Cart said he got a new boss at the Trib. He found the routes were scrambled and the records were wrong.

Andy Moses had done it on purpose so he could get new customers and then retire them.

My boss, Carl Rose, had a brother, Dale Rose, who had the Western Auto Store on South Front.

Then Cart got a job at Oppenheim’s. Izzy and brother Manny opened a men’s store in Hartford. Izzy took me to the Olympia and Nick Terkos greets him and charged Izzy 10 cents for a cup, but only five cents for me.

The two would go after each other for about a half hour.

Bob Frender was fulltime at Oppenheim’s and Izzy used to cuss him out.

Izzy had piles of old clothes and ankle-high button shoes, celluloid collars and old hats in the basement.

Manny ran the store and was gray-haired and kept a bottle of Color-Bak in the bathroom.

I caught him shorting my pay so he fired me. Mrs. Oppenheim came from a well-known New York family and I don’t know how she and Izzy got together.

Jack Paulson of Dr. Paul opened a men’s shop on Commercial.

He had a contract with Wilson Bros. and Brooks Bros.

Jack had to close the store and two doctors bought $5,000 of the good stuff.

Jack, of course, went to selling heating oil and made 10 times more than he could have made in the 2×4 news store.

The senior Herb Phillipson wanted to be a rabbi and went to the Holy Land to study and was called home when his dad got sick. He spent his life running the store. Irv grew into the business and Herb became a damned good lawyer.

Fred Proctor worked fulltime. Mr. Phillipson had a brother who went to West Point.

Adolf Niedner lived on Main Street and used to walk to work carrying his lunch.

His rifle shop was known around the world. He did work for Frank Buck and Chinese Gen. Chiang Kai-shek.

The general wanted him to build 1,500 rifles. He declined.

Tom Shellhamer took over as Adolf got old.
Cart’s mother worked there making gun sights during the war effort.

Next door to Niedner’s was the Yaw family. Marion was the baby. Jim a year older than her and played alto sax in the school band and the Skylarks.

Bill was the oldest and ended up with a good job in Detroit. (I remember Bill coming to town in a big, new Caddy).

Ed Lassiter also played the sax. Lorraine Frank was a baton twirler, fiery batons and all. She was cute and good. She and Ed were in love and got married for about two months.

Ed was an Army pilot killed in a training accident.

Melody Gardens at Magician Lake was referred to as The White Elephant. It had many owners and sold illegal fireworks. Doc Berry kept his boat there. He bought Rattlesnake Island.

Cart’s folks bought a cottage on Maple Island. Cart’s dad was a foreman at Dowagiac Steel Furnace. When Dowagiac Steel went under, Graham Woodhouse started a water heater business with Cart’s dad, Booker Davis and other employees.

A French guy with a bathosphere hung out at Indian Lake.

He had a two-man submarine and mapped Magician Lake. Didn’t find much but some nice fish.

An old black guy, Henderson Bryant, took some large pike from there (I wrote about Jim Lewis and Henderson fishing for pike at Magician before).

One of the Weesaw Indians made Cart an elm bow and carved arrows. Cart said when he and Max Maxey got into Mr. Rosenbaum’s liquor cabinet and took sips of his booze, he got wise to them and locked it up.

Bob, Dick Mosher and I did the same thing to old Charlie Mosher’s booze.