“You get paid 25 cents for each box of apples picked”, the foreman intoned.
At age 88, one feels a little melancholy and you wonder if there is some way to help others. I, therefore, decided to write this unusual and v…
It was rush hour in a small town.
I’m putting the blame squarely on Mother Nature’s shoulders, but it’s happening again this year, despite my best efforts to prevent it.
The battle raged all summer, starting in the Spring and moving in the Fall season. Yes, it was the weeds versus the Scheckel family out on Oak…
Can anyone honestly say they are really surprised that Old Man Winter isn’t quite done?
I thought all Scheckels were upright, honest, compassionate, generous, respectful, hard-working, creative, intelligent, resourceful, mature, d…
Late season snow storms always take me back to March 24, 1979 in the tiny town of Franklin in Jackson County. My feet were wet, and I was begi…
The Chippewa Valley lost two of its most beloved residents last month. Physician and “birdman” Charles Kemper, 103, died at his Chippewa Falls…
Laundry on the Scheckel farm outside of Seneca in the heart of Crawford County in the 1940s and 1950s was a tad more labor intensive compared …
I took a sales course early in my life.
A sure sign of Spring in the 1940s and 1950s on the Scheckel farm outside of Seneca in the heart of Crawford County was the plowing and planti…
A sure sign of Spring on the Scheckel farm outside of Seneca in the heart of Crawford County was the plowing of the garden. Three horses worke…
How do you honor a former slave who served in the Union Army, came North to Wisconsin, farmed the land, raised a family, was gainfully employe…
I knew him a little, but not a lot.
The Seneca Town Chairman, Earl Burns, would stop in at the Scheckel farmstead and ask my Dad if the Town could put up a snow fence along a str…
Oh, did we raise chickens! It was a major source of income for the Scheckel family on the Oak Grove Ridge farm in the heart of Crawford County…
“Nothing is better than agriculture, nothing richer, nothing sweeter, nothing more fitting for a free person.” Cicero 56 BC
The older I become the more I appreciate the little things about Christmas and cherish memories of Christmases past.
“It’s alright. Take your skates to school and walk to the rink from there. Dad or I will pick you up when it gets dark. That’s about 5:30 and …
Free shows were a blessing to the Scheckel kids growing up in the 1940s and 1950s on the farm outside of Seneca in the heart of Crawford Count…
My earliest recollection of a stone quarry is the one on the Hans Westlie farm about midway between Hardies Creek and Crystal Valley, at the t…
The Scheckel farm out on Oak Grove Ridge near Seneca in the heart of Crawford County saw REA string electric wires on poles in 1941. The house…
Life is measured by the passage of time and the season of deer hunting gives me plenty of moments to reflect on past memories.
In May of 1952, I graduated from high school and looked forward to the end of my formal education. I was 17 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy with…
Phillip, Lawrence, and Bob anxiously looked forward to the Crawford County Fair in Gays Mills. The fair was held in late August or early Septe…
There are wonderful surprises and discoveries on the farm. This is especially true in springtime when everything seems to be happening at once…
On September 14, 1814, at about 6 a.m., a lawyer/poet named Francis Scott Key would capture the scene before him in a poem titled “the Defense…