William Blum

The Most Important Events in My Life as I Remembered Them and Had Them Recorded by My Son Herbert

Recorded by Herbert E. Blum.
Transcribed by Ellen M. Rohr from The Blum Family History written by Herbert E. Blum.

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I had to pay $320.00 a year for taxes and interest. Some years I only took in $100.00 total. It seemed like a losing battle. I threshed about 100 bushels of oats and had four loads of hay and three loads of straw that first year. The farm was run down and had to be built up. By the time we left we had seventeen head of cattle and about 200 chickens and threshed four hundred and fifty bushels of ats and had a silo full of corn and had fifteen loads of hay. My son, Herbert, went out and worked for farmers and later he went into the Civilian Conservation Corp. One year at the height of the depression we had a real house full. There was no work to be had so Dorothy and her husband, Alvin Messman; Martha and her husband, Emmath Jonas and their baby son, Winton; Fred Jonas Senior and Fred Jonas Jr.; Lydia Jonas and our family of four girls and my wife and I all lived in our house. They had no place to go so we took them in. we certainly had a house full to feed. I could not let them starve so we had to make the best of it. They all were there for six weeks. Those were hard times. While we were here on the farm Ma had an operation on her womb. At the same time she was in the hospital two of the girls were there also for some minor operation. Now we had a big hospital bill and no money to pay it with. After the times got better we paid it off a little at a time. Before we moved to the farm, while we were still in Two Rivers, I had my appendix out and Martha also was there for the same reason. Well enough of that.

I had a government loan as I said before and when I couldn’t pay it off the government finally foreclosed on me and I lost the farm. Gone was all the work and effort that I had put into it. Gone too were the dreams of making something out this piece of land. I still had my personal property. Ma didn’t feel very good about this time. She was unable to help like she used to. We no longer had the income from the woods as we didn’t own the farm any more. To help out I started to work at the condensery at Mishicot, Wisconsin. They were in the old brewery building near the northwest side of my old farm where I was born. I commuted every day.

After the government foreclosed and took the farm from me I rented it from them for fifteen dollars a month. I stayed there another two years. I was a lot better off. Now the government had to pay the taxes and keep up the buildings.

These years were a hard experience for me and my family, but we made it. After selling my personal property I had twenty-six hundred dollars so we decided to move to Mishicot, Wisconsin. We bought a house with the money. The house was about a mile southwest of Mishicot.

In April of 1932, my mother, Doris Blum, died. We layed her to rest beside her husband on the Mishicot cemetery.

We moved to Mishicot to our new house on January 6, 1944. We lived there for thirteen years.

When I said that we moved into our new house, I meant it was new to use but actually it was an old house that needed many repairs. I did a lot of repairing that first year. The roof leaked and the cellar was full of water in the spring. The water was so deep that Winton and Wayne Jonas went boat riding in a big washtub. It was fun for them but for me it was more work, work to make the cellar dry in some way so we could use it and it would remain wet and damp and maybe rot the timbers of the house. I put in sewer pipe and a septic tank and a dry well. This alleviated the wet situation. AFter that I remodeled the house the way we wanted it. This cost us seven hundred dollars. At this time Ma still made chokecherry wine. About two years later we put insulated siding on all around the house. This cost another three hundred dollars.

There was quite a bit of land that we owned around our home. It was more than we could garden or take care of so we sold a piece to each of our children that lived near by. Marie and her husband Fred Jonas even built a home on theirs.

In 1943, when I started working for the condensery I helped them construct the building. When that was done in February of 1944, I got the job of being the watchman. I held this job for four years. Then in February of 1947, I got a heart ailment and I couldn’t work. I was laid up until September of that year.

On September 17, 1944, my wife’s mother died. We buried her in the Mishicot Cemetery.

On September 1, 1947, I got the job on the cemetery cutting the grass and digging the graves. I remained on that job for thirteen years. In all I dug two hundred and seven graves and put in one hundred and fifteen foundations for grave markers or stones.

On September 1, 1953, I started to pick up garbage in the village of Mishicot. I was the first garbage collector in the village. I had the job for eight years. It wasn’t too hard a job but sometimes it wasn’t pleasant when people were careless with their garbage. Some days I couldn’t eat any meals when I got home. This was part of the work.

In my spare time I started to put in sewers, septic tanks and dry wells for people in and around Mishicot. At the time I was sixty-eight years old. I also made lawns around the new houses for people in the same area. Around Mishicot I put in about twenty-five septic tanks and dry wells and made thirty lawns and landscaping projects. One day as I was driving home in 1958, I was crossing an intersection about a half-mile from home and another driver hit me broadside. I was in the hospital for five days.

When I was seventy-five years old I quit the cemetery job. I continued the garbage route for another year and then sold that in 1961, to Allen Flenge. From then on I worked at light jobs.

In December, on the 15th, in 1961, my wife Meta died. She is buried in the Two Rivers Cemetery.

I sold the house in 1963, in October. The man who bought it wanted the land as he was putting in an eighteen hole golf course and he had plans for a motel where our house was standing. I had the right to live in the house until the 15th of May. On the 10th of May I had an auction and sold all of the things in the house. I bought a trailer on May 9, and had it moved on to the lot of my daughter and son-in-law, Marie and Fred. They lived very close to my former home, in fact I sold them the lot to build on from the land which I originally bought with the house. I moved into it on the afternoon of May 10, and I have been living in it since (1964). Now I content myself with sewing carpet rags which I then have woven into carpets. Some of these I give away to my children and some I sell.

Signed,
William F. Blum

William F. Blum died on September 22, 1968.

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