Interview with Doris Mohr and James Mohr

Doris and James Mohr (#704) Transcript

MM: This is Mike Mohr with Jim and Doris Mohr, that's M O H R, and we're going to talk a little bit about their experience in Madison. Jim was a student there in the '40s. This is with the Wisconsin Oral History Project, and today is December 21 of 2004, and we're in West Best at Jim and Doris's home.

First off, let me thank you very much for letting me interview you.

DM: Oh, it's our pleasure.

MM: OK. First off, let's talk a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up? If you could talk a little bit about your parents, and your family.

DM: You want to, should I go first? OK. I was born in Milwaukee, and that's where I grew up. And I went to elementary school there, at Victor Berger Elementary School, and Rufus King High School. And I lived on the north side of Milwaukee. And what else did you want to know?

MM: Just talk a little bit about your parents, your family.

DM: Well, my father was a policeman, and my mother stayed home, took care of the family. I had three older siblings, two sisters and a brother. And the sister that was next to me was ten years older than I. So I was sort of an afterthought, I guess. And I had a very happy childhood. I just enjoyed my childhood very much, and had a good time. Lot of friends in the neighborhood. It was very much of a-- everything was handy. Our church was right around the corner, the school was right around the corner, and we could walk to everything. And I enjoyed my childhood very much.

MM: Great.

JM: Now it's my turn. I was born in Milwaukee also, in 1921, and as I was 00:02:00growing up, the Great Depression hit the United States. And during that era, why, there were a lot of people were not unable to have a job. My father was, for the most part, found it a little difficult to provide entirely as he would have liked for the family. I was one of three children. I had an older brother and I had a younger brother.

And I got a job when I was 11 years old delivering newspapers. From then on in, I delivered newspapers until I graduated from high school, and I was always able to provide for all of my clothing and other needs by my own earnings, and my 00:03:00mother and father, in essence, provided a place for me to live, and food.

As I graduated from high school in 1939, the depression was about over, and it became easier for people to get jobs. I enjoyed high school, and grade school. My favorite high school teacher was a mathematics teacher. You remember his name? Little man. [? Garby. ?] Mr. [? Garby. ?] And grandma thinks that it's not nice for me to say it, but I refer to him as the man who was the second best 00:04:00teacher I have ever had.

DM: Why do I think that? I never said that.

JM: Yeah. She thought to call him second best isn't good. However, the best one I had was a professor at the University of Wisconsin. And so these two men were amazingly good teachers, and good at their subject. Mr. [? Garby ?] taught mathematics, the other professor taught engineering subjects at Madison.

MM: OK. Well, what, you spoke about Madison. What led you to enroll there, and how did that all come to be? And when did you enroll?

JM: As I was in high school, it became apparent to me that I liked mostly science subjects. General science, chemistry, physics. I wasn't too good at 00:05:00mathematics, but I was good enough to get by, and get a pretty good understanding of mathematics. Mr. [? Garby ?] was a big help for that. Friends of mine and I kicked around, what would we be doing, and what should we be doing. And we all came to the conclusion, we should go to college. So I went, and we decided University of Wisconsin at Madison was the place to go.

I started there without any money, and worked at odd jobs. And I had also, for 00:06:00an interim of a year before I went out to Madison, I had worked as a sheet metal worker's helper. So I got a job, ultimately, in Madison, doing some sheet metal work on the side. Made fairly good pay doing that.

And then, lo and behold, they're looking, the war was just beginning to get going, and students in high school were taking pre-induction courses that would help them in their military life, which they were expected to be participating in. And they had a course at the high school, Central High School in Madison, they wanted to teach sheet metal work. Lo and behold, I got the job. And we weren't married yet, but Grandma and I were going together, and she used to do my typing for me, and help corrected the tests, and type out the tests and that 00:07:00sort of thing for me.

MM: When did you enroll at the UW?

JM: I started in 19-- I had gone to a, started in Milwaukee at the teacher's college, thinking I could transfer credits from that to Madison, but I couldn't. I found that there was a, the vocational school had a course in pre-engineering, or an engineering course, that I could transfer credits to Madison. So I had one semester there, and then in 19, must have been 1941, I went out to Madison. And then, from then on in, I was full time at Madison, except for the working that I did.

