JW,
Given the time frame you mention, you are doubtless correct. The 119 Columbia Heights Bldg wasn't built until the mid-1970s. I never visited them in that Brownstone apartment. I don't know how it was that they got from there to the 119 Bldg, but I'm sure there is a story there somewhere, although Ed was hightly respected right up until the spring of 1980, when Bethel had its own version of 9/11. Things were never the same at HQ after that.
In fact, I didn't get to know Ed & Betty very well until the late 1970s. We became much closer after we all left. They came out here to Connecticut to visit us in the 1980s, and Ed actually rebaptized me and several others as Christians in the backyard of an XJW couple. We were involved with a little support group at the time, and several of us decided to get rebaptized.
Tom
Tom Cabeen
JoinedPosts by Tom Cabeen
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
CoCo,
What congregations were you in? I started out in Queens Spanish (with Ray Franz and Rene Vazquez), then Greenpoint Spanish (with Gerry Vega), then Newark French (with John and Barb Bechtle, Vaughn & Sharon Buntain, Dave & Sally Giltinan, and briefly Leo Greenlees). After I became Pressroom Overseer, we moved back into Jackson Heights, with Fred & April Fredean and Joel & Mary Adams.
Tom -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hi Warren,
Don't spread it around, but I have it on pretty good authority that the WTS actually did produce a functional Universal Translator down in John Kurzen's office in the Carpenter Shop. However, they ended up selling the rights to make them to Gene Roddenberry, who made extensive use of them on the Enterprise. You probably didn't realize that all those guys on Star Trek were actually speaking their native tongues, which was then translated on the fly into English by the device they bought from the WTS. The Society had to sell it because, although it was quite good at translating Klingon, it tended to overheat badly when translating Watchtower articles. They briefly tried to use it to translate Bethel Office memos into Newboyspeak, but again it tended to overheat. The last straw was when one of the UTs blew up trying to translate John Booth's morning text comments into English. Since they couldn't use it themselves, the only thing left to do was to sell it to Gene. Too bad, after all the work Dean Songer put into it.
Guru Tom -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Speaking of saltpeter and sexual hyperactivity, Randy, some quick research suggests that the whole "saltpeter causes impotence" thing is a myth. It is apparently not uncommon to hear the saltpeter rumor in the armed forces. One of the proven uses of potassium nitrate is that it is an necessary component in gunpowder. Maybe somebody at Bethel just reassigned the meaning of "discharge", from firearms to Bethelites. (Is that a zeugma?) Tom
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hey JW,
The only two brownstones the WTS had when I was there, to my knowledge, was 34 Orange and 86 Willow, (where Doc Dixon lived on one floor and some guys lived on another floor). I was in 86 Willow, but never got invited to Dixons' floor. I would not call these homes "luxury" from my current perspective, but nicer in important ways than a standard Bethel room, which was more like a cheap but clean hotel room, (like a Motel 6 in Indiana, for example). These brownstones had a real kitchen, not just a sink, and some even had window air conditioners (but no central air). They also had nice finished wood trim, hardwood floors, and the like. Standard Bethel rooms had metal door frames and metal casement windows. No frills, if you get the idea.
Ed and Betty lived at 119 Columbia Heights, in a nice room there. We visited Ed and Betty in their room, but it was not like a regular apartment, (no kitchen) just a nice room with a private bath. Not much character (read no hardwood), but new and clean.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
CoCo,
"Zeugma" What a great word! From the Greek "to yoke".
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hi Warren,
The Wood-Hoe was a loser from the beginning. It was badly manufactured, and the potential for quality was dismal, almost nonexistent. I felt bad about assigning Randy to try to get it producing, but he was the man best qualified for the job. From every perspective, that press, although it could be made operational, could never be cost effective. I often wondered if I was the only one who ever thought about things like that. No one I spoke to on the Factory Committee or Governing Body thought in terms of quality and cost-effectiveness.
Regarding whether or not I was there for the MAN "2 to 1" conversions, I had strongly recommended against it in a study I did when I was overseer there. I had to do all my own work and calculations (without a computer, with a pencil and adding machine only) but I learned an enormous amount from doing those studies, and what I learned helped me quite a bit when I had to work in the real world where if you don't make money, you can't just put an article in Kingdom Ministry and get money pouring in the door; you just go out of business.
The longer MAN cutoff length (the amount of paper used for one magazine) compared with the American Harris presses meant enough extra paper waste for each magazine that over the life of the machine it would make financial breakeven impossible, especially when one added the conversion cost. The more they used it the more costly it got. So I recommended that they ditch the MAN presses and buy new Harris presses (That was the $8 million plan which Randy made into one of his famous cartoons posted somewhere here on this thread). The Factory Committee didn't implement their conversion plan until after I was gone.
