Ferd B. Meckstroth

A New Knoxville Native Remembers

By Barb Osterloh

Ferd B. Meckstroth
Photo by Barb Osterloh

Growing old is a certainty. Just how old we will get to be is an uncertainty. For New Knoxville resident, Ferd B. Meckstroth, reaching the age of 94 has been as much of a surprise to him as anyone. “I may as well be the oldest person still living in New Knoxville,” he surmised. “There are a couple of New Knoxville natives older than me but they’re living in nursing homes in other communities now.”

In fact, Ferd’s whole neighborhood is advanced in age. “One of my neighbors, Mrs. Neimeyer is 91 and Olga Stienecker is 87,” he said. “There is one young couple living near me. They’re only in their seventies,” he joked. Ferd’s neighborhood is a close knit group, getting together to celebrate each other’s birthday with an afternoon party, complete with cake, a game of cards and just plain enjoying each other’s company.

For anyone hankering to learn how rural life was lived in the early part of the century, has only to ask Ferd. His recollection of those years is very clear. “I was born here in New Knoxville on November 8, 1899,” he said. “When I was six years old, my parents, Ben and Anna (Maneke) Meckstroth, moved us to a farm two miles west of town. I learned I’d rather go fishing in Carter Creek than do farm chores,” he admitted.

Although he went fishing as often as possible, he also did his share of farm chores. “Everyday I had to carry in fire wood for the cook stove in the kitchen and for the heating stove. There was water to pump (by hand) for the livestock to drink. Feeding chores also had to be done for the cows, pigs and chickens,” he said. As Ferd grew older, his younger brothers, Clarence and Arnold also had chores to do. “There was work for everyone,” he said. But he never had to do dishes. “That’s because I had two older sisters, Louise and Lydia. They always did the dishes. I do my own dishes now though,” he said.

Ferd recalls helping his father farm with horses. “When I was small, I’d get a big kick out of riding on top of a horse on the way to the field,” he remembered. “I’d hang onto the hames of the harness for support.” Ferd and his brothers learned to plow, work ground, plant, cultivate and harvest using horses. Even after tractors and cars appeared on the scene, a good horse was often worth its weight in gold.

“The Model T’s had to be hand cranked to get them started,” he explained. “There were no automatic starters then. Trying to start them on cold mornings was the worst. First we’d use hot water to warm the carburetor or fill the petcock with ether from a bottle. If that didn’t work, we’d go harness a horse, hitch her to the front end of the car and have her pull it. The horse was trained to stop as soon as she’d hear the first explosion of the engine. I’d unhitch her, put the pulling equipment on her back and she’d go home – and I’d go to town.”

Ferd first attended school at Wierwille School located on Southland Road. “If I walked, it was one and-a-half miles away (one mile by road and a half mile across fields). Two miles if I took the road all the way.” Every child who came to school spoke only Platte Duetsch (low German). The first lesson to be learned was English. One class of High German was also taught,” he said. However, Ferd’s favorite subject was math.

According to Ferd, he attended high school in New Knoxville, the first year of which was spent upstairs in the old town hall. Some classes were held in church basements. The old school had been torn down to make room for a new building being built on the same lot. The school that opened for classes in the fall of 1913, today houses the Hoge Brush Factory. Ferd graduated from the three year high school in 1916. Following graduation, he worked at the Auglaize Tile Company (located at the present site of Brookside Laboratories) until 1918. The next year he began working for Kramer and Dickman Creamery.

White Mountain Creamery bought out Kramer and Dickman and later moved the business to the north end of New Knoxville (the American Legion building now stands there). In those days, (before refrigeration), natural ice was used to cool and preserve the very perishable dairy product. Ferd recalls helping to cut ice from the pond near the creamery (east of the Legion hall) in 1917 and helping to pack it in the “ice house” for use all summer long. “The house was made of double walls that were filled with sawdust for insulation,” Ferd said. “In winter, ice would be cut from the frozen pond in large chunks and packed tightly together, one row on top of another, until the house was packed full. Then a foot of sawdust was laid on top of the ice, for added insulation. That kept it frozen until it was used,” he said. “Ice was needed in the summer time to cool the cream so that it would churn.”

Ferd Meckstroth and Jennie Katterheinrich were married April 20, 1922. After living with his parents for a year, he and Jennie moved to a rented house in New Knoxville. He continued working for White Mountain in New Knoxville, collecting cream from farmers.

