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.
Tom
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
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.
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Tom Cabeen
Hi Owen,
Yes, Peter and I are great friends. I see him at least once a year, and we talk on the phone every few months. He is a wonderful man, whom I deeply respect. He has a wonderful family as well. I know nearly all of them. Peter and Janet still live in Rainbow City, Alabama.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Mulan,
Thanks for the update. If you can, give Kory my best. Probably the best thing he ever did for his musicianship was to play with people who played better than me! I sure liked him, and have nothing but great memories of the time we spent together.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
OtisBarker:
Before we came along, no one used pocket protectors. We started the trend. We basically defined what "nerds" were. Silicon Valley stole it from us. Just like the WTS, we were major trend setters! Also just a bit delusional! :-)
Warren:
I remember Billy and the Blacks. I drove his grandma to the New York assemblies a few times in their big Lincoln, but I never got to know any of them that well. Shortly after that, I got married and was busy with other things like secret Bible studies and learning how to print with offset presses.
I don't know how much I have changed since my Bethel days. I sometimes feel that I am pretty much the same basic person. But as my wife reminded me, at Bethel we were in an unrealistic environment. I had a lot to learn about life in the real world. I also had a lot to learn about true friendship (BTW, I wrote a song with that title, which I sang at Stan and Julie Weigel's wedding). I found that most of my friendships were not as solid as I thought they were. But I have no bad feelings about the JWs who shunned me. That religious perspective really inclines one toward mental illness, and I simply regard them as having a form of illness. I do not think I ever really had any enemies among them.
JWDaughter:
My heart breaks for you, my dear! It must have been so confusing and difficult for a young person to be encouraged to study regularly, then when you do, you get DA'd without a clue as to what was going on. And at such a young age! At least we were adults when it happened. I hope you have healed, and have met wonderful people who love you and have helped you understand what happened, and that you have freed yourself by forgiving those who did this bad thing, and have moved on.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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To my friend Frank Toth
Hi Frank,
I admit that I haven't thought about many of these things in a quarter of a century. I just sort of put them away in the back closet part of my mind and moved on. But my healing was over many years ago, and there is no hurt connected with any of these memories. I am honestly having a ball walking down memory lane...
Hope you are doing well, Frank. My best to you!
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Hey! At least you could make out the tune, which you couldn't do when you read some of the the Watchtower articles that were out at the same time. And we had a heck of a lot more fun doing that than we did in service!
Tom :-) -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Warren,
Jim Petrie was another of my best friends. He was my assistant when I was operating Cottrell 16, and later he was a Floor Overseer in the Pressroom, like Randy. We were all very close. The song you remember was "You Done Stomped on my Heart", which was a sort of silly country/bluegrass standard written by Mason Williams (he also wrote "Classical Gas"). We first heard it on The Smother's Brothers Show in the sixties. Here is a video of John Denver singing the song. You will recognize the famous line "stomped on my aorta": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHeYhE-k7kw (sorry, I still don't know how to properly insert a link on this board.)
Jim and I used to play guitars (with me sometimes on my 5-string banjo) in our rooms and at Pressroom parties. We also played with two other guys, Kory Tideman (pronounced TEED a mun), a very talented musician who played mandolin, and Kenner Dull, who played guitar. We had a lot of fun together. At the time, bluegrass was hot and we were heavily influenced by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's recently-released two-album set called "Will the Circle be Unbroken" One time we tried to learn to play that song ("Circle") by sitting back to back in a circle (four of us), with our arms sort crossed, each of us plucking one instrument with our right hand, and fingering another instrument with our left hand. For example, I would sit with Jim on my left and Kory on my right, and Kenner behind me. I would hold my banjo to my left and pick it while Jim fingered it. Meanwhile, Kory would hold his mandolin to his left and pick it with his right hand, while I fingered it with my left. It was crazy and we never had enough time to get it down well enough to perform in public, but we had a lot of laughs practicing it.
Jim and the other two guys played at Gloria and my wedding. We also played at the first Bethel Family Night. I was the MC. It was Dan Sydlik's brainchild. I have some pictures of the guys at both occasions, but don't know how to post them here. If I find out how to do it, maybe I will scan and post a couple of pictures.
Tom