Ace Wisdom

It is interesting how smells identify certain periods of my life. The smell of hot, humid August mornings remind me of 3-4 years of working in the fields for Stokely Van Camp canning company “weeding beets”. You had to be 12 years old. I’d like to say it was a voluntary thing, but my mom said “you will work”. She controlled the environment. She kicked my ass out of bed, made me a fabulous brown bag lunch (remember she was German) and she filled a gallon thermos with lemonade or kool-aid. I think we left the local factory to go the the selected fields by covered truck at 7:00 AM.
Stokely contracted with farmers to grow beets and the only way to insure a healthy crop was to have “slave 12-15 year old kids” pick the weeds away from the healthy plants early in the growth cycle. So here I was, out in the hot sun, picking weeds from beet plants for 6-8 hours a day. You learned to wear long sleeve shirts and straw hats.
We were paid by the row. Each row of beets was given a value and when we finished a row, we punched a card and at the end of the week were paid accordingly. My recollection is that we made $5-7 per day or $35 per week. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in today’s dollars it is probably equivalent to $125 to $150 a week.
Actually my parents were very cunning. First, by working I couldn’t get into any trouble. Second, I was earning money which took the pressure off them to provide discretionary spending. Third, it was a great way to teach a work ethic and finally, they knew where I was.
The money was great. I was a saver but I would always keep money to spend. Cokes, potato chips, brats at Uncle Ottos, french fies at the Sunnyside Restaurant, movies, and comic books. No girls yet!
One side story. My first experience in financial management came into play. The man that managed our crew was a nice gentleman named Otto Baer. He could not read or write. So when the crews were in the fields, he would ask me questions about how to fill out required forms and eventually I took over all punching and accounting of row management. I decided that if I was going to do Otto’s job, I should be paid additional. I remember meeting with with the General Manager of the Stokely plant and making my case for more money. I think he patted me on the head and said that I was a “good boy”. No more money! Bastard! I guess I could have stopped helping Otto but he was such a nice man. So as with all my jobs in life, I was underpaid.
I watch kids sit around all summer with nothing to do except play video games, go to soccer and baseball occasionally and complain about being bored. Maybe teaching a good work ethic should be the goal.
Now ask me if I forced my kids to work in the summer! I admit I did a poor job of creating the environment where the kids knew they had to work and earn money. I wish I could go back and do that again.
The beet weeding “gig” led to working inside the Stokely factory when I turned 16. Then my pay went to $1.06 per hour. Pretty spectacular, huh!
So when I step out of my car at 7:00 AM to walk each day on hot humid mornings, it smells like “beet weeding” days. It is a good smell.
The lesson Grasshoppers is “teach your kids a strong work ethic”. It will help them navigate life travails.
Love,
Dad

Your mom and I got to spend a day at the Dells with favorite daughter Kelly along with Grant and Mitchell. Kelly rented a condo for the week and it is located right on Lake Delton. It is August and perfect lake weather.
As I sat on the second story balcony watching all the tourists enjoying the lake with their jet skis, pontoon boats, fishing boats, speed boats, and ski boats, it reminded me of Crystal Lake on holiday weekends. Memorial Day, the 4th of July and Labor Day were particularly memorable. All the amateurs come out.
I think you are supposed to go around the smaller lakes in a counter-clockwise direction. Not at Lake Delton.
You are supposed to veer right as you approach an oncoming boat. I don’t think they know that at Lake Delton. There were lots of jet skis playing chicken!
You are supposed to give any craft that you pass at least 50 feet of room. Not at Lake Delton.
Then in all this madness, you get a couple of guys that think they can drop anchor and “fish”. What fish in their right mind would bite surrounded by all the chaos?
I think you have to be 12 years old to drive any craft. Not at Lake Delton.
And then my absolute favorite, someone decides to swim in the area of the boat traffic lanes. Of course their tiny heads with the “pea brains” will be seen by a boat doing 50 mph.
Actually all this disorganized action was very entertaining and I don’t think anybody got hurt. As the water sloshed against the shoreline, for a brief moment, I thought I missed the insanity.
