Watauga Memories by Merle E. Lofgren

Watauga is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee this summer and perhaps I should record the little that I remember about my old home town and particularly the community south of Watauga that centered around the Prairie View school.
In doing so I am conscious of my limitations of a historian of that area and era. I was about 6 years old when drought forced us to move from the farm to McIntosh.
Rather, I hope these jottings will inspire somebody else to add to them and help to preserve some of the memories of the people and events of the Watauga area and its surrounding communities.
I am further limited by the fact people in those days did not travel over a wide area. Most of the traveling was done by team and wagon or buggy, riding horseback or walking. Most people had a car but those too had their limitations.
We, the Francis Lofgren family lived about five miles south of Watauga. Nothing remains where we once lived to indicate the spot that once was the beloved home of a family. We lived on the side of a hill about 3 miles north of what is the Mike Bailey ranch. Our mailbox was on the road which runs north from the Bailey point at the point where it intersects with the road going east to the Prairie View school.
The creek that ran north of our place is of course still there. It was the summer center of life for the Lofgren children. There was a hole that did not hold much water. The creek is not nearly so wide or big as I see it now as it seemed to we children in those days.
The farm was originally the homestead of my grandfather Lofgren whom I never knew.
South of our place lived an Irish bachelor named Bill Marquadt. He was a tall man and came from Milwaukee. He lived in a boxcar that had been converted to a shack. He had once owned a bar in Milwaukee and when he sold it was quite prosperous but the money gradually disappeared into his claim. He did not drive a car but had an old black team he drove on a buggy. He kept a bull snake in the shack for a pet and the snake kept away the rats and mice. I don't know what happened to him after we left the farm. I don't think he farmed but he kept some cattle. Neither did he ride a horse and his cattle ran wild which resulted in a cattle drive which is still remembered by anybody who had anything to do with it.
The Anton Striny family lived where Mike Bailey now lives. They came from St. Paul and were devout Catholics and every Sunday we would see them driving by our place on their way to church in Watauga. They drove a Chevrolet car on those occasions which was one of the nicest in the community. They had two sons, Frank and Ted and a daughter Teresa. Until a few years ago I used to correspond with Frank. I can remember Frank riding up to our place on his horse with a guitar which my Dad would help him tune.
A couple miles west of our place, where the Zubrod place now stands, there lived the Shroeder family. I do not remember his first name but his wife's name was Dolly. They had no children and I do not recall visiting with them.
East of us, where Mrs. Lawrence Schilling now lives, lived the Nels Oveson family. They were Swedish people and came from Chicago. They had very pronounced Swedish accents and he had a gigantic nose into which he continuously inhaled "Snoose". He would call me "Svenskapoyt" which is Swede Boy and the only words in that language that I know. My parents had once also lived on the Oveson place. They were very kindly people and Mrs. Oveson would always have sugar cookies on hand. Their place was a half mile off the road but we would walk to their house on the way to school on the pretense of wanting to get warm. What we wanted was the cookies she would always give us. Sometimes she would also give us a sugar cube. Our family did not have sugar cubes and we thought they were tremendous.
A little further east, on the top of a hill, lived the Tom Jamison family. I think he was a Scotchman and his wife was one of the Katus girls. One of the wonderful things about Tom was he farmed with a tractor. Most of the rest of the people in that country farmed with horses. When he was working in his fields along the road he would stop to visit with us as we came home from school. His question was always "what did you learn in school today?" He had one of the better radios in the community, a fairly new five-tuber and I can remember walking with my Dad to the Jamison place on a cold winter night to visit and listen to the radio. We listened to Wayne King, the Waltz King and I heard the heavyweight fight in which Jim Braddock won the title from Max Baer in Jamison's radio.
