Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!

by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Fatfreek

  PS for the uninitiated, the G in G-job means "Government". I am not sure where that came from, but Richard Wheelock told me that. I would be interested in how outside work got that name.

  That brings back memories. In the late 50's when I was cutting my teeth as a machinist apprentice I noticed one of the journeymen working a strange shape in the vertical milling machine. Always curious, I approached him and asked what it was. He said, "it's a government job", and said no more. Being a novice I sensed I was treading on sacred ground.

  My bench buddy saw the whole thing and when I returned to work he smiled, catching my puzzled look. He came over and whispered, "government is code for us, young man. We're members of the government, aren't we? -- as he winked.

  Len
• 

  wschroeder

  "...and several pieces of pizza, what was the name of the pizza place by Cadman Plaza?"
  
  FASCATI's
  
  Pizza by the slice... New York's cheapest health food.
  
  Oh.... and then there was PIZZA NIGHT!!! One event more dangerous than the cereal boxtop sprints. All extremities, especially fingers, had to be tucked in tightly and within sight.
  
  I was lucky enough to have Steve Lupo as my roommate. Our 4 man room had enough for an army and we didn't have to suffer the humiliation of those other beggars (baggers) in the dining rooms.
  
  Warren
• 

  gymbob

  I was in Kings County Cong. with Harold Dies and Jim Petrie back in the 70's. We would take Peach's old chevy van to the meetings out in Bay Ridge Brooklyn (that's where they sent the cong. after it no longer met at the bethel hall) and he would get a buck from everybody who was riding along since that's what the round trip subway fare was back then, and nobody wanted to take the train if you could just hitch a ride. I swear that guy would pile as many bethelites as he could in that van and come away with some serious $$ for each meeting!

  Bob
• 

  Tom Cabeen

  Hey Bob,
  
  Your post reminded me of that old van of Petrie's. I had forgotten all about it. One weekend Gloria and I borrowed it so that we and a couple of Pressroom guys could visit some former Bethelite friends who lived in Monroe, CT. It was about 50 degrees F on Friday night and raining as we slogged our way through rush hour traffic. A severe cold front was following us as we drove up, so it kept getting colder and colder as we drove. By the time we got to Monroe, maybe two hours later, it was below freezing and snowing. By midnight, the temperature had dropped to about 10 degrees F, where it stayed all weekend. We had a wonderful visit with our friends (we never went to meetings when we were on a "vacation" weekend).
  
  On Sunday evening, as we were getting ready to return home, I went out to start the van and warm it up. To my dismay, I discovered that the darned van was frozen solid! Not only wouldn't the engine even turn over, the van wouldn't even roll! My friend Steve had to push the van out of the parking spot with his new truck. He pushed me down the frozen back road he lived on. I had put it in gear and was going to let the clutch out to start the motor. The first couple of times, the back wheels just skidded-they wouldn't even turn when I let the clutch out, it was so frozen. Finally, it started.
  
  I let it run as we loaded up the stuff in the van. On the way home, we noticed that not only did the van not have a heater, it had more holes in the front of it than a Swiss cheese. It had warmed up outside to about 20 degrees F, but it seemed colder than that inside the van, not to mention that the windows kept fogging up something terrible, since we had no defroster. I had asked them to try to hold their breath until we got back to Brooklyn, so I could see through the windshield, but everyone inside kept stubbornly insisting that they had to breathe. ;-)
  
  Good thing the traffic was heavy enough that we did not have to drive very fast. But it was a long ride home, and we were all half frozen by the time we got back to Bethel. It's funny now, but I had some choice words the next day for Peach for not telling me that the van had no heater.
  
  Ah, the good old days, when a dollar was a dollar--and that was all we had!
  
  Tom
• 

  Dogpatch

  LOL Peach's van... can't remember if we did "beer runs" to Jersey in that one or not, but we always found a car. Beer was too pricey for a Bethelite in Brooklyn Heights!

  Housekeepers winked at the case of beer in the closet. :-))

  AND, believe it or not, I had ordered "Barnes Notes" through the Bethel commissary? or requisitioned it, or whatever we did, and it arrived, placed on my bed FACE UP by the housekeeper, on the very same day they announced that Barne's Notes were banned! Never had a phone call on that one. I did live across the hall from Harley Miller, though, and our housekeepers were carefully screened for being idiots about what they see. LOL LOL Brooke!

