretty exciting times for The Lakes.  Everyone who lived here, felt that team belonged to them, and it drew big crowds no matter where it played.

            “The Home had some pretty good teams, too, in its’ time; but of course Waupaca usually had the best.

            “Old Theodore Cook managed Waupaca’s teams for many years.  And did a mighty fine job of it, too.  They played everywhere, when he was running them; that is, all the big towns around here.  Places like Stevens Point, The Rapids, Oshkosh, Marshfield and Fond du Lac.  You know those are good-sized cities, and they always shad good ball clubs, but they couldn’t scare old “Teed”.  He’d pit his men against any of them, anytime!  Yessir, he was quite a fellow, old “Teed”!

            “I’ll never forget one team he had. It was one of his best.  There was Hans Anderson, Charlie Chesley, Sandy Stratton, Charley Larson, Lester Mumbro, Tommy Holly, Doc Olson and George Brone, PLUS, a pro, by the name of McConnell!

            “This McConnell was an awful nice fellow, and a great ballplayer, and of course that team was sort of built around him.  If I remember rightly, he was one of the old Chicago White Sox, when they went black.  I don’t know how he happened to land in this part of the country, but Waupaca certainly was glad to have him!

            “It was during this time, that the home diamond was out on Benedict’s field.  That was conven-ient of course, because the streetcar ran right past it.  And my! when there were games there you should have seen the crowds they drew.  I think it cost 25¢ to get in, and the club used the receipts for transporta-tion purposes.  You see when they went out of town to play or other teams came here, the losers always paid the winners railroad fare.

            “I’ll never forget old Fred Lea at those games; I don’t think he ever missed one, while McConnell was here.  You remember Fred Lea, don’t you?  He had a men’s clothing store downtown.

            “Well, anyhow, at those ball games, whenever Waupaca got into a tight spot, he’d start yelling for McConnell and you could hear him for forty miles!

            “’Put McConnell in,’ he’d yell.  ‘We want McConnell!’

            “Then when McConnell went to bat, Fred would really go to town.”

            “’You want a new hat, McConnell?’ he’d holler.  ‘Well knock [?] Connel?’ he’d holler.  ‘Well, knock you one!’

            “And the funny part of it was, McConnell usually did knock it out of the park.  Judas! the home-runs he made – AND THE HATS HE HAD!  Yessir, old Fred was a funny one.

            “Speaking of Fred, reminds me of the old Mead murder trial.  Now there was an awful thing – about the worst that ever happened in Waupaca, I guess.  Or maybe, it just seemed like the worst, because it was the first of its kind, in these parts.

            “Old Mead was a nice old fellow, and he ran a bank downtown, right where the Old National stands today.  He was a bachelor, and he used to live in the back part of the place.  It was there he was murdered one night.

            “Of course it caused an awful uproar, and a lot of people were involved.  Poor old Fred was one of them; but he was later proven innocent.

            “Nothing much ever came of the trial that was held, except it dragged out an awful long time.  There hadn’t been any money taken; only a few papers, like mortgages and notes, so the motive sure wasn’t murder.  Everybody figured if old Mead had stayed asleep, nothing would have happened to him.  But instead he woke up and recognized the robbers, so they had to kill him so he couldn’t talk!

            “Old Judge Cate was sitting on the bench then, and my! what a judge he was.  Not only smart, but so proper-like and dignified.  I remember he had long white curls, natural ones, that hung clear down to his shoulders.  Now, that would look funny on people today, but it looked mighty fine on him.

            “I’ll never forget one suspect they had, though, Judas! what a mess that poor fellow was in. They’d had him in jail for quite a spell, and things were commencing to look pretty bad.  He swore he wasn’t guilty, but he wouldn’t tell them where he was on the night of that murder.  If he’d held out much longer, I guess they’d have hung him!

            “He had an alibi though, and it certainly was a GOOD one. HE’D BEEN ROBBING THE BANK AT SHERIDAN THAT NIGHT!  The poor cuss went to jail for about ten years, when they found that out, but it was better than doing ‘life’ for murder!”

            “Whew!” I exclaimed. “Guess I’ll keep my money in a mattress from now on.”

            “WHAT money?” chuckled Freddie.

Waupaca County Post

April 8, 1948

            It is quite a feat to bake well in the oven of Freddie’s old black range.  Things are so easily forgotten, so completely shut away, by the closing of the big iron door.  Sometimes it reminds me of a great black trap.  It yawns, waits and then swallows up whatsoever passes its jaws.  Its so final somehow – and at times, most frustrating!

            Having ruined one cake, early one morning, I mixed and put another in to bake.

            “Now!” said I, grimly determined, “I’m going to sit right here, for the next forty-five minutes, and wait for this one to come out.  It costs me just twice as much to bake around here as it should because I burn up everything I put into that oven!”

            “You do pretty good though, at that,” chuckled Freddie.  “You most always take things out, the same day!  Now your father, when he lived with me, was different.  I’ll never forget one lemon pie he made. Judas!  What a thing that was.

            “Old Jack Chady had stopped by that day, just as Edwin was rolling out the crust.  We sat around while he made the filling and then heaped the top high with beautiful meringue.  When he put it in the oven he asked Jack to stay for dinner, but Jack couldn’t.  He said he’d sure like to have a piece of that pie, but he was going to meet some fellow up on Radley’s and do a little fishing.  He sat around though, for quite a while before he left.  You know how it is, when a fellow gets to going on trout!

            “Well sir, the next time Jack came to see us, we’d just finished breakfast, and were sitting on the porch.

            “’How was the pie, Ed?’ he hollered, as he climbed out of his car. And I wish you could have seen the look on Edwin’s face.

            “That was the first time either of us had thought of that pie since he’d put it in the oven, three days before.  Ed was so disgusted he didn’t even move, so I got up and went and took it out.  That is, I took the pie tin out.  Right in the middle of it was a lee-tul old, black cinder; plumb cremated, that’s what that pie was.

            “Speaking of ovens, I guess the nicest kind anyone can have, is an old brick oven, like I built at Brinsmere.  I mean for beautiful, steady, even heat.  There’s nothing like them.

            “The one we had there, was eight feet square, and all the walls were double, with about six inches of space in between them.  That space acted just like insulation, and once the inside bricks got hot, they stayed that way, all day.

            “We burned wood of course, to heat it, and I used to set the fire early in the morning, around four o’clock.  Then just as soon as the bricks got white-hot, Min would start her baking.  All the bread for the day went in at once, after that all the rolls, and the pies and cakes.  By the time the breakfast bell rant at eight o’clock, everything was done.  And my! what beautiful breads and pastries they were.  It’s no wonder people praised them like they did.

            “Yessir, that old brick oven sure was a good one.  It did all the baking at Brinsmere for twenty years.  My! what roasts we used to have; beautiful crown roasts of beef, lamb and whole pork loins.  And the chickens, stuffed with old fashioned bread and sage dressing. Mighty fine eating, I’ll tell you, and every bit of it home-cooked.

            “I used to buy a lot of my meat in Milwaukee; had it shipped direct from there.  You should have seen the tenderloins I got; great big thick ones, THAT long!”

            “Did you get your chickens from Milwaukee?” I interrupted.

            “I thought you raised your own chickens.  Seems to me I remember one time when  you had 1500 of them.”

            “No, I didn’t but the chickens, we raised them,” said Freddie, and began to chuckle.

            “Speaking of chickens reminds me of an old rooster I had one time. Judas! he was an awful thing. Part Plymouth-rock, part ‘red island road’ as Dave used to say, and oh! just everything I’d ever had, in that barnyard.  And he had regular bowie-knives for spurs!

            “Well sir, he licked everything around there, including the cats and dogs, and he was getting to be an awful nuisance.  He’d even jump me when he got the chance.  Of course I didn’t mind that, but he crowed too much. You know there’s two times when a rooster should crow; that’s at sunrise, and when he’s licked another rooster.  But this fellow crowed all day long.

            “He’d just stand on top of the manure pile in the barnyard and crow and crow.  I guess being head bugler out there had made a damn fool out of him!

            “Anyhow, one night when I was in Waupaca, I ran into old Van Nelson, in Budding’s place.  Old Van was quite a fellow for sports of all kinds, and he used to go in big for cock-fighting. Of course all that sort of thing was done on the quiet, but there was a lot of it going on just the same.

            “I asked Van how is fighting cocks were doing, and he got all excited and lit up like a church.  He said he’d just bought a bird that could lick anything in the country.

            “Now I don’t know what came over me, but I told him I had a rooster that would eat a dozen birds like his, for breakfast every morning!  When he asked me what the blood-line was, I told him pure ’barnyard’.  You should have heard him laugh.  He said his cock was trained to fight, from away back, and that he’d MASSACRE a common, ordinary rooster.  So I bet him $25 he was wrong!

            “Well sir, a lot of the fellows in Budding’s got interested, and we finally decided to hold a fight.  At Brinsmere.  It was too late to do anything that night, so we planned it for the next. When that was settled, I got ready to leave, then old Van asked me to take his bird home with me.  I was in town with the horse and buggy and he figured it would be an easy way to get it out there.

            “So I waited while Van went and got the cock, and brought him back all crated up; then I took him and went home.  When I got there I put him in the barn, just as he was; threw a little feed between the bars on his box, and went to bed.

            “I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, but when I woke up it was still pitch dark.  And MY rooster was crowing his head off!  I remember thinking that as soon as this fight was over, I’d wring his neck.  That was the first time he’d ever crowed at night, and I figured if he was going to start THAT, I’d have to get a new rooster.

            “Well sir, he kept it up and kept it up, and I knew he’d wake the guests, so I finally got dressed and went out there.  I had a lantern with me, and as soon as I reached the barnyard I could see him on top of the manure pile.  As I walked I picked up a stick, figuring I’d lambast him with it, when I got there.  But I was too dumbfounded to move.

            “My rooster was standing on top of Van’s and Van’s was deader than a door-nail!  The neck of that beautiful trained fighting cock was cut to ribbons, but my bird hadn’t lost a feather!

            “Now, how in the world that cock got out of his box, I don’t know.  I guess old Van thought I let him out, but I didn’t.  I’d have given a lot to see that fight; it must have been a good one. But, oh Judas! was Van mad at me.  I never did collect the $25, in fact for a while, I thought he was going to sue me.  Guess he would have, if it had been legal to have a cock like he had!

