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By 1927 we were on the move again to the Damerow Farm. This farm was still in Adrian Township but the move did take Dad farther away from the valley where he was born and closer to Tomah. He felt somewhat at home, though, because the farm was very hilly. The house and other farm buildings sat on top of the hill, and the farmland was down the hill and through the valley surrounding them. The house was just across the road from the Woodside schoolhouse that was attended by Norma, Wen and Vera. All of these schools were one room and one teacher who taught all eight grades. Adeline was still in Sparta High School when we moved in March of 1927. She continued on in Sparta from September 1927 through May 1928. In September 1928 she transferred to the Tomah High School.

During the summer of 1927 Adeline tells the story and I paraphrase:

Adeline also tells another story about her and Wen:

"Mother always put in about a half acre of cucumbers. These were harvested and sold to the pickle factory in either Sparta or Tomah. It was Wen’s and my job to pick the cucumbers. We had to pick them when they were very small because the gherkins as they were called brought more money than the large cucumbers. Mother would come out to inspect or help us pick and if she found a big one she would smack us across the head with it. One day we were picking and complaining about these damn pickles when Wen pulled a plant out by the roots and then stuck it back in the ground. That looked like a good idea so I pulled a plant out and then stuck it back in the dirt. We did that quite a few times. In a few days Mother couldn’t understand why some of those plants were turning yellow and dying even after she would carry water to see if that was the problem. We never told her what we did until we were both married and quite old. She said, "I’ve a good mind to whip you even now".

This is also the time period where Wen nearly took an eye out of my head. Dad grew tobacco, many farmers in that area in those days grew it as a cash crop and for their own use.

In 1928 the folks were notified that the son of Elmer Damerow was coming back from Milwaukee and was going to take over the farm, therefore, it was time to move on down the road. In March of 1929, we made the move to the Rasmusson farm.

We were still in Adrian Township and only about a mile from the Damerow farm. Slowly but surely, we were moving closer to Tomah. The farm was in a valley and fairly flat. Harry Rasmusson, the owner of the farm, had been elected sheriff of Monroe County, so he and his family moved to Sparta. Sparta is the county seat of Monroe County. It is the first farm of which I have any memories. The first toy that I ever owned that I can remember was a small red truck. It was metal about 8 inches long, and I used it to travel on the roads that I built in the dirt and to haul hay and corn or any thing else that came into my imagination. Soon after we moved to the farm the folks had a house party where people came, brought food and danced. They came in wagons, buggies or cars. The next morning I went outside in the yard and there was my little red truck. It had been run over and smashed by one of the vehicles. I cried and wished so much for another truck but the folks said, "Sorry you have to learn to take care of the things you have". I never remember receiving another truck or toy for many years. It was the start of the depression.

Norma was 14 when she graduated from the eighth grade in September 1929. She did not want to go to high school so she worked with mother in the house. Unlike Adeline she did not care for farming. Over the following years until her marriage in 1940 she worked for other families as a servant in their homes both in Tomah and the surrounding communities. I do not remember her being home very often.

Wen by this time was 14 years old and like all teenagers, except back then they didn’t call them that, was feeling his independence and his right to have a say in the family. One day he got angry at Dad about something and called him a cuss word. Mother was there also and heard what he said. Dad didn’t allow his kids to use cuss words, especially around Mother. So he picked Wen up and threw him in a large tank of water that was there to water the livestock. Wen crawled out of the tank and directed the same word at his father. Mother said, "Oscar, throw the little bastard in again". Dad did and that ended Wen’s try for independence. Wen graduated from eighth grade at the Woodside School in June of 1930. In September of 1930 he entered high school in Tomah. He had to live with a family in Tomah while he went to school because Monroe County in 1931 did not have school buses.

Vera and Pudge were in Woodside School and in the fall of 1930 I started first grade. I was only four years old, but by now all of the other kids were in school, so I would sit and bawl that I wanted to go to school, too. Cora Lemon was the teacher at the Woodside School and was a good friend of mother. She said,

I was never held back, and as I have thought about it over the years, I believe, my parents made a bad decision. I do not remember anything about first grade or my teacher. Throughout the rest of my education I was too young in every grade right up through high school.

In March of 1931 it was time to move again. By this time Adeline was in her last year of schooling, and, here it is in her own words:

On March 15, 1931 we moved from Adrian Township to the Christman place in La Grange Township. The community was referred to as Cherry Valley. I don’t know whether they grew cherries there or not but I do not remember seeing any. The folks rented the farm from a man named Mel Moser who had obtained the property through foreclosure. The Christman farm, as it was still called, was about 120 acres with 80 acres under cultivation and the remainder woods and pasture for the cattle. The buildings were in good condition, and the land was very good for growing crops.

I can remember a long lane that led from the barnyard to the pasture and woods. Marlyn had just turned 9 years old when we moved there and I was 5 years old. He and I built a cabin out of tree branches and pine boughs in the woods at the end of the lane. Over the next two years we spent many hours there where he would tell me stories about what we would do when we grew up. We would go out west and become cowboys, herd and brand cattle and hunt buffalo. He was a great storyteller and had a vivid imagination. Neither one of us became cowboys nor hunted buffalo because they were already gone by that time, but it was great fantasy.

Adeline graduated from her teacher training June 1931, and as she stated – she never taught because she would rather farm. About two miles by road there was a family, Mr. and Mrs. John Gilner who had a large farm. One of their sons was Od Gilner, his real name was Arnim, but I never knew that until many years later. Od and Adeline met at a birthday party they attended for a mutual friend. She said,

"One of the Lamb girls and her brother asked me to go with them. That’s where I first met Od. I said right then that I was going to grab him and, by golly, I got him".

