Town fixtures – Sam and Kaeko blowing glass - friends, Augustans, countrymen – Dennis Nadler – Jackie (Gerdiman) Nadler – August and Carrie (Tuepker) Nadler - we took the farm with us – Sunnyside Hatchery – Luetkemeyer Feed Store - Uncle Oscar played a cello
Gentle readers, I’ve been living in or near southwestern St. Charles County since 1976. Hence, I’ve collected a lot of memories of this place. I try not to dwell on the past too much, but truthfully, I miss having town fixtures.
Mind you, the fixtures I’m talking about aren’t mechanical or electronic. No, they are people like…an Augusta postmaster that sticks around more than a year, or business owners (like the Kemners), that you can patronize year after year. Or, how about Bob and Shirley Fulkerson at their tavern in Defiance?
I guess I eventually became a fixture myself; I could be easily spotted in 63332 and beyond, up on a ladder, scraping and painting, singing, whistling, and cursing.
Okay, you get my drift. And I will admit that there are some surviving fixtures like Sam and Kaeko blowing glass, and Brenda Kamper delivering my mail. But otherwise, I feel like a stranger in a strange land.
But, friends, Augustans, countrymen, lend me your eyes. I write not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. Yes, that was twisted…but seriously…I want to celebrate a long-standing Defiance fixture by the name of Dennis Nadler…that tall friendly guy who ran the Defiance Garage for years, and even worked there when it was still known as Tuepker Bros.
Painting of Defiance Garage including Dennis (right) and his son, Kevin (left). The artist: Jeff Malacarne of Defiance.
On Friday, October 11, 2024, I recorded an interview with Dennis in the living room of his house at T and D. Occasionally, his wife, Jackie, popped in and spiced up the conversation. The whole thing was big fun, and I hope you enjoy this distillation of our 2-hour conversation. (((Please note that anything in parentheses is my addition.)))
paulO: So, what year were you born? And where?
Dennis Nadler: 1936 in a little farmhouse in…along Matson…you know where the Beumers live now…on Terry Road…or Terry Court?
pO: Yeah, back up that valley.
DN: The very first house was an Oberdick…Walter Oberdick, and then there was our place. And then Walter’s brothers, Albert and Vernon, were next. And the next place was where Dick and Kaye Coates lived.
pO: And now they blocked that road, right? You can’t…
DN: Yeah, it washed out so bad…they (the Coates family) made a new road over to Duke Road.
pO: Who were your parents?
DN: August and Carrie (Tuepker). (If you want more info on Carrie Maria Tuepker, here’s a link to a page on FamilySearch. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L87W-JVL/carrie-mary-tuepker-1897-1975 ) It was her brothers that had the shop in Defiance.
pO: I was going to ask you about that. I ran into Benny Moseley just yesterday, and he said, ‘well, you know, that was the Tuepker Garage first.’
This sign from the Tuepker Bros. days, is still on display on the wall in the old Defiance Garage. The brothers were authorized dealers of that brand. (Special thanks to Kevin Nadler for giving me, Angela Stephens, and Judy Renner a private tour.)
pO: We don’t have to go into your grandparents…but if you want to, I’m fine with that.
DN: Well, his name was George (Nadler), I guess, and her name was Helene, and she was an Oberdick. I always told her (Dennis points to his wife, Jackie), ‘She was very fortunate. She grew up knowing both of her sets of grandparents. I didn’t know any of mine.’ My grandmother from my mother’s side was alive when I was born, but she died when I was about a year old.
pO: Where did you grow up, mostly?
DN: The first years, down here on the farm…at Matson…on Terry Road. My dad passed away in ’42, and we tried to…like idiots…we tried to stay on the farm. And here I was, 5yo, trying to take care of the hogs, and cows…and it didn’t work very well…oh…we had a guy come in and do the farm work…named Alvin Stevener.
pO: I didn’t know him, but I knew Orville.
DN: He was a brother. (Orville’s brother, Leroy, just died this year. When I read the obituary, I saw no mention of Alvin.) https://www.pitmanfuneralhome.com/obituary/Leroy-Stevener
DN: Alvin did the tractor work, but in ’47 my mother sold the place, and we bought a place in Augusta…on Main Street.
pO: Where on Main Street was your house then?
DN: Do you know where Bob Parks place was? (Currently the site of Applegate Inn.)
pO: Yeah, where Grandma Parks (the legendary Augusta midwife) lived.