            “But you know after that I just didn’t have the heart to kill that old rooster of mine. He was around there for years, crowing in that barnyard, but I knew there’d be trouble, and plenty of it!  And Judas! what a funny thing that was.

            “I got home in the evening with the new one, and the flock had all gone to roost.  I slipped him into the hen house, and then waited to see what would happen.  I didn’t have to wait long.

            “Of all the cackling and crowing and noise you ever heard, that was the worst.  It sounded like the whole l500 chickens were in the rumpus.  Then all of a sudden my old rooster came tearing out of there, making a noise just like an old hen.  He was actually cackling.  The young one stood in the doorway, and crowed.

            “And do you know that from that time on, until the day he died, that old rooster never crowed again.  He just went around cackling to beat the band, especially when the young one came near him!

            “Yessir, he finally met his match, and once he did, all he wanted was to be one of the hens!”

            Freddie, still chuckling over the memory, pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch.

            “Jumped-up!” he exclaimed, “Do you know it’s noon?  There the whistle at The Home.”

            “Owooooo!” I wailed.  “My CAKE!”

Waupaca County Post

April 15, 1948

            It is said that wisdom comes with age, but I still think people can be aptly classified into two divisions.  Namely, those who live and learn, and those who just live.

            I seem to belong to the latter category. Freddie, definitely to the former.

            Come the 21^st of March, and a warm wind or two, and I immediately want to take down the storm doors and windows, put up the screens, and plant packages of seeds.  I can’t seem to help myself.  Any wisdom I may have acquired in the last several decades simply gasps and expires under the onslaught of my annual attack of spring fever.

            Freddie always called a halt though, before I could do any damage with my misdirected energy.  He was quick to recognize “that certain” gleam in my eye!

            “Judas, Ellen,” he’d say, with a chuckly sort of sigh.  “Don’t you know yet, that you can’t PLAN on anything, but maybe life and death?  You leave things be now.  We’ll have a lot of bad weather, before we get good.”

            “But honey,” I’d argue, breathless with ambition, “it’s JUST like summer. Spring is here to STAY.”

            “Oh poot!” he’d explode.  “I can smell SNOW in the air. We’ll have to shovel out by morning!”

            The first time this happened, I collapsed in a chair. The very thought was shattering, and my pro-found respect for Freddie’s prophetic abilities left me quite too weak to stand.

            “Snow?” I quivered.  “Does it ever snow, this late in the spring?”

            “This late?  Why, this is only March!” he snorted, then mellowed with a grin.  “You’ve got spring fever again, that’s what’s the matter with you.  But you’ll get over it … and in the meantime just leave things be, like I said!”

            Undefeated of course, but temporarily deflated, I silently wrestled the devil inside me.  Freddie went stolidly on.

            “Yessir,” he mused, “I’ve seen snow come as early as October and never go off until May.  But then, the seasons have changed around here; they’ve gotten milder, some way or another.  We used to have awful winters years ago.  Long and terribly cold.  And my! what blizzards.

            “I think one of the worst ones I can remember, was on the day my brother, Dave, was born.  It was so bad even the doctor couldn’t get out to The Hill on horseback.  Now there’s a funny thing.  Dave was born in a blizzard in early fall, and sixty years later, he died in one, late in the spring.

            “My, what a fellow Dave was.  Always good-natured, and full of fun.  He’d get to laughing so hard, when he was telling about something, that you couldn’t help but laugh with him.  It was catching, somehow or other!  And he never had an enemy in the world.

            “Oh, sometimes, if people didn’t know Dave, they might get a little miffed about something he’d say, but they couldn’t stay that way long. Judas! he was a funny one.

            “I’ll never forget a little trouble he had with old Mr. Jollief, on Point Comfort.  You know the Jollief’s had a cottage there for many, many years.

            “Well sir, this time I’m speaking of, was their first summer at The Lakes, so of course, they didn’t know Dave very well.  They met him right away though, because he had that nice farm then, and he sold milk and ice to all the cottagers around here.

            “The Jollief’s started out by taking a quart of milk each day.  Dave delivered it of course, and all he charged those days was seven cents.  Well, that went on for a little while, then they told Dave to leave just a pint; a quart was too much for the two of them.  So after that, he delivered a pint.  Then, came the morning when he found a note in the bottle saying half a pint would be enough.  That was too much for Dave.  When he made his deliveries the next few days, he didn’t stop there at all.  Finally, old Jollief went over to the farm to see him.

            “’Say Mr. Smith,’ he said, kind of testy-like, ‘I’ve seen you go by our place every morning, but you haven’t stopped with our milk.  Where is it?’

            “’Well sir, Mr. Jollief, that’s a funny thing about your milk,’ Dave said, laughing the same as always.  ‘Would you believe it if I told you that I’ve looked high and low for it … but I can’t find it anywhere?’

            “For a minute old Jollief looked kind of puzzled.  He didn’t tumble very fast.  But pretty soon he commenced to laugh too, and before he left he told Dave to bring them a quart, from then on!  So they had no more trouble over milk.

            “It was the same summer though that they had a little run in about laundry.  You know old Jollief was always sort of gruff, and when he wanted something done, he’d just bust up and ask you.  That’s what he did this time. He never meant any harm, it was just a way he had with him.

            “’Mr. Smith,’ he said, short-like, ‘we want to get our washing done.  Could your wife do it for us?’

            “’By jingo, Mr. Jollief, I wish you’d asked sooner,’ Dave said, like he was as sorry as could be.  ‘I’d sure like to accommodate you people, but we’ve already washed, this year!’

            “So, that settled that.

            “Yessir, old Dave sure used to get off some good ones.  And nobody ever got mad.  Like I say, when people got to thinking things over, they’d always end up laughing at what he’d done or said.

            “Why, even old Fred Parrish was the cause of that rumpus.  You know he ran a hardware store downtown.  Dave owed a little money, and told him he’d pay it when the crops came in, but Fred didn’t want to wait that long.  When he said he’d sue, Dave told him to go right ahead, but he didn’t do it right away because his bill was too small to file suit on.  Later though, when he found out Dave owed Fred Lea a little money too, he talked Fred into filing suit with him. So the fat was in the fire!

            “Well sir, before the case came to trial old Parrish learned that Dave had twenty acres of nice potatoes on his farm, so he had Abe Arnold, the sheriff, attach them.  What Parrish didn’t know was that half of those potatoes belonged to your father, so he had no business doing what he’d done.

            “Of course it didn’t take Dave long to put the ki-bosh on that.  He just explained the situation to his lawyer, John Hart, and old John had the Coroner arrest the sheriff!  Did you ever know that the coroner is the only person who can arrest a sheriff?

            “Well anyhow, that’s what happened, so old Arnold had to go back out to Dave’s and take down all the signs he’d plastered all over the farm.  And Fred Parrish was right back where he’d started.

            “When the trial came up though, the potatoes came up with it.  First crack out of the box.  In fact those potatoes seemed to be about all that was on anybody’s mind.  They certainly were important to old Fred Wheeler, who represented Lea and Parrish.  So important, he subpoenaed Father, to try and prove they all belonged to Dave!

            “And that, was where he made a big mistake.  Father was so mad, he was fit to be tied, and what a time he gave old Wheeler, on the stand.

            “When court opened up, Father was the first witness.  Wheeler asked him how much money Edwin made at Locksley Hall.  You see he figured he could prove Ed did too well at Locksley, to be bothered raising potatoes.  But Father wouldn’t answer him.  Where asked him three times, but you’d have thought Father was stone deaf.  He just sat on the stand and scratched his whiskers.  It was a little habit he had, when he was mad.

            “Then Wheeler tried a different attack.  Of course, by that time he was quite upset himself, but hanging on to his temper.  He asked Father how much money they took in at Locksley during the summer. Father still wouldn’t answer, so old Wheeler commenced to holler about contempt of court.

            “Father listened for a minute, then he turned to old Judge Webb who was hearing the trial.

            “’Andrew,’ he said, ‘do I have to answer this man?’

            “’Yes, William, you’d better answer,’ said the Judge.

            “’All right, Wheeler,’ Father roared, ‘It’s none of your damned business!’

            “Well sir, you should have heard that courtroom.  Judas! what and uproar it was in.  Old Judge Webb pounded and pounded and finally had to threaten to clear it, before he got quiet.  Then he took the bull by the horns, himself.

            “’Swear Mr. Dave Smith in,’ he told the clerk.

            “Dave took the stand.

            “’Mr. Smith,’ said Judge Webb, ‘how many acres of land do you have under cultivation on your farm?’

            “’Forty, your Honor,’ Dave said.

            “Judge Webb turned to Wheeler, Lea and Parrish.

            “’Gentlemen!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that it is a law in this state, that a man is entitled to everything he can raise on forty acres of land?  This case is DISMISSED!’

            “And sir, I wish you could have seen the expressions on those fellow’s faces.  Judas, it was funny!

            “But, like I say, no one ever stayed mad at Dave. Fred Lea and Fred Parrish came over and shook hands as soon as the Judge left the bench. They figured Dave knew about that forty-acre business all the time, and they laughed about what damn fools they were!”

            Freddie stretched, and then looked out the window.

            “Say Ellen,” he chuckled, “come here.  I want to show you something.”

            “Never mind gloating Mr. Smarty,” I snapped, the spring is all gone from my soul, “I know it’s beginning to snow!”

Waupaca County Post

April 22, 1948

            Freddie and I were sitting on the porch, one sultry spring evening. There was muffled thunder in the west, and black clouds in the wind.  The lightning was thin, and deceitfully dull.

            I tired to relax in my rocker, but I don’t like electrical storms.  In fact, had I a closet handy, I’d hie me there, and close the door!  Freddie laughs at me.  He loves them!

            “Yes, I know,” said I, squirming about in my chair, “but I haven’t been hit the first time yet and I don’t want to be, if I can help it!”

            “Well, you go in the house, if you’re scared,” he chuckled.  “I’m going to sit out here and wait for this storm. I like to listen to those old owls hooting in the swamp.”

            Scared, thought I to myself, who’s scared?  I rocked a little faster, but kept to my chair.

            “Did you ever hear a screech owl?” asked Freddie, relaxed and absorbed with his brave, foreign thoughts.  I didn’t have an answer; he’d forgotten I was there.

            “My, what funny looking things they are, only about six inches high, but Judas! what a noise they make.  If you didn’t know what it was, it would scare you almost to death.  I’ll never forget the first one I heard, or how scared I was when it happened.  I was a grown man, too, but that didn’t make any difference!