They were married December 14, 1931. So with their marriage, Adeline left the family. There will be much more about the family of Arnim and Adeline Gilner in Section I, Chapter 5.

Norma was still working as a hired girl in the homes of other people. For Wen it was another story. He started his second year of high school in September of 1931 and had his 15th birthday in November of that year. In April or May of 1932, he came home from school because he wasn’t feeling well. It was thought that he had the flu. Finally it became so bad that they took him to the Doctor in Sparta where he was diagnosed with appendicitis. When they operated it was found that the appendix had burst and the poison had spread throughout his system. He was very sick, and there were many times that it was believed that he would die. Adeline and Od came and stayed at the farm. They did the chores and looked after the rest of us kids. Either Dad or Mother was at the hospital at all times and sometimes both of them would be there. It was about two to three weeks after Wen’s operation that Mother was home. She woke in the morning and got Adeline, who was in the barn, to come to the house. Adeline gives this account of the meeting:

Wen did recover, however, it took many weeks. He used the next months to recuperate, and never returned to school.

Vera, Pudge and I continued our education at the Cherry Valley School. The school was only about an eighth of a mile from the house. Vera and Pudge were good students and never seemed to get into trouble. I had my moments. There was a cornfield beside the schoolhouse next to the outhouses. In the fall the silk on the ears of corn would dry and looked very similar to long cut tobacco. We tried to smoke it by rolling it in the catalog paper that was in the outhouse to be used for toilet paper. The teacher caught me smoking some of this in the boy’s outhouse and gave me a whipping with a ruler. I think I was in the second grade. I ran home to tell my mother about what the teacher did, and when she found out what I did I got another whipping.

The Christman farm is also the farm where I first became acquainted with the Shetland pony, Nellie. I do not know where Nellie came from or when she came into the family, but I grew up with her and was the one that rode her the most. I had to get her to stand next to the porch so that I could get on, we had no saddle, and I always rode bareback. I remember she always ran faster when we going home and when she was running uphill. I think she just wanted to get to the top so that the running would be easier. We will hear more about Nellie from time to time.

In 1931 the great depression was in full swing. About twenty-five percent of the people in the country were unemployed and many of the farmers in the area had their farms foreclosed on because they could not pay their mortgages. Perhaps that is what happened to Christman. People did not have much, if any, money to buy things. When they sold things the price was low. When they bought things the cost was high. There was a song that we would sing, "Twenty cent Cotton – Forty cent Meat – How in the heck can a poor man eat". This meant that if you grew cotton you could sell it for 20 cents per pound but then you had to pay 40 cents per pound to get some meat to eat.

The Hagen family was really pretty lucky. We were renter farmers so we had no mortgage to worry about. We had a garden for all types of vegetables and apple trees for fruit. Our cows gave milk and from this we got cream and butter. We butchered our own beef and pork and canned it so that it did not spoil. We had chickens and geese for eggs and meat. Eggs and milk could be sold to obtain other food that we could not grow. About the only things we had to buy were flour, sugar, and a few other necessary condiments. All of the money was spent on those items, and there never was any money left. We grew sugar cane and from this made sorghum that was as much a staple at the table as potatoes and eggs. During the summer we ate well from all this produce. This continued during the winter until the potatoes, carrots and canned vegetables ran out, and then it was oatmeal or cornmeal mush and eggs. Many times the eggs had to be saved so that they could be sold to buy other necessary items. We were poor but everybody in the surrounding area was poor so we really didn’t know it.

I can remember a time when we had hardboiled eggs for supper. In those days we had breakfast, dinner and supper, with dinner being the noon meal. I was six years old and I didn’t like the yolks of the eggs because of the way they looked, so I would peal the egg and only eat the white part. I had two yolks sitting on my plate and my Dad said, "Eat them." I said, "I don’t like them". With one hand he opened my mouth, with the other hand he stuffed the egg yolks in and then closed my mouth. I jumped up from the table, bawling and ran out onto the porch. When Dad closed my mouth I had bit into the yolks and by the time I hit the porch the flavor was coming through. I stood there chewing thinking, "Hey, these are not bad". I have eaten and enjoyed eggs in every form from that day to the present time.

Depression and the fact that there was no money made it tough at Christmas. Christmas in those days was never the commercial event that it is today, but in other years there had always been some presents under the tree even if it was only clothes and maybe one toy. Not so on the Christmas of 1931 and until about 1937. These years proved to be more barren than most, and what made 1931 worse was that it was the first Christmas I really remember. We always went into the woods to cut our tree and would put it up the day before Christmas. The presents would go around the tree, and we would open them Christmas Eve. This Christmas we each received a pair of socks my mother had knitted, some hard candy and an orange. My folks had to scrape the bottom of the cookie jar to find enough money to buy the oranges and the candy. The remaining Christmases from 1931 through 1938 were much the same.

