 TRANSCRIPT OF Interviewer: Rita Pearce, a graduate student of the Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University. Interviewer: Today is Monday, December 1st, 1997. The time is 2:52 p.m. I am Rita Pearce, a graduate student of the Elliott School of Communication at The Wichita State University. This afternoon I am interviewing Dorothy Koelling, a resident of Larksfield Place. Larksfield Place is a retirement community in Wichita, Kansas. This interview is taking place in the Resource Center, and it is being conducted as a part of the I, Witness to History program. Mrs. Koelling, could you tell us a little bit about your childhood, please. Koelling: All right, I was born on my grandfather’s farm in 1913. My, parents had a farm not too far from grandpa’s farm. Umm, grandpa ran in the Cherokee Outlet land run in 1893—that’s the way he got his farm, and my birth was my mother’s second child. So, grandpa’s household was, was a little better equipped, and so forth, than my folks, so that’s the reason they came to Grandma’s house to, for me to be born, and I guess it was a big deal because all of the uncles and aunts and—were around waiting for the birth, and, anyway, we, I, I grew up. Until I was 5 years old I was on the farm. Then my dad and mother moved to Blackwell, Oklahoma, when I was five and I entered school there, and for the rest of my life, I lived in Blackwell. Went to high school and that’s where I met my husband. We lockered next to each other in the, and I thought he was just a big, fat farm kid, but he was a good one—a good one and, so we were married in 1932. And, moved to Wichita in 1936. Now, do you want more about my young, young life? Interviewer: Yes. Koelling: Ok. I, well, what more I can tell you about was I was in school, and I, I don’t know of anything more. Interviewer: Where did you go to school? Koelling: In the grade school in Blackwell. It was central, right close to downtown. Blackwell wasn’t a very big town. It was like 13,000 I think, and around 1921 it grew to about 120, I mean 20,000. And, it was the farm community—it was surrounded by farms, so I can remember our house wasn’t too far from downtown, so my dad would park the car downtown and then walk home, and we would walk back downtown after supper, and so we had a good parking place to watch the people go by. We’d sit in our car and usually, he’d park close to, oh, the drugstore, and I can’t remember the name of the drugstore anymore, but about half way through the evening, I got an ice cream cone. Dad would bring the ice cream out to the car. We just sat and that was the big—that was the entertainment on Saturday. I don’t know whether any body else did that or not, but we loved to watch. And, Dad was in—he sold real estate and farms so he liked to be downtown, because he’d—the farm people would come downtown to shop in the stores. And, he’d get to see, make contact with a lot of people that might—it was just a social thing, and, big entertainment. We didn’t have TV. We didn’t have radio. Didn’t have anything else. We did have movies, but, they cost money, and, of course, we went into the depression in 1929 when I was about, oh, I guess I was about 14, 15 during the depression. Interviewer: You were born in 1913? Koelling: But, I remember the bank holiday, you know, and I didn’t understand all that, but I thought it was terrible that people could have their money in the bank, and not be able to get to it. They just shut the banks down, and if you had money in the bank, you just couldn’t get to it. Interviewer: How did people go on and live when they couldn’t get into the bank? Koelling: Well it was difficult, very difficult. It wasn’t too long—didn’t last too long. I think it was like a week, but, and the people were in that day and age were very ingenious. They figured—they either had gardens or they knew how to can their food, and, and make do—very difficult. But that’s about the only thing I remember about my young childhood. I went to church, I’ve told Terry this story and Kate—about how I became a Christian when I was 9 years old. My little sister, my baby sister was born the day before I was 9 years old. She was born on October 15th, and my 9th birthday was on October 16th. So, and I went to Sunday School, and I had a Sunday School teacher I loved, and, so, my folks were busy at home with the new baby, and I went to Sunday School. They always—Mom got me up and dressed me up for Sunday School, and I went to Sunday School, and after that our teacher reserved a pew in church, and we all went to church with her. And, in those days, it was the Christian Church in Blackwell, and they always issued the invitation to come forward if you wanted to join—if you wanted to become a Christian. And, I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t go down there and join, so I did—9 years old, and, then, they made arrangements for my baptismal, in the next week, so my mother got me all dressed up in little white cotton socks and white dress and I was baptized, and did it all on my own self (laughs). So, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I just did it. Interviewer: What was the response of your folks when you were doing all that? Just that it was fine? Koelling: Oh, they thought it was just fine. I really got some good training from my, Mrs. Brown was her