Looking Back: Memories of Michigan

By F. DeWayne Kyser

After retiring from the faculty of Central Michigan University, DeWayne Kyser wrote a monthly column for the Isabella County Senior News. These essays were written for and about his own generation, those whose lives spanned nearly all of the amazing twentieth century. They grew up with horses and unpaved streets, saw the automobile change the world, and then airplanes, television and space travel change it still more. They lived through a world war, a great depression, another world war and a cold war. These are the stories of how some of them lived in a time some of us can almost remember.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 5, 2003
• ISBN: 9781465329417

F. DeWayne Kyser

Forrest DeWayne Kyser (1913-1993) was a janitor at Central Michigan University in his 40s and a professor there in his 60s. Born on a farm in Lincoln Township, Michigan, he attended Central State Teachers College. After trying rural school teaching, he went to the University of Michigan for a Master’s Degree in geography. Then he returned to his father’s farm. Forced to find other income, he also worked in real estate, a lumber yard in Shepherd, and as a custodian at Central. At 50, he got a Ph.D. in geography at Michigan State, joined the CMU faculty.

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Copyright © 2003 by Nickolas J. Kyser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

These essays first appeared in the Isabella County Senior News, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Reprinted with permission.

Cover painting by Robert Long, Destin, Florida:

www.robertlongwatercolors.com

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Contents

Introduction

I. THERE’S A GENTLEMAN WHO CAN TELL YOU

Looking Back: Football Rivalry Fun

Elton Miller: A Career that Spans Decades

Livestock and the Village

Early Village Industries and Services

Early Village Industries and Services ll

Business Spans Generations

Another Business Spans Generations

Early Settlers in Isabella County

Land Ownership in Isabella County

Pioneer to Present Day Business

Five Generations in Shepherd Businesses

The Railroad Was the Lifeline

Lincoln Center School 1880-1980

Memories of World War II

Political Comment—Now and Then

Doctor Albert T. Getcheff

Seff-Employed for Three Quarters of a Century

The First Isabella County Indian Reservation

Teresa Kenny Collins Recalls

From the Beginning

A Mighty Man Was He

Difficult Times

John and Molly

United States Indian Industrial School

Transport Truck

A Holiday Newspaper of a Century Ago

Last Living Pioneer Settler of Isabella County?

Stump Puffing

Wheelwright

A Hitch in the C.C.C.

A Hitch in the C.C.C., Part 2

Country Girl

A Man Named Smith

Apple blossom

II. PROGRESS AND

HAPPINESS:

RECOLLECTIONS OF

RURAL YOUTH

A Horse of a Different Time

Spring Roads of the Twenties

The Way They Were

Obsolescence in the Local Landscape

Back to School

Pioneer Economy

Ah, Winter

Hey, Hay

Threshing Machines

School Transportation, 1920’s and 193o’s

The Milk Route

Pre-Combine Harvest

Airplanes

Kid Power

Impact

Remember January

The Good Old Summertime

Sounds of Spring in the Countryside

Transition

Apples

Ice

ModelT

Threshing Crew

Motoring Then and Now

Progress and Happiness

TO MABEL

AND TO

DAVID AND ANDREW,

WHO MADE THEIR GRANDPA’S HAT SIZE GROW LARGER

Introduction

My father, Forrest DeWayne Kyser, may have been the only man who worked as a janitor and a professor at the same university. Not at the same time to be sure, but he was a janitor at Central Michigan University in his 40s and a professor there in his 60s.

Dad was born in 1913, on a farm that his father bought around 1900, in Lincoln Township, Michigan, and never went far from that place. He attended Central State Teachers College, as it was then, intending to teach in the rural schools. After trying his hand at teaching in St. Louis, and doing a few other jobs, some of which are described in this book, he went to the University of Michigan for a Master’s Degree in geography, followed by a fellowship year at Syracuse University.

And then he returned to his father’s farm. It was an 80-acre dairy farm, the kind that seemed like the natural order of the universe when I was growing up on it in the 1950s. From a mere half century later, we can see that these farms dominated the landscape for an astonishingly short time, less than 100 years from the time the land was cleared (deforested, we might say now) until all those red barns were abandoned and falling down. After 20 years or so of trying to make a living from 80 acres and a dozen dairy cows, Dad was forced, like most of his neighbors, to find other sources of income. Like most of them, he kept farming while he did the other things: real estate brokerage, a stint as a substitute for one of the geographers on the Central Michigan College faculty, a partnership in a lumber yard in Shepherd, and the custodial staff at Central, which was by then CMU.

Finally, at the age of 50, he went back to graduate school, got his Ph.D. in geography at Michigan State, found an opening on the CMU faculty, and remained there until he retired. In retirement, he started writing essays on a monthly basis, first for the Shepherd Argus and then for the Isabella County Senior News. We are grateful to the Senior News for permission to reprint this selection.

These essays were written for and about his own generation, those whose lives spanned nearly all of the amazing twentieth century. They grew up with horses and unpaved streets, saw the automobile change the world, and then airplanes, television and space travel change it still more. They lived through a world war, a great depression, another world war and a cold war. These are the stories of how some of them lived in a time some of us can almost remember.

Nickolas J. Kyser

Detroit, Michigan

May, 2003

I. THERE’S A GENTLEMAN WHO CAN TELL YOU

SOME PEOPLE AND PLACES OF ISABELLA COUNTY

Looking Back: Football Rivalry Fun

Local high school football rivalry goes back quite a way, but with some differences from the present. The following account derives from an interview with Mr. Russell Stilgenbauer of Shepherd.