I made reference to sugar cane above. From the sugar cane we obtained sorghum that was used in cooking and eating as syrup on bread and pancakes. It was a part of our sandwiches for school lunches and we were the envy of some kids at school. I remember one family that used lard as a spread on their bread, yuck. Everyone in the family was involved from the age of about seven years in the growing and the harvesting of the sugar cane. First the sugar cane had to be planted. The seed came from the crop that had been harvested the year before. It was planted in rows and grew about five to six feet high. When harvest time came the first thing that had to be done was to strip the leaves off the stalk. That was the job of the youngest in the family when they became about seven years old. The leaves were stripped using a piece of wood about two inches wide, two to three feet long and about a half inch thick. You didn’t have to be too tall or strong to whack the leaves off. When the leaves were all stripped the seed heads on the top of the stalks were cut off. This took someone who was tall enough to reach them. Then the stalks themselves had to be cut and placed into bundles. The sap that was in the stalks was used to make the sorghum so the sugar cane could not be harvested until every thing was ready to cook the sap. My parents, in partnership with some of the other neighbors, had purchased a sorghum making apparatus. It would be moved from farm to farm as the cane became ready for processing. The picture shows the apparatus that was used to press the cane and cook the syrup. The horse would go around and around the circle pressing the sap out of the cane as it was fed between two large flat disks or wheels. The huge pan under the wheels captured the sap. There was a wood fire beneath the pan that cooked the sap. This took some expertise to keep the fire burning not too high nor too low so that a critical temperature was maintained, and so the sap did not cook too fast or too slow. After a certain amount of constant stirring by one person, another person maintaining the fire and still another keeping the horse moving and feeding the machine the process was completed. Finally, the sap turned to sorghum, and it was drained off into jars or kettles to be used throughout the year.

In March of 1933 it was time to move to another farm. I hated to leave the Christman farm. Even with the depression it had been an enjoyable two years. The move was to the Pier farm in Pleasant Valley. This was not the Pleasant Valley of Leon Township. This Pleasent Valley ran along the border of La Grange and Greenfield Townships. The farm and school that we attended were both in Greenfield Township. It was the worst farm that we ever lived on. The house was old, cold and haunted. When we went to bed at night on the second floor we could hear the rocking chair rocking downstairs, and we knew there was nobody sitting in the chair. We would hear footsteps climbing up the stairs, but nobody ever came into the room. The house was very cold, with only a wood-burning furnace in the living room and a wood burning cooking stove in the kitchen. None of the bedrooms had any heat. During the winter Pudge and I slept in the same bed with three or four quilts depending on the temperature. Quilts in those days were thick and heavy, and I can remember waking many mornings with frost on the top edge of the quilts that formed from our breath during the night. We never dressed in our bedroom. In the morning we would grab our clothes and dash down the stairs to dress around the wood heater in the living room. There were no facilities for bathing except in a washtub that was placed beside the wood heater in the living room. We slept in our long john underwear, and it was not changed very often. I can imagine how we smelled to the teacher when we went to school, but maybe the teacher smelled the same way and it wasn’t noticed that much.

The farm had a well that was between the house and the barn, but, more important, it at the base of a hill. The hill was too steep for cultivation, so it was used for pasture. The cows, sheep, goats and even pigs were pastured on the hill. When it rained all the waste from these animals drained down into the well. We drank and cooked with the water that came out of that well. It is a wonder that any of us lived to tell about it. Environmental issues or even personal hygiene were not very important items in those days.

John Pier was the owner of the farm. The one thing that I remember about him is that I never saw him do any work. I didn’t know where he lived. He used to come to the farm and would sit out in the side yard with his back up against a tree and go to sleep. He always seemed to have some change in his pockets and sometimes while he was sleeping and twisting around some of it would fall out into the grass. Pudge and I would stay behind one of the outbuildings watching him, and as soon as he left we would have great fun searching around in the grass to find the coins. We had even more fun when we found some and kept it until we had the chance to go into town and spend it. We never found very much but it was exciting to try.

By now Pudge was eleven and I was seven and we spent a good deal of our time fighting. Not physically because he was much bigger than I. He would tease me and one of his favorite things to say was that he was Norwegian and I was just an Irishman. Dad was Norwegian, and at that time we thought our mother was Irish. I wanted to be Norwegian like my father, so I would bawl and tell my mother what Pudge was doing. She wouldn’t do anything about it because I imagine she got a little miffed when I didn’t want to be Irish.

However, there was a time when we stuck together. Just after we started in the new school in Pleasant Valley Pudge got into an argument with the two Purdy boys. It always seemed like we had to prove ourselves whenever we started in a new school. Once we did that every one became good friends. The argument turned into a fight, and both of them were going to fight Pudge. One of them was bigger and one was smaller than Pudge. When they weren’t watching me and it appeared that they were starting to fight I hit the smaller one over the head with my lunch pail. The fight stopped and Pudge and I walked home feeling very proud of ourselves. They never messed with us again.

I was very envious of Pudge. It was during this period that he started his drawing career. He could draw anything just using a pencil. We got a weekly newspaper called "The Tomah Journal". This paper had a page of cartoons that we called "the funnies". Pudge could take a piece of cardboard, or the back of an envelope, or sheet of notebook paper and draw the characters so that they looked exactly like those in the paper. He had drawings all over the school bulletin boards and our house. I was so envious, I really tried to draw and could not understand why I couldn’t and he could.

I don’t remember much about Norma and Wendell when we lived on Piers, but I imagine Wen was working for different farmers in the area, and Norm may have been working in Tomah as a servant. Vera had started high school in Tomah in the fall of 1932. As Adeline and Wen did when they were in school, she lived and worked for a family in Tomah. For her work in their home she got her room and board and time off to go to school. I believe she worked there during the summer, also.

