Memoirs of Norbert E. Gnadinger, Sr. Volume 1

1951

While I was telling you about the Production Committee and the Credit Union at Tube Turns, I mentioned Jack Gardner several times. His official position at Tube Turns was as the Safety Director. Now, in the maintenance department, Claude White had just hired another foreman. His name was also Jack Gardner. These twin names never caused any confusion in the plant. The Safety Director, Jack Gardner, we called “Fat Jack” because he was fat. The Maintenance Foreman, Jack Gardner, we called “Skinny Jack” because he was skinny. Everyone in the plant and offices knew the names and the differences and there was never a mix-up between them. Skinny Jack had been “purchased” along with a good amount of specialty machines we needed in the plant to machine the large welding “tees” we were beginning to manufacture. The Gardner Machine Works had been operating along the Ohio River bank in New Albany, Indiana for several generations. Skinny Jack was the last of the owners, the business was gradually loosing customers due to new technology and the U.S. Corp of Engineers was about to build a “flood wall” down through the middle of their plant. The 1937 Ohio River Flood had devastated New Albany also. Rather than move to a new location, Skinny Jack decided to close down the declining business and sell off what assets that he could. Tube Turns Management learned of this and, after analyzing the equipment available, bought several of the heavy machines. Skinny Jack was included in the sales contract with the stipulation that his knowledge of the machines would be useful while they were modified for the use to which we would use them. After that was accomplished, he would continue as an employee of Tube Turns. His new job became that of foreman over machine maintenance.

There were two other foremen on the first shift who I had to directly work with. “Pete” Lacer had a large crew whose responsibility included building and grounds repair, all the welders, fork trucks and other mechanics and just about every other repair except machine and electric maintenance. Pete Lacer was a very hard person to understand and to work with. The foreman over electric maintenance and air conditioning, Bill Sweazy, was of an opposite personality. A very easy going person who never let any emergency get him down and who always came through with a successful conclusion to all breakdowns. He and I got along famously. We played many innocent tricks on each other and I shot many bits of ash off the end of the cigarettes he always held in his mouth using rubber bands and the trustworthy index finger-nail. Of course, he ruined several of my Wagner-Twins cigars in the same manner.(9-05-2001)

There must have been fifty or more technicians, all men, at that time, working in the maintenance department. I could tell an interesting story about each of them, some good and some bad. I will always recite the good things I remember about them, and, so that I don’t bore you, I’ll only pick out a few.

Harvey Manion was a master carpenter. He was also a successful “Gentleman Farmer”. A gentleman farmer is one who owns a farm but has to also work at another job in order to not starve to death. Harvey only had a small farm but he was able to work it like a professional and actually made more money from farming than he did from his job as a carpenter. There were not many like Harvey.

Arthur Scott was a shop welder. In other words, he spent all of his working hours making welding repairs while sitting in a booth in the shop. His mother also worked for Tube Turns in our lunch room. Arthur only had one hobby away from work. He spent untold years constructing his own private Houseboat. Everyone wondered if the work he was doing in his booth was a Tube Turns repair job or was he assembling something for his boat. Years later, when Bernie and I put in our boat slips on the Ohio River, Arthur approached me about renting a boat slip from us. We had no empty one available and this must have been about fifteen years after he first began constructing his houseboat. That boy really had perseverance.

One of our Millwrights was a very friendly man named George Wheeler. He lived in the nine hundred block of Ellison Ave. but I didn’t know him from there. George had, probably, one of the first Model A Fords that was built by Henry Ford. He had painted it yellow over the regular Ford black, he kept it in excellent running condition and it was his only means of transportation. George had but one vacation destination each summer and that was a visit to the Island of Cuba. This was back before the advent of Fidel Castro. He spoke an excellent Spanish but had no relatives living there. He just had a special taste for the island life. We are all eccentric in some way.

We had several working supervisors in maintenance and one of them was a master welder by the name of Harold Massey. His father worked in the shipping department and years later, his brother was hired by Tube Turns as a Welding Engineer. Harold had spent a great part of World War II stationed in Honolulu in a naval repair unit working as a welder. All he talked about in our shop was his desire to quit Tube Turns and return to Hawaii where the easy money could be found. He finally talked a co-worker, Ferry Pence, into moving to Hawaii with him. It seemed only about six months or so before Pence returned asking for his job back. Harold Massey ended up in Tampa, Florida working for a boat repair company. Not every dream turns out the way you plan and his was a failure because the job market in Hawaii had changed. He was not a failure for, with his skill as a welder, he could find a good job anywhere. I believe he was ashamed to face his old friends.(9-07-2001)

Jiggs and Inez, along with their children, Norma Ann(no nick-name) and Butch(Louis Allen)had finally moved from the Buchter home on Ardmore Dr. and were now living at 1631 Brashear Dr. Jiggs was now working for the Pepsi Cola Co. Whitey, due to his nervous condition he acquired when serving in the CBs on Okinawa Island, could not hold down a job and was still living at home.

