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It is approximately two hundred miles from Tomah to Antioch, Illinois. In 1941 that was about a six hour drive. That was especially true with Mother in the car. As I remember it was a pleasant drive down, for Dad, Mother and me. I did most of the driving because Dad did not care to drive unless he had too. Mother was the only one of us who had ever been to Illinois. She went to Chicago by train with her sister, Della Berlin/Vance when Archie Berlin, their brother, died. From Tomah we drove south on Highways 12 and 16 through Wisconsin Dells and Madison to Richmond, Illinois. At Richmond we turned east on Illinois State Highway 173 past Antioch to the intersection of 173 and US Highway 45. This intersection was called Hickory Corners. At this intersection we turned south on 45 and drove one-half mile to a private road that went east up to the farm. (See map.) We were impressed. The house was new and completely furnished. The barn and the other outbuildings were all painted the usual color of red. There was a large one-story pig barn that had separate pens for about 20 sows. These were to be used for the birthing of the litters of piglets and also a place to keep them during the winter months when they could not be outside. There was a team of large Percheron horses. I don’t believe that Dad ever worked them because there was a tractor to do the farm work, and none of the farm equipment was equipped for use by horses. Also there were two thoroughbred horses that were used for riding. We were not allowed to ride these as we found out when Madden caught Pudge and I taking them out. They were for the use of his kids and grandkids, although they very seldom rode or exercised them. I don’t remember whether there were dairy cows or not, but I don’t believe so.

Because we arrived in October the initial work was preparing for winter. Dad had to get ready to receive the swine that he would care for over the next year. This would include the breeding, the birthing and then preparing the young pigs for market. Dad liked his job and appreciated the opportunity that he had. He was paid by the month. There was no more worry about operating on shares. The risks of dealing with the weather and having to find the money to purchase seed and farm supplies were all gone. Mr. Madden, the owner, would assume those risks. Dad found as the year progressed that Madden did not seem to be very interested in the operation of the farm. He appeared content to purchase what was needed and leave the farming to Dad.

For crops Dad would grow corn, hay and a new grain, soybeans. He had to do some studying and learning so that he could familiarize himself with the methods used in growing the soybeans. Mother spent some of her time in planning where and what she would grow in her garden. I believe that this was the first time that she ever became interested in growing flowers in the garden or around the house. On the Wisconsin farms it was necessary to spend much of the time just surviving and existing. It left no time for unnecessary items such as flowers.

The Monday after we arrived I went into Antioch and registered for school. My peers looked a little different than the ones in Tomah -- maybe a little older, dressed a little better and more standoffish. When they asked me my name I said,

"Puddin Tain, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same",

-- they looked at me like I was a bit weird and started to move away as they kept their eyes on me. Some of the subjects that I had been studying in Tomah were not available and had to be changed. Other than that everything ran fairly smooth and I was registered.

The first big event that happened was on December 7, 1941. It was a Sunday, and I do not remember what I was doing. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a long way from Antioch. The next morning when I went to school a group of us were standing around listening to the reports on the radio. Some of the guys were already eighteen or would be by time they graduated. Some of them would have gone that day if they could have but others were worried about what all this meant and how it was going to affect their lives. The girls were hanging on the guys as if they were going to leave within the next five minutes. I was fifteen years old. I didn’t have the same worries as most of my friends. I had two years and two months before I had to worry, but I felt like I better show some concern so I joined the discussions of what was going to happen to all of us. As the school year proceeded things didn’t appear to be happening much different from before. There were a few students who dropped out of school and joined the service. There were a couple of teachers who were drafted or enlisted. Many of them wanted to get into the service of their choice before they were drafted into the army. Because of the situation, graduation was probably different than it may have been without the war. It was then that the shock hit. Nearly all of my friends and schoolmates left for the service. It seemed that I was the only one left on the street and I was sure that people were looking at me and saying to their friends and neighbors,

"Why is that Hagen boy still in town? My son had to go why didn’t he?"

 I went home, packed my bag and grabbed a bus for Tomah. When I arrived in Tomah I went to work at Ranney’s Ice Cream factory. Avery Ranney, the father of my brother-in-law, Sheldon, owned the factory. I hadn’t worked there long when a friend that I had gone to high school with in Tomah, said,

 "Lets go in the Navy".

He was about to turn eighteen and wanted to make sure he got the navy. He did not know that I was only 16 years old. I obtained a birth certificate and altered it to make my age seventeen, and we went to La Crosse to enlist. We were issued enlistment papers that had to be signed by our parents. This was no trouble for my friend but I knew mine would never sign because they knew how old I was. I signed the papers and then took them to a Notary Public to get the signature notarized. I walked into this notary and asked him if he would notarize my folk’s signature. He looked at the form, and said,

"I can’t notarize this unless your dad is here and I see him sign it".

