The Irish farmhand and forgiveness

Belle Plaine man remembers the life of Harry ‘Shorty’ Davis
By: 
Karl McCarty
Special to NEW Media

“You must be sober two years before you step back on my land,” Dad told Shorty after a drunken binge that scared Mom.

It is the son, Leo Dillenburg, who remembers it, and he tapped the table at War Bonnet Gifts when recalling his father’s ultimatum to the short Irishman who was living at the Belle Plaine farmhouse. Shorty “just got so damn mean,” Dillenburg said.

There were young kids in the house and a line had to be drawn. Shorty never crossed it again, according to Dillenburg.

Harry ‘Shorty’ Davis

There are elements to the life of Harry “Shorty” Davis that will remain buried, but some details appear more certain than others to Dillenburg, whose recollections fill in gaps.

“I tried to think today about who I could ask about Shorty, but everybody is dead, except my sister and my brother,” Dillenburg said

So the following is what Dillenburg recalls during interviews about old Shawano County.

Shorty allegedly came from Ireland, born in 1900. His jig validated it. So did his height — 5 feet, 2 inches “at the most,” according to Dillenburg, “and he was just a guy my dad picked up walking on the road one day.”

The find was before Dillenburg was born in 1946, when Shorty was already middle-aged. He clearly was a traveling worker. Perhaps some called him a vagrant. Others probably called him a bum. He spent time in the Fox Valley, and he was a butler. He survived the Great Depression, and it wasn’t a cliché.

There are aspects of Shorty more obvious than others, according to Dillenburg.

“Well, here’s the thing with Shorty,” Dillenburg said. “I only knew the good part of Shorty, but I always heard the bad parts of Shorty.”

For example, there were details missing in Shorty’s biography.

“He’d talk about these real wealthy people in Appleton he worked for, but we never could get the information out of him (of) who it was,” Dillenburg said. “My aunt came over one day … and she said, “Here, Shorty, would you look at this?’”

The news clipping read: “Wanted: Anybody know the whereabouts of Harry Davis?”

Dillenburg recalled his dad checked out the big mansion he supposedly worked at.

“We even drove down and saw it, and it was by the university, if I remember right,” Dillenburg said. “It was in Appleton, and it was a great big mansion up there.”

Whatever the case, there was a big advertisement out to find him. Somebody in the Fox Valley wanted Harry Davis.

“And he got really mad at my aunt, and he grabbed that, and he said ‘If you ever bring that up again, I’ll never talk to you again,’” Dillenburg said. “And that was it, so nobody ever found out what the situation was.”

These were the elusive bullets on Shorty’s resume prior to the end of World War II.

When younger, Dillenburg never saw Shorty drink, but Dillenburg’s uncle, Wallace, filled him in. The Irish wanderer apparently showed up in the Shawano area, wound up in the bars, and probably worked a little bit here and there. Dillenburg’s uncle and dad went duck hunting on an October morning with a complete frost on the ground.

Dillenburg told the story as if it was Uncle Wallace speaking: “Here, we’re driving down the road, and we thought, ‘Somebody musta threw their jacket in the ditch,’ because we drove by and it looked like a jacket there covered in frost, and here it was Shorty. Laying under all that frost, drunker than hell yet. Frozen, half frozen.”

Shorty, who raised “all kinds of hell,” according to Dillenburg, had been fighting down at Club 22, which threw him out.

“But I never remember that part of him,” Dillenburg said.

Through his dad and his uncle, there were stories of Harry’s wilder days. Layers peeled off over the years, but never exactly to the core.

However, there is no question Dillenburg’s dad had enough of Shorty’s alcohol in the mid-1940s. The last straw was when Shorty tried kicking him down the steps. Dillenburg recalled that his dad grabbed Shorty by the leg, dragged him outside, and gave the ultimatum of two years and sobriety.

Time passed and there Shorty stood at the end of the driveway with a little suitcase, saying: “I’m ready to come home.”

It was two years to the date of the eviction.

The Irish character

Shorty demonstrated his loyalty to the family upon his permanent return.

“He lived in the same house with us: me, my mom, and kids and everything,” Dillenburg said. “He had his own room.”

Dillenburg and his siblings became childlike figures to a man who lacked ties to his own family. A vagrant was now something between a second dad and a cool uncle at the Dillenburg Farm in the 1950s.

“Us kids could do nothing wrong,” Dillenburg said. He just loved us kids. He was always looking out for us.”

Dillenburg also recalled Shorty didn’t get along well with older men. Mind you, Shorty himself was already 50 to 60.

One time, Dillenburg’s dad hired another guy named Lenny. By then, there were multiple farms the Dillenburgs owned. Shorty and Lenny stayed on the other farmhouse, because they worked there. Shorty didn’t have a driver’s license, but Lenny had a car.

“And Lenny comes flying in the yard and said Shorty was gonna kill him,” Dillenburg said, adding, “he was gonna beat him up with a hammer.”

