Back in the 40’s my parents moved from Chicago, Illinois to Soperton, Wisconsin. This was indeed a shock. Chicago was a huge metropolitan area, with all of the trappings of a large urban city. Soperton was not even a real town. It was a tiny 4 street suburb of another small town Wabeno. In Chicago we had running water, bathrooms, public transportation, sidewalks, and such. There was little resemblance to that where we moved.
The entire county of Forest to this day only has a population of about 10,000 people. Housing, however, was considerably cheaper than Chicago. We paid $7 a month rent for the huge 4 bedroom house in Soperton. But we pumped our own water, had an outhouse and the streets were gravel. And to the dismay of my older brother and me, we had a huge wood burning stove in the living room to heat the house.
About 10 miles north of us was the largest hardwood mill in the U.S., the Connor Lumber and Land Company. About 3 times each winter, Mom would buy enough wood to fill a giant dump truck full of flooring ends and pieces. Each piece was no larger than 8 inches long and many were just an inch or so. We would come home from school and find a huge pile of this wood in the alley in front of the wood shed. My brother, being seven years older than I, understood immediately what this meant and tears would stream down his face.
He and I would throw all this wood, piece by piece into the wood shed. Well, the truth is, he would do the vast majority of it and I would more or less get in his way. Over sixty years later he still complains about how little help I was.
There was no getting out of it, regardless of what plans we had for our young lives. After hours of work over several days time, we filled the wood shed and cleared the alley. But we were not yet done with our task. The wood shed was out in back of the house. “Do you think the wood will find its way into the house all by itself”, said our mother. “Stack as much as you can on the back porch”.
So now we (again mostly my brother, in tears) would make trip after trip carrying armfuls of wood into the house and pile it on the back porch. We could get enough wood for a week or two on the porch at one time, but that would disappear very quickly. A short time later, we would have to do it all over again. We got to the point that every time we went to the outhouse we would bring an armload of wood back with us. It helped, but the work was always there.
And, in two to four feet of snow it was not a lot of fun. The tears came easy in below zero temperatures.
So now you need to tell the rest of the story - about how you would go from the outhouse to the fishing hole.
But if he brought back fish for dinner, he wouldn’t get whopped!
2 of the grandsons are familiar with the story. One of his grandsons excused himself from the dinner table. He was gone for a few moments. Of course, we had to continue with cleaning up the kitchen. He came back, and of course, had drawn and cut out a fish. All we could do is laugh!