tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56229267020409298902024-03-06T12:02:41.589-08:00Brad's HistoryBrad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-17549588905679763472020-01-01T08:32:00.000-08:002020-01-01T08:32:52.206-08:00La Farge's Bars<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Recently a rather momentous occurrence happened in the sleepy little Kickapoo River town of La Farge. On August 28<sup>th</sup>, the Town Tap, the village’s only bar, offered twenty-cent hot dogs and chili dogs for lunch. Although the chili dogs were delicious, the significance of the event was that it marked the 20<sup>th</sup>anniversary for Phil & Deb’s Town Tap. That is a rather long time for a bar or tavern to remain under the same ownership in these parts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Phil & Deb Campbell purchased the business in 1999 from Bob & Charlotte Hysel, who had operated the bar from 1976 until 1988 and again from 1994 until selling it to the Campbell’s. Deb Campbell passed away in 2012, but her name remains on the business to this day. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I was at the Town Tap munching on my chili dogs, I shared some information with Phil about some previous owners of the bar. I had been investigating who had owned the bar some seventy years before due to a conversation that I had at a family reunion back in June.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was a Melvin family reunion on June 15<sup>th</sup>at the Methodist Church on Salem Ridge. Ruth Clark organized the reunion and a nice crowd attended the event that included a tasty potluck lunch, lots of visiting and looking at family scrapbooks, and walking around the Salem Ridge Cemetery to look at family graves. I was at the reunion because I am the grandson of Isa Melvin Campbell, who was the daughter of Scott and Lucy Melvin. At one time, Scott Melvin owned pretty much all of Salem Ridge, so there are lots of family connections to that place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the reunion, I met Susan Krause, who lives in Potosi. (Susan makes a living by growing organic worms – isn’t that wild!) She is the daughter of Charlene (Melvin) Krause and the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin, who ran a grocery store in La Farge for several years. (Another family connection is that M.P. Melvin rented the store from my parents, who had operated a grocery store there in the early 1950s – more on that Steinmetz Grocery operation later in this piece.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Susan wondered if I knew anything about a bar that her grandparents on the Krause side had operated in La Farge. I did not have any information, but I started digging through my research notes to see if I could find anything. Sure enough, I did.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In some of my research notes, I found where August Krause has applied for a tavern license on June 1, 1950. The tavern was then called the La Farge Tap Room and at the time was the east side of the first floor of the old Opera House building. (The west side of the building was a hardware store at that time operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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After a gymnasium was built at the school in 1936, the La Farge Opera House was used less and less for community events. Herman Abelt purchased the building in the early 1940s and converted it from the original design, which had a huge, open two-story space for the Opera House. The roof was lowered and several offices were formed on the “new” second floor space. (Eventually those offices were converted to several apartments.) The street level floor was divided into two places for businesses to operate. Soon after, taverns started occupying the east side space. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In my research on the tavern owners of that era, I found that in 1944, the bar was known as Heckart’s Tavern and was operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart. A year later, there was another Christmas ad for Heckart’s Tavern, but by 1946, the bar was called the “La Farge Tap Room” and was operated by Bill and Madelyn Cottrill. The bar remained under that name until the Krause’s took over the business in 1950.<o:p></o:p></div>
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August and Alice Krause renamed the bar the “Tumbler Tavern”.<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span>I found that name for the bar when the Krause’s helped sponsor an ad in the La Farge newspaper for the championship LHS basketball team in March of 1951. There was also a Christmas/New Year’s ad for the Tumbler Tavern in an issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>in December of 1950<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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But the Krause’s didn’t stay very long as the bar was called the “Club La Farge” by December of 1951. That name remained with the bar for most of the next decade of the 1950s with several different owners. Ray Merwin was one of those owners and he added a back room to the building when he owned the tavern.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the 1970s, Jerry and Marie Brickl owned the bar, which they called “Jerry & Marie’s Place”. They also began a supper club, “The Matador”, in the space on the west side, converting an apartment that had been there. Brickl’s also renovated a kitchen space between the bar and supper club to serve both businesses. Bob & Charlotte Hysel bought the business from Brickl’s in 1976 and opened up the supper club to be part of the bar, renovated the kitchen and put in new restrooms. Hysel’s also named their bar, the “Town Tap”, a name that remains today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The name of the Club La Farge tavern brought back a memory of a story that Rex Bufton told me many years ago. It seems that Rex was a bartender at the Club La Farge in the early 1950s. This was also a time when my parents, Earl and Hope Steinmetz, were running a grocery store in La Farge (at the current site of the <i>La Farge Episcope </i>newspaper office).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rex told me that my parents would like to stop in for a drink or two at the Club La Farge after closing the grocery store on Saturday nights. During that time, Saturday nights were crazy busy for La Farge stores and sometimes it would be nearly midnight by the time that my parents got the grocery store closed and locked up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although the bars in La Farge were open until 1 am at that time, there was a village ordinance that no drinks could be served after midnight. Rex told me that sometimes my parents didn’t get to the bar until after midnight. In order for them to get a drink, Rex would pour out the contents of their drinks into glasses and set them under the bar before the midnight hour struck. So, they were technically poured before the cutoff hour. Then when my parents arrived, he would take the drinks out, add some ice and serve them. It was kind of a “No harm, No foul” kind of thing, I guess.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By 1954, my Dad had joined LaVerne Campbell in the C&S Motors garage business in La Farge so the late Saturday nights at the grocery store for my parents ended. They rented the grocery store to my Mom’s cousin, M.P. Melvin, who operated Melvin’s Super IGA Market at the location through much of the next decade. (And we are once again connected to Susan Krause, the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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That post-WW II era was a time of growth for bars in La Farge. In 1946, Ray Hollenbeck and Doug Gabrielson had wedged a bar into the space between the theater building and Ned’s Pool Hall right across the street from the Club La Farge. Stan Hollenbeck joined his brother in operating the bar, called the G.I. Tavern, by 1947 and they continued operating the bar through the early 1950s. But that’s another bar story for another time in this little history of La Farge. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-79708117047357107422020-01-01T08:26:00.001-08:002020-01-01T08:26:44.052-08:00Songs of Sorrow<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Many people familiar with the early history of La Farge know about a poem/song written by Mrs. Abby Payne titled, “The Fatal Oak”. That poem described the agonizing loss of three young Kickapoo Valley lads from Seelyburg who perished in a raft accident on the Wisconsin River. Mrs. Payne’s poem, that was later made into a song and sung to a variety of tunes, told of the 1870 rafting accident that claimed the lives of Jim Roberts, George Lawton and Aaron Hatfield.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Recently as I was doing some research on La Farge’s beginnings, I came across another poem that Abby Payne had written after the death of a close friend in another accident that occurred in 1873. This second poem again shows the talent of Mrs. Payne as a writer, but also the deep emotional investment about the loss of a dear friend. She was the voice of the community at that time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I say community, it is important to remember that the 1870s are the very beginnings of what would become the village of La Farge. Dred Bean has built his farm buildings and opened his blacksmith shop by that time at the location that is now Bean Park. But, Thomas DeJean is still two years away in 1873 from building his general store (which is now the hardware store in town) that would establish “The Corners” as the center of the town.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Community in the 1870s included the entire rural area around what would become La Farge. Mrs. Payne and her husband Truman lived on North Bear Creek and were neighbors to the Shattuck’s, who suffered the fatal accident. But, Abby Payne writes her eulogy about her friend Eliza Shattuck for all of the neighbors of the northern Kickapoo Valley. That neighborhood stretches from West Lima to the Lawton District, from South Bear Creek to Fairview Ridge, from Otter Creek to White City, from Seelyburg to Rockton and on to Valley. All those neighbors mourned the loss of Eliza Shattuck and Abby Payne’s words were felt deeply in many hearts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eliza Shattuck was the wife of George W. Shattuck, who was known as Colonel Shattuck. He had fought in the Civil War with two units from the state of Ohio, where he lived. He was a natural leader in the military, was wounded in two different battles and was mustered out of the service after the war holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. For the rest of his life he would be known as Col. Shattuck.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Shortly after the war, he married Eliza Little, who was born in Ireland, but lived near George in Ohio. In 1870, the Shattuck’s moved to Vernon County and bought a farm on North Bear Creek. (When I was growing up in the 1950s that farm was known as the Brewer place and was located to the road now known as Canyon Avenue.) In 1873, George and Eliza Shattuck had five children.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For the 4<sup>th</sup>of July that year, the family was going to Rockton to celebrate Independence Day. Eliza had prepared food for a dinner in Rockton at the celebration and the family was dressed in their finest clothes. They probably rode their horse-drawn wagon up Canyon Avenue onto Morningstar Ridge and then took that road west to where it intersects with Compton Road. Then they headed north on that road towards Jug Creek, which would lead them over to Rockton.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At this point on the ridge (where the Theron Moore farm is now located), a ferocious thunderstorm overtook the Shattuck’s wagon while they were traveling down a heavily wooded hill. Soon the gusty winds blew a tree over that struck the Shattuck’s wagon. All of the family members were thrown from the wagon and injured, but none as seriously as mother Eliza. The children and Col. Shattuck would all recover from their injuries, but Eliza did not. She was taken to a neighboring farmhouse, where she passed away on July 21<sup>st</sup>from her injuries. She was 32 years old.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although Abby Payne’s poems were quite well known for that time, her poem about her friend Eliza apparently was not known too much outside of the Bear Creek area. In her book, <u>Looking At Bear Creek</u>, (1995), Trixie Larson has several pages on the Shattuck families that lived on Bear Creek, including Abby Payne’s poem. In introducing the poem, Trixie mentions that Alta Todd had once found a copy of the poem/ballad. It was printed on the back of a paper flour sack and had been handed down through the Todd family for generations. Here then, is that poem:<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Song of Mrs. Shattuck<o:p></o:p></div>
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By Abby Payne<o:p></o:p></div>
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Farewell my dear husband and children farewell,<o:p></o:p></div>
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How I feel to leave thee there is no one can tell. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We all enjoyed all the pleasures this earth can afford.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And now I must leave you and dwell with my Lord.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In my richest attire on the fourth of July, <o:p></o:p></div>
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How little we knew that death was so nigh.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My whole family circle, my husband and me, <o:p></o:p></div>
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Came nigh getting killed by the limb of a tree.<o:p></o:p></div>
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While passing through the greenwoods and down a long hill,<o:p></o:p></div>
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A storm was fast approaching, my blood seemed to chill.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My soul was filled with horror, but all done was no good.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was bound to overtake us while passing through the wood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The storm came on quickly, the wind it did blow,<o:p></o:p></div>
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The lightning did flash and the thunder did roll.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The trees were fast falling, the limbs all around,<o:p></o:p></div>
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One fell on our wagon and swept us to the ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We were picked up insensible in all our sad fate,<o:p></o:p></div>
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And carried to the neighbors, our destiny to wait.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But when I survived from the wounds I received, <o:p></o:p></div>
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The state of my family caused my spirit to grieve. </div>
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But I have no time to murmur for soon I must go<o:p></o:p></div>
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I must leave my dear family and friends here below.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But your Master has told you that you can come to me,<o:p></o:p></div>
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For I must go forever and cannot come to thee.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My thanks to the Grangers for their kindness to me,<o:p></o:p></div>
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There’s a lodge up in Heaven for thee and for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Savior is our President, our pass word is prayer,<o:p></o:p></div>
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We can gain the last victory when we all get up there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Farewell, Christian friends the whole world around,<o:p></o:p></div>
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I shall sleep in the grave till the trumpet shall sound.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then my Master will call me and bid me arise, <o:p></o:p></div>
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To meet you in glory in yonder bright skies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Farewell, my dear husband, for you I do love,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Prepare to meet me in Heaven above.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We will celebrate a day far better at last,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where the storm and the tempest of this life is past.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Farewell my dear children, I bid you adieu,<o:p></o:p></div>
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The time is fast approaching when I must leave you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But your father will love you as he has done before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Prepare to meet me on Cannan’s bright shore.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My family is surviving and free from all pain, <o:p></o:p></div>
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They’ve all gotten better and they’ve gone home again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But oh how lonesome and lonely it will be,<o:p></o:p></div>
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For that bright and happy home is no longer for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Farewell my dear mother, I can no longer wait.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You will come to see me, but it will be too late.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For I will be buried beneath the cold clay,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Come visit the spot and see where I lay.<o:p></o:p></div>
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She flapped her bright wings and we see her no more.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We think we now see her on Cannan’s bright shore.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where the angels are waiting to welcome her home.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where the storm and the tempest never more will roam.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The grave of Eliza Little Shattuck is located in the Bear Creek Cemetery. On the Shattuck family tombstone are these words dedicated to who she was:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>She died as she lived<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>At peace with all.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-75335105740119387682019-10-30T07:59:00.000-07:002019-10-30T07:59:23.825-07:00A MYSTERIOUS DEATH - PART II<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
It has been over two months since I wrote the initial part of the story of the events that happened in La Farge on that fateful October evening back in 1947. Since the article was published in July, I have heard from many people about the incident. They had many different aspects of the story to tell.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nearly a decade ago, LaVerne Campbell told me about the shootings that occurred that night to make sure that I knew what he thought actually happened. He said that Vincent Campton did not commit suicide, as was officially cited as the cause of death, but instead was shot by Ted (Buck) Rolfe that night in the trailer park. <o:p></o:p></div>
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LaVerne said that Vincent was a heavy drinker and when he got drunk, he would beat his wife, Thelma, who was the daughter of Buck Rolfe. She would often flee to Buck’s trailer for safety and to get away from her husband. After several of these incidents Buck Rolfe told Vincent that if he ever hurt Thelma again, he would kill Vincent. As LaVerne told me, “Buck Rolfe was a man of his word.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 2010, as I was nearing the publishing of my first volume of La Farge’s history, I interviewed Dick Johannesen at his house in Viola. We talked about La Farge history for a couple of hours and during the conversation, he brought up the shooting of Vincent Campton. Dick told me that his Dad, Finn Johannesen, was the village president in La Farge in 1947. On the night of the shooting, Vernon County Sheriff Morris Moon came to the Johannesen house to ask Finn to go with him to the trailer park. (I also have learned that several other village leaders, including Ted Roberts, were requested by Sheriff Moon to go with him to the shooting site that night.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dick told me that Sheriff Moon laid out the crime scene for the village leaders and explained how it appeared that Vincent had shot himself. There were apparently no witnesses to his being shot. (By this time, both Vincent and Thelma had been transported to the hospital in Viroqua.) Unfortunately, the suicide attempt didn’t seem to add up for the sheriff. Apparently Vincent was shot in the back and Sheriff Moon could not comprehend how Vincent could physically accomplish that. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“He didn’t have long enough arms.” Sheriff Moon apparently used this quote that night, and I heard it repeated by Dick Johannesen and several others who talked to me about this incident. Vincent also had no flash burns on his body, which might have occurred if the gun barrel was held near his body, as in a suicide attempt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Although the facts about the shooting did not seem to line up for Sheriff Moon that evening, the death certificate for Vincent Campton, who died the day after the shooting at the Viroqua hospital, lists death from “a lung hemorrhage due to a self-inflicted gun/bullet wound”. Dr. Frank Gollin, who treated Vincent Campton at the scene of the shooting incident, ruled the death a suicide. (Another source told me that although Vincent was near death and barely conscious when he was transported to Viroqua to the hospital that night, he did mumble something like, “He shot me” repeatedly.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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We now know that Thelma, after quarreling with a drunken Vincent, had fled to the trailer park that night because her father lived there. She had her two-year old daughter, Karen with her. Eventually she went to another trailer nearby where Lloyd and Velma Kellar lived, as Velma and Thelma were friends. Vincent burst into the Kellar trailer with a gun and started to threaten his baby daughter, Karen. Velma and Thelma tried to get the gun away from Vincent. In the struggle the gun went off, grazing and wounding Thelma. Vincent then fled the Kellar trailer and Velma called the police and doctor. This part of the story was shared by Dennis Kellar and Rhonda (Kellar) Wemmer and had been passed down to them by their mother, Velma.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A rather amazing coincidence happened about two weeks after the first part of this story was published. I had a phone conversation and then subsequent e-mails with Sandra Carmichael, who is the daughter of Karen Rolfe. (She told me in an e-mail that her mother, Carron K. Campton, had passed away in July of 2015.) She wrote me that she and her aunt, Anne (Connelly) Stoltz, had been doing research on the Vincent Campton death at the same time as my column was published. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After the shootings of October 1947, Thelma left La Farge. Her daughter, Karen Rolfe was raised by Mettie and Art Alvord on their Jug Creek farm. Mettie was Buck Rolfe’s aunt. Karen graduated from La Farge High School in 1963 and moved away from the town where she was born.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sandra had never heard about the story of Vincent Campton’s death being a possible murder. (Actually, Karen never talked with her family about Vincent’s death.) Others always had told her that he died in World War II. When Sandra had started an online search for Vincent’s records, she found a <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>article about the 1947 shootings in La Farge. She was shocked to learn about the shooting, or as Sandra phrased it in the e-mail, “Her great-grandfather had shot and killed her grandfather.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Sandra Carmichael and Anne Stoltz came to Viroqua in late July to search for information about Vincent Campton’s death at the county courthouse. They also stopped to visit with Cecil Rolfe, who was the first child of Thelma, born in 1943. He told his relatives that I had just written an article about the Vincent Campton death that had been published in the <i>Episcope</i>. That is when Sandra reached out to me about the case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In her e-mail, Sandra said that they found Karen Rolfe’s birth certificate of June 1, 1945 and that Vincent Campton was listed as the father. They also found a marriage record of Vincent and Thelma that occurred on October 25, 1946 at the home of the La Farge Justice of Peace, E.A. Sewell. Sandra and Anne also stopped at the Vernon County Sheriff’s office to see if there were any records there about the shootings. In her last e-mail to me, Sandra said the sheriff’s office continues to search for any report about the incident.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I can’t believe a whole damn town kept this secret for so many years. Just boggles me on how many people knew about it and did nothing but turn and look away.” This quote from one of Sandra Carmichael’s e-mails does raise an interesting point.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It does appear that many people in La Farge did think that Buck Rolfe had shot Vincent Campton that October night in 1947. It also appears that many of those same people thought that a man who beat his wife and threatened to kill his baby daughter probably deserved this fate. More than one person told me, including some members of the Campton family that “He deserved what he got”. “He had it coming”, was another common refrain from many who I talked to. (In one rather amazing revelation, I learned that one of Vincent Campton’s brothers had been a friend of Buck Rolfe’s over the years after the shooting.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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I have been hesitant to write this concluding “Local History Notebook” on the death of Vincent Campton. In the end, I was encouraged by both Cecil Rolfe and Sandra Carmichael to write it so the story could be told. It is not a story that adds to the stature of La Farge as a community, but it may be a story better understood with more light shining on it. I suspect many small towns along the Kickapoo have similar tales stored away in dark places.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although many have told me that Buck Rolfe shot Vincent Campton that evening so many years ago to protect his daughter and her baby, my writing this column does not prove the fact. Indeed, the truth of whatever happened to Vince Campton that night probably will never be known. Instead, this story may shine a little light on a dark chapter in the history of this little Kickapoo River town. In the end, that may help some. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I would like to thank Cecil Rolfe, Deb Rolfe, Beth Larson, Sarah Tunks, Sandra Carmichael, Anne Stoltz, Mike Campton, Dennis Kellar, Rhonda Wemmer, Ron Roberts, Kent Steinmetz, Dick Johannesen, and Winfred Bold for help with information for this article.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Winfred Bold called me from his home in Janesville after reading the first part of this story back in July. He shared his memories about that evening and I will end this by sharing some of what Winfred told me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He was a senior at La Farge High School in the fall of 1947 and was at a LHS Senior Play practice in the gym on the night of the shooting. The trailer park was across the parking lot from the school gym where the play practice was being held. Winfred said the shootings happened sometime between 7 & 8 pm that night. He said the students heard the ruckus outside and went out to see what was going on. The police and a large crowd were there, but nobody would say what had happened. He heard later that Buck Rolfe had shot Vince Campton and that Vince deserved it for beating up and shooting Thelma.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next week after the shootings, the one-act play contest was held at the LHS gym. La Farge students performed three plays that evening and the winning play was “The Bad Penny”. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-808782641207125902019-10-30T07:53:00.000-07:002019-10-30T07:53:40.658-07:00A MYSTERIOUS DEATH - PART I<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