The depression was worse than ever, and it was a bad time in the country for people to find work and get enough to eat. People would do almost anything to get money. In those days there were great flocks of black crows that flew around the farms and ate the corn and grain that was ripening in the fields. This was a great loss to the farmer especially since he didn’t get much for his produce. The County put a bounty on crows. I believe it paid 10 cents for every pair of crows’ feet that a person would bring in. A neighbor boy, Bernard Hellmich, was about the same age as Marlyn, and the Hellmichs had a hayfield or pasture that had a very large oak tree near the woods at one end of it. On the edge of the woods Pudge and Bernard dug a hole and built a blind covered with branches and leaves. When some of the livestock was butchered or died, Pudge and Bernard would take the parts that were not used, climb the tree and tie them to one of the branches. Then they would sit in their blind waiting for the crows to come and feast on the meat that hung there. They shot a lot of crows. I think Pudge used a .22 caliber rifle most of the time. He was always an excellent shot.

In December of 1933 Congress voted a repeal of Prohibition. In 1934 the country was happy to be back drinking beer again, but nobody had any money to buy it. People who brewed their own beer just kept on doing that, and the moon shiners kept selling their homemade products. I don’t remember many people drinking in those days, but I am sure there were some that did. The year 1934 was our second year on the Pier farm, and, as usual, in March of 1935 it was time to go to another farm. My wife, Virginia Snowberger/Hagen asked my Dad why they moved so often while they were farming. He said,

We used to laugh about that but I think it was probably very close to the truth.

In March of 1935, we were on our way to the Vandervort farm. This farm was in the Watermill farming community, and we were back in La Grange Township. The land was rolling, but the soil was sandy. It probably had the worst farming land of any of the many farms that my Dad had farmed, but it was the best we had for the moment. The farm was 80 acres with only about half of that under cultivation. The rest was woods and swampland. The swamp was treacherous because sinkholes could be found in some places. I can remember one of our horses stepping into one and the entire neighborhood had to come and help get him out. The swamp also contained a ditch that had been dug from Brandy Creek and was used to irrigate the cranberry bogs. It had trout in it, and we spent many days catching brook trout. There was also about an acre of land far away from the house where Dad grew alfalfa hay and was a favorite grazing area for deer. Between the fish and the deer we were able to keep meat on the table. Mostly Pudge and I did this; Dad was not a hunter or a fisherman. We hunted deer with a .22 caliber rifle and shot them only when we needed food. There were not as  many deer then as there are at the present time. The swamp also had its share of blueberries. Many times Mother would give me a lunch pail (lunch pails in those days were two quart pails that had contained syrup or lard) and say, "Go out and get us some blueberries". I would take a sandwich and maybe some cookies, if I was lucky, and spend a good part of the day searching the swamp area for berries. There was an island in the middle of the swamp with trees where blueberries grew. The crops that we grew were the same as always. Oats, corn, sugar cane, pickles and mother’s garden were the norm. I was now old enough to pick pickles (we never called them cucumbers) and to help in all phases of the sugar cane harvest. Since Pudge and I were the only ones at home it became a part of our chores.

Our closest neighbors were Otto and Marietta Ziegler. The houses and farm buildings of the two farms were only about an-eighth of a mile apart. Over the next five years we all became very good friends. We all have many memories of our association with them over the years. I did some work for both Marietta and Ot (they had no children) during the next five years. Marietta would buy Leghorn chicks in the spring, raise them during the summer then sell the pullets in the fall. She asked me to help her one evening to catch the chickens and put them in a crate so that they could take them to market the next day. We worked until we had the crates filled, and she gave me 35 cents. I ran home to show the folks and mother got very angry to think that I would take a neighbor’s money and told me I had to take it back. How I hated to walk back and tell Marietta that Mother wouldn’t let me keep it. Marietta said, "It’s my money and I will give it to who ever I want to, so you just go back and tell your mother that". I went back but I didn’t tell Mother. During haying time Pudge and I would work for Ot to get the hay from the field to the barn. We were paid 50 cents a day and felt lucky. We worked for other neighbors wherever and whenever we could. Archie Mosely lived near Warrens and had a large strawberry patch. We picked strawberries there and Archie would give us 10 cents for a six quart tray of strawberries that had to be heaped up or he would make us go back out and put more in. Some days if I was real industrious I could make a whole dollar. Archie also grew a large patch of watermelons. Pudge and some of his friends would go there after dark and swipe (we never called it stealing) a melon to eat. Pudge got a load of rock salt from Archie’s shotgun one evening as he was trying to get through the barbed wire fence. I believe Archie always knew who the young people were, but he never said anything and would not use anything that would really hurt any of them. The farm is still there, now owned by one of Archie’s descendants, and is a commercial fruit orchard. Virginia and I purchased some excellent Cortland apples there in September 2001.

The Watermill School was the community center as most rural schools were then. Pudge was in seventh grade and I was in fifth grade. It was a one room white building that would hold about 21 students. It had a wood-burning heater in the back corner of the room. The student’s desks were facing the teacher’s desk, which was in the front of the room. Blackboards were on the front wall behind the teacher’s desk and were divided by the entrance door. There was a picture of George Washington above the entrance door and a clock on the back wall behind the students. There was a small room that served as a place to hang our outer clothing and galoshes. On top of the entry way roof there was a bell tower that contained the school bell. I’m not sure anymore why the bell was there. The school grounds were enclosed by a fence and contained a flagpole in front of the school building. Off to the side was a homemade ball field where we played softball. For some stupid reason if you hit the ball over the fence it was an out. There were the usual two outhouses, one for the girls and one for the boys. Only one student could go to the outhouse at a time, and then it had to be serious. Pearl Whitman was the schoolteacher at Watermill school during my last three years of grade school. Most of the families and the children liked her. I thought she was a good teacher. We couldn’t get away with anything at any of the schools we attended because Mother was a friend with every one of our teachers. She would even have them in for supper from time to time. We knew that we had to mind the teacher. If we didn’t and the teacher mentioned it, we would have to pay for it. Mother liked Miss Whitman very much and would invite her to supper two or three times a school year. One time she came for supper and just after she arrived I came up to the house from the barn. Miss Whitman and mother were out in the kitchen preparing the meal, and they didn’t know I was in the house. I peeked into the kitchen. Miss Whitman had her foot up on a chair, her dress was pulled up, and she was adjusting her stocking. I could see her leg about half way up her thigh. Wow! When I told the kids at school about that the next day they were impressed. "What did it look like"? "Was it big"? "How far up was her dress"? I was so excited I knew something about Miss Whitman that nobody else knew.

