Norbert Gudorf Speaks

And today, September 17, 1992, I will be talking to Norbert Gudorf. The Minster Historical Society is interested in preserving on tape some of the memories of our older citizens who have lived in or near Minster most of their lives. Norb was born on a farm north of McCartyville in 1912. He married a girl from Mariastein and her maiden name was Freedom Mormon. Norb has worked at various jobs. He's been self-employed and very active in community affairs, school, politics, church. I'm anxious to hear the memories he will share with us. Norb, I would like for you to tell us about the Gudorf family so that our listeners will become better acquainted with you. Where you were born, parents' names, sisters and brothers, and also your own wife and children.

Well, that's— I should really write that down, but I was born in 1912, about a mile north of McCartyville on Route 29. And Dad, we had 11 children. One little boy was stillborn, of course. And the name was Claribel, who married Mr. Birtkey, and Retta, who married Ed Sherman, Leonard, who married Lucy O'Bierman, and Bernie, spring. And then I myself, I married Freda Morman. And then Vernon married Elvira Dusche. And Elvira married Knischner. And Barney, we call him Virgil, he married Griglio. And my brother Pete, Delmer is his right name, he married Clooney, Mariah Stein. And LaDonna, of course, she's the youngest of the family, she married Mary Paul Mormon. And then of course, we, in 1927, Dad moved to Minster on a Luthman farm southwest of Minster here, very close to town. We lived on a farm there for about 5 years, then he moved to town in about '32. And after that, of course, we went to school here in Minster High School. After having finished 8 years in the, in the white-skilled school on Route 29 north of McCartyville also. So, that's basically what my dad's family was. And of course my mother was a Flaudy. And then Mr. Bernard Flaudy, my mother's dad, he had 7 girls, no boys. So after we Started high school here. In my sophomore and junior year, I got a summer job at the brewery. Worked for 20 cents an hour and all the pop I could drink.

What, no beer?

No beer. We had made near beer.

Oh.

We made near beer. Why they call it near beer, I don't know. There's no alcohol in it. It's real beer when it's made. And then we have to cook it until the alcohol is gone, then bottle it. But we had a way of making real beer out of it if we wanted to. We'd get some 188-proof alcohol, mix it with the beer, and then we'd have real beer again. That's what happened when we went to work at the brewery. In 1932, we had a big meeting at the brewery. And Sy Sherman, the druggist, he was able to get us a gallon of 188-proof alcohol, or a couple gallons, I don't know how much we got. And we'd take an 8-gallon keg of beer on Eagle Hall, and that was during the Hoover and Al Smith campaign. And we had a parade from the brewery to the Eagle Hall. Of course, when we got to the canal, we threw Herbert Hoover in the canal. We had an effigy of Herbert Hoover. We went to Eagle Hall. It was quite a party. Everybody had a good time. That's just a brief history of an early member of HAVA getting involved in politics. Yep.

That would be illegal to put that alcohol into that beer, wouldn't it?

That's all right. It was illegal, absolutely. But we did a lot of things that were illegal in them days because of beer too. We had Quite a few beer joints in Minster, and the most popular one was, of course, the Graveyard Inn.

Graveyard Inn?

Yeah, that was Mrs. Brunagraph's, where our disposal plant is now. Lived on a farm.

Oh yeah.

And she had the best beer in town. And on holidays, she usually run out, and we'd go to Frank Steinman's, who lived on a on the alley between where the Dutch Mill is at. That's an alley down further south.

I remember at Delmar Burger Signs in Fort Laramie, they had a home brew that you could buy there too.

Well, when Sophie would run out of beer on holidays, we'd go to Steinmetz and get beer. The big difference was Sophie would— she had quite a bit of sugar in her. She had a good alcohol content. Well, Steinmann's had the best tasting beer with very little alcohol in it. So she saved quite a bit of money that way. But we'd go there on— we had an open-air dance over here on the junction of Mr. Fort Recovery Road and 716. And then just a wooden floor in the open woods. And we'd go to Brunner Graf's. We'd buy 6 quarts of beer. There was 2 of us couples, 2 couples. We'd drink 2 quarts of Sophie and take the other 2 quarts and put them under the seat of the car. And we'd have a high old time out there. We called it Oakwood Park.

Yeah, that's right. That was Oakwood.

Yeah, Oakwood Park. So that was real nice.

We had a lot of other dance floors and stuff that we had places we could go to on those days.

Bremen had one where the raceway is. Mr. Eagles had one where the supermarket is at now. And east of, south of Fort Laramie was, I forget what the name was. Linhouse. Linhouse had a party. There was one at Avon Lake at Sidney, Ohio. I met all those places. People had a lot of places to go. But the funny thing was, after Prohibition came back, it used to be girls would be standing 10 deep at the dance floor. You'd be dancing a different girl every night, or every dance. And then when beer came back, that kind of spoiled it. Everybody sat at the table with their own couples and drank beer. So it was quite a conversion when we got real beer.

There wasn't near as much mixing around.

No. It was not as nice as when— because it was illegal, you couldn't sit down and drink, you know, you had to have it in your car. And so that kind of spoiled it when it come back. But it was a good thing that it came back because it proved one thing, is you can't forbid something that people want. And they liked their beer.

Right, they sure did.

Right, okay. I don't know if I got ahead of myself or not.

Well, that's all right. We got something about the brewery in there at least.

Okay.

You just worked there that one year?

I worked two summers.

Two summers.

Junior and— junior, sophomore and junior year. And of course, I don't know if we want to mention what happened the junior year or not. I broke my arm cranking a Model T Ford.

