Bio of Clarence Currie (b.1897) Pine Co., MN USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor, OR the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Made available to The USGenWeb Archives by: Carol C. Eddleman This is a biography of Clarence Currie, son of John Currie. This is his story as put down by his granddaughter, Marcia Thieling, on April 8, 1977. It has been edited and transcribed by Carol C. Eddleman. Clarence Currie was born on Nov. 28, 1897 in Hinckley, Minn. and grew up there. He graduated from Hinckley High School with 5 other people in his class. His sister, Ethel's, class was the first class to graduate from the high school (in 1907) and she was one of only three graduates. Their mother, Amy, made them go to high school. Four of the kids went on to Normal School, too--Ethel, Beatrice, Genevieve and Earl. She gave the orders in the family, according to Clarence. And no one ever argued with her, because John backed up her orders. She was a little woman who handled 8 kids and no one ever sassed her back. When Clarence was a child, he came down with smallpox at the beginning of the town epidemic. He was about 8 years old. He and his older sister, Ethel, went to the "pest house," the old town hall, where they were keeping the smallpox patients to try to isolate people because the whole town was coming down with it. His whole family got it except for his father, and possibly his mother. When the whole family came down with it, his father went to the hotel so he wouldn't get it, but everyone at the hotel had it, too. The schools had to shut down. This would have been about 1905. The whole town of Hinckley had been replanted with trees after the Hinckley Fire in 1894, especially with things like willows which would be fast to grow. In school he usually ha one teacher for 2 grades. He had one teacher for the 6th an 7th grades. When he got to 8th grade, ther was one teacher for the grade of about 25 kids. Most of the people dropped out after 8th grade. They went to church and Sunday School every Sunday when they were kids, because their mother made them, but their father, John, never went. After Clarence graduated from High School, he and his brother, John, went out and cleared and lived on much of what is now Sid Currie's farm near Cloverdale (in 1977). The family moved out there when Clarence was in the war. His mother died there from complications from the flu she had during the great flu epidemic of 1918/19. He was out of high school a year of two before he went to Macalaster College. He went there a year and then quit to join the Marines during WWI. Macalaster at that time had two buildings. One was all classrooms. The top of the other was the men's dorm where Clarence lived. The guy across the hall used to practice the saxophone all the time, and he never forgot that. Once a guy came around collecting $5 from everyone to bury a saxophone player and another guy said, "Here's ten; bury two." While he was at Macalaster, he worked out on the weekends for 25 cents per hour doing landscaping for wealthy families. He married Harriet Luckman a couple of weeks before he went off to the war. She taught school while he was gone overseas for about a year. He was 22 when they were married. He had met her when he came out working on a surveying crew near her parents' farm. After that job was finished, her father hired him to work on the farm for $35 per month. He was at the tail end of the draft list, so his number never would have come up, but he and a friendwent to the Cities and looked over all the recruiting officees, and decided to join up with the Marines. He was sent to Paris Island for boot camp and when he got there, he discovered there were about half a dozen kids he knew from Macalaster there. They lived in tents, 2 to a tent, and altogether there were about 5,000 men. There were rows and rows and rows of tents. The mess halls were made of wood. They were at Paris Island for about 2 months. Thom there the were sent tot New York City to board ship. About 2,000 of them were put on a ship during November and the sea was very rough. Waes came over the sides and broke the ladders. They slept on beds of chicken wire which they laid their blankets on, lined up end to end with so little room between rows, that one had to stand sideways for anyone to pass through. With the seas so rough, almost everyone was seasick and the smell on the sleeping deck was terrible from it. Out of the 2,000 men, perhaps 50 were able to line up to eat, and most of those could hardly eat. They would take one look at their food and run for the side of the boat. He volunteereed to hand ammunition up in case of a submarine attack, and so got to be on the deck below. They asked if they could sleep there, so they brought their blankets down and didn't have to sleep with the rest of the men. He never did get seasick, only got a headache, and the doctor gave him some pills for that and it went away. He spent the first winte in Germany and two weeks of that in the hospital at Koblenz with the flu. So many more of the soldiers died of the flu than from actual fighting, he said. He was then sent to Altwied, a little town, with ten other men to be assistant muleskinners on the mule trains. All the supplies, everything, was moved by mule trains. At the end of a week he was the only one left because the other were "city boys" and didn't know anything about mules. The first day they were there a mule kicked him and he took a club and beat the mule. He had to be tough with the mules at first, but after about a week, they all got along fine. After a while the mule skinner over him left, so Clarence got an assistant of his own. Once they had to drive the mules to Koblenz (where the big hospital was) and pass in review under Pershing. The mule trains carried everything. They had cook wagons with three big kettles on top and room for the wood for the fire underneath, and they would cook while they were on the move. Everything was cooked in kettles. They would line them up in long rows, cooking for a lot of men. In Altwied he was stationed over a shoemaker's shop. Every afternoon the shoemaker's wife would come up with a big piece of bread with jam for them. The shoemaker had lathes to fit everyone's feet in the village. Clarence was there about 6 months and was the last place he was