As I was preparing to finish up on my first local history book, prior to it being printed in 2010, I received a call from LaVerne Campbell. He wanted me to stop into the C & S Motors garage building sometime so we could talk about something from the past that had happened in La Farge. Actually, LaVerne really wanted to talk to me about one specific event, a mysterious death that occurred in the village in October of 1947. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The conversation with LaVerne took place sometime in 2009 and the following May, I met with Dick Johannesen at his house in Viola to talk about La Farge’s history. During that talk, Dick brought up another recollection of his own about that mysterious death that LaVerne had wanted to talk about. So, armed with those conversations and the newspaper stories of the day, let’s go back to that time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Post-World War II years were a vibrant time in La Farge. As the men and women who had served in the armed forces during the war were discharged, most returned to their hometown. Many were recently married and starting families. La Farge, like many small towns during that time, was immediately hit with a housing shortage – there were virtually no vacant houses or apartments available. A housing boom began in the village as new houses were being built along every street, particularly those north of Main Street. However, due to a nation wide shortage of building materials at the time, building new homes was a slow process. It took time for those houses to be completed and immediate housing needs still had to be met.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In January of 1946, La Farge municipal leaders learned that the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) would provide the village with ten temporary housing units (trailers). The FHA trailers (available from military bases after the war ended) would be loaned to the village with the idea that military veterans would get preference to live in them. The La Farge village board appointed a committee to purchase land for the new trailer houses. Soon after, several lots just to the south of the schoolhouse were purchased for the housing project. (This property is currently the school parking lot just to the south of the gymnasium.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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The village was also responsible for providing any rough grading, street access and utility lines to the property. In March, La Farge Village President Finn Johannesen (Dick’s father) and board member Bill Adams went to Chicago and signed the FHA papers so that La Farge would get the trailers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In mid-July the ten trailers arrived in La Farge. Because some of the trailers did not have any water or toilet facilities, the FHA also constructed a building on the grounds that housed showers, bathrooms and a laundry for those who lived in the trailers. Eight of the trailers were standard models (22 feet long by 7 feet wide), large enough for one or two people. The other two trailers (double-wide’s at 18 by 20 feet) were expandable and large enough to house a small family. The FHA set rents for a trailer at $15-20 per month, while the FHA also paid the village for all property taxes and utility fees. The new trailer camp was filled and operational by the end of August. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For the next several years, the trailer camp was usually occupied to capacity. But as more new houses were built in La Farge in those post-war years, the trailers, because of their size and limited amenities became less desirable. After a few years, the federal government became less involved in providing housing for WW II veterans as well. In April of 1949, the FHA gifted all of the buildings at the trailer camp to the village of La Farge. As more and more of the trailers became vacant, the village decided to sell them. On October 17, 1950 an auction was held at the site and the ten trailers were sold and soon moved. The utility building remained on the site.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The school district bought the trailer park lots after the auction. The utility building remained on the site and when football was started at LHS in the fall of 1956, the building was used to store the player’s football equipment. The new Wildcat football team also used the shower room and bathroom facilities in the utility building that inaugural year. <o:p></o:p></div>
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During the evening of Wednesday, October 22, 1947, an incident occurred in the trailer camp in La Farge. Two people were shot during the evening and one man died. Here is the front-page story about the incident as printed in the October 30<sup>th</sup>issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise</i>under the headline:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Vincent Campton Dies Thursday Night at Viroqua<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i>Vincent La Verne Campton, 26, passed away at the Viroqua hospital Thursday night, as the result of a self-inflicted wound he suffered Wednesday night. Campton shot himself through the heart following a quarrel with his wife, Thelma, during which he shot her in the leg.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Mrs. Campton had gone to the trailer park near the school to visit her father, Ted Rolfe, after quarreling with her husband. She had left the trailer home of her father to go to a neighboring trailer occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Keller. Campton followed her there and renewed the quarrel. After striking her he shot her just above the knee with a .22 rifle. He then ran a short distance from the trailer and shot himself, the bullet piercing the edge of his heart. Mrs. Keller was a witness to the shooting of Mrs. Campton.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Mrs. Kellar called Mervin Erickson, who was on duty as night watchman, and Dr. Gollin. Sheriff Morris Moon was called to the scene. The Campton couple was taken to the Viroqua hospital, where Campton died Thursday night.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Campton was a veteran of World War II.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Mrs. Campton is expected to recover.</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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I need to add some clarification before we continue. Velma Kellar, (last name is misspelled a couple of times in the article), who witnessed the shooting of her friend Thelma that fateful night<b>, </b>called Mike Erickson, who had the night shift as the village policeman (identified in the article as a watchman). Dr. Frank Gollin, the village’s doctor at the time, was also called to the scene and arranged transportation to the hospital in Viroqua for both people who were shot. Another article in the next day’s (October 23) <i>LaCrosse Tribune</i>said that Vincent “Campton had not regained consciousness at the time he was moved”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is another side to this story, actually an almost completly different version that was told to me by both LaVerne Campbell and Dick Johannesen. Next time in the “Local History Notebook” we will look at the other version of what happened that evening in the La Farge trailer park.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-49466403489027749722019-10-30T07:48:00.003-07:002019-10-30T07:48:57.513-07:00ROTTEN ROADS!<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Throughout the history of La Farge, there seems to have been a near constant complaint about the state of the roads leading into the village. I’m sure this is true for other small towns in the state, but it is interesting to note how this little town on the Kickapoo seems to be seeking better roads throughout much of its existence. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As you watch the employees of Organic Valley drive into La Farge each morning, you wonder what they think of their commute on some really bad roads. Perhaps we should adopt a rating system for our local roads leading into the village. Since we have so many bad roads leading into La Farge, we should start our rating system on that end. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s start with the worst rating, which we can title “Worse Than Awful” (WTA). Most of Highway 131 going north from La Farge would fall in this WTA category, although there have been some recent patches here and there along the road to Rockton. Those nice patches only accentuate how most of the rest of the road is worse than awful. Which is rather surprising since this section of Hwy 131 is a relatively new road, being constructed in the mid-1970s to carry traffic around lovely Lake La Farge. It appears that some of that original road is now in play in some of the deep and cavernous ruts in the present state highway.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our next rating could be “Awful”, and Highway 82 going towards Viroqua can easily fall into this category. The road is generally in poor condition from the Kickapoo Valley to the county seat, with some parts worse than others. The Vernon County Highway Department probably recognizes the condition of the state highway because they have turned pretty much the whole route into a double-yellow No Passing Zone. Recent flood damage along this route has led to some minor patching in places, but for the most part, Hwy 82 heading west is just plain awful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That same highway leading east towards Hillsboro is a little better, so it can be put into the “Poor” category. Of course, I live on this road, so I drive it every day. It’s a short hop for me to La Farge, where Hwy 82 really gets “Awful” or maybe even WTA as the village’s Main Street. The village’s elected leaders are formulating a plan to fix up La Farge’s Main Street, but it has been a long time in the making and a finished product still does not appear in the immediate future.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Highway 131, leading south out of La Farge towards Viola is the best state highway serving the community and deserves an “OK” rating. Flood repairs at Lawton’s seems to be a constant on this road lately and the recent washouts along the highway as it gets to Viola seem to create a constant disappearing shoulder act. The stretch of this state road from La Farge to the county line at Tunnelville is the newest of our local highways, as it was constructed in the early 1980s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The best road leading into La Farge, one that would definitely be rated in the “Good” category isn’t a state highway or even a county road. Yes, the town of Stark’s Plum Run Road is a good road, mainly because it was reconstructed using Ho-Chunk Nation funds and is not a decade old. Good planning and use of quality materials by the Ho-Chunk make this a dandy road coming into the village.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Problems with the roads leading into the village have always seemed to be a problem. A few <i>Local History Notebook</i>’s back, I wrote about how the businesses in La Farge had paid for the dragging and grading of Otter Creek Road (now Hwy 82) in the spring of 1915. That stretch of road was a notorious bad spot, but heading out La Farge the other way back then would have produced a worse one – Jordan’s Flat. This section of road leading in from the east (again, now Hwy 82) was a swampy quagmire that was barely passable at any time except the winter when it would freeze up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The stories about getting stuck on Jordan’s Flat are too numerous to mention, but a couple can be mentioned here. If you farmed at the Jordan place, you needed a spare set of draft horses or a good tractor, because you would constantly be helping to pull mired down vehicles out of mud holes. One time, a circus that was traveling to La Farge had all of the wagons become stuck in the mud there on Jordan’s Flat. Using an elephant to pull all of the wagons out seemed like the sensible thing to do for the circus owner. However, the animal pulled too much and the pachyderm had to be pulled out numerous times when it got stuck. (They probably had to use all the circus horses to get the elephant out of the mud.) In the end, the elephant did not survive the ordeal! That’s right, the road at Jordan’s Flat was so bad it killed an elephant! <o:p></o:p></div>
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Jordan’s Flat was so bad that an alternate route along the hillsides to the north operated most of the time. The alternate upper route started just out of La Farge, skirted the north side of the swampy section, ascended to where our house is currently located, crossed to the east at that elevation going above the Baptist Cemetery and Church (today, the Bear Creek Cemetery), before rejoining the road just past the Gold Mine. Eventually enough rock, gravel and logs were poured into Jordan’s Flat that it became mostly passable for the entire year. As a matter of fact, the section of Hwy 82 from La Farge to Hillsboro was the first state road completed to La Farge, opening for traffic in 1939. The new state highway was graveled at the time, but that section also became La Farge’s first paved highway in 1946.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here is how I described that momentous event in Volume I of my La Farge history: <i>A milestone occurred in the village at the end of July. State Highway 82 running east from Hillsboro was paved to La Farge, making it the first “treated surface road” to ever enter the village. As one old-timer was quoted in the village newspaper, “This is the first time in 70 years that a person could get into La Farge over a surface treated road in my 70 years of residence in this village.” Much of the credit for getting the paving project done was credited to Lester Wood, La Farge’s county supervisor, who lobbied for the new road to his hometown. Editor Widstrand then went on to call for cement surfacing of Highway 82 to Viroqua and paving of County M running north and south out of La Farge. In March of the following year, Arnott Widstrand would join Lester Wood as representatives from La Farge to appear at a hearing in Madison to petition the state highway department to pave Highway 131 (former Vernon County road M) from Ontario to Readstown. Eventually extensive graveling work was done on the old river road by the end of 1947.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Now, if you think a protest is in order to try to get some new roads, we have had plenty of that in La Farge’s history as well. From the 1939 protests for better state roads to replace the railroad that was being pulled out of La Farge to the 1975 bridge protests that stopped the school buses from running, there has been plenty of organized complaints. (Shoot, there was even a local protest movement to NOT build a new Hwy 131 south of La Farge back in the mid-1970s) But those are stories for another time. Watch those potholes and deep ruts in the roads, you never know where they may take you.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-32265659232510033192019-10-30T07:47:00.000-07:002019-10-30T07:47:28.620-07:00SOME LA FARGE BAR HISTORY<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Recently a rather momentous occurrence happened in the sleepy little Kickapoo River town of La Farge. On August 28<sup>th</sup>, the Town Tap, the village’s only bar, offered twenty-cent hot dogs and chili dogs for lunch. Although the chili dogs were delicious, the significance of the event was that it marked the 20<sup>th</sup>anniversary for Phil & Deb’s Town Tap. That is a rather long time for a bar or tavern to remain under the same ownership in these parts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Phil & Deb Campbell purchased the business in 1999 from Bob & Charlotte Hysel, who had operated the bar from 1976 until 1988 and again from 1994 until selling it to the Campbell’s. Deb Campbell passed away in 2012, but her name remains on the business to this day. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I was at the Town Tap munching on my chili dogs, I shared some information with Phil about some previous owners of the bar. I had been investigating who had owned the bar some seventy years before due to a conversation that I had at a family reunion back in June.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was a Melvin family reunion on June 15<sup>th</sup>at the Methodist Church on Salem Ridge. Ruth Clark organized the reunion and a nice crowd attended the event that included a tasty potluck lunch, lots of visiting and looking at family scrapbooks, and walking around the Salem Ridge Cemetery to look at family graves. I was at the reunion because I am the grandson of Isa Melvin Campbell, who was the daughter of Scott and Lucy Melvin. At one time, Scott Melvin owned pretty much all of Salem Ridge, so there are lots of family connections to that place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the reunion, I met Susan Krause, who lives in Potosi. (Susan makes a living by growing organic worms – isn’t that wild!) She is the daughter of Charlene (Melvin) Krause and the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin, who ran a grocery store in La Farge for several years. (Another family connection is that M.P. Melvin rented the store from my parents, who had operated a grocery store there in the early 1950s – more on that Steinmetz Grocery operation later in this piece.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Susan wondered if I knew anything about a bar that her grandparents on the Krause side had operated in La Farge. I did not have any information, but I started digging through my research notes to see if I could find anything. Sure enough, I did.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In some of my research notes, I found where August Krause has applied for a tavern license on June 1, 1950. The tavern was then called the La Farge Tap Room and at the time was the east side of the first floor of the old Opera House building. (The west side of the building was a hardware store at that time operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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After a gymnasium was built at the school in 1936, the La Farge Opera House was used less and less for community events. Herman Abelt purchased the building in the early 1940s and converted it from the original design, which had a huge, open two-story space for the Opera House. The roof was lowered and several offices were formed on the “new” second floor space. (Eventually those offices were converted to several apartments.) The street level floor was divided into two places for businesses to operate. Soon after, taverns started occupying the east side space. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In my research on the tavern owners of that era, I found that in 1944, the bar was known as Heckart’s Tavern and was operated by Vern and Vivian Heckart. A year later, there was another Christmas ad for Heckart’s Tavern, but by 1946, the bar was called the “La Farge Tap Room” and was operated by Bill and Madelyn Cottrill. The bar remained under that name until the Krause’s took over the business in 1950.<o:p></o:p></div>
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August and Alice Krause renamed the bar the “Tumbler Tavern”.<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span>I found that name for the bar when the Krause’s helped sponsor an ad in the La Farge newspaper for the championship LHS basketball team in March of 1951. There was also a Christmas/New Year’s ad for the Tumbler Tavern in an issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>in December of 1950<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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But the Krause’s didn’t stay very long as the bar was called the “Club La Farge” by December of 1951. That name remained with the bar for most of the next decade of the 1950s with several different owners. Ray Merwin was one of those owners and he added a back room to the building when he owned the tavern.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the 1970s, Jerry and Marie Brickl owned the bar, which they called “Jerry & Marie’s Place”. They also began a supper club, “The Matador”, in the space on the west side, converting an apartment that had been there. Brickl’s also renovated a kitchen space between the bar and supper club to serve both businesses. Bob & Charlotte Hysel bought the business from Brickl’s in 1976 and opened up the supper club to be part of the bar, renovated the kitchen and put in new restrooms. Hysel’s also named their bar, the “Town Tap”, a name that remains today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The name of the Club La Farge tavern brought back a memory of a story that Rex Bufton told me many years ago. It seems that Rex was a bartender at the Club La Farge in the early 1950s. This was also a time when my parents, Earl and Hope Steinmetz, were running a grocery store in La Farge (at the current site of the <i>La Farge Episcope </i>newspaper office).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rex told me that my parents would like to stop in for a drink or two at the Club La Farge after closing the grocery store on Saturday nights. During that time, Saturday nights were crazy busy for La Farge stores and sometimes it would be nearly midnight by the time that my parents got the grocery store closed and locked up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although the bars in La Farge were open until 1 am at that time, there was a village ordinance that no drinks could be served after midnight. Rex told me that sometimes my parents didn’t get to the bar until after midnight. In order for them to get a drink, Rex would pour out the contents of their drinks into glasses and set them under the bar before the midnight hour struck. So, they were technically poured before the cutoff hour. Then when my parents arrived, he would take the drinks out, add some ice and serve them. It was kind of a “No harm, No foul” kind of thing, I guess.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By 1954, my Dad had joined LaVerne Campbell in the C&S Motors garage business in La Farge so the late Saturday nights at the grocery store for my parents ended. They rented the grocery store to my Mom’s cousin, M.P. Melvin, who operated Melvin’s Super IGA Market at the location through much of the next decade. (And we are once again connected to Susan Krause, the granddaughter of M.P. Melvin.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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That post-WW II era was a time of growth for bars in La Farge. In 1946, Ray Hollenbeck and Doug Gabrielson had wedged a bar into the space between the theater building and Ned’s Pool Hall right across the street from the Club La Farge. Stan Hollenbeck joined his brother in operating the bar, called the G.I. Tavern, by 1947 and they continued operating the bar through the early 1950s. But that’s another bar story for another time in this little history of La Farge. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-88425167194826179972019-06-05T07:04:00.000-07:002019-06-05T07:04:44.552-07:00La Farge's Commercial Club<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<i>A meeting of professional men was held at the Masonic Temple on Friday evening, September 3, for the purpose of organizing a Commercial Club.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> </i>Thus began an article in the September 9, 1937 issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>newspaper about the establishment of an organization of village businessmen. The article went on to tell what the new club was going to be all about: <i>The purpose of the organization </i><i>is to bring together the business and professional men of La Farge for the purpose of bringing about uniform business practices, better harmony and to aid in the development of this Community. It is hoped that through the efforts of the Community Club that La Farge will be selected as the Headquarters for the Kickapoo River Flood Control Survey, and later headquarters for this project.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> </i>At a later meeting held on September 7<sup>th </sup>of that year, the new Commercial Club elected Ralph Freeze, an attorney in the village as its first President. Other officers elected in that 1937 organizational meeting were Secretary – Gene Calhoun, who ran a funeral home in the village and Treasurer – Mac Marshall, who owned a Main Street hotel. The four Directors elected to fill out the Executive Committee of the club were Bernard Brokaw, William Adams, who ran a hardware store in La Farge, Harry Lounsbury, who ran the village’s drug store and Emory Thayer, the manager of Nuzum’s Lumber. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the time that the new Commercial Club was formed, La Farge and the entire Kickapoo Valley were undergoing some dynamic times. As was mentioned earlier regarding the flood control survey, Congress had approved a federal study of the Kickapoo Valley in August of 1937. The study would be held over the next few years and La Farge’s business community wanted the village to be the center of that project. Besides the federal flood control study, an impending event of another nature loomed in the immediate future – the abandonment of the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In August of 1937 a protest meeting was held in La Farge regarding the proposed abandonment of the Valley’s railroad. At that meeting, the Kickapoo Valley Defense Association (KVDA) was formed with La Farge Village President Arch Davidson serving as president of the new organization. Davidson had been a leader in the Valley to get the flood control study (In January of 1937, Davidson and Ralph Nuzum, who owned the lumberyard in town, had spearheaded a petition drive to be sent to Congress in favor of the flood control study. The petitions sent to Congress had been gathered by the Kickapoo Flood Control Association, another organization that Davidson served as president.), and now he would lead the fight to save the railroad.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the first things that the new Commercial Club did was to sponsor a Harvest Festival & Fair to be held in La Farge in mid-October of 1937. The new festival, which featured a parade and a variety of activities was a success and was held under the sponsorship of the new businessmen’s club for several more years. In 1939, all of the businesses in La Farge closed from noon to 6 pm on the day of the festival.