DN: Well, where Grandma Parks lived was just east of our place. We were up on top of the hill. Her son Bob built that house where Jane Fuhr lives.
The former Nadler home on Main St. as it appears today.
pO: So, you were town people.
DN: We were town people, and we took the farm with us. We had 2 cows that we kept, and my sister took care of the milking. And we kept 6 hogs, and my uncle had a basement (I think he said) down by the railroad tracks, and that’s where we kept those hogs. We raised a hundred laying hens…sold hatching eggs to Sunnyside Hatchery in Washington.
pO: So, you had a hundred chickens right there in town?
DN: Yes, and 2 cows. We owned that whole block. And there was a barn down below the hill. And the town owned…where Melvin Fuhr lived…the town owned between him and us. And that town pasture…we rented that…for the cows. My mother wanted us kids to have plenty to do, so we wouldn’t be on the streets.
In the bottoms, below that hill, there was a triangular piece of ground that…George Webbink plowed that up for us and worked the ground, and I planted corn in there. And I cultivated that corn with an old push garden plow.
pO: In a past interview, I learned that Mel and Doris Hopen’s dad, Paul Fuhr, bought that house from a Webbink…probably the same guy…
DN: And the house…or the property where Doris (Fuhr Hopen) lived…my mother bought that at one time…then she finally sold it to Doris.
pO: Sounds like your mom was good at real estate and understanding the land…and how to manage money too.
DN: Yeah…she worked hard. She worked at the shop for her brothers…as a bookkeeper for a long time. She did all the number work by hand, no adding machine or calculator. And when we moved in that house (in Augusta) …that was the first electric we had. So, she bought a used refrigerator at an auction… And then she got some plywood, and she built our own cabinets in the kitchen…sawed everything out, put the hinges on the doors, and everything.
pO: That’s amazing. I guess you all had a big vegetable garden, too. And she would can?
DN: Pretty big, yeah…We butchered our own hogs we were raising. We always had a yearling calf that we saved for butchering.
pO: Okay, backing up… these were fertilized hatching eggs you were selling to Sunnyside Hatchery. Does that pay better than selling food eggs?
DN: Yeah, it must have. My mother engineered the deal with Sunnyside.
pO: And you weren’t part of Sunnyside; you just were selling to them…
DN: Right. We were contracted to them. And that place was on East 5th Street. It might be where the Ford tractor dealership was. B and T Automotive is in there now. Sunnyside came around…I don’t know…once a week and picked them up. They did the hatching there, and we’d get a bonus for hatchability. We’d sometimes get as high as 95% hatchability…and then we’d get a pretty good bonus.
A Sunnyside Hatchery ashtray. (Photo courtesy of Washington Historical Society.)
pO: What kind of chicken, typically, were you using?
DN: New Hampshire Reds. They were big meaty animals.
pO: Was the New Hampshire Red particularly good eating, or was it more for the eggs?
DN: Well, they produced a dark shelled egg; the yolk was a really dark yellow. And for the meat, they were a big fleshy bird.
Jackie Nadler: Tell him how you hauled the eggs…how you made your wagon. You put sidebars on your wagon.
DN: Oh, ho, ho! I had a little wagon with removable sides…and I…my one uncle who used to work as a watchman down at Klondike…and he’d bring all these old dynamite boxes. And I ripped them up in little strips, and I made tall sides…a double decker…and we’d cull those chickens, and then I’d haul them up to Freddie Knoernschild’s store in that wagon.
pO: That was a long haul!
DN: It wasn’t too far. And that’s how…when I planted the corn in the field below the hill…I shucked that out by hand in that wagon, and I pulled it up the hill, and there was a grain bin there. I put it in, and when we needed corn for the chickens or the cows, I’d bag some up and take it up to Luetkemeyer’s to be ground. I put a lot of miles on that old wagon. (Laughs.)
And is now a Hoffmann property. (I think that caption should read 1930’s to 1950’s…or Augusta is older than I ever dreamed.)
pO: Mops (Marvin Fuhr) once told me how people used to…after they felt like their chickens weren’t going to lay many more eggs…they would sell the chickens to Knoernschild, and they would take them to St. Louis, or somebody would come and get them.
DN: A guy by the name of Fred Baumgarth had a run that he’d come out and he’d pick up stuff like that and haul it to St. Louis.
pO: Did you shop much with Knoernschild? I guess he had clothing too, like overalls…
DN: I know he did, and he had work shoes.
pO: Did your mother also sew clothing?