Next down the road was the Prairie View school which still stands. It was the pride of the community and one of the most modern schools in the county. There was a small cottage in which the teacher could live and a barn for the horses and pupils rode or drove to school. The barn also served as a recreation center during recess and at noon in cold weather. It was there some of the children taught each other about smoking. None of them had tobacco so they rolled sawdust or the brown seeds from a plant we called "doc" or even horse manure in pieces of catalog paper and smoked it.
There was a bucket and tin dipper in the hall for drinking water and the building was heated by a furnace, which was a fairly modern innovation. In the winter our hot lunch program was to put potatoes in the ashes under the furnace when we came to school in the morning and we would have baked potatoes for dinner. Up front there was a recitation bench and the grades would take turns going to the recitation bench when it was their time for class. There were such wonders as a global map of the world that was suspended from the ceiling and could be pulled down when the teacher wanted to point something out.
The teacher I remember best was Thelma Thrush, who lived with the Fred Nehl family in Watauga. There was also a Fred Nichols who had some connection with zoos and spent his spare time trying to live-trap prairie dogs and other animals to send to the zoos. He also did his best to shape us up into a rhythm band. We had paper plates with metal discs attached to jingle. Some people were supposed to play on combs covered with a piece of paper in which apples used to be wrapped in. Mr.. Nichol's forte was playing of a "Sweet Potato" which is a clay instrument with holes the player covers with his fingers. The player blows into the thing and by moving his fingers about is supposed to get some kind of music. The rhythm band was never a success. Nichols also played a harmonica.
Across the road from Prairie View was an abandoned house known as the Bundy place. I suppose a person named "Bundy" once lived there. There was still an old green picture of George Washington on the wall. We would sneak over to the Bundy place at noon occasionally. Skunks liked to dwell under the abandoned house and on several occasions we would come back to school with a certain air about us as the result of trying to move the skunks out from under the house.
South of Prairie View lived the Carl Oberhauser family. Two of their children attended school at Prairie View. One was a boy named Raymond who was in my grade and the other his sister Frances. Raymond had a little speech impairment, or we thought he did, and I can still remember him reciting, although it was almost fifty years ago,
"I met a little elf man once,
Down where the lilies blow
And I asked him why he was
so small.
And why he didn't grow.
He said, and this is true
I'm just as big for me, he said
As you are big for you.

The only other people I remember being in my grade were Alexander Kurkowski and a girl named Schmidt. (I think her first name was Phyllis) The Schmidt family lived west of Mallard Dam.
Further south of Prairie View was a bachelor named Scott Wilson. I don't remember much about him except he had a large Adams Apple in his throat. Reading the files of old newspapers these days I learn he was something of a politician and had run for various county offices, including sheriff.
It wasn't far south of Prairie View to the Hillcrest School which got it's name from being on the crest of a steep hill which was south of the school. Pearl Hemphill also lived south of Hillcrest on the place Joe Riehl now lives.
People who also traveled the road past our place coming from the south were the Karl Kern family, Leo Gannon family and the Flying Horse family.
East of Prairie View was the Clyde and Frank Burroughs place and north of their place the Bieneman farm. The Bieneman twins Dennis and Darrel attended Prairie View and they had an older sister.
North of Prairie View where Soebbings now live was the Herman Ruhoff farm. August "Buddy" Ruhoff attended Prairie View when I did. His older brother Joe must have graduated.
Next up the road was Maude Erickson's place. She was a skinny widow lady who had a daughter Maude who was married to Leon Wilson. Leon and Maude lived with Mrs. Erickson the first time I remember anything about them. Mrs. Erickson milked dairy cows. The family had a fondness for Angora cats which overran the farm. They also kept canaries, an unlikely combination. Mrs.Erickson would drive around the country with a buggy selling soap which she made and cream and butter. I suppose the Wilson's were the closest friends of my parents. At least, it seems we visited most. We would often go there to make ice cream. They had several miracles. One was an ice house. Neighbors would get together in the winter to put up ice which they would pack in flax straw and put in the ice house. During the summer we would make ice cream. They had an abundance of cream from their dairy cows.