            “Well sir, this tie I’m speaking of, must have been about fifty years ago.  It was one evening in the spring, and I’d rowed from Locksley Hall across Round Lake, to see old Fred Cast.  I wanted him to help me with some carpenter work at Brinsmere, and he lived in a cottage in the bay.

            “When I pulled into his dock I saw his wife and her sister, Belle Benedict, driving off down the road with the horse and buggy.  You couldn’t miss them, they were both red-headed!

            “I tied my boat and climbed the hill, figuring Fred was there alone, but there wasn’t anyone at home. It was getting dark and of course that bay was a lonely sort of place, but I decided to wait and sat down on the steps.  Just then I heard this terrible noise!

            “It started down low, like a sort of a snarl, then ran right up into the worst blood-curdling screech anyone could imagine.  And, it came from the woods right in back of that house!

            “Judas! thinks I to myself, there’s a panther, and high-tailed it back down the hill.  I was trying to untie my boat, when the thing screeched again, almost behind me, so I dove head-first into the lake.

            “When I came up, I heard someone laughing, and there stood old Fred Cast. I started yelling about the panther, and his wife and her sister, but he laughed all the harder, then told me to come back.  So I swam back in, and he explained what it was; a little old bird, about six inches high.  Yessir, a little old screech owl!

            “That wasn’t the worst part of that night though, I guess, when I come to think back on it, now.  I went up to the cottage with Fred, and while my clothes were drying out, he gave me my FIRST chew of tobacco.  Now, as a rule, nothing would have happened, but Fred chewed the strongest kind made, and I didn’t know enough not to swallow the juice.  And, oh Judas! was I sick.

            “At first I was just a lee-tul bit dizzy and figured it would wear off, but pretty quick the whole room began to spin, and I knew I had to get air.  So, I said goodnight, and made for my boat.  How I ever got in it, I still don’t know, but get in it I did, and out on the lake.  After that, I don’t remember one single solitary thing!

            “When I woke up next morning, the sun was shining right smack in my face.  I was still in that boat, but flat on my back and rocking up against the west shore.  And, by the holy-jumped-up! you should have heard Min, when I finally got home.  I guess she didn’t believe the story I told her!

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “just think of it.  All that trouble over a little, old screech owl.”

            A thin, white knife slit open the sky, and thunder came rolling out.

            “Come on, Chicken, let’s go inside,” I urged.  “That storm is too close for comfort.”

            “Fiddlesticks!” grimaced Freddie.  “That just goes to show how much you know.  The whole thing is going to blow over!

            “But, speaking of owls,” he went on, at ease, “reminds me of the two we had at Brinsmere for years.  They were a couple of those big, old brown ones, that you see around here in the swamps. I’d taken them from their nest, before they learned to fly, and raised them for pets, right on the place.

            “You know owls, if you take good care of them, make awfully nice pets.  They get real tame, and they’re not a bit of trouble except when they’re hungry.  But you have to keep them fed well, or else they get vicious.  In fact, they’re regular cannibals!

            “I’ll never forget one time, when I had three owls at Brinsmere.  Old General King, of the U.S. Army, had been at Locksley with his family for many years and he liked those brown owls of mine so much, he brought me a snow owl to go with them.  What a pretty thing it was; awfully big, pure white, and just as gentle as could be.  And the three of them got along fine.  That is, until I forgot to feed them all one night.

            “The next morning when I went out to the barn, where they always slept, there were white feathers everywhere!  White feathers and blood.  Those two old brown ones were asleep on their roost, with their bellies full of the white one.  Yessir! They’d killed that great big beautiful bird, and eaten him, bones and all.  What’s more, if he’d have been smaller than he was, they’d have eaten the feathers, too!

            “Did you ever know an owl will eat a smaller bird, just as he is, down whole?  Well sir, it’s a fact, and a funny one at that.

            “I used to get into a lot of arguments about it, with the guests at Brinsmere.  You see, no one would believe it, until I’d proved it to them.  I had to prove it to Dick (Ed Dickinson) one time.  He bet me $10 I was wrong.

            “I went out and shot two blackbirds, like I always did, and gave them to the owls that evening.  They picked them up, and they took them by the head, in their beaks, and commenced turning and twisting their necks. Every time they’d do that, the blackbirds went down a little further, and pretty soon, the feet and tails would disappear!

            “Dick of course, was mighty surprised when he saw it for himself, and asked what became of the bones and feathers, and all that stuff.  I told him that the next night, at about the same time, they’d “hock” them all up, in a nice smooth, little ball!  I guess that’s called regurgitating; the same thing as a cow does with its cud.  But anyhow, that’s what the owls did.  Yessir, the whole procedure took just twenty-four hours, and then they were ready to eat again.”

            Freddie chuckled, and rocked quietly for a while.  By this time, I too, was relaxed. The storm had passed by, and the stars were coming out.

            “I never think of birds, though” he resumed with a sigh, without remembering the peacocks Father had at Locksley Hall.  My! what a beautiful sight they were to see.

            “You know there are a lot of different colored peacocks, but the bluish-green ones are the prettiest of all.  Father had two those, and one pure white one.  You should have seen them strut around these grounds.  Their tails were like great big shiny fans, and they’d wave them back and forth, just as proud as could be.

            “It’s a wonder though, that the kids there didn’t kill those peacocks when Father first got them.  I guess they would have if it hadn’t been for Edwin doing what he did.

            “You see a lot of the families had big boys, in their late teens, and you know what devils they can be at that age.  Well sir, there were about four of them on that place, that got after those peacocks every time they had a chance.  They’d try to pull the feathers out of their tails!

            “Old Bill Fieler was one of those kids, but he wasn’t the worst of that gang.  When Edwin caught him at it, he said all he wanted was enough to make a feather duster for his mother, and he didn’t see that was any crime!

            “The ring leader of the bunch though, was young John Weaver, and Judas! he was a bad one.  Just plumb full of hell all the time.  You never knew what he was going to do next.

            “He used to take the oarlocks out of the boats, and pitch them way out in deep water. Edwin had seen that happen lots of times from the top of The Hill, but by the time he’d get down to the dock, all the evidence would be gone!  Then, John used to take the old iron dinner bell down off the kitchen roof, and hide it where no one could find it.  He’d do that at night, while everyone slept, and the next morning when breakfast was ready, there’d be no way of calling the guests!

            “Judas! how mad Edwin got at that boy. He was always taking John to his mother, and making complaints.  The only trouble was, he couldn’t ever prove anything. Mrs. Weaver was always nice about it, but it always ended up the same way.

            “’Johnny,’ she’d say, just as serious as could be, ‘you know what will happen if you lie to Mother, don’t you?’

            “’Yes ma’am,’ he’d answer.

            “’Well son,’ she’d say, ‘tell Edwin, so he’ll know too.’

            “That kid would look Ed straight in the eye.

            “’My tongue will turn black, Mr. Edwin,’ he’d say.

            “Mrs. Weaver would smile, and nod her head.

            “’Now Johnny, stick your tongue out for Mother,’ she’d say.

            “So John would stick his tongue out … and always AT Edwin!  And of course, it couldn’t be black, and there the matter would end.

            “Well sir, the time Ed caught him after the peacocks, though, his mother wasn’t there. She’d gone away for a week, and left the kid in Edwin’s charge.  Ed told him what would happen if he didn’t behave himself, so he was pretty careful the first few days.  But of course, it couldn’t last. I guess Ed hoped it wouldn’t; I know he watched him like a hawk!

            “The day it happened, Ed saw John sneak out towards the barn.  He dropped what he was doing and followed right away.  But even then he wasn’t quick enough.  He heard a peacock scream, and when he collared that fellow, he already had a fist-full of the white bird’s tail feathers.

            “Ed clapped his hand across John’s mouth, and dragged him into the barn.  And, oh Judas! what a thrashing he gave young Weaver.  The kid was quite a scrapper, but Ed whaled him to a fare-thee-well, and then told him that was just a sample of what he’d get the next time he talked out of turn.  And he never had any more trouble with John Weaver from then on.  Or with any of the rest of his gang.

            “I don’t know what his mother thought when she got back and there were no complaints.  But at least, John never got another chance to stick his tongue out at Edwin, with her permission!

            “Yessir,” laughed Freddie, “those were great years around these Lakes!”

            The owls in the swamp were quiet now, but some geese going north honked high overhead.  And the “little brogas” in the marsh were bursting with song.  It was going to be a good night to sleep, after all.

Waupaca County Post

April 29, 1948

            It was lots of fun to sit out in the workshop, early in the spring, and listen to Freddie, while he was busy with boats he had in for repairs.  There were all kinds of course, so some of them he’d cuss.  I won’t go into that!  One would think when he praised he nice one though, he was speaking of beautiful women.

            Cocking his head and squinting one eye, he’d stand back, intent on a canvas canoe.  “Did you ever see such long, sleek lines?” he’d ask in rapt admiration. “She’ll be easy to handle.  THAT one!”  Or, it might be a sixteen foot towboat he’d spy.  “Judas! just look at the curves on HER,” he’d say, gently pat-ting the gunwale.

            One day he was working on a neat little launch, which somehow had broken a rib, and his memory flashed back while his hands forged ahead.

            “Do you remember the Mukwa?” he asked.  “That pretty launch of your father’s?  I suppose that was as fine a boat as was ever on these Lakes.  Old Jim Jensen built it, and it was the only one of its kind.  Just a family boat of course, big enough for about six people, but the workmanship and materials in it, were the best that money could buy.

            “I think it was the only boat I ever saw that had solid mahogany decks.  There was even a mahogany hood enclosing the gasoline engine.  The seats were covered with bright red leather cushions, and the floor with the same colored carpet.  But the little steering wheel was the prettiest part of all; it was inlaid with mother of pearl!  Yessir, the Mukwa was a mighty fine launch, and awfully stylish for those days, I can tell you!”

            “Say honey,” I interrupted, “that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Wasn’t the first county seat we ever had here, established at the town of Mukwa?”

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “and what a time Waupaca had getting it away from them.  Of course that happened before I was born, but I can still remember Father talking about it!

                        “I think it was along about 1853 when they made that change and this country was still awful wild and unsettled.  In fact only ten years before that, there wasn’t anyone here but the Indians and old Alphens Hicks.  He was the first white man to live in these parts, and his home was just this side of Fremont.