Shorty was “very jealous of anybody that wanted to look good around us kids,” according to Dillenburg. He became a figurehead to the family.

“He liked being the one who took care of us kids and everything,” Dillenburg said.

Through it all was a good work ethic. Shorty made the expansion of the Dillenburg Farm possible. Dillenburg motioned the “chu, chu, chu, chu, chu,” suggesting the efficiency in which Shorty could hand milk a cow in the 1940s before milk machines came to the farm.

“And he was a big part of the neighborhood,” Dillenburg said. “Everybody knew Shorty, because he jigged. He would start his Irish jig. And it was funnier than hell — especially when you were a kid. He was always trying to teach us how to do that Irish jig.” His work was sprinkled elsewhere, for he helped put the floor in at Giese’s Three Elms. Shorty told Dillenburg: “We put that flooring in, and then we had a dance, and I had to show ‘em how to jig.”

A decline from the prime

Dillenburg’s dad had bet on mink and faded out of dairy. Then the mink market collapsed.

Dillenburg’s mom died in 1965, dad moved off the farm and the Dillenburg kids grew up. Alcohol crept back in, and depression lingered. The purpose Shorty found in mid-century had faded, as his laborer body turned 70. Meaning was harder to find. Dillenburg’s brother moved in at the farmhouse, and a trailer was put outside for the old farmhand.

“Just a little dinky trailer, and that little Irishman always lived in there,” Dillenburg said.

Shorty seemingly avoided alcohol until the 1960s. But as Dillenburg’s dad moved away, and the kids grew up, there was less social ties to keep Shorty positive. Dillenburg’s dad went over to the trailer one day, and it was clear Shorty was in a bad spot mentally. Shorty hadn’t cleaned up much so Dillenburg’s dad went over to talk to Dillenburg’s brother.

“And my dad told my brother, ‘You get the bathtub ready, and I’m bringing him over there, and he’s gonna take a bath,’” Dillenburg said. “So, he took Shorty over to the house, and washed him up. He literally threw him in the tub.”

Then Dillenburg’s dad made sure protections were in place to protect his aged farmhand, saying: “Every week you check on Shorty, and you make sure he gets over there and gets a bath, ‘cause he’s depressed about something.”

Memories at the trailer

There were more important memories at the trailer that vindicate the Irishman. Dillenburg was drafted for Vietnam, and Shorty worried about something happening to the child he watched grow up over 20 years. Of course, when Dillenburg came home on leave, he went and stayed by Shorty.

“And then when I went away, I can remember him standing there bawling,” Dillenburg said. “And then when I came back from Vietnam, that’s where I went and stayed. The first person I went and seen was Shorty.”

Another aspect of Shorty was his love for his second country.

“He was really, really patriotic,” Dillenburg said.

During Dillenburg’s childhood, he could remember Shorty saying, “I don’t like that president that we got,” but Shorty concluded, “I gotta love him because he’s our president.”

“It didn’t matter what president it was, if he didn’t like him he didn’t like him,” Dillenburg said, “but he would never say anything bad about ‘em, other than he’d just say, ‘I don’t like him, but I respect him because he’s our president.’”

Shorty lived four or five years at the trailer at least.

“When I came home from leave to go to Vietnam, he was there, and when I got back from Vietnam, he was there,” Dillenburg said. “Whenever I would get in any trouble at all — like I’d stay out too late, I couldn’t drive home, or I’d be drinking too much — I’d always stay by Shorty. And he would feed me. I always remember he’d make me mash potatoes with peas, but the mashed potatoes were full of pepper, and I kept telling him: ‘I don’t like pepper.’”

Shorty’s response, which Dillenburg laughed while repeating: “You’re gonna eat pepper.”

Somewhere between alcohol and his 80s, Shorty wound up in the nursing home. He still had some fire.

“I remember all of them women in the nursing home said how much fun he was, because he was flirting with every girl in there, even though he couldn’t get any girls,” Dillenburg said.

In 1984, the chapter closed on Shorty in Shawano. He blew in like a leaf in the wind in early adulthood, but there was a general consensus that he had the best times of his life when he rooted on the Dillenburg Farm. His strong work ethic, overt loyalty and humorous jigging were central to his character.

Shorty had no known blood relatives in Wisconsin, but friends who knew him made sure he was honored.

“And when he died, my brother buried him next to my dad, up there, with my mother on the hill,” Dillenburg said.

Dillenburg was gone at the time working out of state, and his brother, Dan, went out of his way to insure the farmhand was respected. With two clovers and a Celtic cross, a monument stands at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Shawano signifying an Irishman’s redemption: “Our Irish friend touched the lives of many.”

It was quite the comeback from an eviction, and a permanent reminder on the value of forgiveness.


Karl McCarty is U.S. history teacher at Oakfield High School in Fond Du Lac County and a historian.