Max Saik Remembers the Stehles

Recollections of Max (Matthew J.) Saik and His Wife, Shirley Saik

Max (Matthew J.) Saik (1896 to 1985), was a son of Nancy Joseph Stehle Saik and Joseph J. Saik.

Richard T. Saik and his wife Cathy Ann interviewed his Uncle Max (a first cousin of Joe Stehle, Sr.) in the spring of 1981 when Max was 89. This copy of the transcription reproduces those parts of the original interview that speak about Reinhart Stehle, his wife, Teresa, and their children: Nan (Nancy), John, Lawrence, Frank, Joe, George, May (Mary), and Ginny (Virginia)

This transcript picks up on page 4 of the interview. On the previous pages - 1 to 4 - Max speaks of his Saik grandparents and their families.

Page 4 of the transcript:

Shirley: Now tell ‘em about Granny’s side [Teresa Weser Stehle]—

Max: Oh, yeah, my, my maternal grandfather [Reinhard Stehle] was born in Binsdorf, Germany, which used to be part of Austria and is close to the Swiss border. And you know, at the time he was born, they taught the young boys (or whoever wanted to learn) some kind of trade. Now my grandfather was a shoemaker—and he made shoes. And a cousin of his—I don’t know—about a forty-eleventh cousin who lived in Parkersburg—and he had his saloon at Eyth . He looked just like the Kaiser—he looked exactly like him! Well I cant’ help it, I get so excited [to Shirley.]

Shirley: …[? unintelligible ?] German demanding, you know.

Max: He was a big, big tall man and his wife was a little woman…

Shirley: She was so tiny…

Max: And he [the cousin] had a saloon, and at that time they served food to their customers with their beer. And they lived on a street that was number, uh… number 9 1/2, was what the number was—91/2. And the house they lived in is still there.

Shirley: …And two boys—

Max: And two boys--

Shirley: are still living there—they [got] married—still living there.

Max: And one girl who married lived in the same house on the [4th street] that I was born in. Yeah, they… I don’t know how [? unclear phrase – they favor ?] that house then. And my grandfather [Reinhard] and his cousin were real good friends. And they used to visit each other every once in a while. And my grandfather, now I’m talking about [unclear phrase] my grandfather [Reinhard] on my mother’s [Nan Stehle Saik’s] side had a shoe store in Marietta on uh, Pootman St., I think it is. [Putman Street]. And he was in high water. And that water came up in Marietta pretty high. And he said, “I was in one high water, and I’m never going to be in another high water!” So he moved up on a hill and I guess it would have to get up 200 feet before it’d get him. And he bought a farm up there. The money he made to buy a farm while he had the shoe store, he raised bees. And he sold honey—and he made enough money off of the honey to buy this farm. And there was 100 acres on that farm.

[Richard’s note: Again, the phrase behind “I don’t know how...” was unclear. To me, it sounded something like, “they managed,” but I can’t be positive. That would seem to imply that there was some difficulty with either the house itself or the relationships—don’t know what that may have been, unfortunately. In addition, I’m not quite sure what the reference to “the 4th street” might be, since Uncle Max said he was born on Swann St. The shoe store was on Front St. in downtown Marietta, which runs parallel to the Muskingum River and perpendicular to Putnam Street.]

Richard Saik: Quite a plot…

Max: Well, it wasn’t all in one place—I’m under the impression that was, uh, General Putnam’s farm at one time. You know, after the Revolutionary War, a general got 10,000 acres. And then, lieutenants and the others, it went down… privates got 100 acres, I think. Anyway, he had an orchard on there, and he made some money from the orchard. You know, when we lived in Chillicothe, he used to send us a barrel of apples every year. The he… uh, got into the dairy business and he had twenty head of Jersey cows. And of course, there wasn’t no milking machines then. And uh, let’s see…there was George, Uncle George, and Lawrence, and John, and Frank—they were his boys. There were two girls—Aunt Mae and Aunt Ginny. And…uh they helped

Shirley: there was Joe, Joe

Max: …uh, they helped milk the cows—twenty. And when I went over there, I had to turn the separator. You know you have to… And after we separated the milk, I think we got about 5 gallons of cream. And Lawrence and I used to take milk down to a bakery and a creamery where thy served ice cream. And we took that 5 gallons of cream down there every night. And we wouldn’t get home until 10 o’clock. We used to fall asleep. We took it down in an express wagon and oh, [Forrest??] took us and we used to fall asleep coming back home and that darn horse use to go right up into the barn and stop and wait until we unhitched him! (Laughter)

[Richard’s note: Again, a little bit of research confirmed some things about these statements. Marietta was founded in 1788 by the Ohio Company of Associates, a group of about 50 veterans/investors that settled the area. Rufus Putnam was indeed their leader.]

Richard Saik: That’s interesting. I’m thinking…since there was no sophisticated refrigeration equipment…

Max: Oh, no, no…

Richard Saik: …How was the milk preserved?

