THIS IS HOW IT ALL BEGAN
In 1954, I entered Sacred Heart Seminary at Oneida, just west of Green Bay, the fall after I graduated from 8th grade. I had worked that summer and the following summer at Leyse Aluminum Company in Kewaunee, mostly washing windows and sweeping floors. The summer of 1956 I began working for Kewaunee Country Highway Department for eight summers. Each fall I would return to study at the Seminary. The fall of 1960 I began study at St. Francis Major Seminary in South Milwaukee for two years of Philosophy and four years of Theology. I would be ordained a Catholic Priest for the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin in early June of 1966.
My family lived along the Kewaunee River, about five miles from Kewaunee, Wisconsin, which had an outstanding harbor opening into Lake Michigan. Kewaunee was about thirty-five miles east of Green Bay. My father was a big, strong man, the Kewaunee County Judge for twenty-four years, deeply respected by everyone. At age twelve, he taught me how to use a posthole digger. For a couple summers, I built a lot of fence in the hard, clay earth along our sixty acre farm. Every spring, when the ice in the Kewaunee river went out and the river overflowed its banks, the icebergs snapped off all the fence posts, so I had to rebuild the fences. After digging a hole in the ground with a posthole digger, I had a shovel to push ground and gravel around the new fence post, and then I used a twenty pound steel bar to tamp and tighten the earth around each fence post. With a line of posts in place, I tacked barbed wire to each post, and a fence stretcher to pull the barb wire tight enough to hold a half dozen beef cattle inside each completed fence. My father wanted each post to be solidly placed. Making fence was one thing, but making a man was also the result. I learned how to work steadily and with a certain determination. .
We had a small barn on our farm that acted as a chicken coup. I learned to harvest the eggs from eight to ten chickens each morning. We had a couple ducks, four or five geese, including a grouchy gander. My father would push a pail of feed against the gander now and then to tease him, until one day the gander reached over the bucket and grabbed the back of my father’s right hand. My dad let go of the bucket with his left hand and grabbed the gander by the throat and picked him right up off his feet. The gander immediately let go of his grip on my father’s hand. For one second I thought it would be the end of the gander, but my dad laughed and set the gander down. A big blood blister appeared on the top of my dad’s right hand, but it gradually healed. I remember my mother scolding dad for teasing the gander. Of course she offered a soothing first aid, as well.
We had a couple barn cats, and, over the years, a series of dogs, from a Cocker Spaniel named Freddy to a German Shepherd named Homer. a Springer Spaniel, a couple Beagle hounds named Suzy and Sally, and a couple Doberman Pinchers. The Kewaunee, Green Bay and Western Railroad steam engines ran along the river across the creek from our land. One summer day the train ran over Freddy the Cocker Spaniel. My dad had me print a letter to Mr. Homer McGee, President of the railroad, as coming from my younger brother Patrick, who was ten years old: how special Freddy was, how much Pat loved Freddy, and how he missed him. The letter included a picture of my brother in his Cub Scout uniform. About midweek, some twelve days later, early in the afternoon, the train approached our property and came to a stop by an old concrete bridge that a farmer had built across the river many years earlier. Behind the caboose was attached a Pullman car.
Out of the Pullman car stepped a stately grey-haired man in a fine suit, followed by a man carrying a puppy, and a porter in black pants and white jacket carrying a covered, sterling silver tray. They crossed the river via the old bridge and walked up about one hundred fifty yards of pasture, through a couple gates into our yard. My mother and Patrick came outside to meet them. Mr. McGee introduced himself, as President of the KGB&W Railroad, to my mother, and told her he was sorry the train had run over Freddy. To make it up, he presented my brother with a beautiful German Shepherd puppy, and the Porter handed my mother the covered, sterling silver tray. Thanking each other graciously, the men walked back to the train, which blew its horn and proceeded on to Kewaunee where the Car Ferries docked. My mother carried the tray into the house where she discovered a large beef roast, with only a small part eaten. My brother Pat was delighted with the new puppy, which Dad suggested we name Homer, after Mr. Homer McGee, which we did. The newspapers printed the picture of Patrick in his Cub Scout uniform holding Homer. That picture still graces my brother’s home.
Always one for ideas, one summer my father bought a small Guernsey cow from an elderly lady. My job was to feed, water, and milk the cow twice a day for a quarter of a pail of milk each time. Pretty soon our refrigerator was filled with milk. All six of us children could not keep up with the milk supply. We tried making butter with several methods, including a small butter churn. Dad even acquired an old cream separator into which we poured the half pail of milk daily, turned a crank, and the cream, being heavier, came to the top and ran along the edge into an additional container. My mother loved the cream for baking, but we could not drink enough of the rich milk. What to do? Dad solved the problem be giving the little Guernsey cow to a neighbor who was delighted to add it to his small fifteen cow herd. In return he gave us fresh milk every other day for a year.