I explained that my dad lived in Illinois and I had sent the form to him to sign it and he had forgot to have it notarized. The man looked at the form again and I was sure I had conned him. Then he said,

"Are you sure this is your dad’s signature". "Oh, yes", I said, "you can see by the postmark that I just got it in the mail yesterday".

 I was using the envelope of a letter I had received from mother the day before. He finally walked over to a safe and pulled out a file and brought it to the counter. He opened it, and there was a paper signed by my father for some real estate filings that this notary had done for the folks when they bought their house in Tomah. He asked,

"Are those two signatures the same"?

I had to admit they weren’t. I told him what I had done but I didn’t tell him my true age. He went to the telephone and made a call. I learned later he was calling Antioch and was talking with my mother. I heard him say,

"Would you sign for Dean to go into the Navy if you had this form there".

She said,

"He can’t go into the service, he is only sixteen".

The man hung up the phone, glared at me, tore up the paper, including my birth certificate and said,

"Thought you had me, didn’t you? Now get the hell out of here"!

My friend went into the service alone and I never saw him again.

In 1941 Wendell was still working on the farm near Grayslake. He had signed up for the draft, but when he went to take his physical he was given a 4F status. This meant that he would not have to go into the service because of physical disability. I believe that it bothered Wen a great deal because he could not serve. Sometime in 1942 he quit the farm and went back to Tomah. This was mainly because his bride to be lived there. On 19 November 1942 he married Gwenith Betthauser. After their marriage they worked on a farm near Oakdale, Wisconsin, but by 1943 they were back in Illinois. Wen was now married and the rest of that story will be in Chapter 5 of this section.

I don’t really know where Marlyn "Pudge" was during 1941 and 1942. I can remember going pheasant hunting with him in the soybean field on the Madden farm. He did all the shooting of the birds, and I think we got two. In either 1942 or 1943 he went into the U S Army. Whether he enlisted or was drafted is beyond my knowledge at this time. I have been told that he originally tried to enlist in the Marines but for some reason was not accepted. I do know that the folks and I visited him in the summer of 1943 at Camp Grant, near Rockford, Illinois. He had been placed in the medics as a corpsman. He was not very happy with his assignment. His biggest gripe was that they wouldn’t even give him a rifle. He was later transferred to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and on 11 November 1943 in Fayetteville, North Carolina he married Elsie Elizabeth Koenig. Elsie was a girl from Waukegan, Illinois that Pudge had been going with before he went into the service. Shortly after his marriage he was sent overseas. Another Hagen child had left the nest. The story of his life and family will be continued in Chapter 5 of this section.

It was about May or June of 1943 that Madden came out to the farm. He was a very heavy drinker, and Mother had told him months before that he couldn’t come in the house when he had been drinking. This day he was drunk and met Dad in a little shed that stood beside the barn. He had fixed it up as a little sitting room where he could sit and read and have company when he was at the farm. He was angry and started to yell at Dad. Dad finally calmed him down and asked him what the hell was the matter with him. He said,

"I bought this farm as a tax write-off, and my tax accountant tells me I made a profit on it last year. I told you I just wanted you to manage the farm and not to make a profit".

This confused Dad because he had never heard of such a thing. How could you own a farm and not want to make a profit? Dad said,

"Well I don’t know how to do anything any different than what I have been doing and I certainly am not going to work everyday and worry about whether I am making a profit or not. If that is the way it is you had better let me go and get someone else."

Madden told him he was fired and left the farm. Madden was back a couple of weeks later when he was sober. He apologized and asked Dad to stay on the farm. Dad had already made arrangements with a Chicago lawyer named McFarland who had a farm north of Hickory Corners just off of U S Highway 45. This farm was much the same as Maddens and needed someone to manage it. Dad told Madden,

"No once I’m fired, I stay fired".

They settled on a departure date. It was sometime in the fall of 1943 that the folks moved from Maddens to the McFarland farm. (See map.)

It took me the first six months of 1943 to talk Mother and Dad into signing for me so that I could enlist in the Navy. She kept insisting that they had one boy in the service and she wasn’t going to give them two. Dad was silent about it all. I am sure that he would have signed for me, but there was no way he was going to do it without Mother’s consent. Finally in August I brought it up again, and they said they would sign. I think they got tired of my asking or maybe Dad convinced Mother. On 13 August 1943 I entered Great Lakes Naval Training Center at North Chicago, Illinois for boot training.