Pudge did the remainder of his seventh grade year and all of his eighth grade year with Miss Whitman at Watermill. In 1935 Pudge took the job of building the fire in the schoolhouse stove. He would get to school an hour early and get the fire started so that the school would be somewhat warm when the teacher and the other students arrived. This happened only during the wintertime when it was cold enough to need a fire. From November through March this was nearly every day. I did the fifth through the eighth grade in this school, all with Miss Whitman. At the end of the seventh grade we had to go to the county seat in Sparta and take tests in English and Civics. If we did not pass the tests we could not go on to the eighth grade. A passing grade was 75%. I don’t remember how Pudge did but I’m sure he did not have any trouble. He always seemed to do well in school. At the end of my seventh grade I went to Sparta to take my tests and I didn’t do very well, but I passed. It scared me and so I studied harder in the eighth grade. To pass the eighth grade we had to take tests in English, Math and History. I did better this time because I knew I wanted to go to high school.

The school was about two and a half miles from the Vandervort farm if we went by the road but only about a mile if we cut through the woods. There were two water obstacles that had to be crossed when we went through the woods. The first one was just a creek, quite shallow but about four feet wide. A birch tree had been cut and the trunk lay across the creek so that one could cross. One winter day when it was very cold but with only a little snow I was hurrying to get to school because I was late. I ran down the path to cross on the log without stopping my run. I hit the middle of the log, which was slippery from the ice and a light covering of snow. I landed on my back in the creek. By the time I got out my coat was wet and my overalls were soaked. I started to walk back home. The overalls and the coat began to freeze, and by the time I got home they were stiff as a board. I didn’t get to school that day. The second water obstacle was actually a river even though its name was Mill Creek. It would average about eight to twelve feet wide and about four feet deep although there were many holes in the curves of the river that were deeper. There was a walk bridge built across it about a quarter mile from the school. We had some neighbors named the Boettchers who had a young son named Harold who started first grade in the fall of 1935. They were afraid to let Harold cross the walk bridge by himself so they asked if I would walk with him. So for the next three years whenever possible I would walk Harold to school. In the spring we would set fish lines near the walk bridge. I would run down to the river during the noon lunch break and check the lines.

The Watermill School has been moved from that community and now sits in Gillette Park in Tomah. When we went there it was white, but when it was moved they painted it red. It is now known as the "Little Red Schoolhouse". I have visited it and was surprised to find some assignments that I did when I was in school. They also have a list of students that attended the school. Pudge and I are on that list. The school would hold about 20 students, about one third were Indian students.

There was a small lake and a cranberry marsh about a mile from the farm. Around 1915 this was known as Lake Tomah, but by the time we got to the area it was referred to as Watermill Lake. It was a man-made lake and was built to have water available for flooding the cranberry bogs. Mill Creek ran into it at one end and there was a dam at the other end. Just beyond the lake and the cranberry marsh was the Winnebago Indian reservation. This reservation was established in the late 1860’s. After a time the Indians who lived there were moved to Nebraska, but soon after about 200 of the band returned to the Watermill area and lived on homesteads on the reservation. They had houses that they lived in during the winter. In the summer they would move out into tepees that they set up on their land. They hunted, fished and worked on the cranberry marshes. About half of the students who went to Watermill School were Indian. Pudge’s first girlfriend, at least, we used to tease him about her, was Iva Hopinkah. Laverne Carrimon was another of the Indian students. Laverne and I became good friends and we would sing together at school. The Winnebago tribe had a secret religious organization that involved a ceremony for the initiation of a young Indian male into the tribe. Laverne invited me to the pow-wow for his initiation, and Dad took me. It consisted of a dance, in which Laverne and the other men and women would dance around a circle inside a large meeting hall. Each of them carried the hide of an animal with the head attached. Laverne would dance, and at certain times a man would touch him with the head of an otter skin. Sometimes when this happened he would fall to the ground and his legs and arms would shake violently and then he would just lay there as if he was in a trance. Since it was a secret ceremony Laverne could not tell me what all of the rituals meant, but I felt quite honored that I had been asked. Laverne lived in La Crosse, WI after he finished his schooling and for a time sang on the radio. I never saw him again after we finished grade school. I heard that he died quite young.

