THE WAUPACA REPUBLICAN POST

July 29, 1915

 

WHEN DAD WAS A BOY

 

Pictures of Pioneer Days in Town of Dayton, Waupaca County, Fifty Years Ago

 

            The following article appeared in the Britt (Iowa) Tribune of July 1, and purports to be a joke put over on the editor, E.N. Bailey, while Mr. and Mrs. Bailey were visiting in this city and at Crystal Lake.  Altogether it reads so much as some of these pioneer settlers are wont to talk when they become reminiscent that we deem it will be interesting to our readers, old and young alike.  It should be noted that Mr. Bailey was a boyhood friend of P.A. Hamm of Crystal Lake and a nephew of the late Wesley and Jane Noyes, pioneer residents of this city. – Editor’s note.

On Old Stamping Ground

            The fact that Dad has gone back to Wisconsin to his old boyhood home for a three weeks’ trip reminds us that this is a good opportunity for a “come-back” on past reflections in these columns on our various fishing trips, so here goes:

            You know Dad?  Well, he was born about the year 49, just after the big wind, and the gold rush to California.  It was in June after the big snow in Wisconsin.

            He used very good judgment in the selection of both of his parents and remained with them for several years, doing all of the work on the farm and most of the housework for his mother, putting in a great deal of his spare time in assisting the neighbors with their work.

Early Education

            When Dad was a boy the high school student with his hair parted in the middle had not as yet been discovered.  At that time the Bailey library consisted of a Dr. Jaynes almanac and a volume of Petroleum V. Nasby.  This latter was in use most of the time as a prop under one corner of the cook stove where one leg was missing, so his education was neglected and obtained under difficulties.  Eventually he mastered these two volumes and applied a portion of his time in the evening in manufacturing words to suit his own convenience.  After graduating with honors his education was polished off with a hetchel and wood rasp and he thought to apply it where it would to the most good so he stayed right on the farm and helped his neighbors more and did more housework for his mother.         

            You never knew that Dad was some speller, did you?  Well, you can just bet he was.  When he was a boy he used to walk seventeen miles to spelling school three times a week to spell down Ella Wheeler Wilcox.  The rest of the evenings he usually spent in whittling shoe pegs out of a pine log or walked over into the next county to steal somebody’s girl at a dance.

Popular Young Lothario

            Dad was a gay young Lothario in his younger days.  How he used to work for fifteen cents per day to buy a sheep so he could get enough tallow to keep his boots greased in proper shape for those courting trips.  He was so popular that our mother succeeded in getting his consent to share her lot at the age of about eighteen years, when he became a benedict.

            After he married he worked in the logging camps for several years at thirty-five cents per day and boarded himself and team and supported his family in luxury.  This at the time, too, when tea was $1.50 per pound and flour $15.00 a barrel, but that never phased Dad, he did it.

            We remember distinctly of hearing him tell of a winter he spent in a big logging camp as a chore boy.  Now this camp was so big that he was compelled to travel on horseback to make the entire rounds while doing chores.  At mealtime it was one of his duties to assist the cook at the cookhouse.  Now you know that those lumberjacks are great fellow for pancakes and at this particular camp they had a mammoth pancake griddle that, if we remember right, covered in the neighborhood of an acre or two and one of his duties each morning was to strap a couple of hams to his feet and skate around this griddle and grease it for the regular pancake breakfast.

            And this reminds us that Dad was some skater in his day too.  Nothing in Wisconsin could carry a blanket for him in the skating business.  How often he used to skate down the lake and over the frozen snow thirty or forty miles to a dance and get back in time for breakfast, do a day’s work and then away in the evening for spelling school.  We remember that pair of skates so well. They were a pair he made himself out of a couple of old files mounted on hickory tops , and if we do say it, there wasn’t a pair of skates in Waupaca or Waushara counties that could hold a candle to them.