And then it was time to leave the water-side bungalow. I remembered why Crystal Lake Advancement Association imposed a 35 mph speed limit, continued to prohibit speed boats on Sunday and have steady patrols by the Sheboygan Sheriff Department. It is because when people go in the the water, they go NUTS!
The Dells was a fun trip. A special thanks to Kelly, Grant and Mitchell for entaining boring Grandparents for a day.
Love,
Dad

Prior to this existing heat wave, we had some great weather and it was nice to sleep with the windows open. If you listen real close during the night, you can hear freight trains rolling through the “Fox River Valley”. There is a low rumble from the diesels and of course the whistles as they near intersections.
The City Club was 2-3 blocks from the Plymouth train station. Plymouth was a stop for trains running between Milwaukee and Green Bay. There were both passenger and freight trains. In the 1940’s, all trains were steam engines. In addition to the rolling engine sounds, there was a smell that permeated the air from steam and burning coal for the engines. There was one engine that stayed near Plymouth and switched cars for the Borden Cheese company and the local Stokely Foods. A lot of switching of empty cars and loaded cars happened at night. There was no air conditioning at the City Club (and bedroom windows were always open) so that you could hear the engines during the evening hours moving back and forth on the local tracks. The silent summer nights made the trains seem like they were across the street.
The different crews that manned the trains would walk down the hill from the station to the City Club for nurishment. My Grandpa Chalk got to know the local train engineers and he got an invitation for himself and his oldest grandchild (me) to ride the local steam engine one morning as it did it’s switching of cars for businesses. I remember how high the engine was as we got up into the cab. “Firemen” were constantly shoveling coal into the firebox of the engine to get heat to change water to steam. The heat in the cab was intense. And then after all the steam pressure had built up, they would release the lever that moved the steam to pistons on the wheels. The surge of steam made the wheels spin wildly and then slowly, very slowly, the engine began to move. Chalk and I probably spent a couple of hours moving freight cars around and I remember stopping on the tressel that overlooked the main street of Plymouth (actually Mill Street). The street looked different from high up in the engine.
The best memory however was when troops from World War II would take the train from Milwaukee to come home to Plymouth. We sould stand on the station platform and watch for the light of the engine to round the bend 2-3 miles to the south and work its way to the main station and stop. There was excitement everywhere as friends and loved ones looked for that special serviceman. There was always a funny sensation as the trains arrived along the platform where we were standing. You weren’t sure whether you were moving or the train was moving.
So every night as I hear trains moving through the area, it brings back good memories. And a special thank you to my Grandpa Chalk who died way too early. He made a little kids heart pump a little faster.
The lesson! Do things with your kids now while they are young. Create good memories.
Love,
Dad

Growing up at the City Club, beer was the staple of the business. I think in the 1920’s, a nickel would buy you a 32 ounce beer and snack food. I’m guessing at those numbers but the point is that I was always around beer and beer consumption.
I know that all the bartenders would “jockey” to avoid having to go into the basement cooler to tap a new 1/2 barrel of beer. Beer was pumped from the barrels up to the spigots behind the bar. Many “free beer baths” were received when new kegs were not tapped properly because of all the pressure required to pump beer.
For me, as a kid, beer meant money. I would get paid for stocking the coolers behind the bar with bottle beer and for getting rid of the “empties”. I kept track of my time, put a required time slip into the cash register and Myrna would pay me regularly. My beer money started early.
After Grandpa Chalk died and Myrna married the assh— from Latrobe Pennsylvania named Charles Lavan Andes, beer money continued to roll. Myrna bankrolled a beer distributorship for Chuck under the Champagne Pilsner brand. That meant several trucks and regular routes delivering Champaygne Pilsner in middle Wisconsin. Champagne Pilsner was made in Lomira, Wisconsin. During the summer, I would ride with Chuck over to pick up beer inventory in cases and kegs. Chuck did very little. I was always up in the box of the truck stacking or unstacking beer cases while he was in the office settling money matters. Beer trucks get very hot in the summer. Chuck never had semis but he had big box single axle trucks. I was 11-12 years of age at the time. When we delivered beer to taverns, Chuck would buy the whole bar a drink and consume a few drinks himself. Imagine, here I am riding down the road with a drunk who was blind in one eye, delivering Champagne Pilsner beer. The pay off (beer money) was $15-25 per week. That was pretty good money for a kid at that time. Also included was all the soda (no not beer) I could drink and all the potato chips I could eat. I don’t know if the beer distributorship made any money? If it did, Chuck Andes drank it away.
