Two soldiers’ stories as Veterans’ Day approaches

Veterans’ Day, Nov. 11, was originally established as Armistice Day to honor the veterans of World War I. The armistice to end that war was signed on Nov. 11—the 11th hour of the 11th month of the 11th day.

But in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower officially changed the holiday’s designation to Veterans’ Day as a way to honor all of the nation’s veterans from all of its wars.

Every year at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego, assistant museum director Bob Stekl and his crew of enthusiastic volunteers fills the museum’s main room with uniforms, photographs, and memorabilia of Oswego’s veterans, culled from the museum’s extensive collections. And every year, we seem to stumble across new facts and folks donate new veterans’ materials to the museum’s collections.

After the USS Maine exploded in the harbor at Havana, Cuba the night of Feb. 15, 1898, tensions between the U.S. and Spain grew until the U.S. declared war on April 25.

This year, we thought we’d delve into the Spanish-American War of 1898 a bit in order to highlight information concerning Philip Clauser, our community’s only veteran of what Theodore Roosevelt called “a splendid little war.” In gathering information and memorabilia about Clauser’s service, we also recalled that his son, Frank, went on to serve in World War II, where he was killed in action when his B-26 was shot down over the Mediterranean near Italy in 1943.

The story of Oswego’s Clauser military family really begins on the night of Feb. 15, 1898, as the USS Maine was riding easily at anchor in the harbor at Havana, Cuba when, at 9:40 p.m., an explosion ripped through the ship, which then sank, still at anchor, with the loss of 266 of her 355-man crew.

At the time, it was determined the ship was sunk by a mine. Subsequent investigations, however, suggest that an internal explosion cause the ship to sink. But whatever the cause, the disaster whipped the war fever that had been raging in the United States into a positive frenzy. When the U.S. demanded they vacate Cuba, Spain declined. On April 11, President William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war, and 12 days later he sent a request for 122,000 volunteers to the states.

Philip Clauser in a portrait taken about 1898 when he became the only person from Oswego to enlist to fight in the Spanish-American War. (Little White School Museum collection)

Then on April 25, 1898, Congress voted to declare war on Spain, a conflict that led to land and sea battles in both the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Among the volunteers flocking to the colors was Theodore Roosevelt himself, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt resigned his office and eventually wangled command of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment—later famously nicknamed “The Rough Riders.”

Also volunteering was Oswegoan Philip Clauser, the only village resident who decided to serve.

Clauser was born in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country at Tower City, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania on Aug. 12, 1868. As a young man, he decided to head west to Illinois where his aunt and uncle, John and Mary Ann (Wolf) Minnich, along with several cousins, were living in Oswego.

He worked at whatever jobs he could find, probably working for his cousins, Irvin Haines and Ed Inman, at carpentry in the spring, summer, and fall, and in the winter finding work with the Esch Brothers and Rabe Ice Company’s big ice harvesting and storage operation at Oswego. He also traveled for the company to their ice harvesting operations in Wisconsin, the Kendall County Record’s Oswego correspondent reporting on April 2, 1890: “Charles Rieger, Alf Wormley Lars Nelson, John Peterson and Phillip Clauser returned Saturday from Wisconsin where they were employed in the housing of ice for Esch Bros. & Rabe. The firm is said to have gathered a full supply.”

By the time the war with Spain was declared, the nation’s two biggest newspaper barons, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, had used their media empires to whip up public enthusiasm for a war ostensibly fought to free the people of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from what Hearst and Pulitzer characterized as Spanish oppression. So when President McKinley issued his call for volunteers, there was no lack of men willing to go off to fight.

The President requested that Illinois supply seven regiments of infantry and one of cavalry.

Phil Clauser traveled up to Aurora on April 26, 1898, the day after Congress approved the declaration of war against Spain, to enlist in the Illinois National Guard’s 3rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was assigned to Company I, under the command of Capt. Charles M. Greene, volunteering to serve for two years or until the end of the war, whichever came first. The regiment was commanded by Col. Fred Bennitt, a prominent Joliet lawyer who had risen to the rank of full colonel in the Illinois National Guard.

Company I traveled by train from Aurora to Springfield, where the entire regiment was mustered into U.S. service at Camp Tanner—actually the state fairgrounds, renamed for the duration of the war—on May 7. The regiment entrained once again for Camp George H. Thomas on the old battlefield at Chickamauga, Georgia, arriving May 16. The Georgia camp was fittingly named for one of the Union’s top Civil War generals who had been nicknamed “The Rock of Chickamauga” after he withstood rebel attacks during the battle in 1863.

