Local Voices

The Lives Affecting Wausaus Past

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Frank Gering
Frank was born in Wausau in 1913 and has lived on the east
side of Wausau for most of his life. He joined the Navy for
few years and then went to work at Employer s Mutual, now
Wausau Insurance, for 45 years. He was a manager of the
Audit Department for 32 years. He was chaplain at Athletic
Park since 1980 for the Wisconsin Timbers.

I grew up in a family of seven. My family consisted of my grandfather, my moth

father, my three younger brothers, and myself. I was born on March 22nd, 1913; I
old. Wausau was established in the mid?eighteen hundreds. There were a number
?
of
ent people who came to Wausau. One was George Stevens who came up from Stevens P
and there s a bridge in Wausau that was named after him. After him, there were a
men who came together to Wausau; they were not officially organized, but were ca
Wausau Group, and they had a number of famous names. I ll just give you a few of
names which may not mean much to you now, but these men were part of this Wausau
Group. Most of them were lumbermen, and they did a lot to develop the city of Wa
there was a man by the name of Alexander Stewart, and he had a big sawmill opera
Walter McIndoe also had a sawmill and logging operations. Then there was a fello
name of John Ross. He had a sawmill called the Brooks and Ross Sawmill here in S
right where the Eau Claire River empties into the Wisconsin River. Then, there w
Alexander, who helped develop the city. Then a fellow came along, a lawyer by t
Neil Brown. He was a very brilliant person and did a lot of brilliant things; he
Employer s Mutual, which is now called Wausau Insurance. Then, some time later,
Clark Everest came along. Of course, your school system is named after D.C. Ever
the one that developed the paper mill in Rothschild. I d like to tell you some o
did in my own life, and maybe that will help you. First of all, not far from wer
north end of the city of Wausau, there was the Excelsior Mill. Excelsior is wood
down to very thin pieces. If you can imagine the kind of stuff you put in your E
these days, that was all wood. So, they had to get the tree from the woods, and
had to be peeled off of it, and then they ran it through these shredding machine
was real small, I worked for a time at peeling bolts. We used a draw shave to do
they used the bolts and ran them through these machines and made the Excelsior r
them. Also, when I was growing up, I worked for a time at the canning factory. T
factory was on the west?side of Wausau, and I went out on the fields and picked
had these market baskets, which were about eighteen inches wide and eighteen inc
something like that. They would haul us out there in stake?bodied trucks. We st
trucks, in the back as they hauled us back and forth. We picked the beans all da
the bean fields were out in this area, west of here out towards Camp Philips Ro
was twelve years old, I worked on a farm, which was across the river from the pa
downstream a ways. There, I learned how to milk cows by hand. There were no milk
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Local Voices

The Lives Affecting Wausaus Past

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machines, of course. I learned how to hoe

? pota
toes, how to feed the pigs, and to do a lot of
other farm activities.

What else happened when you were young?

