Historical Interviews with Geist residents - Part 2
ACCESSION NUMBER: RHP 169
INTERVIEW: VICTOR KNARR
INTERVIEW DATE: 1/9/2001
INTERVIEWER: JULIE ZIMMER
TRANSCRIBER: BARB ABEL
VICTOR KNARR
My grandfather Knarr came to Hamilton County in the late 1800s -- I don't know just when. He came from Germany and he traveled up the Mississippi River to southern Indiana. I think he stopped in Louisiana or someplace down there and worked in a sugar factory till he got enough money to go back and marry his girl friend and brought her over then. They came up the Mississippi and Ohio River and they settled in Jennings County, in southern Indiana and eventually came here. I think because he had a brother that lived in the neighborhood of Pendleton. My father was born in Jennings County and I think maybe he was a year old when they came to Hamilton County. So he grew up in Hamilton County. His parents spoke German -- they never learned English. My father said that when he went to school he didn't know yes from no in English because all they spoke at home was German. And he always had a German brogue to his talk and people liked to talk to him.
WAS YOUR GRANDFATHER A FARMER?
Yes. He settled east of Clarksville, a little town about 6 miles east of Noblesville. After he died my father tried to farm for a year and I was born there. We moved when I was a year old to a little parcel, 2 or 3 acres , north of Noblesville. We lived there until I was 9, then we moved into to town and I've lived in the same house for 81 years. I had 1 brother and 2 sisters. I was in born June 10, 1909.
TELL ME ABOUT THE WAR AND THE DEPRESSION.
I don't remember too much about the WWI but I know it had ended, I think, just as we moved into town and I remember my father taking my brother and I up to the courthouse square. They had a big bonfire and they were burning the Kaiser. They had a big do celebrating the end of the war.
WHEN YOU LIVED JUST NORTH OF TOWN, EVEN THOUGH IT WASN'T A FARM, DID YOU HAVE A GARDEN, CHICKENS. . .
We had a big garden and had some chickens. One thing my brother and I hated was that father always put out a lot of potatoes and we had to bug the potatoes. We had a bucket or something and we knocked them into the bucket and took them up to the house and mother poured hot water over them. I don't remember whether we had electricity, course I was only 1 year when we moved there. Seemed to me we had gas lights and we had electricity and mother always did her ironing with irons you heated on the stove. That's what she used. When we got electricity father bought her an electric iron and she said that won't work because it's too light. I don't know if we always had gas or not but we had an old cook stove that you cooked with wood and we had a big iron pot that you'd take a lid off the stove and this pot would fit right in that opening. We've still got that pot. They were good to pop corn in.
THERE WERE GAS WELLS UP AROUND THIS AREA. . .THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE HEATING WITH GAS AROUND THAT TIME.
I know we had gas eventually because we had a regulator -- it reduces the pressure and maintains a certain pressure. That was right outside the back door and sometimes I've seen my mother take a tea kettle of hot water and pour on that because the gas pressure wasn't great enough. I can remember her doing that. We had no inside plumbing then, had a pump and we walked to school. It was less than a mile away. It was in the north part of Noblesville, what they called first ward. We had first ward, second ward and third ward. And all three of the school buildings have been torn down. During nice weather we'd walk to school, we'd walk home for lunch and we'd walk home in the evening. Well, mother had to have dinner on the table when we got home as that's all the time we had. If it was real bad weather father would hitch up the horse and buggy and take us. We also had surrey with a fringe on top. Father use to take us to Sunday School in the buggy. In the buggy you had a lap robe. When I was a kid seems like we had bigger and more snow than we have today. I remember seeing the snow drift as high as the fences in our neighborhood.
DID YOU HAVE ANY OTHER LIVESTOCK?
We had chickens. Father had to bring the country with him. He built a chicken house. I think he worked at a lumber yard for a while and then he operated a dray -- it's a one horse wagon. Course they didn't have any trucks then, the drays would meet the incoming freight cars and haul the merchant's whatever they had coming in to their store or where ever. He'd move people. When the trucks came in they put him out of business. He never got a truck.
