Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!

by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  darth frosty

  4) Getting drunk in our rooms before some special lunch. Was it the Gilead Grad lunch? everyone got out of work early and went to some private party or another to consume mass quantities of alcohol. I always had plenty of booze and liked to invite new boys over to see them stagger down to lunch. One boy fell down several flights of stairs in the Bossert on one occassion. I know...i am evil.

  I had made it known that I was not happy at Bethel. He actually told me that I must be committing secret sins which were grieving the holy spirit, since no one could serve at Bethel and not be happy..I swear to God he told me this.

  Y'no whats really sad...you cant make up stories this bad. All this sh!t is true, all of us were there at different times and we all have the same f@cked up stories to tell.
• 

  willyloman

  gave a thirty minute lecture a few days later warning us boys on how rock music (Dave confessed to being a Led Zeppelin fan) can twist us into knife wielding maniacs.

  This kind of twisted logic they threw at you explains why so many Bethel boys came home all screwed up. That and the constant guilt ("You must have a secret sin....").

  One of the kids who went from our old congo came home a year or so later under a cloud. He showed up at a few meetings with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, then disappeared. I never saw him again until about a year later, out in service. We were in a really run-down trailer park inhabited by low-lifes, and knocked on a door. A teenage girl heavy with child answered. She gave us a blank stare, then looked inside at a figure curled up on a filthy couch and spoke to him. The body lying there moved and the guy got to his feet and moved slowly to the door. His long hair was matted, his eyes bloodshot. Even with a scruffy beard, I recognized him as the former Bethelite.

  "You've come a long way," I said.

  "Fuck you," he said.

  I wrote it down as not interested.

  Looking back, I was dying to know what the hell happened to him at Bethel. When I gathered enough of these kinds of questions in my head, I left the dubs. Of course, that took another 10 years.
• 

  Dogpatch

  Warren sez in yellow... (did you have a nickname, fess up!)

  When I arrived to work in the factory, or maybe it was Bethel, we were told to do our jobs and not make recommendations for changes. Bethel was already a well-oiled and efficient machine with much smarter people at the helm.
  LOL. Before I went to Bethel, a former Bethelite in the San Luis Obispo congregation warned me of the racial fights, the cussing, cigarette smoking and general mayhem there. I knew exactly what to expect because of him, only it was worse! Most of these boys did not want to serve their four years, and most were sent off like military kids to teach them discipline. I had to run floor 3-6 like a bunker camp to get production. We were a cult within a cult, even though the rival Cottrell boys could kick our asses if they wanted. But they had no 6" rubber bands like we did, thanks to Darryl? Where is Darryl. He used to smile at Cab and I when we talked about the secret apostasy, but I wonder how much he knew. This is Cab. He was a joker, kissing butt to Wheels (we had to or get sent to job press!) then laughing when he walked away and doing pranks! BAD Cab. Behind this monster was "Fish" on the left, and Darryl on the right. All others, including 3-7 pressmen and the dweebs in JOB PRESS (we wouldn't be caught dead down there) were hazed upon entry. Overseers excepted, of course. Rubber bands and chest blows were the fave. We met once a week at MAN 19 to have quick verse of Bible and to plot strategies against the inkheads on 3-7. Apostate knowhow was the sublimation of Bethel from within in more ways than might be imagined.
  
  LOL. We RAN the place! Randy and Tom,
  
  ... were you part of the process to convert all the MAN presses to offset? This was a conversion project to make 2 MAN letterpress into 1 MAN offset. Also, some new 4 color Hiedelbergs started showing themselves.
  I was in charge of R+D for the stupid nyloprint conversion idea. What a ridiculous plan! But I was happy to do research, and got to visit the Government Printing Office in DC with Cab and Ralph Lindem, and this was REAL riot because CAB was mouthing off about his horrible apostate things that he had learned from the evil arch-enemy Ray Franz and his minions. I was grinning from ear to ear. When you learn something new, you want to see it tested. I was chiming in as the "disinterested observer," In 81-82 they bought a new high speed burst binder and tried to connect it to the WOODHOE (through the floor). I think the integration was a major flop. At the time I was developing a barcode reader for the new highspeed gatherer, that not only would read marks at the folds to "know" if the signature was in the correct bin and not inverted, but also read the collated signatures to check for correct order and kick out bad combos without shutting down the machine.
  That was my second R+D assignment, to get the Wood How running, more in a minute. Randy
• 

  wschroeder

  There is always one person, or more in some cases, that cannot keep a decent level of decorum when drinking. There was an actual incident that made the local Brooklyn Heights paper that involved a whole group of drunken Bethelites, including at least one being arrested by police.
  
  The WTS owned a brownstone on Orange street where a brother, his wife, and children, were being housed. They were often seen at the meals in the Towers dining rooms. This brother was a computer expert with IBM and was part of getting the new MEPS system working on the new IBM computers recently acquired.
  