I could tell you something about ice. Where do
ice come from? It s got to be where it s cold,
the river is cold. We had a number of companie
who made ice. One of them was an ice and fuel
company in Schofield. There was also a Wausau
Ice and Fuel Company, and there were several
others. When the ice got to be pretty thick, t
would go out there, and they used horses and
sleighs. They would have a long saw that they
would put down, and they would saw the ice int
blocks, take it out, and haul it out with tong
the sleighs. They would take them to the
? ice
houses. An icehouse was a little different th
normal building because the walls were like timbers, and they were very thick. H
suppose they kept the ice from melting all summer long until the next winter? Th
each layer that they put down, with sawdust, and that was an insulator. When it
to take the ice out and haul it by wagon to the ice boxes in the people s homes
they would have to take that sawdust off and wash it off with water, and then th
deliver the ice. When I was a junior and a senior in high school, I worked on a
of Wausau about five miles out, and it was a dairy farm.
We delivered milk to the city of Wausau in glass bottles
door?to?door. We don t have door?to?door deliveries
anymore, but we had it then. We had to go to houses five
We delivered
miles apart in the wintertime. We had horses and a sleigh
and didn t really have any problems because the streets
milk to the city
were never plowed, and the sleighs worked very well.
The horses had special winter shoes that had big knobsof Wausau in
on the end of it, so they wouldn t slip on the ice. During
glass bottles
summer time we would deliver the milk in a regular milk
door-to-door.
wagon, which was a lot of fun. I earned the sum of fifty
cents a day working there. We got up in the morning,
usually about five o clock, and our chores were done at
about eight o clock in the evening. It was a long day. So
that was kind of an interesting thing. Wausau had a
number of sawmills. They used to call the Wisconsin River the hardest working ri
state of Wisconsin because it had so many sawmills and power plants on it. These
operated by water, and in the early days they floated the logs down the river.
?
T
ings in the river and what they called booms, which connected one piling to anot
they were able to steer the logs. They were stamped, so everybody knew who owne
logs. The farthest north sawmill was at the very north end of Wausau on the west
was another one just north of Bridge Street. When I was growing up, I lived fair
mill. I could hear them running these logs through the saws all night long.
? I ca
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The Lives Affecting Wausaus Past

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ber it so clearly. There were some other sawmills near downtown Wausau, where th
is now, and there is an island there. It was Stewart?Barker Island, which is now
it had a sawmill there too. So, logging and lumbering was a very important thing
At that time, there were also some farmers who would bring in logs on their slei
horses. The sleighs had two sets of runners on them, and they were connected tog
a hinge. So, what we used to do when we were growing up, when the sleighs were
and the farmers were on their way home, as they came up the street, we would get
back end of the sleigh and swing those things around. So, it kind of makes the h
The farmer had this long whip, and with this long whip, he d be trying to chase
that was a kind of a fun thing. Wausau had a streetcar system. Wausau had stree
ran from the north end of Wausau all the way down here to the paper mill in Roth
Down Grand Avenue, they would have a separate track along side of the road, but
these streetcars ran on tracks right down the middle of the street. So, sometim
?
tertime, the only thing that was plowed were the streetcar tracks. It had a litt
plow in front of it, and it pushed the snow aside. So, if you wanted to walk, it
idea to walk down the middle of the road until the sidewalk was shoveled. That w
important thing that went on, too. Of course buses have replaced streetcars sinc
they go all over the place. Let me tell you about hobos. Well, they keep moving
to place, and we had our hobos, of course, coming through Wausau. They usually s
along the railroad tracks because that s how they d hitch a ride on the train an
place to the other. Well, there were two prominent hobo places. They were called
and one of them was on the north side of Wausau right near what is now Gilbert P
kind of a hollow there between the railroad track and the river, and those fello
there and would make whatever food they could. They d have a fire going. The oth
back of the cemetery that s on Grand Avenue, where the railroad track is east
?
of
tery. They would go door?to?door and try to get handouts. Well, lets say, they
your place, and your parents gave them some food. When they left, they d put
? a m
where on your property, on a fence or wherever, so the next time they came along
know this was a good place. If they stopped at your place and they didn t get an
they d mark that, too. So, they got to be pretty smart. In the wintertime, ever
owned was on their backs. I remember seeing some of these fellows. They d have
three or four coats on, one on over t
other one, because that s the only wa
they could keep warm. So, that s the
story about hobos. Another thing,
when I was growing up in Wausau, we
lived right in the city. But one time
had two cows, and we had to take
those cows to a pasture, which was on
the edge of the city. Before school
we d take the cows with a rope around
their neck and take them out to the
pasture, and at the end of the day,
we d have to get them and bring them
home. We d do that every day. Some
of the older boys had a small herd of
cows, maybe ten or twelve cows. They
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The Lives Affecting Wausaus Past