            “About 1848 though, other people began coming in, and most of them built at the mouth of the Little Wolf River.  It got to be quite a settlement in just a couple of years, and they named the place Mukwa.  Then, they made it the first county seat.

            “But, you know how it is with most people; they’re never satisfied to stay in one place. It wasn’t long before a few men from there decided to push further north.

            “If I remember rightly, it was a fellow by the name of Sessions, and two brothers named Hibbard who discovered Waupaca.  They figured this was an awful good water-site, and they got a lot of the other settlers to come up here and join them.  Old Captain Scott was one of these, and so was old Judge Ware.  Of course all of these people had lived in Mukwa first, so when they left it, the rest of the town was fit to be tied!

            “Well, anyhow, Mukwa had been the county seat for about two years when the county board voted on the thing, and ordered it changed to Waupaca.  They wanted it more centrally located.  And Judas what a rumpus that caused.  Everyone, from both towns, was up in arms!

            “Old James Smiley, who was the first register of deeds, wouldn’t turn the books over to Waupaca, and of course Waupaca had to have those books. So, they finally had him arrested, figuring that would end the trouble. But it didn’t, no sirree!  Those books had been toted out of Mukwa somehow, and for some fool reason landed in Weyauwega.  There was just a handful of people living there then, but for a while it ran the county!

            “Later on though, an election was held to settle that fight, and Waupaca won by some 900 votes.  And seeing as how that was about all the people there were in this country then, there was no use arguing any further!

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “that was quite a battle, but Waupaca’s been the county seat ever since.”

            Freddie paused to whip a “rib” from its steam bath near the workshop door.  In his neat and skillful hands, it was both meek and pliant.  Just the work of a minute, and the long, narrow scar in the nice little launch was covered, and waiting for varnish.

            “You know,” he resumed, sorting out his brushes, “it’s a funny thing, but Waupaca hasn’t changed much in these past fifty years.  That is, the business section.  There’s always been those four blocks on Main Street and the few that run through them, going east and wet.  Oh, of course, it’s gotten newer and nicer I guess, but it isn’t much bigger than it ever was.

            “And there’s still about the same number of jewelry shops and barber shops, and drug store, and such; some of them in the same old places.

            “Speaking of drug stores, reminds me of old Uncle George Evans.  He was Mother’s brother, and he had about the first real drug store in town.  I mean a place that sold the things a drug store should sell.  It was right there on Union Street, beneath Hansen’s gallery.  My! but that’s a long time ago.”

            Freddie chuckled.

            “Hansens!” he exploded.  “Judas, what a lot of Hansens there have been in Waupaca.  I’ve known a good many in my time.

            “But, take old Charlie Hansen, for instance.  Do you know I can remember him when he was just a kid, wearing copper-toed boots, with red patent leather tops. Now, why should I remember a thing like that.  Oh poot!  I guess people are funny, that’s all.

            “I do though, and I can see him just as plain as if it was yesterday.  That was when he first started work in the Post Office.  He was sort of an office boy, then.

            “And, come to think of it, that was the first real Post Office we’d had here.  It was where Bammel’s is today.  Before that the Post Office had always been a part of somebody’s store; sort of a side-line, I guess you’d call it!  Yessir, old Charlie started work there as a kid, and I never forgot those boots.

            “There’s one thing that’s different about Main Street though; we didn’t use to have any chain stores.  All the owners of the business places lived right in Waupaca, and that kept all our money at home!

            “One of the biggest stores we ever had here, belonged to old Nate Cohen.  He handled all kinds of groceries and dry goods; and counting the basement, the place took up three floors.

            “Old Nate was quite a fellow, a little quiet maybe, but as nice a man as you’d ever want to meet.  Father and I bought a lot of our supplies at The Fair Store, and he and Father were very good friends.

            “I’ll never forget one thing he did for Father while the First World War was going on.  He could have gotten into a heap of trouble over it, too, but that didn’t stop old Nate.

            “You know baking the way they did at Locksley Hall took an awful lot of flour.  Barrels and barrels of it, every single summer.  But, when the war came on, we couldn’t get white flour unless we bought twice as much of the unbleached.  And that old dark stuff didn’t make the nice breads, so Father wouldn’t have it on his tables.  Of course he had to buy it to get the other, but he made a mash out of it, and fed it to his pigs!  And he’d have gone right on doing that, if old Nate hadn’t heard about it, somehow.

            “The next time Father was in The Fair Store, Cohen called him aside.

            “’Mr. Smith,’ he said, ‘if you keep on buying flour at the rate you have been, it’ll land you in the poor-house!’

            “Father laughed, and said it might, at that, but he’d be teetotally chawed up before he’d feed that “black stuff” to his guests!

            “Old Nate looked around, to be sure no one was watching, then he slipped a key into Father’s hand.

            “’That’ll open my warehouse, Mr. Smith,’ he said, ‘There are fifteen barrels of the best white flour you can buy there.  Just be careful not to get caught!’

            “Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “That was quite a thing for him to do.  But, like I say, he thought a lot of Father.  They were good friends for many years.”

            At this point I was busy with memories of my own. Jesse Cohen, “old Nate’s” son, was seated at the piano in the high school auditorium, and you could have heard a pin drop, while he played.

            Suddenly there was a wild and crashing discord, and my music filled bubble had burst.  I was back in the workshop, perched on a sawhorse…and Freddie was speaking of a boat he DIDN’T like.

            But, as I’ve already said, I won’t go into that!

Waupaca County Post

May 6, 1948

            I have seen Freddie do a lot of amusing things, and usually with very good reason.  In other words, he was a most entertaining, though profoundly sensible person. One day last summer however, I thought he had taken leave of his senses.  To say I was startled, is putting it mildly, and, I still raise an eyebrow over that caper.

            It happened one very warm day in August.  I had hurried through my housework, and into my swimming togs.  I couldn’t wait to get into Round Lake.  Before leaving Freddie though, I tried to persuade him to come with me.  Looking hot and undecided in his kaki shirt and pants, he said he might be along later.

            So, I went for my swim, and then, for a row in what shade I could find along the shore.  I was gone about an hour.  When I first started back I glimpsed in the distance what appeared to be a straw hat bobbing on the water, not too far out from Freddie’s little dock.  The closer I got, the more suspicious I became.  That hat was on somebody’s head!

            I didn’t look that way again until I’d tied up my boat; then I walked out to the end of the dock.  It was Freddie all right, sitting in water up to his chin, and he not only had his hat on, but his clothes as well!  That is, except for his shoes.  They were placed neatly, side by side, on the bottom step of the hill.

            “Mr. Smith,” I exclaimed, arms akimbo, “just WHAT do you think you are doing?  You come straight in here before someone else sees you, and figures you’ve had a touch of the sun!”

            I expected him to laugh, and he did.  He wasn’t one who much cared what other people thought.

            “Oh poot!” he snorted.  “I feel just like a buck in the forest.  This is the first time I’ve been cool in a week.”

            I knew it was useless to argue, so I took myself up on the bank and sat down. Pretty soon he was sitting beside me, drippingly refreshed and delightfully loquacious.

            “You know,” he pondered, plucking a long spear of grass, “I was just thinking about a time when your father almost drowned.  Now there was a comical thing!”

“Well!” said I, my feathers badly ruffled.  “What’s the matter, didn’t you like him?”

“Pshaw!” grunted Freddie, “what makes you ask such silly questions?”

“Well anyhow,” he proceeded, “it happened years and years ago I guess I was about fifteen, and Ed was four or five.  I’d taken him to Hick’s Lake with me, and let him wade close to shore while I fished.  He was minding real good and stayed where I told him to, so after while I crawled out on an old pine tree that was hanging over the water.  It wasn’t deep below me, even then, but it was better than fishing from the bank.

“Well sir, I was laying there on my belly, just watching my hook and not worrying about a thing, when all of a sudden I saw Ed go by, right beneath me. He was on his hands and knees, crawling along the bottom of the lake, and headed straight for deep water like a damned old turtle!

“I don’t know when he fell in, or how long he was under, but I rolled off that tree and grabbed him mighty quick.  He was blue in the face from holding his breath, and I guess that’s all that saved him.   Know I was a lot more scared than he was.  He thought he was crawling toward shore!”

Freddie chuckled, and plucked another piece of grass.  Then he stuck it in one corner of his mouth, where it jumped and danced, keeping time as he spoke.

“Yessir,” he resumed, “that was one of the funny things.  But there have been others that were far from funny.  I’ll never forget a young couple who drowned here years ago. It was caused by carelessness, just like most drownings are, but it was so pitiful somehow.  I guess that’s why I still remember it.

“You know we used to get a lot of honeymooners at both Brinsmere and Locksley, and as a rule they all acted about the same way. What I mean is, they stuck pretty much to themselves, and shied away from the rest of the guests.

“But, this honeymoon couple was different.  They had the smallest cottage at Father’s place, and you could always find them in the middle of a crowd.  The girl was pretty as a picture, and my! how she could play the piano.  And her husband had a mighty fine voice. Of course there was always someone asking them to play and sing, and the nicest part about it, was the way they obliged.  Yessir, they were awful popular there at Locksley Hall.

“Well anyhow, just one day, before their vacation was over, they decided to go on a fishing trip. Way up in the upper lakes.  Edwin gave them the lunch he’d packed for them, and then walked with them down to the dock.  He knew neither one of those people could swim, and he was awful worried about them taking a canoe.  But, he couldn’t talk them out of it, so he did his best to warn them.  He told them not to stand up in the thing under any circumstances, and they laughed and promised they wouldn’t.”

“Edwin said he’d never forget that girl, turning and waving goodbye.  She had some sort of a nice pink dress on, and I guess she looked real pretty.

“Well sir, they paddled clear up to Beasley Lake before they stopped to fish.  And you know what a bad one that is. The water’s black as pitch, and it’s plumb full of weeds.  Some people even say it hasn’t any bottom!

“When it happened they were fishing just off the channel between there and Long Lake.  On that point that comes out from the east shore of Beasley.  The man stood up in the canoe to cast, and of course the thing tipped over.

“If I remember rightly, old Capt. Edmund had been watching them. He lived in a cottage right near there. He saw the whole thing, and heard them call for help, but he couldn’t get to them in time.

“We got the man’s body that evening, but we dragged for the girl for three days.  I guess she’d put up and awful struggle; she was all tangled up in the weeds.  I’ll never forget when the draghook caught her, and she started to come to the top.  Judas! it was awful to look down in that black water and see that pink dress waving back and forth, around her.

