INTERVIEW OF CARL AND DOROTHY LIEPE
BY JOHN AND HELEN BRANIFF
JULY 5, 1980
(Tell me, did you have a harness maker in town?)
We had a wagon maker. He also worked on harnesses. Otto.
(Where was the wagon maker?)
I think it was on Atlantic Avenue. Out there near Better Built, near that neighborhood.
(What about the breweries that were in town?)
Well, I never patronized them John but, Ott’s brewery was a main one. That was on Philadelphia Avenue and Beethoven I guess.
(Is that where that storage place is now?)
Yes, that was it. Campe would be the next street.
(How about some other breweries?)
Then there was one out on Darmstadt and near the Egg Harbor Cemetery, on the right before you got to the Cemetery. There was a big brick building there. Von Bossey’s had a winery.
(How many breweries were there?)
As far as I know there was just the two. This wasn’t much of a drinking family. If they made their own wine that was enough.
(They made their own beer too didn’t they?)
No, because dad really wasn’t a drinker. About once a year he would come home with a box of beer from Ott’s. That was a box of twenty four bottles, I guess eight ounce bottles. They had the old Ceramic lid with rubber on you know. That case used go down in the wine cellar. I think he only got it out once or twice a year.
(Like ourselves, we go to Somers Point about three times a year and buy German beer and it goes into the special refrigerator. Once in a while Helen and I take it out. You think of how, in those days, in many ways life was so much more convenient. Everything was there, I mean fresh. The brewery was close by. The wines were homemade. Today everything comes from such a long distance. People think that they are blessed with all of them I don’t think so. I think you had so much in those days.)
That and it’s hard to go back to those days because the people have been oriented go go go. I mean on the farm you just stayed home period. All summer because it was all summer.
(How about beer gardens Carl, were there a lot of beer gardens around?)
No, I think there were two in Egg Harbor. One in fact was on the other side of, off the City limits, back on Duerer Street.
(Is that where Child’s is now? The Old Heidelberg?)
No, not on the Pike, I mean back on Duerer Street near where the paint place is. The place up on the hill in back of Town Paint. That was a beer garden. The house on the hill was part of the beer garden. They used to run excursions from Philadelphia to Egg Harbor on the train. Egg Harbor was known as the wine center because, of course, of the wineries. I heard my dad talk about it. They used to go out to the Egg Harbor cemetery. There were people who had relatives and friends buried there. They would get Hen Grater was his name, he used to have a livery up there, and he had a horse drawn bus. He would load them up and take them out. They would stop at that beer garden before they went to the cemetery. I guess, by the time they got there they didn’t care if the people were dead or alive I guess. That used to be one of the trips they would make.
There was one in town, I’m not too sure about. I think, Zimmer had a beer garden in back of his saloon. That was on Chicago Avenue. That was all I knew about the gardens. Of course here the Bob White down here on the corner was a beer garden to an extent.
(It was a hotel too wasn’t it also?)
Of course it has the porch all the way around it. That one out on Darmstadt Avenue that was the biggy. It was a real garden. They had the arbor, dancing, and music and all. Probably the people who stayed in town went to a saloon or the wineries.
(Tell me Carl, outside of Renault’s how many other wineries were there?)
Renault’s of course, Oberedsts. Boston Avenue I think.
(That sounds like a German name?)
They were German, Dewey. Then there were a few small ones but they were the bigger ones in Egg Harbor.
(What happened to the other wineries? Were they so small of what?)
Yes, they were just more or less home wineries so to speak, I don’t know if they had to have licenses or not then.
(They made pretty good wine around here didn’t they?)
Oh yes, very good
(There were quite a few here then. Did they have any kind of a wine festival here?)
Have you ever seen the Diamond Jubilee Book of Egg Harbor City and the Centennial Book?
(Yes, but I never looked at them that closely, are they in there?)
We have those books but their still packed up from moving when I get them out and come across them I’ll loan them to you. I’ll see that you get them. As a matter of fact, the one that has the story of Egg Harbor in it a lot of it is in German.
(Now about the glass business, do you know about how many glass places there were in town?)
As far as I know, just Tielockers and Liberty.
(What did Tielockers do just engraving?)
As far as I know just cutting or engraving.
(Where was he situated?)
Right where the house is now, on St. Louis Avenue, but originally that is the one that Anne and them were saying started in that old Cranberry shed back on Washington Avenue and the railroad. He started back there and then he moved over to St. Louis Avenue.
(I think you are forgetting one. How about Baldi?)
That is a newer one isn’t it? How old is Baldi? Didn’t Baldi work for one of the others? I really don’t know which.
(Well, the old man built a factory. Engraving only now, not making glass but only engraving.)
Well, no one made their own glass.
