Page 184

           BOYHOOD DAYS IN NEENAH
WHEN Ed Cochran, Editor of the :News-kecord, was assembling ma-
terial for his 75th anniversary number, which appeared on June 20,
1956, he asked a former Neenah boy, Kendrick Kimball, to give him
something on his boyhood days in the city of his birth. Kendrick,
presently Out-doors Editor of the Detroit News, is the son of L. H.
Kimball, a former owner and editor of the ,Neenah Daily ,News, a fore-
runner of the News-X(ecord.
   Kendrick's boyhood escapades remind one of the "Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn." He, with John Studley and others, roamed the
streets of Neenah during the first two decades of this century. Here,
in part, are Kendrick's memoirs:
  It seemed inevitable that I work upon the staff of the Neenah Daily News.
The
paper was founded by Arthur R. Bowron, son of Frances Kimball Bowron, and
he
sold it a few months later to his uncle, Leonard H. Kimball, my grandfather.
  On The News I received primary instruction in journalism, and experiences
illu-
mining my later years with many pleasant memories.
  The instruction was primary, and somewhat primitive in view of modern ad-
vances. I was city editor during summer vacations from Neenah High School
and
at various other intervals from 1912 to 'i8, and also during this period
was employed
by The Neenah Times.
  The city editor was the reporter who met the trains, attended weddings
and
chronicled whatever local event seemed worthy of publication. The News, then
under guidance of the J. R. Bloom family, was equipped with an underslung
type-
writer nobody but an acrobat or someone with extra-sensory perception could
op-
erate. Therefore it was necessary to write all copy in longhand, an endeavor
creating
a bunion on the index figure as an occupational hazard.
Russell House Stood Out
  Just after the turn of the century Neenah was a vastly different community
than
its present bustling self. Its most prominent physical characteristics in
the downtown
area were the Russell House, later Hotel Neenah, distinguished by an imposing
row of brass cuspidors in the lobby, and the city hall, unchanged outwardly
by the
stress of the decades.
  Along the business section were such names as Schimpf, Seatoft, Dahms,
Paepke,
Sam Thompson, who operated a sample room; Finnegan, Witte, Jandrey, Gaffney,
Koepsel, Reynold's Honey Bee, Courtney, Neudeck, Draheim and Pingel, Sokup,
Prebensen, Sorensen, Hanson, Marsh, Boehm and Leutnegger.
  Elwers, Haertl, the Larsen barber shop and a few others were still there
on my
last visit.
                                  184