We moved to town and he became a stationary fireman -- fired the boiler at the milling company. We had a big flour mill here in town and he fired the boilers. We had a strawboard plant -- they made brown paper that was used to make corrugated boxes. It was Ball Brothers. That strawboard -- they had stacks of straw. You can't imagine how many stacks of straw they had down there. They'd go out in the country and collect it when it was available and they'd store it in these stacks so they operated year 'round. If the wind was a certain way, we lived on the north side of town, you'd could smell the strawboard. It was an interesting operation. I went through a sugar factory in Florida at one time and it was very much the same operation up to a certain point. They had big vats that were constantly agitating the straw pulp -- cane pulp. Then they'd take that out and they had a belt that that came out on and the paper would go over rollers and those were heated with steam to dry the water out of the paper. That was a long machine with a lot of little rollers on it and it never stopped. When they got a roll full the fellows there really fought that paper coming out to get it started on a new roll. Never stopped, just kept coming.
SO WHAT KIND OF MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE OF NOBLESVILLE BACK THEN?
It wasn't built up then. We had a vacant field, a farmer had a cow and horse in there and there was a vacant lot back of us. Usually grew up in weeds -- once in a while somebody would put a garden out.
DID YOU KEEP YOUR HORSE IN TOWN THEN?
We got rid of it when we moved to town.
Father always rented a lot someplace nearby and put out a big garden. He liked to grow things.
WHAT KIND OF MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE ABOUT THE DEPRESSION?
Well I don't know. My father didn't have a job then. I don't know how we got along. We ate a lot of corn mush, which wasn't too bad. I like fried mush.
DID HE HAVE RELATIVES THAT COULD HELP HIM OUT?
He had some sisters here and one of those used to buy us some groceries and I don't know how she did it. I remember -- I don't know if father had to get a loan when he bought the house or not or if during the Depression he borrowed money against the house. What was the agency in the government that was to help home owners that got behind in their payments and things. . .they got behind in payments and this came along and I remember father and I painted the house one time through this agency. Think they bought the paint. But it wasn't an easy time.
YOU WERE A TEENAGER -- DID YOU GET A JOB?
No you couldn't find a job when I graduated from high school and I didn't have money to go to college. Back in those days you couldn't borrow money to go school like kids can today and it was 1928 when I graduated from high school. The Depression started a year later and I was out of high school years and I went to Purdue one year and I couldn't finance any more so that's all the advanced education I got.
YOU CAME BACK AND HELPED OUT AT HOME?
In 1936, I think it was, I got a job at Diamond Chain in Indianapolis and I worked there until '71 -- 35 years. I loafed for about 4 years then and then I went to work as custodian at my church. I worked there for 14 years. First Christian Church. As I hobby I repaired clocks and did that as a business after I retired from the church. I still got one at home that I torn down and hoping to get back and finish it.
I've seen electricity come. I've seen the automobile come in. Seen TV and all that. We didn't get a TV until way late. I don't have a computer -- everybody else has a computer.
ALL THESE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFETIME. . .DID YOUR FAMILY GET A CAR?
No we never had a car. Father always had a bicycle. We never had an automobile. We were too poor.
IS THERE A SENSE THAT THE PEOPLE WHO WERE ON FARMS, WOULD THOSE PEOPLE BE CONSIDERED LAND RICH?
I don't recall anything like that. I remember we had the interurban. We used to get on it and go to Indianapolis and we had relatives that lived north of Noblesville about 3 miles and we used to go out there for Sunday dinner. We'd ride the interurban out and they had the "limited" which didn't make any stops except in the main towns. They had "locals" and of course, you had to ride the local out there. I remember when my relatives used to say when we were waiting for the train to come in -- "Stand back" when a limited went by because they went so fast. They had certain stops -- I 'm trying to think of the stop where we went. I don't remember. But each stop had a name and of course you knew when the train was coming and you'd stand out there and wave them down. If there wasn't any passengers there they wouldn't stop.
HOW ABUT THE ROADS. . .
I remember when we lived north of town that was just a dirt road then. While we lived out there they paved it. I remember they put piles of gravel and sand out along the road where they were going to use it. They mixed their cement right there. Today they mix it in a plant and haul it out in trucks.