Oh, that was not unusual either.

And at that time you had to carry him in a sling. Didn't move your arms. He was allowed out, laid up for 6 weeks. During that 6 weeks, I don't know if I want to mention this or not, but Dad was running the still out on the Luthman farm and I run the still for 6 weeks.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and I handled 100-pound sugar with My left arm, my left arm got bigger than my right arm. So I wanted to get back to work real quick, so I practiced with a bottle of beer and handled it with my hand to get my pressure, to get my pressure back in my hand because I'd run the tapping machine at the brewery. Tapping machine, you have 24, 24 a minute, 24 bottles a minute went through there. That's how fast. Tap it with your foot and put bottle in, put in a basket went through the pasteurizer and to the labeling machine.

Well, let's go back to this still that you were running.

Okay.

What was the whiskey made from?

Was it made from corn mash? You used a 55-gallon wooden barrel, 55-gallon capacity, and you put 50 gallons of water in there, and then you put 4 pounds of Fleischmann's yeast. It come in a about like a pound of butter in a package. Then you put in 75 pounds of sugar and you put 14 pounds of rye or barley, whatever you want to use. We used barley and put that in a muslin bag and that would float on top of the barrel. And you use that twice for 2 brews and then you give it to the hogs and they got real happy with it, eating the mash. So, and then you let this stew 7 to 8 days, then you run it off in the still. But the still was a 1-barrel capacity, and we heated that with gasoline burner. And so—

Gasoline burner?

Yeah, we had gasoline burner.

Wow, that would be dangerous, wouldn't it?

It was, sure, we had a fire with it. And when I went back to work then, my brother Vernon took over, and he was filling the gas tank 5-gallon can, there was some left in the tank, they didn't realize, and it overflowed and ran under the still and lit fire. Oh boy. That was the end of the bootlegging on Luthman Farm.

Oh really? Yeah.

So that was something else. I don't know if I should tell this, but—

Didn't they also make it from corn?

Oh sure, some used corn, and barley and corn was basically what's used.

Or maybe they mixed some of it.

Well no, it just gives it flavor. Barley. We used nothing but barley. It was a little smoother. Corn was a little sharper, you know.

I was over at Clarence Nadel's one time and they had a whole bunch of barrels of mash sitting there. It was sulky.

Yeah, that was about 55-gallon, they called them, barrels. Yeah, 55-gallon. But the raisin, Bookie Schmaderer was our It was a guy that we worked for. Julius was his right name. But the funny thing was, I was getting around 12 gallons of whiskey out of one barrel. And it was all 100-proof. That's the nice thing about it. A lot of them made 80 and 70-proof whiskey, but he made a— he'd insist on 100-proof. He had the best whiskey in town.

How would you make 100 rather than 80?

Well, we had a barometer just like you use for your You test your alcohol in a car now. I don't know what you call it, barometer or whatever it's called. And you could test it that way.

Oh, I see.

Once in a while you broke it. But then the other way you could test it, put your finger in it and light a match. And if it burnt, it wouldn't burn your hand, but it would burn if it was still 100 proof, but it didn't burn anymore than that. Once in a while you'd break the measurement. So, but it was all 100 proof. And what Mays Bookee, he had several stills out, you know, all over the country. And he'd, and we was getting 12 barrels of whiskey out of a barrel of mash. And he wanted to know what we were doing that was getting that much. Well, when we had a whiskey done, and when we drain out the mash, I would take a couple bucket of this hot mash and put it in the water. Brought the temperature of the water up to about 72 degrees, and that made it ferment faster and produce more alcohol. And so, of course, Bookie was pleased with that, and he paid, he paid Dad $1 a gallon for cooking it. But he furnished everything, furnished our sugar, everything. We furnished the water, and we furnished the manpower to make it, but he gave us $1 a gallon.

Didn't you have to age it?

No, we didn't have to do that. Every morning at 2:30 in the morning, he'd come down and pick up what we cooked that day. Then he'd take it to another place, and I don't know if I want to mention the name or not, but they lived right on South Cleveland Street, and in the attic, they had a gas burner in there, temperature controlled, kept 110, kept in these little 10-gallon charcoal kegs with charcoal, and then barrels were put together, little 10-gallon barrels, had the 110-proof heat in the attic and let it in there 10 days to give it color. The age would take the mashy taste out of it, see. And from there on, he took it and sold it. So that was the process. Okay.

Well, that's what I was going to ask. How did he sell it?

Well, he sold it in pint bottles, half pint bottles. He told me a story one time. The Toby Boys lived here, two bachelors. I don't know what their name was. They lived in that big brick house on 5th and Main, right at the corner, that big brick house. That's where he lived. Toby Boys, he called them. And Bookie was complaining. He said, they always come down and want a piece of whiskey. He'd take a whole pint and guzzle it all down, you know. And so he told Dad, he said, "You saved me." He's talking about the first whiskey came off the still was 188 proof, you know. He said, "You know, you saved me half a pint of that sometime, that 188 proof." And he didn't tell us what he was gonna do with it, but later on he told us what he did. He said the Toby Boys come over, they wanted to drink. So I hand him that. Guy started going, he dropped it and ran for a sink and put water in his mouth. At 180 proof, they're really burning, you know. So that was the last of the— Toby's didn't buy them after that anymore. Maybe I shouldn't mention their name, and they're gone. But I don't know, that pretty well takes care of the booze.

Well, wasn't there some of it delivered to like Chicago and Detroit? Dayton.