DM: And you shared your housing with these other friends of yours, that lived in a--

JM: These friends and I, we figured the way to get by on as low a cost as we could, was we rented an apartment a five-room apartment, and we batched it, as we called it. And we lived there, did our own cooking. I think our rent was $45 a month, which was about normal for that time. This was on the third floor, was as 421 North Murray, which is between State Street and University. So it was a good location to be at.

And a number of us were there for two years when we, like in my case, was called up to active duty in the Army. I had been in ROTC at Madison for two years, but I was called in as an enlisted man in the Army, in '43, I think it was? Probably.

DM: It was in '43, because that was when I graduated from high school, and he went to the--

MM: So what year were you guys married, then?

JM: 1944.

MM: OK. And you studied engineering, correct?

JM: I studied mechanical engineering, but I was in the Signal Corps ROTC at Madison. They had engineers, they had infantry, and they had Signal Corps, and I went into the Signal Corps ROTC. That's where I went in when I was called up to active duty in the Army, in the Signal Corps.

MM: OK. Can you talk about what you did in the Signal Corps for a little bit?

JM: OK. I went through all of the basic training, and then I had specialist 00:10:00training, and was called Central Office, Telephone Office, which was where the switchboards and all were. That would have been a major army headquarters, it's like division and up. And I was then, also, trained in a new type of long-distance telephone, which was called carrier and repeater, and it was just coming into commercial use in telephone companies in the United States. And we also had training in that in the Army.

But at that time, I was able to get into this Officer Candidate School, OCS, and there I, after getting Basic Training, again, as an officer, I was in what was 00:11:00called long lines inside telephone office. Again, it's much the type of thing that would be at a major headquarters, rather than out in the field.

That's when we got married, when I finished OCS.

MM: So you began your school in '41. And so what year, then, did you complete school?

JM: Well, after, I was in the Army until 1946.

MM: So when was, the interruption was--

JM: From '43 to '46. There's a total of pretty near four years in there. And then I had been overseas in Philippine Islands, and I was doing a little 00:12:00different work then I was trained for, became the motor officer of a signal heavy construction company. We built telephone pole lines. And we were in the Philippine Islands while the war was on, and we were assigned to the 6th Army to invade Japan, bombs were dropped, we didn't know what they were, but we heard that there had been a big bomb dropped, and then another big one, and we were pretty much told that maybe the war would be over soon. Then I was shipped to Japan for occupation duty. I was there for about three quarters of a year there, and three quarters of year in the Philippine islands.

MM: And you returned in 1946.

JM: Came in '46. And September of '46, just when school was starting, I got here.

MM: And at that point, where did you guys live?

JM: Want to tell?

DM: We lived in Madison with a family, because we couldn't find any apartments. There wasn't any housing anywhere. It was kind of late to find something. So grandpa found this ad somehow, and we were to share this home with a family, and help with the expenses, and then take care of their children when they needed to go away, or something. So we'd be sitters. And it was in Olin Park, on Turville Point. And they had a big home, and it was really a very nice location. It was on the lake.

JM: Right on the lake, there.

DM: But the family was a little unusual, and it really wasn't to our liking. So we kept looking far places, and then is when, let's see, that was in 1947, and 00:14:00we heard about Badger Village being opened up for housing. And I think it probably had already been opened up to students, so it had families, but now-- and those were in row houses. But then, they were opening up the barracks, and those would be for people like us, who didn't have any children.

JM: But they were all married students.

MM: And do you remember what, was it early in 1947 that you--?

DM: It was about in February, because there was a big snow storm then. And it was right after that snow storm that we got there.

JM: That snow storm went all over Wisconsin, and in Milwaukee, they had 18 inches of snow fell at one time, and everything was tied up. Well, we had the same in Madison, and it was right after that, we had been negotiating before 00:15:00that, but right after that, we were able to move in. So it was in February.

MM: OK. Well, great. Before we get too into Badger Village, I was curious how you financed the rest of school, after you were back from the Army. I'm sure the GI BIll was part of it.