stationed before he went home. A street car came within a mile of the town and the men would go on it to the larger town of Neuwied and when they came back, they would be lucky if thre were enough men left capable of standing to carry the ones who were passed out from drinking between them back to Altwied. They went to Marseille to get the ship back home. They sailed out of the Mediterranean and had a day at Gibralter. On the way back the ocean was as smooth as glass and they were able to have portholes open all the way. They were loaded on a train at New York to go to Quantico, Virginia to be discharged. But when they got to Quantico they wee missing a lot of men, because those that lived anywhere near the route got off the train on the way down to spend a night with their families. When they got to Quantico and the role was called, if it was one of your friends that got off the train, Clarence said they called their name in the rollcall for them. They all came back the next day and the officers knew what had been going on, but they didn't pay any attention. They were given so much money per mile for transportation back home. He went up to Wahington, got their in the afternoon and left for home around midnight. He spent the afternoon walking around the outside of the Capitol buildings but never did get inside. He regretted not staying an extra day or two to see more of the city later. On the train home there were two sailors who spent all their money on whiskey. They had so much money that anyone who wanted to could drink with them. Someone from Wisconsin went and drank with them until he passed out. When his town came up he was still passed out, so Clarence took one end and someone else took the other end and they carried him off the train and laid him out on the platform. And there was his whole family lined up waiting for him. When Clarence got home he bought a quarter section from George Luckman and farmed. In the summer of 1928 he ran a lumber camp built to cut pulp wood. A person could make $1,000--$2,000 in three months, depending on how large a crew of men you had, because you made about $1 a cord. Clarence looked after a big crew of men, about 60-100, and didn't have to do any cutting himself. They had big bunk tents for the men to sleep in and a cook tent. He also worked for Northern States during the 20's surveying. He was a recorder for the instrument man. They surveyed the entire length of the St. Croix River and then went to Wisconsin and surveyed the Chippewa and then the Pestigo Rivers. He was paid $50 a month plus free board and room and expenses paid. While he was working for Northern States, his wife and family lived for a while in Bruce, Wisconsin and then in the town of Cumberland, Wisconsin for about a year. This was at the end of the time he worked for Northern States. "Junior" was born in Cumberland. Harriet's parents lived on their farm on Sand Lake outside of Cumberland at this time. Around this time he had a good friend named Jack Pike who was an Indian. Jack used to tell him that he could show him the place at Mille Lacs Lake where the thunderird lived, who made the thunder. He said there were giant bones there. He also talked about spirits that came out of the water at night. Jack also used to tell stories about when he was a boy growing up. One was about a missionary who had come to camp preaching. Jack had to take the missionary up the river (probably the St. Croix) in a canoe. There were rapids and Jack had to pole the canoe upstream. The missionary was very frightened. Jack couldn't understand why this should be so as the missionary had been preaching to them about what a wonderful place heaven was. Why should he be afraid to go there? Shouldn't he want to? Jack said he never could understand that about white people. Another story he used to tell was about how he learned to chew snuff. It used to be that when an Indian died, they would bury him about three or four feet deep and then build a small house over the grave with one of the ends open. The old Indians would put things like food and snuff into the house for the Indian to enjoy in the "happy hunting grounds." Once Jack and some of his friends saw someone putting snuff in one of the houses, and they took it afterwards. Someone, maybe Jack, used to carry around some snuff they'd gotten from one of the houses and then offer a chew to white men. Then they would tell them where they'd gotten it and watch them get sick. Clarence's biggest job was working on the park (now the St. Croix Park) running a camp of WPA men. He was the camp manager. He got the job when he was farming during the Depression in the 30's and the County Auditor sent the men out to get him because they needed someone who knew the country. At first, for about two years (?), he had to drive into Pine City to work. They had to check out who owned the land they wanted for the park and then write to the people who owned it to see if they could buy it. He said there was even 2 or 3 movie stars living in France who owned land back there. If they couldn't find the people who owned the land, there was some procedure they had to go through by publishing notices in the newspapers. As camp manager he had to do things like order the food for 300 men, and also take care of them otherwise. On the first day of April he would have to order all the food he would need for the men for the month of May, for example. His cookbooks were for 100 men. The WPA men built the camps and buildings and roads in the park. They worked after the Civilian Conservation Corps had, and he emphasized that the CCC hadn't accomplished anything much, while the WPA men really did everything that was done. He worked this job for four years or so under the National Park Service. Then, when they were done, the federal government turned the park over to the state, and everyone was out of a job. The WPA men got $44 for two weeks wages and the manager got $150 a month. Those were big wages in those days. He married Marion Gontjes when he was working at the camp. Once arouond this time, he was out appraising land by St. Cloud in the spring and got stuck in the mud on the roads. During WWII he was on the draft board for four years. Footnote: He had seven children: Ethel, Barbara, Clarence, Richard, Lorraine, Beverly, Virginia. He died on May 11, 1981.