WHAT ABOUT TELEPHONES. . .
As I recall we always had a telephone in the country. It was a party line and you had to crank something in order to get the operator. You had to get the operator and tell her who you wanted to talk to.
WHEN YOU WERE IN TOWN DID YOU GO TO THE BUTCHER TO GET MEAT?
Yes we went to the butcher. Mother used to make bread. She always made bread when we were young -- they had bakeries in town. I remember mother commenting about people buying sliced bread. Can't slice their own!
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THESE CHANGES?
I think there are greater changes coming. I get literature from financial newsletters telling you what to invest in. They're talking up the fuel cells now and they say the automobile companies are putting millions and millions of dollars into developing fuel cells for automobiles. It's hydrogen. It's non-polluting. It forms water as a by product and one of these newsletters said that you would have a unit in your home about the size of a refrigerator that would heat your house and provide your electricity. If that develops there will be some big changes. That would put the electric companies out of business. The big problem is how do you get hydrogen. Hydrogen is hard to store because it's very explosive. Thompson Electric has recently announced a new system of projection television and in this article it told about a system that they've got ready to put on the market. A hard disc that you can store 4,000 songs -- can you imagine a disc that you could put all your songs on -- push a button and play whatever.
BESIDES THE TECHNOLOGY. . .THE SENSE OF COMMUNITY PEOPLE HAD -- WAS IT THAT WAY IN TOWN?
I remember when we first moved to town for several years, whenever anybody died they didn't have funeral homes then. The undertaker would prepare the body and put it in a casket and bring it back to the house and people would come in to view the casket. People would sit up with the family all night. I remember my father going in the neighborhood when anybody died and stay with the family all night. They'd hang a wreath on the door.
When we were kids if you had any communicable diseases they came out and put a sign up on your house. I know we had the measles and I think father stayed away from the house for a week or so because of that. My brother and I and a sister, I think, were all in school and we lost so much school that year that we didn't pass and had to take the grade over. If you had measles or scarlet fever they'd come out and tack a sign up on your house.
Then when we moved to town, that was before electric refrigerators, the ice man came around every so often and you had a card that hung out to indicate how much ice you wanted. The ice man would bring in what you'd ordered. We had a square card -- 25 - 50 -- 100 pounds on the corners. You hung that up with the corner up with the number on it of the amount you wanted and they'd bring your ice in. Of course, when the ice truck came around the kids always gathered around wanting a chunk of ice to suck on.
DID THEY HAVE EVENTS DOWNTOWN. . .
They used to have a county fair and it was down on the square. I remember you used to have balloon ascensions on the square. It was a hot air balloon. They'd build a fire and that balloon would fill up with hot air from that fire and some fellow would take off with that balloon and then he had a parachute that he cut loose and would come down. I remember when he would cut loose the balloon would kinda turn over and the black smoke would pour out of it. When he cut loose the hot air would go out of it and it would fall. He came down in a parachute. I suppose they recovered the balloon.
They used to have Chatauquas. Our church had their church service there on Sunday and Sunday School. We used to go to church then on Sunday out there. It was southeast of town. We walked out there and back. People can't walk any more. Even I drive the car for a few blocks sometimes.
I THINK ABOUT PEOPLE TALKING PHILOSOPHY OR POLITICS THERE [CHATAUQUA]. . .
They had well known people come in and speak. I think William Jennings Bryan was here one summer. I suppose they had musical groups, too. As I recall, they had movies but I don't remember when. But I remember when we lived in town we had movies but we never went. Went to the library I guess. We always had the library. People back in those days made their own entertainment. We had Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues. The catalogues always wound up in the outhouse.
When we moved to town we had indoor plumbing. We had a furnace when we moved to town.
YOU WERE WORKING IN INDIANAPOLIS DURING THE WAR -- DID YOU GET DEFERRED BECAUSE YOU WERE WORKING IN A FACTORY?
Yes. I was operating a lathe and my boss said I was more valuable operating that lathe than I was in the Army so I didn't have any trouble getting a deferment. I lived where I live now and drove back and forth. It took about an hour each way. But there were a lot of people that lived in Noblesville and worked in Indianapolis.