JM: GI Bill provided a fairly decent income for married veterans, and on the other hand, in a way, I felt if I could earn something on my own, it would be better, not only that, I could augment that. Well, it turned out, I earned so much, I had to give most, or half of what the GI Bill provided, back to them, which I was happy to do.

I started teaching welding as a student instructor in Mechanical Engineering. In those days, they were still teaching some of the manufacturing basics. And they 00:16:00had course in acetylene and in arc welding. And I was the instructor for the acetylene welding part of it.

I also did very well in school, and I was asked to teach a course in machine design. And so I was hired as a half-time instructor, and I taught, at the time, I did no longer teach the welding, but I taught machine design for a year, while I was a senior, at the university. And had a regular class, which I imagine we had maybe about 30 students, and mother helped me with paperwork, and so that 00:17:00was-- but I did that, and it did that when I stayed on and got a master's degree, and I continued to teach then, also.

MM: OK. Very good. OK, so. You were living with another family, and you didn't like it so much. So you looked to move out to Badger Village. When you did move, you said it was February. What were your first impressions?

DM: Well, we were just happy to be by ourselves. And it was very rudimentary. It was just two rooms, it was in a converted barracks, it had been a barracks for people that worked in the ordinance plant, I believe, Badger Ordinance Plant, right?

JM: They were [UNINTELLIGIBLE] for single people. And this one would have been probably for men. And most of the employees were men, in those days. 00:18:00[UNINTELLIGIBLE] wherever they could get women, but out there in the country, this was really out in farming country, 30 miles, 35 miles away from Madison, was about six or eight miles away from Baraboo, but it had been farming country.

DM: Anyway, we thought that was, it was fun. It was going to be fun. And they did a nice job on converting those. There were two, like I say, two rooms. One room was a part kitchen, part dining room, and part living room, and everything was new, like they had a new hide-a-bed in there, a new kitchen table and chairs, and a little apartment-sized stove, and not a refrigerator, it was an icebox. But we didn't have to empty a pan, because they drilled a hole in the floor, and the water just dripped right down through the floor, onto the ground.

And then there was a bedroom. And they provided bunkbeds and wardrobe, and they 00:19:00didn't have closets, so they provided wardrobes. But we brought our own double bed from home, so we had that, we didn't use the bunkbeds.

And then, the bathroom facilities were down the hall. And the ladies had their bathrooms and showers, and the men had theirs. And so it was a community facility. And then there was also a laundry room, and boy, I thought that was pretty great, because we had all brand-new washing machines, and they were not automatic washing machines. They were washing machines with wringers. And we could hang our clothes, and no dryers, of course. And so in nice weather we could hang our clothes outside, because they would string lines between the barracks, and in bad weather, they had a separate room where you could hang your 00:20:00laundry inside.

So I thought that-- we just thought it was pretty nice, and it was a lot of fun.

JM: Everything was new, as grandma said. The furniture, and all of the equipment, was new. And it's been, the floors and everything were newly painted, and the walls, so it was really a nice place. It was an H-shaped affair. And the bar of the H was where all of the bathrooms and showers and that sort of thing were. And it was easy for everybody to get around. Everybody was in the same boat.

DM: Yeah. That's I think, probably, what made it enjoyable. Nobody had any money. You counted your pennies at the end of the month. And there was a general 00:21:00store, right on the grounds, so you could go to that. I think we called it the commissary, I don't know if that was the right term. And then in the summer, they provided grounds and land for us to have a garden. So we had a garden.

JM: They plowed it for us.

DM: And it was a good sized garden.

JM: Had a garden, it was about 40 by 60. 40 feet by 60.

DM: So we thought it was pretty much fun. I don't know if I'd, I certainly wouldn't want do it again, right now, but at the time, we thought it was not too bad. Enjoyed it.

JM: Incidentally, you had to be married students that went there. But for the most part, they did not have children. Until they got to Badger Village, and that was the case with us, where-

DM: --Where Jimmy, Jim was conceived. And then-- was it on April Fools Day, they 00:22:00put a big sign, some funny people, put a big sign over Badger Village that said Rabbit's Village. Because everybody was pregnant at that time!

