Paiders named king and queen
By Angie Landsverk
Joe and Pat Paider’s memories of past Horse & Buggy Days include cornstalks on Main Street, threshing machines and lots of horses.
Pat also remembers how “years ago, a lot of people dressed up.”
This year, they will be among those dressed in attire representative of that era.
The Paiders are this year’s Horse & Buggy Days king and queen.
“We were very surprised,” she said of being chosen to be 2017’s royalty.
This is the first year community members were invited to nominate couples to be the Horse & Buggy Days king and queen.
While the Paiders are not certain who nominated them, they do have an idea about who may be behind their nomination.
The 57th annual Horse & Buggy Days will take place Saturday, Sept. 16, in downtown Weyauwega.
It will include an 8 a.m. pancake breakfast, a vendor fair, music throughout the day, food, a 1 p.m. parade, games and activities for children, a pool tournament, sumo wrestling and pedal tractor pulls.
People may visit the Weyauwega Area Chamber of Commerce’s website at www.weyauwegachamnber.com for further information.
For Joe and Pat, their duties as king and queen will also include visiting elementary students in Weyauwega and Fremont and attending the Horse & Buggy Days Royalty Breakfast Friday, Sept. 15, at Crossroads Care Center, in Weyauwega.
At the breakfast, the Paiders will be joined by past Horse & Buggy Days kings and queens.
Joe and Pat have lived in Weyauwega for 50 years, and later this month will celebrate 53 years of marriage.
She is from Cobbtown, and he is from Luxemburg.
Pat’s father and uncles started Weyauwega Milk Products in the early 1960s.
Her grandfather, Jacob Wagner, had five sons.
Before starting Weyauwega Milk Products, four of those sons – including Pat’s father, Harold – worked at cheese factories in smaller communities.
“I learned to work in the cheese factory (in Cobbtown),” Pat said. “My whole background is cheese.”
After they closed the smaller cheese factories and everything moved to Weyauwega, she remembers working there as well.
In both grade school and high school, Pat wrote out checks to the farmers from whom they bought milk.
As time went on, her father and uncles retired.
Sons took over and eventually sold the business to Agropur.
Joe moved to the area after his father bought a bowling alley in Waupaca in 1957.
He attended The Academy in Scandinavia for two years and then switched to Waupaca High School his junior year, after The Academy closed.
“All the ag boys pressured me to ask her to Homecoming,” he said of Pat.
They graduated from WHS in 1962 and were married in 1964.
Prior to getting married, Joe spent six months active in the National Guard and then went to barber school. After six months active with the Guard, he was then inactive with it for eight years.
He worked as a barber in West Allis, Berlin and then Waupaca before going to work at the cheese factory.
Joe worked there 39 1/2 years and retired in 2007.
He then started working at Oakwood Cemetery in Weyauwega.
In addition to working at the cheese factory, Pat’s past employers include the Waupaca County Post and the former Ron & Lloyd’s in Weyauwega.
Joe and Pat have two sons (Tim and Tom) and one daughter (Sarah Mueller).
Tim and his wife, Dorothy, live in Weyauwega. Tom and his wife, Michelle, live in Minnesota, and Sarah and her husband, John, live in Weyauwega.
Joe and Pat have seven grandsons, three granddaughters and one great-granddaughter.
In the past, Joe and Pat were members of the Jaycees and Jaycettes respectively. Both served as officers.
She is a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Waupaca, and he is a member of Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Weyauwega.