printed "Cavalier County Republican", 1996
and contributed by family member Kathie Marynik
Wohletz Recalls Early Days on North Dakota Prairie, California Dairy Farm
Even though Louie Wohletz turned 95 on March 28, he has a vivid memory of his past and talks openly about it. Wohletz, who was given a birthday party and steak supper in his honor at the Langdon Eagles Club on Thursday by family and friends, recalled the early days on the North Dakota prairie, as well as stories of how his parents homesteaded land 12 miles southwest of Langdon. He said his father and uncle, who originally homesteaded a 40-acre spread at Albany, Minnesota, heard somewhere that they could homestead 160 acres in North Dakota, so they rode a freight train to Langdon to find out. They eventually homesteaded near Langdon in 1895. Wohletz' parents originally came to the US from Austria in 1892. They used a team of oxen, he said, to break up the prairie and plant crops. "That's what the sod house was built of, and I was born in that sod house," Wohletz said. He was born in 1901. He added that as a young boy, he remembers shooting mice in that same sod house and that his mother used to keep chickens in the sod house to keep them warm and producing more eggs than neighbors' hens through the harsh winters. Wohletz said he also has a good memory of the winter of 1911 when a doctor told his parents not to live another winter in North Dakota because of his mother's ailing health. So the family packed up and moved to Los Molinos, California. "I remember it personally," he said. "We got on a passenger train at Nekoma and rode it to Los Molinos. Dad built a little house there, and we started dairying." Los Molinos is about 100 miles north of Sacramento. In the fall of 1918, World War I had not yet ended and a 17-year-old Wohletz and his father returned to Langdon, farmed the land for two years, then rented it out and returned to California. "In the fall of 1920, I drove a car back to California," Wohletz described. "It was an Overland 90. It was a good old car that we bought in 1920." He added there were no improved roads to speak of or city street lights. "Even Los Angeles didn't have stop lights back then or organized parking." The family stayed on the dairy from 1920 to 1955, then moved back to North Dakota. Wohletz commented that he wanted to be a farmer in North Dakota. "I always wanted to farm here and finally got squared around." In the interim, things got tough. The Great Depression hit every facet of life in America, including the Wohletz dairy with its 25 Holsteins. "We were milking the cows by hand during the Depression," Wohletz said. "Butter fat was down to 12 cents a pound, and that's all we got for it." He added that he recalls selling a 2,000-pound Holstein bull for a meager $15. "That was terrible and I was just a kid at the time." It was also during the Depression years that President Roosevelt implemented several plans to get America back on its feet. One was welfare to feed the 25 percent of unemployed Americans. Wohletz remembers his friends asking him why he kept working. "Why are you working, the government will feed you," he recalled. "I told them who pays for it?" By 1940 there was finally some economic relief, according to Wohletz. A cheese factory was built 25 miles from the dairy, and milk was picked up every day. "Butter fat jumped to $1.10 a pound," he said. On Feb. 9, 1942, Annie Heck and Wohletz were married. They stayed on the dairy. Wohletz explained that it kept him out of World War II because the government encouraged farm production during the war. He does, however, remember making a trip to North Dakota during the war and getting rationed gas. "I came into Williston and told the station attendant I was going to Langdon. He gave us a couple of gallons extra." By the early 1970s, Wohletz was an established grain farmer and hit the bonanza when he sold his durum for $8 a bushel. He said he made $320 an acre, a far cry from 12 cents for butter fat. "I still don't know why durum went up so high," he said. Wohletz decided to retire one year ago. "I farmed myself until last year. This year, I didn't put a crop in at all, but I still look after the farm and keep the buildings up to keep busy." People talk of hard times now," Wohletz explained. "People were rugged years ago and at the same time we kept Uncle Sam from feeding us."