(I have a strange feeling that one of them did, because Gramp worked for an outfit that made glass. I wouldn’t know what Gramp could do otherwise. I think possibly Liberty may have had a furnace?)
Yes, I guess they did, I remember we used to pick up the slag.
(Well, they made some of the glass, not all maybe but some of it, cause Gramp was a gareler you know. There were only two things I know he could do, make molds and make glass. Baldi built his shop on Philadelphia Avenue behind where the soft ice cream stand is.)
That is more or less new. I don’t think that goes back beyond World War II. I spent a lot of time there when Paul was a kid and Paul was born in 1949. I remember that building being built then.
(He was in business before that.)
Where?
(I don’t know.)
Now it’s a machine shop. I never knew it was glass in there.
(Do you remember anything at all about Liberty?)
Only the building.
(You don’t remember the shop or the people that worked for them do you? It was evidently before the First World War, you were quite young then, they had the women cutting glass in there really in there.)
At that time I can remember Armistice.
(First World War Armistice?)
Yes, but I was only about seven or eight years old at that time so cut glass didn’t mean a thing to me, only to drink out of it I guess.
(Do you remember in the First World War the talk about sabotage in New York of an ammunition plant at Black Tom. They made ammunition and it didn’t explode and it was a terrible thing.)
I only knew about it but just heard it you know.
(Remember they think one of the Super Spies of Germany was responsible for that?)
How about out here at Tuckerton. They had that radio station.
(Tell us about it. I don’t know about that? Is this the first or second World War?)
First, you know where Mystic Island is? Well, before the First World War a bunch of Germans built that wireless radio tower there near Tuckerton you can still see the blocks there. You go out Rader Road. They call it Radio Road now because of that you will see the big blocks that held the tower. It was an immense tower.
(What was it a sending unit?)
Yes, I don’t know if there was any idea of war at that time but it was built before the war. The tower was built before the war. It was to send messages back and forth to Europe. Whether that was a pretense at the time now I don’t know and then used for [unintelligible]. When we got into the war with Germany the U. S. confiscated it.
(Was that the most exciting thing In the First World War that happened around here? Were there any U boat landings here?)
No, not that I know of.
(Were there any ships that were torpedoed beached along here?)
No, not that I know of.
(Being such a German area, do you have any remembrance of how people felt like?)
People changed their name from Kaiser to Kaser. It was to get away from [unintelligible]. I think a lot of people were ashamed of Germany. The same as during the Second World War. We had an exchange student here with us in 1967 for a little while from Germany. He said, "We in Germany don’t hold it against you that you bombed us." If they were all like him they will have another Hitler. Those are my feelings.
(In the Second World War did you have any spy scares or anything like that around here?)
No, we all had to pull our window curtains and we had to paint the tops of our headlights. Atlantic City, of course, was dark. There was always talk about all these inlet places but nothing ever came of that.
(Did they have beach patrols all along the coast?)
Oh yes,
(Were they military or civilian do you know or remember?)
Some of both. What was that civilian group called now? Air-raid wardens. Civil defense. Over past Mays Landing. We had an incendiary bomb plant. I worked over there during the World War II. The National Fireworks it was called. In Mays Landing.
(There was another munitions place during the First World War where was that?)
That was in Belcoville. Then there was Amatole up on the pike up where the Troopers Barracks are. That also was a race track years ago. Amatole; a wooden track.
(Is there anything else that happened around here during the war? You know up in New York they caught spies like crazy because of the convoys going out you know and all the ships?)
Where NAFEC is now, that was a Navy Base and they trained pilots there.
(Did you have any other training areas around?)
Down on the other side of Marmora. It was called Palermo. That was a radar station.
(You didn’t have any defense plants here?)
The only one was National Fireworks. We made incendiary bombs.
(I mean did you have any defense patrols to go out and intercept aircraft?)
Only back here. The Navy had a squadron. Then too they did a lot of practice and training.
(This Civil defense business. Did that affect almost all the people that were here during the Second World War who weren’t in the Army? Do you know the older people?)
I really don’t know. An awful lot of them were in.
(Did they do away with the traffic lights or have them shuttered?)
They were shuttered. So they wouldn’t reflect.
(How about the broadcasts? Were they restricted on giving out the weather reports do you remember? That is another thing, they were restricted in our area.
No, I don’t remember that.
(Carl, you said before that when you went to school, there was a store you went to down. near the school. Did you pay cash for everything or did you run a ticket there?)
No, we always paid cash.
(Most people ran tickets didn’t they?)
They did and that was the downfall of the store. It had so many credit buyers that it couldn’t exist. When Carl went to school over here they were all eight grades in one room with one teacher.
(I think you learned just as much didn’t you?)
I guess so.
(You heard a little of the next class. You know if you forgot anything you could pick it up eh?)