name, she was my Sunday School teacher, and I thought, well, you know we grow up and we never know what, what influence different people have on our lives, and that was just a good influence. So . . . Interviewer: What happened to her in later life? Koelling: I have no idea. I just don’t know. I probably asked—you know, kids that age go wherever their friends go. If you have a group of girl friends and kids that like to be together, you’ll go wherever they go. And, I don’t even remember anymore (clears throat) what, where I went. I went to—I know I had some good friends at the Methodist Church, and they had, they had, Epworth reading on Sunday after—Sunday Evening, and that’s where a lot of my friends—that’s where my, my boyfriend, J. T. Koelling, went to that Epworth reading. So, a bunch of us young people would go to places like that, you know. So I lost track of Mrs. Brown, but . . . Anyway. Interviewer: Do you remember any interesting events that took place over your childhood years that stand out? Koelling: Oh, actually, I know that I was in—I was kind of, they used to have evangelists, evangelists come into town, and they would set up a tent. I remember they had a vacant lot just across the street from my, from the Christian Church that I joined, and they had, and, I babysat. People that would come to the tent meeting, they called them—they could bring their little children. Anyway, I was at that age where I could, I could—they would just turn the basement in—they had cribs, little baby beds, and all kinds of equipment down there, and they would get young kids. They were supervised by older people, but we would help, and I did that when they had it every night, because I loved holding the babies, and playing with the babies. And I remember this one couple brought this sweet, little baby that (laughs) they’d bring soda crackers to leave in case she got hungry, or to pacify her. And, I loved those soda crackers (laughs). I thought (laughs) they tasted so good so, I thought that was—anyway, that was—and I was intrigued by those tent meetings. They were so emotional and I think that turned me against that kind of religion. I didn’t like—I didn’t like all that hubbub. So, in later years, I kind of shied away from that kind of—I like to hear ministers that had something to say, but I didn’t—I didn’t need all that emotion. So that had an effect on me, too. That was kind of the old fire-and-brimstone kind of religion that I didn’t agree with. Interviewer: About how often did the tent shows come through? Koelling: Oh, they would, they would last about a week. And, of course, it was to get more members to join your church, and, it happened, but I—and they would be just like a year, once a year they’d have those tent meetings. Interviewer: Do you remember the first day that you were taken to school? Koelling: Yes, I remember my (laughs) this story my Dad used to tell. he went—he took me to school and it was raining. Had an umbrella. I remember, I can almost see it now, he was—he took me to school, and, it was my first day. And, the teacher met us, and then Dad left, and I stayed at school, and I loved it. I loved all of it—just loved it. And then the next day, Dad said, "Get up. It’s time to get your clothes on and go to school." And I said, "I don’t want to go. I went yesterday. So I don’t need to go today (laughs). And he said he had to almost whip me to get me to go to school. Well, I’d done that yesterday—I didn’t want to do that today. I got my toys out and started to play. Anyway, I must have been a character, but, I—and that was the Lincoln School. Then we moved from—we lived closer to town—I changed schools to the Central School, which was closer to downtown. That’s where I spent the next six grades. Interviewer: Do you remember very much about your grandparents? Koelling: Yeah, I do because Grandma was a weaver—she uh—they came from Ohio and, and the, life on the prairie was pretty rough. So they didn’t—they made do with lots of—they didn’t throw anything away, so I remember going over there to Grandma’s house when I was a kid, and, she had a little room where she kept the loom, and the whole countryside would, would, save their old clothing and they’d have gatherings at Grandma’s house and cut up all these clothing and wind the strips—make balls of the, material they—that she used in the weaving. And, I know that she always had those white peppermints with the three Xs on it, and, she needed them for her digestion. She used them for medicinal purposes. We kids, we’d—she’d hide ‘em for us—from us, but we’d find ‘em sometimes and eat those peppermints, and I remember that loom room was—the loom was very interesting to me, but she, she would weave the rug material in 36 inch strips, and then the strips would be sewn together, and that’s what they used for their carpet on their floors, and the old floors were, were cold, so at the end of every threshing—after they would thresh their wheat, they would rip up the old carpet, take it outside and beat it, and take out the old straw, throw it away, and then after the new straw came, after they threshed the wheat, then new, clean straw, they would put that down on the floor, and then the new carpet, the carpet that they’d beat the dust out of as good as they could. Then they would tack around the edge, around the edge they