Why sure, because I know Hopenkamp uses Hirsch to deliver some to Dayton. And all the others, I don't know who they all were. The mister was, you know, he used to joke about, you know, if you, where can you buy whiskey? He'd point to the church steeple and say, any place but there. Of course, somebody told me that the priest sold it then. So that was what connected to him. He said that wasn't right. He said, they said, go to the church. But sure, there was a lot of it hauled out of town because we had a lot of stills in town. And after Dad moved into town, he ran a still on Ed Benson farm out there, chicken coop, 90 barrels in there. And the guy come there every night from Dayton, He had a Chrysler Coupe. He could get it. We put the whiskey in metal cans, like little rectangle shapes, you know, and he could put 90 of those in the trunk of that Chrysler, big trunk, you know. Go to Dayton every night, go to the west side and sell it for a dollar a gallon or so. And just real, they didn't even age it, you know, just green, just green, just plain like water. And he sold it every night. You had to have the 90 gallons ready. But that's the biggest one that I don't know how many years we had that there. But the amazing thing, and we never, never got raided.

Never got raided.

And we had—

How were they hitting?

Well, we had a fellow by the name of Davis and Kelly, the two Democrat sheriffs, you know, and they every once in a while they had to let them catch somebody to keep the dry dicks out, you know. A lot of people don't realize if any federal agent wants to come in the state of Ohio or into Minsk or any place in the state, they have to notify the sheriff and he'd tip them off. Once in a while they have to let somebody get caught. So we had about 6 of them went to the pen for a year. But you had to let one slip through once in a while. But it never bothered us. We had good protection. Bookie was probably paying a pretty good salary to him to keep him straight.

Putting some money under the table.

Yeah, we never had to worry too much about it. But when we had the fire then, of course, then we had to tear it down quick. We took it out in the woods and burned everything because the fire was so close. The big dicks could come, but they never did come, you know, back out there. That was some history there.

I remember Andy Poppelman. Yeah. He lived up there close to McCartyville too.

Sure.

Their chicken coop was started on fire one time when he was a little boy.

Yeah.

And he told his playmate where he was at. He was at the neighbor's. He said, oh, that's our chicken coop. He said right away, that's our chicken coop. He knew right away what it was.

He lived just a half mile from us, same, on 29 also. Well, the funny thing was, I made about 7 gallons of homebrew every week, you know, for my friends and stuff. And one time I made a batch, I took a half gallon of this white, we called it, what do you call it, fire water or something.

Fire water.

And we put that in a 7-gallon beer. The first night I tried it out, I drank a half a quart before we left for a dance. By the time I got there, I passed out.

Oh my.

I was jamming powerful stuff. That was terrible. Well, that pretty well covers the liquor.

We've covered that fairly well. I know there's a lot of other names we could mention of people who did cook some whiskeys and that sort of thing. Give me a good ground figure, how many people around in right around Minster here that made whiskey?

Well, whiskey, an estimate whiskey, I could say 6 of them for sure that I know that made whiskey, but they're in the country, a lot of made in the country too, but home brew joints at about 10, 12 different home brew joints where you could go and have a beer or so. And then of course there were Mrs. Bargy and Mrs. Bellow. They were all Wiseman girls. Bellow lived where Ed Plucky's house on South Main, and she sold whiskey and beer. And Mrs. Bargy, she just sold whiskey here on, on Heil Street. We're in the brick house just well, not too far from Iden's, one that Barners put up, the building along the street, along Cleveland Street, that big brick house there. That's where Mrs. Bargee was. And of course, Honovello, I think, had married a Wiseman. There was another Wiseman wasn't married, she lived in with her in the Plucky House. That's where they They had a real nightclub there, whiskey and beer. That was the best one. Henry Sombergel and Ben Sombergel both lived on Cleveland Street. They sold just beer only. And of course there was Mrs. Steinman in the alley there. Well, there's a lot of places for selling homebrew, you know. 25 cents a quart, you know, 25 cents a quart.

Do you know whether or not any of this whiskey was made before Prohibition?

I doubt it. I don't think there was because there was no need for it. You couldn't have sold it. You couldn't have sold it, no. No, I don't— my knowledge was never any made.

Where did the whiskey drinkers get their whiskey that then?

Well, I guess you had to buy it. I don't know.

Drugstore or something?

I don't know. I guess they had it some store, state stores. Well, even when we had, when we built a bowling alley, I was president of the organization. I had to go to, at that time for wholesale, you could sell retail, we had a retail store, but wholesale you go to Wapakoneta. And I went to Wapakoneta to get the first batch of whiskey we needed for the bowling alley. And I had a check with me, I paid, wanted to pay with a check. You can't pay it, you gotta have cash. I had to go back to Minster and get cash. They would not accept a check all the way to Wapakoneta. And then later on, that Minster became both wholesale and retail. Then you could accept a check, you know. But the state was very strict with that. It was very, very well controlled. So, but you could get during before, when we had Prohibition, you could get whiskey on a If the doctor, if you got a permit from the doctor, and the druggists could handle it. They get it from Canada. They got a lot of whiskey from Canada, and that's where we got our 188-proof alcohol from during Prohibition. Canada couldn't make alcohol, and they, so the Sherman, you could get it for it because they had to have a special permit for that.

You also had a liquor store yourself.

Oh yes, I had a liquor store under the Gilligan administration. I had it for 4 years and I had it for 5 years under, under Dixie Less.

Yeah, that was a political thing.

Yeah, it was political then, but now they changed it. You have to bid for it. See, when I, as long as I had it, I could get it renewed. But I had to, when I quit, then somebody had to bid for it. And that's what happened.