“And my! how bad, and sort of scared, all our people felt.  You couldn’t get a smile out of anyone for days.  In fact some of them were actually thinking about going home.  They got kind of panicky, or something.

“It was then old H.E. Miles put on his biggest Fourth of July celebration at Locksley.  That drowning took place the last part of June, and he figured it would help the people to forget about it.

“The Miles were from Racine, and they always spend their summer at Father’s place.  Every year they’d give a party on the evening of the Fourth, and people from all over the Lakes used to come and watch the fireworks.  There would be dozens of boats floating off the shore, and the grounds would be packed, besides.

“But that year, like I say, old Miles gave his biggest party.  There were bright Japanese lanterns strung all over the yard, and all the way down The Hill, and out on the dock. He had all the fireworks a fellow could buy, and it took about two hours to shoot them all off. Then, to end up that part of the evening, he sent up a big balloon.

“Everyone around the country was waiting for that event.  You see there had been a write-up in the Waupaca paper, a few days before hand, and people knew what a prize it carried.  Old Miles had tied a sealed envelop to that balloon, and inside the envelope there were fifty new one dollar bills!

“I’ve forgotten now, who found the thing, but it wasn’t anyone from Locksley Hall or Brinsmere.  Seems to me it was a farmer, over near Sheridan.

“Well, anyhow, to finish off that celebration, there was a hard-times party, with an orchestra and dancing in the dining room. I think it was that, more than anything else, that broke up the tension, we’d had since the tragedy.  All the people seemed to have an awful lot of fun, and they couldn’t help but laugh at the “rigs” they saw there!

“I’ll never forget old H.M. Edmunds, and the outfit he had on. He was a great big man, and he dressed as a baby, in a long white night-gown, and little ruffled cap.  He had a bottle full of milk, nipple and all, and drank from the thing while his wife pushed him around.  They’d decorated a big old wheel-barrow, and used that for his buggy!

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “that was quite a celebration, and just what our people needed, right then.  Old H.E. Miles was sure right about that!”

“Now, honey,” I clucked, like an old hen, with one chick, “let’s go home, so you can get out of those wet clothes!”

“Fiddlesticks!” he snorted. “Why do you think I wore them in the water?”

“Well THAT,” said I, “is what I’d like to know!”

Freddie looked up with the foxiest of grins.

“So I’d be cool for the rest of the day,” said he, “It’ll take them that long to dry out!”

Waupaca County Post

May 13, 1948

There is an old shed on Freddie’s place and like most old sheds it harbors queer odds and ends, and dust covered things stowed away for repair.  I like places of that sort.  They have always intrigued me. So, I used to poke around in it at my leisure.  Once in a while I’d bring something to light, which I felt might be put to good use. Not so, Freddie.  He would make me take it right back.

“Judas, Ellen!” he’d say.  “Put that thing where you found it.  Someday, I’m going to fix it.  If I ever get time.  Maybe!”

As a rule I would do as I was told; but once, I saw fit to argue.  It was over a little blue rocking chair, which to me, seemed sound as a bell.  I carried it proudly out in the yard, and set it down close to Freddie.  He looked up from his whittling and said to put it back.

“But honey,” I said, “it’s a GOOD little chair.  Why can’t I paint it, and put it on the porch?”

“You’d best do as I tell you,” he offered with a grin.

Puzzled, but determined, I sat primly down in the thing, and for a short, wild second, had the sensation of being astride a bucking bronco!  It jumped way back on the tip of its rockers, throwing my arms and legs in the air, and then dumped me sidewise onto the ground!  I just sat for a minute, astounded and breathless.

“NOW you see what I mean,” chuckled Freddie.  “That chair has always leaned towards Sawyer’s.”

“Do you remember old Charlie Sawyer?” he mused, while I picked up myself, and my badly shaken dignity.  “Now, there was quite a fellow.  He was married to A.M. Penney’s daughter, Eva, and they used to be around the Lakes a lot in the summer time.  Eva was an awful pretty girl, but then, all those Penney girls were pretty, and she and Charlie made a swell looking couple.  He was quite a “dandy” in those days, always dressed up, and my! what a kidder.  Didn’t care much who he kidded, either, just full of gimp and worked it off that way, I guess!

“I’ll never forget one time when he was over at Locksley and started teasing you. You were just a little tyke, about five or six years old, and he had you on his lap, and was poking fun at your freckles.  You just looked him in the eye for the first few minutes, but when he kept it up, I guess it made you kind of mad.  Anyhow, you finally jumped down off his knee, and backed off so he couldn’t catch you, then you said real pert-like:  ‘There’s no freckles on ME, Mr. Sawyer.  You just see a reflection of your own!’  Then you ran around the house and hid, while a bunch of us fellows had a good laugh on old Charlie.  You know he was just covered with freckles!

“Yessir, he was quite a flashy fellow, you know how some fellow are.  It’s one of the reasons you remember them while you might forget some others.

“Old Charlie Carroll was another one on that order. He was always a real swell dresser, too. He led the band in Waupaca for a while, years ago, and even his uniform was different from anything anyone else had ever worn.  It was all black, with jodphur style breeches, and high, shiny leather puttees. He sure stood out from the rest of that band; good showmanship, I guess is what you’d call it.

“Now, speaking of that band reminds me of some fellows I haven’t thought about for years.

“Take old Art Whiting from Stevens Point; he played with us during that time.  I’ll never forget Art and that slide trombone of his.  It was brass and he always wore white gloves when he played it, so it wouldn’t turn his fingers green!  He wouldn’t use a plated instrument; he claimed it spoiled the tone. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but old Art was a mighty fine musician, so maybe he knew what he was talking about!

“Then there was Fred Burkhart.  My! what a nice fellow he was.  He worked for old John Burnham on the Waupaca paper for a long, long time.  And playing in that band was about all Fred did for amusement, but he sure loved that.

“I’ll never forget when Charlie Carroll took over, and Fred didn’t get to play any more solos.  He never said anything about it, but he felt awful bad, and the rest of us fellows felt pretty bad, too. You see he sure could handle his cornet, and we all used to love to hear him play.

“But for some reason or other, Charlie didn’t care for solos.  That is, except for the ones he played!  And Edwin and I pretty near got into trouble over that.

“You know now a row can go on beneath the surface of things, and take a long time to break into the open.  Well, that’s the way it was, the first summer Charlie led our band.  A little bicker now and then, and a whole lot of half-hearted ribbing, but no one came right out and really aired their troubles.  We were all sore at Charlie on account of Fred Burkhart, but I guess Ed felt he worst about it.  He and Fred were awful good friends.

“So, by the time fall came and we were ready to disband for the winter, everyone was kind of glad to get the season over with. What I mean is, we were glad we got through it without a big fight.

“Then, someone told Charlie, Ed had said he played cadenzas with one finger, and that was the last straw!  Charlie had been simmering all summer, and when he heard that, he swore he’d lick Ed if it was the last thing he ever did.

“Old Andy Larson put me wise to what had happened when I stopped in at his barber shop one morning.  He said Charlie had been there mad as a hornet, and was going to get Ed that day.  So I went right up to Stevens Point and warned Ed.  He was running a studio there.  Then we waited for Charlie together.

“Well sir, we’d commenced to think it was just a bluff when he finally showed up, late in the evening.  You could hear him coming for forty miles; he’d head a couple of drinks somewhere along the line.  And mad, oh Judas!  He was sure going to show Ed who played cadenzas with one finger!  Yessir, poor old Charlie was in an awful state.

“But, you know how Ed was; he never got excited, and he was just as nice as could be. All the time Charlie was shouting about how he was going to lick him Ed was smiling and telling him to go ahead and try.  But Charlie never made a single pass at Ed, and after a while he just sort of ran down.  Then he wanted to go some place and buy us a drink.  He said maybe we ought to talk the whole thing over.

“So we all went out together, to a place across the street, and the drinks were on him.  I don’t know how long we sat there and talked about cadenzas. But old Charlie sure changed his tune.  When we finally left him, he was felling mighty bad, to think he’d misjudged Ed the way he had!  And that wasn’t all. He was going back to Waupaca and look up the fellow who had told him all that stuff and whale the daylights out of him!

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “old Charlie Carroll was quite a fellow, and after that first summer he never had a bit of trouble with the band.  As a matter of fact, he made a mighty fine leader.  Like I said, he knew good showmanship.”

“Not that I want to change the subject dear,” I interrupted, “but while speaking of all these ‘Charlies’, wasn’t Charlie Spencer quite a man in his day?  I think he owned a drug store, but my memory is rather hazy on that point.”

“Oh sure,” agreed Freddie. “Charlie Spencer was one of the old-timers in Waupaca.  He was a good friend of Father’s and they were about the same age.  Both of them were awful interested in politics, and just as sure as election time rolled around, you could always find Father in the back of Spencer’s store.  They used to get into some pretty hot arguments, but I guess they both enjoyed them; at least Father always went back for more!

“Old Charlie was quite a fellow, all right, and everybody like him.  He was a tough old geezer in some ways maybe, but he ran a nice drug store, and people respected him.

“I’ll never forget one thing he did, though, that he never did hear the last of.  Judas, how some of us fellow kidded old Charlie about that!

“One year to celebrate his birthday, he gave a stag party downtown.  I’ve forgotten how many men were invited, but it was quite a big affair.  We ha a swell dinner with all the trimmings, and a lot of talk, and such.  We also had a lot of champagne, and you know how it is with that stuff.  You can drink it right along, and not feel it one bit, and then all of a sudden … phfft!  And that’s what happened to poor old Charlie, about the time the party broke up.

“Funny part about it was, no one knew it.  He was perfectly fine when we all said goodnight, and Alfred Peterson drove him home.  Alfred worked in Charlie’s store those days; he was head druggist there.

“Well anyhow, when they reached Charlie’s house, Alfred walked with him to the door.  Then, old Charlie turned around and held out his hand!

“’I want to thank you Sir’ he said, just as serious as could be, ‘for driving me around this evening.  And, if you ever go through Waupaca again, be sure and stop in and see me.’

“Yessir,” laughed Freddie, “that was certainly a good one.  He’d forgotten completely, who Alfred was.”

“Well,” said I, getting up on my feet, “Before I forget what a spill I had, I better put that ‘pixie’ back where I got it!”

Then I took firm hold on that guileless blue chair, and carted it back to the dust of the shed.