Pudge and I made our first entrance into acting during this time. We had a wind up phonograph at home and there was a record entitled the "Two Black Crows". It was a skit that involved two black people who talked about their way of living. I remember very little of what it said but in one part the one man is talking about a party he was going to and the other man said, "Rastus, you kno dat tey are not goin to let yu into dat party. Now what yu goin to do about dat". Rastus replies, "Wel I’se tel you what I’se goin to do. I’se goin hav my razu wit me and if I’se doint get in der ain’t nobody goin to git out". It was humorous or at least what we considered as humor in those days. Dad and Mother both had appeared in community plays from time to time. These were usually held at the schoolhouse. So Pudge and I decided we would try it. Neither one of us had ever seen a black person in real life nor heard a black person speak except on the phonograph record. I’m not even sure the artists on the record were black. Anyway, we learned our parts and did the gig at about three different schools. I enjoyed hearing the laughter and the applause more than Pudge did. In any event, he decided we wouldn’t do it anymore.

This is also the period that I tried to figure out just who my Father and Mother were and what our family was all about. I knew Dad was Norwegian and that he could speak it because he would still talk with friends from back in Leon in that language. Genealogy research has proved that Dad’s father came from Norway in 1869 and that his mother was probably Norwegian and part Indian. His ancestry is covered in Section II of this project. Mother, as far as we knew, was Irish and that was mostly because she told us that her Mother came from a place near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin called the Irish Settlement. Much later in life when I became involved in the genealogy of our family I found that there was such a place, but I have never been able to establish any Irish ancestry. Her father was German, and the ancestry of her mother is probably a mixture of Scottish, English, and Dutch. Her ancestry is fully presented in Section III of this project.

Dad was a very pleasant man who showed kindness to nearly all people. I have heard him say that if you can’t say something good about a person, don’t say anything. He was not a hugger and I don’t believe I ever heard him say to any of his children that he loved them. We all knew he did because of his actions towards us. He loved fun and practical jokes. Adeline tells of one of his practical jokes:

Dad liked to tell stories and I heard some that I was not supposed to hear from time to time. Adeline said,

I never heard him say a cuss word in front of us kids until we became adults and then very seldom. He was a fatalist. When someone was killed in an accident or just died from old age or some disease he would say,

"Well it was his/her time to go".

He felt compassion for the families of the person that died, but I do not believe he felt much sadness for the deceased. His idea was that it was their time to leave this world.

Mother was the disciplinarian in the family. All of us got our share of wallops and whippings as we were growing up. One of forbidden words when addressing our mother was "Ma". I don’t know why but we had to address her as "Mother". She could be very loving, especially when we were younger but again I do not ever remember her saying, "I love you". And I don’t remember us saying it to either one of our parents. We just knew the love was there and that if there was a problem they would both be there for us. Mother loved parties, and when there was music she and Dad would dance throughout the evening. They were both very good dancers and took some community prizes for their waltzes, foxtrots and schottische. The ladies used to say that when they danced with Dad they felt like they were in a rocking chair. They often went to community parties, and as the evening wore on the younger children would go to sleep on the floor or in a bed, and the old folks would dance and eat all night. In the morning we would be awakened and go home to do the chores and the next days work.

I can count on one hand the times that I ever heard Dad and Mother quarrel or argue. They had a great deal of love for one another, and they really liked living and doing things together. Dad would normally refuse to go anywhere unless Mother would go along. Religion was not a part of our upbringing. I do not remember any of us ever going to church as a family, unless there was a wedding or a funeral. I think later in life Mother became a member of the United Methodist Church, but I don’t think Dad ever joined any church after they left Leon Township. I was told that I was baptized in a church in Leon but research has not produced any proof. I have been unable to locate baptism records for Archie, Vera, Marlyn and myself. I don’t know whether the folks were agnostic, atheist or just not interested. I never heard them ever mention God or Jesus Christ in a spiritual way. I think that the reason they baptized their children was because it was tradition and they thought it was expected of them.

The year of 1935 was the middle of the depression and the Roosevelt Administration was able to get the Public Works Administration Act passed through Congress. WPA’s main objective was to put people into jobs so that they would have money to buy clothing, manufactured appliances and food. It was also meant to improve the economy by creating demand for goods, and, thus, create still more jobs. I forget what year it was that Dad worked for the WPA, but it must have been about 1936 and 1937. In Monroe County they used workers to improve rural roads so that it was easier to transport agricultural produce to town where they could be shipped to other points within the country. They improved the roads by placing a rock called shale on the dirt roads. Those dirt roads would turn to mud and would have large ruts in them when it rained. The shale was a fine-grained rock formed by the hardening of clay. It would split into thin layers when broken up. This was mostly pick and shovel work, and I can remember Dad coming home at the end of the day telling mother how there were workers that did absolutely nothing during the day but lean on their shovels and talk. It brought in money for our family, though, and provided needed public roads, buildings, and other projects.

Dad did many jobs besides farming. During the winter he would go off to the woods and work for a lumbering company. They would either be cutting large logs or cutting pulp for the paper mills. He would be gone for a week or sometimes two weeks at a time. During this time Mother, Pudge and I did the chores. We had to milk and feed the cows, feed the other livestock, clean the barn and separate the milk into cream. Once when Dad was gone we all caught the flu. Mother put Pudge and me in bed, and, even though she also had the flu, she went to the barn to do the chores. The cows had to be milked, and it didn’t matter if we were sick. After a couple of days of this she finally had to give up. Adeline and Od came to help us out.

One of my winter jobs was to clean the gutters that were behind the cows and horses in the barn. During the winter the cattle were kept in the barn and only let out in the barnyard for exercise on good days and then only if there was not too much snow. My job was to clean these gutters and put it on a sled called a stone boat, because it was originally constructed to haul stones. It had a flat bed that rested on two logs; these logs would slide on snow or grass. A team of horses, which had to be harnessed and hitched to this manure carrier, pulled it. When all of the gutters were clean I would take the team and drive them out to the field and pile the manure in small piles on the field. These piles would be spread on the ground in the spring after they thawed out.

