A Cottage Industry is defined as a service performed or product made in one’s own home for remuneration. It probably began hundreds of years ago when housewives, living in small cottages owned by the local squire, tatted, crocheted, or knitted garments to be bartered for the necessities of life.

Today in some parts of the world cottage industries are still flourishing. An. excellent example is the world famous fishermen’s sweaters of Aran Isle, a fishing community five miles offshore from the village of Kinvara, County Galway in Ireland.

Soft fibers of virgin Irish wool are still carded and spun as of centuries past. Natural pigment elements dye the yarn to its soft muted ivory shade. Ancestral thatched roof cottages aglow from the burning peat cradled in the fireplace protect the fishermen’s wives from the penetrating cold as the blanketing fog rolls in from the sea. It is here that they hand knit the intricate designs handed down from generation to generation.

In 1925 father, mother, sister and I became involved in our Cottage Industry.

As I set out to write this story in January 1989 -- 1925 seems so many, many years ago.

It’s as if the cobwebs in my memory, no longer geometrically spun thin silken strands that wavered in soft zephyr breezes, have become impenetrable dust laden barriers jealously guarding the secret, undisturbed for sixty years, of the closet containing family skeleton #1.

Writing the above paragraph has been cathartic. It has cleansed my memory and stirred my emotions. Now, on to the story.

As with all well run businesses we too had a “pecking’ order. Father was C. E. O. His responsibilities included research and development, production, sales, and quality control. Mother was treasurer, communications director and assisted in production.

Sister was in charge of purchasing and inventory control, production assistant. Her most important position was assistant treasurer in charge of laundering.

I was assembly line coordinator, in-house transportation director, and after receiving my driver's license at age fourteen also became a member of the delivery network. Along the way we added a non-family member to our enterprise. He volunteered his services, gratis, and dubbed himself our security officer.

Being in charge of research & development, father set out to find someone to teach him the business. In Milwaukee he contacted a man, newly arrived from Bavaria, who agreed to sell him the formulae and teach him the business. Father would stay with him for two weeks.

While in Milwaukee father also purchased the equipment necessary to start operations. It was not wise during those years to buy it in Oshkosh. Custom made brushes were a needed item. Father had been sales manager for Weems Brush Company of Milwaukee from 1899 to 1905 and now went there with his brush order.

The following human interest item should be noted:

The 1902 sales brochure cover of Weems Brush Company had a picture of a baby, in the buff, laying on a white bearskin rug. The caption said, “Our camel’s hair brushes are as soft as a baby’s skin”. The picture was of my older brother, Clarence. My sister still has a copy of that brochure.

Now, there was no turning back. Sales were made and deliveries promised. We were knowingly violating the Federal Volsteas Act Law.

It was a chilling thought to be in the same racket as Bugey Seigel, Dutch Schultz, Dandy O’Brein, and Legs Diamond those scurrilous gangsters who were gunned down in that infamous Saint Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, 1929.

-- -WE WERE IN THE ILLEGAL BEER BUSINESS-- -

Father was very discreet in choosing our customers. Only those saloons, as they were called then, that were well run by reputable owners were allowed to buy our beer. We had a good product and “played by the rules". The latter fact was very important and the reason we were allowed to operate as long as we wished to continue to sell beer.

All of our customers were out of town except Mr. Brunner who was an old friend of the family. We delivered to Ripon, Omro. Winneconne, Buttes Morts, Neenah and Menasha.

Mother, as communications director, was in charge of the telephone. On a flow chart she recorded the number of pigs or onion crates ordered and delivery date requested. It was a simple code. Pigs were quarter barrels and onion crates were cases. As treasurer she counted receipts which were all cash as we did not accept checks and all deliveries were C.O.D.

Sister carried on as assistant treasurer in charge of money laundering. Precisely at 7 p.m. each Friday night she delivered to the Oshkosh National Bank the cash receipts for the week. A certain portion was used to purchase Certificates of Deposit which were then placed in a bank safety deposit box. In those years banks were not required to keep records of C.D. purchasers.

My job as assembly line coordinator entailed keeping the bottle filling line running smoothly. Please remember I started at age ten. At one end were cases of empty bottles. Next to them sat sister who filled them with a gravity flow hose. Next sat mother who sealed the bottles with cork lined caps. I took the bottles from mother and placed them in cases and hauled them away to the storeroom. On my way back I’d bring the cases of empty bottles to keep sister supplied. Then the whole endless circle started again. Woe be it to me if sister ran out of empty bottles.

In January, 1929 father applied for a driver’s license for me. I had just turned fourteen. Police departments issued the licenses in those days to anyone fourteen years old if you could justify the need. As an example, because there was no school bus system any farm kid going to high school would qualify.

I got mine becau8e mother and I lived alone and she depended on me to drive her where necessary, since she didn’t know how to drive. True, true, true -- we were the only ones residing in our home. That is for a period of fourteen days only while father and sister traveled to Texas to close the deal on a citrus grove that the family purchased.

There was no misrepresentation of the truth. In issuing my license, the Chief of Police was well aware that Mother’s necessary trip was for me to drive our two door Essex sedan, equipped with special extra heavy rear springs, to make beer deliveries. As long as we “played by the rules”, the significance of which will be explained later, the law did not bother us.

The following are pertinent facts to why the Texas trip was made. In November l928 mother and father along with ten other couples from Oshkosh boarded a private Pullman car, destination Texas. They were guests of a company promoting land sales of citrus groves. Father, being somewhat of a con man himself, became suspicious of the deal and did not sign up to purchase.

The following month, December, the land salesmen were back to Oshkosh and called father at least once a week. He became convinced it was a good investment and signed the contract with the provision that he return to Texas and see the acreage again. This second trip sister went with him. The purchase price was $10,000 and the deal was closed.

Within a year this fabulous, no-risk investment was worthless. The land was in the flood plain of the Rio Grande River. Flooding and a killer frost the first winter wiped us out. $10,000 in 1929 is comparable to a $200,000 investment in 1989.

We were operating at full capacity by the summer of 1927, producing 500 gallons of beer weekly. Our sales were $1.000 weekly. A $500.00 C.D. was put in the safety deposit box each week, and the balance used for brewing expenses, living expenses, and father’s insatiable gambling losses.

Our neighbors were aware of our operation. Many kids in the neighborhood: Lawrence Schreiber, Ollie Holmes, Pete and Ray Volkman, and the Stroede brothers earned date money working part time as they grew up. On warm summer Saturday nights father tapped a quarter barrel of beer in our backyard and soon the neighbors working in their gardens would congregate. Good public relations was an important asset.