Chuck eventually dropped Champagne Pilsner and took over a Weber beer distributorship. Yes, I rode “shotgun” delivering beer again. I worked my ass off. I did “hang on” to a lot of the money with a savings account.
As I got older (14-15), Bucky got a job as manager of Hickory Hills Golf Course in Chilton, Wisconsin. We would commute up to the golf course daily and my job again, was stocking shelfs with beer and disposing of empties. The empties actually dropped down a chute to a sorting table in the basement. It sounded efficient but lots of the bottles broke while dropping. I got paid based on time and I golfed free.
The big beer names when I was growing up were Blatz, Schlitz and Pabst “Blue Ribbon”. The poor man’s beer was Kingsbury made in Sheboygan. You could get “smashed” on Kingsbury and it would clean you out the next day all at an affordable price. I don’t know if Blatz is even in business anymore. I know that Champagne Pilsner and Weber beer are defunct.
So you see, beer served me well in my early days. It provided a steady steam of cash.
I guess the lesson is that I always had sources of income and the beer business played a part of that. Hey, we live in Wisconsin with all the Germans and Polocks. Beer is part of the heritage.
Love,
Dad

My reference point for interest rates on housing is 1985. Your mom and I bought our home in Appleton and the loan on the property carried a rate of 11.5%. That was a preferred rate.
During the next 10 years we refinanced 3-4 times to take advantage of lower rates reaching 5.5%. Each time we refinanced, we reduced the amount of our monthly mortgage payment and we had extra cash.
The prevalent psychology is “we were making monthly payments on our house and living okay, with lower interest rates we can afford a lot more house for the same payment”. So people buy bigger houses. In addition, creative financing has increased the monthly payment you can afford, i.e., adjustable rate mortgages that can go up or down with prime rates, interest only mortgages, and guaranteed low mortgage rates for 3-5 years before “normal rates” would take over. All this demand for bigger houses pushed prices up. At the same time, the minimum down payment for a house went from 10% to 5% to “no money down”.
The second part of the housing bubble is home equity loans. You can get home equity money at low rates but you lose the amount of equity you carry in your home. My observation is that appraisals are really loose, allowing people to borrow lots of money easily. Historically, if you borrowed up to 80% of the value of your home, you were maxed out. No longer. You can in some cases borrow 120% of the appraised value of your home.
Our U.S. economy has stayed buoyant because people have been tapping into home equity.
Now the other side. What goes down, must come up. Interest rates are going up and it looks like short term rates are headed for 4-5% as measured by the Fed. Rate. That means rates on home equity loans are moving to 6,7 and 8% at some time in the next year, or two or three. Adjustable rate mortgages will force people to make higher monthly payments as rates rise. Less people will want to move to bigger houses because they cannot afford the monthly payments. People that lose jobs will not be able to afford their existing large monthly mortgage payments. Value of homes will start to slide down because there will be less buyers wanting new homes.
So what do you do? What do you do?
Assuming you own your home and are comfortable, lock in the lowest interest rate you can for the whole term of the loan. If it is a 30 year mortgage, pay a slightly higher interest rate but know that it cannot go higher while you own the home.
Resist home equity loans. If home values ever start to fall, you could end up with a mortgage coupled with a home equity loan that exceeds the value of your home. That means your property equity is 0 or less. As an example, you borrow $125,000 with various loans and then home values drop. Suppose you can’t make monthly payments for whatever reason and the bank forecloses on your home. The home sells at auction for $100,000. You still owe the bank $25,000 after your home is taken away from you.
Personally Grasshoppers, prudent financial advice is to maximize the equity in your home by paying down the bank loan over time and resist taping into the home equity. There are exceptions to the rule, but they need to be very compelling.