After I left Bethel, the Society decided to sell the Wood-Hoe press. They used a used equipment broker in California, a guy I knew named Reggie Dewar (also a good friend of Dan Sydlik's, and coincidentally the one who brought Randy Watters "into the truth"). Reggie used to call me up after Randy left the organization, all upset because he left. I told him that Watters was a good man (what was I thinking!?!) and that Christian living was more important to me than doctrine. I said that if Russell had been around now, he would have been disfellowshipped. Russell, I told Reg, believed in two heavenly classes.
Now for a little aside: As it turned out, Reggie's contact at Bethel was Ralph Lindem, the Society's purchasing agent. Ralph knew me well, and in fact he was one of the four of us who Randy mentioned in another post who made a trip together, when I first presented some of the ideas I had been discussing about law versus undeserved kindness, and which started Randy on the road out of Bethel. He remembers us on the way to DC, but I remember us on the way to a trade show in Boston. (The fourth guy was Werner Bohn, the Overseer of Photoplate. He was rather new at Bethel at the time.) Now back to the Reggie Dewar story.
After I had helped Reggie in his efforts to sell the Wood-Hoe in some long conversations with a buyer in Australia, Reggie confessed to me that he had gotten me into some trouble in a conversation he had with Ralph. Ralph had been on the judicial committee that disfellowshipped Ed Dunlap, and he could be like a bulldog when he wanted to know something. Reggie told me that Ralph kept asking questions until he got Reggie confused, and he ended up telling Ralph that I believed in two heavenly classes, which I am pretty sure started the ball rolling which ultimately led to my being disfellowshipped. I told Reggie that what I had said was that Russell believed that, not me! He said "Yes, I know, but Ralph just kept asking questions until he got the answer he wanted. I'm so sorry." A year or so later, that conversation was brought up to me just prior to when I was disfellowshipped, so I know that somehow it got back to my local committee.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hi Randy,
Here are a couple of 34 Orange stories. For a year or two, my wife Gloria was the housekeeper at 34 Orange. The first floor apartment had a well-stocked kitchen, a TV and air-conditioning. George Couch, Max Larsen, Lowell Dixon and others would bring their friends there and entertain them well. On Monday mornings, Gloria would empty the waste baskets, and there would be lobster shells on shrimp shells and lots of empty liquor and champaign bottles. It was something to notice since we were actually living on Bethel food and $20 each per month for "extras" like underwear, and since my parents were in the Circuit work and hers were retired, we got no money from home. One time, when her parents planned to come for a visit, she asked if they could stay there. The office told her some cock and bull story about needing to leave it open in case some "important" guests came in at the last minute, so they refused her request. Of course, no one used the place while her parents were visiting, but the office didn't want "just anybody" to stay there.
Shortly thereafter, one day Gloria said to me "After work, don't come home. Come to 34 Orange, first floor." It was summer and stiflingly hot. I came down the alley and into the back door. When I got there, she had bought steaks from our meager allowance and had made chocolate chip cookie dough. Gloria made cookies, oven going and air conditioner blasting. it was marvelous, and was made even more so by the fact that it was totally illicit. We closed all the blinds up tight, had a wonderful meal, watched TV, and spent a cool, comfortable evening there. It was truly one of the high points of my 12 years at Bethel.
Later, two of my good friends (who shall remain nameless for their own protection, as they are both still JWs) lived at 34 Orange on the second floor for awhile, and we had many a great party in that room. One time they decided to make wine in their room. The Bethel Office got wind of it and told them that they couldn't do that. One of them got very angry at them, especially because he was working on the first Harris offset press with ultra-heavy ink coverage on the original version of the "Bible Stories" book before we bought the afterburners. The press was belching out lots of smoke, which was illegal, and the EPA was trying to catch us, so we were running the press at night so the Society wouldn't get caught polluting and have to pay a big fine. One weekend this same guy had had a few beers, and he started thinking about it, he got so worked up, he peed out the window onto the air conditioner down below. As it happened, some important guests happened to be staying there at the time, and I got called before the Factory Committee over the incident. It took some fast talking to keep the guys from getting kicked out, as I recall. After the FC relented and let the guys involved stay at Bethel, they got together and bought me my first bottle of Wild Turkey. I still drink the stuff.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hey Warren,
Speaking of paper rolls being dropped, here's a story you might not have heard. Before I came to Bethel, the night watchmen in the factory used to carry guns. You probably know that much of the paper the Society bought came from Canada in boxcars. It was often quite cold when it was unloaded, so they would stack it up on end, several rolls high (20'-30', depending on the ceiling height) and leave it there to reach room temperature so it could be run through the presses. As the paper would warm up, it often made cracking noises.
One night a particularly skittish watchman was walking through one of the storage floors at night. It was dark, and the rolls were warming up and making noise. I am not quite sure just how it happened, but shots were fired into the paper rolls. That was the end of the guns.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hi Warren,
Never heard of either one of them. That must of been for new boys, Warren. I was already a "heavy" when you got there. :-) Maybe someone else remembers.
Tom