Edmund Bringer Memoir - Brookens Library

University of Illinois at Springfield 

Norris L. Brookens Library 

Archives/Special Collections 

Edmund Bringer Memoir 

B771. Bringer, Edmund A. (1905-1997) 

Interview and memoir 

6 tapes, 360 mins., 83 pp. 

Bringer, retired Illinois Bell Telephone employee, discusses experiences with Illinois 

Bell, his education and early employment, improvements in telephone technology, 

his work teaching safety courses, and working in Cairo during a flood. He also 

discusses his childhood in the early 1900's, family history, his marriage and raising a 

family, effects of the Depression, work during WWII and life on the home front. 

Other topics include his vacations along the East Coast, resorts in Havana, Illinois, 

and anecdotes from his travels through England, Ireland, and Scotland. References 

are made to Bringer's work on the "Manhattan Project" during WWII, attending the 

Chicago's World Fair in the 1930's, and meeting Sally Rand. 

Interview by Alison A. Coffey, 1983 

OPEN 

See collateral file: interviewer's notes, photocopied pictures, newspaper articles 

regarding Bringer's retirement, correspondence regarding Safety Demonstration 

Board, and a telephone company safety brochure. 

Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 

University of Illinois at Springfield 

One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 

Springfield IL 62703-5407 

© 1973, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

Table of Contents 

Early LLfe ........................... 1 

Birth-Life with bther, Brother and Grandparents-- 

Schooling--Living in kt Lilly's shadow--Moving with 

his kther's job-Vocational training and early jobs 

krk for Northwstern Bell Telephone Company .......... 5 

bther's remarriage. ...................... 6 

Captain Allison Smith's family ................. 7 

krk during the Decatus years. ................. 8 

Cable splicing--A thirteen-day courtship--Many kinds 

of wrk with the phone company--'Writ all aver this 

dogone state" 

brk during brld kr I1 ................... .12 

An uofunny joke at the signal depot-Telephone, not 

militaxy =--at the '!Manhattan Project" plant-- 

alms t drafted 

Marriage ........................... .16 

A number of mes around Decatur--"An Alison in every 

generation1'--Mrs. Bringer, a foracious reader 

Effects of depression and the war years. ........... .21 

Yes, he repossessed phones--Kept a "stMcingl' 

garden--- in the wrk force 

From "Farm Ues" to Dick Tracy transmitters ......... .24 

Mr. Bringer's safety damstration board ........... .26 

Everyone frm the United States and Canada saw 

it--Several embarrassing nmmmts--bard mt to 

the AT&T Building in New York 

Bringer starts a cable school in Decatur and teaches 

ho&rs.............,...... ..... 30 

Wrking in Cairo during a flood. ............... .31 

Description of lwee and Haliday Hotel --kl tzes 

and tunes but no fox trots--Riding the interurban 

Edmund Bringer Memoir - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS

Daughters. .......................... .34 

'Tar Baby Tiniket'--Sarah, a tanboy, Mary, a 

schoolgirl 

Fourth of July Celebrations. ................. .36 

"A big hooferaw out of CSllrisbms". .............. .36 

Visits to Havana resort areas. ................ .37 

Bringer's Chxisms ornmt collection. ........... .38 

Sarah' s courtship and marriage ................ .40 

"Scnr~ dingalings for friendsw--lived in a 

chicken coop 

Bringer ' s trip to New Orleans, featuring encounters 

with a hurricane and an irate air force nun .....,. .42 

Travels along tihe East Coast ................. .43 

Hurricanes--kty-eight or thirty trips to 

Wil liarnsbarg--Atmosphere now taken away by 

amuserrmt parks, quick run-throu* tours, and 

Indians smoking cigarettes 

The Bringers' trip to England. ................ -47 

Tours all over, includinp; to "me of the dirtiest 

places" ringer has seen-- ringer ' s retiranent- - 

'?lighli&ts of Britain tour1'--The Bringers ' second 

marriage--town rimes that drive one crazy--drinking 

and dancing and "Anrazing GraceM--A funny little 

coachan--Lady Godiva's statue and the "Black Swan1 

Drunken h.ck"Twern--klsh tom nes mrst of all-- 

Cathedrals and cream in Exeter--Stomhenge, New Forest, 

and London--Seventy or eighty tourists buses a day- 

Birds, bums, and toilet paper--% filthy 'Iharnes River-- 

The hippies of Picadilly Circus and other sights of hndon 

Trip to Ireland. ....................... .70 

"Ine thing right after anotherw--Trouble in land? 

the plane--A good time at Knappogue Castle--muldn t 

kiss the Blarney Stone-Ten-thousand dollar glass--A 

bomb scare--Left a play for bornie's Tavern--A poor 

tour, and Bringer let them know-Cathedrals and walled 

towns--The "West Tour of &gland"--Uninvited guests and 

differat ideas about good places to eat 


Preface 

Ws tm-ucript is the product of a series of six tape-recorded interviews 

conducted by Alison A. Coffey for the Oral History Office of Sangamon 

State University. The interviews =re begun in October and concluded in 

December, 1983. The tapes =re transcribed by Susan Jones and Barbara 

Brandt and the transcripts =re edited by Ms. Coffey . 

lMmund A. Bringer ws born in Burlington, Iowa on November 28, 1905. In 

1970 he retired after mrking for 46 years with Illinois Bell Telephone 

Campany. Jde was first errrployed as a cable splicer's helper in 1925, and 

later wrked at residence telephone repair, cable repair, switchboard 

repair and teletype repair. 

In 1950, Mr. Bringer was assigned as a temporary instructor for Illinois 

Bell's Plant Instruction school in the St. Nicholas Hotel in Decatur, 

Illinois. In 1956, when the St. Nicholas was tom dm, the school was 

wed to 306 N. Franklin. Mr. Bringer taught classes in first aid, 

safety, cable repair, key equipment repair, switchboard repair and 

installation, touch-tone equiplleslt schools, AC-DC theory, solid-state 

devices and mathematics. 

After his retirenxmt, Mr. Bringer and his wife, Marguerite T o Bringer 

made several trips to Great Britain and traveled throughout the southern 

and eastern United States. Mr. Bringer resides in Decatur , Illinois with 

his eldest daughter, Mary Bringer. Another daughter, Mrs. Gene A. (Sarah) 

Guinn, lives with her husband in East Peoria, Illinois. 

Alison A. Coffey (nee &inn) is the narrator's eldest grandchild. She is 

a graduate of Millikin University h Decatur, Illinois. Ms. Coffey is 

employed as a grabte assistant in the Oral History Office of Sangamn 

State University, where she is pursuing a master's degree in literature. 

Readers of this oral history m ir should bear in mind that it is a 

transcript of the spoken mrd, and that the intervier, narrator and 

editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is 

inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State University is not 

responsible for the factual accuracy of the memir, nor for views expressed 

therein; these are for the reader to judge. 

The wcript my be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be 

reproduced in mole or in part by any mans, electronic or rrrechdcal, 

without written permission fran the Oral History Office, Sangmn State 

University, Springfield, Illinois, 62708. 


Ed& A. Bringer, Octokx 21, 1983, Decatur, Illinois. 

Alison Cof fey, Interviewr . 

Q: 

here and en =re you born? 

A: I ws born in Burlington, Iowa on Nwdr 28th, 1905. 

Q: And ere you--you =re--you had a brother named Paul right? 

A: Yes so Paul ms my younger brother. He m s tw years younger than I 

was. 

Q: kre there any other children? 

A: No there *ren't any other children. 

Q: And dmt was your mther ' s m? 

A: Before she wis married? 

Q: Yes. 

A: Patterson ms her name, Florence Patterson. 

Q: 

You--did yau grow up in ks mines? 

A: No I grew up in several toms. I started aut the--w lived in Burlingtan, 

Iowa until I ws in about the fourth grade of school. My father ms 

killed &en I was four years old, in Burlington, Iowa. He was a railroad 

rrran and he was a s w l t c and ~ he got killed coupling cars together down 

in the yards. And my mother brought my brother and I up. She took care 

of us all the way up thuugh school years. I don't remember m h 

abut 

my father, as I was only four years old when he was killed but. . . . she 

h y s used to tell zne a few things about him kt. . . . I guess he wis a 

rather strict man. His family wre strict people and he ms fairly 

strict and set in his ways and everything and so vas his father-he ws 

my grandfather-he ws a very strict m. I didn't know too mch abut 

him either lxlt my father--my grancbther--m lived--my mtkr and Paul 

and I lived with my grandmother and my grandfather Patterson. And he a s 

on the road all the tlm3 so there ws just us at the--in the house mst 

of the time. He'd caw hme maybe once a mnth or something like that. 

Q: This is your, your father you're . . . 


Edmund A. Bringer 

Q: Your grandfather you're talking about. 

A: My father ms dead. 

Q: Right, okay. 

A: But my rnother had to go to mr2c to support ray brother and I so she 

had a job as a secretary to the rredical director of the krchant's LLfe 

Insurance Company down in Burlington. And so she wrked for him and I 

mrked there for a little while. I r d r : 

now I ms their office boy 

for a little hile. I 'd go get the mil at the mailbox--mail--post 

office every mrning and bring it dom to the--office was only tm blocks 

away it. . . . sort it and deliver it around the roan and lrun errands for 

everybody b the office and everything that ms just, just a general 

flunky. I was an awful young kid then. I was probably in about the 

fourth grade or sanething like that or fifth grade and then. . . . My 

mther was--she wsn't too strict she was--kt she'd always, every place 

she ~ n she t almys took my brother and me with her. We'd go up to band 

concerts at the park and to the nrrvies. In those days they =re nickleodeons 

they weren't real mnries kt they Ere pretty nice. Little theater 

there, we had one pretty nice theater k t . . . 