  I guess they figured the factory boys couldn't put it all together in our heads anyway. Plus we were too busy carousing. Guess we had the last laugh.

  R
• 

  Gamaliel

  How did they ever get so paranoid that a Bible commentary was outlawed? What would be next, keeping average Bethelites out of the Bethel library??
  
  I forgot the guy's name on 1-8. I thought he worked for Wheelock or Songer. I think he was the same one who nearly got himself ousted for growing a beard. We requisitioned our commentaries through him at excellent prices. Got Barnes. Got Matthew Henry 3 vols. Got a Hebrew-English Interlinear of the OT in 3 vols. And then his beard threatened to ruin the whole thing for everyone. :{>
  
  All this fuss about commentaries. Meanwhile Bert Schroeder loaned me his Barnes commentaries, along with a lot of other commentaries and references, any time I wanted right up until my last week at Bethel in 1980. He even recommended Barnes as one of the best. Even Stan Milosevic's theocratic library (someone gave a link previously) has a lot of things in it that would have raised eyebrows in 80 and 81. I wonder what the stance is now on such things.
  
  And after someone like GStafford or RFuruli starts seeing the inevitable, what do JWs do with their once-theocratic publications? (RFuruli still has a couple years to go. I think he's already working on his next book, "Oslo Chronology, Plan B", which supports the 2,520 years by trying to poke holes in the accepted secular chronology which claims "World War I" started in 1914. He will show that, even if you accept 539 (and therefore 587 as pivotal), "World War I" may have actually started in 1934, but that several mistaken and/or conspiratorial encyclopedia and calendar publishers have managed to change times and seasons on us.)
  
  Greg
• 

  wunce_wuz

  I forgot the guy's name on 1-8. I thought he worked for Wheelock or Songer. I think he was the same one who nearly got himself ousted for growing a beard. We requisitioned our commentaries through him at excellent prices. Got Barnes. Got Matthew Henry 3 vols. Got a Hebrew-English Interlinear of the OT in 3 vols. And then his beard threatened to ruin the whole thing for everyone. :{>

  I think his name was Barry Smith? After the beard incident he was exiled to the garage... out of sight...
• 

  VM44

  "Barnes Notes" were banned?

  Why would they ban those?

  Were the "Barnes Notes" in the Bethel library?

  I bet if Fred Franz ordered "Barnes Notes" they wouldn't have banned them!
• 

  gymbob

  Tom~

  Good story! Petrie's van was a classic! We would take it out to Fire Island back in 70's and watch all the Brooklyn girls wear high heels to the beach (that "disco look" was so big in Brooklyn then, everybody looked like they were in Saturday Night Fever).

  Some regulars in the van on meeting night were.....Harold Dies, Judy Martin, Mark Quazell (sp?), Rueben Barraza and his sister Anita, Peter Coconis, Buster Hicks (yes, that was his real name), Tim Smith, John Hill, John Shirey.

  The first time I ever got drunk was in that van!

  We were helping a guy in our cong. move named Nick Tramentano, with that van. We were drinking beer all day long, and after we finally get the last box in the house Nick puts out this bottle of Whiskey like he's going to toast his new house or something...well we all took a couple shots. The next thing I remember, i'm outside in the snow blowing chunks on the back of that van!

  Jim put me in the van and we headed back to bethel. This was on a Saturday night. The next thing I remember, I'm waking up in my bed on Sunday afternoon about 3pm and I haven't got a clue how or when I got there. BB
• 

  Dogpatch

  For those of you who haven't heard the SERIOUS side of this story:

  Cris and Norma Sanchez, former Bethel Spanish translators testimony of how they were treated at Watchtower headquarters in 1979. part 1 part 2 (RealMedia format, free player)

  Randall Watters and Robert Sullivan, What Happened at the Watchtower Headquarters in the Spring of 1980? part 1 part 2 (RealMedia format, free player)

  from MEDIA page: http://www.freeminds.org/media/media.htm

  If anyone has thefull lecture of Sam Herd making a fool of himself on the 2005 talk, let me know, as I want others to be blessed by it online. :-))

  Randy

  partial is up at:http://www.freeminds.org/media/SamHerd.mp3