Carl Obenour Oral History

Interview Feb. 9, 2002, by Charlotte Wangrin, Henry County Senior Center

CO. My name is Carl Obenour and as a young man I lived in South Amherst. I used to work for the Cleveland Quarry Company in the machine shop. I used to repair the machines they used to quarry out the sandstone. And I, that time while I was working there, why I took care of the waterworks, Superintendent of Waterworks in South Amherst, and I would take care of the plant by feeding the chemicals that was necessary to purify the water so it was usable.

CW. Pretty important job.

CO. Yeah and it took care morning and night to work 3 or 4 hours each day in the morning and evening to make, ah, the testing that was necessary to make the water safe for drinking.

CW. Was that different in those days than it is today?

CO. It was a little different. We had hoppers that we would feed in lime and calcium carbonate; there was-up several different chemicals.

CW. Did you have to put a lot of them in?

CO. Well the hoppers we had that fed the chemicals in the water, we had to adjust them for the right amount.

CW. Were they big or little?

CO. Well they were just medium-sized. They were about as tall as a person. And they would hold about four bags of lime in one hopper, and there was of course calcium that we put in the water, and it was determined by how the test come out, and Hummerson who was in charge of the Lorain (?) nearby town making sure that we had the right chemicals.

CW. Was he a chemist?

CO. Yeah. He was, so that way safe and when we did all the tests on it we knew how to go about adjusting the feeders that fed it into the system.

CW. Did you ever have any incidents that were different than the ordinary?

CO. Well, yes, we had one time, ah, the overflow from the sediment tanks where the water overflowed because a lot of rain had come in at that particular time so that made a difference in running the tests because there was outside water coming into the system and the tanks were inside but the filtering tanks were outside in the open, water came into them. We had a problem till we could get things straightened out again so people could have drinking water for all the people in town.

CW. Ever have any irate housewives coming down to give you trouble?

CO. Oh there was people'd get upset but we could only do what the plant would take care of as far as the hoppers and so forth. We had a _________, a carpet which would make the water tasty which would help but when that outside water'd get in it would make the water unbearable to drink so it was somethin' but they were quite fussy.

We had a pony and that was something which was a lot of fun for them, and they'd get on the pony and the pony'd go and we had a barnyard and if there was a bigger horse or something they'd run round and you couldn't catch up with them. The barnyard was fenced in of course and the pony'd go round. We had one horse that could unlatch the gate next to the barn. It'd run up, unlatch the gate, then back up and leave all the rest of the horses out. The pony and the whole works they'd be running down the road. It was quite a deal to catch 'em sometimes. Our road, we had about a mile of mud road, then you come to a pike, and we had about a half mile on the way to school and when we'd walk to school a lot of times on the way we went over a small creek and it was ah, comical because of the animals and farmers that lived along the road there some of them would get out and we'd have quite a time keeping out of their way. So it was interesting to grow up in that kind of an atmosphere.

C. Did you go to a one-room school?

CO. Yeah. I went to a one-room school and the back end of the school there was a little hill and in the winter we'd take our sleds there and down the hill we'd go, and down at the foot of it was a little creek and if you didn't watch why you might slide off into the creek. So it was a lot of fun there. We had our own sleds. We made our own sleds.

CW. My mother taught in a one-room school and she used to tell about how they'd hang the alarm clock on a nail pounded in a tree. The bigger boys brought bob-sleds and they'd all slide down that long hill together, she with them. Then the boys would pull it back. They'd do that during lunch break till the alarm would ring. She said when they went back those days they'd reall study after lunch.

CO. Oh yeah. Oh, it was pretty interesting. I was just a little boy then. They, ah, the thing I can remember is that we had three teams of horses in the barn and of course we had cows, we had chickens, and the chickens would get in the barn and lay eggs up in the haymow and so we got to sell the eggs, my sister and I.

My brother second to me usually he was, ah, selling cars. He used to sell cars--Chevrolets. So my older brother and I, we used to go rabbit hunting and we each carried a gun. We went along the fence row. There was about a foot of snow on the ground then. There wasn't much going on with the animals then because of the snow, so we went along this fence row and, ah, we was huntin' pheasant at that time. So up ahead you could see a pheasant would dip down into the snow and raise up. When it raised up the snow covered over its head and eyes and it couldn't see us so we followed it along quite a ways and it knew someone was following so it kept out of sight and we kept following and finally the pheasant raised up a little, got clear and away he went. My brother got a shot at him but he didn't get him so the pheasant it come down farther in the field. We kept walking along and finally we found it again. It was along the fence row so we followed the same way and it would go down in the snow and up again. Then finally up it went, my brother got a shot at it and he got it so down it went. The field where we got it was close to where my father's place of business was. He had a garage. So we got the pheasant, took it home and cleaned it so we had pheasant for supper.

CW. That's a good eating bird.

(End)