Q: Do you ramnber any of the shows that you used,to see? 

A: Ch no that was too long ago. I don't remember any . . . 

Q: Do you remember like what kind of mies you liked? 

A: No I don't rmkr that. It ms just that she took us everyplace. 

& liked to go out to the park. Craypo Park is the narne of the park and 

it tas a beautihl park and w'd go out there on wekends, Saturday to 

the band concerts and we 'd alms ride out on the streetcar. They had 

*at they call the "trailer". It was the second car, the first car ms 

really the streetcar and the trailer ms pulled behind it and it didn't 

have any control or anything it ms just pulled khind it, there ms no 

trolley on it or anything. And it rss wide open. You sat in lory seats 

on it and you =re. . . . everybody liked to get on that. And w d ride 

up to the park in that and stay for the concert and then have a ice cream 

soda or something like that aut there kt I don't recall too much abut 

Burlington then. The schools I mt to, they =re--first school I wmt 

to was Sanderson School and by gosh as I recall now compared to the 

schools R have now. . . . bk had real pails to drink the water out of 

with tin cups d m in the toilet roans. That's FJhere w got our drinks 

of water; they never had fountains in those days. And the bathroom =re 

something else too. They had running water in them kt they wren't like 

bathroom they have now. They had a long trough for a urinal for the 

boys. And--but the toilets rere, oh they Ere all right kt. . . . I 

remember that school and the heck of it vas my--I had a great-aunt there 

and she was quite well-known around the teaching circles there and so 

everytime I mt to school why they expected mre out of m and everybody'd 

say, 'Ylh he ' s Miss Lilly Wth's grand--great--grandnephew'' and she used 

to cart me around all the tine and made it kind of rough on me in school 

because the teachers expected so dam m h out of me and . . . 


Edu.lund A. Bringer 3 

Q: Was she a teacher? 

A: Yes she m . . . 

Q: bat did she teach? 

A: 31.e was a grade school teacher, taught everything. In those days 

they taught everything. 

Q: Yes. 

A: And, but she never tm&t--she'd retired when I went to school there 

at Sanderson. She had-she ws well learned too because she'd gone to, 

all wer , she 'd traveled all wer . She 'd been up to Alaska and a1 1 over 

the country here. She hew. . . . They ere good teachers in those 

days, they had real good teachers. I rmbr all my teachers kt I 

don't r-kx their nares now. And then frcm there why we moved off of 

what was called Garfield Avenue, in Burlington. & lived in a great big 

old W e 

that belonged to the principal of another school there, Mrs. 

Leebrick. She was our rwrt door neighbor too. %@--and we lived in her 

hause next door to her and she vas kind of strict with Paul and me hecause 

of my Aunt Lilly. She Ns. Teebrick] expected everything out of us. 

But it ws, you know, w just didn't mind it too much kt. . . . The 

house m lived in, in those days they didn't heat the homes with furnaces. 

& had four fireplaces on the first floor in that house and a base burner. 

And the four fireplaces =re in the front roams and the base krner was 

in the living roan where =--the dining room ms connected to it so we 

could be warm in there and the bse burner as we called it had a great 

big d m up in the bathroom upstairs that put the heat up into the bathroan 

so w could tde baths and everything. That's the only heat w had up in 

the upper floor of the house. 

But it was a big house and gee whiz it ms. . . . I ramnber the yard was 

probably half a block and it had all kinds of fruit trees in it and 

walnut trees and te had a great big barn out on the back end of it and a 

great big horse barn and a big carriage barn and. . . . oh it used to be 

£un to play around there. Everybody in the neighborhood had those thuugh. 

W all had our own carriage barns and horse barns. Nobody had any horses 

and carxiages though. fie or of the farmers that lived across the 

street from us did kt the rest of us rode the streetcars araund tom. 

Then w moved out on South Hill to another part of town and I went to a 

never school aut here, it was a brand new school and it had everything in 

it. It had the individual cloakroans for the boys and the girls and it 

had real--toilet facilities =re excellent and they had drinking fountains. 

It ws , it ms a nice school . I lived out there until vie wed. 

bk mrrd £ran there when the Merchant's Life Insurance Company wed to 

Grand Rapids, Michigan and the mdical director took my mother with him 

as his secretary and there ws several of the girls and fellows in the 

office took their families and med up to Grand Rapids. And w wnt up 

there during the war, it ms during bbrld &r I and boy when e got up 

there, the winter ie =re up there it ms cold. And ve couldn't get many 

th~ngs. All w could get--=re allowed rather-ms a pound of sugar a 

month and we got tm hundred and fifty pounds of coal mry tm weeks, 


Ekkmnd A. Bringer 4 

that's all they'd let us have see. Tnat was on account of the war. And 

everything else ws the sam way. And I mt to a school up there, it 

was Alexander School and the grade I was in was fifth and part of sixth. 

The teacher I remember very vaguely kt the only thing I rmkr abut 

her is she asked m; one day if I'd get up and tell the class about the 

Indians out here in Iowa and how m got along with them and how they 

lived and I told her I 'd never seen an Indian in my life so I didn't 

how. And that winter ms awful it--= had awful snowstorms up there and 

it got real cold and it was bad. In the spring the insurance company 

wed to Des Moines, Iowa and still kept its nam, it ms still the 

Wrchant Efe. And ve went with than aver there, thy took everybody 

that wanted to go to Grand Rapids, why everybody ma~ed to Des Ibines, 

I . And I wnt to school out there, started in with grade school there 

in Crocker Scbol and it MS. . . . I started to school there I think in 

the sixth grade. And I went to the sixth grade there. And then w lived 

in furnished rooms till my mther found a house for us to live in. And 

then &en w found a haw why it wed me out of that school district. 

I finished that year, that semster dom at Crocker School and thm I 

went out to vhat they called a junior high school, kshington Irving 

Junior High. And it was one of the first pre-vocational schools that was 

in that part of the country. It was a kind of a pilot school. And 

besides getting the ordinary instruction in aritktic and geography and 

algebra and everything like that and Qlish and literature and things 

like that w had a school--part of the school ms craft shops. It m s 

the-they had a print shop, a drdting shop, a modmrking shop and an 

auto ochanics shop for ---boys. Now the girls of course had the 

things that--they had the, oh. . . . what do you call where they teach 

home--hare economics room. And LP had a great big cafeteria and these 

girls ~o Ere learning did all the cooking for the cafeteria, and the 

rest of the places. . . . the printing shop did a lot of printing for the 

schools all aver tom and the furniture shop-or the wodmrking shop- 

donstairs made lots of desks and repaired chairs and made desks and 

chairs for the different schools in the classrooms. And then the auto 

mchanics shop-amambiles were--there =re autmbiles then but there 

weren't too many--and they repaired the autmbiles for the school, 

schools, different schools in tom and everything. 

Q: Ms this all done for, just for free or . . . 

A: Qll yes, it ms part of the training. 

Q: Just training? 

A: Sust training for the fellows that =re in it. And then, bile I 

wrked there I wr;nt to wrk after school because that pre-vocational 

school let out at tw o'clock in the dtemoon. bk ent from eight in 

the mming till twi o 'clock in the afternoon and then there was another 

group that cane on at ten o'clock and went until fmr. It was split, 

there ms so many kids in the school and everything. . . . But I mrked 

in the evenings because the professor-the principal of the school got IW 

a job dom at Hopkins Brothers ' Sporting Goods Store delivering erchandise 

to people that bought it and what I'd do, I'd--they'd give me the mrchandise 

to deliver and then give lrre the mney to get on the streetcar and I'd take 


Edmund A. Bringer 5 

the streetcar out and deliver it and then cane back to the place on the 

streetcar. And if they didn't have any deliveries for n~ to mike why I'd 

help around with the marking of the products and putting than on the 

shelves and unpacking, thbgs like that. Then frm there a friend of 

mine got a job as a printer in a print shop because w wnt to the printing 

school together at junior high and he got XIE a job out there. And ve 

mrked there for quite a FJhile. And £ran there e both went over and 

wrked for another printing campany. 

Q: b t 

was his--do you remember his name? 

A: Yes, it was Herb Ridgley. I ramnber him. And he got us both a job 

there and then w wnt to wr2c for d-mt ws know as the Zaiser 's Printing 

and Stationery Canpany. They had all kinds of stationery and office 

eqyipent and everyt?xbg like that and then d m in the basent they had 

a print shop and he and I wrked dom in the print shop for quite a 

FJhile. And for some reason or other they did away with the print shop 

finally and so ve both =re out: of a job and looked a r d 

for quite a 

while. Couldn't find a job at that time because there was a depression 

on and it ms right after krld &r I. And it ms hard to get a job and 

my next door neighbor toldtne one day to go dom and see a man dm at 

the telephone cqany. So I m t 

dom and he told re to talk to Mr. 

