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

by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends

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  compound complex

  Air-conditioning was only in the factory barber shop, as I recall. Can't cut sweaty hair. Barber was a Brother Julian. He wore flared trousers and got stares.

  Brother Greenlees taught me that "the sole survivors" is "les ultimes survivants," in French.

  Brother Heidi (sp.?) scolded me for using a defective pink songbook (isn't pink, of itself, a defect?) to prop up a wobbly metal antique of a stitcher/whatever/contraption.

  An older, non-Bethelite brother - a former merchant marine, so I was told - was hit and killed by an automobile after we left a Gilead Production in Jersey City. Is that correct, J.C.?

  I accompanied Karl Klein and M.K. to different congos where he'd give a talk on music and play the cello to my piano accompaniment. So, I accompanied him there and on the piano. That's a zeugma, for your grammatical edification. And here you thought we were talking about nut jobs.

  The above could be useful some day in some circumstance in some hell hole ...

  CoCo
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  compound complex

  Tootsie (ironically, Dorothy in the movie) and Mr. Goodcheer were seated at my table. I remember her being very sweet and "top of the morning to you" C.L. being the cheeriest man at Bethel.

  He made me look like Grumpy by comparison.

  Starting a new study group in Manhattan, a few brothers and I picked up sound equipment from a local's apartment and wheeled it in a baby carriage to a community center. There we set up a ministry school/service meeting one evening a week. Lots of work till we got a hall that we shared with 3 other congos.

  We had all 4 meetings on the weekend (excepting B.S.). Still lots of work. We were gone on congregation duties (the "foreign service," don't you know) from work dismissal Saturday noon till midnight, then back to the field, shepherding and Sunday meetings from about 7:30 a.m. till 10:00 p.m.

  Beer helped.

  CoCo

  CoCo
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  jambon1

  Bookmarked for later. Thanks
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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi Randy,
  
  Here are a couple of 34 Orange stories. For a year or two, my wife Gloria was the housekeeper at 34 Orange. The first floor apartment had a well-stocked kitchen, a TV and air-conditioning. George Couch, Max Larsen, Lowell Dixon and others would bring their friends there and entertain them well. On Monday mornings, Gloria would empty the waste baskets, and there would be lobster shells on shrimp shells and lots of empty liquor and champaign bottles. It was something to notice since we were actually living on Bethel food and $20 each per month for "extras" like underwear, and since my parents were in the Circuit work and hers were retired, we got no money from home. One time, when her parents planned to come for a visit, she asked if they could stay there. The office told her some cock and bull story about needing to leave it open in case some "important" guests came in at the last minute, so they refused her request. Of course, no one used the place while her parents were visiting, but the office didn't want "just anybody" to stay there.
  
  Shortly thereafter, one day Gloria said to me "After work, don't come home. Come to 34 Orange, first floor." It was summer and stiflingly hot. I came down the alley and into the back door. When I got there, she had bought steaks from our meager allowance and had made chocolate chip cookie dough. Gloria made cookies, oven going and air conditioner blasting. it was marvelous, and was made even more so by the fact that it was totally illicit. We closed all the blinds up tight, had a wonderful meal, watched TV, and spent a cool, comfortable evening there. It was truly one of the high points of my 12 years at Bethel.
  
  Later, two of my good friends (who shall remain nameless for their own protection, as they are both still JWs) lived at 34 Orange on the second floor for awhile, and we had many a great party in that room. One time they decided to make wine in their room. The Bethel Office got wind of it and told them that they couldn't do that. One of them got very angry at them, especially because he was working on the first Harris offset press with ultra-heavy ink coverage on the original version of the "Bible Stories" book before we bought the afterburners. The press was belching out lots of smoke, which was illegal, and the EPA was trying to catch us, so we were running the press at night so the Society wouldn't get caught polluting and have to pay a big fine. One weekend this same guy had had a few beers, and he started thinking about it, he got so worked up, he peed out the window onto the air conditioner down below. As it happened, some important guests happened to be staying there at the time, and I got called before the Factory Committee over the incident. It took some fast talking to keep the guys from getting kicked out, as I recall. After the FC relented and let the guys involved stay at Bethel, they got together and bought me my first bottle of Wild Turkey. I still drink the stuff.
  
  Tom
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  slimboyfat

  Great thread, and what "grand reunion".

  It seems being a JW at bethel is a whole different story to being a JW most any place else.

  Thanks for the glimpse into a different world.
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  darth frosty

  The press was belching out lots of smoke, which was illegal, and the EPA was trying to catch us, so we were running the press at night so the Society wouldn't get caught polluting and have to pay a big fine.