You didn't tell me anything about your own family at all.

Well, I told you the children we had.

You said how many you had.

Oh, I had 11 of them. Yeah, we had a little— one of our boys died. He didn't have an esophagus. Philip, he died. He lived 13 days. So I had 11 of those. And then of course the family, you know, where there's my oldest son is the only one in ministry here. My oldest son of the children. He's run the store now. And Marlene, Gaudy, Marilyne Gaudy. She runs the license bureau in Wapakoneta. Then comes my son Ken, lives in Minnesota, and he runs his brokerage firm. And Ken, then comes, gosh, it's hard for me to tell who comes next.

Get them all mixed up. Get them all mixed up.

I had them so far, so right, Ken. And then I think was Dennis.

Dennis.

He's been working for TWA. He goes all over the world and checks on how everything's running. That's why we were allowed to fly. Naturally, the parents are allowed to fly free then. And then comes, I guess, Kathy is next. She lives in Florida, Gainesville, Florida, where the University of Florida is located. And she does all the bookkeeping keeping for her husband, Snap Grillo, who runs a service, refrigeration and appliance service work. And then comes Bob. He's working for a concern of South Bowling Supplies in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And, uh, okay. Then comes— who's next? I guess Bob, and then comes— I got a little trouble. I don't know who comes next. Ted's the youngest.

Ted, oh yeah.

He's an attorney, he lives in Englewood. And I got— I don't even know how many I mentioned.

Well, what if we did miss one?

I missed one or so, yeah, I guess. It was a total of 11 anyway. My dad had 11 too, so I matched him. Okay, I don't know.

When you were still on the farm, what What, did you have any experiences out there?

We sure did. Dad made us, when we was 5, 6 years old, we had to go out there, shuck wheat and corn, cut corn and everything. And 7 years old, we were working full-time. Dad was a hard driver, and that's why he made us work. That's why we all grew up in pretty good shape. He really made us toe the line. We really had to work. And it was, we learned how to work. That's what we did. And that's why J.T. Harvick hired me, I guess, for post-printing that time. Because he knew we were brought up to know how to work. And when we lived on a home place on North McCartyville, the Swabros run a chicken hatchery. They had the English, English Lakehorns. They were pretty, pretty chicken. And he told us we should put up a chicken coop and he would pay us 5 cents a dozen above market price for hatching eggs. And so we built a big chicken coop on there and they were laying tremendously. And all of a sudden, come into the chicken coop, find 25, 30 sitting on nests dead. Here our sawmillman said the woods just right the next to where the chicken coop was at. We went in there and we found some dead geese in there. He had some die, threw them in there. Our chicken got in there. That's how we got the darn— some kind of disease on the chicken. And we just had it, we couldn't, had to quit.

Yeah.

Because you couldn't use it again for several years, so we just quit. Chicken. Dad had a lot of tough luck. Had a nice horse, he was offered $300 for it. Well, he said, it's $300, you're worth $300 to me to keep it. And a couple year later, it got some kind of disease on it and the horse died for us. So Dad had a lot of tough luck on the farm, but he was a hard worker, hard worker, hard worker, yeah. We had a— one year was July the— May the 30th. May the 30th. Day before, Dad told us, well, we had to put all our sleds and stuff away we used for wintering. Well, I said, we might get snow yet. May 30th. And he laughed about it. Next day we had 3 inches of snow. May 30th. And the same year, the corn froze. And Schemmel, he had a lot of boys, you know, big family too. He made them snip all the corn off about 3 inches tall. It froze. Snip with a scissor, snip it off. We left ours grow and it would come out to our rights, you know, it just sprouted right up. Well, that's just—

Yeah, there's a— Mother Nature still does some odd stuff all the time now too, you know.

That's for sure. It's very sure. Nobody believes that yet.

And you know, I think you notice it a little more on a farm than what you do otherwise.

Well, it's so unusual to happen that time. You remember that. It strikes your mind, you know. It just sticks in your mind. You remember those cases. Okay. Well, I've rambled around here a lot. We better get a little system here maybe, huh?

No, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter? You can always straighten it out.

No, we can always—

Okay.

I think our tape might be running close to an end here. I'm not real sure exactly what time we got here. I want to take at least time to thank you for providing us with the time to listen to some of your memories and opinions of some of the happenings in and around Minster for the last 70 or 80 years, whatever we can remember, right?

Ja, ja. I can only remember back about 79 years. I was 2 years old, I remember that, but that's as far as I can go back. I don't know.

Since we're in the middle of a political year right now, is it all right to run the other guy down, or should you just—

You can just say nice things about him, say bad things about them. That's immaterial to me because I know how I'm going to vote, you know, that's no problem with me because I've been a lifetime Democrat, you know. You can see over there, see up there?

Yeah, all those donkeys around here.

There's a collection up there.

Oh yeah, there's a whole big collection of them.

I got another big one I give away to—

well, we'll have to edit that Everybody's entitled to his own.

I've always, you know, when I first, the first time I ran for Democratic committeeman, it must be about 30 years ago, I was at your house and, well, I'm sorry, I'm a Republican, you told me. I said, well, I didn't know we didn't have registration.

I didn't know it was, but I came If you were listening to the other side of this tape by Norf Gudorf, you will have noticed that he is a Democrat and I am a Republican. I also want to mention that I surprised him when I asked him to name his children, and since he had no list to check off the names, he missed some of them. Now I would like to give you— it would be a good time to mention the rest of them, Norm.