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Later in 1939, members of the La Farge Commercial Club went to Hillsboro to celebrate the opening of the new state highway between the two communities. The last section of the new Highway 82 had been completed that fall. With the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad gone by this time, the development of state highways to La Farge was a main concern for village leaders. With the completion of Hwy 82, La Farge had the first state road to the village. While at the meeting in Hillsboro, the community leaders from both towns also celebrated the re-opening of the Hillsboro Brewery and sampled some of the “Hillsboro Pale” that was again being made.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The opening of the new state highway between La Farge and Hillsboro was the result of strong lobbying by village leaders, led by Davidson. When the railroad abandonment became a certainty earlier in the year, the KVDA switched its emphasis to getting new and improved state roads to the Kickapoo Valley. Because the railroad had been used extensively by many Kickapoo Valley businesses, especially for the receiving of goods to sell, a new and reliable highway system was needed as a replacement. Davidson and other La Farge businessmen continued to have the state improve and gravel Highway 82 to Viroqua and to have the state designate the old “River Road” (then County Hwy M) as a state highway.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Having good roads to La Farge had always been a priority for its business community. In 1915, La Farge businesses had donated money to have the Otter Creek Road dragged and graded. At the same time, June of 1915, three La Farge businesses – Chase’s, DeJean’s and Householder’s – had placed a notice in the local newspaper announcing that their stores would be closing at 8 pm except for Wednesday and Saturday. Operating hours for local businesses could be a point of contention in a small town like La Farge. Probably because the stores actually competed for people’s business when they came to town to shop, establishing a mutual time for hours of operation was difficult to achieve at times. But later that month the community came together to promote La Farge’s 4<sup>th </sup>of July Celebration.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A call was made to all the automobile owners in the La Farge area, estimated to be about 75 at the time, for a Booster Club Trip to promote the 4<sup>th </sup>of July. Eventually 36 automobiles and around 150 people went on the booster trip that included stops in West Lima, Bloom City, Woodstock, Rock Bridge, Hub City and Yuba in the morning of that last Saturday of June in 1915. When the booster caravan reached Hillsboro, everyone stopped for lunch before continuing on to Dilly, Valley and Rockton in the afternoon to conclude the trip. La Farge’s 4<sup>th </sup>of July Celebration was well attended and successful that year thanks to the efforts of the business community.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1920, the La Farge businessmen united once again to sponsor the La Farge baseball team. The “town team” was the pride of the village and always seemed to play for a championship each year. Over the years, the sponsorship by La Farge’s businesses for the ball team was a given.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During World War II, the La Farge Commercial Club ceased to function as the village turned its attention to various drives to support the war effort. After the war was over, there were calls for the Commercial Club to again unite La Farge’s business community. In 1947, the La Farge Development Association was formed and Casey Sanford was chosen as its first president. Sanford, who owned a men’s clothing store on La Farge’s Main Street, led the new organization in helping with the village’s annual 4<sup>th</sup>of July Celebration. The new business organization sponsored a raffle for that year’s Independence Day. The following year, the development association co-sponsored the 4<sup>th</sup>of July with the newly formed VFW Post.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1949, a Lions Club was formed in La Farge and it seemed to take the place of the previous business organizations. The president of that first Lions Club in La Farge was Ed Deibig, who owned the Chevy-Buick garage in town. The new Lions Club sponsored a “Wild West Rodeo” that was held on Labor Day. The rodeo was held at Calhoon Park, but crowds that first year were small because of rainy weather. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That Christmas season, the Lions Club sponsored a “Clock Stops Contest” fundraiser. People would pay to make a guess on how long a hand-wound clock would run. The clock was on display in the front window of one of the Main Street stores. The clock ran for 92 hours before stopping and a winner was announced with much Yuletide fanfare.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the main projects that the La Farge Lions Club undertook was to build new tennis courts in town. Using proceeds from several more successful rodeos, the courts were constructed beyond the left field fence at Calhoon Park. John Ferris, who ran a funeral parlor and furniture store in the village, was key in making the rodeos successful. Finn Johannesen, who ran a grocery store in town and also served as the village’s president for several years, led the Lions club in getting the tennis courts completed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Over the years several different business organizations were formed in La Farge to provide some type of order in the commercial sector of the village. Some times the individual businesses had to act upon their own. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In May of 1947, a notice appeared in the <i>Enterprise </i>that the four grocery stores in town – the Cash Store, Clover Farm Store, Andrews Market and Kennedy’s Grocery – would all be closed during the summer on Thursday afternoons. The reason given for the new closing hours were due to the late Wednesday nights when the free movies were held on Main Street during the summer. At a time when those La Farge grocery stores were sometimes open for 15 hours a day, a break was needed for the workers in the store to catch some rest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Different times; different needs for this little Kickapoo River town.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-23295882747006414832019-05-22T08:47:00.001-07:002019-05-22T08:47:17.412-07:00MURDER OR NOT - PART III<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
In this conclusion about the strange death of Robert Morris that occurred in La Farge on February 24, 1928, the focus will shift to the legal proceedings to punish a possible murderer in the case. In the last installment, we learned that several people had come forward to implicate Frank Traister regarding the death of Morris. Robert Morris had been in the upstairs apartment of Traister, who lived with his family in the Travers Building on La Farge’s Main Street, on the evening prior to his death. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Following investigations by the Vernon County Sheriff and a Pinkerton Agency detective brought in for the case, Frank Traister was arrested on an alcohol charge (Traister was known to have run a speakeasy from his apartment). After questioning in Viroqua by the Vernon County District Attorney, Traister eventually admitted guilt to a 4<sup>th</sup>degree murder (manslaughter) charge and was sentenced for up to two years in the state penitentiary. So that is where we ended last time, but that is certainly not the end of the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the March 22, 1928 issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i><b></b>newspaper, a front-page headline boldly screams out, “TRAISTER CASE STILL UNSETTLED”. Under the headline, <i>Enterprise </i>editor B.W. Koob, who had been hesitant to print very many first-hand accounts on the case since its earliest phases writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Reliable and authentic reports regarding the proceedings in the Traister case, have failed to reach this office, as it appears there has been several unforeseen obstacles presented. The following data is taken from last week’s <i>Vernon County Censor:</i></b><i></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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It is interesting to see how often the editor of the Enterprise uses other newspapers’ accounts when covering this story. In his original account of Robert Morris’ death, Editor Koob had a lengthy article about the deadly incident. But in the weeks following the strange death, Koob seems to rely solely on other newspapers for presenting information. This practice will continue as Traister’s legal case plays out over several months. Let us return to the March 15<sup>th</sup>article in the <i>Vernon County Censor </i>that Koob had introduced:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The case of State of Wisconsin vs. Frank Traister, of La Farge, seems to be arousing considerable interest among our citizens. Proceedings were had before Judge Mahoney on Monday in which the defendant was sentenced to the Penitentiary for from one to two years on a plea of manslaughter in the fourth degree.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Prior to that time attorneys had been employed to look after his interest, but no notice was served upon his attorneys of any proceedings and upon learning what had taken place his attorneys immediately appeared in court and demanded that he be brought before the court to ascertain whether or not he had entered a plea of guilt understandingly. The court refused to order the prisoner brought before the court, but affidavits were obtained stating the true facts in the matter, and Attorney Bennett went to Madison and appeared before the Supreme Court, Wednesday morning at 9 a.m., and that court issued an order directing the County Judge to proceed no further in the matter and to grant the defendant the proper hearing that he might be tried on the merits or in the alternative to show cause before the Supreme Court why he should not do that.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Besides being one amazingly long run-on sentence, that last part of the <i>V.C. Censor </i>article provides some new information in the Traister case. First, after initially appearing to have had no counsel in the case, Frank Traister subsequently was being represented by one of the top lawyers in Vernon County, J. Henry Bennett. It is amazing to think that Traister was originally sentenced in the county court without any counsel, but that appears to be what happened. When attorney Bennett heard what had happened to his client, he immediately tried to get Vernon County Judge Daniel Mahoney <i></i>to change or vacate the charge, but was denied access to the court. That prompted Bennett to hop in his Model T Roadster (or whatever prominent attorneys drove back then) and head to Madison to get the Wisconsin Supreme Court to issue a legal stop to the proceedings against his client. The Supreme Court issued an order for the Vernon County Judge “to proceed no farther”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I wonder how Frank Traister, who does not seem to have a job since it is never mentioned in any of the articles, could afford to hire a top law firm to represent him. Perhaps Traister’s father-in-law, Chancy Parr provided the money. Parr, a distinguished Civil War veteran and President of the G.A.R. Post in La Farge, was married five times. Frank Traister’s mother was Chancy Parr’s fifth and last wife. I’m presuming that Parr would have had the financial means to hire the Bennett law firm in Viroqua to represent his wife’s son.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>printed another <i>Vernon County Censor </i>article in the March 29<sup>th </sup>issue. The front-page headline read, STAY ORDERED IN TRAISTER PROCEEDINGS. The reprinted article followed:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Viroqua County Censor: All proceedings in the case of Frank Traister, La Farge, execution of whose sentence of from one to two years on a plea of guilty to manslaughter in the fourth degree in connection with the death of Robert Morris on February 24<sup>th</sup>, has been held up, have been suspended pending a return to the supreme court writ by Judge D. O. Mahoney ordered for April 7<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Traister, who is still held in the Vernon County jail, was not arraigned in court yesterday to which time the case had been adjourned. Judge Mahoney has ordered a stay of all proceedings until a return on the alternative writ issued by the supreme court, demanding that the sentence be set aside and Traister given a trial is made.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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From this article in the <i>V.C. Censor</i>, we can deduce that attorney J. Henry Bennett was able to get the Wisconsin Supreme Court to halt the proceedings of the Vernon County Court against his client. Although still in the Vernon County jail, Frank Traister at least did not have to go to the state penitentiary in Waupun. Getting a new trial and getting out of jail was another thing all together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the April 19, 1928 issue of the <i>Enterprise</i>, there was this article listed under the headline, “TRAISTER CASE TAKEN UNDER ADVISEMENT”:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Norwalk Star:</i><i>Whether or not that Frank Traister, La Farge man being held in Vernon County jail in connection with the death of Robert Morris, also of La Farge, will be admitted to trial over his plea of guilty for manslaughter, will be determined by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> The Supreme Court on Saturday took the appeal of attorneys under advisement, whether it will issue a peremptory writ of mandamus ordering the Vernon County court to withdraw his plea of guilty, and be tried.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Attorneys C. J. Smith and J. Henry Bennett, for the defendant, took the case to the Supreme Court on the allegation that Traister was “railroaded” into court to plead guilty unbeknown to his counsel.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Following the legal proceedings for this case proved to be tricky. Back in 2013, when I first started research on this murder case, I went to the Clerk of Court’s office in Viroqua to see if they had the records. The records for that far back (1928) were no longer there, but had been transferred to the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) to be archived.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The WHS had deposited the old Vernon County court records at the WHS Area Research Center (ARC) at the Murphy Library on the UW-LaCrosse campus. I had done some previous research at that site, so I made contact with the folks at the ARC to see what they could find. Ed Hill, retired librarian and local history aficionado, did some digging for me and sent along a copy of the registration of official documents by Vernon County in the case. From this document, I was able to get a better picture of the time line regarding the legal proceedings. (Ed Hill later called me about what he had sent regarding the Traister Case. He said that all of the hearing and court proceedings were on file at the UW-LaCrosse ARC and could be viewed there.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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The <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>provided the next information on the Traister Case in the May 10, 1928 issue. Under a front-page headline that read <b>Traister Gets New Trial</b>, the article read:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The county court of Vernon County must receive the application of Frank Traister to permit him to withdraw his plea of guilty to manslaughter in connection with the death of Robert Morris, also of La Farge, the supreme court held on Tuesday of this week. Traister is now serving a sentence of one to two years for alleged offense.</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i> <b> </b>Traister was arrested on a charge of violating the prohibition laws and while being held in the county jail he was persuaded to plead guilty to manslaughter in connection with the death of Morris. Morris was found nearly dead at the foot of the stairway leading to the living quarters of the Traister family, and is believed to have died as the result of a skull fracture. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Traister had an attorney who was told that the only charge against him was the one involving an alleged violation of the liquor laws and this case was set before a justice of the peace. The attorney waited at the justice’s office but found that while he had been waiting Traister had been induced to plead guilty to a manslaughter charge.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> </i>After Traister’s attorney, J. Henry Bennett, had obtained the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that his client should have a new trail on the manslaughter charges, the Vernon County Court had to act. On May 16<sup>th </sup>papers were filed in the county court as a “Petition of Frank Traister to withdraw plea of guilty and Judgment vacated filed”. At the same time, an “Order setting aside plea and sentence filed” also appeared on the listing of legal filings in the case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Three days later an order was filed in court for the Vernon County Sheriff to continue to hold Frank Traister in jail. On that same day, May 19, 1928, another order was filed requiring “bail and commitment after arrest and before trial”. On June 27<sup>th</sup>, a notation on the filings in the Traister case notes read, “Bail Bond, certificate of deposit for $500.00 filed”. By that time it appears that Frank Traister was out of the county jail for the first time since he had been arrested back in early March.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Traister, this time with his attorneys present, was back in the Vernon County Court in early October. On the 5<sup>th </sup>of that month, an “Affidavit of Order for witnesses of indigent defendant” was filed and a trail was held three days later. The court record shows that Traister was “Tried by Jury who return a verdict of “not guilty”. The next week’s issue of the <i>Enterprise </i>had a short notice that Judge Mahoney had dismissed the Traister case due to a lack of evidence. I am assuming that the editor of the La Farge newspaper had it wrong on the outcome of the Frank Traister case, but regardless, Traister was a free man. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Although arrested on a “liquor charge” originally, then subsequently sentenced to time in the state penitentiary on a manslaughter charge, Frank Traister eventually was not found guilty of anything. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Later in 1928, in an October issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise</i>, there was a notice in the school news section that May Traister, 2<sup>nd</sup>grade and brother Harold in 4<sup>th</sup>grade had perfect attendance for the first quarter at the La Farge School. They were the two youngest children of Frank and Cora Traister.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Life went on, except of course, for Robert Morris. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-36122777942662235522019-05-09T06:57:00.003-07:002019-05-09T06:57:32.051-07:00MURDER OF NOT? - PT. 2<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
The first time that I ever heard about the murder of Robert Morris was when I was talking to my aunt, Alice Lawrence, twenty years ago when I was just starting this little local history project. We were talking about some events from La Farge’s “Dark Side” from the past and she brought up the death of Morris. She did not remember Morris’ name, but did remember the Traister name and where the family lived at that time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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She said that Frank Traister ran a speakeasy in the upstairs apartment that he rented at the old Travers Building then located on Main Street. According to my Aunt Alice’s version of the story, Morris, Traister and some other men were drinking and playing cards late at night in that apartment. She said that they caught Morris cheating at cards and the other card players threw him down the stairs. From the fall down the stairs, Morris broke his neck and he was found dead the next morning, lying on the sidewalk in front of the building. My aunt’s version of the story leads us into a continuation of looking at the aftermath of the death of Robert Morris.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let us return to the year of 1928 and take a look at the lead story in the March 8<sup>th </sup>issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>newspaper. It began under a headline of “New angle In Morris Death”:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>While it is hardly possible for the Enterprise to issue statements with a degree of authenticity relating to the disaster which befell Robert Morris, on Thursday two weeks ago, we have been able to secure certain facts connected with the case which we believe we are free to publish without fear of contradiction.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Shortly after the funeral of Robert Morris, Frank Traister was taken into custody by county officials, and after a hearing at the county seat, was placed under $1,000 bonds, which, being unable to furnish, caused the officers to place him in the county jail. His trial was set for Monday, March 12<sup>th</sup>, according to plans in force at the time this is being put into type.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Herman Henthorne, a farmer living a few miles from Viroqua, who with Harley Harris, of the village, were inmates of the Traister apartment at the time of the accident, were taken to Viroqua, where, in the county attorney’s office, certain details of the case which were not brought out at the inquest held on the day following the death of Robert Morris, were made to present a somewhat different angle regarding the death of Robert Morris.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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With these opening paragraphs in the <i>Enterprise </i>article, the story that was told to me by my Aunt Alice starts to come together. Vernon County Sheriff Martin Larson arrested Frank Traister and took him to the county jail in Viroqua. While there, Vernon County District Attorney Martin Gulbrandson questioned Traister about the night of Morris’ death. Let’s return to the <i>Enterprise </i>article:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Frank Traister has made a signed confession that he was standing at the top of the stairway and witnessed R. Morris roll down the stairs, from which catastrophe he is supposed to have received the blow which soon afterward caused his death.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> At the time this is being put in type, Wednesday afternoon, the county sheriff, in company with a special representative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, of Minneapolis, are in the village, going over the scene of the accident, and putting certain parties who are more or less involved in the case, through the third degree.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The editor of the <i>Enterprise</i>, perhaps to protect the reputations of Frank Traister and the other men in the apartment that night, is loathe to declare the death of Robert Morris a murder. The story published in the March 14, 1928 issue of the <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>does not show the same constraint. Under a headline of “Hold Evidence In Morris Death Case Points to Foul Play”, the article in the <i>Tribune </i>read:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>That Vernon County authorities have in their possession sufficient evidence on which to arraign Frank Traister, La Farge, on a murder count, seemed a certainty as the probing of the mysterious death of Robert Morris went forward today.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Most important of this evidence divulged today by Martin Gulbrandson, district attorney for Vernon County, was that blood stains were discovered on the upper landing of the stairway, leading directly into the Traister residence, and below which the frozen form of Morris was discovered by a laborer at 5:30 on the morning of February 24<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Authorities point to this evidence as the most conclusive of any yet uncovered in connection with the case, since it has been maintained by Traister and his associates that Morris sustained the severe skull fracture, contributing to his death, in his tumble down the stair case. It indicated to authorities that an assault had been made and aided in bearing out their contention that foul play had been committed. Other evidence authorities are believed to have in their possession has not been divulged.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> C. A. Hedin, St. Paul, special investigator brought in on the case, went over the ground with Sheriff Martin Larson yesterday, making a trip to La Farge and discussing various phases of the case with Vernon County officials. The findings of the special detective were not disclosed, but he was to remain with the authorities until the case was cleared up.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> District Attorney Gulbrandson over long distance today said that meanwhile Traister, who was placed under arrest last Friday, and from whose stairway Morris was said by him to have fallen, was being held on a liquor charge. He </i>(Gulbrandson)<i>said the preliminary hearing was set for Monday, but said the arraignment on this charge would be postponed in the event other clues pointing to Traister’s implication in a murder count were uncovered.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It appears from this account in the <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>that Frank Traister was originally arrested on the “liquor charge”, or that Traister was running a speakeasy of sorts out of his Main Street apartment. Remember that this event occurred during the days of Prohibition in the United States, so there are federal and state laws in effect regarding illegal bars or taverns, “speakeasies” being in operation. The <i>Tribune </i>article then goes on to capture the mood in La Farge as found by conversations that the reporter had with residents of the village. The article continued:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Through its own investigation, carried on in the city with parties who have recently been at La Farge and who know personally the persons involved, The Tribune learned today that considerable feeling is in evidence in that village, the majority of residents contending the action should be brought on a charge of murder.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Complete disregard on the part of the Traisters of Morris’ well-being after his injury was explained here as a means they adopted in endeavoring to cover up on any possible connection with his injury, it is alleged.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Morris was known to have sought liquor at the Traister home on the night previous to his death, spending close to an hour before 11:30 that night in Traister’s quarters. He was believed to have departed around midnight, and lay at the bottom of the stairway until 5:30 in the morning, when he was found in a dying state, with his hands and feet frozen.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Detective Hedin was scheduled to question Traister at the Vernon County jail today. Authorities previously have questioned him and on all occasions he has maintained that his original story – that Morris was injured in the fall – was the truth.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It is interesting that although the editor of the <i>Enterprise </i>did not want to speculate on the alleged murder as the <i>Tribune </i>article had done, the local La Farge newspaper did reprint the entire <i>Tribune </i>article in the March 15<sup>th</sup>issue of the <i>Enterprise</i>. The following week (March 22<sup>nd</sup>) the La Farge newspaper reprinted an article about the Morris murder case that had been originally printed in a Viroqua newspaper, the <i>Vernon County Censor</i>. Although the <i>Enterprise </i>account led with the following disclaimer, “Reliable and authentic reports regarding the proceedings in the Traister case, have failed to reach this office, as it appears there has been several unforeseen obstacles presented”, the <i>VC Censor</i>, again like the <i>Tribune </i>article the week before, was reprinted in its entirety. The lead paragraph in the <i>VC Censor </i>article read”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i> The case of the State of Wisconsin vs. Frank Traister, of La Farge, seems to be arousing considerable interest among our citizens. Proceedings were had before Judge Mahoney on Monday in which the defendant was sentenced to the Penitentiary for from one to two years on a plea of manslaughter in the fourth degree.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Piecing the information from the several articles together, it appears that Frank Traister, who was originally arrested on alcohol – related charges, eventually admitted to having a part in Morris’ death, probably after questioning by the detective and county sheriff. Perhaps to avoid being tried for a more severe offense, Traister agreed to plead guilty on the manslaughter charge. It appears that Traister was headed for a year or two in the state penitentiary at Waupun. Or was he?</div>