Another miracle was a pump in the house. They had a cistern. Water ran off the roof of the house into the cistern and could be pumped by a small pump in the house. The rest of us hauled water from the pumps out in the yard. Leon and Maude Wilson later moved on a farm southwest of Prairie View. I think it would be about a mile east of the Long farm. The Zubrod home place was next up the road. The Ben Kurkowski family lived on the east side of a creek that later was dammed to make Mallard Dam. They had a large family but the only ones I remember are Alphonse and his sister Anna who were about my age and a son Joe. They later moved to Minnesota as did Wilsons.
North of our farm was the farm of my grandfather, William Bown, whom everyone called "W.A." He was a blacksmith by trade. When he came to the community he had a blacksmith shop in Watauga. When he moved to the homestead south of town he did blacksmith work on the farm. He moved to McIntosh in the early 1930's and ran a blacksmith shop there for many years. After they left the farm a family named Bierwagen lived there for a time. The family was aptly named since he brewed home-made beer which is about all I remember of them. When Bown's daughter Ethel Smith married Laborn Smith they lived east of the Bown place, northwest of our place, until they too moved to McIntosh.
We could walk across our pasture and a short distance across another pasture to the John Afrank place. The Afrank children were the people the Lofgren children visited most. There was Johnny and Harvey who were my brothers age, Leslie and Floyd who were more my age and Verna who was about the age of my older sister. They had another older sister but she was not home much by the time we were visitors. Afranks had a huge red barn with a big haymow. We used to play in the barn. They had slings to lift the hay around in the hay mow. We would swing on the sling. We would also hang on them and have the other kids pull us up in the air and then drop into the hay.
Still further north of us was the Adolph Pfaff family. She was a large lady. They had two daughters who attended Prairie View for awhile and used to walk to school with us. One was Anna but the others name I have forgotten. A Lorensz family lived further north just about at the periphery of our visiting range. The older boys were Johnny and Art. One of the boys died from appendicitis. We believed he died from eating green cucumbers and a seed got lodged in his appendix. It wasn't until a few years ago I would eat a whole green cucumber.
A little further northeast of our place was the Eric Anderson family, but we did not get to know them so well since they went to Matkin school. There was also a George Deer and Roy Matkin who was a county commissioner.
An edifice of the plains was the big red barn on the Roy Webb farm. The barn still stands on the place south of Watauga. Webb came to Corson County to establish a dairy farm bringing with him dreams and a herd of Holstein dairy cattle. His place also had the miracle of lights other than kerosene lamps and lanterns. The barn and house were lighted with carbide lights. School was held at various periods at the Webb house. One summer there was a community play produced in the hay mow in Roy Webb's barn. The only thing I can remember about that is Leon Wilson played the part of the villain Rawden Crowley.
West of the Erickson farm, about halfway between the road that runs from Prairie View north and the road that ran from our place north to Watauga there lived a Norwegian bachelor named Andrew Langlo. Dances used to be held at his house. I can remember being placed as a baby in some sort of alcove in the wall of his house when my parents were there for a dance. Maybe it was once meant to be a fireplace.
Andy got the Chicago Tribune newspaper and would keep them. Whenever we got to his place we would pick up a pile to treasure. They had a huge comic section, we called them "funny papers" and I remember best "Flash Gordon" and the "Katzenjammer Kids"
I remember going with my Dad to help pull the pipes out of a well for Langlo when the pump ceased to function. When they got it pulled up they found the pipes and cylinder were clogged with mice that had fell in the well.
Lorenzo Miller who became Corson County Clerk of Courts for many years, also lived a short ways south of Prairie View for awhile. Ed Robb, who later moved to Watauga and then to McIntosh to run confectioneries, also lived south of our place, and so did Mr. and Mrs. Ed Willigan and Joe Mitchell.
It's hard to believe, now the number of families who once lived in that small area generally known as "south of Watauga."