Sautherland and I wnt down and Mr. Southerland put to mrk. He was a 

superintendent at the Northwestern Bell Telephone Campany around Des 

Moines, Iowa, with the outside plant--inside plant department so I went 

dom to where he told me to go--to the central office as they call it--& 

they put ne to wrk there. They give I-IE training first. They started IIE 

in the basemer1.t and mrked me up thr- the &ole lxilding training IIE 

and I, mll I liked to wrk there, I got real interested in the mrk 

there. And I vent--for quite a while I wrked days learning what to do 

and how to do it and then thy put m on the evening shift and I was on 

there all by myself. km four o 'clock in the afternoon till elwen 

o ' clock at night. 

Q: 

bt exactly did yau do? 

A: el1 I 'd mrk on the switchboard and keep--do everything that was 

necessary around the office as far as starting the engines and charge the 

batteries and do the testing th telephone lines and filing the cards and 

everything and that. . . . it kept me h y 

every night. And then they 

finally decided to put me on nights, eleven o'clock till eight o'clock in 

the rimming. And I vas learning another phase of the telephone business. 

I lead to maintain and repair the switchboards up there fiere the 

operators ere. That ms a big office I was in too kause they had 

about three hundred girls mrking there during the day on the switchbards 

and then they had the long distance office up there and they had another 

one hundred and fifty over there mrking. And at night there eren't 

that many. At night-when I worked nights there ms probably about, oh, 

seventy-five girls that wrked all night like I did frcm eleven until 

seven in the mming. And I liked the mrk doing that ht I, I do r-ber 

that a s before camavlications got so. . . . improved like they are 

today. I ranember they used to have What they called "repeaters" and 

they were mmm with real high voices that talked through their noses. 

And if they put in a long distance call £ran say, oh a tom fifty miles 

aut of Des bines to maybe Denver, Colorado . . . 


Q: Yes? 

A: People couldn't hear each other that fax so there'd be these girls 

wild have to repeat and you'd talk to the ooperator and tell her and 

she'd listen and then you'd say about a five mrd sentence and then she'd 

say, '!Repeat that .I1 Then maybe another operator out farther muld repeat 

it and then finally the person that was supposed to hear tb mssage 

wuld get it. And those girls, they'd just drive you nuts at night 

because that's when they did roost of that repeating ws at night see, 

these repeaters. &It the local, the short distance calls they cauld do 

all right, they could hear. But on those long--over a couple kazndred, 

three hundred or four W red miles or across country they had these 

girls with these high-pitched voices and they, they just, you could just 

hear than all night. They'd keep me a*, mst the tirrre. But I got to 

the place &ere I couldn't stay awake at night. I 'd fall asleep abut 

4: 30 in the rmming and I 'd, I 'd been in there for a h ile and they put 

me outdoors as a cable splicer's helper and then 1 did like it because 

that ms outdoors all the tb. And, heck, w w ed around all over the 

*ole tom and we took care of the trouble that wuld get into the cables 

and we'd do all kinds of wrk pertaining to the cables in tom. 

fSf first job, when I first went outside, the first ~ e I k was art IR had 

a horse and wagon, that wis our--= mrked off of a horse and wagon so 

you can see how long it's been since I worked with the telephone ccmpany. 

And about a wek after that they rented a Ford--what they had, they had 

places they called "Rent-a-Fords" and they rented a truck for us. And it 

was a delivery truck and it had an enclosed cab kt the back end ms open 

and there was a couple of kind of leather curtains that lung dm on the 

sides to keep the rain and wind and snow out and w used that all the 

time w m&ed outside. And after oh, I don't--about tm years after 

that why 1 writ to school in ks kine& for a while. I mt to this 

junior pre-vocational school and then I went out to North High School. 

'Phey had three high schools, North, East, South and &st and I mt to 

Fbrth High School for a tJhile and then I got sick with typhoid fever and 

ms out a year. And then I writ back to high school and I 'd only been 

out there in hi& school about, oh just to finish the third year in high 

school when the insurance corupany--it didn't m e or anything kt my 

mother decided to get married and . . . 

A: Remarried. 

Q: That's right. 

A: And &en =--when they, she and my stepfather decided to m e to 

Peoria because it ws close to his, center of his kiness. He ms a 

traveling salesman for a company that sold overalls and flannel shirts 

and sheepskin coats and wrk clothes like that out of Indianapolis and 

Peoria was the center of his territory. 

Q: ht was your stepfather's nam? 



A: Mr. Deb. Ed, l%hund kb. And that started a--why his name was 

l3im.d Deb and my name was Fdmnd Bringer, Fdmmd Bringer see so that 

ccmplicated things. 

Q: Yes. 

A: From then on out it was a camplication. Every place we wnt why, 

they had a hard time distinguishing betwen Fdmd and E&md and so I 

turned over and started using the name Allison, and that made it mrse 

than ever. &11 I used Allison all the way through because my father's 

name ms Mmnd too. And in high--in school they used to say, "Allison 

B r 7 , is she here?" and it used to just drive me nuts. And see that 

rime s ken handed dm--that Allison's been handed d m frm my great- 

great grandfather's side all the way. The nam ms not--the original 

name was not Captain Allison Sraith kt he's the one that I remember best 

because I've got his history and I don't whether you've got it or not. 

Did I give it to you? 

Q: Yes. 

A: I give you the history of Captain Allison Mth. And he ws quite an 

educator and he ms also quite a figure in tow, around Burlington, where 

my family. . . , see I had quite a, there ms quite a family of, on my 

mther's side in Burlington. I don't repnem'oer anything about my father's 

side kcause. . . . but I do rmmkr he had a--his father had a uncle 

there that run a grocery store in Burlington and my grandfather wrked 

for a lumber ccxnpany, as superintendent of the lumber campany. &It on my 

mther's side, the Smiths, who =re her family, see Wth ms her mther's-my 

grandnother's--name before she was married and the Sroith's =re . . . . 

There ws a flock of them. One of than ms editor of the paper in Burlington 

another one was the head of the, was the librarian at the public library 

there and the--that ms my grandmther's sister, and then her other 

sister Lilly--Clara, Clara a s the librarian and Lilly ms the school 

teacher. And then, her father ms the one that established, or ms the 

first one in the. . . . principal of that high school in Burlington, 

Captain Sraith was. And then his brother--or his son ms editor of the 

Burlington Gazette and he had another son that was the turnkey d m at 

the Fort Madison Prison and he had another son that ms the myor of 

Sioux City and then there was another son that moved out to Kansas and 

his family tiere jeelers, they mt into the jewlry business. So there 

was quite a few on my mother's side of the family around tom there. And 

then my great-aunt Clara who was my mother's aunt--Clara Faith--she 

married a fellow by the mm of Wilson and he run a book store there in 

tom, he and another m, Gunone and Wilson's in Wlrlington, and it wis 

there for years and years. But after, then--going back to Peoria why 

when vie got to Peoria d ~y I went to Block and Kuhl's and vent to wrk for 

a vhile. 

Q: khat was--Block and Kuhl's sold . . . 

A: my it was just a great big store. 

Q: oh. 



A: Big . . . 

Q: DepazQrent store? 

A: kpartment store, see. It ms the beginning of--what is it they call 

that now? It's not Block and Kuhl's anpre. . . . W11 anyhow it was in 

Peoria and they took wer quite a few stores. They had quite a few 

stores there. And I worked in their radio deparmmt for a while and 

then I worked in their sporting goods and toy department for a vhile--that 

was a canbination. And it w s all right, I liked that until I got tired 

of that and wmt, writ dm and got a job with the telephone canpany and 

I didn't stay in Peoria too long with the telephone company though. I 

was there maybe one winter and the next spring they sent me to school 

dom in Springfield, Illinois to becaw a cable splicer and. . . .well, 

so &en they did that &y 1 went to school there for a h ile and then, 

they sent me over here to Decatur to mwk. And that was in 1925 and I've 

hen here ever since, ;In kcatur. 

And I worked in, oh, every job. I started out here as a cable splicer 

and I wrked here when they first put in their first dial office here. I 

wrked here then and put it in, the cabling for it and before--and up-after 

that why I wrked around here for a while as a cable splicer and 

then they decided to send me out on the road as a cable splicer. And wzhad 

a lot of tow all over the state and wxk got kind of slack here for 

cable splicers. But I stayed here and then they sent tw out d m 

Cairo, I went dom there whenwer they needed me and I 'd go to Mount 

V e m and Salem and over to Darrville and mampaign. . . . always in the 

southern part of the state then. And I wrked all over dom there, 

Pana--1 never wxked in Alton though--bud City and dom through there. 

And then while I w s still a cable splicer I met your granhther. I was 

mrking on a--no, I wasn't a cable splicer then, I '11 take that back, I 

wasn't a cable splicer then. I cum back to Decatur and things started 

getting kind of rough. 

Q: About &n ms this? 

A: & it was abut 1932 or 1933. . . . no it wasn't either, it was about 

1928, because when I cum back here things =re--we 'd cut over to the 

offices and everything and it ws getting k3md of rough around here then 

and so, I c a 

back and they--getting kind of slack on mrk. I ms getting 

disgusted with it anyhow-traveling down there in the southern end of 

the state as a cable splicer. . . . so I asked to get on the plant depar-t 

here and they took me, they put rw on the plant department. And they 

started out--1 started out on all of it there and then I finally mrked 

my way up until oh I was. . . . let's see, I was with them all the time 

nearly till. . . . I had a job as a station installer, I m s a cable 

trouble shooter, repairman, cable repairman. 