Okay. Well, actually, I'll start right from the beginning. It was David. He's the oldest, and he is the only one of our family that's in Minster. He took over the business when I retired in '75. Well, let's start again. Okay, the second oldest, my daughter Marlene. She runs a license bureau in Wapakoneta, Ohio. And then the third one is Kenneth. He lives in Edina, Minnesota. And he's of course with some— I don't know what kind of— what's he called? Some kind of investment firm. And then comes Dennis. He's with TWA. He has a traveling job, travels all over the world for them. And then comes Kathy. She lives in Florida. She married Snap Grillo and she does the bookkeeping for her husband who runs a servicing business in Florida. And then comes Robert. He lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he works— he's a sales rep for a bowling supply outfit in Fort Wayne. And then comes Ruth. She lives in Westerville and she is a beautician. And then of course then we had Philip, who's deceased. He only lived 11 days. He didn't have an esophagus, so he died. And then comes Mike. He lives in Chicago. He just got his doctor's degree, worked for the University of Chicago. And then Carol, she lives at Englewood, and she does— she's a graduate of Wright State, and she does part-time work, you know, from on her own, computer instruction. And then Ted also lives in Englewood, and he's an attorney in Englewood, Ohio. So that completes the family up there.

Okay, we got that all back in order again. Yeah. Norb, most of us know your interest in politics. Has the political system changed since you first started voting in the '30s?

It sure has. It sure has a whole lot. The biggest thing, of course, we went from paper ballot to a punch board system. That took place while I was on the Board of Elections, and we paid $32,000 for that system that time. And it's been very successful. But when you go way back, of course, they used to have a lot of rallies You know, we had a rally at Shelby County Fairgrounds in Celina, and we had an independent ticket there one year, and Tony Kainanz from Smaragdstein was the vice president, and the guy from out west was independent. Used to be real fun to go to those rallies. I know my brother-in-law Ed Sherman, he went and bet me $10 I shouldn't have done it to him, but I asked, I'll bet you $10 the Independent won't get a single electoral vote. Oh, I'll take that up right away. He didn't understand what the Electoral College was. So after the election's over, I give him the $10 back. It was just a joke, you know. So that was kind of funny. But there was a lot more people involved in elections those years. There was big turnouts at those rallies. Boy, that was something else. Like I say, I got really involved, like I say, over Hal Smith campaigns. Now, of course, we got TV. It makes a big difference, you know, debates and stuff. Okay?

You think there are fewer people, for instance, in Minster and Jackson Township that vote today, comparison percentage-wise? Than what there were back in the '30s, '40s.

We're not too bad here. We're doing pretty good. Our county turns out about— sometimes in a general election we've turned out as high as 85% of the people. But statewide, we only have about 51% of the eligible people vote. So I don't know what the matter with some of those people are. But I think in this community, it's a pretty solid vote. Pretty good vote. Yeah, very good vote. Okay.

Have you always voted a straight Democratic ticket?

Yes, sir.

Or do you sometimes find a good Republican?

No, I never found a good Republican, but I voted for some Democrats that kind of had to hold my nose when I voted for them.

I see.

But that's all the way solid. And I just made a note here. I had to be 21 years old in order to vote when I was growing up, and my first vote was It was in 1933, and I've never missed a single election since that time. '33 all the way up to date. Special elections, primaries, and general elections, I've never missed an election. That's one thing I always insist on. If you're going to complain, and if you don't vote, you have no right to complain. So I got a perfect record in the election. And I insist on it. I dated 18-year-olds can vote. And only 25% of the 18 to 25 vote. 18%, that's terrible. Maybe this year we'll get more out because we've got young candidates versus the elderly candidate of Bush. So it'd be rather interesting how it turns out this year. But I wouldn't bet either way who's going to win right now, it's so close. So it's a toss-up with Perot in there now, so you don't know.

Well, supposing we switch over to schools a little bit.

Okay.

I know that you started in a one-room school.

Right.

Who in your opinion has the best schooling? You, your children, or your grandchildren?

Well, I'd say I got as good an education as they did. We was in there 8 years in one building and you, all you had to do is listen. Now some kids didn't pay any attention. Well, they stayed in school until they was 16 years old and quit. But I, like I said, I was interested in education and I got as good or better education than we got in town. Because when I started my high school in Münster here, I was surprised. A lot of things I knew they didn't know. So that was an advantage that time. But of course, we wouldn't want to go through that system again. But my other— I was the only one in the family. I'm not the only one, I was the fourth one that finishes 8th grade. Vernon had to finish his last 2 grades here, but I had— I finished my full 8 years in the White School in Van Buren Junction. But yeah, with that education, I I'd say it was more superior, those that really wanted to learn, the little schoolhouse, because you had them all in one building, one teacher, and it was— you listened to everything going on.

I really suppose we have to say though that one teacher, if he was a real good teacher, he or she, or she wasn't, that made some difference too.

Well, it made some difference. My first teacher was a 16-year-old, Emily Byce. Until 16 years old. They could teach that time, get a teaching certificate. They graduate high school and go to normal school 2 years, they were teachers. Now, they get a much better education. I don't know if they can teach any better, but I'd say some improvement, I'm sure there is.

Computers, of course we've got them and we have to use them in schools and stuff. We have to show the children how to use them and everything. Is it a real big advantage in their education or— or does it take away from your thinking?