would tack that new carpet—fresh carpet down on the floor. Well, Mom said it would take a while, because it was—after you would walk on it, it would break the straw down enough that it would, but that’s what they used for their flooring. Interviewer: What was underneath the straw—what kind of floor? Koelling: Just wood, just wood boards, but it was cold and they didn’t have any new kind of insulation or anything, and, of course, that one room, I remember, it was the biggest. the bedrooms were around it. At first, when they first ran in the race, my grandpa was the first one to build a shack, a house with two rooms in it. They were—I have the dimensions of them someplace. But they were just two rooms, and that’s where this carpet, Grandma would weave the carpet, and that’s—and then, of course, everybody else around the countryside would save their rags and she would weave the cloth and make rugs. Interviewer: Did they pay her for those? Or did she just do it? Koelling: Oh, yeah. No, that was—I don’t have any idea. It wouldn’t be much, but then she earned—she earned her money, a little money that way. And I remember, I remember riding in the buggy with Grandpa and Grandma to go to the Mercantile to take—they’d take the eggs and, maybe eggs was all that I remember, but, and then she’d trade for other—like flour and sugar, and take her eggs in and the Mercantile would pay her in goods instead of money. That’s how that word trade came about. Interviewer: Do you remember the other set of grandparents? Koelling: not as much because I wasn’t that close to ‘em. They lived in, oh, they lived—they started out in Lawrence. Well, they were on the farm around Norden, which is a little town close to Deer Creek. And they, but my grandpa had poor health, and, they moved to Lawrence, so some of the younger brothers—my father’s younger brothers and sisters could go to school at KU, and they went through KU, and they were just on a different level than my mother’s farm family. And, but I loved—I thought she was so pretty, my grandma Lyon was so pretty. And, Grandpa had asthma, so he scared me a little bit because he had to use the atomizer thing every once in a while to clear his lungs and throat, so I just stayed away from him. Isn’t that interesting how you’ve grown up with visions of people that you should be close to, but then you just don’t. You stay away from them, but later, in later years, I—he was a nice man and he was a wonderful carpenter. He built houses around there, but, it was always a big deal whenever I got to see them, because they would come from—and it was a big deal to travel from Lawrence down to—which it was about 150 miles. In those days, that was a big deal. Interviewer: How long did it take them? Koelling: Well, they’d have to—they—I had an uncle living in Newton, Kansas. So they would come from Lawrence down to Newton, and then from Newton down to Blackwell. So it was a—it was a big deal in those days to have them visit. Interviewer: So, did it take them days, did it take them. . . ? Koelling: No, they, they would spend some time in Newton, and then, it was like an all-day trip. Interviewer: Well, after you were married—let’s go back for just a minute here and talk about the technology that you remember as you were growing up, such as the telephone, and well, you know, like electricity, and that kind of thing and some of the experiences. Koelling: OK. Well, I remember we did have electricity, but I had lots of aunts and uncles that lived out on the farm that didn’t and they had coal oil lamps, and it was always kind of mysterious to me, to go visit on the farm, because all the chores and everything were done before dark. They had lanterns that the farmers would carry. Then they’d come in the house and they’d have supper, but it—and then, my one uncle, Uncle Estridge, I know he—I can remember very well—now this was mysterious to me, too. After supper he would read out of the Bible and then my, I had two or three cousins that were quite a bit older than I, but everybody turned around and knelt by the chair they were sitting on, and Uncle Estridge would have a prayer before we went to bed. That was just the ritual they did. As I got older and thought back about those people, why they were so religious—they had to have a faith to believe in to get though the hardships that they had to endure. They had to have that faith and they kept that up and they really relied a lot on their faith to get through all the hardships they had to endure, and that’s the reason they were so religious, I think. I analyzed it later. Anyway, and then, of course, we moved to Blackwell when I was five and we had electricity (laughs) and I remember the big deal it was. Of course, I grew up taking a—the folks would bring in the big tub, big metal tub, put in the kitchen, in the middle of the kitchen floor, and heat the water on the stove and it was a big deal to have a bath on Saturday night. Gosh, you just look back and think, "How the –did I really go through that?" It—and I was the youngest so I got—Mamma would bathe me first. But I mean they would just add hot water to the--they wouldn’t throw the water out each time, so you bathed in somebody else’s dirty water. And shining the shoes, I remember Dad—all the shoes had to be polished, but then we moved to town, and I remember what a big