Early one summer, at age sixteen, that same neighbor had a milk route where he picked up three to six large cans of fresh milk from a couple dozen dairy farms and delivered the milk to a milk factory in a small village called Denmark, some twenty-three miles southwest of Kewaunee. He had gotten sick in early June and called my dad to see if I was old enough to handle his milk pick-up route for four days or so, until he felt better. Each large can filled with milk weighed around ninety-five pounds, for a total daily amount of some seven-thousand pounds of raw milk. Of course, my dad said, “Yes.”
I knew how to shift a large box-like truck, so I drove the truck while the farmer sat beside me with cards bearing the name and address of each farm I was to stop at each morning, how to position the truck as close as possible to the indoor milk tank. I was to wear a large leather apron and lift each covered can of milk from the tank, then bounce each can lightly on the edge of the tank, which was filled with water to cool the milk. Then he taught me to roll or carry each full can of milk the shortest distance to the truck. I had to swing and lift each can into the truck, about waist high, and push it carefully into place ahead of a large, adjustable, metal gate that kept the cans from sliding around in the the truck. Then I offloaded the same amount of empty milk cans for the next morning, each can marked with the owner’s name & number. I never missed a farm and I didn’t spill any milk, either. The farmer was very thankful I was able to take his place. It was a responsible, tiring job, but years of digging postholes in dry, stony soil had toughened me up considerably.
After the milk can week, my Dad had me visit the Manager of the Leyse Aluminum Company in downtown Kewaunee. They made aluminum kitchenware pots and pans. I applied for a job sweeping floors and washing windows. The manager smiled and shook my hand. “When can you start? ” I said, “Tomorrow morning.” “Fine.” My Dad then called the manager and told him I was not to do anything that might cause injury to my fingers or hands, that I was studying to be a priest and the church wanted men with no physical handicaps.
The job was mine: washing windows inside and out, sweeping floors even cleaning bathrooms when the regular janitor was on vacation. Once in a while, I got to help an employee make wooden crates and boxes to ship the kitchenware in. He did all the cutting, I helped staple the crates and boxes together. Many of the men ran punch presses where a heavy weight pressed pots, pans, and covers out of aluminum sheets. I noticed many of them had one or more fingers missing They had skipped wearing the safety wrist guard cables to each wrist. When the press came down, the cables shortened up, pulling the operator’s hands out of danger. The company required every man running a punch press to wear the safety guards, but men often left them off when no one was looking. I determined to finish my schooling after that discovery.
At eighteen, my Dad had me visit the Kewaunee County Highway Department main office, about two miles from where I lived. I asked the Manager of the Highway Department for a summer job. Presto! He hired me for all manner of jobs: running an air hammer, cutting protective concrete bridge edges off along creeks and ditches, helping setting forms into sections of highway and adding reinforcing steel rods before cement trucks came and poured cement in to fix broken pavement. My job there was to run one end of a giant three by twelve inch thick, ten foot long plank with plow share handles on each end, with a partner on the other end to rough smooth the fresh cement. My partner was usually a college football player or wrestler, who was bigger, but not necessarily tougher, than I was. The boss ran a long handled trowel to smooth finish each pavement. I helped build wooden forms for concrete bridges over small creeks, drove gravel trucks when regular drivers were on vacation, swept intersections and picked up dead deer carcasses hit by cars, shoveled sand into highway cracks after hot tar was carefully poured into them to help seal the roadway for another year or two. I even ran a chainsaw one week cutting down large trees helping widen a country road through a woods.
Eight summers working for the Kewaunee County Highway Department, I enjoyed very much. My Dad had told me to work as hard or harder than whatever foreman headed the particular crew I was on that day or week. One boss worked even when it rained, and I worked right along with him, while the rest of the crew slept in the truck cabs until the rain stopped. One week a summer I stood on a rock crusher in a gravel pit, holding an eight pound sledge hammer. A small crane dumped gravel, stones and rocks into the crusher. The top of the crusher had a grate of hard steel bars, leaving one foot holes. Whenever a rock was too large to pass through the grates, I would strike it several times with the sledge hammer and break it into smaller pieces. Whatever was too large or too hard after that, I simply rolled off the grates. It made calluses on my calluses.
With my Dad’s suggestion, I even attended shop Union Meetings as an observer to learn how Unions worked. The men were always friendly. They also knew the best time to go on Strike, which was after they had rolled out a long row of blacktop mixed with hot tar. It got the attention of the Department Heads immediately. The employee family picnics were delightful, with music, food and cold beer. I always worked the final Friday of each summer, so there was only a weekend to get ready for school on Monday.