Carl and Robert had gone into business together and were the owners of the Gnadinger Bros. Furniture Co. located at 2122 S. Preston St. Carl and Nellie, along with their children, Carl Jr., Tom and David rented an apartment from Mom at 1027 Ellison. Robert and Pauline were still living at 1239 Wolfe Ave. Their son, Bobby, was an apprentice in the Linotype Dept. of the Courier Journal and Mary Jean was a bookkeeper for the Citizens Fidelity Bank.

Mary Catherine and Bill lived at 1144 St. Michael’s St. along with their children, Jim, Eileen and Sue Ann. Bill used his home as his office in his home building and remodeling business. Mary Catherine served as his business agent(secretary).

Mom’s house was once again completely filled with people. Ruth Bushman had divorced Al. but was still living in her apartment with her new husband, Tom Misbach. As I mentioned, Carl and Nellie and their three little ones occupied another apartment. In the front apartment lived Mom and Bernie. Also, since Stanley’s divorce from Mary Jane, he had moved back in with Mom along with his two children, Patsy and Judy. Yes, Mom was back raising children again. Stanley was now working again and seems to have started his association with the printing trades. He was then a Platemaker with the Photo Lithographing Co. Bernie was now back with the American-Standard Co. in the returned goods department.(Monk’s[Harold] adopted daughter, Linda Carol[Buchter]Moore, born, July 19, 1951)

On Stevens Ave., there were a few changes. Next door, Mrs Schurr had taken in her sister and brother-in-law, the Robert Schneiders, as boarders. Mr Schneider was a salesman for Steepletons selling pool tables. During the war, Mr. Schneider had trained attack dogs while in the Army K9 Corps stationed in Florida. At 1840 Stevens, the Sensbachs had moved out, their daughter, Nellie, had married Abe(Adrian) Eversmann and they were now living there. We were still fortunate with the fine neighbors we had living on each side of our house.(9-08-2001)(Frank Joe’s daughter, Emily Louise [Gnadinger]Sprague, born, Dec. 2, 1951)

Frankie is a big boy now and had joined together with Nibby, Rosie and Nancy at St. James School. He was about to make his First Holy Communion. This was our last little angel and we made plans to insure that his party would be one that everyone would long remember. “Long remember” is an overused expression which described a very fine party but, our memory fades as new events occur which are sometimes just as important. Anyway, Frankie probably has fond memories of that occasion. I definitely remember that this was the party where Nibby was smarting off with Bill Wantland and Bill picked up Nibby and sat his rear end down in the wash tub full of icy water, beer and soft drinks. I do believe that Nibby learned a lesson the hard way. It was the first where we could afford to buy a camera and we took some good, outside pictures of Frank’s group walking together from school, along the sidewalk and into church. There was no built-in flash unit on that camera. At this time, Nibby finally talked us into letting him spend his Communion money to buy himself a new bicycle. He was very proud, it was red I believe, and he was the envy of the neighborhood boys and girls.

Rosie was ten years old now and she was growing much faster than the other kids in her class. She was taller than most of the boys. This worried her quite a bit because her classmates were beginning to tease her about this. I told her to stand up straight and be proud that she was tall. She seemed to accept this approach and she actually began teasing the boys about their being so short. Later, she wore high heels without worrying about her height. Rosie will probably kill me for writing this. I think she had a crush on Father Robben, who was associate pastor at St. James. He was a product of St. Vincent de Paul school and was well liked by all the parishioners. Fr. Robben was later pastor of St. Mary Magdalene Church on Brook near College St., downtown, at the time that President Jack Kennedy visited Louisville in 1962 and attended Mass there.(9-09-2001)

I had a little mental quirk of my own during those days on Stevens Ave. We were being invited to the homes of the fellow students of the kids and I felt that I didn’t belong, that those families were better than mine. I know this sounds strange, but I grew up a poor boy in a poor neighborhood in Germantown and I always thought that anyone who lived in the Highlands was rich. At the time, it never entered my mind that having a lot of money alone did not make for a good relationship. All of those people were friendly and accepted us just as we were. As I said, I was the one who had a mental quirk. It was during this time that we met Father Maloney of Boys Haven fame. He was related to one of the families and was visiting them when we did. We were quite impressed later when the then Father Maloney became a Bishop in the diocese.

I have always had a quaint, quirk for, and possibly a queer use of, and I quote, a “play on words”. Maybe I should be quarantined in my quest for an additional quip. I would be the first to quickly point out and qualify that I am not a quack who would quite literally quaver in a quagmire of quaint usage of queasy words. I will not quibble or quarrel with, but I would ask you to qualify, your quiet quiz of my sanity as you watch as I quaff a quarter of a quart of quality brew, which I had hid under the quilt, to quench my queenly thirst, but I would quiver if I quit. I feel that I sail like a quadruple quartet of quail. I am quite ready to set a quota for it soon begins to taste like quinine. You may quote me that I have qualms and I quake at the thought.(9-11-2001)

With only one word, quirk, I had been set off with a full paragraph of nonsense. I first started this “play on words” while I worked in the maintenance office. Not every minute of each day was I busy. For instance, I said the word tune, Bill Sweasy would throw in loon, Jim Lorson would add, soon, and so it would continue as boon, coon, goon, June, moon, noon would be added. This is only a simple example for some words we would throw out were quite complicated.