Right. I think it's just an addition that could be taught in the— in a 2-year college or 4-year colleges. But they start them out in the first couple grades already with playing with computers, you know. I more or less think maybe it's a toy or what's real beneficial, I can't, I couldn't say for sure. I doubt it very much if it's a big advantage because computer too, my daughter's right up on top of all computers, but it's still changing all the way. Every year it's something different and more complex. You do more things with them. When I had my first apartment, I a great big 8-foot folder on my computer, happy birthday thing. So there's a lot of things you can do with a computer. But that's not actually, I don't think it's an educational advantage unless somebody's, I mean, wants to really go into the computer business the rest of his life. But the fact you teach them all computers, there's not all people are going to use computers in their lifetime. I don't know. —could in the future maybe do buying by computer, you know, have— some big cities already have that, you know. Okay.

We have some inflation in our schools, of course, just like we have in regular living. Do you realize, do you think that the schools have gone higher in their inflation than what an ordinary trend is, or is it about the same?

So, because this year we only had 2 and 3% inflation, they still got 7, 8% raise. And they usually get an 8, 7, 8% raise. But actually, they got too many teachers now that don't teach. You know, like our school here, we got 2 guidance counselors. We never had a guidance counselor when I went to school, not in high school. In grade school. They got two principals, primary school and high school. They got a superintendent. They got two librarians. I don't understand why librarians have to have teacher certificates. I think some educated laypeople could run a— could run a— take care of a library real well. I'll give an example. When I was on the school board Sister Alicia was the primary elementary principal. Then the State Department of Education decided that the principals and guidance counselors and librarians, they should not teach. Sister Alicia said, "I do not want to get out of the library." She worked The library didn't have a secretary. They demanded that she have a secretary, and demanded that she have a— get out of the library. She said, "I sit in my office all day twiddling my thumbs, do my own typing, I have no need for it." But we had to do it, so they hired 2 more people, cost $70,000. Just a little thing like that. Now, that's unusual that that happened in a small school.

Well, we don't want to spend all the time on schools. No. I think you one time mentioned that you had been hired by J.T. Alverbeck to work at Post Printing. That's right.

Well, let's talk about that a little. Well, the school had a policy that time. The two boys that had the highest grade, one would be hired by Mitch Machine and one would be hired by Post Sprinting Company. That was a policy they had. Well, J.C. Ausubel told me, he said, you wouldn't, but Fripplo, or Ty, which is for high honors. And so I said, well, I'm going to Chicago. I had saved $25, sent it to Chicago, going to electrical school to go to a What do you call it? It's Tubes— Electrical engineering or— Well, it's Tubeshear College is called. What is it called? A tube college. Well, so I said, well, I'm not interested. Well, so Riplow took the foundry. And then J.C. Hoverbeck was in the choir with my brother Len here in Mistry. And so he told him, I said, Norb has not been in. To her about a job. I said, well, he's going to Chicago. So a couple weeks later, he asked him again. Well, he said he's decided to— he definitely wants to go to Chicago. So then J.C. Houseman called me, said, Norm, out of common courtesy, even if you don't want to go to Chicago, at least go to see Mr. Harbett, see what he's got to offer. So I didn't— I went in there. Well, we were in there where the Eagles were in there. That's where Post Printing used to be, in the Eagle Building. And so I went in there, and I'll never forget it. He took me on the tour through the whole building. It reminded me just exactly when the devil took Christ up the mountain. You do that, you promise everything, see? So, well, he made it pretty interesting. He said, well, he said, you can't go to Chicago until September. Why don't you start here June 14th and see how you like it? Well, I did start, and then when the Congress came around, I notified him, "Well, get a job. I need a part-time job because Dad didn't have any money. I need a part-time job." No jobs available. This is 1930. No jobs available. So I took the job. He said, "You can always, if you don't like it, you can always go." Well, in the meantime, he was I found out they would have a correspondence course. So I took the same thing by correspondence course. It's the DeForest Electrical School. They taught radio, TV, and sound. That's what I was interested in. So I lucked out because I started post-printing and then Joe Westride had come down to see me in 1946. I started post-printing in '30, worked for 16 years. He come down there, he said, Narby, he said, I fell off the roof, hurt my back, I no longer can do roofing. And so we're going to quit roofing and we won't have any play. I can't deliver anymore refrigerant stuff, it's too much work. He said, without interest, because when I took this course, I did all the service work for them, fix their radios and small appliances, you know, just really small appliances. That's why you see this shop there, got a window in it. You know, and it's a regular shop, it's not a double garage. They got a couch in there to sleep in there now. So I come out real nice, you know, and fixed up.

Well, before we go on any further with that, do you remember any other employees at that time in the Minster Machine— I mean in the Post Printing?

No, not at all. I was the only one. You were the only one? That they hired that time. The other were all veterans. No, that's what I mean, who were they? Oiglewell, Wes Froning, Howie Helmsing, Jerry Meyer, Moore Schulte, George Bussey. He ran the lineup time, George Bussey and George Kester. And then I got my brother-in-law. Of course, when I started there, I got my brother-in-law from Wapakoneta, Elmer, okay, what's his name? Neese. I got him over here. I got him a job. That was about it. That was it. Well, Leo Richling. Too. He married a couple years after. That was the whole crew in the shop. Who was the owner of it? Well, J.T. Hauerbeck and Harry Ekman had a partnership, but he bought out Harry Ekman later on. Harry got out, but that was after I quit. Harry got out of it. J.T. owned the whole thing. Then old Harry Guttenkaufer, I don't know if you knew Harry or not. Yeah, man. He used to, he was J.T. Hauerbeck's grandson. Or what would he be, the uncle of his uncle? And he, uh, well, he had a big fixture there. He was cleaning that one day, walked through the shop like that, all of a sudden he dropped it. Well, the damn thing was getting old anyway, don't matter, you know. I just mentioned that as a joke. But yeah, made that person, uh, he left when J.T. Hammerbeck died, you know. And it was a joke, you know, you go in there, that one of wanted a raise, you know. I was under a 4-year contract, you know. I got to start out 25 cents an hour and got 2.5 cent an hour raise every 6 months. So at the end of 4 years, I was getting 37.5 cents an hour. And so then when you go in to ask for a raise, he just— you feel sorry for him, just about tears in his eyes. He said, "Well, I'm just giving you guys work. I'm just breaking even." The same old story every time. Of course, when he died, he was worth $200 million. So that was quite an experience. But I, of course, Jerry Meyer and Moore Schulte, some of those town guys, they complain about me. You work too damn much. You know, I'd run a press and I'd be setting up another form and I'd set some type. I was just supposed to be a pressman, but I was just— Dad brought us up on the farm to work. I didn't know any better.