These schools were very good for the children, yes.
(You didn’t have any dancing or bands or art or that nonsense did you?)
We just had the basics.
(Once you had the basics what else did you need? You probably were able to read better when you got out of there than some college kids can today?)
I know some kids in High School who can’t today.
(Some couldn’t get into college because they couldn’t read the examinations. That’s outrageous.)
If you don’t give a hoot then I guess you don’t learn anything and, that is what the trouble is today. I think we had real teachers years ago who cared. Now it is no reflection on them, they say the children have a learning disability.
(I think all the teachers I had never wanted to go home. They all put a 60 up on the blackboard in the corner and if they drew a line and your name was underneath there you were stuck for an hour after school. I don’t think any of them ever wanted to go home.)
I know when we went down to school not so much up here in town but down there, we must have been better kids up here. Down there they were rough kids. The Germania kids were rough. The Cologne kids were good kids. Ask him about his school bus ride down to there. We had a horse and wagon. That was the school bus. The old guy had a sway back horse and all. It was an old top wagon you know what a top wagon is of course; the leather top is across it. That is what he transported us in. The poor old nag was just about moving along. In the wintertime that old top wagon was so doggone cold we used to get out and walk.
(Really?)
We’d walk part of the way, get tired walking, get back in a little bit and so on.
(That is the forerunner of the station wagon. It had benches across didn’t it?)
Yes, on the side it had benches across not this way but across.
(I’ve seen them both ways.)
Yes, both ways. Well he would drop us off at school and some of the bigger guys at that time, I don’t know just how big they were, but the bigger ones would wait till he turned around to go home again and three or four of them would get hold of the front of the wagon and hold the horse for fun. Then during the warm weather I always rode my bicycle back and forth.
(You didn’t have any sleighs down here then, horse drawn sleighs?)
No, South Jersey never got that much snow. It would snow and go away right away. I guess it wasn’t really profitable.
(How about hay rides. Did you have them?)
Oh yes, hay rides were quite popular,
(Both sexes?)
Yes, Hay rides in the wagon and then hay rides in the trucks. They were quite popular.
(You people down here don’t have any hills or mountains but did you use skis or snow shoes at all?)
No, we had ice skates though. When the ponds would freeze over.
(There weren’t that many ponds around here though were there?)
If the pond was big enough, maybe a hundred foot in diameter we would skate on it.
(I guess if the fields got rained on and iced you skated on that?)
A number of times we skated up and down the fields here. We even skated on the road when it was glazed over.
(As a young fellow, did you go fishing?)
No, I didn’t. I first graduated into fishing recently.
(You children didn’t do much fishing then?)
No, we didn’t for some reason I just never bothered.
(I have to ask you one question because it seems to be a question people would like to hear this twenty years from now. How many servants did you have at home?)
I don’t know. I don’t remember any.
(Any hired help at all outside of the field hands? No help in the house?)
That’s all but mother had help in the house when she had her operation. They, Carl’s parents, brought a couple of German girls from over there when they were over there in 1929. They brought them over to visit for a year. When their year was up they went back. One got married while she was here so she didn’t stay in Germany very long she came back. Then the other girl came back and stayed with Carl’s parents and helped around the house just enough to have a place to live. But then eventually she married a local fellow.
(Before we run out of tape, let me ask you, how about bathrooms in the house? Did you start out with outhouses? I presume you did or did you?)
To tell the truth John, I don’t remember an outhouse. We had one but I think it was for emergencies. We still had the one in the house. Carl’s dad was very much ahead of his time. He had a Delco plant. He had electric before electric came through here. Before that they had gas. Gas lights. He made his own electric and you made your own gas then too. When he originated that Black Diamond black berry everybody in Hammonton raised black berries so he made a dollar so to speak. They made out better than average. They had a generator, they used gasoline I guess, it turned the generator into gas, and it went through large pipes downstairs in three or four rooms. They didn’t have it downstairs. You had to put aluminum on the big one. We used to have a big rake thing with a paper and you held it up there to lite it and it went swish.
(Did you have table lamps where the rubber hose went from the pipe into the lamp?)
No, we thought we were pretty modern.
(Carl, we really appreciate this. You did nearly two hours. It’s hard to believe. We really appreciate it and if you ever want to hear this we will be glad to play it for you.)
The one thing you didn’t mention is that we have one son. We only had one but if he heard this and he wasn’t mentioned, I’m sure he would care.
(What business is he in, the plant business?)
No, he is a supervisor in the computer department of Atlantic City Electric Company.
(I also didn’t mention the fact Carl, that you do Christmas arrangements and you do them very nicely and that you taught them on television and radio. You gave numerous exhibitions which I attended and which were excellent.)
[Carl Harvey Liepe was 68 years old at the time of this interview.]
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