A passenger liner, the USS St. Louis was armed after war with Spain was declared. The ship transported troops to Puerto Rico and went on to disrupt undersea communication cables between Spain and Cuba.

At Camp Thomas, the 3rd Illinois was fully equipped and underwent combat training. Three days after the regiment arrived, Phil Clauser was promoted to corporal.

Training complete, the troops left once again, this time for Newport News, Virginia, arriving July 24, where they were marched aboard the USS St. Louis and sailed for Puerto Rico, where they arrived off Ponce on July 31.

The Puerto Rican campaign was under the direct command of Gen. Nelson Miles, the U.S. Army’s commander-in-chief. The 3rd Illinois was assigned to Brig. Gen. Peter G. Hains’ Second Brigade along with the 4th Ohio and 4th Pennsylvania volunteer infantry regiments, plus a few other attached units. Miles ordered Hains to take Arroyo, a small port that served the larger nearby coastal town of Guayama. The brigade handily took Arroyo with only light resistance.

Then on Aug. 5, Haines ordered the 4th Ohio and the 3rd Illinois, supported by a battery of Sims-Dudley Dynamite guns to take Guayama itself. The Americans advanced up two small hills where Spanish forces had entrenched, and after a half-hour firefight the Illinoisans and Ohioans took the Spanish positions, suffering only three wounded.

Other than small skirmishes north of Guayama on Aug. 9 and 13, that was the 3rd Illinois’ last combat as they went into camp near the city. On Nov. 2, they filed aboard the SS Roumania and set sail for New York, arriving on Nov. 9. They were sent back to Illinois by train where they were granted furloughs before being mustered out of federal service on Jan. 24. Their “splendid little war” had lasted three months, three weeks, and two days.

Cpl. Clauser returned to Oswego, where he told folks he hadn’t minded his military adventure at all.

“Phil Clauser, the returned soldier from here, is one that enjoyed the war; says that they had both rough and good times, but on the while he liked the service, that if the thing was to be done over again he would not miss it,” the Record’s Oswego correspondent reported on Nov. 23, 1898.

Clauser married Ella Wolf and settled down in Oswego to raise a family that included two sons, Sylvester and Frank, who went on to fight in World War II. Phil Clauser remained proud of his service for the rest of his life and was an active member of the United Spanish War Veterans.

It’s likely he told his war stories to his sons as they grew up, so that when World War II broke out, they were more than willing to serve. Theodore, the oldest son, had been two young to serve in World War I, and then found himself too old to serve in World War II. But Sylvester and Frank were just right, Sylvester serving in the U.S. Navy, and Frank joining the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Frank Clauser was born in Oswego in 1911. He grew up among a tight group of friends and relatives—often they were one in the same. A good athlete, he played basketball and was a letter-winner on the undefeated 1929 Oswego High School football team. As a teenager, he was able to find work around Oswego, especially with his friend, Earl Zentmyer, who owned the local Ford auto dealership and garage.

After high school, Frank worked around Oswego and continued to live at home until he married his wife, Dorothy, and the couple moved to Aurora, where Frank found work building steel lockers and shelving at Durabilt Steel, one of the city’s many factories.

Sgt. Frank Clauser in a military portrait taken in 1942. (Little White School Museum collection)

When World War II broke out, he joined the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Corps.

After basic and advanced training, Frank was assigned to the newly activated 438th Bomb Squadron, part of the 319th Bomb Group. When the 438th received its B-26 Marauder aircraft, he became an engineer-gunner.

Designed and built by the Martin Aircraft Corporation, the B-26 was termed a medium bomber by the U.S. Army Air Corps. Its two Pratt and Whitney engines gave it good range (1,100 miles) and an excellent top speed (310 mph) while carrying a potent bomb load of 5,200 lbs. It was also heavily armed with 11 .50 cal. machine guns.

The men of the 319th Bomb Group trained with their B-26’s as low-level raiders, and then flew their aircraft to England in September of 1942. From there, they flew on to North Africa where they operated against Italian and German forces. Besides engaging in tactical bombing against ground targets, the B-26’s of the 319th Bomb Group were also used as interceptors to shoot down German transport aircraft flying from Italy carrying supplies to the Axis forces in North Africa.

After the German Afrika Korps and its Italian allies were defeated in North Africa, the 438th turned its attention towards Sicily and Italy. Flying at low altitudes, Sgt. Clauser and the rest of the men of the 438th Bomb Squadron used their low level bombing to hit ground targets in Sicily and Italy, and also attacked Axis shipping in the Mediterranean using skip bombing techniques.

One of the 319th Bomb Group’s B-26 Martin Marauders, this one from the 437th Bomb Squadron, identical to the aircraft in which Frank Clauser flew.