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More next time on the murder of Robert Morris.</div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-4277535520743210932019-04-30T11:29:00.000-07:002019-04-30T11:29:50.554-07:00Murder or Not? The Death of Robert Morris<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Although I have tried to focus on the positive when writing this little history of the community of La Farge, there are some bad things that happened in the town as well. I have not ignored the negative entirely. Back in 2010, I wrote about the death of Sam Hook, a storeowner in Seelyburg who died under mysterious circumstances as his general store was being robbed and set on fire. That two-part <i>Local History Notebook </i>about Sam Hook’s unusual and tragic ending in 1917 detailed how his death was investigated thoroughly. In the end though regarding the death of Sam Hook, nobody was ever prosecuted for a crime, although Seelyburg residents always contended that he was murdered.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eleven years after Sam Hook’s death, another mysterious death took place on Main Street of La Farge. It involved the death of Robert Morris, who died on February 24, 1928. The circumstances of Morris’ death and the legal maneuverings that followed make for another interesting story from La Farge’s past. To begin, let’s look at the story of the death of Robert Morris as told in the March 1, 1928 issue of the <b>La Farge Enterprise </b>newspaper. The headline on page 1 of the <b>Enterprise </b>read, “Robert Morris Found Lying Unconscious On Sidewalk Friday”. A sub-headline under that lead read, “Both Hands Frozen and Face Covered With Blood”. The article in La Farge’s weekly newspaper at the time continued:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Excitement ran high in the village on last Friday morning when the intelligence was passed about that Robert Morris had been found on the street just before daybreak, almost frozen to death. The unconscious man was first discovered by John Mullett, who chanced to pass by the stairway leading to the second floor of the Travers building, heard a strange sound, at first thinking it might have been a dog that had crawled up the stairway seeking shelter from the extremely cold night air.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Let me interject here that the Travers building is the former post office in La Farge, the brick building that last housed a real estate office and sat between the current post office and the Zzip Stop. It was torn down a few years ago after it started to fall down. For more information on the building, check out my <i>Local History Notebook </i>columns when I wrote about it in 2013. In 1928, the building had a covered outside stairway that led up to the second story apartments. Now; let’s return to the <b>Enterprise </b>article:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Upon drawing closer, however, Mr. Mullett discovered the sound issued from the numb human, who was lying on the snow-covered walk with his head resting on the lowest step of the stairway. Mr. Mullet immediately hastened to the Central Hotel next door, and divesting the knowledge of his discovery to those within the hotel, who were already about, lost no time in notifying Marshall Showen, and as quickly as the village official arrived on the scene of the tragedy, he, with two other men, loaded the unfortunate onto a handsled and placed him on the cot in the village lock-up.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The Central Hotel was located where the present post office of La Farge sits. Beside the hotel there was another large store building that would have been next to the Travers building. Both of those buildings burned down during the great hotel fire of 1942. When Robert Morris was sledded to the jail by Village Marshall Showen and others, they probably only had to go a block or so. Taking the severely injured man to jail seems like a strange choice, especially when you had warm rooms at the hotel right next door. But there are lots of strange occurrences involving this case, so let’s return to the newspaper story:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Not once since the man was first discovered until life became extinct did he regain consciousness. Immediately after the man was placed on the cot, Dr. Haggerty was called, but his services were of no avail, as the man’s life ebbed before he arrived. Parties who remained with the man after he was placed on the bed say that he opened his mouth once or twice, but that was the last and the only sign of life.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> At the inquest and hearing held in the afternoon, conducted by the district attorney and county sheriff, the details of the case were brought out. Depending on the strength of our memory, this is the way we got the run of the dope:<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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“Run of the dope”? That sounds like something from a present day song infused with hip-hop slang. Dr. Eber Haggerty, who was called to the jail to pronounce Morris dead on that cold February morning in 1928, lived a block away from the jail. His house that contained an office for his medical practice sat across the street from the newly constructed Masonic Temple that would be formerly dedicated later that year. Meanwhile, back to the story:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>It appears that quite late last Thursday evening Robert Morris mounted the stairway of the Travers building, a portion of the second story of which is occupied by Frank Traister and his family. Morris, knocking on the door, made inquiry of Frank Traister, who answered the knock, if he could get something to drink. Upon receiving an answer from Traister in the negative, Morris turned from the door and Traister closed it and went back to his chair. Perhaps a moment afterward a commotion was heard within the hallway, and upon investigation, it was found that Mr. Morris had fallen down the stairway. With the aid of a second party, Frank Traister carried the man to the doorway of the Central Hotel, where inquiry was made regarding the engaging of a room, but was told that the house had no rooms available. Morris was then taken back and deposited at the bottom of the stairway, where it was presumed he would soon be able to collect his senses and repair to a place of warmth and shelter for the night. The accident, as near as we were able to determine, happened about 11:30 in the evening, and if the man remained outside from that time until he was found in the morning around 5 o’clock, small wonder that his fingers and hands were frozen white, when one remembers that a temperature of between 12 and 15 degrees below zero prevailed throughout the night.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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First of all, it is important to know that in 1928, the United States had Prohibition in effect, so there were no bars or taverns in La Farge. It does seem interesting that Robert Morris goes to the Traister apartment at nearly midnight on a Thursday evening to get something to drink. Another interesting part of the story was that Frank Traister and somebody else (and don’t you wonder who that person was at that time of the night) carried a badly injured Morris over to the hotel to get him a room. That seems like a decent thing to do. But then Traister and his buddy drop off Morris back at the bottom of the stairs to sleep it off. There is not much compassion in that determination.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps, Traister could have let Morris stay the night in his apartment where the injured man could recover from his fall. At the time Frank Traister and his wife Cora had four children who lived in that second story apartment in the Travers building. The children were John, aged 14, then there was Floyd, 12; Harold, 9 and little May or Mae (found it spelled both ways) Traister aged 7. With all of those kids, perhaps there wasn’t any room in the apartment for the injured man? But wouldn’t you think that Morris could have been laid on the kitchen floor to get him out of that bitter -15 degree cold night? Frank Traister does not seem to have much compassion for Morris in this situation. We perhaps will learn more about why that may have been, when other information starts to come out about Frank Traister. (Don’t forget about little May Traister, the 7-year old daughter – she may be a key in this case.) The newspaper article continued:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Arrangements were made Saturday afternoon to conduct the funeral on Sunday, but all such plans were cancelled when those closely related to the deceased were advised by county officials that a post-mortem examination would be held over the body on the following Monday. It appears that a more thorough and careful search of the premises upon which the tragedy occurred, by village and county officials, brought to light certain complexities connected with the matter which they wished to investigate and to effect a possible solution thereof. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Following the post-mortem examination of the body, on Monday afternoon, by local and deputy state medical examiners, the funeral was held Tuesday, at 2 o’clock, at the Free Methodist Church in the village.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Mr. Morris was a man of close to 40 years of age, and only until quite recently, was in another section of the country, but returned to La Farge last fall and had been making his home with his brother, John. We have endeavored to report the particulars of this case to the best of our ability. As is always the case when an accident of this nature occurs, one will hear a great many and different stories, but we have tried to adhere only to those statements brought out at the inquest.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Thus ended the newspaper article about the death of Robert Morris. As mentioned in the concluding paragraph, there were many stories swirling around La Farge regarding Morris’ untimely death. Some of those stories had more merit than others and soon, more stories about that frigid February night on La Farge’s Main Street would surface. Next time in the history blog, we will continue to look at the unseemly death of Robert Morris. <i> <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-52442975460518413922019-04-18T12:08:00.000-07:002019-04-18T12:08:04.136-07:00La Farge Goes "Paperless"<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
A while back, they stopped selling the <i>Wisconsin State Journal </i>at the Zzip Stop in La Farge. The long hard winter had resulted in sporadic deliveries to the La Farge gas station that had become an outlier on the route. When the big Kickapoo River flood had closed the Viola gas station back in August so no daily copies of the <i>State </i><i>Journal </i>were being sold there, La Farge had become a stop too far on the route. For those of us who are accustomed to having a daily newspaper to read, the stoppage was shocking. Trips to Readstown, Viroqua and Hillsboro to get a newspaper are being made begrudgingly. What’s a guy to do? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The loss of a daily newspaper in La Farge also got me to thinking about when the last time the village was without a daily newspaper. I think it probably goes back a long way. I’m guessing to the time before the railroad was completed to La Farge and daily trains could start bringing in the newspapers along with the mail, passengers and freight. That takes us back to 1898! Yikes! We have had daily newspapers in this little Kickapoo River town for over 120 years? Probably, yes is the answer to that question.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember that in those early years, the village of La Farge was the last stop on the Kickapoo rail line. There were three hotels (Belcher House, Hotel Ward, and Central Hotel) operating in town to accommodate all of the people disembarking from the trains. Dray lines in La Farge would have wagons at the railroad station to bring the visitors and salesmen up to the hotels in town. From the very beginning the trains also delivered the daily newspapers. There is a classic photograph from that era showing some men dressed in suits sitting in the front lobby of the Hotel Ward. Each man holds a copy of a daily newspaper in his hands.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For over thirty years, there were always two trains arriving in the village every day. Thus, the morning and evening editions of newspapers from Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago could be in La Farge “hot off the presses”. Maxine Shird told me that when her folks were running Mac’s Hotel in La Farge (this would be from the 1920s until the early 1940s) that the daily newspaper was always available there. Many of the train workers stayed at the hotel and bringing the newspapers was a daily delivery for them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the railroad line ended in 1939, there was much uproar about how Kickapoo River towns would receive needed goods that had been delivered by the railroad. Daily truck delivery routes were established to get goods to the Valley and newspapers were part of that. The railroad continued to run a daily truck delivery route to the village until the late 1960s and daily newspaper deliveries were included.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eventually, the newspaper publishers began to run daily rural routes to places like La Farge. The morning newspapers like the <i>State Journal </i>and <i>Milwaukee Sentinel </i>were delivered by delivery boys to people’s doorsteps in the village while later in the day, the <i>Milwaukee Journal, Capital Times, </i>and <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>would arrive at people’s homes “fresh off the presses”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m not sure if there were any age requirements for boys (Did girls also deliver the newspapers? I can’t remember any from my youth, but perhaps later the fairer sex did become involved in the venture.) delivering newspapers in La Farge, but the job did entail collecting money for the papers besides delivering them. I remember substituting for Freddie Shird one summer for a couple of weeks while he was on vacation. He delivered the <i>State Journal</i>, I believe and I even was able to use his bicycle with the saddlebag newspaper baskets draped over the rear tire on the route. During that time there were two boys delivering the <i>State Journal </i>since there were so many people in La Farge who had home delivery. The afternoon deliveries of the <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>may have needed a split route during that time as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Delivering the Sunday newspapers was a whole different animal because of the increased size. The newspaper bundles would be left on the back porch of the post office in town early each Sunday morning. They would usually come in several bundles with additional inserts and such, and then the delivery boy had to put the newspapers together. The papers would be so big and heavy that you couldn’t carry them all, so you had to do part of the route and then go back for the rest of the newspapers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Besides the home deliveries of the newspapers, several businesses in La Farge usually had the daily papers for sale. Harry Lounsbury always had the newspaper for sale at his drug store and at least one of the grocery stores would also have them. The gas stations usually had the Sunday newspapers, as some of those other businesses in town would be closed. When we moved back to La Farge in 1972, we lived a block off Main Street in the Burt Apartments. I would usually walk up to the drug store to get a newspaper and could catch up on the latest with Lillian Waddell, who worked there. At school, several daily newspapers would be in the library or teachers lounge, so we could read them there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For a short time, Carolyn and I were part of the newspaper delivery system as we took over Ernie Meseberg’s rural Sunday route of the <i>State Journal </i>from November of 1979 until September of the following year. The route included a drive down to Tunnelville and then up on Fairview and Salem Ridges. We caught more places driving down Wemmer Hollow, Otter Creek and Green Hollow. Heading north, we caught the places on Plum Run, Buckeye Ridge and on to Weister Creek. We would often stop and talk to Rex Bufton at his place before moving on to circle the Dell area. Then it was on to Ontario where we dropped off a stack of papers at the restaurant there. We would sometimes have breakfast there before heading down to Rockton and Warner Creek. Next, the route took us to Jug Creek and on up to Morningstar and Maple Ridges. Before finishing back in Bear Creek and heading home. It usually took a couple of hours if the roads were good.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We had a heavy social schedule back then and a couple times we went right from a late night party to our early morning paper route. We particularly remember a night of celebration for my class reunion (that was #15 for the great LHS Class of 1965) resulted in no sleep before going on the paper route. Eventually, Ernie took the route back over and we could sleep in on those Sunday mornings.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m not sure when home deliveries of newspapers stopped in La Farge. I do remember that adults were doing the routes at the end, which may have been ten years ago perhaps. Today some people have the daily newspaper come through the mail, but that means it’s always a day or two late. The <i>LaCrosse Tribune </i>stopped deliveries to La Farge in 2018, but the <i>State Journal </i>continued until February of this year. I always made a daily stop at the Zzip Stop to get my copy each day – my reading usually focused on the sports page and the puzzles. But alas, that option is now gone. We have moved on to another time – paperless.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-44209608229000465362019-04-11T09:22:00.000-07:002019-04-11T09:22:36.044-07:00"Near La Farge" Photos from the Past<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
A while back, I received a request from the Vernon County Historical Society to help identify an old hand colored photo postcard. The photo was of a bridge spanning the Kickapoo River with the only title being “Near La-Farge, Wis. By, Potter”. The photograph was probably taken around 1908 and the photographer was Walter Potter as his name is hand written on it. At the probable time of the taking of the photograph for the postcard there were three photographers operating in the village of La Farge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Walter Potter operated a photography studio out of his residence on Main Street next to Donaldson’s Hardware. Today Deb Moore operates her beauty shop from that location. Another prominent photographer in La Farge in 1908 was Charles Brown who operated a studio in his house on south State Street, just south of the present hardware store. A third photographer, A. E. Strait operated a mobile photography studio that when it was in La Farge the wagon was usually parked in the back of a building where today Cheryl Haas’ resell store is located. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is hard to imagine that three photographers could make their living in a small town the size of La Farge, but those times of more than a century back obviously called for the need for people, places and events to be remembered in a permanent way. Fortunately, many photographs from that era still survive, helping us to know the history from that time. Each of the three La Farge based photographers left behind a variety of photographs to help us understand the little Kickapoo Valley community from that time so long ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Walter Potter probably published the photo postcard of the bridge around 1908. I base my reasoning for this choice because I have another similar photo from that same year that shows the sandstone cliffs along the Kickapoo River north of La Farge. That photo is also identified with the “Near La Farge, Wis.” title and it is hand colored, also like the photo of the bridge. The similarity between the two postcards is quite evident, both from the river scenery choices and the coloring techniques used on the postcards. But there are differences in the two cards, as the printing on Potter’s bridge photo is hand written while the river bluffs postcard “Near La Farge, Wis.” is printed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is also a nice Kickapoo River photograph by A.E. Strait from this era, showing the river just south of La Farge and it is titled “Kickapoo Near La Farge, By Strait.” If we attribute the sandstone cliffs postcard perhaps to have been taken by Charles Brown, we could have each of the three local photographers vying for the almighty tourist dollar of the time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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La Farge was somewhat of a tourist destination of that era both because of the natural beauty of the Valley in which it lays and the terrible flood that hit the community on July 22, 1907. That flood was one of the worst ever recorded in the Valley up to that time and the local photographers were out in force to record the event.<o:p></o:p></div>
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First, we have Walter Potter’s iconic photograph, probably taken from the roof of the Opera House (Now Phil & Deb’s Town Tap) that shows La Farge attorney Alva Drew walking down the flooded Main Street with his son and dog in tow. There is also an A. E. Strait photograph on that same day in 1907 with a view looking at the flooded houses on Snow Street a block south of Main Street. Another photograph of the great flood of 1899, taken by C. S. Brown shows Seelyburg on the north end of La Farge being inundated by the floodwaters. That photograph is taken from part way up Ed Nixon’s hillside hay field and actually shows where Brown’s former photography studio was located before he moved it to higher ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With all three La Farge photographers publishing photos from those floods, the little river community became well known around the Midwest. People would ride the train north to La Farge to view the village with the flooding past and to be amazed at the beauty of the Kickapoo Valley.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Within a few years after that great flood in 1907, the photography business in La Farge would be drastically changed. In 1909, A.E. Strait sold his photography wagon to Sam Steinmetz, who continued to run the business for several years after that. The announcement advertisement about the sale placed in the May 13, 1909 <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>newspaper read, “I wish to announce that I have purchased the Photo Gallery of A. E. Strait and will remain at the old stand just north of the Rittenhouse & Davidson’s Market, prepared to do good work at reasonable prices, will do all kinds of enlarging, also expect to handle picture moulding and make frames to order at reasonable prices. Work guaranteed or your money refunded. Yours for Business, S.I. Steinmetz”. Charles Brown closed his La Farge studio in 1910 and moved to California, where he would eventually become the photographer for the movie stars of Hollywood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Walter Potter continued to run his photography studio in La Farge for many more years. Eventually, his son Elmer would run a radio store from the same Main Street location after his father retired from the photography business.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus, from these photographers from yesteryear, the story of this little Kickapoo River town can be better told. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As for the identification of where that bridge in the Potter photo was located, I think it was the Lawton Bridge at Tunnelville, located two miles south of La Farge. Joe Young called to say that he thinks that the bridge was the Schroeder Bridge, now Bridge #16 on the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. When pressed on the matter, local newspaper publisher Lonnie Muller thinks it might be the original Bacon Bridge located north of Norris Ridge, now the KVR Covered Bridge #18. I think we old-timers should continue to stare at the photograph for a couple more weeks to see if it will improve our squints any. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-10918594186566958742018-12-08T10:18:00.000-08:002018-12-08T10:18:15.340-08:00A World War II Letter Home<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