Q: ht--what's a trouble shooter? 

A: k11 I'd go out and if anybody's telephone wnt bad I'd go out and 

fix it, out to. . . . I alwys mrked in repair wxk &ch was if any . . . 

h d of Side One, Tape One 

Edmund Bringer Memoir - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS 

to


A: And after I went into repair mrk I--on telephones inside, and on the 

outside plant: why, I did everything then. Duz- those depression years 

I did about every kind of mrk there wis to do with the telephone canpany. 

I even mt out ad mrked on the old lines betwen toms and shot trwble 

on them and helped put them up and everything like that. They cut d m 

back on the mrk force then and I ws the youngest man then that fn~s kept 

on; everybody else younger than I was ms laid off. 

Q: How old =re you then? 

A: I was, I don't know, I was about . . . 

A: Yes, Iwas inmy twnties then. But the thingms . . . By the 

way, in the mantime I 'd married your grandma. 

Q: Well tell rw abut how you mt Grandma. 

A: k11 I ws mrking out--helping install--putting in the cable and the 

switchbard-I did all of it then. They'd got TIE to the place where I 'd 

put the cables in and the switchboards and everything. And I ws out at 

kader Iron brks wrking one day and she caw dmstairs *ere I was 

and . . . 

Q: She wrked there? 

A: 31e wrked there, she ms the secretary (chuckles) out there to one 

of the mn out there, and so she caw domtairs and she started running 

her hand through my hair. I was sitting there on the steps talking and 

everything and finally w got araund, I got around to getting a date with 

her and . . . 

Q: She just walked up and started running her hand . . . through your 

hair. 

A: Yes. 

Q: You didn't know her at all? 

A: No I didn't know her at all and I finally--we got to talking and got 

acquainted and . . . 

Q: Did she explain nhy she just tmlked up to a perfect stranger . . . 

( laughter) 

A: No. So w wnt and had a date and I went out to her house and picked 

her up and ve had a date that night. Oh, I borrowd a guy's--the fellow 

I lived with then--I borrmd his car. Paid hjm five dollars that night 

to take her out riding in it and ve mt to a shm and everything and. . 

. . I got--I asked a friend on a date and we had, oh, three or four dates 

and me night my helper--he ms my cable splicer's helper--he took us for 

a ride in his car wer to Monticello, we wnt over there to Monticello 

and carzle back and I asked her to mrry JIP and I--she said, "Sure. " So 



that was thirteen days, rn ent together thirteen days and WE =re mrried 

on the thirteenth--fourteenth day. And then-kt I kept on wrking for 

the telephone corrrpany and she kept on aut there. I didn't dare show my 

face out there the next tmming, they muldn't--they =re going to kick 

IIE out of the place the next mrning so I crawled in and out of the 

window out at kader Iron krks because the old mn that she mrked for 

was so mad at mi!. 

Q: What was he mad at you for? 

A: ell. . . . I don't bow, he just had a bull in his neck and he was 

mad at n~ because I mrried her I guess. But everybody-they just got to 

kidding me and everything, just kidding the hell out of me after that 

see. But he ms an Irish and he ws kind of hot-headed. Ik ms going 

to tell me off. But, then, I mrked on switchboards and, oh everything. 

And then I finally got the teletypewriter equipnt departmnt. I vent 

to schools on those and mchines, t h 

I went to maintaining them. I was 

in that for quite a while, installing and repairing teletypewriters and 

I 'd go from here over to (hampaign or over to Darnrille. The Shell Oil 

Co. at that tb had teletypewriters in all their lnanping stations and I 

maintained those and everyplace else; radio stations and businesses 

domtom. A lot of than had teletypewriters. And I maintained those and 

installed them, mr2ced on special equipnt, PBXs . . . 

Q: ht's a PBX? 

A: That's a private branch ahange. kse =re switchboards that they 

used to have in hotels and big tusitwsses that had to have an operator to 

run them. And then they kept those for quite a while and they finally 

made-started to putting in autamatic equi~t, you know *re werybdy 

did their awn dialing and didn't need an operator, jut had one girl 

answz the incaning telephones and I put those in too, special lines like 

that. I 've had--and then during brld War 11 I worked on special equipnent. 

Q: Uke what? 

A: &11 it ws--it ws actually cryptograph equipment was &at I worked 

on and special mmitoring equiprent and things like that that were secret 

equipnent, see. They were government's equiptent and they ere classified. 

Q: LLke phone taps? 

A: k11. . . . not phone taps exactly kt it was classified KO&. And 

the cryptographs =re coding machines see and I'd mrked on those. I 

wnt to Chicago and wnt to sch.001 on a special and after the war why, 

that ms Over with. And then I got into teaching, they wanted me to go 

into teaching. b11, all the tine--I'd started out teaching first aid 

when I ms mrking for the plant departnmt in the repair deparmnt 

repairing special equipnt I also taught first aid. They sent= to 

Chicago for a mnth and I became an Anmican Red Cross first aid teacher. 

I had to go to school a mnth. And I taught everybody in this town that 

mrked for the telephone company first aid, and I had to teach all of 

than. And I taught a few classes other places also. And then during 

bbrld Mx I1 why, I mt onto this other e quipt and everything and 


Eclnud A. Bringer 11 

when the mr was wer and werythimg why I wnt into teaching-I was 

transferred over to the general staff over in Springfield and put into 

the personnel and public relations department as an htructor. I was an 

instructor and a teacher and I wrote up program for-to teach people 

with and things like that and. . . . For a long time there that's all I 

did was just teach and I'd almys set up my om schools and I'd go to 

school myself. Every time anything new muld caw up they'd send IIE to 

Chicago or smeplace to go to school and learn about it and then I'd cane 

back here and teach on it. Had my OWI school set up here in tom, a big 

one dow aver to the c ~rcial office on North kanklin and. . . . 

all after the wax also they had n~ go into giving tests, what they 

called their drivers test. Everybdy that drove a telephone company 

automabile had to have a drivers test and it was not the one put on by 

the state, it had to be done by our om people. There was three or four 

of us that gave those drivers tests and KE taught safe drivhg all over 

the country. We'd go and give these lectures and--all over the state and 

everything-and I was traveling quite a bit through that. I set up three 

or faur schools here and taught for, oh. . . . several years just . . . 

Q: You said . . . 

A: Every--everything they wanted. I 'd set the schools up and teach them 

see. And in tk mantime, while it ws during bbrld War I1 I also mt 

and attended Millikin, four nights a eek. 

Q: b t 

were you taking out thexe? 

A: For tm and a half, three hours a night. And I did that for three 

years, besides carrying on my wrk. And I w s taking out there electrical 

engineering, mathanatics and I took safety psycholorn and telephone 

carmunications . 

Q: This m s during the wr? 

A: hring the war and I was--by that ms rough going out there tm 

hours and a half a night for four nights a eek and then studying on the 

side and they'd call rxre out jn the middle of the night to go to mTk or. 

. . . k t I got through it and it helped m quite a bit. 

Q: Did you--did you like Millikin, did you like school out there? 

A: Oh yes, I liked it, I had. . . . kt the, the oms that I--the professors 

I had wre not--* only one that I had that was a Millikin professor vas 

the mathematics teacher. The other one, S h , ws professor all right 

but he was with the Caterpillar Tractor Company, or--yes Caterpillar 

Tractor Carpany. And the one I took electrical engineering fran ms with 

the Power Company and he ms a--Ashry ms his mne, Professor Asbury--and 

those three I r&r. S b 

used to go to school with my brother in 

Peoria. But I enjoyed it. And then at the end &en I was getting up 

there-wll up till about three or four years kfore I retired I mt all 

wex this doggone state. I went from--I've mrked in every town that the 

telephone company had in this state. I started in the southern part of 

the state with Cairo, bud City, bmds, Salm, kunt Vernon, Alton, 

Marymille, Qrhcy, Springfield, Danville, Qlampai&n, Kankakee, Peoria 


U A. Bringer 12 

then I went up to Joliet-awful long time I was up there in Joliet, 

around there. I vent to Rockford and I went up to Rock Island and Moline 

and all up through there. I been--I traveled all the time. The last 

five or six years I w s on the road mst the time. 

Q: About: when ws that, the last--you man the last-before you retired? 

A: Yes, just about the last four or five years before I retired it ms 

t'hat lay but . . . 

Q: Did kanb ever go with you? 

A: No she couldn't. She ms tmrkingl 

Q: Oh I'm--yes she, she mrked £ran--she mrked right on up . . . 

A: Yes she mrked tm years after I retired. 

Q: Yes that's right. 