I’m jumping ahead of myself but this is the ideal place to continue explaining my odd-ball use of “a play on words”. My friend, Dabney Taylor, who I worked with in Industrial Engineering, had a very active mind. As I mentioned previously, Dabney was the one who first named me reg-ni-dang way back in 1954(?)(Gnadinger spelled backwards). We worked together in a small office above the Forge Shop at Tube Turns. There were seven or eight of us in the department. All of this started innocently enough. I experimented with my new friends by calling out a word like I did in Maintenance. The others soon caught on to it and would add their “two cents worth”. Dabney soon expanded on this word play greatly. Pretty soon, he would put the new word in a sentence and as we furnished more, similar words, he would add the new words to the sentence also. After a short while, we all became experts at this game and it sure made for an interesting day. You would “die laughing” at some of the crazy combinations that Dab. could “come up with”. Try this with your friends or family sometime. Follow the lead of my nonsensical paragraph above. I’ll also give you a few words to play with and to get you started-----ruminate, suffocate, expectorate, investigate, debate, rebate, extenuate, hesitate, fumigate, deteriorate, determinate, separate, explicate and etc.-----”a play on words”.(9-13-2001)

My boss, Claude White, bowled on a team in a pinnage league downtown on Fourth St. Whenever he was out of town or couldn’t bowl for some reason, he would ask Jim Lorson or me to “sub” for him. I got a big kick out of this for, it would cost me nothing and I would be bowling with John Henby, Vice President of Production, and other “big shots”. Later, when all of the “big shots” deserted the team and the league had moved to Frederich’s Lanes on 7th St. Road, I became captain of the Tube Turns Team for several years. Now, I started all of this with a key word, “pinnage”. I would like to explain the difference between a pinnage league and a handicap league. Most of the pinnage leagues were designated as Thelmal 825 or 900, Frederichs 830 or 850, or, maybe, Executive Bowl 850 or 910 league. The numbers meant nothing except, the higher the number, the better the bowlers who made up each team. At the beginning of the bowling season, in an 850 league, for instance, the total of the averages of all five bowlers on the team could not exceed 850 and any substitute who filled in could not have a beginning average which would take the total over 850 combined with the other four bowlers. Each team then was equal, supposedly.

In a handicap league though, You could assemble a team of bowlers with any averages you desired, even up to or over 1000 pins. Another team in the league may have a combined total of 800 pins. This difference almost averaged out through the use of a handicap which the lower pinnage team received each game from the better bowlers and higher average members of the other team. The handicap was agreed on in advance of the season by the league board. If an 80% handicap was selected, that would mean that the better team who averaged 1000 pins would give a 160 pin handicap each game to the team who averaged 800 pins. This system was not perfect for the lower average team would still have to pick up over 40 pins per game to defeat the better team. The “kicker” here is that no one ever bowls exactly their average each game and luck begins to play a big part in the outcome.

Now that I was a student of the University of Louisville, I was eligible to purchase tickets to all of the basketball and football home games at the special reduced, student, rate. I did that and I was allowed to buy the family package. I can’t remember the exact price for six tickets but it had to be between sixty and eighty dollars. What a bargain that was. The football games were then played at the old Parkway Field on Eastern Pkwy and on the U of L campus. We like to froze to death at those games and finally stayed at home when the game day was exceedingly cold. When we finally started attending the basketball games, Freedom Hall had been built and we sat in the student section located as it is today. Bernard “Peck” Hickman was the coach then and he always put a very competitive team on the floor. Peck Hickman, beginning in 1943(?), put U of L in the game as one of the better teams in the nation. I have always thought that he was as good as or better than(gasp!) Denny Crum who was always at the top.

What a great day for the kids. We sat down together before christmas to make a family decision. Did we really want to make the sacrifice needed so that we could finally have a television set of our own. It would mean doing without most of our christmas presents that year. Maybe the kids were not really aware of how much they were actually giving up but they all voted for the sacrifice. Television sets were very expensive and you got very little for your money I believe the price of a ten or twelve inch screen in black and white only was close to three hundred dollars. You could buy a magnifying screen which fit in front of the regular screen but we didn’t and we just sat in a tight group close to the set. We bought the set through Gnadinger Bros. Furniture Co. and they gave us a slight discount. In 1951 we thought that the TV set was the greatest thing going even though the picture was not very clear and we could only pick up two channels, 3 and 11. Before this, the kids had to visit friends in the area to watch the few shows that were available to youngsters. Incidentally, we did have a christmas as usual but there were no other large gifts.