Then from there you went to, like you said, you were joining— 16 years. Doing some electrical work or something.

Yeah, I stayed there 16 years at Post Spring. Then like I say, Joe Westerly had come out, asked me to, since I was doing their service work, he likes it, maybe I'd be interested in it. Well, I bought the business. He said— I said, I don't have much money. Well, he said, $1,200, and that's just what plants we got in there and the signs and stuff. That's all. Rent the building. Of course, I took him up on it. Of course, I needed a mechanic, a good mechanic to service the plants and make deliveries. Well, poor Mormon had just got out of the war. He was an airplane mechanic in Africa. He never was in the front line, but he was in Africa. He had to repair airplanes. They had to repair them, they had to take the first ride, make sure they got it right, and then it was okay. So he, I talked him into it, he went with Parker. He put in $1,200, $650, and I put in $650. We took over the business. And everything was on, at that time, everything was on allocation. It was in the Korean War, you know. So, refrigerator, so much, you got so many ranges, so many refrigerators of everything. That's all you got. And so then when I had advertised for grand opening, I kept accumulating that for a couple months, you know. I started that in August, you know, and then by December 7th, started up. And Joe West said, well, you got more? And I finally said, the store now Frigidaire guy. So then I ran a special sale, the door prize. Imagine I run a door prize. The one that won the door prize would be able to buy, would be the first one on the list to buy a refrigerator. You couldn't do that today. And old Henry Beimer used to live in East Westminster, the best Wellsman Road, West Wellsman. And he won a refrigerator. And I had thousands of people come in that day, and I know some people want to bribe me, give you $10 extra, give me a refrigerator. No, I said, you go on the list, when your name comes up, you get it. I never believed in that, so that was something else.

You know, this electrical work that you were doing, did you ever— you never had it— you never studied it for or anything from anybody? Do what?

How did you learn the electrical? Oh, I got through this electrical course. Oh, you took that course? Yeah, I took an electrical course. There's one of the burns. I got burned electrical at Fox Printing. Yeah, you would go out and wire houses? I wired houses. I wired 104 new homes. I wired a lot of farms. I put all down the road here, I put in center pole systems. I put in 104 furnaces in homes, you know. Then I had to go to school. I had to go to Wichita, Kansas twice. Took a trip up there to learn how to figure heating loss. That's rather interesting, figuring heat loss in a house, you know. Brick house is worse than a frame house, you know, for the heat loss. Okay.

Okay, so now you got the Gudorf and Mormon. Yes. That's right. Radios and no TVs yet, I guess.

No, we didn't have TVs until '52. Well, we had the aerial up a couple years before that was trying to get Cincinnati. We had a 70-foot tower on top of the store, just getting little fading pictures. But '52 it broke, I sold 1,200 sets in '52. But we had oil heaters, gas heaters, a lot of people didn't have furnaces those days. Gas heaters, refrigerators, ranges, gas, electric, and then we had later on when TV came back, we had combination TV and radio. And I just might mention the first TV I sold, sold to Joe Rieckman, east of town. $630 for a little 10-inch. It had an AM/FM radio in it. Oh, it had a radio in it too? Yeah, and a year later, about 2 years later, they came out with a 17-inch Joe would trade every year, just as soon as they come up there he wanted back. He was a good friend of mine, old Joe. He had a brother, you know, the Bashors out there on the farm. That was interesting. That was a nice new business, the television, I believe.

Oh, that was a big one.

It just came in and everybody really wanted them. That's right, that was tremendous. We had in December, we had about a couple hundred sets of the We got 14 below and a foot of snow, and I had a crew working for me, and they wouldn't go out. I said, well, if I go, will you go? Yeah. So I went out with them. That was rough.

You remember we talked about bootlegging? Yeah. I'm just interested, did the Gudorf family and other people like that make enough money to warrant taking the risk of being caught?

We couldn't afford the risk, but we was desperately poor and trying to make a living. If it wouldn't have been for that, we would have went broke on the Luthman farm because that had been farmed out to all the neighbors and they didn't put anything back in it. Just sucked all it could raise, only the weeds. And so Luthman made it nice for us. He'd give us 20 cents an hour, and with the kids and dad, We cleaned out the state ditch, took all the shrubbery off the state ditch border, the northeast side. We had woods back there, it was all underbrush in there, cleared all that out. We put fence in all 88 acres. There's 8 acres on this side of the road where Warner's built. And we tiled, 35,000 tiles we put in. That's what we kept to living. And Dad made about roughly, I guess, about $5,000 bootlegging. Was it no expense? Well, the only expense we had It was a gasoline fire, but he furnished everything else.