How He Cleared His Farm

            As I said before, you know that Dad was brought up on a farm.  Now this farm was in Waupaca county, Wisconsin, and we suppose it is sadly run down since Dad left, but nevertheless, he brought that farm to a high state of cultivation from a state of dense primeval forest.  How he worked in grubbing out those stumps, but he got ‘em out, every one.  Pulled ‘em out alone too, while he was resting from his other work.  This stump pulling work was dead easy for Dad, for you know he was the strongest young fellow in several counties in those days.  How often we have heard him tell of how he’d hitch up his yoke of cattle, old Buck and Bright, and haul logs all day and then dig out a couple of acres of stumps while mother was getting supper.  You know he always took his diner to the woods with him and how he did enjoy sitting on a log when it was thirty below zero and eat his dinner off a pine slab.  Those were pioneer days of hardships, but little things like that never bothered Dad a bit.  He cleared up his farm and raised the best and biggest crops of any man in the county.  That first plow Dad had was a dandy, if he did make it himself out of an old sap boiler or something like that, and it did the work better than any of the modern rigs.

Some Cradler Too

            You remember that this was long before the self-binder was invented, when they used to cut all of the grain with a cradle and bind it by hand.  And say – You never say Dad cradle, did you?  Well, you surely missed something.  The way that man could handle a cradle was a caution.  It was no trouble for Dad to keep out of the way of five or six big strapping fellows binding behind him.  Twenty or thirty acres from sun to sun was just an average day’s work with a cradle for Dad in those days.

            And that reminds us of that cradle.  It was an old one that grandfather had thrown in the fence corner because “the dum thing wasn’t good for anything anyway”.  But one rainy day Dad found that cradle and went to work on it.  He fixed up the blade so it was shaped right and like it should have been made in the first place, and then whittled out a handle (they had another name for that in those days, but we have forgotten what it was) for it out of a hickory log, and say!  Do you know that every fellow who ever picked up that cradle said it was the prettiest hung cradle that they ever laid their eyes on.  And how he could swing it!  Where other fellows only cut six or seven feet for a swath, Dad always took twelve or fourteen, and did it easy.

Dad as a Ball Player

            By the way, you never knew that Dad was an old time baseball player, did you?  Well, you can just bet that he was and a mighty good one at that.  In those good old days the modern baseball with horsehide cover was a thing unknown as was also the gloves and masks.  They used a wooden ball covered with a piece of pork rind and caught with the bare hands.  As you all know Dad was a great athlete and powerful quick on his feet.  He used to act as battery for the “Corners” ball team, and the way he could heave them over and follow the ball, and catch it behind the bat was a sight.  They never thought of using more than six or seven men on the team that Dad played with.  In one game we remember particularly, he struck out thirty-seven men and did all the catching himself.  He was some batter too.  In those days the rule book could be written on a postage stamp and when a ball was batted the batsman had the privilege of running around the bases as many times as he could before the ball was recovered.  In one game, we remember so well, he drove one clear over Ad Ham’s north eighty and a fellow was sent for it on horseback, but Dad ran in fifty-seven scores and was still going when the game was called on account of darkness with the score standing fifty-seven to nothing.

            Along about ’74 Dad had accumulated so much of that Wisconsin sand between his toes that he couldn’t get his shoes to fit, so he decided that he would go west.  He hitched up his team, (and by the way, that was a mighty good team) and loading up his family of wife and three children he started for Iowa.  Now on the road to Iowa he fell in with one of the officials of the C.M. & St. P. railway and in a conversation told him that he was headed for Iowa and that Britt was his destination.  This official immediately wired headquarters to commence building a line of railroad for Britt, but Dad told him that perhaps he might want to go over to Algona once in a while so they of course built the road to that point.

            When he arrived in Iowa and settled on the old farm southeast of Britt, at Bailey’s Grove, an executive order was at once issued from Washington, D.C., to change all maps of the state of Iowa and mark Dad’s farm on them.  This was done as all maps will show up until the time he sold his farm.

            Here’s to Dad, the best and kindest man I ever knew.       -  O.S.B.