As Americans continue to remember the 75<sup>th</sup>anniversaries of the United States’ involvement in World War II, I thought it might be appropriate to share a letter from 1943. LaVerne Green, who was in the U.S. Navy at that time, wrote the letter and sent it home to La Farge to his father, Lester Green. The letter was written on October 22, 1943 and had an FPO military address in New York City. For much of that year, LaVerne Green was stationed in Panama and did not return to the United States until November of 1943. I am guessing that the letter sent home to his Dad was written in the Panama Canal Zone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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LaVerne Green’s letter is remarkable in several respects. First of all the written penmanship of the letter is superb. Written in longhand script with a pencil, the letter reminded me of my own father’s excellent cursive writing, common from that generation. Cursive writing was a required skill taught in school back then and those who did it well, like LaVerne, leave an easily readable text for the reader to follow.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another aspect of LaVerne Green’s letter that is unique is that it is almost entirely about music. The Green family was very musically inclined, talents that carried on to La Verne’s children and perhaps to later generations even to this day. From the contents of the letter, it is evident that Lester Green probably played in a band of some sort in 1943 and that LaVerne is musically active in the service as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Much of that letter from late October in 1943 tells about LaVerne Green’s effort to copy some music for his father. I will use La Verne’s words as he related them to his Dad in the letter:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Just finished the music today. I had to hurry a lot on two of the tunes. Who & Marie. They were set but I had to copy them and it is slow work. I don’t have a writing pen and the ink I used on them is too thin. The ones written in pencil are quite neat but I spent more time on them. Marie was a rush job. I set it last night and took it to my friend to play this afternoon and there wasn’t a mistake in it. Fast work. Tonight I copied it for you. I will send them thru in the morning along with this letter.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> </i>I do not know what songs that LaVerne is writing about. I “Googled” the top songs of the 1940’s, but nothing with those titles came up. Irving Berlin had written a tune titled, “Marie” several decades before then, so perhaps that is the tune that was being worked on and mentioned in the letter. <o:p></o:p></div>
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LaVerne Green continued with his letter to his Dad: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>My friend here plays violin beautifully and he likes the choruses very much. He can really take off on them. You will find them very hard for the most part. Tea For Two is a beautiful job and the last measures are really swingy.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Now here is a song that I could find! “Tea For Two” was a song from the Broadway musical, “No, No, Nanette” originally written in 1925. Doris Day sang the song in the 1940’s and made it a big hit, probably because as LaVerne wrote, it was “really swingy”. He continues to tell his Dad about other hit songs that he is working on: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Whispering is a bit easier. Who is a terrific thing to play, especially the last 16 bars. It’s catchy as can be. Marie is a little bit on a hot tenor side. I believe a tenor sax could take most of the choruses except 32 bars of that stuff is too long and the way it is written there are no breathing spots for a horn. Marie runs pretty smooth if not tried too fast. I think you will agree with me they are quite difficult. For a small outfit the whole chorus would be fine. 8 bars or so doesn’t make much of a fill. I hope you find them all to your liking.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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“Whispering”, another song that LaVerne Green had written out for his Dad was a hit song first recorded by Frank Sinatra in the 1940s. Later, it was also recorded by Louis Armstrong and The Ink Spots. LaVerne continues in the letter to tell his father about his work on writing out the music and possibly some future work that he may send home. Apparently, LaVerne thinks his renditions may have some financial value when he wrote: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>If you see Alf Modahl, ask him what he thinks of the commercial value of this type of arrangement, will you? Or anyone else you happen to see who knows something about it. Whatever you do, don’t give them away or let anyone copy them. Keep them to yourself. I think quite a lot of that work I put in them. </i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the last paragraph of his letter, LaVerne wrote to his father about some correspondence with LaVerne’s brother, Willard, who is referred to as “Ping” in the letter. Willard Green, who was thirteen years younger than LaVerne and a 1942 LHS graduate, had entered the Army earlier in 1943.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Got the photo of Ping today. I like it very much and thanks a lot. Had a letter from him dated Sept 20. Just before he went to Sam Houston I guess. He wasn’t so happy about the Army. Hope he likes the new place.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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LaVerne wrote about Willard going to the Army base, Ft. Sam Houston located in San Antonio, Texas. That was where Willard went after basic training and before being deployed to Europe where he was wounded severely in the Italian Campaign. After spending several months in an Army hospital in Iowa, Willard was discharged in late 1944.<o:p></o:p></div>
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LaVerne ended up being based in Washington D.C. for the rest of the war. Ironic, since he had worked for the federal government in the nation’s capital for two years prior to joining the Navy. While there, he met a young lady from Pittsburgh working for the war department. LaVerne and Stella Green were married in 1942 and after the war they made their home in La Farge. LaVerne was a mail carrier in La Farge, like his father and brother Willard. LaVerne and Stella were also Cub Scout leaders in town for many years. That’s when I first met LaVerne – when I was a member of the Cub Scout Pack – I remember how the couple was devoted to starting young boys on the skills of scouting. LaVerne was also a master at tuning and restoring pianos – a skill that he practiced the rest of his life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I will close this column with LaVerne’s closing words to his father in that letter from 1943:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>I’m fixing to send you my radio, player and a bunch of records, just to keep for me in case I get a place to put them. All my love to you and mother. Keep well – keep trying on those tunes too! Your Son, LaVerne<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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(Joe Persons gave me the letter that LaVerne Green had written in 1943. Joe wasn’t sure how he had received the letter, but it’s apt that Joe, a man of music would have had it. If there are family members of LaVerne Green’s who would like the letter, I would love to get it to them. It might make a memorable Christmas gift. Otherwise, I will pass it on to the Vernon County Historical Museum for their WW II collection.)<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-72031095598763145512018-12-08T10:13:00.001-08:002018-12-08T10:13:34.997-08:00Armistice Day In La Farge<div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
When word was received that an armistice had been signed to stop “The Great War” on November 11, 1918, La Farge, like most communities in America, celebrated heartily.<span> </span>After an earlier “false alarm” about the armistice that had been received on November 8<sup>th</sup>, this news was real and caused the little Kickapoo River town to go into full celebration mode.<span> </span>(There was an interesting article in the recent November 11<sup>th</sup><i>Wisconsin State Journal </i>that told about that newspaper publishing a front page headline about the armistice on that November 8<sup>th</sup>in 1918.<span> </span>So, La Farge wasn’t the only town fooled by the report on that day.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>The lead story in the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>newspaper of that week told about the celebration, “The fire bell, church bells and every noise making device was brought into action and the crowd paraded the streets for several hours.<span> </span>School was dismissed and all business places closed and a general holiday unanimously declared.<span> </span>By noon hundreds of people had arrived in the village from the country and the streets were packed from curb to curb.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>Angie Marshall used to tell an interesting story about the businesses in La Farge all closing during that Armistice Day in 1918.<span> </span>Angie’s brother worked in the La Farge Bank at the time and when the decision was made to close, the bank employees quickly started to put all the money away and lock everything up.<span> </span>Angie’s brother went into the vault to put some money away.<span> </span>While he was in there, another employee, not knowing of his location, swung the vault door shut and locked it.<span> </span>The bank employees then went out on Main Street to join in the celebration.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>A couple of hours later, after the parade and program had finished, the employees went back into the bank, where they found their fellow employee locked in the vault.<span> </span>Angie said that the bad part of the ordeal for her brother was not running out of air to breath in the locked vault, but instead was missing out on the village’s celebration – something he always regretted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>The <i>Enterprise </i>article continued, “Early in the forenoon a committee arranged a celebration program which was given at 2 o’clock in Main Street.<span> </span>The program began with a parade headed by the band, followed by automobiles containing the old soldiers.<span> </span>Then followed the entire village, school and citizens, making a parade six blocks in length.<span> </span>Afterward the crowd assembled on Main Street and listened to music by the band and stirring addresses by Rev. Dunlevy and Prof. Mills.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>Fortunately, we have several excellent photographs from that first Armistice Day in La Farge that show the parade and program.<span> </span>(Those photos accompany this article.)<span> </span>There are two photos that show the parade being formed on Main Street between Donaldson’s Hardware Store (now where Bergum’s Grocery is) and Neefe’s Garage (now C&S Motors).<span> </span>One photo shows the La Farge Band waiting to lead the parade with two cars of veterans following.<span> </span>(Three people are identified in this photo, as the names of Walden Lawton, Calvin Blakely and James Paul are penciled in.) <span> </span>Another photo taken from the same spot shows the latter part of the parade with marchers on foot and a wagon decorated with red, white and blue banners and flags bringing up the rear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>John Telfer may have described that wagon when he wrote a letter to the <i>La Farge Epitaph</i>newspaper in 1973 about his memories of that Armistice Day.<span> </span>Remember that Telfer was an 11-year old boy at the time of the 1918 armistice and he wrote, “I went uptown in the afternoon and joined the happy crowds.<span> </span>My Uncle Will Bean had pulled his big one-horse delivery wagon into the middle of Main Street; all traffic was diverted and singing shouting people filled the whole block.<span> </span>A straw effigy with a spiked German helmet on his head was sitting in my uncle’s wagon.<span> </span>I swam in the excitement and sang and yelled, too.<span> </span>The war is over!<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span> </span>But one thing shocked me.<span> </span>Around the straw figure’s neck hung a sign, <i>“To Hell Mit the Kaiser!”</i><span> </span>When I went home I asked Mother if it was quite decent to use such bad language in public.<span> </span>She smiled and said she thought that was about where the Kaiser would end up.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>Another of the Armistice Day photos shows the parade as it headed down Main Street going east.<span> </span>It shows the rear of the parade meeting the front of the parade as those people head back towards the downtown area.<span> </span>Also of note in this photo is that several of the houses along the street are still in La Farge one hundred years later.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>The fourth photograph of La Farge’s 1918 Armistice Day celebration shows the band seated in concert formation on the street as the program commenced.<span> </span>The speeches by the Methodist minister and the school principal would follow during the program held on La Farge’s Main Street.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>There were other ways of celebrating the armistice that day in La Farge as the newspaper reported in the “Local News” section:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Some time ago Mrs. Angelina Hook, who is 86 years old, made the statement that when the news came that Germany had surrendered she would turn a hand spring.<span> </span>We have been told that she made her word good Monday morning after learning of the signing of the armistice.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i>The boys from here who reported for army service at Viroqua Sunday returned home Tuesday, having been released.<span> </span></i>(My grandfather, Pearl Campbell, was in a group from Salem Ridge who had gone to Viroqua to join the army during that time.<span> </span>The family story goes that the rest of those country boys stayed in Viroqua to celebrate the armistice, but Pearl drove the wagon back to Fairview to tell his recent bride, Isa, of the good news that he did not have to go off to fight in the war.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i>School was dismissed Monday for the celebration, to which the students gave hearty support.</i><span> </span><i>The results were many sore throats.<span> </span></i>(This piece was located in the “School News” in that week’s <i>Enterprise</i>.)<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i>A deplorable feature of our otherwise glorious celebration of peace Monday was the importation of several kegs of “liquid fire” into the village.</i><span> </span><i>To the majority of the citizens this part of the celebration was objectionable and the instigators of this should have taken a second thought before they launched such a feature. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span> </span>The editor of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>in 1918 was a staunch prohibitionist and a leader of the Anti-Saloon Party in the state.<span> </span>La Farge was “Dry” at that time, with no saloons operating when the war ended.<span> </span>When the kegs of beer were snuck into the village to aid in the celebrations’ merriment (I found another reference to the clandestine beer being imported from Yuba for that day’s celebration.), editor Perkins was obviously not happy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately the celebration in La Farge was short lived as the community was feeling of ravages of the influenza epidemic that was sweeping the country. Within a few weeks, all community gatherings were cancelled, including church services and programs at La Farge’s Opera House. Eventually the school would even have to close for extended periods of time. Deaths were numerous in the community with entire families being wiped out by the deadly influenza. When some of the soldiers began returning from France later in the year, they found family members gone – killed by the deadly flu. It was truly a tragic irony for that time.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-55216551914078872102018-12-08T10:08:00.000-08:002018-12-08T10:08:23.793-08:00Armistice Bells Ring In La Farge!<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i>Early Monday morning the glad tidings were received here that Germany had signed the armistice thus practically ending the war. In a very short time the streets were crowded with people and men and women alike alternatively laughed and wept with joy. The fire bell, church bells and every noise making device were brought into action and the crowd paraded the streets for several hours. School was dismissed and all business places closed and a general holiday unanimously declared. By noon hundreds of people had arrived in the village from the country and the streets were packed from curb to curb.<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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Thus reads the initial paragraph in the lead story on page one of the November 14, 1918 issue of the “La Farge Enterprise” newspaper. Under the bold headline of “Full Surrender of Germany”, the article continues on to describe the events that played out in this little Kickapoo River town a century ago. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I was particularly interested to read about the bells in La Farge being rung on that original Armistice Day morning because I believe most of those bells still remain in the village. One hundred years after that momentous conclusion to “The Great War” (as it was known then), four bells that rang out on that day still remain in the village.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The <i>Enterprise</i>article first mentions the fire bell when describing that historic morning. The village bell, or fire bell, was located at several different sites around the village over the years. When I was a boy growing up in La Farge in the 1950s, that bell was displayed prominently by the firehouse, which at that time was located where the post office is now. Eventually that bell was stored away by the village, but is still kept at the new EMS Building on La Farge’s East Side. After finding the bell, Wayne Haugrud took a photo of it, which accompanies this article.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On that morning of the original Armistice Day in 1918, the fire bell was located in front of the village firehouse located on Penn Street, a block north of Main Street. Today, that location of the old firehouse and bell is across from the United Methodist Church.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another account of that original Armistice Day morning in La Farge was provided in 1973, when John H. Telfer wrote a letter to the <i>La Farge Epitaph </i>newspaper about his remembrances. Telfer was eleven years old on that Armistice Day morning in 1918 and 55 years later, still had vivid memories of the day. The Telfer family lived on south Mill Street; I think it was the last house on the street before it joins Pearl Street. The house was next to the railroad track coming into La Farge from the south and the boy and his mother were walking up the railroad track that morning. John Telfer’s account of that morning is fascinating.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The morning of November 11, 1918, was dawning cold and clear. I remember how crusted the snow was as my hardy mother, Delila Geneva Telfer, and I tramped up the track, then along the edge of the swamps that nearly surrounded the old Milwaukee Road “round house” which was really square. I had some good muskrat sets in those reedy marshes and two or three held fur that never-to-be-forgotten morning. </i>(This location would be across Mill Street from the present Hometown Village Apartments.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Putting them into a gunny sack we went on up the track to that old “ox bow” slough just west of where the track ran through a cut in the sandstone and then emerged into the Seelyburg “Y”. </i>(This location is just to the west and down over the hill from the Chapel Hill Cemetery.) <i>Here I found several muskrats had got caught and were quickly pulled into deep water and drowned by my traps sliding out on a 4 or 5 foot length of securely staked telephone wire. Our sack now held seven rats, a very good days catch for the 11 year old trapper running his line before going on to the S.D.A. country school. Mother some times came along to carry home my catch. Otherwise I had to hide them for all day, a chancy matter with sharp covetous eyes often trailing me.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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From this account, we know that the young lad was headed to the Seventh Day Adventist School that was held in the SDA Church, at the time located next to the present Star Cemetery on the north side of the river at Seelyburg.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The scene has always remained clear, I was knee deep in the water, Mother was shivering up on the track, the early sun had broken through onto the bright snow. Suddenly all the village church bells began to ring furiously. We were startled and wondering for only a minute. Then Mother cried, “It must be the armistice, the real armistice!” Old-timers may remember there had been one mistaken report that had set off the bells a day or two earlier.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> We both hurried home; there’d be no school today.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It is interesting to note how the ringing church bells on that cold morning brought instant recognition to the boy and his mother that the war had ended. Although, to be fair, the village had apparently had some practice for the armistice announcement since the village’s bells had been rung erroneously a couple of days earlier. I imagine everyone in La Farge was anticipating the announcement of the war’s end after that initial bell pealing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am assuming that the bell at the SDA Church in Seelyburg rang that morning along with the church bells of the Methodist and Free Methodist churches. I’m also going to assume that the bell at the schoolhouse also rang out the armistice announcement on that November 11<sup>th</sup>. The bells at the school and at the two La Farge Methodist congregations all remain in front of those fine institutions to this day. Photos of each of those three bells also accompany this article.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The bell on the SDA Church/school at Seelyburg is a different matter. The church and school remained at the Seelyburg location until the 1920s. At that time, the congregation built a new church on the northwest corner of Silver and School Streets in La Farge. They may have moved the bell on the SDA Church at Seelyburg to that new location two blocks south of the La Farge schoolhouse. (When the Methodist congregation moved their church from Chapel Hill in Seelyburg down to La Farge in 1902, they brought the bell along and hung it in the new church. That was the bell that rang on Armistice Day in 1918 and now stands outside of the newest Methodist church.) Some fifty years later, the SDA Church closed and the building was sold to Lee & Donna Gudgeon, who converted the building into their home. The steeple and bell were removed from the former church and the bell eventually ended up near Mt. Vernon in rural Dane County, where it was to be placed in an old country schoolhouse. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-53190408551525393432018-11-02T10:45:00.001-07:002018-11-02T10:45:18.081-07:00WATER THROUGH THE DAM!<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<b>KICKAPOO RIVER FLOOD OF 2008<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b> </b>Volume II of my history of La Farge begins with information about the great Kickapoo River Flood of 2008. The introduction of the book deals with how that particular flood somewhat delayed the publishing of Volume II and why that flooding event kept me occupied with other tasks besides writing. Chapter 1 of the book is all about the flood itself and how the community reacted to it. As we have been doing with these recent columns, we also will look at how La Farge dealt with the aftermath of that great flood. Let’s begin by looking at what I wrote about the flood of 2008 in Chapter 1 – titled <b>A Flood For The Ages</b>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The water started to cross Highway 82 at the low spot in the road near the river, just to the west of Nuzum’s and the Organic Valley cheese factory building. Roger Andrew’s flat to the north had filled with water during the early Sunday morning hours and was now spilling the excess water across State Highway 82. Around the corner and going north on Mill Street, the water was starting to seep across that street towards Schroer’s sawmill. Heavy rains from the day before in the Kickapoo Valley had accumulated to over a half a foot of precipitation or more in some places and those waters were rushing to the river. It was Sunday, June 8, 2008 and the village of La Farge was beginning to feel the effects of what would become the greatest recorded flood in the history of the Kickapoo River.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> To the north, the flat empty land that had once been Seelyburg was covered with several feet of swiftly rising water. The river had come out of its banks during the night and now the old lumber town’s Main Street was under water from Chapel Hill in the south all the way to the Star Cemetery hill north of the river. Around the hill to the north, the covered bridge on the Kickapoo Valley Reserve strained against the floodwaters battering at its foundation and rising nearly to its roof.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> On County Highway P where Weister Creek enters the Kickapoo, the river was a quarter of a mile wide at Bridge 14 that morning. Traveling north to Rockton, the talk in that hamlet was about the FedEx truck that stalled out in the rising waters near Cutoff Road on County P heading east towards Valley. The previous evening, curious on-lookers and flood gazers had watched the floodwaters ascend on the side of the truck. When darkness fell, the truck was still there surrounded in water that was door-handle high. Then early on this morning, the first gazers noticed that the truck was gone and supposed that the terrible current had washed it away. Only later did they realize that the truck was still there in the early morning light, only invisible as it was completely covered by the floodwaters.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Word came upriver from Ontario that the village was in a state of shambles from the terrible floodwaters. Reports started down the valley that the crest of the flood was the highest ever seen in the village, surpassing the high water marks of the 1935 and 1978 floods. “Prepare for the Worst” was the alarm echoed along the Kickapoo on that June morning.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Back in La Farge the warnings were being heeded. At Nuzum’s Lumber Yard, workers carried a variety of items upstairs in the old shed, as had been done so many times before during big floods. Across the street at the old cheese factory building, Organic Valley workers placed products up on shelves in the retail store and warehouse. Earl Nelson and his crew moved trucks off the lots at the La Farge Truck Center and drove them to high ground. The ambulances and fire trucks were moved from their garages located south of Main Street to the school parking lots on the high ground on the north side of the village. An Emergency Command Center was set up at the schoolhouse and the Red Cross arrived to prepare a place for displaced people to stay in the school gymnasium. The National Weather Service issued flood warnings along the Kickapoo, setting off preparations by Vernon County Emergency Management to help those people in the path of the flood.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> As the water continued to rise during the afternoon, many people were removed from their homes south of Main Street and taken to the shelter at the school where food and sleeping cots were available. Most of the people living in houses south of Main Street had been busy all day getting what they had out of the way of the floodwaters. Once again the floodwaters of the Kickapoo were cutting the familiar diagonal slash across the village as it had done before in the other great floods. Heavy rains hit in the afternoon hours dumping nearly three inches of water on saturated ground. Rain totals for the two days now reached eight inches, or a foot, depending on where you lived in the Kickapoo Valley. All of the creeks soon roared out of their banks in the countryside around the village. Water rushing off the hillsides washed a pickup parked along Jug Creek Road, located north of La Farge, into the nearby ditch. Bear Creek’s raging waters closed County Highway D east of La Farge and washed two cars off the road there.