A: k she was, no. . . . see she started out--oh yes she mrhd quite a 

bit because when Mary and Sally =re born she ms off for a while Eut: 

during the war they asked her to care back to mrk out there at Leader 

Iron see and she writ back to mrk out to Leader Iron krks. And she 

worked out there quite a dile until I think the man that she mrked for 

died and then she c m haw for a little bit and saw gal, gal she knew 

asked her--told her she ms going to quit her job with Engineering Service 

and your gxandmther went dom there and asked her, got that job. And 

she m s the secretary and treasurer of Fngineering Sewice until she 

died. (tape turned off) 

A: I got one here I want to tell you about a joke this fellow pulled on 

us one tim out here at the signal depot when the United States government 

had that during the kxld kr 11. They had a fellow out there that was 

head of security and te ere putting in s m special equipent for him 

out there--for the government--and this fellow was a retired Army man I 

think because of the wy he acted. And he said--he wanted us to m e 

s- equipnent that w weren't supposed to me, m e 

it and vie said e 

muldn't do it. And as we were wxking in his office there and he said 

to the girl in his office--his stenographer there-he says, "Say, did I 

wer tell you about the fellow that got hit in the head with a piece of 

iron and it injured him real bad and he ws taken to the hospital and he 

ms unconscious?" And he said, 'They took him to the hospital and they 

operated on him and. . . . and it was a bad operation. 'Ihey had an 

awful time kt they finally got through the operation and put him back in 

his room to recuperate and everything and after they got through the 

operation why, the surgeon looked around and he saw that he'd taken s- 

of the guy's brains out of his head and hadn't put them back in. So he 

says, 'Oh boy, I mde an awful mistake. Tnat 's going to be smthimg bad. 

I'll tell you, ' he says, 'when that man canes around and m? can talk to 

him were going to have to tell him abut it. ' " And, so, he said, "Finally 

the fellow CUIE around so they go in and talk to him and the doctor went 

in and said to him, 'Say, I got something that I have to tell you. I 

hate to do it, but it WS smthing that happened. k were in such a 


Edmnd A. Bringer 13 

hurry anyway we t~as in such--doing--mrk was so bad, was so bad and e 

had to be careful and everything ht it happened. And I 'm sorry as the 

dichns about it but there's nothing w can do about it now. After we 

got throw with the operation w forgot--= put--* left out over half 

of your brains, ' he says. 'You haven ' t got a1 1 your brains anymre. I 

And the guy, the guy turned around and he says, 'Oh hell, that don1 t rnake 

any difference I don't need them anyhow, I: 'm a telephone man. "' And W s 

other fellow and I just sat there and never said a wrd. (laughter) 

Q: IX1 he didn't--he didn't know . . . 

Q: He didn't know that's tJho you guys =re right? He didn't know . . . 

A: #11 yes, he knew xe ere telephone men, he just told it because he 

was mad at us for not moving his equipnent see. (laughter) For nothing. 

And we just sat there. l3ut w had a couple-there was--out there they 

had another general out there one day. k was putting in a teletypewriter 

out there one day and w got the equipmt all in bst w mded a certain 

piece of equipmt to make it tmrk and m didn't have it. So this general 

corns bting into the roan. 'my, " he says, "if w haven't got enough 

ecpipaent around here w I l l wrk night and day until we get all those 

equipmt lines out here we need" and everything. He says, why, '%'re 

going to need this and ='re going to need that ," and so w said, '%I1 ," 

w said, "as soon as we get this piece of equipnmt , if e can find one, 

w'll put it in and it'll mrk. That's all we need, just one repeater, 

as we call it, box that goes on the side here and it'll mrk fine." He 

says, Wll,'' he says, ''Aw hell w got those by the carload around here." 

He turned around to a poor second lieutenant and he said to him, he says, 

"See that they get one of those repeaters right away. Have it flom in 

frrm anyplace in the country, hrever you got than," he said. 'W got 

them things by the carload around." And so the general started to walk 

dom through the office there and left and this old second lieutenant 

turned around and he says, "Say, what is those things? I never even 

heard of one of than before." And w told him, and he says, "Gee whiz," 

he says, 'k don't have any of than anyplace in the United States." He 

was a procurerrent officer for the plant, see and he says, "I--* don't 

have any of those anyplace." So w got one the next day, they flew it 

in, they flew it in to us from Seattle, Mshington see kcause rn needed 

it right away--the canpany flew it in. This general telling us they had 

than by the carload. . . . (lawter) Oh, you run into a lot of h y 

things that way. 

They called E up one night out here at Illiopolis. . . . called E up to 

go to mrk out there and said the whole north plant ws out of telephone 

service, they didn't have any--it ms , it was a hot plant too see--that 

vas one of the plants where they made shells and stored them out there on 

both sides of the road--and so I went out there and got to wrk. k 

wrked oh, good hrd, e 'd been working about four hours and here caw a 

colonel down the road in his car and he was just raising he11 kcause w 

hadn't got the trouble cleared yet. And he says, "I ' 11 take this way on 

up," he says, "You're going to have to snap out of it here," he says, 

"I--= aren't going to stad for this kind of stuff." And be was just 



shooting off his mth and everything, telling us by gosh to get it fixed 

right now or he 'd take it clear to %shington. (chckles) So I finally 

found the case of cable trouble out there, lead cable, and it was behind 

a bunch of aparhnmt hzildings they'd hilt for amy officers out there. 

And one of these army officers had taken his 45 revolver and "Blooey! " 

out the back -ow with it and shot the telephone cable right square 

through see. (laughter) And the lead slug was still in there and it was 

smthing. It--it ms raining see and the lead ws still in there and 

the cable was clear out all right. So WE--I cleared the trouble and I 

called my boss and told him wZlat it tas and everything. So, they sent 

our liaison officer out there to talk to that colonel. And he says, 

'Tisten," he says, '%lderstand that these mn that are mrking out here 

are not military people, " he says , "they ' re wrking for the telephone 

company," he says. "If you've got anything mre to say, or want to say," 

he says, 'you came to us not--don't go and try and tell them dmt to do 

because you've got no control over them." He said, "And by the way," he 

said, "that was one of your mn, one of your officers that caused that 

trouble last night." He says, 'W got the 45 Mlet out of the cable in 

back of this apar-t house aver there." And that old colonel, he spit 

and sputtered a r d there and he, kind of quieted dom kt w never had 

any trouble with than out there again. But WE run into all kinds of 

stuff like that. Always. . . . I wrked on that '!L%mlmtm Projecttt out 

here on a machine in there. Anpre it's obsolete. 

A: It was a cryptograph machine. There m s only tm people in this city 

that could, could be anywheres near that; that tas myself and a sergeant-- 

girl that was a sergeant in the signal corps that had been in London for 

tm years during the krld &r 11. And they . . . 

Q: Do ym remember her mme? 

A: No 1 couldn't--I muldn't dare tell you anFy. 

Q: oh okay. 

A: And, she was over there for tw years. . . . due to the fact that 

she 'd been in bndon when it ms getting all the bombing and everything 

she was transferred back to this cauntry and sent out here to this plant 

as a control over the cryptograph equipmt , which is your decoding and 

coding equipnaent. And she and I e re the only tm that =re allowd to 

be anywheres near that. And I couldn't be in the zoom alone with it, she 

had to be there withm and nobody else could caw Sn there at any time, 

wer . 

Q: &re you wrking on mssages or . . . 

A: No, it ms just machinery. She did the transmitting and receiving. 

Q: She did that. 

A: SZle did the sending and. . . . no I never had anything to do with . . . 

Q: You operated the machinery is that it? 



A: No all I did was keep it and . . . 

Q: Keep it wrking. 

A: Maintain it. She did all the rest of it. &It I wrked out there 

£ran the beginning of the tim that plant--that 'Fixhattan Project" plant 

started until it ended. 

Q: Now d-mt exactly--I 'm not sure what the '!Manhattan Project" ms 

exactly . 

A: It was part of the first atomic bomb. Nobody that mrked there knew 

what it ws. Not a person out there knew what it ws. 

Q: oh. 

A: But--see and th.ey muldn' t let anybody know hat they =re dokg out 

there. 

Q: bere was this plant? 

A: Right out here on North Broadway. 

Q: In Decatur? 

A: Yes, it was in Decatur here, the '!MaManhattan Project", they called it 

the '%lahattan Project ." It's now the Decatur Paper Gmpany. Out there 

on North BXM~WIY. . . . But it m s . . . 

Q: Top secret stuff, right. 

A: It was then Ixlt see the govermnent-the telephone company used to 

handle quite a bit of that shrff and they don't--people don't know that 

and they never will know it see but the thing m s that during krld &r 

11, they asked for volunteers to mike up what they call "cardans", they 

ere groups of telephone rnen that muld--wrked for the telephone cqany-- 

that muld operate as a unit and go in the service. So, I don't know 

how, somehow or other-the kids =re, my kids =re both young and everything 

and my wife was wrking--and sanehow or other I got mixed up in it and my 

name ws put in *ether I wanted it or not. And so &y told rw that I 

was selected to be on one of these and so I ms sitting at hm one night 

there and my boss called me but my--one of the guys over in Springfield 

says, "bn't you volunteer for not- ." He says, "Your work here at hcm 

is more important: to us, the mrk you re doing on those machines and 

everything than it is for you to go in the service." These other guys 

=re going averseas see. So, the boss called m that night and says, 

'They want you to be ready in the mming at eight o'clock to leave." 

And I said, 'Nothing doing, I ain't going." I said, 'You can't do that. 

I got a wife and kids ancl a fmily to take care of remember." k11 they 

finally said okay. They put m off the list and they sent a friend of 

mine from Springfield in my place. I guess it ms bad. But they did 

that, a lot of people during the wis ~nt--and they were all telephone 

people, mrked for the telephae cqany--writ and took care of cormarnicatiom, 

all around the world, they went all over. I& lost. . . . Yes e did 

lose s-. But it ms, . . . kt anpre it's a little different. 