  Love it Tom. When I was there they had us give tours to make it seem that the bethel factory had no emissions and was revolutionary in there efforts to be environmentally friendly.

  Another nugget who had the priviledge of working in tha baler room? This was a special duty only assigned to brother's who weighed over 200lbs. The key was working in the baler room, making paper bales of used paper and signatures, you lost a lot of weight due to the nature of the work. So thats where they liked to stick the lard butt's...like me. So I go down to the baler room and everyone is telling me how I will loss weight. I left with the distinct honor of being the only person sent to work in the baler room who gained weight.
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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi Warren,
  
  The Wood-Hoe was a loser from the beginning. It was badly manufactured, and the potential for quality was dismal, almost nonexistent. I felt bad about assigning Randy to try to get it producing, but he was the man best qualified for the job. From every perspective, that press, although it could be made operational, could never be cost effective. I often wondered if I was the only one who ever thought about things like that. No one I spoke to on the Factory Committee or Governing Body thought in terms of quality and cost-effectiveness.
  
  Regarding whether or not I was there for the MAN "2 to 1" conversions, I had strongly recommended against it in a study I did when I was overseer there. I had to do all my own work and calculations (without a computer, with a pencil and adding machine only) but I learned an enormous amount from doing those studies, and what I learned helped me quite a bit when I had to work in the real world where if you don't make money, you can't just put an article in Kingdom Ministry and get money pouring in the door; you just go out of business.
  
  The longer MAN cutoff length (the amount of paper used for one magazine) compared with the American Harris presses meant enough extra paper waste for each magazine that over the life of the machine it would make financial breakeven impossible, especially when one added the conversion cost. The more they used it the more costly it got. So I recommended that they ditch the MAN presses and buy new Harris presses (That was the $8 million plan which Randy made into one of his famous cartoons posted somewhere here on this thread). The Factory Committee didn't implement their conversion plan until after I was gone.
  
  After I left Bethel, the Society decided to sell the Wood-Hoe press. They used a used equipment broker in California, a guy I knew named Reggie Dewar (also a good friend of Dan Sydlik's, and coincidentally the one who brought Randy Watters "into the truth"). Reggie used to call me up after Randy left the organization, all upset because he left. I told him that Watters was a good man (what was I thinking!?!) and that Christian living was more important to me than doctrine. I said that if Russell had been around now, he would have been disfellowshipped. Russell, I told Reg, believed in two heavenly classes.
  
  Now for a little aside: As it turned out, Reggie's contact at Bethel was Ralph Lindem, the Society's purchasing agent. Ralph knew me well, and in fact he was one of the four of us who Randy mentioned in another post who made a trip together, when I first presented some of the ideas I had been discussing about law versus undeserved kindness, and which started Randy on the road out of Bethel. He remembers us on the way to DC, but I remember us on the way to a trade show in Boston. (The fourth guy was Werner Bohn, the Overseer of Photoplate. He was rather new at Bethel at the time.) Now back to the Reggie Dewar story.
  
  After I had helped Reggie in his efforts to sell the Wood-Hoe in some long conversations with a buyer in Australia, Reggie confessed to me that he had gotten me into some trouble in a conversation he had with Ralph. Ralph had been on the judicial committee that disfellowshipped Ed Dunlap, and he could be like a bulldog when he wanted to know something. Reggie told me that Ralph kept asking questions until he got Reggie confused, and he ended up telling Ralph that I believed in two heavenly classes, which I am pretty sure started the ball rolling which ultimately led to my being disfellowshipped. I told Reggie that what I had said was that Russell believed that, not me! He said "Yes, I know, but Ralph just kept asking questions until he got the answer he wanted. I'm so sorry." A year or so later, that conversation was brought up to me just prior to when I was disfellowshipped, so I know that somehow it got back to my local committee.
  
  Tom
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  TheListener

  I remember the the bridge day and the knife in the desk speech.

  I absolutely loved getting an early dismissal from work. Whether it was Gildead graduation day or the memorial.

  The only way to escape the bethel police was to tip your housekeeper regularly.
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  Tom Cabeen

  CoCo,
  
  "Zeugma" What a great word! From the Greek "to yoke".
  
  Thanks!
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  james_woods

  I have a simple question - this <Orange> luxury brownstone - would it possibly have been also where Ed and Betty Dunlap had their apartment? This would be just after the Squibb Pharma buildings were first purchased and the renovation was taking place.

  When they had me and the Murray sisters over one night I was amazed at the relative luxury compared to the horrors of ordinary Bethel life...later, Ed made sure that Helen and Lucille got to stay in an unnocupied similar apartment next door, but as I was a sort of unimportant junior escourt for the ladies I was left in the horrible seedy hotel up the street.