deal it was for them to fill the bathtub and put me in it. I was five years old and, oh, we just thought that was the most wonderful thing you could ever have—a bathtub—a real bathtub, and then all you had to do was just pull the plug on it and it drained out. So, isn’t that funny that—I guess you’d call that "simple abundance." But it was—it was wonderful. But, we did have—we had electricity but it was—it seemed to me it was just a light bulb hanging down out of the middle of the ceiling. And I don’t think we had—we didn’t have nothing—not any posh. Dad always seemed to get in on "deals" one way or another and how he found this—it was a player piano that wasn’t working, but it, manually you could make it work. And, it had, it came out of a who-knows-what, probably a saloon or something because it had something like colored glass on the front of it and, but it was a piano. And he probably got it for nothing someplace—just hauled it off, but anyway that was my Dad. He was always bringing something home that he thought could be used, and, I remember my mother grew up—my aunt was quite an accomplished pianist. They, in fact, she gave piano lessons around the countryside, and, she and my mom were about two years apart. And, looking back on the whole—my upbringing—I can remember a little competition between those two sisters. They were the youngest in the family, and, I just remember, but I think Mamma, she just kind of played by ear, but she—it was fun to listen to her, and I kind o’ picked up a little bit of it from her, too. But, life was nice in town. It was a lot easier in town. Interviewer: Do you remember the first time you heard a radio? Koelling: Oh, yeah. I was about—let’s see the first time I was out at my old—it was not—it was my uncle—it was my dad’s uncle. But Uncle Lou Sawyer lived down on the farm and he raised horses—kept stallions. And, I remember we’d go out there—that’s the place we went every Thanksgiving. Everybody would go out there because they, they had a big house, and the men would go hunting, and then they would go out—Uncle Lou had a big barn, big barns—and that’s where he kept the stallions and the kids were not allowed out in that part of the—at all, but, and he had a radio that was the funniest looking thing. It had three knobs and you had to get—it was one of the premier radios apparently, ‘cause you—there wasn’t anything good. It was just—it was just something—it was, you could hear. It was just something so new that it was just kind of interesting, but you didn’t—and then later, when J. T. and I were married in 1932, my folks had one of the old radios and I remember thinking, "Golly, it’d be so nice." I’d go out to Mamma’s and she’d be cleaning, and have the radio on and I thought, "Gosh, I could clean better, too, if I had a radio," but that was in 1932, and we just couldn’t afford to have one. But we got one, oh, a little bit later. We moved to Wichita in 1936, so we would’ve had one after we moved up here. Interviewer: So when you came to Wichita, what were you doing here? Koelling: Well, J. T., that was really in the depression. The depression started in 1929. That was the bank holiday, and then ’31, ’32, right in the middle of the depression—that’s when we were married, in ’32, and, he—J. T. was a year older than I so he came to Wichita for business college, and, then he went—his first job was with the ice company, which was a big deal. But then right soon after that, the first electric refrigerators came on the market. Well, that put the ice companies out of business, just about, and they had a creamery in connection with the ice company, so they put him doing bookkeeping for the creamery, and that’s his first job, and that’s when we were married. Well, actually it wasn’t long after that ‘til the creamery—‘til they went broke, and they were in the hands of the receiver, and J. T. didn’t get his wages for quite a while, so the only place we were—I was pregnant with my first baby. and, let’s see (laughs). I remember (laughs), we had all the old ladies in Wichita—in Blackwell counting their fingers because I was—I had one period after we were married, and then I was pregnant, so ten months after we were married, I had Connie, and, it was interesting because, here we were, J. T. with a pregnant wife, out of a job, during the depression, and his folks had moved in town from the farm and bought this big six-bedroom house that Grandma Koelling wanted to turn in to a rooming house. She had six bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom at the end of the hall, so she let us—she rented us two of those rooms, and kept books on what she got out of them ordinarily, so we had a place to live. We turned one room into a, kind of a kitchen-dining room and the other into a bedroom, and, my folks lived our on the f—out on a suburban place. Well, when we were married, J. T.’s Dad still had the farm and he gave us a choice of $50 or a cow. We could have our choice—the cow or $50, so we decided since my folks lived on the—in the suburban, that we would buy—that we would take the cow, and give it to my folks to keep so every time that cow became pregnant—became fresh, they called it— she would be—she would have lots of milk so my folks would bring us a half a gallon of milk every other day, and then Mamma would, save up the cream, and churn