In the late August of 1936, the day was extremely hot and dry. Dad was about a mile and half from home cultivating corn for a neighbor. About four-o-clock in the afternoon it started to cloud up in the west and we hoped that it would rain because we needed it badly. An hour later it became very dark; the clouds were black and rolling. We were all down in the barn just starting the chores, and Pudge was getting water for the livestock. He came in and told mother about the sky. She went and had a look. She ran in and said,

She wasn’t able to turn it off and finally ran for the house. By the time she came down the basement stairs, we heard a large rushing noise, the windows in the house were breaking and we could hear hail falling on the floor above. After what seemed like a long time Dad stuck his head in the basement window and hollered,

We, of course, said, "yes", and he said,

The storm had passed as quickly as it came with just a sprinkle of rain still falling. Dad told us, that he had noticed the storm coming and started home. He was about half way home when it hit. The hail and wind were so strong that the horses turned around in the road to put their rear ends towards the storm. As the storm subsided he was able to get them turned and raced home to try and find us. He saw that the barn was gone and figured that we were all in it. He noticed that Ziegler’s barn was also gone. He ran to our barn but because of the mess he could not see much and no one answered when he called. He finally ran to the house and noticed the basement window was broken and that was where he found us. We found that two of our cows and a young heifer had been killed, and I frantically looked for Nellie, the pony, and found her grazing peacefully in the pasture. As Dad and Mother surveyed the damage and the mess, Dad had his arm around Mother, and I think this may have been the first time that I ever saw Mother cry. The Indians came the next afternoon and asked if they could have the dead cows. Dad told them to take them. I know that today we would call this type of storm a tornado but in Wisconsin at that time we called them cyclones or just windstorms. It took about four barns as far as I can remember. Ot Ziegler was in his barn milking the cows when the storm hit. He didn’t know anything happened until he looked up and could see daylight through the floor timbers up above him. No people were injured or killed and no houses blew down so everyone considered that we were all very lucky. The barns were rebuilt and life went on as normal.

Now, where was the rest of the family during our time at the Vandervort Farm? Norma was somewhere working for some family. I remember only one time during this period that Norma was home and was going to work for a family down near Valley Junction, not far from the farm. We took her by car to her place of employment. We had been home only a short while when Norma placed a telephone call to the Ziegler’s, (we had no telephone), and wanted us to come and get her. When we got there she was sitting in the front yard with her suitcase. She said that when she went into the house, they showed her where her bedroom was and she started to unpack. She pulled the covers down on the bed she was to sleep in and found that it was loaded with bedbugs. She said, "All I could think of was the old saying we always said as kids –‘Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite’".

Wendell was also gone most of the time that we were on this farm. He spent a couple of years in Ludington, WI where he worked and stayed with his Uncle, Mother’s brother, Joe Berlin. His real name was Albert Joseph but he always went by his middle name, Joe. Joe and his wife Carrie grew bush beans for the cannery. Wen went there originally to help with the harvesting of the bean crop. Uncle Joe and Wen got along very well. He called Wen, "Windy". Wen ended up staying for nearly two years. You will hear more about Uncle Joe and his family in Section III. Wen finally came home and helped out on the Vandervort farm. Sometime around 1938 he went to work at a farm near Grayslake, Lake County, Illinois. I believe he was managing a farm for a man from Chicago.

Vera graduated from high school in 1935, took one year of teacher’s training, and started teaching in a country school in the fall of 1936 at the age of seventeen. The school was called the White School and was in the district where Adeline and Od had their farm. Their two children, Duane and Delores, were students of Vera’s during the first years that she taught in White School.

Vera taught me how to dance. We had the wind-up phonograph. One of the fad dances of this period was called the shag. Vera taught me the basic steps and then would hand me a broom and say, "Practice". I thought she was quite something. She was a schoolteacher, and most people said she was a good one. She had her own car and would drive me to school sometimes. She was the one who made me believe that I did not wish to be a farmer and that the one way I could keep from doing that was to go to high school.

Pudge graduated from the eighth grade in Watermill School, June 1936. In 1937 or 1938 three of the neighborhood boys decided that they were going to California to find work. Harold Noth, always called Bish, was the oldest, somewhere in his twenties, and had a car. Lyle Scott graduated with Pudge from eighth grade, and there was a fourth boy that I don’t remember. Pudge had to do some tall talking to get Dad and Mother to okay the trip and let him go. Finally they gave him some money, (I think it was $50) and the four guys took off. As I remember, they didn’t write very often and didn’t live very high on the hog. In about six months they were back in the Watermill area. Pudge never told me very much about that trip, except that they worked very hard at picking cotton and that they were hungry most of the time. Pudge kept up with his drawing, working on our farm, on Od and Adeline’s farm and for other farmers. Od and Pudge did a lot of hunting and fishing together. Od said of Pudge,

Some time in 1939 Wen got Pudge a job on a farm just down the road from where he was working. So by the end of 1939 both Wen and Pudge were in Lake County, Illinois.

In 1938 I graduated from eighth grade and prepared to start high school in the fall. There were no school buses, so if you wanted to go to high school you had to find some place in town to stay during the week. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Schappe owned the home where I stayed. Mrs. Schappe was a second cousin of my mother, but I was not aware of that until I got involved in genealogy in the 1980’s. I was twelve years old when I started high school, and most of the kids that I went to school with were two years older than I. I wanted to do what they did so I went out for football. I was short and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet. The coach let me practice even though my uniform pants fell down to my ankles and the jersey they gave me was about four sizes too big. I remember one game when we were ahead about 54 – 0 and Coach Bitzer said,

I ran out there not having any idea what I was going to do and on the other side of a line was a guy that looked liked an army tank. The play started and the guy hit me – they carried me off the field and the next day, Coach said,

I was sure glad the Coach said that because it’s what I wanted to hear. That was the last of my high school athletic days.

