My family moved to Soperton, a suburb of Wabeno Wisconsin when I was in 4th – 5th grade.

One of my good buddies was Bobby.   In the summer Bobby and I would make the rounds of the neighbors gardens.  Whatever was growing, we would “harvest” a little of it.  We would get all sorts of vegetables in various stages of maturity.  We would find potatoes, corn, beans, peas, cabbage, carrots and many other vegetables.   We took whatever was available and made our own version of Hobo Stew.

After we had amassed a   collection of these treasures, we would find an old 5 pound coffee can, usually rusted and dirty.  While Bobby collected wood and made a fire, I would clean the can, punch 2 holes in the rim opposite each other and thread a wire hanger through the holes and make a handle.

We cleaned the vegetables and filled the can with them and water.  Sometimes we would sneak a small piece of meat from leftovers in our homes and add that to our concoction.  Once the fire had burned down a bit and we had hot glowing coals, we would hang the can of food from sticks that Bobby had fashioned into a tripod over the coals.  About a half hour later we would eat our “stew”.  It was delicious and we were very proud of ourselves.   It was our secret and we said we would never tell anyone.

Fifty years later when I did tell my mother about these adventures, she told me that she, Bobby’s mother and the neighbors were aware of what we were up to and would watch us to make sure we didn’t burn something down or hurt ourselves.  I was never aware of it at the time.

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.