But as might be expected when flying a demanding aircraft at low levels during combat situations, losses were high. In fact, they were so high the bomb group temporarily stood down in February 1943 and retrained to bomb from medium levels. When Clauser’s outfit went back into action bombing rail marshaling yards from medium altitudes, aircraft losses dropped sharply.

The men of the 438th Bomb Squadron woke up on the morning of Aug. 22, 1943 anticipating another mission against Italy. Based at DJedeida, Algeria since late June, the 438th and the rest of the squadrons in the 319th Bomb Group were assigned to cut the supply lines of Axis forces in southern Italy in support of the upcoming Allied invasion of the European mainland–what Winston Churchill called “The Soft Underbelly of Europe.”

On this particular morning, the airmen learned they’d be bombing the railroad marshaling yards at Salerno, just down the coast from Naples. The crew of Clauser’s plane included the aircraft’s pilot, Lt. William Brown, co-pilot 2nd Lt. Richard Lobdell, and the navigator/bombardier 2nd Lt. Charles McVaughan, along with Staff Sgt. Alfred Conz, the radio operator and waist gunner and Staff Sgt. Sidney Gibbs. Sgt. Clauser was the plane’s gunner/engineer whose battle station was in the B-26’s dorsal turret armed with twin .50 cal. Browning machine guns.

After the crew strapped in, Lt. Brown lifted the plane off the airstrip for the hour’s flight to the Italian mainland. They never returned.

Later that month, the Clauser family was officially notified by telegram that Sgt. Clauser was missing in action. A terse note appeared in the Record’s “Oswego” column on Sept. 22, 1943: “Mr. and Mrs. Philip Clauser received the sad news that their youngest son, Frank, is missing in action. His wife lives in Aurora.”

The Clauser family received this note signed by the President after Frank Clauser was finally declared dead. Shot down over the Mediterranean off Salerno, Italy, his body was never recovered. (Little White School Museum collection)

Although the Army Air Corps listed him as missing, they knew he was almost certainly dead. Second Lt. Clarence Kozenski was piloting his B-26 just off Lt. Brown’s wing about ten minutes past noon on Aug. 22 when Axis fighters attacked the formation. He reported that Frank Clauser’s plane was riddled with bullets. One engine was set on fire, and large sections of the aircraft skin pealed off the vertical stabilizer at the tail before the aircraft plunged into the Mediterranean. Lt. Kozenski reported no parachutes were sighted as the plane crashed.

Although the family held out hope for his eventual return, it became more and more likely Frank would never come home as the months went by and no word was received. Eventually, his status as a casualty was verified and a gold star, denoting “Killed in Action,” was painted next to Sgt. Clauser’s name on the “Honor Roll” billboard in downtown Oswego that listed the men and women serving in the armed forces. His family received a Certificate of Honor from Oswego Township reading: “Certificate of Honor. To whom these presents shall come: Greetings: Whereas Frank Clauser, who as a member of the armed forces of this, our great and glorious country, gave his life for the cause of liberty and freedom he had always loved. These communities, with God’s Blessing, pay tribute to our beloved hero.” It was signed by Oswego Township Supervisor Oliver Burkhart, NaAuSay Township Supervisor Hugh Christian, and A.M. Pierce, Oswego village president.

Because his body was never found, Sgt. Clauser’s name is carved on The Wall of the Missing in the North Africa Cemetery along with the names of 3,723 other missing U.S. servicemen. The cemetery is located close to the ancient city of Carthage in Tunisia, near where Clauser and the rest of Lt. Brown’s crew left on their last flight. In addition to the honored missing, a total of 2,841 fallen U.S. servicemen are buried in neat ranks in the 27-acre cemetery.

This year’s “Remembering Our Veterans” exhibit will be held from Nov. 4 through 12 at the Little White School Museum, 72 Polk Street (Jackson at Polk) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, and the two Clausers, father and son, will be among the hundreds honored for their service and, in Frank’s case, his ultimate sacrifice. You’re all invited, so stop on by; admission’s free.

 

Unintended consequences…

For some reason, there seems to be a lot of controversy connected with global climate change.

Well over 90 percent of climatologists say it’s proven science that us humans have greatly contributed to the warming of the earth’s climate since 1900, and even the big oil companies’ scientists told their bosses what was happening decades ago. In fact, there’s an interesting investigation going on right now where the attorneys general of several states are trying to determine whether Exxon misled the company’s investors about the issue.

But a lot of people still don’t buy the facts that have been laid out, mostly because those folks at Exxon didn’t only hide the facts their own scientists dug up from their own investors, but they also apparently bankrolled climate change denier individuals and organizations, muddying the waters for lots of us.