In place of athletics’ I went out for the speech team and decided to present what was referred to as "Humorous Declamatory". This was a monologue that one learned and presented much like the stand up comedians of today and was something similar to the material I did with Pudge in the Two Black Crows. To my amazement, I won the local school competition and then received first place in district competition. This allowed me to earn my school letter even though it was a small "t" rather than the large "T" that athletes wore. It still represented my school. I played a clarinet in the school band and enjoyed that although I am not sure Mrs. Schappe was too crazy about it. I was afraid of girls and got tongue tied if one talked to me, so I spent most of my time in my freshman year playing pool in the pool hall. The owner would let me play for free if I would help him out in racking the pool balls and collecting the money from the people that were playing. Od and I played some mean pool games. He was a good pool shooter.

It was also while I was in high school that Nellie, the pony died. Nobody really knew the age of Nellie. One weekend when I came home from school I went out to say hello to her, but I could not find her. When I inquired Dad told me she had a heart attack and just fell over. He had disposed of the body. Dad said,

 "Everything and everyone has to die sometime, and there is nothing we can do about it".

She was the one thing that I had grown up with and I missed her. 

In March 1940 we said goodbye to the Ziegler’s and other neighbors in the Watermill farming community and moved to another farming community called Benjaminville where we settled on the Winker farm. It was closer to Tomah, about two miles north of the city limits and we actually thought we were in heaven. This was our first farm with electricity. The house had inside plumbing, and there was a blacktop road all the way into town. Dad and Mother were quite happy on this farm, but I don’t remember much about it. During the summer I worked for a farmer by the name of Rolle Vandervort. He was some relation to the owner of the Vandervort farm in Watermill. He raised purebred Clydesdales horses and had a junior champion stallion that he had purchased in Canada. This was during the time that tractors were starting to be used quite extensively on the local farms. Rolle would not let one on his farm. We did all our farm work with Clydesdales. They were huge, beautiful animals and I cultivated many acres of corn with them. Rolle’s farm was a large farm with a very nice house, barn and outbuildings. None of the buildings or the farm is there today. When the freeway, Federal Highway 90, was built during the Eisenhower administration, the buildings and the land were all developed into the highway with gas stations, restaurants and motels alongside. We call it progress.

On the first of October in 1940, Norma was married to Lester Christianson of West Salem, La Crosse County, Wisconsin. Lester was from a Norwegian family, and his parents farmed in the West Salem area. Norma and Les lived in the Village of West Salem where Les was an over the road truck driver. I do not remember their wedding but do remember visiting them in West Salem and also the farm where Les was born and raised. The folks liked Les very much.

The second big event in the Hagen family was the marriage of Vera to Sheldon Joseph Ranney, 22 June 1941. Shelly was the son of Avery Ranney who was the owner of Ranney’s Ice Cream in Tomah. They made and sold all kinds of ice cream. Reverend M. Z. Hovela married Vera and Shelly in the Methodist Church in Tomah. After the ceremony there was a horse and buggy at the entrance of the church that carried them to the Winker farm in Benjaminville. That night friends and neighbors held a large shivaree at the farm – (for those who are unfamiliar with a shivaree, it was a celebration held for newlyweds on the night of their marriage. Pots and pans, chains, large lumber saws and other types of noise makers were brought and banged on until the groom finally came out and said enough. The newlyweds were then expected to serve the crowd with spirits and treats.) Since Shelly’s father owned the ice cream factory there was plenty of that for everyone. There also were kegs of beer that were set up on a hay wagon, and by early morning time every one went home happy and full. Vera and Shelly lived in Tomah.

For the rest of the summer of 1941, Dad and Mother were alone in their house for the first time since Adeline had been born. Adeline and Od were on there own farm about four miles away, Norma and Les lived in West Salem, Vera and Shelly were in Tomah, Wen and Pudge were in Grayslake, Lake County, IL and I was working for Rolle Vandervort. I imagine they were glad for the peace and quiet.

In the summer of 1941 a large black Cadillac pulled into the driveway at the Winker farm. It had an Illinois license plate, a chauffer and a slightly overweight man in the rear seat. The man that Wen managed the farm for in Illinois had asked him if he knew of anyone who would want to manage a farm for his friend. His friend owned a lithograph ink company in Chicago, and had just purchased a farm in the vicinity of Antioch, Illinois. Wen met with Mr. Madden who was the owner of the Madden Lithograph Ink Company and the farm, and said that maybe his father would be interested. That started the ball rolling, and that’s the reason the Cadillac was parked in the driveway of the Winker farm. Madden and the folks negotiated a deal. The folks held an auction on the Winker farm and sold all their personal livestock and farm machinery. They purchased a house in Tomah because that is where they knew they would return when they quit farming in Illinois. I was in my senior year in high school, and I spent my days saying goodbye to my friends. On October 4, 1941, we left for Antioch, Illinois.

This brings to a close the events surrounding The Family of Oscar and Frances Berlin/Hagen in Wisconsin. Dad and Mother would never return to live in Monroe County or any other county in Wisconsin but would continue to live the remainder of their lives in Lake County, Illinois.

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