I do know that home values are very high (over inflated), people are over extended with their monthly payments, real estate appraisals are very loose (in some cases ridiculous), job security seems to be a fleeting dream and interest rates are headed up. Those are all the ingredients to pop the real estate bubble. Don’t get caught in the splash.
These are interesting times!
Love,
Dad

Myrna and Chalk had purchased vacant land on the Mullet River for Elmer Andrews to “farm”. Adjacent to the open garden were the backyards of many homes from a nearby street. One of the backyards belonged to Helen and Elmer Olson. Helen worked in the kitchen area of the City Club. She was rather robust in size and when she gave you a hug you would disappear into the “abyss” of womanhood. She was a nice lady.
This story is about brother Jack. He was 3 years younger than me and my guess is that he was 6-7 when we were invited to stop at the Olsons after attending to the garden. “Stopping by” meant lemonade and maybe a sandwich. As we walked from the Andrews garden into the Olsons backyard, there were several cages of rabbits. Yep, furry, pink eyed white little darlings with the long floppy ears. As Helen Olson greeted us, she showed us the rabbits and indicated that they loved to eat grass. We were welcome to put blades of grass through the openings in the wire cage and we could watch them munch. Her warning was that we should never, never, never put our fingers into the cage because rabbits have sharp teeth and it was dangerous.
Brother Jack allegedly took after my mother’s German side of the family, the Stillers. They weren’t good listeners. There was also a stubborn streak and “bullheadedness”. Jack stubborn? No?
You can see this coming. Everybody went into the house except Jack and I and we continued to feed the rabbits grass. Then Jack did what he was told not to do, he put his finger into one of the holes in the wire cage to touch one of the rabbits. The rabbit went for the finger and bit so hard his sharp teeth went through the end. That is not then end of the story. The rabbit wouldn’t let go and Jack was screaming at the top of his lungs. The Olsons came running out of the house and when they saw the rabbit had clamped on the finger, they opened the top of the cage, grabbed the rabbit behind it’s neck hard enough that he let go.
After lots of blood, tears and stitches at the doctors office, the finger got bandaged and obviously Jack survived.
Years later, Jack got a job feeding mink at a ranch outside of Plymouth. Instuctions were to never put your fingers into the cage. If you think rabbits grab on when they bite, mink are noted for being nasty little bastards. You guessed it, Jack figured out a way to get his fingers in the wrong spot while feeding and one locked onto his finger. Again he survived.
I think Bill Cosby got it right. “All children are brain damaged. What else would explain some of the things they do”. Brother Jack was always strong minded and did what he wanted. I always blamed the rabbit incident on bullheadedness. Maybe he was just being a kid.
So Grasshoppers, listen closely when someone gives you advice and don’t put your fingers where they do not belong.
Love,
Dad

As the heat of summer fills the air and as I spend huge amounts of time picking the weeds from around our flower beds (yeah, right), I am reminded of my first garden experience.
Elmer Andrews (my dad’s grandfather, my great-grandfather) came to live at the City Club with his wife Addie May in the early 40’s. Addie May died in April, 1944. Elmer had been a sheep herdsman and farmer for years. I guess Elmer, living out his years at the City Club with nothing to do was not good. Myrna and Chalk decided a good way to keep Elmer “busy” was to buy a piece of property where Elmer could grow vegetables to be used by the family. It was located on North avenue in Plymouth along the Mullet River, 6-8 blocks from the City Club. There were no buildings on the lot and it was very, very deep. It was bordered by the river on the farthest side from the road.
We could walk to the “garden lot” from the City Club by cutting through the cemetary. In the spring the lot got roto-tilled and the planting began. I don’t remember planting the seeds but I do remember going to the lot on a regular basis to pick weeds. Eventually we harvested the potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beans and I think they planted bad stuff like kohlrabi, broccoli, and cauliflower. I think there was a water line sticking up from the ground with a faucet so that some plants could be watered manually.