JM: And we played baseball. We had that during the summer. And we weren't around one of the summers. We were there one summer. I think I went right to school, you know. And then, I guess, after that, then when I graduated, so we were never there, except that one summer.

MM: OK. You were speaking of baseball. Describe some of the activities that you enjoyed, or the social activities. Were you part of the Badger Mens' or Badger Wives' Clubs? Speak about, I guess, the social activities you were involved in.

JM: You really were so far from the campus that you really--

DM: I think he means the activities there at Badger Village. There were activities, but we didn't really take part in too many of those. Or in any of them. I took sewing classes there. I remember learning how to sew, and I made myself a dress. But grandpa was studying, almost all the time, and he really worked hard at it. And then, of course, he worked, besides. And so we really didn't take part in any social activities there. I know there they were there, they were available, but I don't think we did. I don't remember at all. Do you?

JM: No, nothing all that much.

DM: If anything.

JM: Yeah. We had a car. Not everybody had an automobile in those days. And we had a car. We must have been, when I first got back, right away, I must have 00:24:00gone and bought a '36 Plymouth, that summer. And this was now, what was the year, '47. So it was eleven years old. And in those days, a ten or eleven year old car was pretty well used up. And this wasn't too bad, but it ran, it was good enough that we could keep it running for a while, and then, I think, the summer after I was, when I was in the graduate school, I think we were always at home, and then, I think, I painted the car. But before that--

DM: It was a nice car, it really took us a lot of places.

JM: Yeah, we went all over with it.

DM: Otherwise, when grandpa went to school, he always rode the bus.

MM: Oh, you did use the bus.

JM: You had to ride the bus to school. And that was very convenient. And I don't 00:25:00think there was anybody really minded it too much. For one thing, it gave you a chance to do a little studying. With the way it was usually light, going and coming. And it was no stops. I mean, once it got loaded they would take off--

DM: They were bumpy old buses, though.

JM: And after you rode a few times, you knew the scenery pretty well. You're not group really interested in looking at that, much. So it was very convenient. And it must have taken pretty close to 45 minutes each way. 30 minutes to 45 minutes. It was 30 miles, so yeah, it had to be more than 30 minutes, because they weren't driving 60, then. And the buses were rickety, you know. Had a lot of jokes about that. But I don't think I ever was on one that broke down.

MM: OK. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the facilities there. Earlier, 00:26:00you had spoke a little bit about the A&P store, before we started the interview. But if you could talk about various stores, and even, like, I know there was a barber shop, or, you know. Talk about the, I guess, the village aspects of it, the fact that it was almost a town.

DM: Well, it was, except I don't remember too much more than the store being there, and the barber shop must have been there.

JM: It was a barber shop, yeah. I think I got my hair cut sir.

DM: And I guess the store was run by the A&P. I think we probably did more of our shopping in Baraboo, because we had the car, so we were able to get into Baraboo. And I remember shopping at the A&P store in Baraboo, and other stores. And sometimes in Madison, if I was lucky enough to get into Madison to go 00:27:00shopping. And so other than that, I don't remember any other facilities. I guess we probably weren't there long enough, maybe. We were only there, I don't even know if we were there a year. About a year.

JM: And during that time, once grandma was pregnant with Jimmy, we went up on the-- there were hills all around there, the Baraboo Hills. And matter of fact, what's the lake? Devil's Lake State Park was right near there. We went up, and we picked black raspberries.

DM: Up on the hill.

JM: And she made, it was the first time she made jelly. And that was really something. That was very good, yeah. And she's all pregnant, pretty far along, and we walked up that hill, and then in those fields, and found these 00:28:00raspberries, and picked them. We also had a little crick running near there, and we would go out and walk in the woods, and she got me a fly rods for my birthday present, I guess, and we tried it there, a little bit.

DM: Graduation, it was. It was a pretty area to live in, and I think we enjoyed that. Taking rides around in the area, in the country. And it's a beautiful part of the state, as well.

MM: I know you're real good friends with a couple that you met there, the Petermans. Did you make a lot of friends there, you know, besides them, or maybe describe how you got to tell them a little bit, and how your relationships have been.

