Fred Short, a 1910 graduate of the River Falls State Normal School, discusses his uncle, Emery Short, and his grandfather, J. A. Short, who were engaged in the milling and roalroad busnesses in Wisconsin. His father, C.P. (Commodore Perry) Short, was a farmer and a freight haulder.
Short attended the River Falls Normal School from 1898 to 1910, including eight years in the campus or Model School, and four years at the Normal itself. His first teaching assignment was at New Richmond, WI. Short joined the faculty of Norris Inorporated, a private school for "problem boys," near Milwaukee, WI, in 1931; he was still associated with the school, where he taight indistrial arts, at the time of the 1971 interview with Wyman.
Short tells of his days at the River Falls Normal and at Norris. He also discusses his recollections of his youth in the City of RIver Falls, his involvement in the Boy Scouts, and of Ku Klux Klan activities near Barron, WI, in the early 1920s.