The story takes a turn because Elmer turned out to be a very proficient gardener. The idea originally was to keep him busy and also enjoy modest amounts of different vegetables. His daughter-in-law, Myrna, would describe Elmer trudging off from the City Club to harvest from their garden and then return with prodigious amounts of tomatoes. “Farmers of old” would pick tomatoes and “can” them for winter use in chili’s and tomato dishes. It started that way but eventually Elmer was bringing home so many tomatoes that Myrna’s comment was “if I saw him bring one more tomato down the hill coming from the garden, she was going to scream”. The good thing about the City Club is that you could turn it into a marketplace. Myrna’s solution was to take the tomatoes out to the bar and give them away to patrons. Talk about a win/win solution. Elmer was busy. Tomatoes were good to eat fresh. Customers got free tomatoes. Life was good.
The lot with the garden eventually got sold to City Club bartender Roy Koebel. Roy built a new house on the lot and lived there for many years.
If someone offers me fresh tomatoes, I have this mental picture of Elmer walking down the hill on Stafford street to the City Club with his harvested tomatoes (or is it tomahtoes).
My lesson for the day Grasshoppers is “never underestimate the potential size of your harvest”. Or, “if your harvest is abundant, share it”. Or, “as you sow, so shall you reap”. Or, …..
Love,
Dad

No, this is not about blonde, voluptuous “trophy” girl friends or wifes. It is about excelling at something so well that they award you a medal or a trophy (a sculptured piece of wood with a figurine mounted on top). The trophy goes on a shelf to gather dust and testifies that for one brief moment in time, you were the best.
For those of you that haven’t read son Paul’s blog, he did get to witness his dad getting a hole-in-one on the third hole at Whispering Springs in Fond du lac. There has always been this emptiness in discussions with other golfers that at age 65 I never achieved a hole in one. I had shots that rimmed the cup or stopped just short, but it just never happened.
The emotion of achieving a hole in one is really kind of hollow. You hit the ball, it goes in the hole and then you move on to the next hole. I think Paul got more excited than I did. It was nice to get that blemish off my record. Now I can brag too.
I remember my brother Jack and I did a lot of ice-skating until I was about 14. We had “racer” skates with long blades. My dad would take us to various skating meets and we would compete in different age groups for short sprint races up to one-quarter mile. Jack won a race in Fond du lac. He got a trophy and I didn’t. That trophy sat on top of our bookcase at the City Club for years. The tough part was all the bullshit humiliation that went with the kidding that Jack was the only one to ever have won a trophy. I will say it bugged me.
So wouldn’t you know, it took until I had graduated from college and bowled in the Allis-Chalmers Engineers Bowling League that I finally got a trophy. It was harder earned than Jack’s because it was for bowling 167 average for the year. It was bigger that Jack’s. So for a while, I put that trophy in every prominent place I could find in our house and Shelby kept putting it some place less obtrusive. For “one season in time”, I had achieved a semblence of excellence and I could prove it.
And then over the years I went on to win some 20 golfing trophies for various things. The largest trophy was for some insignificant Company outing. So slowly all my trophies have found boxes in the basement and we fall over the boxes everytime we look for something. Really important trophies, huh?
So this last Christmas, we had a “white elephant” game where everyone brought a gift that they really didn’t want. I was going through boxes in the basement and found that first bowling trophy. It says on the plaque “C. Andrews, 167 Average”. It would be my gift. Well the white elephant game allows multi-exchanges of gifts so that if someone sees a white elephant gift that to them would be special, they can claim it. Grandson Collin claimed my trophy because he is in a bowling league with his dad and wouldn’t you know his first initial is the letter “C”. So on a shelf somewhere in his bedroom, there is a trophy that says “C. Andrews, 167 Average”. How special is that?
My hole-in-one is kind of like that trophy. You always want one because of all the stories you hear and it seems like it would validate your life as a golfer. After you’ve put that “1” on your scorecard there is some kidding and slowly, like that trophy, it gets put in to mothballs and people go on to whatever else there is in life that is more important: which is just about everything.
But for one moment in time, I got a magnificent shot that I will remember for ever. Hot damn! I wonder what box in my brain I will bury that memory.
Thanks Paul for attesting to the occurance.
Love,
Dad

The rats were real! Even though I never saw a rat while living at the City Club I knew the little bastards were there. You could feel it.
My Uncle Bob (Bucky’s brother) now lives in Florida/North Carolina recalls the rats. His story is too precious to lose forever so I am going to copy his e-mail verbatim recalling an attempt to catch a rat.