YOU SAID YOU HAD ONE BROTHER AND TWO SISTERS -- DID THEY ALL STAY AROUND NOBLESVILLE?
My brother went to Indianapolis and worked for Kresge Company and he moved around all over the country in the Kresge organization. He got married and had a family and I never married. My sisters both lived around here. One of my sisters is here [nursing home] -- she's in the same room with me. I was taking care of her at home and she had had a stroke about 11 or 12 years ago and she more or less recovered from that and she was at home. Then about 2 or 3 years ago she broke her hip and was in a nursing home then after spending some time in the hospital. Eventually I took her out and took her home to take care of her. I saved over $50,000 the time I had her at home and then I fell in 1999 and she had to go back to the nursing home then. After a few months I recovered enough that I took her home.
DID YOU HAVE ANY MUSIC IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD?
I remember when we lived out in the country my father bought a phonograph -- an early Victor phonograph with a brass horn on it. Have you seen those? We had one of those and you cranked it up. After we moved to town he was kind of a trader and he traded that off and while we were in the country yet he bought a Reed organ. He was going to give my brother music lessons and he didn't take very much to it and didn't go far. We had that organ up till a few years ago and I gave it to a niece. She had it overhauled.
DO YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER HAVING A RADIO?
We didn't have a radio very early. I remember when radio first came in. Somebody who worked where my father did lived not too far from us and he had one of the early radios. My father took me over there one night and we listened to it and you didn't hear very much. More static than anything. Radio came in during my life time.
WOULD YOU SAY THE CHURCH WAS THE CENTER FOR THE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES.
I would think so. We used to have church service in the evening. Very few churches have that any more. We could walk to church.
WERE THERE OTHER FAMILIES THAT YOU KNEW THAT WERE GERMAN IN TOWN?
We had a neighbor, an old woman and she spoke German. Couldn't speak English and I think her husband spoke German and he spoke a little English. My father used to talk to this woman.
DO YOU REMEMBER ANY BLACK FAMILIES IN TOWN AT THAT TIME
Yes. I remember we went to school and there was what you called Federal Hill, west of the river, and those kids came to our school, first ward.
DID YOU HAVE FRUIT TREES IN TOWN OR DID YOU HAVE TO BUY FRUIT?
When we moved to town I think we had 3 enormous cherry trees. In the summer we picked cherries by the bushel and mother sold them -- of course she put up a lot of them. Canned them. When we moved there mother had to have a fruit cellar to store things in. Most of the house was not excavated so dad excavated part of it and built a fruit cellar. He cemented it.
In town we always had city water. I remember in the kitchen the pipes were lead and today they say lead is poisonous. Of course they didn't last long as lead was so soft and didn't take the pressure. I remember we had trouble with them and they was pretty quickly replaced.
I don't remember what year the house was built -- think around 1900. We moved there in 1918 so it wasn't too old when we moved there. It has a nice porch, cement floor porch with a yellow brick work around it. Always enjoyed sitting on the porch. We always had a swing and always had a good breeze blowing. We had 8 - 10 big Maple trees around the house. Of course, they've all disappeared -- I had the last one cut down last spring.
FURNITURE
Still have it. Have an old rocking chair that I imagine belonged to his father as we always called it Grandpa's chair. It was a reed construction back and seat -- woven something and of course that gave out and I took it to the blind school and had it re-caned. It's in good shape now.
When my father started housekeeping he bought furniture someplace. Think he shopped in Fortville and of course we had furniture stores here in town. We had a furniture factory here. In later years it belonged to Sears.
YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE LUMBER MILL WHERE YOUR DAD WORKED DO YOU?
Bernell and Doolin.
WHAT ABOUT GAMES
Well, I remember we used to play Dominoes on Sunday and my father liked to play. We had a Carom Board -- it was a board that you had shooters you flipped and knocked each other off. It had pockets in the corner -- you flipped the the shooters with your fingers. I think on the backside it had a checker board. I think we've still got that. I think they still make them. My father had a game made and I don't know where he got the idea. It was not square, it was oblong and he had a pocket in each corner with a hole. It was a 3 sided pocket with a hole in each piece and you used marbles to flip them and see if you could put them in those holes. We've still got that. It had felt on the playing surface. Kids use to play marbles outside but I never did.