It’s not that hard to figure out what’s happening, though. Each recent year sets a new record as being the hottest on record, and individual months are regularly setting temperature records, too. But it’s not hard to find someone to dispute the fact of global climate change—although there aren’t a lot of them, the professional deniers are a pretty loud and determined bunch, once again proving muckraker Upon Sinclair’s dictum that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

If you’re a seed catalog saver, you can get an easily understood look into what’s happening. Just look at how those hardiness zone maps keep changing. The zones where certain plants can grow keep steadily moving north, indicating average temperatures are continuing to rise.

Walleye, one of Wisconsin’s most sought-after gamefish, are becoming rare in some of the state’s most popular resort areas, at least partly due to global climate change.

Up in northern Wisconsin, the change in the climate means some of the fisheries up there are changing, too. In the Minocqua area, largemouth bass, which is generally considered a warmer weather species, have begun to take over some of the lakes in that region. The Wisconsin DNR figures that the growing largemouth population is feeding on walleye fry, thus leading to a decrease in walleyes. And that’s bad for the resort industry up there because walleyes are a big, big draw for anglers. To try to do something about the situation, the DNR has banned keeping any walleyes caught for a five-year period, supposedly to give the species a chance to rebound against largemouth predation.

I’m pretty sure it won’t work. Those largemouth that are suddenly so prevalent aren’t there by happenstance; they’re there because the water’s warmer there now on average, making it a friendlier habitat for bass. Helping the walleye population by increasing their numbers through lack of angler harvest isn’t going to do a thing to cool off the water in Minocqua area lakes. But since the DNR is now prohibited from discussing climate change’s effects on Wisconsin wildlife, it’s going to be interesting to see how the subject is handled going forward. Because you can bet this is just the tip of this particular rhetorical iceberg.

When you think about unintended consequences, global climate change is this era’s prime example. When the Industrial Age got really going, I doubt anyone thought that burning all that coal and, later, oil was going to have a negative impact on the entire earth. Just like adding lead to gasoline, which was designed to make internal combustion engines run smoother and more efficiently, the ultimate impact was to inflict lead poisoning on several generations of Americans. The outcome of that was likely the spike in crime rates in the 1970s, according to some who’ve studied the topic. Banning leaded gasoline may well be the reason violent crime has been declining since the 1970s.

It’s when we fiddle with the earth’s ecology that those unintended consequences seem to have their biggest effects. The folks in Wisconsin are trying their best to do something about a process over which they have little control by doing something over which they do have at least a little influence, although it’s probably futile. It probably won’t comfort them to know that we’ve been messing with fish populations for generations, sometimes with negative implications that didn’t show up for decades.

German carp thrived after being stocked in the Fox River by the U.S. Fish Commission in the 19th Century.

The lowly carp is prime example number one of that. We take these ubiquitous rough, annoying fish for granted these days. But they only got in our rivers and creeks because the U.S. Government put them there in the first place, hoping to provide a useful, marketable species to benefit everyone.

So they imported a bunch of them from Germany with plans to stock them in streams the next year. They were considered so valuable that they used the reflecting pool on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to house them over the winter. Then in the spring they stocked them all over the place.

I’ve already written about the general reaction to this bit of ecological sabotage, noting the reaction was far from unanimously positive. But, as luck would have it, carp were stocked at about the same time streams in long-settled parts of the country were being stressed beyond their limits with almost unbelievable amounts of pollution, from raw human and animal waste to manufacturing byproducts, from coking mill waste to waste from coal gas plants. The effect of chemical poisons on streams was amplified by increasing amounts of agricultural runoff that was containing more and more silt as unwise farming practices created erosion.

As their gravel-bottomed spawning grounds were covered with silt the oxygen content of water in polluted streams drastically declined due to huge increases in chemical and human waste, game fish populations catastrophically declined.

Enter those carp. They were far more adaptable to filthy water conditions and positively thrived on the muddy stream bottoms that were being manufactured by a near-total lack of any controls on pollution. And because they liked the conditions they were introduced in, they thrived—and therefore were blamed for creating the conditions rather than being lauded for making use of them, much like those largemouth bass up in northern Wisconsin are being blamed today for decreasing walleye populations.

A classic example of blaming the messenger—carp—for stream quality happened on the Rock River in southern Wisconsin back in the 1970s. The Rock has several dams up there creating lots of recreational fishing at Beloit, Janesville, and other towns along the river’s course. By the ‘70s, some of those impoundments had gathered a lot of sediment and silt from agriculture runoff, and while carp were flourishing, gamefish were not. So the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources decided to try poisoning the all the fish in one of those impoundments, the idea being that without carp rooting around the bottom and creating silt-laden water that gamefish didn’t like.