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> During the evening the floodwaters in La Farge continued to rise at an alarming rate. County Sheriff’s cars manned a blockade on the west end of the bridge over the river to keep traffic from entering the raging waters. In town the waters had reached into the Heartland Cenex Co-op station parking lot, nearly up to the Post Office. A vigil of emergency personnel maintained an overnight post on Main Street at the east end of the floodwaters. Shane Nottestad, owner of the Zzip Stop convenience store/gas station, spent the night with other helpers steering floating logs, washed out of Schroer’s lumber yards several blocks to the northwest, away from the gas pumps of his business. Lights shining out of the roiling waters showed one of the trucks at the La Farge Truck Center, parked on a display riser nearly four feet above the street level. Left there because it was hoped it would be above the floodwaters, the truck now seemed to be perched on the surface of a lake as the waters lapped at its tires. Finally the water rose so high that the emergency electric generator, being operated two blocks south of Main Street, had to be shut down, plunging the village into further darkness.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> When light first came on that following Monday, June 9, the Kickapoo River at La Farge still stretched from the bridge on the west end of town to the Zzip Stop corner five blocks away. The floodwaters had risen to record levels in the village during the previous night and had stayed that way for longer than ever before. The only good sign that the bleary-eyed gazers saw on that morning was that the waters, slowly but surely, were starting to abate. Sometime in the early morning hours of darkness the crest had been reached and the river’s mighty flood had started to recede back towards its banks. The recession of the river’s crest was a slow process that took most of the day.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> By Tuesday, the cleanup from the flood was in full force in the village. Volunteers poured into the village to help those returning to their flooded homes. The flood had been the greatest ever recorded, with the National Weather Service gauging station at La Farge measuring a high water mark of 15.78 feet. That level was nearly a foot higher than the previous highest level recorded in La Farge during the 1978 flood. The effect of those record high floodwaters on the houses and businesses of La Farge was readily apparent. There was so much water backed up in the offices of Nuzum’s that holes had to be drilled in the floor to get the water to drain out. Across the street at the old cheese factory, the coolers and freezers of Organic Valley’s retail store and warehouse were badly damaged by the floodwaters. It would take months to get that Main Street operation back to normal. Further up Main Street at the La Farge Truck Center fire hoses washed away at the mud left by the floodwaters. Piles of trash and debris started to accumulate on the curbs around the village.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Homeowners who had rarely if ever had floodwaters before in their homes, now returned to see the devastation caused by the flood. High water marks left on the walls were nearly two feet high on the first floor in some houses. Nearly every house in the village south of Main Street had suffered some type of flood or water damage. Mold grew on the floors and walls where the floodwaters had once been. Many of the homes had suffered major damages and the extent was confirmed by touring village and FEMA officials. After the inspections later in the week, eight houses that were most heavily damaged by the floodwaters were declared unfit to live in and condemned. Eventually, more than fifteen houses in La Farge, damaged by the floodwaters, would be purchased from their owners with FEMA funds and demolished.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Another casualty of the flood was the Burt’s apartment building located across Snow Street and to the south of the motel. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, June 11<sup>th</sup>, the La Farge firemen rushed to the building, which was totally ablaze. It could not be saved and burned to the ground along with the contents of the three apartments. The flood had inundated the apartment building, which was once the former La Farge Methodist Church parsonage. The moisture from the floodwaters had damaged the wiring in the apartment complex. When the power was turned back on, the wiring failed and caused electrical problems that led to the fire.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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The Burt’s apartment building was the first of nearly two-dozen residences that would cease to be on La Farge’s south side because of the 2008 flood. Using FEMA and later DNR funds, many houses on south Mill Street, south State Street, Snow Street and Pearl Street were purchased from their owners and razed. The great Kickapoo River Flood of 2008 and a later, but smaller flood in 2010 sent people who owned homes near the river to higher ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the flood a new apartment building was built on Highland Street using federal grant money as a way of replacing some of the lost housing in the village. A new Emergency Services Building opened in 2010 on the village’s east side to house the fire department and ambulance squad vehicles. The building also serves as a village hall for meetings and elections. The Town of Stark relocated away from their flooded buildings on Main Street and moved to a new town hall building constructed on the dam site at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. About that unfinished water control structure north of La Farge, once again people were amazed and saddened at how much water can flow through an unfinished dam.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you would like a copy of Volume II of my La Farge history, send a $25 check (that includes shipping and mailing costs) to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639. Locally my books are for sale at the <i>La Farge Episcope </i>office, the bank in La Farge and at the gift shop at the KVR Visitor Center. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-69339760126331064682018-10-16T12:47:00.000-07:002018-10-16T12:47:03.753-07:00WATER OVER THE DAM - PT. IV<br />
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The great Kickapoo River Flood of 1978 was the culmination of a very wet spring season that continued into June. That month, weekend storms seemed to keep the river at or near flood stage every weekend, thwarting the attempts of tourists to canoe on the river. At the end of the month the tipping point was reached. Here is how I described that flood in volume II of my history of La Farge (page 214).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>On the evening of Friday, June 30<sup>th</sup>, a series of heavy thunderstorms swept through the Kickapoo Valley. During the evening, the National Weather Service issued a flood alert for the Kickapoo River and surrounding streams. The Vernon County Sheriff’s Department mobilized efforts to move everyone away from flooding streams. The La Farge Fire Department was called out during the night to look for canoeists who were camped along the river south of Rockton. Later, the power went off in the village and firemen helped people with emergency power for sump pumps to keep water out of basements.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> By the morning of July 1, reports from communities upriver from La Farge warned of high floodwaters on the way. Norwalk, Wilton and Ontario were all deluged with floodwaters and all of it was headed fro La Farge and other communities downstream. North of Rockton, the waters of the flooding Kickapoo were almost over the 10-foot high railings of Bridge #10 that spanned the river. By late morning on Saturday, July 1, the flooding Kickapoo began to spill into La Farge. Employees and volunteer work crews worked at Nuzum’s, Jeffer’s Truck Sales, and the cheese factory to get merchandise to higher ground. Volunteers and members of the fire department began to move furniture and other belongings out of the houses south of Main Street. A caravan of volunteers in trucks and boats moved people out of their houses on Mill, Pearl, Gold, Silver and Snow Streets. All of the trucks of the fire department as well as the ambulance were moved away from the firehouse on south Silver Street to higher ground. Some of the trucks were kept at C&S Motors and a couple others were eventually driven over to the Major farm on Otter Creek, so the department could respond on the west side of the river.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> By mid-afternoon the waters of the Kickapoo had advanced up Main Street to crest between the post office and the Co-op Gas Station. All events of the opening day of the 4<sup>th</sup>of July Celebration were cancelled, but many people still came to La Farge for the events – many unaware of the devastating flood. Others, however, cam to see the floodwaters and by late afternoon the village was jammed with people. Sandwiches that had been made for the celebration were donated to feed the many volunteers, firemen and policemen helping with the flood. Red Cross officials came to the village by nightfall and they arranged for meals to be served at Kennedy’s Restaurant for people displaced by the floodwaters. Sleeping bags were placed in the school gymnasium and people with no place to stay could reside there until the floodwaters abated. Others stayed in the KP Hall overnight as they waited to return to their flooded homes.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> The waters started to recede late in the day on July 1<sup>st</sup>, but then an intense storm pummeled the La Farge area in the evening. The storm had spawned several tornadoes in the Viroqua area and La Farge received nearly two-inches of rain. The storm caused more severe flooding on Bear Creek, Otter Creek, and Weister Creek and caused the Kickapoo to again rise to former high levels during the night. From Friday evening June 30<sup>th</sup>through Sunday morning, July 2<sup>nd</sup>, 6.15 inches of rain was measured in La Farge.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> By the morning of Sunday, July 2<sup>nd</sup>the waters of the Kickapoo at La Farge had begun its recession down Main Street and back towards the river’s banks. The floodwaters had crested at 14.92 feet, the greatest water level ever recorded at the gauging station located on the bridge west of Nuzum’s. 12,900 cubic feet of water per second was rushing through the village at the peak of the crest, another apex never recorded before. (Many of the older generation compared the great Flood of 1978 to that of the one in 1935, but the gauging station at La Farge was not in operation at that time of the Flood of 1935, so an official comparison was not available.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It is interesting to note that the gauging station at La Farge was installed because of the flood of 1935. When the Corps of Engineers did their preliminary flood control studies of the Kickapoo Watershed beginning in 1938, one of their initial recommendations was for gauging stations to be placed along the river to measure its flow. The stations were installed at La Farge and Gays Mills soon after that initial Corps study. Let’s now return to my account in volume II of that 1978 flood at La Farge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>In La Farge, the houses that had floodwater in them (Some for the first time ever) included Gerald Anderson, Stanley Potter, Elmer Storer, Catherine Norris, Eva Clements, John Sokolik, Bob Sokolik, Ron Gabrielson (renting the JaDoul house), Reynold Waddell, Jim Campton, Gib Stevens, Ethel Burt, Maxine Kennedy, Bob Erickson, Lucille Yarolimek, Vera Campton, Bob Jacobson, and Leslie Gillett.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Business places in La Farge that were inundated with the floodwaters included the La Farge Cheese Factory, Nuzum’s, Gary’s Texaco Station, Caucutt-Olson Plumbing, La Farge Epitaph newspaper, Jeffer’s Truck Sales, Kickapoo Antiques, and Nelson’s Garage. Also suffering damage from the flood were the Town of Stark hall and shed, the La Farge jail, and the new village hall and firehouse.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> The school’s bus garage, located on Main Street in the old Fulmer’s Garage building suffered heavy damage.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Floodwaters kept area roads and highways closed for days. Water covered the old portion of Highway 131 at Seelyburg for nearly two days and caused major damage to the road. Highway 131 south of La Farge was closed for two days and almost one hundred yards of the highway were washed out below the new bridge at Lawton’s. In addition the sewer plant at Seelyburg was inoperable for more than 24 hours at the height of the flood and raw sewage was dumped directly into the river’s waters. Many people boiled village water for drinking during the flood, but a DNR check on the village’s water supply on July 5<sup>th</sup>indicated there was no contamination.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Governor Martin Schreiber had declared much of southwestern Wisconsin, including the Kickapoo Valley, a disaster area because of the flooding. (President Carter soon followed with his own disaster declaration, freeing up federal funds for flood relief.) The move by Governor Schreiber allowed for state and federal assistance to reach those affected by the floods more quickly. Within a week of the flood, representatives from HUD and the Governor’s office were in La Farge to assess the damages. A list compiled by Village President Ted Erickson indicated that 38 residences, 23 businesses and several municipal facilities in La Farge had damages from the flood. An initial estimate total of $200,000 in damages to La Farge residences, businesses, and streets was compiled. That total did not include any of the damages to farm operations within the village.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It is important to remember that a nearly completed flood control dam lay north of La Farge during that epic Kickapoo River Flood of 1978. Originally scheduled to be completed two years before the flood, construction on the unfinished dam had been delayed for nearly four years. It is interesting to notice how the Corps of Engineers assessed that 1978 flood on the Kickapoo River. Again, I will return to volume II, page 219.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Later, the Corps of Engineers came up with very different numbers for the impact of a completed dam on the flood. Corps estimates on the total damages from the flood to Vernon, Richland and Crawford Counties was $20-million. An additional $7-million in damages occurred in Monroe County, but those damages would not have been affected by a dam at La Farge. However, the Corps estimated that with a completed dam at La Farge and the accompanying levee systems at Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills, 80% of the flood damages to Kickapoo towns would have been avoided. With only the dam in place and with no downstream levees, the Corps still predicted a decrease of 63% in flood damages. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> Wow, 80% less damages with a completed dam at La Farge! It blows one’s mind to think that those kinds of numbers still created no impetus for the politicians to finish the dam project. As Bob Faw said on his TV news story about the La Farge dam project that was shown on the “CBS Evening News” on October 13, 1978, “An unfinished dam stops no flood waters”. </span>Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-87910089039480191992018-10-16T12:41:00.000-07:002018-10-16T12:41:01.389-07:00Water Over The Dam - Part III<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
La Farge, as a community located along the Kickapoo River, has a long history of recovering from floods. As we wait to see how the village reacts to the greatest Kickapoo River flood ever in 2018, perhaps a look back at some of the other post-flood times is in order.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The June 1899 Kickapoo River flood was the first great flood to be felt by the communities in the valley. There had been other floods before that, but nothing like the destruction caused in that year. At the mill in Rockton, the 1899 flood of the Kickapoo River was measured as over a foot higher than any previous flood. The flood was devastating to the downriver town of Seelyburg as the river cut a new channel right through the middle of the community. Every house and store in the hamlet was damaged or destroyed. Many of the people who lived in the little community along the Kickapoo moved away from Seelyburg to higher ground. Several of the Seelyburg businesses including the Millard General Store and the Brown Photography Studio moved south to La Farge to reestablish their businesses. The exodus from Seelyburg continued after the flood as the Methodist congregation moved from Chapel Hill on the southern end of Seelyburg to a new church in La Farge in 1902.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Interestingly, only one house in La Farge suffered damages from the 1899 flood. A month after the flood, the village was incorporated and the new municipality including flood-ravaged Seelyburg on the north end, was established. La Farge had damages to the railroad that had come to the town only a year earlier. Most of the railroad’s track bed in the village was washed away and the railroad bridge south of town was washed askew and had to be straightened. Of course, in the summer of 1899, the new village had not yet begun its expansion towards the river. By 1907, when the next great river flood hit, the village had expanded to the west and south from the original “Corners”. Many houses and places of business had been built south of La Farge’s bustling Main Street and would be in the way of the flood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The July 1907 Kickapoo River flood devastated La Farge and the other communities along its path. In La Farge, the crest of the floodwaters reached nearly three blocks east from the river. According to an article about the flood in the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>newspaper, the floodwaters reached the base of the hill where the Central Hotel stood (Today, the post office is located where that hotel once was. That serves as a good comparison of that 1907 flood to the recent 2018 flood.) Major damages were suffered at many of the lumbering businesses along Mill Street, including the Arm & Pin Factory, Nuzum & Hunter Lumber, Hammer Brothers Lumber & Excelsior Mill and several other lumber mills located along the street. Further north at Seelyburg, the La Farge Milling Company & Electric Company also suffered heavy damages. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The railroad depot and freight warehouse (next to Nuzum’s today) also were heavily damaged in La Farge. At Seelyburg, the railroad’s “Wye” turnaround was washed out as well as the spur line to the mill there. South of the depot in La Farge, most of the railroad’s spur line to the lumbering businesses was washed away or damaged in some way. It was weeks before railroad service was restored to the community. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many people living in houses south of La Farge’s Main Street had to be rescued by boats during the night when the floodwaters rose dangerously in town. Amazingly, nobody was hurt or killed during the numerous rescues in La Farge during that 1907 flood. During the height of that flood, water was measured at five-feet deep in some houses in La Farge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For Seelyburg, the 1907 Kickapoo River Flood virtually marked the end of the little riverside hamlet. After the flood, only one residence and one business remained on the once bustling main street of the mill town as everyone else moved away from the river, continuing the exodus to the higher ground to the south in the village. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>When the big floods come, the Kickapoo washes away more than ever comes back.</i></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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After the 1907 flood, some people living in La Farge moved from their flooded houses to higher ground. A few businesses that had been hit hard by the flood did not choose to stay in La Farge. Some of the lumbering businesses located along Mill Street would close within a short time. Some of that was due to the damages suffered from the flood, but another reason was the lack of available wood to use in the lumber and excelsior mills.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It would be nearly three decades before another massive flood would hit the Kickapoo Valley. In August 1935 the greatest Kickapoo River flood that had ever been seen devastated the valley. The floodwaters rose rapidly in La Farge during the evening of August 5<sup>th</sup>and people once again were rescued from their houses during that terrible night. The floodwaters rose so rapidly that some people had to be rescued by boats from the second story windows of their houses. The La Farge telephone operator stayed up all night calling homes in the village and beyond towards Tunnelville to warn people to get out of their homes if they lived near the river. At its height that night, the Kickapoo River floodwaters rose two feet in one hour in La Farge. People displaced by the flood were temporarily housed in the KP Hall, the Odd Fellows Hall and the Masonic Temple. The Red Cross was in town the next day and over the next week served nearly 300 meals to those displaced by the flood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The aftermath of the Flood of 1935 was a massive cleanup. Disinfectant by the gallons was used to clean up the flood’s stinking residue. The village’s health officer ordered everybody to boil any water used for drinking for fifteen minutes to avoid the ill effects of typhoid fever and other bowel infections. Waste and garbage from the flood was burned immediately or buried. Dead animal carcasses, and there were many of them in the village, were removed in haste.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Red Cross brought in two-dozen large tents to La Farge for people to live in while their houses were drying out. People in the village shared their garden vegetables with their neighbors who had lost their gardens to the floodwaters.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Damages to businesses in the village were massive. Nuzum’s, the cheese factory, both gas stations on the corners of Main and Mill Streets, the lumber mill and pickle station on south Mill Street and the power plant at Seelyburg all had heavy damages from the floodwaters. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Every aspect of the railroad received heavy flood damage as the tracks from south of La Farge all the way to Seelyburg were heavily damaged. The railroad’s depot, freight warehouse, coal shed, icehouse, engine house and nearby cheese warehouse were all heavily damaged. The railroad bridge south of town had to be repaired again. A freight train had stood next to the depot in La Farge during the flood and the high water mark was three feet up on the wooden boxcars. It was nearly three weeks before the trains were able to run to La Farge once again after the flood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Residential damage in La Farge from the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935 was immense. Many people’s woodsheds and out buildings were burned instead of repaired, too far gone to be fixed up. Most of the damaged houses in the village were eventually cleaned up and repaired. Some of the houses were elevated to avoid future floods. Many of the former occupants moved back in, but several houses were dismantled due to the excessive damages from the flood. By September, several small single story houses had been built along north Mill Street (across from the present Calhoon Park) to help provide temporary housing for those displaced by the flood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935, the people of La Farge and other Kickapoo Valley towns began to seek some type of relief from the river’s floods. Led by La Farge Village President Arch Davidson, a delegation went to Washington D.C. to plead with Congress for some type of flood control help. Thus, the story of the dam project at La Farge began. But that is another story for another time.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-30164404269317091382018-09-28T09:27:00.000-07:002018-09-28T09:27:30.554-07:00Water Over The Dam - Part II<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