DM: Well, the way they got to know Petermans, we met them, they had garden next 00:29:00to ours, and that's how we got to know them. And they are the one couple that we have stayed friends with, all these years. And we see them quite frequently. They did not have any children, and they moved out of Badger Village before we did, quite a bit before we did, because they found an apartment in Madison, and they were both, he was in school and she was working, so it was convenient for them to be living there. We certainly made friends with all of the neighbors, people who lived in our barracks.

JM: And a few of them we kept in contact with for a few years, you know, but gradually that begins to drop off. But Petermans were, they, of course, lived in Milwaukee after he had graduated. He was a journalism major, and she was a 00:30:00schoolteacher. And they moved back to Milwaukee, as we did. And so we were able to keep up that friendship, and we are, to this day, good friends.

MM: What about newspapers, media? Did you guys read the Daily Cardinal? I know the Village put out a weekly bulletin, or a newspaper. Radio, did you listen to WHA at all?

DM: We listened to the radio.

JM: They didn't have any TV in those days, of course. So radio was the thing.

DM: We probably did not subscribe to a newspaper, because we really didn't have a lot of money. And I don't even remember, Michael, what we read, you know? I can't tell you. Do you remember? I can't remember! You were so busy studying all 00:31:00the time, that's all I remember. I guess we might have had movies there, too, at the facility.

MM: OK. We're talking a little bit about the movies, and various recreational activities available at Badger, and what Jim and Doris were into, as well as we're going to talk a little bit about some of the visitors that they had.

DM: Well, they had movies. They showed movies there, at Badger Village. And I remember, I think we did that. We really did not get involved too much, socially. I think they had dances there, and so forth. We didn't do that. But we did have company. We had visitors. My cousin and her boyfriend came and visited us, and spent a day with us, and some other friends came up, and spend some time with us. And then, when our first child was born, my mother came and stayed, 00:32:00because they had a guest room there, in the barracks. And so my mother came and stayed for a few days, and then grandpa's mother came and stayed for a few days after the baby was born. And so that was nice.

And we did not, that year, we did not come home for Christmas. We had our Christmas there, because the birth of the baby was pretty imminent. He was born in January, so.

That's about as much as I remember. Do you remember any more?

JM: Did we have a Christmas tree?

DM: I don't remember that.

JM: I can't remember that either.

DM: Probably not.

MM: You said there was a visitor's room? Did that have to be reserved ahead of time?

DM: Probably did. I don't remember.

MM: Pretty high demand for it, do you remember?

DM: Not that I recall. We didn't seem to have any problems.

JM: They were all pretty much like we were. They gave people-- remember, we were away from the campus, and you don't have all of the things that you can do, that is available to students on the campus. And so they, and not only that, they're all, in many instances, in those days, the wife did not work, and so they had to get by on their GI Bill, or borrowing, or working as I did, working at something else decides that, and it didn't leave too much time for doing anything else. And our pleasures were simple. Finding the garden was fun, and probably at the 00:34:00same time, it did provide something in the way of savings in food. But I don't think that that was the big issue. Although the gardens were pretty good-sized, and as I say, they plowed them up for us, so we didn't have to spade it. But--

DM: I think most of our pleasure was going, on a weekend, probably going for a ride in the area. Because we enjoyed going to Sauk City, which was right near there, and Prairie du Sac, that was a nice city, and Baraboo was really a nice city, and they had a zoo there, and I remember taking Jimmy there, when he was just a little baby, to the zoo in Baraboo.

JM: I got to know a guy that was a plumber. He was working on some of the stuff, that building going on at Madison, and he lived on a farm not too far from where 00:35:00we were. And so we'd go over to their farm, I had a .22 rifle, we were going to go shooting squirrels, which we never did, so we over there. And for quite a while, we knew those people. And they were German, weren't they? Spoke with a German accent.

DM: I think their name like Heine.

JM: Oh, yeah. And our ride, we'd drive over that way, and they had a daughter that was probably in her early 20s, maybe. So there's things like that, that we did for recreation, I suppose you'd say.