the butter and once in a while she’d bring us a little bit of fresh butter and then she would bring us some eggs and we got—we didn’t have any money! We didn’t have any money, so we were, we were friends with the grocer in town, so he gave us a $10 grocery book that had little tickets in it, like 10 cents, 15 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents—it was a 10—it all amounted to $10. We would use that grocery book—it would last us a month. We bought nothing but cocoa—a can of cocoa, and bread. Mamma would bring us butter once in a while, so we’d kind of be stingy with the butter, so for breakfast every morning, we made toast. We had this funny little toaster on this kind of a funny little hot plate and we made our toast and made cocoa. That was our breakfast for a long time, and then, we just struggled. That was really hard times! Interviewer: What did you do for lunch something for supper? Koelling: Well, we, well, you could get things—I remember beef steak would be on sale once in a while for 10 cents a pound, so I’d buy a little bit of beef steak. We’d have meat and then, I’m sure that our folks, you know, it was so hard that I kind of blocked that out of my head, so I—it’s been, what 60, 60-some years, so I kind of forgotten a lot of it, but I’m sure our folks wouldn’t let us starve, but, we had our, we could use our money, like I say, things were cheap. It was all in—relative—everything was relative, if you could buy—and I think the bread, it was 5 cents a loaf. Um-hmm. So the $10 grocery book would last. We just made it last with our milk, and Mamma would make cottage cheese I remember. They were awful good to bring us things, and I remember a "keep"—J. T. made it was kind of like an orange crate that he made to put outside our window. We’d raise the window up and that’s where we’d keep things cold, out in this little box that he made—window box, they called it. That’s where we kept, you had to be real careful. The temperature got to freezing, we had to bring things inside because it’d freeze out there, but most of the time it was cool enough, but it kept ‘em just about right. Interviewer: What did you do with that when it was summertime and it was very hot? Koelling: Well, let’s see, I don’t think—Connie was born in January and it was still wintertime, and I think by the next summer that we had a job and moved out. Moved into a little house. We, and I remember, $8 a month for a little house, and so we lived there—we didn’t have much furniture. We had different relatives over in both sides of the family that had furniture that they didn’t need. I know there was an old—they called it a couch—was a couch, and, then somebody else had a rocking chair, and we had this—and then I remember we, we had Thanksgiving dinner at our house, in November of that next year. And, for a table, we had sawhorses that J. T. either made or got someplace, and we got these 8 x 10 boards that were like 14 feet long. We put them over the saw-horses, and made this—and we had benches that I don’t even remember how we, how we sat people—folding chairs, maybe. Anyway, our family—we had it at our house and they all, of course, helped and brought food, but I remember (laughs) J. T. felt obligated to ask Grandpa, my old grandpa to return thanks for our Thanksgiving dinner, and I can still hear him—he, this, it was, it just sounded like, and we didn't have carpet on the floor, so, his steps were pretty heavy, and I can remember hearing him walk down to ask Grandpa, who was hard of hearing, "Grandpa, would you please return thanks (laughs)? But, oh, my goodness, what, what experiences! Interviewer: What happened later on after you and J. T. had been married and a lot of children came along, J. T. had found some other jobs? Koelling: Well, his first job after he left the ice company while we were struggling so without work, he heard of a—well, there was a—I remember how this, how we were just devastated because he missed getting a job at the flour mill for—it was an accounting job. That’s what he was trained to do—to keep books and be an accountant. For $50 a month, and he missed that. By the time he went to interview for it, it was already gone, so we were just—and then he heard by the grapevine someplace that the Globe Oil Company who was a big, big deal in our town. The Globe Refinery was a big deal, and they needed somebody he’d heard, so, he called, went out there, and they needed somebody for a shorthand and typing, and the switchboard, which was a woman’s work, but he went out to interview, and it was $80 a month. Oh, my goodness, we—and he, he had to, he was, J. T. was awful good at typing, but he had to brush up on shorthand, so, he got, he got a teacher over at the high school to bone him up on shorthand, and then he went out to interview for that job and got it. I mean we just thought we were really doing OK—got that job. So that, things began to look up after that a little bit. And, I remember, we had this, we needed a—I kind of think we heard about two little houses being for sale for $1800. They were in a man’s estate and I think Grandpa Koelling loaned us—we had to mortgage—and I think Grandpa Koelling signed the mortgage with us, and I remember how hard we worked at painting and paperhanging in getting those little—and then the one little house we could rent. It