You can’t dream this stuff up. This is Uncle Bob’s story.
“Even though I’ve been gone many years, your story about your experiences in the basement of the City Club brought back memories as though they happened yesterday. Once you’ve lived in the City Club it will be part of you forever.”
“The bartenders Roy Koebel, Bob Awe, Harry Strobel, and me had seen a rat in the basement several times. This is how I remember the exiting actions that took place. Maybe if someone sat in the furnace room and the lights were turned off for a few moments, there was a chance the rat could be seen and shot when the lights came back on. A hell of an idea. There were no immediate volunteers but Roy said it wouldn’t bother him sitting in the dark so our plans were set up. Roy would get comfortable on a box in the furnace room, facing the coal pile with his “22” (I don’t remember if he had a gun or not). When he was set, I would go upstairs and turn off the lights for a time. When the time was up I would turn the lights back on and Roy would have a chance to see and kill the rat. It didn’t quite work out that way.”
“After about ten minutes I turned the lights back ond and waited for the shot. Instead, I heard a lot of hollering and commotion going on downstairs. When I got to the furnace room I found Roy with both his hands clutching his leg and crotch area with death grips. He was helpless in this position. He had a death grip on the rat and his pants leg and since a rat has teeth he wasn’t about to let loose to take his pants off. A bite in this location could have been fatal!! I loosened his belt and pants and we carefully removed Roy’s pants while Roy kept his security grip on the pants and the rat. Once the pants were off, the death grip on the rat had solved this rat problem. When the lights had come on the rat was near and headed for the nearest hiding place which happened to be Roy’s pants leg. Nobody ever volunteered to do this again”.
Thank you Robert Jack. Great Story!
Love,
Dad

The people that passed through the City Club were always interesting. A particular “roomer” for a year or two was named Victor Toniello. With a name like that, he had to be Italian. He was built like your local pizza shop owner. Short. Rotund. Happy.
There were nights that we would open our apartment to him and he would cook up a spagetti entree with some special sauce. His offerings were spectacular and without calories.
Victor wasn’t exactly surrounded by good looking “chicks” but he had some Greek friends in Sheboygan. They had a cousin, Maria, living in Greece that wanted to get to the United States. Victor married her sight unseen. Maria was also a little rotund and happy. They did have one child Tony that became good friends with brother Jerry Lee.
Now to my story. Maria would work at the local Stokely Canning Company in the summer. She would operate the machines that placed peas into a can from a hopper and then capped the can off. Her job was to make sure that peas maintained a constant flow into the cans. Since peas were always flowing into the hopper, the job was mostly visual checks to make sure peas were dropping properly. It got a little more tricky as a batch of peas would be ending. She would climb to the top of the hopper and push peas down that “were hanging” up on the sides of the hopper. At the bottom of the hopper was a slicer gate that was extremely sharp. You guessed it. Maria got her index finger down too low in the hopper and the finger got sliced off at the second knuckle.
Because it was a noisy environment, it took a minute or two before anybody could hear Maria scream. By the time people realized what happened, several thousand cans of peas had been processed. One of those cans contained a finger.
Stokely as a matter of normal procedure immediately cooked the peas in pressure cookers after canning. By the time they analyzed the accident, Stokely decided that even the potential cans that held the severed finger would be cooked. So at least the consumer that purchased the can containing the finger couldn’t be harmed by bacteria. Then they opened thousands of cans of peas and never found the finger.
My story is that some poor, unsuspecting domestic Goddess like Debs would open the can and freak out (or breakout into an uncontrollable laughter). If Stokely had been responsible, they would have isolated all production from that day and disposed of it. I really don’t know what they did.
This was the 50’s. McDonalds and Wendy’s didn’t exist. Litigation was not a prevalant as it is today. Concern was about health, not money.
Maria was a sweet lady. She recovered. She had trouble pointing out directions after that (I couldn’t resist that).
Somebody literally might have had “finger food” for dinner.
I keep trying to make this blog a “teaching”. I guess my teaching here is “keep your fingers out of places they shouldn’t be”.
Love,
Dad