MM: OK. So you lived in Badger from February or so of '47, through just into 00:36:00'48, it sounds like?

DM: Right. Until grandpa graduated in May or June, whenever he graduated.

JM: No, I graduated in--

DM: Did you graduate in February?

JM: I graduated in January.

DM: Oh you did? I don't remember that. Then you stayed on for a--

JM: Then I stayed on for a master's degree.

DM: But then I came home. I came home to Milwaukee, and stayed with my parents.

JM: And she had Jimmy.

DM: I had the baby, and grandpa rented a room in Madison, when he got his master's degree. So we really didn't live in Badger Village all that long. About a year.

MM: And eventually, after your master's degree, where did you then go on to work and live?

DM: At that time, I had a number of decisions to make, of course. Do I stay on 00:37:00and get a PhD? Or do I go get a job as an engineer? And I thought, well, I had had an invitation from the Mechanics department to be a teacher. And what do you call?-- An instructor, not a professor. An instructor. And I guess I surely could have [UNINTELLIGIBLE] with Mechanical Engineering, because I had an appointment, half-time appointment, as an instructor even while I was an undergraduate, and when I was in graduate school.

And so I thought, I really got into this game because I wanted to be an engineer. So I thought, I'm going to go and at least give it a try. So then I 00:38:00began looking, hunting around. In those days, of course, there were a lot of jobs available for engineers. And they sent, the company sent people to the school to interview them, and invite them to come to their places. I received a the number of invitations for that, and I did go to one or two of them.

And then, I had an invitation from a company that made outboard motors at Cedarburg and Fond du Lac, was called, the company was called, Kiki for aeromarine motors. And they made the Mercury outboard motor. And so I thought 00:39:00I'd start there. It was relatively close to Milwaukee, where our families were, and that's, so after being interviewed and going there, and invited to go there, I decided that's where I was going to go. And I worked there for about a year and a half before I went to Outboard Marine Corporation.

MM: Where you worked for most of the rest of your career.

JM: The rest of, I worked at Outboard Marine Corporation for 36 years. And always in research, and for the last 20 years, I was director of research for the company.

MM: When you look back on your time at Madison, do you feel as though your 00:40:00education was adequate, or above par, or how do you rate your education?

JM: Well, I frankly think it was terrific. I was able to move into these operations, and a number of them did not have the highest level of technology that I had been exposed to at Madison, and I was able to put it to work. And so it was-- I regarded the education had, and the value of it, very, very highly.

I also, incidentally, after I graduated and after I was working, I didn't do 00:41:00this while I was at Mercury, but when I started with Outboard Marine Corporation, I begin teaching at night school. And I taught Machine Design, at the Evening Engineering Course at what I guess we would call the vocational school in Milwaukee. It had a different name for it. And I taught that for a couple of years, and then I taught a phase of Machine Design at what was then the University of Wisconsin extension. And that was, again, good experience. And and the thing is, that I could--

One other thing, along that same line, before I was doing this teaching, I 00:42:00learned that there was something called a professional engineer. Why I didn't know it until after I was on the school for near five years, I couldn't tell you. Or at least, maybe not five years, maybe three years.

And you could take a test that the state had to register professional engineers. You had to take engineering training test. It was an all-day, eight-hour exam, and then the know professional engineer exam. I took that, and I got very good grades on it, and easily was accepted as a professional engineer.

Apparently I did well enough at that, they asked me to be an instructor, was 00:43:00close to being an instructor. I would write, for a number of years, I would write the test for the PE exams, and then grade them. And the history of these people taking the professional engineer exam, and then qualifying to be a professional engineer, was sad. You're lucky of if a third of them could pass the test. And well, a third would generally pass, but I should say, maybe to get as high as 50% to pass the test was amazing.

And so like I say, I did that for a couple of years, and one of the fellows that I worked with, that taught mechanical engineering, was involved with basically machine design and heat power, thermodynamics. And even though thermodynamics 00:44:00was my major field, I did quite well at mechanical design, as well. But ultimately, after a couple of years of writing the whole thing, I had a fellow that I worked with who really was sharp at machine design, one of our engineers where I worked, and he did that test, and I did the thermo test. Did that for a while.