DN: Oh, yeah. She sewed a lot of dresses, for her and my sisters.
pO: How many brothers and sisters did you have?
DN: No brothers, two sisters.
pO: And because your name is Nadler, should I assume you’re a Lutheran? (We laugh.) We don’t have to go there.
DN: No, that’s right. That’s all I know. I was born and raised in the Church there in Augusta.
pO: Did you go to the one-room school (on Church Street)?
DN: Yes, I did. I went to the first three grades at the public school in town, under Evelyn Koch. And for 4th grade I moved over to the parochial school. Our pastor was the teacher. His name was Kamphoefner. He was a relative of Paul and his family.
pO: Do you have any stories about the school…anything you want to talk about?
DN: Well, I think it was a fantastic school. I learned more there than the kids that went to the town school. When I got in high school, my freshman year…was all review of stuff I had already in 5th and 6th grade. Our pastor was very thorough, and very organized. He’d take lesson material, and plan that out for the whole school term. We never finished a year without finishing a (text) book, and we never finished a book more than a couple days early. We were always on a schedule.
He taught all 8 grades. He brought us up to the front, and we’d sit on a bench so the rest of the kids could hear what was going on, and that’s one reason why we learned so much easier. We’d been hearing this stuff for 5, 6 years already. There’s a lot to be said for the one-room school.
pO: And were you living that whole time in Augusta?
DN: The whole time was in Augusta. And we walked to school.
pO: Dennis, until today, I had no idea you ever lived in Augusta.
DN: I lived there until 1960. Then she sold that, and we moved down to Ottmer Nadler’s farm in Defiance.
pO: Okay, up on the hill…the house is gone.
DN: Yeah, they (the Hennesseys) took that down, and built another one. We lived there for 47 years.
pO: Let me understand now…when you left Augusta, and you went to live at the Ottmer Nadler house…was Ottmer’s wife still living there?
DN: Yeah. Well, he was living there too.
pO: So, you were living there as part of the family?
DN: There was two houses up there, and I always said, ‘you know that big white house up on the edge of the hill? I live in the little white house behind it.’
pO: I’m glad you clarified that. And then, you must know the Kamphoefners quite well…and the Diederichs.
DN: Right.
pO: Do you remember, in your youth, what you did for…did you have any playtime?
DN: Yeah, my uncle, Oscar Nadler, and Leland, and Leonard…when I was a teenager, I worked for them. And we got together…we grew up…Leonard and myself…we grew up like brothers rather than cousins. Leland was a little older. And Leonard was 5 years older than me. We didn’t get together and socialize that much, but every year they tried to have a Nadler reunion.
pO; When you lived in Augusta did you go to the Legion Hall for dances, or reunions…
DN: Picnics, yeah. Jackie and I, when we were dating, we went to a dance every Saturday night…as far as we could drive reasonably.
pO: And I guess these were all local bands?
DN: No, not necessarily. The one band that we followed quite a bit was ______ Bottermiller from Hermann. In recent years…the late 1990s…Leonard Nadler got a group together that he called The Nadler Memories Band. It was after his dad passed away, and after his wife (Leonard’s) passed away.
DN: Uncle Oscar played a cello, and he played for his first dance when he was 12yo. He rode horseback from Augusta to New Melle…through the woods and carried that bass on his horse. Leonard’s wife played it (Oscar’s cello) after my uncle died, and then, after she died, Leonard asked me to play it. I told him, ‘I don’t know a bit of music.’ He said, ‘It’s easy, I’ll help you get started.’ So, I played with them for a couple years.
Uncle Oscar’s cello now resides 20 miles north of Jefferson City, MO, in the home of Bernie Nadler, son of Leonard, and grandson of Oscar Nadler.
Gentle readers, this seems like a pleasant place to end this installment. And it looks like we’ll have a part 2, for sure. Until then, do good work, and stay curious.
paulO
The Friends of Historic Augusta's S.A.G.E project (Stories of Augusta's German Evolution) is sponsoring this program (TILIW stories) in partnership with the Missouri Humanities and with support from the Missouri Humanities Trust Fund. If you wish to read more stories, or want to make a donation to Friends of Historic Augusta and Tell It Like It Was, please use this link: https://www.augustamomuseum.com/tell-it-like-it-was-stories
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