Finally the last Hagen child had severed the family umbilical cord. I stopped writing about my siblings when they got married. Their lives and the lives of their families will be continued in Chapter 5 of this Section. I will also stop my life story at this point with the intention of continuing it in Section IV – "The Memoirs of Dean C. Hagen".

The folks managed the McFarland farm from 1943 through 1945. I do not remember very much about this farm, although I did visit there while I was on leave in the fall of 1943. I also have no knowledge of why or when they left this farm in 1945. They didn’t move far. Just down the road to the Hernquist farm. (See Map.) They did not manage this farm but merely rented the house as living quarters. During the time they were on McFarland’s they became good friends of the Hernquists. During the time that they lived there one of the jobs that Dad had was to build cement blocks for an independent contractor. They were only there about a year when they bought their house in Antioch, Illinois. The move from Hernquists to 270 Park Ave in 1946 was to be their last residence.

Some time in the late 1940’s Dad went to work for a Mr. Keats. Mr. Keats was the president of a large bank in Chicago. He and Mrs. Keats owned an estate on the state line road. (See map.) The picture on the right is the sign that is present as of this date. Mr. Keats' first name was Benjamin so I assume he or his children still owns the estate. Dad actually worked for Mrs. Keats. Mrs. Keats was a perfectionist and had many workers over the years. She was quite demanding and people  found her very hard to work for. Dad worked for her for about 20 years and I don’t believe they ever had an argument. He did yard work and gardening. He built a rail fence that surrounded the front yard on three sides. He refinished woodwork in the house and some of the antiques. He told me about a door in the house that Mrs. Keats wanted refinished. She decided on the stain, and he completed the work. She didn’t like the color. She purchased another color, and Dad refinished the door a second time. Mrs. Keats didn’t like the way that looked so he had to refinish the door a third time with a different stain. I asked him,

"Don’t you get a little perturbed at that".

He said,

"Why? If I wasn’t doing that I would be doing something else."

Actually Virginia and I found the Keats’ to be very nice people. When we would come home on leave we would go out to the estate to see Dad. Mrs. Keats would serve us lemonade and cookies in the gazebo. We would all sit around, including Dad, and talk about what was happening on the estate or she would show us through the house. In 1956 we were stationed in Fort Carson, Colorado and lived in Colorado Springs. One Sunday morning a huge limousine pulled up in front of the house. It was the Keats. They were at a convention in town, and they had told Oscar they would drop in on us. We had a nice visit.

When Dad became 65 he was eligible for social security. He, of course, could not work for a salary and also draw social security until he was the age of 72. Mr. Keats didn’t deduct any money from his salary for social security or for income tax withholding until he reached the age of 72. Keats paid those amounts from his own funds. When Dad turned 80 years of age he had to take a test for his eyes in order to get his drivers license renewed. He did not pass. He called Mr. Keats, and told him he would have to quit because he couldn’t drive the car anymore. Keats said,

"We will work something out".

So each morning the big limousine would drive down to the house on Park Avenue, pick up Dad and take him to work. In the evening the same procedure would be repeated to bring him home. This arrangement was continued until Dad turned 82, at which time, he said,

"I am getting too old. I have to quit".

During the period that Dad and Mother lived in Illinois they had their good times and their bad times. Both of their sons had come home from World War II unscathed and returned to their own lives. Vera and her family moved to Illinois and later Kenosha, Wisconsin. Wen and Gwen and their family lived near Trevor and then later Camp Lake, Wisconsin. Pudge and Elsie and their family lived in Zion, Illinois. They were all close and they would visit often. Dad and Mother made friends easily and there were many of them from the communities where they had lived.

Christmas of 1946 found the entire Oscar & Frances Hagen family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pudge and Elsie were living there while Pudge was going to the Minnesota Art Institute. This is the first and only time that the family had a formal family picture. We had a great time that Christmas. Pudge and I had a chance to talk, elaborate on and enhance our war experiences.

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On 3 July 1953, Norma died in a hospital in St Mary’s Hospital in Sparta, Wisconsin. She had been sick for about two years, and her illness was diagnosed as cancer. Mother went to West Salem some time in May and stayed with the family. Dad went up to West Salem in June, and both of them was with Norma when she died. This is the first one of the family to die since Archie in 1918.

Dad and Mother celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary on 3 April 1962. The picture and following item appeared in "The Antioch News": The Mrs. Cecil Smith mentioned in the article is Vera. Cecil Smith was her second husband.

GOLDEN YEAR OBSERVED – Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Hagen of Antioch, were honored on their golden wedding anniversary with a dinner at the home of their daughter, Mrs. Cecil Smith of Kenosha. The couple was married April 3, 1912 in Winona, Minn., and made their home in Tomah, Wis., until 1941 when they moved to Lake County. The Hagens have another daughter, Mrs. Arnim (Adeline Gilmer (sic) of Tomah and three sons, Wendell of Trevor, Wis., Marlyn of Zion and Dean who is stationed in Viet Nam. One daughter is deceased.