Shepherd High School had a football team in 1909. Mr. Stilgenbauer was a freshman, weighed 110 pounds, and played quarterback. The football coach had no connection with the High School. He was a dentist who came to Shepherd from the University of Michigan where he had played football. He offered to coach a team at Shepherd High School and the boys took him up on it. They played five games in the 1909 season, with the entire squad consisting of thirteen boys.

The last game of that season was at Midland with the Midland High School team on New Year’s Day. A horse drawn bus was rented from a livery barn (located on the south side of Wright Avenue between First and Second Streets). They started out from Shepherd at 2:00 a.m. Russell notes that when they crossed the Chippewa Bridge about half way to Midland, they heard a shot and discovered that Jud Upton (who ran a hardware store in Shepherd for many years) and his brother-in-law had just shot a deer in the woods by the road.

The team reached Midland abut noon. They went to the hotel, had dinner and changed clothes for the game. The playing field was covered with slush, and Russell tells that the boy standing beside him (Harry Rosselit) said that he was going to take off his underwear before putting on his suit in order to have dry clothing for the long cold ride home. It seemed to Russell like a good idea and he did the same. They had a good game, though losing by about one touchdown and getting very wet. After the game, they went back to the hotel, changed clothes, and started home, arriving back in Shepherd about 2:00 a.m. (24 hour round trip).

The following year, the Shepherd team played only two games. The first was with Ithaca played at Shepherd (a good game, says Mr. Stilgenbauer). The next game was with Alma High School at Alma where they were beaten 85 to 6, and one of the boys was so badly injured he was on crutches all winter. That seems to have ended football at Shepherd High for the time.

February 1979

Elton Miller: A Career that Spans Decades

At the corner of Wright Avenue and Third Street in Shepherd is a sign indicating the real estate office of Elton H. Miller in the second block north on Third Street. There is, of course, nothing unusual about real estate signs in most any town, but records show that this same Elton H. Miller was the Village Clerk of Shepherd, in 1920, an activity span few can match.

Elton was born July 31, 1894, the son of William O. Miller and the former Eliza M. Gruber. Elton’s grandfather was one of the earliest residents of Coe Township. He deeded 40 acres of his farm just north of Salt River to his son, William O. Miller. Part of this farm became the Miller addition to the Village of Salt River and so later to Shepherd.

Elton graduated from Shepherd High School in 1913. While in school he worked nights at the telephone office. After high school he attended Ferris Institute where he studied real estate business among other subjects.

William O. Miller was then engaged in farming, lumbering, and real estate, and son Elton came home to work with him. The Millers had an office on the top floor of a building on the southwest corner of Wright and Third Streets. Elton notes that it was heated by a coal stove, and coal had to be carried up from a street level pile. The Millers at this time expanded by buying an insurance business. In addition to these activities, Elton once served simultaneously as clerk for both the Village of Shepherd and Coe Township.

World War II conditions seriously disrupted business for the Millers, and Elton found employment in Lansing with the Capital National Bank and later with an insurance company. Irregularities which developed in the latter’s operation caused Elton to leave the company and return to Shepherd. After coming back, he found employment with the sugar company in Mt. Pleasant until it closed down. He then went for a time with the Hess Hatchery in St. Louis, finally returning to reestablish his real estate business in Shepherd, in which he is still engaged at age 84. There are still other activities which have not been mentioned in this brief account of a long career.

March 1979

Livestock and the Village

Livestock of the farm utility variety are seldom to be encountered roaming urban places today, or even the smallest villages. Indeed, the occasional bovine which escapes the stock truck or yard and wanders downtown not only finds itself the object of intensive roundup efforts by police and others but likely front page news as well. Such, however, was not always the case in the Midwest before and even after the turn of the century.

In pioneer days, lands cleared and cropped were much in the minority as compared to unimproved lands and the usual practice was to fence livestock out rather than in, with crops being protected by fences and livestock allowed otherwise to roam private holdings and the public domain alike (hence the use of cow and sheep bells). Villages were not immune to the wanderings.

Shepherd Village Council proceedings of May 2, 1889, reported the appointment of a committee to find a place for impounding cattle, horses, etc. The proceedings of May 23, 1889, reported an offer of the stockyards belonging to the railroad (Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Northern Michigan) for use as a village pound. The council accepted the offer.

The Marshall was then instructed to impound all stock running loose as of May 31, 1889.

Some problems seem to have developed. Council proceedings of November 11, 1889 show the Marshall reporting that Mr. A has paid fines for impounding cattle, that Mr. B will pay his when Mr. C pays his, but that Mr. C refuses to pay. The Marshall was instructed to collect. Proceedings of subsequent meetings show discontinuance of the use of the railroad stockyards and provision for the establishment of a village pound on lots 18, 19, and 20 and part of the unoccupied alley of Block 9 (north side of Wright Avenue between Second and Third Streets), placing it immediately behind business places along Main Street. Proceedings also record the presentation of a bill by the Marshall for impounding 5 cows and one hog. That the problem of unconfined livestock was still around after 1900 is indicated by action of the Council on July 2, 1901, instructing the Poundmaster to procure lock and put the pound in condition to hold stock, and any stock found running at large in the streets be placed therein.

Loose livestock seems not to have been the Village’s only problem with animals. At the June 8, 1891 Council meeting, the Marshall was instructed to impound all stock found staked in the public highway, street, or alley near enough to impede travel. In October, 1901, the health officer was instructed to stop the slaughtering of livestock within the village limits, and in June, 1903, an ordinance was passed to make it unlawful to keep swine within 100 feet of any residence during April, May, June, July, August, September, and October.

June 1979

Early Village Industries and Services

In the past, strictly local sources of goods and services were necessarily utilized much