  When this family moved out, the house became the residence of some Bethelites. I don't know how that was all decided, because one might have guessed it would be passed to a "heavy" and his wife. Seems that the new tenants decided to throw a party, which got out of hand, and one or more of those there got louder and more obnoxious than the neighbors could bear. Apparently, the police were summoned, nobody responded due to the noise. It took a while and the end result was at least one arrest.
  
  An announcement of the incident was made at the breakfast microphone. Soon Bethel was a few members shorter from that point. This episode was so different from the typical announcements of group dismissals (usually for homosexuality) that the whole event stayed the buzz for a while, especially since many of us were reminded every time we walked by the house going to the factory.
  
  Warren
• 

  Dogpatch

  What, 34 Orange? They recently sold that.

  Cab, you should tell the story about Fitz, the Cotrell press, and the air conditioning. :-))
• 

  lrkr

  Can you guys shed some light on the aversion the old-timers (Knorr and Couch???) had to air conditioning. I heard once that the policy was that Bethel will pay for one utility either heat or AC. If you live where its cold- you get heat and have to pay for AC.

  So- AC was a great luxury. New buildings would be built with knock-out sleeves for through wall units and no central air!!! Thru wall units were bought and sold until they were well beyond unsanitary. Poor new boys got no AC and just suffered. New York city can be HOT in the summer, especially if you are on one of the upper floors.

  Regarding the "drinking before lunch" tradition- I know that was the tradition for special meals. Then one time I was invited up to one of the heavies rooms and I found out that it was more of a daily tradition for some of the heavies.
• 

  wschroeder

  Randy asks: (did you have a nickname, fess up!)
  
  I was the invisible 6'5" Bethelite who worked the whole factory and wandered the pressroom often.
  
  I was deliberately isolated for 3 years. Only one of the 20 or more electricians, (?firstname) Guerrero, from San Antonio, remained my friend and biggest advocate within the department. He was also the smartest electrician (next to me :-) ). He always had a nickname for me, but none that I can remember now..... sorry. When my situation flipped and I had my own work area. On a daily basis he never failed to walk over to my table and put his arm around my shoulder, shake his head sadly, and then smile really big. That's a friend...
  
  Warren
• 

  david_10

  Fantastic thread. Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

  That's all I have to say.

  David
• 

  Dogpatch

  

  The Wood-Hoe was purchased by Nathan Knorr (3rd Watchtower President) at the peak of the 1975 fever. It was a prototype costing $1.6 million with three huge letterpress cylinders about 54" in diameter and 72" wide. It was designed to print 100,000 "Truth" books a day and was directly connected to a bindery upstairs. Chief Engineer (and formerly my roommate) Milan Miller was in charge of getting it going, but was away most of the time setting up presses in other countries. Eventually, I got the job.

  The problem with the Wood-Hoe was that the cylinders were made up of magnetic, concentric rings that expanded and contracted so much during the course of the day (we had no air conditioning) that the printing looked like it was done with rubber stamps. Just webbing up the press took a case of books in paper, it was 70" wide and moved very fast. The press created such sway in the building when we ran it, the lathes in the machine shop on the floor below us could not keep register. The press was eventually sold to a low bidder in another country. After 1975, they had decided to print pretty books instead, as they could make much more money and woo in more people at the door.
• 

  compound complex

  Hello, Randy!

  I'm sure enjoying this thread. Memories, dredged up by your stories of the pressroom, are flooding back. Well, trickling back.
  
  R.N. and N.D. and a few others of us did make-ready for the printing of AID TO BIBLE UNDERSTANDING. Was that because of all the highs-and-lows in the plates? I was absolutely the slowest and most methodical of all the m.r. artistes. Couldn't help myself.

  I lived at 34 Orange Street. An old lady a few doors told me the Judge and his sister (?) used to get into terrible fights.

  During breakfast one morning we heard the peal of thunder and the results of a lightning strike. The stylized watchtower of a brand-new brick building - adjacent to my first home, 117 Columbia Heights - was hit and fell to the sidewalk below. Jehovah strikes again.

  Brother Knorr always went overtime during breakfast and, when finished, frantic brothers scurried out to move their already ticketed cars.

  Later worked in goofreading. Loved K.E. and A.R. and M.H. When E.T. claqued on over in her stilettos, some of the brothers ran, saying they didn't wanna get "treed" by E. I loved her, too. She didn't mean to be comical.

  Brothers with the "problem" were given written instructions on how to implement salt peter into their regimen in order to serve Jehovah in a manner more wholesome and without distraction ... Am I full of it, or what? What?

  You know all this already (pretty boring), but I hadda spill it.

  Thanks,

  CoCo