would walk them right down the street. You ve seen some of the movies where cow
gone down the middle of a street, well that s the way
they did it. They just knew where to go. For instance,
they d go down to a barn. The back door of the barn
would be open, along the alley, and the cow would
go right inside, at that time, most of the roads were
Seven of us, at
dirt roads. There were very few that had any kind of
times, lived on fifty
a macadam or concrete or anything like that. Also,
we had many places where we had wooden side
?
dollars a month
walks instead of concrete. The street that I lived on,
we didn t even have wooden sidewalks. All we had plus the little bit of
was a dirt path and we traveled on that.
money that my

brothers
How long did you go to school?
I went through high school. I went to Wausau High
School, which is now Wausau East, and at that time
they were the top school in the Wisconsin Valley
Conference.

made.

How many kids did you graduate with?

We had a hundred and ninety. I ve done some speaking about the Depression days i
book. I graduated from high school in 1930, when the depression was started.
? So
ty percent of our kids were able to go on to college because you just couldn t a
didn t go to college, but I wish I had. I had to stay home and help support my f
in 1930, I went to work for Employers Mutual Insurance Company. I got fifty dol
for that. My father was an interior decorator, and he worked in many of the home
fellows that I referred to you earlier, and they didn t want any painting or dec
because money was very scarce even to them. So, sev
of us, at times, lived on fifty dollars a month plu
little bit of money that my brothers made. They wer
younger than I, and they had paper routes, but they
about ninety papers at a time, and for that they go
cents a week for each paper that they delivered. So
would only amount to a dollar and eighty cents a we
I would encourage all of you if you possibly can, g
to some other school in addition to high school; co
be a technical school or could be a college, but ge
the education you can. I was one of the fortunate o
who was able to make it without going on. But a lot
people were not able to do that.

What is the biggest difference between school then

and how it is now?
There was more discipline. We were more disciplined
and dress was different. I also think that we were
courteous than many students are today.

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Did you have a dress code?

No, we didn t have a dress code, but it
was just common that we didn t have the
sloppy clothes; you know what I mean.
The only ones that wore denims, which
are now called bib overalls, were the f
kids, and there weren t very many farm
kids that went to high school because
they couldn t get to town. There were n
busses. A few of their parents brought
them in. Some of the kids came in and
stayed during the week with somebody in
town. The teachers dressed differently
too.

Well, our grandparents tell us stories where they didn t have shoes, and they ha
walk twenty miles to school.
Well, that s quite a distance. I had some friends who walked all the way from th
Stettin into Wausau High School. That was four miles. They were small girls.

Was it hard with all those brothers?

Yes, because, first of all, only the kitchen stove and a space heater in the liv
heat the house. We four boys slept in one room upstairs, two of us in a bed, and
We didn t have any running water in the house. We got water from a pump outside.
?
body left water in a washbasin downstairs when they went to bed, in the morning,
times when it would be frozen, sometimes frozen solid. When we got up in the mor
had to really fight to get closest to the stove to get dressed, but it was good.
life. I enjoyed it.

My grandpa that s still living, his dad, who died, said that if you wanted to ke
feet warm in the winter, and you didn t have any shoes, you would stick your fee
cow
Now, Frank is a follower of Jesus Christ and is
very active in his own church, Immanuel Baptist
and the Gideons. He continues to be the
Chaplain at Athletic Park for the Wisconsin
Woodchucks and has currently been inducted
into the Baseball Hall of Fame.. His hobbies
include trout fishing and scenic photography.

manure.
Seems to me that your grandpa was joking. I don t
know what you know about cow barns, but if you go
into a cow barn, they don t put any heat in a cow barn
because cows throw off a lot of body heat. ?In high
school,one of my friends and I bought matching
Interviewer: Samantha Degen & Kim Duhaime
sweaters. Those were the only sweaters we had
Transcriber: Josh Schmidt
our entire junior and senior years.
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D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications

Gering, Frank