Waupaca County Post

May 20, 1948

Charlie Weller’s store in Rural is a typical country store, standing near a road on the way to many trout streams.  It is a place where fishermen stop to rest and swap talk over cracker snacks of pickled herring ad strong, bitey cheese.  The cheese is cut from a big, round cake, and the herring comes out of a barrel.  Men lounge against he counter while they eat and talk, and even Time seems to stand still.

In other words, there is no rush or bustle around Charlie’s place.  And, there is absolutely No such thing, as hurrying Charlie!

“I’ll tell you, he’s a good one!” laughed Freddie one evening, as he pulled off his fishing boots.  “I always like to stop there, when I go through Rural, and see what old Charlie has been up to!  He’s done some mighty funny things in his time, mighty funny.

“You know what a big man he is, and how slow he moves, and how low he talks.  It’s just like he was almost too lazy to breathe.  But, don’t let that fool you. Judas! can he move when he wants to!

“I’ll never forget one time when Jim Norton and Ed and I stopped to see him.  It was in the middle of the afternoon and Charlie was listening to the ball game on the radio.  We knew what a fan he was those days, so we didn’t interrupt him.  Just helped ourselves to some crackers and cheese, and sat down and listened with him.

“Well sir, that game got awful exciting toward the end.  The score was tied up and the bases were loaded, and old Charlie sat like he’d taken root.  We shouldn’t have thought of talking to him at a time like that.

“Then, in walked some tourist fellow, all dressed up, and in a terrible hurry.  I’ve forgotten now what it was he asked for, but it didn’t make a bit of difference anyway.  Old Charlie was sitting behind the counter, and he didn’t look up, or answer.  The game was going to end any minute and he wouldn’t miss that, just to wait on trade!

“Finally this fellow commenced to get mad, and when he did, he started to shout.

“’What’s the matter with you, anyhow?’ he yelled, pounding the counter.  ‘Can’t you move?’

“Just then the game ended, and Charlie got up. And MOVE?  Judas! you’ve never seen anyone move SO fast!  He grabbed that fellow by the collar and the seat of his pants and doused him head first, into a barrel of flour that was standing right there.  Then he whipped him back out and stood him on his feet!

“’Was…that…fast…enough…for…you…Mister?’ drawled old Charlie, in that quiet, lazy voice of his. And I wish you could have seen that poor fellow.  It all happened so quick I guess he didn’t know what hit him, but he figured Charlie was crazy.  He dove into that barrel after his hat, backed out of the store and jumped into his car.  Just as he was, flour and all.  We figured he left Rural doing about seventy, and as far as I know, he never came back!

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “old Charlie is quite a character around these parts.  People come from all over just to hear him talk.  And you couldn’t find a better fellow anywhere.  You just have to know him pretty well, that’s all!”

Freddie, as usual, had caught his “limit” that day, and there is nothing he admired like a pretty mess of trout.  He had cleaned them on the creek, and when he got home he took them from the cool, wet grass in his basket, and washed them again beneath the pump.  Then, he laid them all straight in a pan, and salted them well inside.  I knew we would have them for supper.  He always like to eat them the same day they were caught.  I also knew he’d rest a while before he started to cook.  That trip had filled him with talk.

“There’s the nicest size for eating,” he said, pointing to the smallest of the lot.  “About eight inches, just over legal.  You can eat THAT kind, tail and all!

“Judas, what trout feds we had years ago, when it wasn’t any trouble to catch all we wanted.  It’s pretty hard to do it these days, but we could sure do it then.  Even in the evening, by the light of the moon.

“In fact, we used to do a lot of our fishing in the evening.  A bunch of us fellows from Brinsmere or Locksley, would get up on some stream just about dusk, and we always went home with our baskets full!

“Of course it’s quite a trick to change flies after dark, but if you can do it, and find out what the trout are hitting, you can have an awful lot of fun.  And Judas! what a pretty sigh it is, to see those old trout come out of the water that is laying in the path of the moon.  They look like they’d been washed in silver!  Yessir!  It’s quite a thing.

“Well, anyhow, years ago when we went on trips like that, we’d have our ‘feed’ the same night.  It didn’t make any difference what time we got back; that’s the way we did things at Brinsmere and Locksley.  We’d always have one waitress and the cook stay up and they’d get us a great big meal.  Usually there’d be eight or ten of us fellows, sitting around one big table in the dining room, eating by the light of a kerosene lamp.  The rest of the place was dark, and everyone else was asleep.

“My, oh my,” sighed Freddie, “WHAT suppers those were, and how we DID enjoy them.”

“Hmnp!” said I, with haughty conviction.  “Very nice indeed … for a chosen few!  But what about all the rest of your guests?  Or didn’t they care for fish?”

“Now what kind of silly question is that?” he asked, “Of course they cared for fish.  Everybody likes fish!”

“Well, that,” I persisted, “is exactly what I thought.  So while you were at it, why didn’t you catch enough for everyone, and serve a nice trout dinner to the whole dining room?”

“Judas!” snorted Freddie.  “You can’t serve trout in a dining room.  Don’t you know yet, that it’s against the law?”

“Oh!” I blushed, “Will you pardon me, dear, while I remove my foot?  I t just doesn’t feel right in my mouth!”

Freddie chuckled, and rocked as he rested.

“I did it once, though” he resumed with a grin.  “Served trout in the dining room, I mean.  And Judas! what  a funny thing that was.

“Some of the guests had been with me for a long time, to give them a good trout dinner, but I’d always put them off because it was against the law.  This one summer though, they were awful persistent, so I finally weakened and promised them one.  And, I wasn’t very worried when I did it, either!

“You see those days we didn’t have near so many laws, and those we did have, really didn’t amount to shucks.  What I mean is, a native could get away with almost anything, providing of course, he didn’t go hog-wild.  So, I figured I could get  away with that.

“Old Dud Carr and I talked it all over, and he felt the same way about the thing.  He said he’d be glad to catch the fish, and whatever chances he had to take, would be worth it, if it pleased the guests.  So, I told him to go ahead, and to bring me at least a hundred and fifty trout.  And that was as good as having them right in the frying pan!  I knew old Dud wouldn’t miss.

“The next night we had that dinner, and my! you’ve never seen so many happy people.  There was trout for everyone on the place; all they could eat, and then some.

“I was out in the kitchen while that meal was going on, and I couldn’t help chuckling to myself as I listened to the chatter from the dining room. It sounded like the place was full of magpies, and I knew everyone was talking about the trout.

“Then, all of a sudden everything was quiet, and I couldn’t hear a sound.  Not even the clinking of silverware or dishes, which meant the people had stopped eating. I waited a few minutes, wondering what had happened, an then I walked over and pushed open the door.

“And Judas! I’ll never forget it.  All the guests were just sitting, watching a man who was walking from table to table.  It was old Frank Randall, the game warden!

“I never found out who tipped him off, but they certainly did a good job of it.  He had the thing timed right to the minute and he got enough on me, to hang me.

“Of course I knew the jig was up, so I didn’t even try to argue.  We just stepped outside and I called old Dud, and Frank arrested the two of us.  Dud was charged with welling fish, and I was charged with buying them, and serving them in a hotel dining room.

“When the trial came up I paid the costs and both our fines, and that was the end of that!

“But I’ll always remember how my people enjoyed those fish.  I guess they knew it was their first and last trout dinner at Brinsmere.  I know they didn’t leave a smidgen on their platters or plates.

“No sir!” chuckled Freddie.  “That night they were clean as a whistle!”

“Well honey,” said I, “WE don’t have to worry about the game warden.  Do you mind if I fry OUR trout, now?  My stomach feels like my throat had been cut!”

Waupaca County Post

May 27, 1948

The little yard was freshly mown, and with a sigh, Freddie sat down to rest.  He was more than pleased to be done with that job; he didn’t like cutting grass.  Or shrubs, or trees, or anything else which nature intended should grow!  That’s why, except for the one small spot, his place grew willfully wild.

The woods and the swamps are a cool, green tangle, alive with the darting birds.  There it is, that orioles nest, canaries, bluebirds and cardinals.  And they stay as wild as their nesting place; different from the robins who become brave and bold!

Two red-breasted parents, old tenants on the place, were busy pulling worms right near Freddie’s chair.  They always ignored our presence completely, and their audacity never ceased to amaze me.

Freddie chuckled as he watched them, almost at his feet.

“You know,” said he, “I’d miss those two, if they didn’t show up every spring. I don’t know how long they’ve been coming here, but I do know it’s the same old pair. If you’ll notice, the mother is missing one toe?  She’s always been that way since the first time I saw her, years ago.

“Have you ever watched robins picking up worms?  I mean REALLY watched them?  You know a lot of people think they’re LOOKING for worms, when they run along the ground and stop and cock their heads.  But, they’re not.  They’re LISTENING for them!  Yessir.  They can hear a worm moving beneath the ground, and they’ll run their bills down and pull him right out.

“My gracious, honey!” I gasped.  “You are a regular walking encyclopedia, if I ever saw one.  I didn’t even know worms made any noise, but it’s certainly something to think about!  Just imagine. Noisy worms, Ugh!”

With a shudder, I shook myself free of the thought, then went off at a light-hearted tangent.

“You don’t know EVERYTHING though, Mr. Smith,” said I with saucy conviction. “For instance, you just said a robin RUNS along the ground.  But it doesn’t.  It HOPS.  So there!”

“Oh poot!” snorted Freddie.  “That only goes to prove you just LOOK; but you don’t really SEE!  A robin always runs.  It never hops.”

I took a quick breath and got ready to argue; then quietly deflated, without opening my mouth. For just at that moment, our Mamma Robin, with Papa in her wake, took off for the other side of the yard.  And both of them RAN every step of the way!

Feeling rather foolish, I stole a look at Freddie, wondering when I’d learn not to contradict him. But his mind was a million miles away; or to be more exact, sixty years away.

“Hops,” he mused.  “When you said ‘hops’ it sure took me back; way back to the time when they raised them here, and sold them to the breweries for beer.  Those were the days when beer was fit to drink, and didn’t put a fellow to sleep.  This stuff we have now never saw a hop; they put ether in it, instead!

“Well anyhow, raising hops was quite a business then, and lots of farmers hereabouts, made it their principal crop. I remember old man Hearn was one of those, and so was Walter Jensen.  They both had acres and acres of hops, and it brought them lots of money.