As he tells it, “I drove a Model T truck around the country picking up the cream. The only dairy product that had any market value was cream. So farmers separated the cream from the milk (for the market). The skim milk was fed to the hogs. I knew “German” farmers who didn’t think they could raise hogs without skim milk,” said Ferd. I’d go out with a bucket and a scale for weighing the cream. I’d measure the butterfat. Farmers were paid on butterfat content of their cream. I picked up cream in containers of all kinds, earthen ware (crocks), cans, jars, and buckets. I carried a large rubber scraper with me so I could scrape every last drop into my weighing bucket. Then I would dump it into the 20 gallon metal barrel that I carried on the truck. The 20 gallon barrel was insulated with wood to keep the cream cool during the seven hours I was on the road. Cream was collected only twice each week, so farmers had to keep their cream cool in their basements or wells until it was picked up. Many of them made their own butter and cottage cheese.

To keep the cream from splashing and churning while driving in transit to the creamery, the barrels contained a metal float that sat on top of the cream. It had a hole in the center and as the barrel filled it floated up with it. That way I didn’t show up at the creamery with butter or only a small amount of cream, instead the full load. Sometimes, I’d carry butter on the route to sell or to exchange for the cream I collected. The butter was carried in insulated, ice cooled, wooden containers.”

The roads weren’t paved and some of them were mud roads so it wasn’t unusual for Ferd to get his truck hung up on them occasionally. Whenever he got stuck, a farmer usually hitched up his horses to help him out of the mud or snow. He remembers one mud road in Mercer County in the spring of the year. The wheels got a foot wide with mud and got so heavy that the motor couldn’t pull it anymore. “It took a team of horses to get me out of that one,” he said. Another time a ditch that had been dug across Lock Two Road sunk down and Ferd got stuck in it.

In 1924, Ferd went to work at White Mountain’s bottling plant in St. Marys. White Mountain always prided itself with a consistently deep cream line. Customers looked to this cream line to make sure they were getting full value for their money. Then along came homogenization which kept the cream in suspension. White Mountain bottled it both ways at first not knowing how the public would accept it. Some felt that by not being able to see the cream was just one way for the creamery to “gyp” their customers. Consumers eventually learned to like not having to shake the bottle before each use to redistribute the cream, and it soon became the only way milk was bottled.

In 1946, after 22 years at White Mountain, Ferd left the creamery. “I just got tired of working on Sundays,” he said. At that time he began working for Hoge Lumber sawing lumber, “ripping small sticks out of big ones,” he grinned. “We made a lot of rafter pieces for those round roofed barns that Hoge built so many of,” he said. “We’d cut them out so they could be nailed together on the job.” Ferd Meckstroth was 72 years old when he retired from Hoge. He might not have quit yet, but his legs began to hurt him. The doctor told him it was varicose veins.

He and his wife, Jennie, had three children, two boys and one girl. His son, Roland, died at the age of 64, of heart failure. Dale Meckstroth lost his life in a fire that destroyed his home. Daughter, Lois (Mrs. Marvin Schuller) survives. “She is my greatest support system,” Ferd said. He also has seven grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

His wife, Jennie died 13 years ago, on February 3, 1981. Ferd had been troubled with an ulcer for a number of years, and in 1983, he was rushed to the hospital with severe stomach pains. Doctors found that the tissue of his stomach was eaten through and emergency surgery was performed to correct the problem. “I feel great now,” he said. “I always had to be so careful what I ate, now that no longer bothers me.”

On May 3,1993, he tripped and broke his leg. After 18 days in the hospital and six weeks with his daughter, he recuperated. On November 8, 1993, his 94th birthday, Ferd got on his trusty bike and rode around New Knoxville. In his lifetime he’s witnessed many changes in New Knoxville. Another new school in 1938, the paving of Main Street, more recently a new town hall, just to name a few. Gone is B. E. Cook’s General Store (now Adolphs) and Duhme grocery and post office (parking lot next to gunshop) and Kuhlman Dry Goods Store (in gunshop building). The only grocery in town is Home Town Grocery owned by Patrick and Rachel Meyer. And he remembers when the building housing 5th Third Band was actually three businesses—Kuhlman Bank, Beickman Restaurant downstairs and a pool hall upstairs.

Ferd still drives his car when the weather is good. For a number of years, he rode his bicycle many miles each week, picking up beverage cans off the side ditches for exercise. He still likes to play cards with the senior citizens and enjoys Jeopardy on TV. Ferd has always been keenly interested in what is going on around him. “I enjoy living one day at a time, he said recently. At my age, that’s the only option left to me.”