IS THE HOUSE YOU HAD PRETTY MUCH AS THE SAME AS IT WAS IN 1918?
Our old house was cheaply made -- it wasn't first-class workmanship. For instance, the stairs. Usually when they build a stair they cut slots and insert the steps into slots. Our old stairs they just nailed boards on risers and put the steps on those. Well that's cheap construction. Back in those days when they built a house it was all built with native lumber. They had saw mills around here and they sawed the lumber. The floor joists are what they call a native Beech. You can't hardly drive a nail.
It had a small kitchen, no kitchen cabinets. We have a kitchen cabinet if you know what I mean. We had that in the country. It has a pull out dough board and a flour and sugar bin. My father did build another cabinet in but not like regular kitchen cabinets are. The bedrooms were all upstairs.
Sometime when I was working I put in a stoker in the furnace. It used coal that had been ground up into small pieces and you put that in a hopper and it had an auger that fed it into the furnace. Then during the war, I don't remember why, I took the furnace out and I put in an oil burner. You couldn't get gas then and then when gas was available I took the oil out and put a gas furnace in.
RUGS
I recall that we had one big rug in each living room. We had a front room, we called it, and a living room and had a big rug that was 9 x 12.
GROWING UP WAS THE RIVER PART OF YOUR LIFE?
We used to go down and fish some, my brother and I. Not a whole lot. We never swam. The boys used to go up north of town. There was a swimming hole there. Stoney Creek, south of town, they had a swimming hole. I suppose the kids on the south end of town went down there.
BACK THEN IF YOU CAUGHT A FISH I SUPPOSE YOU COULD EAT IT.
Yes. You didn't know about the fish kill in White River. A time or two I went up to the lake and went fishing. I belonged to the Indianapolis Hiking Club and one year I went with them on a canoe trip up in northern Wisconsin or Minnesota on the Canadian border. I don't know when I joined -- 1939 maybe. They're still going. I don't hike anymore but I still belong. I joined about a year or two after they formed the club. They just went out and hiked and they publish a schedule all the time where they're going to hike. They have somebody that locates these places. We've gone to a lot of interesting places. They'd take overnight trips. Over weekends. We went to Kentucky several times. (Natural Bridge) We went one time when there wasn't many trees around and we went back later and some of the bridges were almost obscured by trees.
YOU MUST REMEMBER THE TIME OF THE CCC DOING A LOT OF WORK WITH BRIDGES AND SOME OF OUR PARKS TODAY STILL HAVE CCC ACTIVITY.
Back in the Depression I remember they had WPA and I think my father worked on that some. I remember we had a brick sidewalk in front of the house and the WPA came in and took out all the bricks and re-laid them so it was level. Two or 3 years ago they cemented all the old sidewalks unless you wanted the brick. Cement is easier to sweep the snow off.
WERE THERE ANY OTHER CLUBS THAT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO KNOW ABOUT?
I don't know of any. I'm sure there were. One time some of the members knew places and because they knew they knew somebody there that could get us in -- I remember one time we hiked around the airport and we got to go into the control tower and hear them bring in planes.
YOU MENTIONED THE COUNTY FAIR.
I remember they had a fairground that was just across the street from the school. I remember when you used to go to school and look out the window and daydream about the fair that was going on over there. I was only in the first or second grade. I'm sure we went, but I don't remember. I remember one time at the fairground -- it seemed to me it was some sort of temporary building they put up for Billy Sunday [ well-known evangelist]. They put up that tent or building special for that meeting. That was at that fairground across from the school. That's all houses in there now. Now the fairground is out east of town.
WHAT WOULD YOU WANT PEOPLE TO REMEMBER OR KNOW MOST ABOUT LIFE IN HAMILTON COUNTY . . .
I'd say life was slower then. Everybody is so busy today. Going in a hurry. Back in those days, when I was a kid, of course they didn't have automobiles, so when anybody died you had a horse drawn hearse that took the casket to the cemetery. I've heard my mother say that when they started getting the motor driven hearses, "Just can't wait to get them to the cemetery quick enough."