So that’s what they did. And it worked. The impoundment was cleanses of carp—and all the other fish as well, and that had the effect of clearing the water right up. Residents living there were ecstatic—you could actually see the bottom again!

But getting rid of the carp didn’t get rid of the sediment, which was extremely rich in nutrients thanks to runoff from all the farm fields through which the river ran. And as soon as the water clarified, sunlight finally got down to the bottom, creating a veritable algae explosion. The stuff grew inches thick on the surface, died, and sank to the bottom where it decomposed, sucking whatever oxygen still remained out of the water, creating a smelly, slimy mess. Which made residents far from ecstatic. It took a frantic DNR quite a while to get the situation stabilized and to try to reverse it because the agriculture interests were not interested in doing what needed to be done to reduce runoff from their fields.

The main point the ecology movement tried to get across to people when it got started is that almost everything in the natural world is connected one way or another. And sometimes, because much of the time we neither understand nor recognize them in the first place, those connections come back to bite us when we mess with one part or another without careful consideration first.

A tale of two towns…

Just got back from our annual early October trip up to the Northwoods to close our fishing cabin for another season.

My buddy, Paul and I, have known each other for more than 60 years, having met in third grade when my family moved off the farm and into town. Paul, I, and my wife Sue pooled our resources back in 1972 and bought five acres of wild land along the South Fork of the Flambeau River up in Price County, Wisconsin. Camping got old after six or seven years, so in 1980 we bought a fishing cabin a couple miles north of Park Falls—then, as now, Price County’s largest municipality—on Butternut Lake.

The sunset on Butternut Lake on Oct. 10 proved to be a spectacular one as we attempted to invite a few walleyes for supper.

We open the cabin each spring so as to be ready for opening day for walleye season on the first Saturday in May. And since it’s a three-season fishing cabin, we close it down for the winter each autumn, generally around Columbus Day.

As I sat out fishing with Paul as our annual autumn trip drew to a close, I started thinking about the big changes we’ve seen in northern Wisconsin, as well as the changes in my hometown of Oswego here in Illinois’ Fox River Valley. In both cases, those changes have been profound, generally in a good way for Oswego but not so much for Park Falls.

Park Falls, like most of the municipalities in Price County, was established during the lumbering boom of the late 19th Century, growing faster than its neighboring villages when a paper mill was built there. It was not only the industrial center of the surrounding hinterland, but was also the agriculture market center for nearby farms, which were mostly dairy operations. Today, the paper mill is still busy, turning pulpwood harvested from the surrounding managed forests into paper.

The town’s businesses and industry led to construction of a large stock of housing, smaller worker’s cottages for industrial workers and retail employees, with larger homes built by executives and successful merchants.

The Flambeau River Papers mill still dominates Park Falls’ downtown while providing jobs for residents.

But like so many small towns in overwhelmingly rural areas like northern Wisconsin, Park Falls has seen its population decline sharply over the years. When we bought our fishing cabin back in 1980, Park Falls’ population stood at its historic peak, 3,192. The town’s downtown sported a stock of substantial brick storefronts that housed two grocery stores and a fair variety of retail businesses.

That same year, Oswego’s population was reported by the U.S. Census Bureau at just slightly below Park Falls’, 3,021. Oswego was still the market town for the surrounding agricultural hinterland, but was rapidly changing into a suburban bedroom community. Residential and commercial development took a breather during the 1980s, but then in the 1990s it began again, surging strongly into the early 2000s. In fact, during that era, Kendall County, in which Oswego is situated, became (in percentage terms) the fastest growing county in the entire nation.

Meanwhile, Park Falls and Price County were steadily losing population. Young people graduating from high school found decreasing opportunities for economic advancement, leading to a population drain.

Autumn color was hitting the peak on Oct. 6 when I snapped this shot down towards Butternut Lake.

The paper mill continued to provide jobs, but increasing automation meant there were fewer of those available. Then in 2006, the factory closed, shocking the entire community. But with private and governmental economic cooperation, it reopened after a few months, and has continued operating since. In addition, St. Croix Rods opened a manufacturing plant in Park Falls for high-end fishing equipment, and later, the Weathershield company opened a state-of-the-art window factory in town, providing more relatively good-paying jobs.

Even so, the community’s population continued to decline. The 2016 population estimate for Park Falls was just 2,292, a decrease of nearly 30 percent since 1980.

In comparison, Oswego’s population surged during that same period, growth fueled by northern Illinois’ powerful economic engine. In 1990, Oswego’s population had grown, but not sharply, to 3,879. But then the frenetic growth of the 1990s and early 2000s hit and by the new millennium Oswego’s population had grown to 13,326. The growth explosion continued through the 2000s, despite the Great Recession of 2008. By 2010, the village’s population stood at an astonishing 30,355. Between then and 2016, population went up another 10 percent or so to an estimated 34,571.

