The Carl R. Krieser Family in the 1930s

These photos were taken about 1932.  Carl Junior obviously enjoyed playing on the running board of their Nash.  Then there was tree-climbing and driving his own little car.  But surely the ultimate thrill came when they went out to Roesler’s farm and were able to ride their horse.  Marge Roesler was a teacher who rented a room from them.  She bought the second Mamie for Junior after he lost his first one.  They were renting Schumacher’s house at the time.  It was just a house or two down the street from where they built their new home.

TOP LEFT:  Esther & their 1930 Nash.

TOP RIGHT:  Carl Jr. (front) & Ruth (right) with cousins, Annette & Dorothy Maes, in Marion, Wisconsin.  Fall of 1931.

MIDDLE LEFT:  Carl Jr. & Pattie Oulette at a Tom Thumb mock wedding held at the Kimberly clubhouse.  1932 or 1933.  Carl always teases about his “first marriage”.

The Kriesers moved into the Schumacher’s rental sometime before Carl Junior was born and they lived there until about 1933 when the Schumachers needed the house for some family members.  They had lived there for at least five years and perhaps longer.  They called their next house “the dump” because it was all they could find while their house was being built.  It wasn’t in the best neighborhood.  This was when they lived next to Marvin “Putsy” Verhagen, a cousin of Joyce’s Verhagen relatives.  He was always getting into fights.  Junior gave Putsy a well-deserved bloody nose!  Yeah!  Oops!  Sorry for taking sides.  In the above photo, Junior appears to be about two years old.  He’s on the side of the house.  In the upper, right photo, Junior is sledding with their little dog, Jippy.  He was a beloved pet for many years.  He obviously loved to get his picture taken.  He’s in so many of them.  He poses beautifully in the middle photo.  Junior had gotten some clamp-on roller skates for Christmas and was practicing in the early spring with a stick to balance himself.

Carl Jr. and Jippy were great playmates and friends.  They got him at Marion, Wisconsin.  He was a mis-treated little waif who lived next to Carl Sr.’s Sister, Lil Maes.  Lil used to feed him because he was always hungry, but when winter set in and he was still sleeping outside with no way to keep warm, Lil suggested to Carl that the Kriesers tuck him into their nice warm car and provide a better home for him in Kimberly.  So they did!  He was a very smart little dog.  Carl Sr. taught him to count and then how to do simple addition and subtraction problems.  Of course, there was a trick to it.  His math was totally dependent on Carl’s.  Then one day he disappeared from the Krieser home.  Somebody must have taken him.  About six months later he came home in awful shape.  He was terribly skinny and his feet were all bloody from traveling a long, long distance.

Later, someone told Carl Sr. that he was the same dog that had been hanging around the depot at Ladysmith--which was close to two hundred miles from Kimberly.  He must have followed the train tracks from depot to depot until he finally got home.  What an amazing little dog he was!  He also loved to chase rabbits.  They’d go down by the woodpile to scare one out.  The problem was that he couldn’t follow them by sight.  He’d go bounding up over the weeds looking around for the rabbit who was also leaping high above the waving grass.  They made a funny looking sight.