The great Kickapoo River flood of 2018 began on the evening of Monday, August 27<sup>th</sup>, when torrential rains inundated an area from Coon Valley to Hillsboro. Rainfall totals for that evening exceeded a foot in the Cashton, Ontario and Wilton areas. In La Farge over five inches fell. During that first night, the northern Kickapoo Valley communities were hit with record setting flood heights. Most of the downtown Ontario business district was under 5 to 10 feet of water before daybreak.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By 4 am on Tuesday, August 28<sup>th</sup>, word had been received in La Farge of the record setting water that was approaching from upriver. An army of workers and volunteers began to move what could be saved from the businesses along west Main Street nearest the river. By daylight the river was out of its banks, crossing the old Highway 131 at Seelyburg and plowing its way toward the village with alarming speed and power. By mid-morning, the Kickapoo River stretched from the bridge west of Nuzum’s all the way to the gas pumps at the Zzip Stop. And the water kept rising.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That afternoon over five inches of rain fell in less than three hours in the La Farge area. The downpour set off a massive flood on area creeks and streams. As the rising waters of Bear and Otter Creeks came careening into La Farge that afternoon, it encountered the already record flood heights of the swollen Kickapoo and had nowhere to go. The water kept rising and by nightfall, the flood crest had breached the drive-thru of the post office – a never before seen height. Water from a backed up Bear Creek was running west down Snow Street and into the river near the motel. On the other end of the village, the waters of Bear Creek nearly reached the parking lot of the new EMT Building.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rescuing people from their houses was a top priority after the afternoon deluge. DNR wardens brought a boat to the village and went door to door rescuing people and their pets from their flooded houses and getting them to high ground. (Check out the rescue video posted on the WKBT – Channel 8 in LaCrosse website of those DNR wardens rescuing people in La Farge that day. It is mesmerizing to watch – the definition of heroism in many respects.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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It took nearly all of Wednesday, August 29<sup>th</sup>for the flood waters to leave Main Street in La Farge. Highway 131 was closed in both directions from the village. To the north, the road had washouts at Bridges 10, 9, 7 and three different locations at Bridge 2 on the northern end of Ferris Flat. To the south, the river’s floodwaters covered the highway below Tunnelville at Lawton’s and would eventually wash out part of the road there. Highway 82 through La Farge finally opened for traffic on that evening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The flood’s height for La Farge measured at the official measuring station at the bridge next to Nuzum’s was 19.42 feet. That height eclipsed the previous high water mark in La Farge (set by the 2008 flood) by nearly three and a half feet! By the way, that measuring station was always operating during the flood even though the station did quit sending out information via satellite. When Lyle Dorscheid, the local gauge reader and the National Weather Service crew checked the gauging station after the floodwater finally went down, they verified that it had always been recording the river’s depth. What the station could not record was the torrents of water entering the river via Otter and Bear Creeks south of the gauge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The power was out in La Farge for most of three days as the village’s generating station on south Silver Street was overcome with the high floodwaters. The electric power ceased to be at noon on that Tuesday and did not return until mid-afternoon on Thursday, August 30<sup>th.</sup> Down river, the Kickapoo inundated Viola, Readstown, Soldiers Grove, Gays Mills and Steuben as its waters raced to join the Wisconsin River. Almost every village set high water marks, just as La Farge had, with some areas noting water levels nearly five feet higher than any ever recorded previously.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The record floodwater levels meant lots of damages to several businesses in La Farge. They included Nuzum’s, the Organic Valley retail store in the old cheese factory, the La Farge Truck Center and Car Wash, Don Potter Realty, the Zzip Stop, Ewetopia, the Premier Co-op, The La Farge Dental Clinic and the La Farge Motel. Water even seeped into the north end of the new clinic on north Mill Street that had been constructed at an elevation level three feet above the previous highest flood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In addition, twenty-one La Farge residences had floodwater damage. All of the houses on Snow Street, eleven in all, suffered extensive flood damage. Many of those houses had been elevated since previous floods, but still had water damage due to the record flood crest. Six houses on south State Street, several that had never had floodwater previously, were flooded this time. Some of the houses can be repaired and made livable again, but many cannot be fixed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By Friday, August 31<sup>st</sup>, the water had finally receded from Plum Run Road (old Hwy 131) at Seelyburg. Massive clean up continued in the village. The Zzip Stop was selling gas by that day after having the gas pumps cleaned and inspected. Dumpsters were everywhere in the floodway of the village, stretching the length of Snow Street and beyond. The water had been so high in the motel that all of the rooms had to be gutted. Dumpsters piled high with flood debris stood beside the motel, Zzip Stop, Ewetopia and other Main Street businesses. Rental houses on Main Street were damaged too badly to allow the tenants to return.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The sidewalk outside of the Kickapoo Haven served as a meal site while the power was out during the beginning of the cleanup. Meals were served at noon and in the early evening every day through that Friday, August 31<sup>st</sup>. Volunteers, flood victims and those who needed a meal were fed with food donated and made by the Rockton Bar, the La Farge Food Pantry, both La Farge restaurants – Brosi’s and Phil & Deb’s, Bergum’s Grocery, and the Zzip Stop. The La Farge Fire Department personnel was on call for the entire week helping with rescues, pumping out basements and doing what ever needed to be done to help the people of the community.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Flood relief supplies were available at both churches in La Farge and the United Methodist Church was soon filled with clothes, food, and other necessities for those that had been flooded out. The La Farge UM church is scheduled to be open as a flood relief center until the end of the first week of October. The La Farge Food Pantry, under the leadership of Pastor Mark Phillips, was providing housing and money for those displaced by the flood. A week after the last floodwaters had subsided, Pastor Mark was still busy finding places for people to live and providing relief in many other ways. Several families displaced by the flood moved into campers parked in the La Farge Village Park.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the weekend, the weather had settled down and the river was back in its banks. Then early Sunday morning, September 2<sup>nd</sup>, it started raining again. It rained again on Sunday and several times on Monday, Labor Day. Another nearly six inches of rain fell in three days and the Kickapoo rose rapidly again. By Tuesday, September 4<sup>th</sup>, the floodwaters of the Kickapoo River had covered old Hwy 131 at Seelyburg again. By that evening the river’s water was over Hwy 82 at Nuzum’s and over Mill Street again near the new clinic. Most of the floodwater had receded by the next day, September 6<sup>th</sup>, but Plum Run Road at Seelyburg remained under water for another day. South Mill Street, south Silver Street and Pearl Street on the far southern end of the village were closed for nearly two weeks straight due to high water.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So where does La Farge go after such a catastrophic flood? How many people and businesses will leave? What lays ahead for this Kickapoo River town? What will be the reaction to this historic flood?<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-87259645097580601242018-09-28T09:17:00.000-07:002018-09-28T09:17:58.951-07:00Water Over The Dam - Part I<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
Where do we begin to describe the great flood of 2018?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are iconic scenes that will stick with us, recorded forever (hopefully) in today’s technology by anyone and everyone with a phone in their pocket or purse. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is the video of the Red Angus bull standing in the middle of the bridge in Coon Valley with that “I’m here now and it’s a lot better than where I was before and nobody is moving me” look in its eyes. (What ever happened to that magnificent animal? That question seems to be floating around a week after the waters subsided.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then there is the photo of the highway sign in Ontario that alerts viewers that Highway 131 going to La Farge is a right turn. When the photo was first posted online, some people did not see the picnic table covered with flood trash sitting on top of the sign – indicating the record setting level of water in Ontario. A week after that record setting floodwater, Hwy 131 remains closed between there and Rockton as several bridge areas of the highway received significant damage from the floodwaters. Maybe that photo was trying to say that it would be no picnic trying to travel the road south to La Farge.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For Viola, perhaps the enduring memory will be that waterline on the brick walls of the Iron Horse Saloon building on the village’s main Commerical Street. The water line, with the water soaked red bricks below delineates the heights of the Kickapoo’s record crest in that town. An after effect of the great flood for Viola is another cancelled “Horse & Colt Show” – the second time in three years. (The 2016 Horse & Colt Show also had to be cancelled because of flooding – which was the first time in nearly 80 years of having to cancel the annual fall festival.) That celebration is a homecoming for many and will be sorely missed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In La Farge, perhaps the scene captured of the yellow storage building located next to Nuzum’s floating in the middle of Highway 82 between the lumberyard and Organic Valley’s cheese factory building is the one to remember. As the record setting floodwaters receded the building was moved into a spot in front of the car wash. That building dates back to the railroad days in La Farge (The last train left town in 1939.) when railroad cars could be unloaded of their cargo into the storage building. Now the concrete foundation piers where the shed sat are a historic reminder of the old railroad days in the Kickapoo Valley.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The great Kickapoo River flood of 1935 was the beginning of the end (or perhaps the end of the end) for the Kickapoo railroad line. Despite efforts by village leaders in La Farge and other Kickapoo Valley communities to get some flood control measures through federal programs, the railroad was soon a thing of the past. That flood of 1935 was the standard for measuring flood events until the great flood of 1978, which was surpassed by the great flood of 2008, nearly topped by the great flood of 2017, and now has been eclipsed by the Great Kickapoo River Flood of 2018. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>When the big floods come, the Kickapoo washes away more than ever comes back.<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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That old saying from over a century ago about flooding in the Kickapoo Valley was included in the prelude to Volume I of my La Farge history. Already rumors are circulating about businesses in Ontario, Viola and Readstown that will not reopen because of the great flood of 2018. People who lived in flood-ravaged homes along the river in towns from Wilton to Wauzeka don’t want to return to their former residences. How many people who lived in La Farge in 2008 and were affected by the flood left the village? What will it be like this year? Some people cannot return to their homes because the damage is so great. Everyone is beaten down by the terrible floodwaters. Morale is low for many. This is the third straight year for bad flooding on the Kickapoo. When will it ever stop?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The recent 2016-18 flooding on the Kickapoo is eerily similar to the flooding of a decade past. In 2007, 2008 and 2010, the Kickapoo Valley experienced bad flood events with the flooding of June 2018 being an all-time record setter until the most recent flood. At the time, people of the Valley were wondering what was going on. Was this climate change at its worst?<o:p></o:p></div>
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At one of the Driftless Dialogue talks held at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve several years ago, a speaker from UW-Madison (we think it was Stanley Temple) discussed the causes and effects of the flooding in the Kickapoo Valley between 2007 and 2010. The main thing that we took away from the talk was that the Kickapoo Valley could expect more of these flood events because of the changes occurring in weather patterns caused by climate change. The unique and hilly topography of the Kickapoo Valley also was a factor in the intensity of the flooding. At the time, I wasn’t sure if this theory about continued flood events in the Kickapoo Valley would prevail, but perhaps it is playing out right in front of us once again. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We will have to have more on this flooding on the Kickapoo next time.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-17225619264156846842018-08-20T14:24:00.000-07:002018-08-20T14:24:54.168-07:00"KICKAPOOGIA - A STATE OF MIND"<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Many moons ago we checked into a motel in the Eagle River area for a little summer vacation stay in Wisconsin’s “Up North”. When the owner/clerk saw our address as La Farge, he inquired what we were doing in the north woods. He said that it didn’t get any prettier than the Kickapoo Valley. He and his wife were from LaCrosse (they helped run the family owned hostelry in the summers) and said they tried to get to the Kickapoo Valley whenever possible. I told them I was going fishing on some of the lakes in the Conover area to try to catch some walleyes, which you cannot do in the Kickapoo Valley – and he agreed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But what he said, probably first got me to thinking about the natural beauty of where we live here in the Valley of the Kickapoo. That “Up North” conversation probably occurred sometime in the late 1970s or early ‘80s and what the motel operator was saying was already playing out in front of us, but we probably didn’t even see it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many people were visiting the Kickapoo Valley in the early 1970s, some drawn to the area because of the controversy over the La Farge dam project. Many of the visitors canoed the river and camped along its shores. Some of those people fell in love with the gorgeous valley and decided to stay.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In La Farge, the newcomers of that time were known as “Hippies” although most were not necessarily of that “hip generation”. Yes, some of the men had longer hair and beards and the women sported long skirts and a bra was not an absolute necessity as an undergarment. Some of the newcomers had an inclination towards relaxation with marijuana use (“Wacky Weed”, as the locals liked to call it), but most seemed to fit into the local scene pretty well. Downstream, in the Gays Mills area, the newcomers of that time became known as the “Back – To – The – Landers”, because of their propensity to try farming on a small scale. Regardless, all of the newcomers came to the Kickapoo Valley, liked what they saw and decided to stay.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The stoppage of the dam project at La Farge in the mid-‘70s continued to draw national headlines and that continued to draw people to the Valley to see what all of the fuss was about. Again, many of those visitors liked what they saw in the Valley of the Kickapoo. People from the urban areas of Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago started to view the beautiful Kickapoo Valley as a place for a second home – a spot in the country for extended vacations. When you add in the spectacular increase in the populations of Whitetail Deer and wild turkeys in the Valley at the same time, small acreage spots for a hunting camp became sought after in the Kickapoo Valley as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you were born and raised in the Kickapoo Valley, there is a propensity to take the beauty of the Valley for granted. You get used to the surroundings and start to overlook the majesty of the awesome hills and valleys. When the people who lived north of La Farge were leaving their homes and farms because of the dam project, they were forced to make a decision on whether to stay in the Valley or move away. For some, who wanted to stay in farming, the decision would be based on finding another farm to keep milking cows. Many of those farmers stayed in the area, but others left and sought their agricultural fortunes in other locales.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Harvey and Bernice Schroeder sold their mink ranch to the federal government as part of the dam project buy out in the early 1970s. They were retiring from farming, but they were not sure where they wanted to live. They traveled around America to other places, in particular checking out some locations where the Corps of Engineers had water control projects similar to the one at La Farge. They visited many beautiful places, but in the end returned to the Valley and built a new house located just north of La Farge that would be overlooking “Beautiful Lake La Farge”. Bernice has always said that they could not leave the beautiful hills of the Kickapoo Valley. (Perhaps that is why Bernice’s daughter, Kathy, has returned to the Valley to build a house on one of those hills.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even after the dam project was stopped and the lake was no longer a possibility, people from away continued to buy property in the rural areas of the Valley. Whether for a hunting camp or a second vacation home, the people still wanted to be in those hills as much as they could. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When CROPP bought the cheese factory in La Farge in 1989, a whole other group of new people came to the Valley. As the “Croppies” took over La Farge, many bought homes and farms in the area. Their organic ideals of farming struck a chord with locals, who liked the old-fashioned sensibilities of that type of farming. Because the topography of the Valley almost demands smaller farms, the “Organic Way” of farming soon thrived. The old “Two-Story Farms” of the Kickapoo Valley were viable again and the beauty of the Valley was a bonus for the new organic farmers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sometime in the late 1990s a local realtor took a long distance call from a faraway place. The caller was looking for a house on a small farm. The search was a little more specific though because the caller wanted a place located in THE “Organic Valley”. (Who says brand names don’t make a difference!) When the realtor explained to the caller that there wasn’t an actual “Organic Valley”, a sense of disappointment could be felt over the phone by the realtor. But the realtor, being a good salesperson, promptly started selling the virtues of the beautiful Kickapoo Valley, and eventually the sale of some Valley property was secured. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Today, the beauty of the Kickapoo Valley is wrapped within the overall tourist draw of the Driftless Area. This unglaciated region of the Midwest is unique in many respects and the beautiful Kickapoo Valley is the poster child of the area. Since the Kickapoo River is the only river that has its entire watershed included in the Driftless Area, the Valley has historic and geologic reasons for its unmatched beauty and majesty. Since the Kickapoo Valley has this awesome beauty, then its inhabitants must be pretty special, too? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Right? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Well??<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maybe the story of those “Kickapoogians” (or is it “Kickapoojians”?) who live in ultra-cool “Kickapoogia” is one for another time. Don’t forget that those <i>uber</i>-cool “Kickapoogia” t-shirts are for sale at the gift shop of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve Visitor Center. Get them while they are HOT! <o:p></o:p></div>
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Stay cool in Kickapoogia!<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-61455080351549165192018-08-20T14:18:00.000-07:002018-08-20T14:18:12.550-07:00KICKAPOO WILDLIFE REVISITED<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
One of the things that I find interesting in this little local history project is the ability to do updates on stories about which I have previously written. In April of 2011 I wrote a column titled “Kickapoo Wildlife” in which I presented changes in the local populations of animals and birds in the past fifty years. In that column I wrote about the abundance of deer and turkey in the Kickapoo Valley compared to a half century before. I also mentioned how the geese and cranes were hanging out on our ponds along Bear Creek, something else that was not common fifty years earlier. Perhaps it is time to take another look at Kickapoo wildlife.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first six months of 2018 seemed to abound with new and unusual sightings of local fauna that were both odd and interesting. Taken from an historical perspective, most of the instances reinforced my previous thoughts on the changes that have taken place in the Kickapoo Valley in regards to wildlife.<o:p></o:p></div>
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While driving home on a late afternoon in January, an elk jumped in front of our car near Bridge #10 between La Farge and Ontario. I had just crossed Ferris Flat, heading south and saw what I thought was a deer on the hill beside the road. I slowed down anticipating the animal jumping onto the road. Sure enough, what I thought was a big Whitetail, jumped the fence, landing right in the middle of the road in front of me. When I got a closer look at the animal’s rear end, I realized that it was an elk. It lumbered across the road and headed north down towards the Kickapoo River below.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Earlier that month, an elk had been seen running along Bear Creek south of our house. The elk had escaped from a nearby game farm. I thought that the elk that jumped in front of us that day was probably the same one. Later I would learn that the elk that we saw between Ontario and La Farge was from the DNR managed herd of elk released in the Black River Falls area. Two elks in the area in one month – that is a rarity indeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of rarities, I should backtrack to the summer of 2017 when an unusual bird sighting occurred at our place. My wife, Carolyn, is an active bird feeder with several continually stocked bird feeders in operation at our Bear Creek home. This food extravaganza attracts a wide variety of species of birds to our place. Last summer, we were surprised when this funny looking small robin started feeding behind our house. I soon realized it wasn’t a robin, but instead a large flycatcher species called Say’s Phoebe. The Say’s Phoebe is a species mainly of the Great Plains and is rarely seen in Wisconsin. I learned that earlier in the summer of 2017, a pair of the species was seen in the Middleton area. Perhaps the pair at our house later in the summer was the same ones seen there. The birds stayed about a month before moving on. They have not returned this summer, but many other birds have showed up here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our Spring/Winter/Spring/Winter/Spring weather that we had in April seemed to slow all of the water birds return to our ponds. Finally around May 9<sup>th</sup>, we saw a family of geese walking in our driveway. There were two adults, which I named Gus and Gertie, and their four little chicks. The springtime was very wet this year, so I think the geese came up on the driveway to find a dry place to hang out. They would walk all the way up the driveway and waddle around in our lower lawn. It was interesting watching the chicks grow, seeming to get taller and more goose-like each day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pure cacophony broke out at our place on the evening of May 14<sup>th</sup>. Seven Canadian geese decided to drop in on the ponds for a visit and Gus & Gertie were not happy. The squawking over territorial pond rights was deafening and even increased when two Sand Hill Cranes descended onto the far pond. Carolyn even tried to walk down to the ponds to arbitrate the situation, fearing the little ones would be driven off. Her trip was to no avail, but eventually Gus & Gertie prevailed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The family of Canadian Geese continued to walk in our driveway for over a month. The last time we saw the clan, the chicks were nearly fully-grown and we suspect the group flew off soon after that. The geese would be replaced in late June by a family of cranes. Again, because it was so wet in the lowlands around our ponds, we think the cranes were seeking the driveway for dryness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have had Sand Hill’s nest on our ponds before and have often seen the little ones in our pastures and yard. This year, during the annual Crane Count in late April (which was iced and snowed out from the original weekend), we saw a crane on the far pond, but never a nesting pair. We heard crane calls every morning indicating they were nesting nearby, so they could have been nesting along the little rill that runs to the west of the ponds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What was different about this year’s crane family was that they were staked out at a place right next to the driveway and close to Highway 82. When I would drive down the driveway, one or both of the cranes would fly right in front of the vehicle, trying to protect the two little chicks. Sometimes, the adult cranes would fly across the state highway, further endangering all concerned. Another difference in this year’s crane family from previous years was that the chicks were very young – small little bundles of yellow fuzz waddling around the edge of the driveway. Usually the chicks are much larger when we see them, but I think the wet conditions caused the move off their nest. After a few days of this tenuous situation, the whole crane family moved across the highway and hung around some high ground besides Bear Creek. For another week, we observed the cranes walking in the fields by the creek, before they moved on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We have had a gravel driveway for the entire forty years that we have lived on Bear Creek. Since we have the gravel, we usually have Killdeer around, because they like to lay their eggs in the substance. A few years ago, the Killdeer laid four big eggs right in the middle of the driveway, out of the tire tracks. We marked the nest, which amounted to no more that a little hole scratched out of the gravel, so I wouldn’t run over it with the riding mower. As we drove down the driveway, the adult Killdeer would run ahead of us, luring us away from their eggs. Occasionally, one of the adult birds would play the old “broken wing card” to entice us away from the eggs. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some years, the Killdeer eggs hatch, while other times the raccoons and other nighttime predators destroy the eggs before they hatch. This year, perhaps because of the wet conditions, the Killdeer made their driveway nest on higher ground, between the barn and the house. We saw four big eggs in the nest-hole and the two adult Killdeer were busy luring us away from the nest as we drove on our driveway. One of the adult birds would sit on the eggs during the day, to shelter them from the heat of the sunshine. As we buzzed past with the mowers, the adult would try to lure us away. Finally, they grew used to our mowing practices and stayed on the nest as we trimmed the lawn on either side.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We never did see little Killdeer chicks this year – I don’t know where they go when they hatch – but the eggs in the nest decreased from four to two and then to only one in a period of ten days or so. The older birds abandoned the last egg; I ended up placing it over into the pasture after waiting a week or so with nothing happening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With our ponds, we also have a healthy turtle population at our place. When the turtles are seeking higher ground to lay eggs, this can some times be a problem if they try to cross Highway 82. One Snapping Turtle and one Box Turtle did not make the crossing of the busy state highway successfully this spring, but several others did survive. Wood Turtles seem to be increasing in our area now, probably due to the increasing amount of habitat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That increased wildlife habitat, especially north of La Farge on the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, played out in a strange way in late April. A turkey hunter was walking to his hunting site on the ridge near Bridge #10 when he spied a Black Bear laying next to a little stream that runs into the Kickapoo River. The hunter did not want to encounter the bear so he continued on to his hunting site. At the end of the morning when the hunter was heading back to his car, he noticed the bear still lying next to the creek. He notified the authorities about the bear siting and the KVR personnel found the bear near death. It died by the next day and the animal had apparently been struck by lightning during a big thunderstorm that occurred in the area the night before it was first seen. When the animal was gutted out, black singe marks were observed on several of the bear’s organs, indicating a possible lightning strike. It was believed that the bear had hibernated on the Reserve last winter.