Edmmd A. Bringer 16 

Q: 

So, en, when you were travelling around, you know, going to all 

those various places did you spend mch the in any of them, any one 

place or did--howmuch . . . 

A: Lbat do you an? 

Q: About average time? 

A: You man mrking? 

Q: Yes. 

A: Oh I'd be in one tam mybe a week or tw weks or ten days or smthing 

like that. The woxst--longest I stayed was up in Joliet for--oh seven 

mnths . But I was, no nine--at the end there I was just out of town 

maybe three or four days a wek or three days a wdc at the mst and I'd 

be back here then. No, kt vhen I'd go south, when I was a cable splicer 

going south I might be out for a mth or tw at a tb, because there 

muldn' t lx any sense for rm to caw back up here and then go to bunt 

Vemon from Cairo and then go back dom to Mount Vemon or go to Salem 

and then down to--ccme hum and then go dam to Cairo again see. k I 

ws out q@te a few tines that way. And then I m t 

over to Springfield. 

I drove back and forth there though for a while. I was wer there for a 

couple of mnths at a th. But it was. . . . Telephones has changed a 

lot since I went to wxk for them. Fran those old crank on the mll 

kinds... 

Q: And that was right before, before dial or that they went . . . 

A: Yes, that was sight up until dial corn on. had those old farmer 

lines that they called them out all around the tom here, big old boxes 

with a generator in them and batteries and they 'd get noisy and you 

couldn't hear on than and everything else. 

End of Side W, Tape One. 

Q: akay. I wanted to talk to you today a little bit about *en you ere 

first married to Grandma which was . . . do you r&r--we11 what year 

was that in? 

A: Oh I 'd have to go back and. . . . gee &iz I 've been married fifty- 

eight years ! 

Q: &11 here, here did you live first? (tape turned off) 

A: ell E wre--rember--mrried on I think it was April 27, 1925. 

Q: And you weren't mrried here in Decatur? 

A: No, we =re mrried in Sullivan, Illinois. k went dom there--1 

called up down there and had the Presbyterian minister, asked him if he'd 

marry us and he says, "Yes. " He says, "Carrie on dom. " So e m t down 



there. Reverend McCloud at the Presbyterian much in Sullivan married 

us and . . . 

Q: This was after. . . . fourteen days? 

A: Yes, thirteen or fourteen. 

Q: Thirteen or fourteen days. 

A: And I'd already got the license and everything so. . . . when t \ ~ got 

back from Monticello I vent dom the next day and got the license. In 

those days you just--all you had to do ws get a license see, you didn't 

have to have the blood test or any of that and it was. . . . just one of 

those thbgs. my, w ~ nwer t there and. . . . Then for about a year 

after that everyplace we'd go everybody 'd look at your grandmther to see 

if she was pregnant. W used to get the biggest kick out of that. 

That's the first thing they'd do ms look dom at her to see if she ws 

pregnant or not. That's because w only ent together thirteen days. 

Q: And then you wed--you lived in Decatur? 

A: bib11 yes. She never did leave Decatur. I did, I was in and out all 

the tim3 ht she alwys stayed in kcatur. No e started--* first lived 

out on North Main Street in the 1100 block just about a block awy £ran 

her folks. bk found a rented apar-t upstairs in a house over on North 

Main Street and w lived there for quite a--oh, a little vhile. And then 

the wrnan there that wz lived with--the Nicholsons wis their m--and 

she died real suddenly. She had peritonitis and died real suddenly. So 

he broke up housekeeping and everything so your grandrother and I had to 

look for another place to live. And w ent over and lived with Mrs. 

Peters that lived right smack across the street frm--oh I'll take that 

back. We started-yes , w mnt over and lived with her for a *ile and 

she--we just had a room there kt she'd let us have the whole house. I& 

ate meals with her, our suppers and dinners and everything and LP ate 

with her all the tb and then her sister and her bmther-in-law decided 

they mted to m e in with her. 

So she said that we'd have to find another place bcause there muldn't 

be enough rom for us. So your grandroother and I got a, a third floor 

apartmeslt down on 240 North College Street. It klonged to tk ccrunty 

treasurer then and w got a third floor apartmnt there and boy it was-- 

walking up and down and up and d m 

there ms kind of rough. And that's 

when your grandmther first found out she was pregnant so w had a lease 

but the man told us he says, 'Being as she can't go up and dawn all th.e 

stairs that way why just forget the lease. " And so he let us out of the 

lease and IE mnred out to North Church Street right next to the I. C. 

[Illinois Central] Railroad. Had a little cottage out there belonged to 

a guy by the name of Cantw41. He owned the house--he and his wife split 

up so he owed the house. It w s a nice little house it ms, oh I think 

it =S just a four roan house, had a bedroom and a 'Living roan and a 

kitchen--sme real small kitchen and a smll dining ram and a basemmt. 

And w lived there a *ile and Mary was born &en w lived there. 



Q: And that was--the first child ms . . . 

A: Yes, Mary. 

Q: ah. 

A: And then w decided the house wasn ' t big enough so e mx~ed over on 

North College Street in the 1900 block--great big house, brand new one. 

And se lived there for quite a kile. . . . until the depression. And 

during the depression w had to m e out of it because it ws pretty 

expensive and the darn thing ate coal--the furnace ate coal like there 

msn't any £urnace in there just--the house, w never could heat it 

it. So w mved dOwn in the 2000 block, 2050 North College and from 

there &y--w stayed there quite a while. Sally was born there and I had 

a great big garden dm there, an old backyard garden and it ms a nice 

garden. I& had everything; all the vegetables we'd want and I grew all 

kinds of flowers and everythimg. And it was--it ms a nice neighborhood 

to live in in those days. Gee whiz there was about--I think there was 

twmty-eight kids in that one block. And every night they'd get aut and 

play out in the yard or out in the street. They'd play handball and 

things like that around out in the street everynight and some of the 

fathers w ld get out with them, we 'd get out there and play with them 

and everything. (chuckles) And then the house, they sold the home. 

'Ihey wanted to knaw during the Depression if I wanted to buy it and I 

couldn't raise enough mney to ?my the dam house and so this minister 

out at Niantic [Illinois] h&t it and he omed it fox a little while 

and Sally was born there. And then later on after she was born why your 

granchmther ~s pregnant again and samething happened--I don't know it 

was a--she had s-thing happn and that baby was. . . . died at birth 

so. . . . It a s an Alison, w namd it Alison because there ws supposed 

to be an Alison in every generation. And so w w ed frw there out on 

Bwna Vista during the mrld k x 11. That guy wanted--that minister-- 

wanted his house and he wmted it right naw and I'd just got through 

painting it for him and everything, fixed it up nice for him and he told 

zne I'd have to be out of there in a mnth. 

So I wt to--lawyer and the lawyer said, ''Yes you have to m e ckause 

he ' s a minister and he had ministorial rights and you don't have any. 

You have to get out whether you want to or not." So w finally talked to 

a fellow that w hew--Mr. Fritz--and he said, 'kll, you can't get the 

house Eut: your wife can." The houses during the war you had to--if you 

wanted a new house or by a house like that, a new one in a new district 

you had to be with sonae war industry. And I wrked for the telephone 

carpany and KP handled a11 their cdcations and everything kt yet I 

msn't--w wxen't important to the war. She wxked for the Leader '1rm 

Fbrks so she got tk hause in her nane and re bowt the house out there 

(chuckles) on Buena Vista and we lived there t mty years. 

Q: You said this friend ms Mr. Fritz? 

A: Yes. 

Q: ks that his first ME or his last mane? 



A: That was his last name. 

Q: k s that Doctor . . . 

A: No it msn't Doctor Fritz. This was a Fritz that was with the Field 

and Shore Plumbing Company. He ws one of the executives out there and 

he did sane house lmilding on the side and everything and he hilt those 

houses on Buena Vista and so. . . . he sold it to us and m lived there 

for 1 think about twnty-three years or twenty. And then bth of the 

kids grew up there and Mary wmt to school and so did your mother--mt 

to Millikin, both of thecawat out to Millikin after they graduated £ran 

school here and Mary vent on to . . . . Lhile E still lived there your 

mother got married and then Mary went to Boston and interned at Boston 

General Hospital there, Massachusetts General Jhspital in Boston to get 

the rest of her internship in dietetics and then she ccrme back here and 

she's been at the hospital ever since then as the head dietician. And 

then ve wed over to this house here and that's all the places w've 

lived ht in the man tin^, in all those t ks why I ws--oh I wis harne 

mst of the time, heck I wasn't gone too mch of the time. Your grandmother 

and I both wxked until w got all the hauses paid for, that one over 

there and then this one. 

And then when w retired why your grandnother and I decided w wnted to 

mike som trips so w wmt to the British Isles three different times, 

one year right after another. And every time w wnt w stayed longer 

and we did quite a bit of traveling. We've been fram one end of the 

British Isles to the other, frm Land's FJI~ to John 0 'Groat 's--that's 

both ends of the British Isles. And we've been all wer the Irish Republic. 

And oh E did a lot of traveling too. Every year E wnt someplace. k 

traveled all--up to the northern, northeastern states. I& writ up there 

for years and re wnt to--£ran there w'd go down to Willimshrg and 

stay there and w 've been going dom to Williarasburg for abut thirty 

years m, every year. &11 not every year, there ws the three or four 

years when w wnt to Britain, lost those years dom there kt WP 've ken 

down there thirty times altogether and w've been all aver the East. 