was on the back of the lot, and we rented that little—and I remember how we just thought we were just doing pretty good—being land owners and we could rent that little house, and that, but we needed—we had this little baby, and I think by that time probably Jan was on her way. She was two years later, Jan was. But we needed a washing machine—we didn’t have any—we couldn’t wash. so, and we had to have a car to get back and forth. I remember $125 is what we paid for a little ’28, 1928 coupe that was in good condition, and but we had to make payments on the car and the washing machine. Ten dollars a month for each one of them. Ten dollars a month for the car and ten dollars for the washing machine. And, we had to make those payments, but I mean we kept track of every penny, and didn’t spend money on anything that we didn’t have to have. Interviewer: So did J. T. stay at the oil company? Koelling: Yeah, he was with the Globe until 1936 when they moved. The Globe Company moved their corporate offices to Wichita—that’s how we got to Wichita, ‘cause he was with the Globe, and he was studying for the C.P.A exam, even before we moved to Wichita, and, no, he was studying, he was studying, taking a course, a correspondence course with LaSalle University, and he would get up early in the morning while it was cool, and no distractions, and study. And, they would send him these lessons, and made really good grades and graduated from LaSalle Extension University. And then when we moved to Wichita, he started studying for the CPA exam. And, his boss, Frances Yaley at the, Globe Company said you had to have experience with a CPA firm to get your certificate at that time, so Francis, after he passed the exam, he said, "You can’t get your certificate until you work for a CPA firm," which was John Bynacamp, and he did the tax work for the Globe Company, so Francis said, "You go to work for Francis to get your experience, and if you want to stay, fine, and if you don’t want to stay, you can always have a job back here." So after he went to work for John, then the war came along and he became a partner with John Bynacamp, and he just stayed with John. That’s how he moved up in the accounting field. Interviewer: So when the war was going on, he was able to stay in the United States? Koelling: Yeah, because, yeah. He was able to stay because we had children. See, he was the right age, but they hadn’t—they were just about to get to him when the war ended. See, that’s the only reason he didn’t have to go to the war because we had children, and, but the, I don’t remember what they called it but then, the draft was just about to get to people with children when it ended, but, no, he was with the, that was his life. Interviewer: How did you make some investments on the side when you were with Global? Koelling: no, actually we weren’t. We were just able to keep our heads above water—make a living. Well, we did, when we moved to Wichita, we rented a little house on 822 Nims, and for $15 or $25 a month. I can’t remember, it was not much—probably 25 a month, and that was in 1936. And, then, and I had to have and append—appendectomy—I had appendicitis and the doctor said it needs to come out, so that was an experience. We went to old Dr. Updegraff who was an old doctor here and he, he would analyze—when a young couple would come in he would want to know all about your life—how many kids you had, all—everything, and he’d say, "Well, you bring me $25 and we’ll set it up for Tuesday at 7:30 and your doctor bill will be paid." He said, "Now that’s not the hospital bill, but that’s the doctor bill." And, he, he, he—everybody knew Dr. Updegraff around here in this part of the country, and he just would schedule one operation after the other. He just—and I had the worst center incision scar you ever saw. They’d just sew you up and get ready for the next one. So everybody—he had a, he had a reputation, but because he was so cheap, he took care of me. Anyway, that, then, we lived in that little house, and then we bought the one out at 1214 Coolidge for $3,500, and we had, we had saved, well, we sold our little houses in Blackwell—those little houses we bought. We made a little bit on those. We had a little bit of money, to put down, but we had to mortgage the house that we bought on Courtleigh--$3,500—we had to have a mortgage on that so we paid on that, but it just went from there. we lived there, umm, I can’t remember, it was a little after the war was over, but I know we sold it for $8,000. The little house that we’d bought for $3,500 we sold for $8,000, because every place we lived we always improved it through J. T.’s carpentry or my decoration or something. We always made it a little better, so it would—we could get a little more out of it. So, we sold it for $8,000, and the next one we bought for $18,000 at 152 N. Chautauqua—big, nice brick house, but we loved Riverside, but we couldn’t find anything over in Riverside that we could have, but we found this one on North Chautauqua and we bought it for $18,000, and, and then, that’s—we lived there until we built our house out on, in the Village, for $45,000. I mean, we, but now 300,000. If you get a fairly good house, it’s $200,000 or $300,000. So that shows you what inflation does. You know, you just go from--inflation really got us there. Interviewer: When did you get involved with the Carey Salt Company? Koelling: that was back in, let’s see, 37 years old, I can’t remember the date now that it started but eight men, my husband was, these eight men were friends, acquaintances, and they were all occupations, Jack Heathman was the dreamer. He’s the one that heard about the salt mine. He was the one that thought, well, surely it ought to be used for something. Got all that space down there—that empty space. So, he and my husband and 7 other men—actually there were 8 altogether. There was an attorney, and my husband was an accountant, and they had a couple or 3 oilmen, and they all had—I’ve forgotten—I think they all put like $10,000 in. Had like $80,000 and they had to—the owner of the Cary Salt Mine, Jake Carey, was one of, on the board. They still have those 8 men on the board and Jake Carey, and then they hired a president—somebody to run the company and they all had stock, and those people are still the original ones that started the company are still in it. But, it was hard going, there was—they would have their stock, their, their meetings, their meetings and J. T. would come home and say, "Well, we think it’s gonna to go, but we’re gonna to have to invest, so maybe another 2 or 3,000. Every body had to put in to pay John’s, John Shewell’s salary. Hah, and it was a long time before it just kind of took off. Struggle, Struggle, but it’s really paying off now. Interviewer: What did they use the underground storage vaults for? Koelling: well, the space was just empty space until underground vaults. They got a 99-year-lease on it—that’s the way it started. They set all that up with, with 99-year-lease with the mine, with the owner of the mine, and we had, we had to use their elevator that they took the salt up and down, and it was pretty rugged at first. Now it’s—they have it all paved and, I mean, the walkways are all paved. The lights, once you’re down there, you don’t even know you’re down 650 feet below the earth. You don’t know ‘cause it’s so light and comfortable. They have a restroom. They have a big dining room for the employees where they eat their lunches and they go up and down whenever the "skip," they call it, is going up, so . . .. Interviewer: Did the salt play out? I mean, is the mining for salt all done? Are they still doing that while they keep the underground vaults, you know? Koelling: Well, no, the, the, the space that underground vaults rented is just the mined-out space where the salt has been taken out of it, and they’re still mining that clear back because the face of the mine goes several miles back. And they’re still carrying out salt. They still-the mining—salt mine is still in operation, big time. But, all the underground vaults has is just the mined-out space that we rent, and then we have to improve it with all of our shelving and all of our lighting, and all of our cement walks, floors, and everything is all done by Underground Vaults. Interview: How did they market the fact that they had all of this space available? Koelling: Well, that was the big deal in the very beginning was getting the market, marketing department going. And it started out with—oh, we had, we had salesmen—some in California and some here and actually the people we’re in connection with us in California were pretty prominent in the, in the, movie industry, and they got started with the movie film storage. They needed—they needed storage for their film and the atmosphere underground is perfect, ‘cause the humidity is low and the temperature is low—it’s just the perfect atmosphere for good storage for paper and film, so, that’s how they got started mostly was with the film industry, and then as we got other clients like, oh, the Encyclopedia, a common one. I can’t think of the name, but anyway. They, they, and the oil, oil companies started storing their records because it was good storage (clears throat). Interviewer: Were there government offices of any kind associated with the vaults? Koelling: The Federal Reserve had a facility down there. That was during the war when it was when we weren’t sure whether we were gonna be bombed in this part of the country or what, so, and then, of course, Washington was a big threat. They wanted to be sure that they had, they had their records, and they had money, and they had everything that the government needed safe, so they would—they had a pretty good size facility in the underground. And a hotline to the President, and they, they kept, they had, they had a staff of people that were—they had to stay there all the time, but they were familiar with the area and they could bring them down if they needed to. Then they had, they had other companies like Exxon Oil Company had a big facility and they had some of their own people who would come down and manage their records, so we had several companies like that, that had, had their own people, but, we, I remember all, everybody that was on the board at that time. We used to talk about, you know, if they invaded, if we had any warning at all, we would—had, had a route all mapped out, how we would go to underground for our safety. We never did think it would probably happen, but then you never know. Interviewer and Koelling: [Thanks for the interviewing were exchanged. Copyright
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