“It was a good thing too, for the people around here; I mean for those who wanted extra work.  You see when picking time came anyone could get a job and the crews were made up of both men and women.  And for those days they got darn good wages.

“Of course they earned every cent they got; picking hops wasn’t any joke. In fact, it was mighty hard work.  But then, you don’t mind that when you’re young and strong.  You can work in the fields like a horse all day, and still run around at night!

“I’ll never forget when I worked for old Frank King. He had the biggest hop farm around here, and I was foreman of his crew.  We’d pick all season from daylight ‘til dark, and then dance half of the night!  Judas, WHAT time we did have at his place, and WHAT a fellow old Frank was!

“We always called him “the country gentleman” and that’s just what he looked like.  He was a powerful cuss with a lot of white hair, and a long, iron-gray beard.  And he ruled with a hand of iron, too!  He  had to!

“You see those days, when you hired a lot of young bucks, you were bound to wind up with a couple of fighters.  Of course everyone knew how to handle their fists, but some fellows just fought for the love of fighting.  And usually that kind made the best workers, so we always wound up with a few on the crew.

“But I guess the fightingest fools I ever saw, were old Will Foley and George McCrossen.  Judas! the battles they’d get into.  Not in the fields you understand, but in the evening, right after supper.  I guess they did it to settle their victuals, because I know for sure, they weren’t mad at each other.  That is, not when they started!

“They’d get out in the yard, as soon as we’d eaten, and begin with a little sparring.  Just jump around with a few playful pokes, and the rest of us sat and watched them.  Pretty soon though, they’d work up a good sweat, and the clips would get harder and faster.  Then, all of a sudden they’d be into it, and Judas! could they make the dirt fly.

“Of course that was all right, when the rest of us sat still.  And for the most part, we did.  We usually figured it was their hard luck, if their noses were bloody, and their teeth were loose. But you know fighting gets awful exciting at times, and when that happens, it’s mighty catching!

“Like I said, we had others who were darn good scrappers, and if they jumped into it, the rest of us followed.  Then the whole place would be in an uproar, and nobody cared who knocked down who!

“I’ll never forget the last time, when it happened like that, and Frank (Loafer) Hicks and I were mixing it up.  That just went to show what a fool a fellow can be, because Frank and I were real good friends.

“Well anyhow, we were pounding away at each other, when Frank yelled something about my girl and Judas Priest! did I see red!  I hauled off and hit him with everything I had, and knocked him out colder than a mackerel.

“Now, you’d think that would have satisfied me, wouldn’t you?  But THAT’S what I say about fighting.  A fellow might as well have a tack for a head.  He just gets so mad he hasn’t any sense.

“So, instead of leaving old Frank stretched out flat as a pancake, I dragged him clear across the road, and threw him in a cornfield.  Then I ran back and jumped into the fight again!

“Well sir, I don’t know how long that thing went on, but it must have been an awful long time. There were fellows laying all over the yard; fellows who couldn’t get up.  But anyone who could stand on his feet was fighting.  And I was one of those. That is, until I got mine!

“It all happened so quick, I didn’t know what hit me.  Just a great big whump! on the back of my head, and down I went, like a ton of brick.  And Judas, when I found out about it later, did I have to laugh.  It sure was a good joke on me.

“Old Frank was the one who put me out of business!  Yessir!  When he came to in that cornfield, I guess he was fit to do murder.  Anyhow he found himself a nice big two by four, and let me have it right over the head!  I hadn’t seen him coming; I was too busy knocking other fellows down!

“And THAT was the last BIG fight we ever had at King’s.  From then on the old man himself, put a stop to them, before they got started.  He said he didn’t care about us young bucks fighting OUT of hop-picking season, but he couldn’t afford to let his crop rot, while we laid around and licked our wounds!  He also promised a good thrashing to the next fellow who started anything, and seeing as how we knew he could do it, things were pretty quiet from then on!

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “That was certainly SOME fight.”

“Hmn!” I teased, “I’ll bet you didn’t dance THAT night.”

“Oh poot!” he snorted, “Of course we danced.  Those of us who could move around, anyway.  The dancing was the nicest part about the whole hop season, and we never missed one single night.

“My, but that’s a long time ago, and just think how things have changed.  I don’t suppose people nowadays would go across the street for dances like those, but we sure had a lot of fun then.

“The King’s were awful good to their crew, and all the time we stayed there we were treated mighty nice.  They even kept their great big parlor cleared for dancing, that is, except for the organ.

“Of course all we had to dance by, was that and the fiddle, but there was never any sweeter music.  One of the girls always played the organ, and old John Gray did the fiddling.  IN fact, he fiddled and called off at the same time.  Judas!  I can see him yet. His head and his feet kept time with the music, and he talked away at a great rate!  We wouldn’t have known what to do without Johnny Gray, in hop-picking time.”

Freddie sighed, and was lost in reverie.  But, I could almost follow his thoughts.  They must have been very nice years, those of his youth, filled and over-flowing with living.  The ones when he worked and fought and danced, and all of it was as play.  Yes, they were the good years, the best of them all.

Waupaca County Post

June 3, 1948

The sad, deep voice on the radio, filled our little kitchen with the troubles of the world.  Patiently pleading, and full of commiseration.  It rose and fell, rushed, and receded.  Five minutes, six minutes .. then,

“Judas priest!” said Freddie in disgust.  “Shut that danged thing off, Ellen.  Nothing on it but war, war, war!  What fools people are; why can’t they leave things be?  But no!  They won’t be satisfied until they start another one – and it isn’t far off either!

“Oh well, it won’t bother me.  I’ll just sit down here in those woods, and when those ‘Rooshuns’ get to dropping ‘booms’ I’ll bet they don’t find this place!  No sir, no war is going to bother me, not anymore.

“And come to think about it, I never did have to worry much about any of them.  I mean as far as fighting is concerned.  I was too old for the last two we’ve had, and before that a fellow didn’t have to go if he didn’t want to.  That is, if he had a good excuse, and could afford to send a substitute!

“Take the Spanish American War for instance.  Now, I was the right age for that, but I sure wasn’t hankering to go.  I was married, running Brinsmere and a big farm, besides, and I didn’t want to march off and leave them!  So I hired a substitute, and that cost $300.  I never knew who he was of course, because the Government took care of all that.  All I did was pay out the money, and they got someone else in my place.

“Of course the country was full of adventurers then, so it wasn’t hard to do. Fellows who were foot-loose and fancy-free, and never caught by the draft because they didn’t have an address.  They’d go for $300 though.  In those days that was a small fortune!”

Ding-a—ling, went a bell in my head.

“Say honey,” said I, “didn’t the Government do that in the Civil War, too?”

“Why certainly!” he snorted, “They always did it, up until the First World War.  That’s why there were so many ‘drifters’ in the army.  They were known as ‘soldiers of fortune’.

“But speaking of that Spanish American War, reminds me of old Frank Hurst.  Judas!  I’ll never forget old Frank, the day he joined the army.

“It must have been along about 1898, and he was working on Mort Taylor’s farm.  I remember it was spring and he was plowing in a field right near the old Berlin Road.  The sun was pretty hot, but that didn’t bother Frank.  All he had on was blue denim overalls. No hat, no shoes, no nothing.  Just overalls!

“Well sir, he was plowing away with nary a thought of going to war, when a bunch of fellows came marching by on their way to enlist, at Stevens Point.  They hollered at Frank across the field, and told him to come along.  Of course they were only kidding; no one thought he’d really go.

“But, you never could tell what old Frank might do, and he certainly fooled those fellows.  He tied Taylor’s team to the old rail fence, and went with them, just as he was!

“I’ll never forget when I saw him at the depot.  Judas, did I kid him about being barefoot.  It didn’t bother him though, not a bit.  By that time he was all hipped up about being in the army!”  Our band went up to the Point with those boys; that’s how I happened to see him.

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “old Frank Hurst was certainly a funny one!”

“Seems to me I remember the name,” said I, but I can’t exactly place him.  Were there a lot of Hursts around these parts?”

“Oh, years ago there were, “ said Freddie.  “Fifty or sixty years ago.  In fact, if I remember rightly, Frank’s people were among the early settlers here.  They had a place on the Berlin Road, between the old Thomas and Boutwell farms.

“Of course you remember Robert O’Leary?  Well, his mother was a Hurst before she married his father.  And old Frank Hurst is Bob’s uncle.

“Now, there’s an awful nice fellow. Bob O’Leary.  Always has been ever since he was a kid, and he sure started out with two strikes on him.

“You now he broke his arm when he was just a little cuss, and somehow or other infection set in. I guess they had him all over to a lot of different doctors, but none of them did him any good.  I know they took him to a Dr. Palmer in Janesville, and a couple of more in Fond du Lac, and after that, to Dr. Pelton and Dr. Pinkerton in Waupaca.  But they all felt the same way; they wanted to amputate.  And Bob’s grandmother, old Mrs. Hurst, wouldn’t stand for that!

“Well sir, it was on their way home from the trip to see Pelton, that they passed old Doc Reed’s office and decided to see him.  He was the only one left, and I guess they figured they might as well do the thing up brown.

“Now, the funny part about that was, that right at that time, Pelton and Reed were carrying on an awful feud!  Old Reed was city health officer, and Pelton had been after him hot and heavy, about some potatoes which were piled up rotting, outside the old starch factory.  All you had to do those days to make Reed see red, was to mention Pelton’s name!

“So, of course, when Mrs. Hurst told him that Pelton wanted to amputate, he pooh-poohed the idea!  He said HE could cure the boy with medicine, and by Judas! that’s what he did!  I support it was just a lucky shot in the dark, but anyhow, that’s what happened.  And, after being sick for years, Bob finally got well.

“My! but that’s a long time ago.  I remember O’Learys were living on the Dick Brown place then, near the Little Hope Grist Mill, on the Crystal River.  Their nearest neighbors were the Taylors and Chandlers, and Bob grew up with their kids.  Mary and Clyde Taylor and Bob all went to the old West Lind School; I guess it was called the Lewis School then.  So did Roy Rasmus and his sister Grace.  Their father ran the old grist mill those days.

“Later on O’Learys moved to Waupaca, and Bob and his father got jobs in the old stone quarry, near the depot.  I remember his father worked breaking stones, while Bob carried water for $1 a day.

“It wasn’t long after that when his parents died, and Bob came to Locksley Hall, as choreboy.  And my! how the folks got to like him, through the years.  I think he was fifteen when he started.