Max: Well now, they had what they called a cooler. And uh…the milk came down on the outside, and they drew water from a well, or where it was cold, and they had cool water on the inside, and the milk would roll down over there. But they never had any trouble with milk because that skim milk (not the cream) was fed to the hogs. What we pay for now, they fed to the hogs! (Laughter)

Richard Saik: I can believe that… I can see that…

Shirley: And cottage cheese was just a waste…

Max: Yeah, cottage cheese, and clabber.

Shirley: And here now, they manufacture cottage cheese.

Max: Well, they took the whole milk and churned it—that’s where they got their butter.

Richard Saik: But certainly cheese products must have been a convenient way to convert the milk products.

Max: Oh…we went up from Cyrus [Sardis]…I don’t know if you know where Sardis, Ohio is…it’s over on the eastern part of Ohio. It’s pretty close to, uh…I think Pennsylvania.

Richard Saik: Pennsylvania or West Virginia, that’s the only two there…

Shirley: They call it Swiss…

[Jayne Stehle’s note: Sardis is on the Ohio River in Morgan County about 45 miles northeast of Marietta. Morgan County still has a school district named “Switzerland of Ohio”.]

Max: We went up, and Aunt Mae went with us. She said, “I’m going to show you where to go.” And I just caught a glimmer, and I wanted to try it out, anyway. And she said, “You’re going up, and up, and up. They call this place ‘Little Switzerland.’” And we went up and up, and she said, “This is where they make Swiss cheese.” She said, “There’s fellows from Switzerland that come over here, and the people who live up in there and have cows bring all their milk to him, and he makes the cheese.”

Shirley: We went in…

Max: We went in, and at the time we were there, we were buying the cheese for 60 cents a pound. And I told the fellow down below there, and he said, “Don’t you tell anybody else you get it for 60 cents a pound!”

Shirley: Then they took us in the place where they made big wheels and it’s the gas that blows out that makes the holes.

Max: Oh gosh, they got things that big around. Wheels, they call them—in the curing room—well, like a cave. I guess they may still make cheese up there, I don’t know.

Shirley: I don’t know whether all Swiss cheese is made that way now, I don’t know, but they did then. This was a long time ago, when we were first married.

Max: Yeah…

Shirley: Because our car, we only paid $750 for it, so you know it was a long time ago. (Laughter) But the gas in it was…the holes there. I thought that was so interesting because I hadn’t any idea how that happened.

Max: Now then, there was 20 acres that was in the front part of the farm. The city of Marietta bought it. And they made a…

Shirley: [The town??] bought the house…

Max: Oh yeah, well the house was tore down…

[Jayne Stehle’s Note: Reinhard’s house was torn down and replaced with a tennis court. The barn near the house was torn down and nothing put in its place. The property is now Marietta’s Lookout Park and has a fire station, a community building, two tennis courts, a playground, and a city water storage tank. Most of the land is still undeveloped and is often used for sled riding by neighborhood children in the winter – as did I when I was a child.]

Shirley: Yes, it had a log cabin.

Max: Oh yeah…in the dining room was a log cabin. And it was built up around there

Shirley: They kept adding on around it.

Max: And the part that the old kitchen…my grandfather moved it over and he said, “I’m going to put all my beekeeping equipment in there.” And that’s where he kept his beekeeping equipment. He, uh…well, he extracted the honey from the comb and that’s the way he sold it—like uh liquid honey.

Richard Saik: Was it used as a substitute for sugar sometimes?

Max: Well, I used it for sugar…

Richard Saik: Because refined sugar may have been extraordinarily rare because…

Max: Oh, I don’t know about that…Oh, I used to live on biscuits and honey…(Laughter)

Shirley: We thought it was reducing, see—but honey has calories, too.

Max: Yeah…Well, anyway, we always got all the honey we wanted, because we always had honey and my grandmother [Teresa Weser Stehle] used to make pancakes & biscuits. Gosh, I can see her yet. When she made pancakes, she had a big old, uh…crock-like—it was about that high. And she put those pancakes in there to keep them warm and that’s the way they served ‘em—it’s a wonder we were all there.

Richard: OK, you couldn’t, uh…you could only make a certain number at a time…

Max: Yeah, that’s right…

Richard: And rather than serve them to each one, she kept them warm, and then served them.

Max: Well, she had an old stove—no, they had gas—when I re…because you know, they had…well, that’s where John D. Rockefeller started—over in the eastern part of Ohio. And had gas and, uh…in the places they had gas they’d have a flaming burning all the time—night and day—they never shut it off.

Richard: This is natural gas?

Max: Natural gas. And that’s what they had in…

Shirley: Fireplaces were that way…

Max: Oh yeah, the fireplaces…

Shirley: It really wasn’t good because there was a certain dampness that goes with it. And then uh…you know, at the time, I don’t know about gas now, if you had that much of it, it would smell, but the odor from it was…kind of worried you.