I retired from the U. S. Army in 1965 and was going to school in Southwestern State College in Weatherford, Oklahoma. On January 6 early in the morning I received a call from Gwen Betthauser/Hagen that Marlyn (Pudge) was dead. Virginia and the rest of my family were still living in Lawton, Oklahoma. This was about 100 miles from Weatherford. It was decided that I would go home alone. I got a ride to the airport in Oklahoma City and flew to Chicago. This was an unexpected death and was very hard on the folks, especially Mother, and his family. I was home only long enough for the funeral and then returned to college.

I graduated from Southwestern State in June of 1968. We were still living in Clinton, Oklahoma and getting ready to move to Kansas City, Kansas for my first teaching assignment. On July 18 we received a call that Dad was in the hospital and seriously ill. We were told that we should come immediately. There was not enough time to get the entire family ready and drive to Waukegan so again I went alone. Cecil Smith, Vera’s husband, picked me up at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Dad was in the Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois but he died about ten minutes before I got there. Dad had been sick about a week with stomach problems that he and mother diagnosed as the indigestion. On the morning of July 18 he went into the bathroom and when Mother went to check on him he had passed out and was lying on the floor. She called the Antioch Rescue Squad, and they transported him to the hospital. His death certificate states that the cause of death was peritonitis so I have always thought that he died from his appendix that had burst probably a couple of days before. There were two obits published and both of them appear below.

OSCAR M. HAGEN – Published in "The Antioch News", Antioch, IL

Way back in 1935 through 1940 we lived on the Vandervort Farm and our nearest neighbors were Otto and Marietta Ziegler. Among other things, Marietta wrote the local township news column for the weekly paper. Some of the dates and information are a bit different from what I have already written in the paragraphs above, but not serious differences.

The following article was published in the June 30, 1968, "Tomah Herald Tribune" under the byline of LA GRANGE -- By Mrs. Otto Ziegler.

Marietta was right. Dad was a great person. He was friendly to all, respected other people’s thoughts and received the respect of everyone. He worked hard, he played hard, and if he could not think of something good to say about anything he would say nothing at all. I wish I could be like him.

During this time and seeing the grief of my Mother put me to thinking about the situation. For the past twenty years my brother, Wen and his wife, Gwen, and my sister, Vera and her husband, Cecil, had been looking after the folks when and if looking after was necessary. I believed that it was time that I should do something. I was under contract to teach in a high school in Kansas City, Kansas and I said to Mother, "If I can get out of that contract and find a position here in this area then we will move back here and take care of the house and you". We did it, but it was a bad decision for reasons that will be noted in Section IV.

We lived in the house at 270 Park Ave for one year and then moved to Duluth, Minnesota. Mother continued to live there for twelve more years. Cecil who worked in Antioch would stop in and see her nearly every day. Wen worked in Antioch and he would stop by to check on her. Gwen, Vera and grandchildren also were there often to visit. Vera did all of financial work and with Gwen took care of medical needs.

December 5 1975, Mother celebrated her 90th year of living on this year. The picture on the right appeared in "The Antioch News". All of the family and many friends were there. She had a great time, she loved being around people when it was a happy occasion.

Have you ever received a call and wondered why you received it? It was on a Sunday, the actual date March 2 1980. We were living in Duluth and Mother called about 7:00 PM. It was surprising because we would call her about every two weeks, and she had never called us. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "Nothing, I just felt like calling". We talked for maybe ten minutes and she was ready to hang up. The following day she called Gwen and said, "What do you have planned for tonight". Gwen said that she and the girls (her daughters) were going to a movie in Antioch. Mother asked her to come a little early and stop in because she had something to tell her. Gwen and the girls did go to the house. They were all sitting in the kitchen by Mother’s rocker. Mother was talking and suddenly there was nothing but a mumble of words and she slumped over. She had a massive stroke. The Antioch Rescue Squad took her to Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan where she died March 5, 1980 at the age of 94. She never regained consciousness after her stroke.

I thought about the call I received the previous Sunday and the story that Gwen told me. I am convinced that somehow, someway, Mother knew that she was going to have the stroke. She wanted to say goodbye and then called Gwen so that she would have someone with her when it happened. Maybe she had a dream and looked it up in her dream book. I don’t know whether she still had one or whether she still believed in dreams.

The following obituary was published in the Antioch News

Obituary of Frances Louise Berlin/Hagen.

Guess I'll have to sell my little old shack - getting old and tired, - the old machine won't go no more.