These days, there are more traffic signals on Oswego, Illinois’ Washington Street than in all of Park Falls, Wisconsin—one of the prices residents pay for the community’s growth.

Not sure what all this proves, other than the old cliché that the three most important factors contributing to real estate values is location, location, and location.

Park Falls’ population declined by nearly 30 percent during the same period when Oswego’s population grew by 10 times, mostly, but not entirely, based on where the two towns were situated, Park Falls largely isolated in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, Oswego adjacent to the Chicago suburban economic powerhouse.

Those of us who have lived through Oswego’s growing pains often grumble about the area’s extreme changes. But all things considered, it’s been a lot better watching a community grow and prosper rather than slowly evaporate as its young people leave for places where there are opportunities to make a successful family life.

 

 

 

Substituting electronic for personal contact is nothing new…

Got back from our Undaunted Courage trip out west all in one piece, despite a battle with bronchitis. The good folks at the walk-in clinic in Fergus Falls, Minnesota fixed me up with a supply of tetracycline and so we were good to go for the trip back home.

We planned to make a brief stop at our fishing cabin up in northern Wisconsin on the way back, and since the route there from Fergus Falls took us right past the Norske Nook in Hayward, we couldn’t stop ourselves from stopping for supper and pie.

When we got home, I had plenty of time to go back over the things I missed while we were on the road. While I was doing that, an article in the September issue of The Atlantic caught my eye. Written a couple months ago by Jean M. Twenge, it asked the question, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

The kicker to the title of Twenge’s piece, “More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis,” lays out her basic thesis, which is that teens are in danger of becoming mentally and physically isolated because of the impact of smartphones on their lives.

Twenge starts her piece by recounting a conversation with the teenage child of a friend. The kid told Twenge that she spent most of her summer hanging out along, in her room, in constant communication with friends via social media. “I think we like our phones more than we like actual people,” the teen told her.

Which leads to several hundred words of increasing concern that riff off a theme laid out in a sentence in the piece: “The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health.”

In 1911, the Chicago Telephone Company’s new switchboard in Oswego handled all the village’s calls with just two operators.

It’s entirely possible—even probable—that’s Twenge’s concerns are valid. But it’s likely panic isn’t necessarily something we need to do. In fact, it might also help put things in a little perspective to know that telecommunications revolutions have been gobsmacking technologically punch-drunk folks here in the U.S. for a long, long time.

In the early 1850s, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad extended its tracks across the Fox River at Aurora and then west across northern Kendall County on the line’s way to Burlington, Iowa. It didn’t take long for telegraph lines to follow the tracks west, thus tying the county in with the rest of the country and the world. But the line ran a couple miles west of both Oswego and Yorkville, so it still took messages a while to get to town from stations along the line. Not until 1870, with the CB&Q’s Fox River Branch was built connecting towns along the Fox River did the bulk of Kendall residents find themselves living in towns with direct telegraph service to the rest of the world.

In the spring of 1870, the Great Western Telegraph Company strung their lines south and west of Aurora past Oswego and Yorkville and then on to Plano. On May 19, the Kendall County Record’s Oswego correspondent, Lorenzo Rank, reported that “Oswego is to be connected with the rest of the world by telegraph. A gentleman representing the Great Western Telegraph Company was here the other day disposing of the stock to our citizens and making preliminary arrangements for an office.”

Then in December 1870, the CB&Q built their own lines, following the Fox River Branch’s route all the way south to Streator. By the end of January, Rank could report: “The telegraph wire is up and we are in connection with the world at large.”

It was an immediate convenience for just about everyone from law enforcement, which used it to quickly track down horse thieves, to just regular folks. In December 1878, Tom Miller received word from England that he needed to go back to his native land to deal with settling an estate. He accordingly set off from Oswego for New York and was about to leave on a ship across the Atlantic when the British Counsel in New York telegraphed him at Oswego that due to fast-evolving circumstances, he should delay his trip. But Miller wasn’t in Oswego; he was in New York. So the message was immediately sent back east along the line, reaching him in time for him to get off the ship before it sailed for England.

It took not many more years for telephones to pop up here and there in Kendall County. Originally, they were two-party, personal affairs used to connect a business owner’s home with his store. By the late 1800s, telephone wires were beginning to stretch across the region, tying whole communities into a telecommunications network that was rapidly spanning the nation.