$5,000, that was pretty nice. At that time.

2:30 in the morning, he was there. Yeah, dollar a gallon.

In other words, in other words, the Depression helped people into doing this also.

We really didn't have a death serious depression in Minster. People managed to get a living because in a farm you had chicken, you had cattle, you had hogs. Wow. Sunday when we'd have kesselrutsch, chopped it up and fried it, you know, built it the same way. Yeah, that was tremendous. That's just like one of the best ones.

But the people still wanted that beer and whiskey though too. Oh, absolutely.

We never gave that up. And of course, we had to— when Roosevelt got in, we had to keep the TPA, you know. And the funny thing was, they They— there's two things that towns were offered. You can have a swimming pool or a sewage plant. And Albert Fisher was in the bank, and I was, you know, I was 18 years old. He asked me, what do you think we should have, a swimming pool or a sewage plant? Oh, by all means, get a sewage plant. A swimming pool we can always get. And I'll never forget the alley where Dutch Mill is located. 2-foot deep ditch together. 3 men, every 5 foot you had a guy shoveling up over there. And then shovel next, guy throw it up. And they all dug it by hand, the whole sewage plant. That was— they did a lot of work.

Oh, that was a lot of work.

They got a dollar an hour, you know, but that dollar an hour was a lot of money that time. Yeah, that was something to remember. I wanted to mention that because I remember that one 20 feet deep. That's a lot of shovel.

Would something like that work any other depression, you think?

No, we'd have it mechanized now. It's all diggers now. Yeah.

Nobody knows how to use a shovel anymore.

No, they don't know how to use a shovel. I used to kid a lot of PWA people leaning on their shovels. Well, they had to lean on them because they were working all day. That's right. That was quite something.

Some of them were better at digging than others, but they all needed —some kind of a restaurant. You were also a little bit involved with Marius Dining Retreat House at one time, if I remember right. Well, have we got anything there?

It was quite a, quite a job. I got Sister Friedeberger—she was a good friend of mine. She was head of the shrine that time, and she had a lady from Dayton offered a PA system. There was an infirmary there, or the little— there are the patios out there. It used to be a big 3-story infirmary building. They had 14 sisters that were bedfasters sitting there, sitting there. And they said, this— they give us— watch the whole system to get somebody installed. Well, I spent about 5, 6 weeks there in Donatus, you know, and I installed it. And in the sanctuary, put a microphone in sanctuary, and right above the sanctuary, a little area where they could sit. Those could walk, would get out and sit in there and listen to the Mass, you know. And in every room, I put a speaker. They could listen to the Mass. And I'll never forget, to make me feel so good, when the sisters turned it on and hear the Mass, the smile on their face. That would be tremendous. That's how I got started about 45 years I worked with him, but when he got tired with— so she put me on the advisory board when we talked about a retreat house, 1962. Well, I felt a little out of place because John Herkenhoff, Carl Idding, and the Oppenheims, and Heckler, all them millionaires were on there, and I was just a poor little guy. And so they talked about money, retreat house. $610,000 bid on it. Well, he went to a cigarette corporation in Wichita, Kansas— now Wichita, Nebraska— and got a $350,000 loan. And he paid off so much a month. And they hadn't figured— whoever designed it, there was a guy from Dayton, I forget his name, he had a cripple, he was the architect, and Derek Dorson was the contractor. But after they got the foundation in. They had a flash flood there, and yet way above the— here they checked, they had misgaged, the architect had misgaged the elevation. So they had to dig a lake out there to raise it up, keep flooding in, see. And so the funny thing was, when they let out the bids for the building, I did not get them. There was to the meeting. At that time everybody wanted a job, it was hard times. And of course they give it to Dorsey. And so then when the building was done they had a fender furnisher, another $100,000. So one of the old minds said, well, let's go to Cedar, get another $300,000. And Sister Elrod was Sid Friedberg's secretary She about had a heart attack, she said. That— he said, we can't pay the bills, they're coming in, you can't pay them. So I drew up— I got a little helper, I still got a couple copies of it— I drew a complete plan for the Meierstein helpers, for Meierstein helpers. And so I had completely organized, and in May— and Sis Freeburg was all for it, but the board would not meet on it, wouldn't make a decision. So she'd come back to me, said, well, I said, I will not go ahead with unless the board approves. I want to endorse because I don't want to stick my neck out. So finally, on July 31st, Mike called me, said, can you meet me at Mr. Henders' office in Salina? We're going to make it, we're going to go along with your plan. So we met, and the Henders, John Henders was on vacation, so his young son John We met, he said, well, what are you going to call it? And he gave different names. I said, well, let's call it the Treehouse Hill. Okay, that settled everything. So Joe Schmidt had told me when we were talking about the idea, he said, if this thing goes, I'll donate a pink mink stole every year. So he said, when we left Henderson, he said, I got something in the car I want to show you. Here he come out of the big Pink Mint. Mint, he was going to give it to me. And then, of course, like I say, I give a washer and dryer, come and yell, put a big prize on a ticket. And we started that chicken frying, started the stump picking party, still going today. And we had a picnic. We cleared about $42,000 to $42,000 a year. And within 15 years, we had it paid off. But then, of course, we would have kept on, but the preservation group decided they wanted the money for the shrine, so we would give it to them and give my equipment and everything. That was a long struggle, but that was a lot of fun too.

Well, I think we're about out of time here. Okay. So we'll just have to call it that. Thanks a lot, Norb.

Yeah, it's all right.