And so even though I wasn't teaching classes in some of those years, I was still kind of teaching on the side. Of course, we got paid for that, too.

MM: So certainly the university did an excellent job in preparing you.

JM: I would say, if I could do those things, like that PE exam, which the University didn't have anything to do with, but somebody else did, it had to be, the only place I got it was there.

MM: And then just one last thing. How do you, when you think back on your time at Badger Village, you know, what are your reflections, what are your memories, how do you rate the experience? If you had to do it all over again, would you?

DM: Well, I think I sort of said that before. I don't know if I'd want to do it over again now, but it certainly was a very positive experience. We enjoyed it. I did. I thought it was a really nice experience, and liked all the people there. I felt we were pretty lucky, actually, considering the times. That we were pretty lucky to be able to have a place all to ourselves. The rent was certainly great. It was probably about $23 a month or something like that. And it was a good experience. I just kind of feel sorry for young people today that 00:46:00don't have to go through an experience like that. I know most young people today want to have their house all paid for, or at least have a house, and have a car, and have everything that goes with it. We didn't have any of those things, and still, we were very happy. And it was great.

JM: Well, we always had a car.

DM: Yes, I conceded that.

JM: Maybe only half, at most, half the people had cars. But then again, remember, I was a motor officer in the Army, and I was never afoot. Always had wheels under me.

DM: Yeah, we were lucky to that extent, that we had that. Most people didn't. That's true.

JM: Yeah, I think I thought it was a, looking back on it, it was a great experience.

MM: I just actually thought of this. What would you say were the hardest things that you dealt with at Badger Village? What was the most difficult thing?

DM: Probably in the wintertime, it wasn't all that, really, warm. You know, 00:47:00there's no basements. If you think that you're icebox could drip right through the floor, you know there isn't much of a foundation there.

JM: There was about two feet, and then there was gravel under there.

DM: So it probably wasn't all that warm in winter. But you know, when you're young, you don't seem to mind those things too much. And probably--

MM: Did you guys use the coal heaters, or a Nesco roasters?

DM: No, I never had anything. I just used the stove that we had. It was a little apartment-sized stove. And it had an oven. It was fine. No problems. I guess I really didn't mind it too much. Did you?

JM: No, I think it was great. We never, when you look back on it, we never really had any hard times. Everything went along smooth.

MM: Do you have any closing comments you'd like to make concerning either your education at Wisconsin, or your time at Badger, other than what we've talked about?

DM: Well, I think we both have good feelings about Wisconsin, about Madison, and about the University, and we think it's one of the best, if not the best.

JM: We're happy that every one of our children and now our grandchildren are all students or alumni of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I don't see how they could've had a better opportunity for college education than they've had there. In Jim's case, and I always felt that way about University of Wisconsin. Our taxes, in those days, paid for a pretty good part of the cost of education. Today, taxes don't pay quite so much on it, but even so, the school is going to 00:49:00be there, and people are going to support the school, and it's a shame not to go there, because it's as good a university as you're going to find, one of the top 10 or 15 in the nation, anywhere. And so why go anywhere else?

Now, if view I've always felt that if any of our children wanted to specialize in something, they might very well find another university that they could go to for grad school. And Uncle Jim went to Harvard for law, because he felt it was would be better, either a better law school, or maybe look better on his record. And your father, if he would've stayed in Mathematics, he might very well have gone to school in New Jersey, I forget what the name was.

DM: Princeton.

JM: Princeton, which had an excellent mathematics school. Your, father, incidentally, was a natural math person. But then he changed his mind and decided he'd rather be an attorney, and so then he, I think it was because it was convenient for him, but he also knew it good law school.

MM: Well, great. Well listen, thank you both very much for taking the time to share your experiences with me. I appreciate it very much.

JM: It was our pleasure!

DM: You are welcome, yeah, we enjoyed it. I don't know if we could help you too much, but I hope we did.

JM: Whether our memory's good enough, yeah.

DM: Right. Oh, dear. So you want us to shut it off?

JM: That do it?

DM: That's pause.

MM: The stop button's over here. There you go.