Max: And when my uncles got sittin’ around, and didn’t do anything, it kinda disgusted my grandfather. He said, “When are you fellows gonna get outta here and do something?” He said, “You’ve been sittin’ around here all morning, and you ought to get out.” And it kind of disturbed him that they’d bought an old stove—and it was a wood stove—and that’s the way they heated the place. And they finally got out and chopped wood. Oh, they helped him…they helped him. And uh…well, Uncle John, he went out to Montana, and he thought he was going to make some money on raising wheat, but he…well, you know, it doesn’t rain out there in Montana where they raise wheat too often and he lost out on three times—three seasons. He didn’t make any money at all on it. Finally, it caught up with him and I think he went to work for a railroad or something, and the children stayed out there. But one girl [daughter of John Stehle], well, she came east here, and she, uh…she’d go, and she had a boy—and I don’t know, I think they got a divorce, didn’t they? Or did he die?

[Jayne’s Note: The daughter of John Stehle who came to visit was Louise Stehle Walker Collins. She had her nephew, Kyle Gipson – the only child of her sister, Winifred Stehle Gipson McKoewn, with her. This information is from Kyle Gipson who survives at the writing of this note on August 30, 2009. Kyle is the only grandchild of John Stehle. John’s other daughter’s had no children.]

Shirley: Yeah, she was divorced.

Max: Yeah…And oh…she was really good. And she said, uh…

Shirley: She had gone away by herself.

Max: And I said, “Well, how in the world do you get by, driving by yourself?” “Well, uh…you know, I have a gun layin’ right on my side.” And she could shoot, too! She was a…

Shirley: She was from Butte…

Max: She what?

Shirley: Butte, Montana.

Max: Butte…Well, she made herself one of those little jackets, like…out of a deer that she shot, and had the fringe on it.

Cathy Ann Saik: Is that right?

Shirley: Well, she was manly. [unintelligible] You could tell she was real western.

Max: Yeah. And she said, “If anybody would have bothered me, I’d let them have it.” And she could shoot, too! (Laughter)

Skipping here from Page 9 to Page 11 of the transcript:

Max: Now Uncle Joe [Stehle] was in the uh, oil well supply business. He sold for a company by the name of Turner, out of Pittsburgh. And he went down to Texas, and he sold oil well supplies down there, and he then he had his brother come down with him—that was Frank—you didn’t know Frank.

Shirley: No…

Max: And he went down there, and he contracted…oh, uh…appendicitis. And gangrene set in, and they couldn’t do anything for him, so he died down there in Texas. And Uncle Joe had to bring his body back up here. Anyway, when he got tired of going down there, he, uh…he got a job with a company up in Dayton that made, uh…cast iron pipe fittings. And he did bid on a job when they built that Carew Tower, but Crane Co. beat him out.

[Jayne's note: Frank died in 1905. Joe later worked for Kuhn Brothers in Dayton, OH until he retired.]

Shirley: Uncle Joe was a good salesman.

Max: Oh, he was a good salesman! Why, Aunt Mae said he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos! (Laughter) That’s what she said. And…why, I used to sit in his study and, uh…maybe read some of the books, and listen to him on the telephone, and gosh, he could sell more stuff over the telephone than I think he did out on the road.

Shirley: You didn’t want to play pinochle with him, though…

Max: No…

Shirley: ‘cause he cheated…

Max: He cheated! (Laughter) And when he got tired of that job down there [in Texas], he went over in the eastern part of Ohio, and I think he got quite a number of acres that he leased. You know, the people who owned the property get an eighth of all the oil that’s produced on their property. And he went up there—and that’s where he…it was in the same ground that John D. Rockefeller owned. And he had a fellow with him who started out at the same time John D. Rockefeller did. And he didn’t do what John D…John D. gave…oh, he tried to run everybody out of business. Now I was talking to this fellow one time. And he said, “Now when this is all on the up, well, you could go down there with a huckster wagon, and before you got very far, you could sell everything you had.” He said, “It was really crowded in there—uh, people who connected with oil.” And that was part of the Pennsylvania base, too—and that’s the best oil there is. Now, out in California, where they have, uh…out there at Santa Fe Springs, Walnut…Walnut Hills?

Shirley: Walnut Grove…

Max: Walnut Grove, there. Why, that oil is…oh, is asphalt-based, and western oil is not as good as this eastern oil.

Richard: I think it has somewhat to do with the, uh…geological history of the Pennsylvania area because are not the Appalachian Mountains considered to be older than the…geologically speaking, than the Rockies? Is not that true?

Max: I don’t know, but…

Shirley: Seems like it ought to be…

Max: But out there in the eastern part of Ohio, they go down eight and nine hundred feet, and out in California, they go down 6,000…10,000 feet.

[The interview ends shortly after this section with more talk about California.]