Just, you know just scenery and historical trips. I& hit a lot of the 

battle fields in the East because you grandmother was interested in the 

Civil k. And. . . . she's got a lot of books there. (indicates 

Marguerite Bringer's collection of Civil %r books on bookshelves in 

basenlent where interview takes place) 

Q: Yes. (chuckles) She does. 

A: A lot of those books are autographed by the people that wrote than 

too. 

Q: Yes I know, she-she's told me about Lee erriceather. 

A: Yes, ~ 1Lee 1 Merxiwther ws a character. He ws 102 years old 

when he died and w tent d m and talked to him a couple of times. 

Q: You--you mt him too? 



A: Oh yes. (lau&ter) I mnt up there to see him and he was just as 

agile and intelligent and. . . . at 102 as he was I guess abut sixty. 

He ~s a. . . . quite a character. He knew General Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

He--he'd--General Nathan Bedford Forrest had been at his father's hm. 

Merriwather 's father hilt and established a railroad in the South. 

krriwather had been an ambassador to some little country in the East 

and he has traveled quite a lot. He wrote several books also. 

Q: I33 you know ~&ch book he wrote or--she's got . . . 

A: Yes it's here around here someplace. It's autographed by Merri~ather. 

And then she's got books that are autographed by a guy by the-mn by the 

mane of Eisenschjrmnel that wrote about the Civil %r. And Bruce Catton 

she's got sane of his books that are autographed, and there's several of 

them in there that are autographed by other authors. 

Q: ks she--when you first ~t her ms she interested in the Civil &r 

then? 

A: No! &--no w just had a good time hen we ere first married you 

haw I wan . . . 

Q: &11 I know kt (chuckles) she liked history though. 

A: Yes she liked history she did. Did a lot of reading. Gee whiz she 

read all the thl She'd read a book a day. And every place w'd go why 

she 'd buy books and we've got . . . 

Q: Tats of books. (chuckles) 

A: History books and w've got books about. . . . oh practically--all 

kinds of houses and American history and everything. They're just all 

over the house here. And then she liked mysteries too, she bought up all 

the mysteries she could find and read them and was still reading them. 

Q: k t kind of things did you guys do for fim when you first got married, 

like go to dances or . . . 

A: (31 E wnt to dances and shows and WE wnt to the brld's Fair and . . . 

Q: You mt to the krld's Fair? 

A: Yes we ent to the Chicago brld's Fair . . . 

Q: b you remmber anything abut that? 

A: No it was . , . 

Q: Very interesting? 

A: Aw it was. . . . it was all right ht it ws just a big--that one 

was--that was in 1930 something and it was mre of a big circus and 

carnival. Zhey didn't go in too mch for. . . . oh they did have a lot 

of displays and everything up there but it ma nothing like these new 

ones are, it was mre entertabrent, they had more doggone entertaimmt 

there. 


Q: This wasn't the one with the fan dancer was it? 

A: Yes, it t(as Sally Rand . . . 

Q: Really? 

A: Peg's [the narrator's wife, Marguerite T. Bringer] sister, &dne ms 

a publicity person and she wrked for one of the papers up in Chicago and 

she wxked for one of the magazines, movie magazines out b Hollymod and 

she lazew Sally Rand personally. 

A: And her name ms Maxine Smith--Peg 's sister was. And she said she'd 

take us over and introduce us to her so she did and w mt backstage and 

~t Sally Rand and she w s no dumrry. She was a smart mman. 

Q: bs she? 

9 - P 

A: And she gave rn an auto raphed icture of herself with her fan. &st 

she always made Maxine, Peg s slster d all the tine, she called her 

"Smitty". 'Ihat used to make md (laughs) but you bow, she never 

said anything about it ht. . . . Oh we got to wet her and so. . . . I 

didn't think much of that brld Fair. I 've never been to any of the 

other ones, never got to go to them. &It I--it bas, mst of it ws you 

know carnivals and sideshows and things like that and they had some 

people there from different countries and everything ht they. . . . it 

was like all of them. They had their different ethnic groups and countries 

they =re from. & used to--your granhtbr and I w didn't--when we 

ere first mrried it ms pretty rough. You know that old depression ms rough. 

Q: kt ms--vihat was that like, being in the depression I man &at 

what ws--how did things change? 

A: k11, when they--see when the depression hit in the early 1930s a y 

it hit everybody bad. People got out of wxk and no jobs and so. . . . I 

mrked for the telephone company then kt people couldn't pay for their 

telephones and they -re taking than out and everything and w got down 

to... 

Q: Did you we+ have to do that? 

Q: You didn' t ever have to go out and repossess phones and . . . 

A: Oh yes! 

Q: Did you? 

A: Lk used to take out a lot of them. Yes w took out a lot of phones 

because people-wll re had to use them over again. Put than in other 

places that could use them. And then thy cut down on our work force and 



as I told you before I was the--at one t k 

here I was the youngest mm 

wrking for the telephone company here and they *re, the older rzlen wre 

hollering cbeause they Ere keeping rrr; on instead of thm. 'Ihe only 

reason they kept IIE on ms ckause these older mn didn't know how to 

take care of sane of the equiprent that I was taking care of. There 

eren't any of 'em here that could do it and do it right. And so I was 

the youngest man here until the depression ms wer. It got d m to the 

place where KP were mrking four days a wek and off the other three and 

they'd laid off an awful lot of people younger than I was. . . . awful 

lot, everybody younger than I ms. So and they kind of resented m. 

These fellows had been here for so long and they =re, they ere the 

older group of employees and they just wren't capable of keeping up with 

the changes that Ere caning on. Lot of them hadn't even had a high 

school or a grade school education. Sorne of than had quit in the sixth 

or eighth grade and went to work for the telephone canpany. And they-- 

they just couldn't handle the new equipnent that was coming out. Tney 

didn't how how to use it. . . . know how to hook it up or anything or 

repair it. 

And so =--kt during the war your granhther and I wz got to the place 

where mauey was tipter then the devil and gee vhiz she'd--to save nmey 

why--well, we didn t have any mney to save, that was it--kt just to 

make good use of what VE had why she used to sew patches on all my clothes 

and then sew patches on top of those patches and my shoes ms. . . . I 

nwer had a good suit or anything during those days and it got dom to a 

couple of places--1 remmbex one Fourth of July m didn't have nothing to 

eat because my paycheck hadn't cone in yet. So all the things E had to 

eat was out of a little old stinking garden we had out in the backyard of 

the house we lived in and all that was in it ms carrots and beets and 

radishes and I think we had. . . . something else in it but that's &at 

w ate over the Fourth of July ws stuff like that and a loaf of bread. 

It MS. . . . and thewe was a lot of people . . . 

bhen e wed over to the other house wen-on North College--things 

wren't too good aver there. People used to come around and sell us 

doughnuts at the front door--people that had good jobs. And another-I 

can r m k x one of our &st friends that we had he cane around and 

sold--he made hot tamales and sold them to us for, I think they =re a 

nickel a piece and we'd buy half a dozen of them. And another person 

mld carne by that had dou&-~~ts and they =re selling them for tmty 

cents a dozen. Boy it was. . . . it ws really bad. But when it started 

to picking up why things got better and. . . . my wrk I wmt back to 

five days a mek and as things got better why the--you never forget a 

depression though like that. . . . nobody did. Beause they had what they 

called a. . . . there was so mch. . . . there was so much graft. They 

m out--oh Roosevelt carae out with that big thbg of his that he had, 

the civil--CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] c q s all aver and that was 

all right, that helped scm~ lxlt then they started up doing a--oh there 

was other things that they started up that . . . 

Q: WPA [krks Progress Administration 

A: WPA and. . . . PWA and. . . . some 

and gee whiz those were all--everybody 

of those things that they started 

that was the head of them ws 



politicians and they =re--they spent mre mney doing nothing than thy 

did doing anything. I wrked around a lot of offices and boy it ww 

awful. You couldn' t say anything. Then they--when the mr came why 

things--everybody get into it and. . . . mrk hard and everything, be 

patriotic and everything and gee vhiz--money wrking night and day and. . 

. . that's when the mrtm first started to going to wrk real fast. 

Q: Do you rernember anything about that? I mean did you how any mrwn 

that went to wrk in the--well they did all kinds of shzff . . . 

A: Oh yes! They wnt to wrk in the plants and did everything. I had a 

girl that mrked with mt dom at the office there during brld hhr 11. 

She was yaung then and she drwe a fork lift out in one of these big 

factories, one of these big amnunition factories. And other ones--they 

all wrked around then. Then our om girls--the tJwaen that mrkd with 

the telephone companies around here--they took a lot of them off the 

switchboards here and put them in switchboards in the military camps and 

in the military places and things like that. 

Q: Did you ever have any mmen doing like outside mrk? 

A: Not then. & did-the first time I ever run into any wmn doing 

what e called mual mrk, manual labor, that started ~ i lI e was up in 

Joliet mrking on--&ring that big strike they had with the telephone 

colnpanies nation wide. They put s m girls wt--they didn't have to put 

them out, they asked to be put out! Climbing telephone poles and putting 

in telephones and things like that and they put out four or five of them 

ht they watched thm real close. 