In December 1897, just as Oswego got connected to the national phone network, Rank commented: “The telephone is much appreciated by some of our people and quite a few distant colloquies were had by them through it on Monday. It was suggested to me that I might more readily phone my report to The Record than the doing it by writing.”

Oswegoan Scott Cutter’s tree-mounted insulator helped telephone companies extend service to rural areas without having to install utility poles.

By June 1900, Rank was predicting telephones would not only affect townspeople, but would also have an interesting impact on area farmers: “Oswego is bristling with telephone poles and the lines being run from it in all directions. The farmers have been struck with the phone craze and it would seem as though they mean to raise corn and pigs by telephone from now on.”

And indeed, on June 16, 1901, the Record’s correspondent for the Specie Grove neighborhood along Minkler Road south of Oswego noted with some amazement: “We talked to the ancient city of Plattville over the ‘phone Friday. What a triumph! Certainly it would be such if the roads were as bad as they sometimes are. At the end of the century we expect to be able to talk to planets Saturn and Neptune, and to hear the songs of the stars as they sing together. Why not? It would be no greater achievement than those accomplished in the past century.”

County residents weren’t only taking advantage of the telephone’s communications advantages; some were turning their inventive genius towards finding ways to make a buck off the technology itself. Oswego druggist Scott Cutter, for instance, invented an insulator for telephone wires that didn’t require telephone poles. As wires were strung through rural areas, it was a lot more cost effective if they could be hung from trees instead of installing utility poles—especially in that day when holes for them had to be hand-dug.

By the time his photo was taken about 1903 in downtown Oswego, utility wires, from overhead electric lines for the interurban trolley to telephone and electric service lines were starting to blot out the sky.

Gradually, even most rural areas were wired for service. In 1900, telephone service reached Judd and Maria Bushnell’s farm, just across the Kendall County line in DeKalb County near Sandwich.

The Bushnells were enthusiastic diarists, with Judd, Maria, and their son, Frank, all jotting their thoughts down on a near-daily basis around the turn of the 20th Century.

Reading the diaries, copies of which are in the collections of Oswego’s Little White School Museum, it is striking how much face-to-face socializing went on in rural areas of that time. The stereotype of isolated farms and their lonely residents simply doesn’t stand up to an encounter with the Bushnell diaries, which record a continual series of overnight guests, of the Bushnells visiting other families and staying overnight, and numerous trips to town and for pleasure.

But all that personalized socializing came to a halt with the arrival of the Bushnells’ telephone. After their phone was installed in their farm house, the swirl of face-to-face visits sharply declined, eventually trickling off to almost zero. Instead, the Bushnells write about talking on the phone with friends and relatives.

So like all new inventions, the impact of telephone technology had a host of unforeseen consequences for area residents. Business owners had no trouble adjusting to the phone system’s advent. It took regular folks a little longer to figure out how they’d benefit from it, some, like Oswego’s Scott Cutter, turning their inventive genius towards figuring out how to make a buck off improving aspects of the business. Others, like the Bushnells, experienced lifestyle changes they likely didn’t even notice until after they’d occurred. Although you could make a good case for the impact of television on society, I believe it would take until the invention and adoption of the Internet for such a major information technology-driven change in people’s lives to occur again.

Pretty sure we can already answer the question of that Atlantic article and figure that no, smartphones won’t destroy a generation. After all, we’ve survived the positive predictions of television, video games, and Pokemon Go destroying generations past. But given the way these things seem to creep up on us, I can hardly wait to find out how the next big thing in communications will disrupt my life.

 

Undaunted Courage 2017: Day Eight

So we got to Polson, Montana just fine, although we had to drive through some mid-September snow to get there. Although it was cloudy, rainy, snowy, and rainy again as we forged north from Salt Lake City, it was a pretty drive. We crossed the Continental Divide twice along the route north, and again my mind kept straying back to Lewis and Clark who were the first Americans to penetrate this vast, distant wilderness.

Even on a cloudy day, the view coming down out of the mountains to Flathead Lake at Polson, Montana is a pretty sight.

Bob and his wife live on a small ranch just outside Polson, with mountains for a dramatic backdrop. A friend of mine suggested it is a ranchette, but I’ve always figured ranchettes were western hobby farms. George W. Bush’s ‘ranch’ was a hobby farm—a ranchette. Bob’s place is a small working ranch, where the deer and the yaks play in the pasture.

As Bob observed the night we got there, I’m his oldest friend and he’s mine. We met when we were six years old the first day of classes at Church School out in rural Wheatland Township. There were five kids in our first grade class, Bob and I, and two other boys, Gene and Ricky, and one girl, Diane. Bob’s farm was just up the road about a mile from my parents’ farm, with Church School about the same distance south of our farm.