“It’s funny when I think back on all the things that happened.  The people we knew, and how we came to know them.

“Now Bob O’Leary must have been with Father for about ten years, but you know he pretty near didn’t get that job!  And here was how it was.

“He’d heard through Cora Boutwell, who worked the year around for Mother, that Father was going to fire his choreboy.  So he went to Locksley Hall to ask for the job, and learned that Father hadn’t meant what he’d said.  As usual, he’d just been doing a lot of threatening, but Cora didn’t know that, and had taken him seriously.

“Well sir, Bob was so disappointed Father felt sorry for him, and told him to go and see me, at Brinsmere.  He said he knew I was going to hire another boy for the summer, and he didn’t think I had anyone yet.

“So, Bob high-tailed it over to my place. But, when he got there, I’d  JUST hired Roy Holly!  And Judas, if you’ve ever seen a big kid want to cry, it was poor old Bob.  He wanted to work at The Lakes SO bad h e could almost taste it, and the worst part of it was I KNEW he’d be a good hand, but I couldn’t do anything about it!

“Well anyhow, I took him to the kitchen and while we were having something to eat, I told  him I’d walk back to Locksley with him and tell Father to keep him in mind.

“Of course that cheered him up a little bit, but when we finally got there, I guess he could have shouted with joy!  Father had had a row with his choreboy again, and sent him packing, big and baggage, while Bob had been with me!

“So good old Bob got the job, and like I say, was there for many, many years.

“He started out by hanging the lanterns.  You see in those days, kerosene lanterns were the only means we had of lighting up the yard after dark. And the dock; and the paths to the cottages.

“Now, I guess you wouldn’t think so, unless you could see it, but those old lanterns hanging on the trees were an awful pretty sight.  You see the light they threw wasn’t bright and harsh, but sort of a soft, flickery yellow.  Well, they were just like everything else, those days.  Old fashioned maybe, but beautiful!

“And Judas! what a lot of care they took.  Washing and wiping and filling every day; and Bob sure kept them sparkling.  Then in the evening he’d light them and hand them all over the grounds.

“You and Jeannette were real little tykes then, but you always went with him when he hung out the lanterns.  I remember how you ran along at his side, but you were so chubby you couldn’t keep up, so he’d carry you on his shoulders!

“Yessir!” sighed Freddie, “Old Bob was mighty proud of his lanterns, and proud of being “lantern boy”, at Locksley Hall.  The flaks came to think an awful lot of Bob, he was just like a member of the family.”

Footnote:  The Robert O’Leary in the above story, is now Ticket Agent for the Illinois Central Railroad, at Blue Island, Illinois.

Waupaca County Post

June 10, 1948

Whenever Freddie went to town and did the shopping.  I could always rely on a new supply of salt pork.  That is, if “Butch”, as he called Mr. Mortenson, had it in stock.  Freddie never bought this special delicacy any other place.  It seems “Butch” puts down his own and was taught to do it right, at a very tender age, by his father!

Yes, he was sure to bring home salt pork, and we had it every morning for breakfast.  All of us.  Even Pat, the ugly little black and white cocker.

Now Pat, I needn’t tell you, was of the utmost importance to Freddie.  Much more than a pet; almost a person. So when Pat commenced to ail one time Freddie rushed him down to the doctor.

After the examination, the matter of diet was brought up.

“What do you feed this little fellow,” asked the “vet”.  “There is something wrong with his diet.”

“Oh,” began Freddie, “he gets a lot of good salt pork …”

“SALT PORK!” exclaimed the startled doctor.  “Well, no wonder he’s sick.  I’m surprised he isn’t dead!  Don’t you know salt pork’s enough to kill a man?”

“Oh pooh,” snorted Freddie.  “That just goes to show how much you know.  I’ve lived on salt port for EIGHTY years, and there’s nothing the matter with me.”

Yes, we were bound to get salt pork when Freddie did the shopping, but at times he’d bring home other things too.  One day it was a pound of pickled herring.

“Now why in the world do you suppose I bought that?” he asked, as he placed a bit on a cracker.

“Ever hear of the $65 question,” I laughed.

“What’s the matter?” he puzzled. “Don’t you like herring?  They’re the same thing as ciscos, you know.

Judas! the ciscos we caught here years ago – thousands and thousands of them, in nets.  They’re a deep water fish and they won’t take a hook, so if you want ciscos you have to use a net.

“Of course there’s a law against it now, but it’s about the poorest law we’ve ever had. In fact, it’s hurt the game fishing no end. You know pickerel and bass and the likes of them won’t bite unless they’re hungry.  And around here they haven’t been hungry for years.  No sir!  Not with these lakes plump full of ciscos.

“But anyhow, when we could net them we used them for a lot of things.  Like I say, they’re a herring so they’re good eating, either pickled or smoked.  We’d always put down a couple of barrels every fall, and we’d eat them off and on all winter.

“Then we used a lot of them for fertilizer.  They make about the best there is.  And the rest we fed to the chickens and pigs.  Yessir!  We got a lot of good out of those old ciscos years ago.  But now?  Well, they’re good for nothing!”

“I’ll bet it was fun to set nets,” I said.  “Did you get anything besides ciscos?”

“Oh sure,” he mused.  “We used to get a lot of big pickerel and bass and anything that would gill.  But, they’re no good smoked or pickled you know, so we always threw most of them back.  There wasn’t any need for us to keep them.  We could catch all the fresh fish we wanted to eat, both summer and winter.

“Judas!  What fun we used to have fishing through the ice. Especially when we were kids.  You know that’s a pretty tough, cold job, but it didn’t bother us those days.

“I’ll never forget one time, when Alfred and I decided to try our luck at The Narrows.  That’s what we used to call the channel between Brown’s Point and Fern Terrace.  We’d been doing a lot of fishing up in Long Lake that winter, but this day we figured we’d try closer to home.

“Well anyhow, we were hiking across Round Lake, loaded down with our paraphernalia when who should we spy but old Neil McArthur way over by The Narrows.  We couldn’t imagine what he was doing, but we could see he was having an awful time.  He seemed to be pulling and dragging at something in the snow, and whatever it was, he couldn’t move it an inch!

“When we yelled at him he stopped for a minute and waved, then he went right back to his tugging.  So, Alfred and I broke into a run.  We were awful surprised to find Neil on the Lakes.  He wasn’t a fellow who did much fishing.

Well sir, when we got there, we could only stand and gape!  He had four of the biggest old pickerel we’d ever seen, all tied together with a rope.  And that’s what he’d been trying to drag through the snow.  There wasn’t a one of them weighed less than 40 pounds, and most of them weighed more!

“Of course we were all het up and anxious to find out where he caught them. But when we asked him he looked so danged sheepish, we knew they weren’t his fish!  Then we had him.  He had to tell us where he got them or we wouldn’t help him carry them.  And they weighed so much he couldn’t budge them by himself!

“So, he finally admitted he’d robbed someone’s lines.  And when we found out who that “someone” was, I’ll tell you we were fit to be tied.  He couldn’t have picked out a worse customer to steal from, and nobody knew it better than Alfred and I.  Those fish belonged to old “Philapina Pete” … and Judas! what a fellow he was.  He was quite a bit older than any of us boys, awful big and a terrible scrapper.

“But, we couldn’t let old Neil down, scared as we were to steal Pete’s fish.  Neil was about the best friend we had and we knew if he got caught there’d be heck to pay. So, the three of us got busy and hauled those fish off the lake.  Then, we covered up our tracks the best we could, and beat it for home.

“Judas, how relieved we were when we got inside the house and shut the door behind us.  Neil had gone on to his place, and Alfred and I couldn’t do anything but talk about how lucky we were to be all in one piece!

“Then, all of a sudden, I remembered Father’s axe, I’d left it laying in the snow on Round Lake!

“Well sir, that was quite a thing. For a while we didn’t know what to do. We knew if we lost that axe, Father’d lick up.  And we knew if we went back for it we’d probably run into old Pete, and he’d lick us.  But seeing as how we’d get licked either way, we finally decided to get the axe back. At least he’d have something to show for our pains!

“So we high-tailed it back down to the Narrows and we kept a sharp lookout all the way.  We didn’t see hide nor hair of old Pete, and by the time we’d reached the Point we commenced to breathe easy.  As far as we could tell he hadn’t been around and we figured we were just plumb lucky.

“Before we stepped out on the Lake though, we looked up and down all the shores. There wasn’t any sign of anything moving, so we ran out on the ice.

“Just as we reached the middle of the channel we heard an awful roar, and there was old Pete, bearing down from behind.  I never did know where he came from, but he’d sure caught us red-handed.  And Judas, did he look big and mad.

“Well sir, I knew there was not use in running, so I whirled around and faced him.  I figured he’d lick me good, but I might as well get it over with.  I guess I was so scared I’d forgot about Alfred.  He’d been ahead of me when we ran out on the ice.

“Anyhow, when old Pete came pounding up, I doubled my fists and waited.  But nothing hap-pened.  He even quit yelling, and started looking sort of pleasant!  Then I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me, behind me.

“So, I glanced around real quick like to see what had brought him to a stop.  And Judas! what a funny thing that was.  There stood Alfred, about two feet in back of me, and he had that axe already to swing!

“Yessir!  That was certainly something and it sure took the wind out of old Pete’s sails. He just fizzled out right then and there, and ended by telling us to clear off the lake.

“And he didn’t have to tell us twice either.  We just backed up far enough to get a good start, then went hell-hooting for home.

“The funniest part about it was that Alfred never thought of using that axe.  The whole thing was a comical accident.  You see when Pete first yelled from behind us, Alfred had already reached the axe, so all he’d one was to swing around and stand in that position!  But it sure saved us from one heck of a thrashing.

“Yessir, we were awful scared of old Pete those days, but that just goes to show how foolish kids are.  Pete was really a darn good fellow.  He just wouldn’t stand for people trifling with his lines.

“Years later he was out in Minneapolis one time, and he and Alfred had dinner one night at a hotel.  They got to laughing about that day on the Lake, and Alfred told him the whole story.  The only thing they couldn’t figure out was what Neil McArthur had done with 200 pounds of fish!

“Yessir,” chuckled Freddie, “That was one of the loose ends we forgot to tie up.  But , those were great days, I can tell you, great days!”

(Footnote:  Spanish American war veteran, Chris Peterson, is the “Philapina Pete” of the above story.  He came by this nick-name after his long and vigorous service in the Philippines during the Spanish American War.)