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At least, we don’t have hibernating bears on our place here on Bear Creek yet. Or do we? After all, there is a reason the creek has that name. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-40863037139441909072018-06-22T11:48:00.000-07:002018-06-22T11:48:52.386-07:00More LHS Band Memories<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Starting in the summer of 1962 and continuing through that fall, the La Farge High School band became road warriors as they marched in 17 different parades throughout western Wisconsin. Part of the abundance of marching was to show off the new LHS band uniforms that had been acquired at the end of the previous school year. Purchased through a fund raising campaign by the LHS Band Parents, the new uniforms were gray in color, trimmed in purple with a white LF on the front coat panel. For marching in parades, the band members doffed gray hats adorned with a white plume reaching skyward.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. Marlin Pendleton, the LHS band teacher, wanted to show off the new uniforms and the band’s talents, so every marching invitation was accepted. The LHS Band marched at the Horse & Colt Show Parade in Viola, the Labor Day Parade in Hillsboro and for Cashton’s Fall Festival. Besides the schools own homecoming parade, the LHS Band traveled to Barneveld and Ithaca to march in those school’s Homecoming festivities. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In August, the band marched in the Rockton Homecoming Parade, or at least tried to. The parade was part of the Rockton Centennial Celebration that year and lots of floats were entered – too many perhaps. The band unloaded from the school buses and formed into their marching lines on Lisney Road on the northwest side of the little hamlet. The LHS Band marched down to Highway 131 and headed south. When the band was about in front of the old Rockton schoolhouse, it stopped. And there it stayed, as nothing in the parade was moving. While the band waited in that spot for some time, Mr. Pendleton decided to have the band play several of the marching musical numbers that it played as it marched. After a half hour or so, the band began to inch ahead in the route until stopping again before reaching the Rockton Store. The band played some more numbers as it waited there for some time in front of the store and then the band broke ranks and walked back to the bus. We learned later that there were so many people in Rockton that day watching the parade that the parade units could not reach the end of the route. (Wouldn’t you know it; only Rockton could put together a parade that was bigger than the town.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Besides the snazzy new uniforms, the LHS Band stood out in other ways as they marched in parades. Most high school bands of that era played musical marches, many composed by John Phillip Sousa, as they performed in parades. The LHS Band had played Sousa marches previously as well and continued to do so, but Mr. Pendleton introduced Broadway show tunes set to march music for the band to play. Using the show tunes for the marching music was new and no other high school bands in the area were doing that. When the LHS Band belted out “Give My Regards To Broadway” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” as they marched along the many parade routes, many a head and ear were turned by the modern show tunes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. Pendleton also booked the LHS Band into college homecoming parades that fall. The LHS Band played in the LaCrosse State Homecoming Parade that year, marching along some of the same route used for the Music Festival held later in the spring. The band also played in the Platteville State Homecoming Parade, a real source of pride for Mr. Pendleton, as it was his college alma mater. After we marched in the parade in the morning we went to the football game in the afternoon. One of the captains of Platteville’s football team was Danny Rabata, a graduate of LHS. As a matter of fact, Dan Rabata led the Pioneers to victory that day with his punishing running from his fullback position. Just like the old days when Danny played for La Farge!<o:p></o:p></div>
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The LHS Band’s marching season culminated when they marched for the Music Festival held in LaCrosse in the spring. The Wildcat band garnered a first-place in the marching competition as well as another first in the concert competition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During the 1963-64 school year, the LHS Band continued to expand in size and performances. To get a sense of that school year, I am going to use the write-up for the 1964 “Memories” yearbook. It went like this:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The fifty-one members of the La Farge High School Band had a whirlwind year during 1963 and 64. During the summer of 1963 the band marched at La Farge for the 4<sup>th</sup>of July Parade and later that month at Farm Progress Days in Viroqua.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> In September the band marched in the annual Horse and Colt Show Parade at Viola. In October</i><i>they again went to Viola to play during half of the Viola-La Farge football game. Later in October they had the opportunity to march in the Homecoming Parade at Platteville and the Apple Festival in Gays Mills.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> Here at our own Homecoming, the band presented a show during the halftime of our game. They used a variety of new drills and formations, which were devised by Mr. Pendleton.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> The first appearance on stage was the Mid-Winter Concert on February 13, which took place in our new gymnasium.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> In May the band will enter the Concert and Marching competitions at the Music Festival in LaCrosse<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> They will conclude the school year by taking part in the Commencement and Memorial Day exercises.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i> All in all this year has been quite an experience for the members of the band.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It was quite a year for the LHS Band, but it did not end all that well at the Music Festival competitions held in LaCrosse. Mr. Pendleton was always looking to improve the band’s performance by playing in more demanding competitions. For that spring Music Festival held in LaCrosse, the band, for the first time, competed in the Sight-Reading Competition. In that competition, the band was given two musical numbers to play that they had never seen before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. Pendleton talked the band through the first number as we saw the music for the first time. I remember the piece being some sort of minuet and when the band started playing the number, it was immediate confusion. Finally after a minute or so of pure musical mayhem, Mr. Pendleton stopped the band and had us start over. It went a little better after that. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The second selection for the Sight Reading Competition was a march and it looked easier than the first number. The band quickly picked up the march’s tempo and was playing the number pretty well. However, a certain cornet player sitting in the third section fell behind in the number and struggled to catch up. When the band reached the final note, all finished together in glorious unison except the struggling cornet player. Yours truly had one more note to blatt out of his silver cornet, putting a nice closing button onto the tune, when one wasn’t needed. If looks could kill, Mr. Pendleton’s glare towards me regarding my concluding blunder would have been fatal. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, we did not get a first in Sight Reading that morning. To make matters worse, the judge for the LHS band’s dismal showing was one of Mr. Pendleton’s music professors from Platteville College. He dutifully laid out our woes in the new musical field of competition and mercifully gave us a second place ranking. To make matters worse, it wasn’t the last of the second places for the band that day. To everyone’s shock, the band also received a second in the concert competition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The band played more challenging musical numbers than in years past for the Spring Festival Concert competition, but hard and constant practice throughout the year had left everyone in the band feeling that a first place could be achieved. Perhaps it was the holdover from the earlier Sight Reading Competition that day, but the band did not perform well and had to settle for a second place in Concert competition. Well, the LHS Band could always be counted on for a first place in the Marching Competition, but there was a little catch to that as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because Mr. Pendleton had concentrated all of the band’s practices on preparing for Sight Reading and Concert competitions, we had never marched once that spring – no practice whatsoever. When we assembled on the LaCrosse streets on that May afternoon, it was the first time for some of the band’s newer members to march or play the music for marching. We had to assemble quickly into our newly formed marching lines and then head down Main Street towards the LaCrosse downtown. Our odds did not look good, but by the time we had gone a few blocks the percussion section had us strutting our stuff. When we neared the judge’s stand the LHS Band belted out one of their new show tunes, which brought shouts and applause from the big crowd. Some things are not easily forgotten and the Wildcat band could march and play anywhere at anytime.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We did not know our rating when we left LaCrosse that day, but we were not surprised when the band received another first place for the Marching Competition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During my senior year at LHS, the band continued to grow with 60 students making up the concert and marching band. I was elevated to the second chairs section of the cornets. Dean Steinmetz, Carlyle Stoleson and Brent Waddell comprised the first chair cornets while I joined Nathan Larson and Kevin Alderson in the 2<sup>nd</sup>chairs and Phil Muller, April Melvin and Rhonda Jacobson played in the third chairs. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the band and can’t seem to remember any major screw-ups that I committed that year. I remember that the 2<sup>nd</sup>section had a dynamite counter-melody part in one of our marching numbers that we really enjoyed belting out. That is if we all had a horn to play.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seems that when we marched in the Horse & Colt Show Parade that year, I forgot my horn at home. When I told Mr. Pendleton about it, I thought that I wouldn’t be allowed to march. But he would have none of that since I was a row leader in the band formation. So, I marched without a horn as the La Farge Band marched down Viola’s Main Street. At one point, the band stopped and played a number. As everyone in the LHS Band played the marching selection to its best ability, I stood mute at the end of my row. I stood there in dumbness right next to the crowd on the sidewalk, and I seem to remember when the musical number ended someone in the crowd (with a voice that sounded very similar to my brother, Kent) yelled out, “Where’s your horn, Bradley?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I might not have been much of a musician, who was prone to occasional mistakes, but I really did enjoy my time in the La Farge High School Band. My memories of the experience fondly live on to the present.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-6484663703589643552018-06-22T11:44:00.000-07:002018-06-22T11:44:53.455-07:00LHS Band Memories<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
Fifty years ago mention was made that LHS band members Dean Steinmetz, Monte Muller, Jim Looker, and Phil Gudgeon had all won gold medals for their cornet and trombone playing at the 1968 state music festival. That accomplishment, the first for brass instrument performances at LHS, brought back many memories for me of my time playing in the La Farge High school Band.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Miss Jeanette (Jan) Stinzi ignited my interest to play an instrument in the school band. Miss Stinzi, who hailed from Bangor, came to La Farge to teach music at the school during the 1959-60 school year. It would be a rebuilding effort for the dynamic young teacher as the LHS band had fallen on hard times. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the 1959 4<sup>th</sup>of July parade in La Farge, the school band had not marched. I remember that many adults were very upset with the LHS band’s no-show that day and complained to Al Oaklief, La Farge Superintendent of Schools about it. Mr. Oaklief was in the process of hiring a new band teacher to replace Hubert Groves, who was leaving the district. During the 1958-59 school year, there were only 15 students in the LHS band. Mr. Oaklief soon hired Miss Stinzi to resurrect the program.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When school began that fall, Stinzi set out to create interest in the music program. She brought a representative from a LaCrosse music company (I think it was Leithold’s) to demonstrate instruments to the students in grade school. I was in 7<sup>th</sup>grade at the time and was thrilled to hear the instruments being played. The students even got their turn at blowing the horns and I remember tooting on a trumpet and making a clarinet squeal. I seem to remember that the music man stayed around that evening for a meeting with parents to arrange the purchase or rental of an instrument for their children.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was living with my grandmother, Isa Campbell, at the time and raced home to announce that I wanted to play in the school band. My father wasn’t against the idea, but he did not attend the parent’s meeting to buy or lease me an instrument to play either. When I went to school the next day, several of my classmates already had their rented instruments to begin practicing on. Others had purchased new instruments that were on their way. When I went home that afternoon, I let my grandmother know about my disappointment in not having an instrument. But she had a big surprise for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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She had been up in the attic that day and brought down a fancy and beautiful instrument case. Inside was a classic silver C cornet that had been my uncle’s – Berlie Campbell – which he played in the LHS school band back in the 1930’s. He had graduated in 1937 and died in a farm accident less than two months later. Apparently the cornet had not been played for over two decades. It had some mechanical problems and one valve did not open properly. But I did have a horn to play!<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the cornet to school and Miss Stinzi marveled at the instrument. She sent it up to LaCrosse to be repaired. In a few weeks it came back ready to go – I remember the man from LaCrosse telling me what a beautiful instrument it was. I was soon taking a weekly lesson from Miss Stinzi and learning to play my cornet. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Others in my class were learning to play as well. In her first year at La Farge, the band under Miss Stinzi’s guidance had grown to 36 members. From my class, Ben Rastall was playing the trombone and Carlyle Stoleson was playing trumpet in the Senior Band that year. Carlyle had started playing the cornet about the same time as me, but caught on much quicker than I did. Both of Carlyle’s parents, Floyd and Charlotte Stoleson, were accomplished musicians and even had their own band – The Kickapoo Sweethearts. The Stoleson family’s musical talent had carried on well to Carlyle. The LHS Band marched proudly in the hometown 4<sup>th</sup>of July Parade that summer!<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the next year, when I was in the 8<sup>th</sup>grade, I had made the LHS Senior Band! (There were 34 in the Senior Band that year with another 22 students in the Junior Band.) I was the last chair in the cornet section that included Butch Donaldson, Roger Steinmetz, Carlyle Stoleson, Greg Ferries and Vera Beth Looker. The band expanded its marching performances by playing in the Horse & Colt Show Parade in Viola in September and marching in the La Farge Homecoming Parade in October. Under the capable direction of Miss Stinzi, the La Farge High School Band was proudly returning to form.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alas, it was learned that Miss Stinzi would be leaving La Farge after her second year there. She was getting married and returning to her hometown of Bangor to teach. Mr. Oaklief was busy looking for a capable replacement when he became aware of a man graduating from the music program at UW-Platteville, who also happened to be from Mr. Oaklief’s hometown of Lancaster, Wisconsin. Marlin Pendleton was soon hired as the new bandleader at LHS.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr. Pendleton began in that summer of 1961 by continuing the summer instrument lessons that Miss Stinzi had arranged. My first lesson with the new band teacher did not go well nor did my next. My cornet playing underwhelmed Mr. Pendleton and I was soon demoted to a kind of standby position in the band. I remember on one warm evening that summer when Butch Donaldson and Greg Ferries, who both lived about a block from my grandmother’s house, were practicing their cornets by playing outside. Soon Butch and Greg were playing songs together from each of their houses and the neighborhood was filled with music. So I decided to join them. When I started to blatt out the song they were skillfully playing, the impromptu concert came to a grinding halt. That should have been a hint as to Mr. Pendleton’s concern about my playing ability.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the school year began that fall, my cornet lessons with Mr. Pendleton were increased to several times a week, almost daily. My playing improved and I was soon back playing my cornet in the Senior Band. The LHS band increased to 40 members during the year. The cornet section increased to nine members that 1961-62 school year. Butch Donaldson, Carlyle Stoleson and Greg Ferries occupied the first chairs. Then Vera Beth Looker, Dennis Martin and Brent Waddell comprised the second chairs, with Roberta Putt, John Sullivan and myself playing in the third chairs. Other members in my class in school who were in the band that year included Ann Steinmetz, Berthanna Betts, Judy Kirking, and Ben Rastall.<o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5622926702040929890.post-76253005854513529452018-05-07T11:47:00.000-07:002018-05-07T11:47:09.141-07:001968 - PART II<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
As mentioned previously, nothing had a greater impact on America in 1968 than the escalating war in Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese launched what became known as the Tet Offensive in late January of that year, everything changed for the American military forces already in the Southeast Asian country. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In an issue of the <i>La Farge Enterprise </i>from December of 1967, Rudy Hamilton, LHS Class of 1965, had written home from Vietnam thanking everyone for writing him letters and to keep them coming. After the Tet Offensive began a month later, it was learned that Rudy was in Khe Sanh, where some of the heaviest fighting was occurring. In early February, Larry Booher, with many connections to La Farge, was listed as wounded in the fighting in Vietnam. Todd Muller, Gary Climer and Danny Thayer all sent messages home about also being in the thick of the fighting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the March 14<sup>th </sup>issue of the <i>Enterprise</i>, publisher/editor Arnie Widstrand, a World War II veteran, wrote an anti-war editorial, specifically aimed at the way that the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was handling the war effort. A week later, word was received that Dean Dalberg, aged 19, had been killed in Vietnam. Dalberg grew up on a farm on South Bear Creek and was a 1966 graduate from Kickapoo High School. He was the first soldier from Richland County to die in the Vietnam War.<o:p></o:p></div>
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La Farge received more shocking news that year when Dr. Connie Lee, La Farge’s only doctor, announced that she was leaving La Farge and the last day of her practice would be August 3<sup>rd</sup>. Village leaders scrambled to replace Dr. Lee and Bernice Schroeder was named to head up a doctor procurement committee. Later, it was learned that the La Farge Medical Clinic Corporation was broke and people were asked to pay off their pledges for the clinic as soon as possible. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Good things were happening at the school in La Farge in 1968. The high school’s enrollment was 145 students for the 1967-68 school year. The school also was undergoing several changes in programs during the year. Albert Oaklief continued to be a dynamic superintendent for La Farge Schools. Mr. Oaklief volunteered to coach grade-school basketball on Saturday mornings as he had done for years. He also was moving the school towards new programs and in March hosted a meeting for those interested in becoming Para-educators at the school. After months of negotiations with federal and state officials, Mr. Oaklief announced in late November that the school at La Farge would soon have the first Talking Typewriter in the state of Wisconsin. The new state-of-the-art machine would offer a variety of programs to improve student’s reading skills. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At La Farge High School, several awards were handed out in February when Peggy Gabrielson was named the winner of the DAR Award and Peggy Steinmetz received the LHS Homemaker Award. On the basketball court, the LHS boys were knocked out of the Kickapoo Valley Conference title chase with a loss to eventual champion Barneveld. (Yes, I know that Barneveld is a long way from the Kickapoo Valley, but that’s the way it was back then. The conference, on its last legs, consisted of Seneca, Wauzeka, Ithaca, Barneveld, Hollandale and La Farge.) The Wildcats finished with a 7-3 mark in KVC play, good for second place and John Smith and Dick Campbell led the team in scoring. In wrestling, Frank Meseberg’s 12-4 mark led the Wildcat team. The LHS Wrestling team’s highlight was a 29-28 victory over archrival Kickapoo during the season.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the winter sports season concluded, LHS students Lahna Kellogg and Jane Wenzel wrote a history of La Farge’s participation in the Kickapoo Valley Conference, listing the top LHS championship teams over the years. La Farge Wildcat teams would be moving to the Scenic Central Conference after the 1967-68 school year. In March, the LHS Forensics Team won the KVC Championship, defeating teams from Seneca and Wauzeka. Later, six from the LHS forensics team would qualify for state competition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The French Fair was held at LHS on April 5<sup>th</sup>with proceeds from the event used to pay for students taking a trip to Washington D.C. Later in the month, twenty-seven LHS students in the French Club and FHS made the trip to the nation’s capital.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The LHS Junior Prom with a theme of “Summer Rain” was held in late April. Sarah Widstrand and Phil Gudgeon were named royalty for the prom. After the dance, the parents of Junior Class students hosted a post-prom party in the school lunchroom.<o:p></o:p></div>
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LHS Senior Simon Widstrand was named a National Merit Scholar in April, one of only 400 students so honored in the country. Accompanying the prestigious honor for Simon was a 4-year scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The LHS band, under the direction of Marlin Pendleton took a first in Class B concert competition at the music festival held in LaCrosse in April. Later, LHS musicians Dean Steinmetz with a cornet solo and the trombone trio of Phil Gudgeon, Jim Looker and Monte Muller won gold medal firsts at the State Music Festival held in Eau Claire. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The La Farge track team repeated as KVC champs at the meet held at Kickapoo High School in May of 1968. The LHS baseball team did not play in the spring season, also for the second year in a row, instead playing their games during the WIAA’s new summer season.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end of the school year was highlighted by the graduation of the 32 members of the LHS Class of 1968. Simon Widstrand was valedictorian of the class and Sherri Nemec was salutatorian.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As was usual then, the last day of school was held on Memorial Day so students could participate in the parade. The parade went from the schoolhouse down to Main Street and then west to the IGA grocery store. School buses waited there to transfer everyone out to the Bear Creek Cemetery for the VFW & Auxiliary Memorial Day services. The services included a roll call of veterans buried in the cemetery and the placing of flags on wooden crosses bearing their names. The LHS band played for the service, which concluded with the playing of “Taps”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some developments with the La Farge Dam & Lake Project would soon have a lasting impact on the school district as well as the rest of the community. In July, the Army Corps of Engineers sought bids for a title firm to handle the purchases of property for the La Farge project. A month later, a title company from Wichita, Kansas was chosen for the job. Later the Corps sent out letters to landowners in the project area with a notification of a meeting about the land acquisition process. That meeting was held in November with over 300 people in attendance in the LHS gymnasium. At the meeting, the Corps officials explained the process for the land acquisitions and said that negotiations for the first land purchases (those properties at the dam site located just north of La Farge) would begin before the end of the year. Many people left the meeting that night with worried expressions on their faces. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A few weeks later, one of the first properties affected by the Corps’ dam project purchases, the Gale Huston mink ranch, suffered a devastating financial blow when a utility building burned down on the farm and 7,000 mink pelts were lost in the fire.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As 1968 came to a close in La Farge, Santa Claus visited the village on Saturday, December 21<sup>st </sup>to hand out bags of candy and nuts to youngsters eagerly waiting in the village parking lot. The La Farge Post Office was open the next day, a Sunday, to handle late Christmas mailings. As usual, the old year was rung out with style in the little village on the Kickapoo River and happy shouts heralded in the New Year of 1969. <o:p></o:p></div>
Brad Steinmetzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17506334792817210860noreply@blogger.com0