The author (left) and his good buddy Bob out on the farm with two friendly dogs. Note the box of Sugar Frosted Flakes kept ready to hand.

Bob and I and Diane eventually went through all 12 grades together. But we didn’t know what the future would hold for those of us going to that one-room country school.

We loved watching TV and fooling around on our walks home from school in the afternoon. When “The Adventures of Superman” hit the television airwaves, we were enthralled, with the episode where Superman creates a diamond out of a lump of coal by super-squeezing it making a particular impression. On our way home one day we found a lump of coal alongside the road—a not unlikely occurrence in the days when most of the farmhouses in our neighborhood had coal-fired furnaces. We figured that if Superman could make a diamond by squeezing a lump of coal, maybe we could do the same thing. We knew we weren’t super-strong, so we found as many big rocks as we could and piled them carefully on top of the chunk of coal and then proceeded to check it every day when we walked home—we figured we could really use the profits from selling a diamond. But alas, the coal stayed coal and no diamond ever appeared.

Hal Roach Studios made three Jim and Pidge movies staring Jimmy Rogers and Noah Beery Jr. in the early 1940s. They later became serialized staples on kids’ TV shows like “Captain Video and His Video Rangers.”

We were also big fans of Captain Video (and his Video Rangers), and watched his show religiously, especially enjoying the short cowboy movies and serials that were part of the program. One of our favorites was the Jim and Pidge series, with Bob always wanting to be Jim, meaning I had to be content with being Pidge.

In one of those films, there was a bit about a rancher raising Brahma bulls that immediately caught our eye—because Bob’s dad had one of the evil-tempered creatures out in their cattle yard. After seeing that the bulls would supposedly chase anything that was red, we had to try it out, which we did with a red bandana. Not sure if it was the color or just the fact we were inside his fence, but we found out Brahma bulls do not like pieces of cloth waived at them. Fortunately, we were pretty fast on our feet (you accelerate pretty quickly with a thousand pounds of bad mood with blood in its eye chasing you) and the fence was easy to climb.

After high school, I stayed around our hometown of Oswego, while Bob and his wife moved west, first to Colorado and then to Montana, where he worked for power companies and actually became one of those cowboys portrayed by Jim and Pidge.

He spent many summers for a couple decades inspecting high-tension lines through mountain areas of those two states on horseback. He had to visually inspect each tower or pole and keep a diary of the condition of the tower and the lines to make sure there were no situations that might cause wildfires. If he found repairs that had to be done, he’d call it in by radio and they’d send a helicopter and repair crew out to the site because the lines he checked were inaccessible by motor vehicle. He said it was sort of lonely, just him, his horse, his packhorse, and his dog dozens of miles from nowhere. But added that the solitude and the scenery were great.

After he retired he took up another career as a horse buyer, trainer and transporter. For a while he specialized in breaking wild horses to ride, but was also hired to train horses for both riding and driving. He got a job with a consortium of drug companies working on various equine disease vaccines and was responsible for buying horses for their trials, training them to stand quietly while blood samples were drawn or they were vaccinated or other tests were done. Then he arranged their sales to good homes after the trials were complete. He said he considered doing one more stint with the equine drug companies, but noted that like the rest of us, he’s getting too old for the training/breaking part and isn’t anxious to get any more broken bones. It’s a younger man’s game, he ruefully noted.

He’s currently engaged in raising those yaks that we were surprised to see in his back pasture. He raises them for some rich guy who’s invested in yak breeding stock. Apparently yak meat is very healthy and is sought-after by a certain class of people because of its low fat content and other reasons I can’t remember right now. Every spring, Yaks can be combed out and the hair they shed can be spun into very fine yarn. Also, yak milk can be turned into a fine butter.

Bob said they’re better tempered than cattle, and they’re also smaller and eat less. One main concern is grizzly bears, two of which the fish and game people had to trap in his back pasture last year after they killed a couple of his neighbor’s llamas (Montana stock raising isn’t exactly what I’d pictured). The sow grizzly was relocated about 30 miles away. The boar, which turned out to be the biggest ever trapped by the Montana fish and game folks, had to be euthanized because this was the third incident where it had definitely killed livestock.

A typical Polson espresso kiosk.

Modern Montana livestock raising was a surprise, but I was happy to see the area around Flathead Lake is still obsessed with espresso. The stuff is sold in little kiosks that look like those old Fotomat booths that used to dot shopping centers. Mornings, especially, dusty pick-up trucks with gun racks in their back windows line up for their morning pick-me-ups.

So yaks and llamas and espresso and cowboys…it’s good to get out and see the countryside so you don’t get too settled in your notions about the way things are or ought to be in areas you’ve never been before.