Q: I'll bet. 

A: And then later on they c m out and there wasn't a job-the only job 

that they haven't had too many go into is cable splicing. Nm they do 

have girls that help--or ~~EII, I shouldn't say girls--that climb the 

pales, they do that now. Tkey install telephones. And they have s e 

that wrked along with mm on FJhat they used to call heavy equipem 

trucks--that ws setting poles and placing cables and stuff like that-they 

had some of them caning in. But now they got--- have got-progressed 

real good with the telephone company. They 90 a lot of them 

now that are holding dovm mnagerial jobs that *re mtn s jobs before and 

supervision--over men too--and they 're pretty good about that. 

I--the improvement in telephone equiprent has just been--in the last ten 

years is when it's progressed completely so fast. Actually I think that 

it ent back to--& xeal change in all comnunications is &en they 

invented the transistor. And then when they started that boy that--saw 

of this equiprent now is just. . . . it just don't seem possible h t 

they can do with som of these things that they make now. Like sorrre of 

their switchboards that used to wigh--oh maybe take up six ox eight feet 

in an office in length and about five or six feet high and wigh maybe a 

ton or smthhg, they can replace one of them now with a little box 

that's about ten inches--or about eighteen inches wide and about ten 

inches deep with a hmch of buttons on it and that muld take the place 

of one of those big switchboards that wighed a ton and do the same mrk 

faster. (tape turned off) 


Ecbmd A. Bringer 24 

Q: 

A: Yes. 

So that's cane a long way since the crank boxes on the m11. 

Q: What did you call the--fanwrls . . . 

A: k used to call thm famr--farm lines. They'd tell you they got a 

case aut here on farmer line number so and so and it may be ten miles out 

there on an open line see and you'd have to drive the dam thing frm one 

end to the other to see that nothing ws in it and everything. And there 

M a s . . . 

Q: Now explain drive it from one end . . . 

A: &ll you'd get in your car and inspect it as you ent down the road 

see. 

Q: Oh. 

A: And then you'd have to climb poles and everything and test it and 

everything, cut it open maybe and s e way with the toll lines see. All 

the toll lines betwen cities used to be open, what e call "open wire". 

That was on cross irons and wire and if we got bad stom lightening and 

wind and trees muld just tear the lines all dm and we'd have to go 

replace than see. And then the sarrre in the winter, it was blizzards and 

snowstorms and sleet that did it and if w wer got a sleet storm everything 

m t dom. And those used to be a m to fight. k'd k out freezing 

ourselves to death almost hecause--el1 in those days w didn't have the 

clothing that they war naw, thermal clothing and everything. I've been 

out there I've been close to freezing couple a tks ht anymre they've 

got all this eqpiwt and we11 there's no wire anyplace that you have to 

see or wrk with see . . . (tape turned off) 

Q: You *re explaining about: the cables . . . 

A: We11 see they've changed so mch with the cable and things like that. 

Now they 've got insulation that 's waterproof. It used to be that the 

lead sheathed cables--they still got SUE of them in place yet--kt the 

water mld get into them and there ms paper insulation on the wires--or 

on the cables, on the copper inside the cable, the pairs of wires--and 

that d d put the telephones out of service. And the electricity going 

through the wires muld cause trouble see. And then they got to a place 

where they c e 

out with these plastics that they're using now and they 

started to putting. . . . the wires -re covered with plastic and the 

sheath--they use the plastic sheath now that is waitherproof and it very 

very seldom goes bad and now you don't wen--&ere e used to go out 

every tk it rained now they can have a rainstorm and they don't wen 

have any trouble. 

Q: And you =re a 

you do that? 

A: kll I'd--etd 

repair it 01: clear 

cable splicer right and so &at did you do, how did 

have to locate the trouble and then w'd have to 

it and t h 

repair it. 


Q: Clearing it is what? 

A: k11 getting the wtter out of the cable or the gun shots out of the 

cables and everything and repairing the wires by splicing them together 

or replacing the insulation or samething. . . . mayk--used to be in the 

old days when they =re lead sheath cables we used hot paraffin to boil 

the water out of the cable see. bktd take the amour off the cable and 

heat up paraffin and boil the ~ter out of the cables and then when we'd 

got the water all out of the cable by using hot paraffin vhy w'd wrap it 

up and then put a sleeve on the cable and wipe it like a pldr wipes a 

joint. k used to wipe joints that way. And then they c m out with a 

new kind of a--what they called a desiccant--and it was a poder you put 

in the cables and it wuld absorb the water and you didn't have to use 

that paraffin anpre. And then they came out with the--later on they 

cme out with the plastic wire cables. 

End of Side ke, Tape Ztx3 

A: . . . plastic sheaths on the cables why that don't--you know it don't 

oxidize and it very seldom cracks--of course if anybody shoots it or 

anything you got a case of cable trouble again. &It it used to be that 

any of those things--see water cas one of the wrst enemies of that and 

then now they don't have any open lines out in the country anymre--that's 

wire lbes or anything see--everything is hried cable. If they've got 

any cable it's turied in the underground and the elements don't get at it 

eept once in a while the water gets into them or som construction win 

or somebody like that cuts a cable up or digs it up. But the toll lines, 

they don't--they 've gone to microwave camnxnications naw beteen cities 

and everything. See they can send their--telephone calls are a11 put 

right over the microwave just like television and radio are out in the 

air now, betwen toms. And then another thing that's came up is this 

what they call these "glass cablestt that they 're--they 're expensive as 

the dickens--but instead of using copper they transmit light wex glass 

fibers that are just as -11 as the hair on your head and they can 

transmit thousands of comnunications at a time over one of those cables 

and they're using them hzteen telephone exchanges in the big cities now 

and they're going to start using them beteen toms. They bury those see 

and it's a-- just an imprcsvawnt , everything gets smaller and mre perfect 

as they go along with it. It mn't be long until you see them--you'll 

have telephone like your mtch on your am. 

Q: Probably, probably. 

A: W11--w11 you got those . . . 

Q: k11 they've got TVs now. (chuckles) 

A: You got radio transmitters that you carry around that are-old Dick 

Tracy wasn't so dmb after all in the funny paper. 

Q: No. 


Edrmd A. Bringer 26 

A: 

(chuckles) He's the one that instigated all of this. 

Q: k11 so that ms pretty dangerous to wrk out there on those lines? 

A: Q11 yes it did used to be because e'd have to go at night and-especially 

art in the cuuntry on a storm or anything like that and. . . . 

it was bad. But everything has changed so much since I first started 

with the cqany. I doubt if I could--oh I probably could keep up with 

it. 

Q: (Intervievier produces some magazine articles about the narrator) 

Thought I'd get this article out. 

A: Is that the one from Popular Mechanics? 

Q: Wll Po lar Mechanics has just got the photograph but this is an 

article in +?- atsod et News fran April of 1942 about the bard that 

yaumade. Do you t t t you could tell n[re a little about that? 

l-2E-L- 

A: Qll--I was taking a safety course at that time in safety psychology 

at Millikin [Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois] frmthis S b at 

eht school. And on top of that why I'd also been teaching first aid 

and everything like that for the company for quite a while when I mt 

into that and I'd been on their--* used to have first aid teams, all the 

toms had a first aid team and then every so often we'd have a big contest 

and w 'd go to those and the American Red Cross, or the safety people 

from other industries wid judge us on our performance and werything 

and we 'd see &ich one ws the best safety team in the country. & 'd go 

to Chicago for contests and over to Springfield and everything like that. 

W practiced all the time and everything and then I saw one of these 

safety damnstration boards. The fellow that mde it I mt him, he ws 

fran Indianapolis, the guy that mde the first one--or Indiana, he ms 

with the Indiana Bell Telephone Company and I rnet him at a National 

Safety Council meeting in Chicago one year after I'd gone up there with 

mine. 

Q: This was a demonstration board. 

A: Yes. It shows how accidents happen and how-everytime w 'd have an 

accident why w could demmstrate it on that bard. Like if a mm got 

electrocuted on a light pole or smthing like that w could hnstrate 

it on that. That was wired with electricity see. And the wires wre all 

copper and the poles. . . . w d1 that's kind of hard to tell you &at it 

is but it's all--it's authentic ew-t that vie used then see I wen. . 

. . you can see that the cross arms are on it (pointing at photo of 

demonstration board) and the wires are running betwen than and here's a 

cable and I had letters and what VE called "drop wire reels" to unwind 

the wire off that we was using to go into houses and things like that--te 

used to have cable reels or drop wire reels. And w had safety signs and 

I mde little safety signs and placed then where they should he placed 

and everything like that. 

Q: This was to scale of what . . . 



"Here's How It Happened'' 

A 

Table-top demonstration re-enacts the accident 

TELEPHONE man's hobby is 

helping to bring home to his fellow 

workers the importance of working 

safely, particularly in these times 

when every accident that takes a 

skilled workman off the job hurts the 

nation's victory effort. 

A1 Bringer, cable maintenance man 

at t%e Illinois Bell Telephone Company's 

exchange at Decatur, Ill., attended 

a safety meeting a few months 

ago at which a model demonstration 

board was used to re-enact accidents 

that actually happened to telephone 

men on the'job. 

Mr. Bringer was so impressed with 

the exhibit that he decided to make a 

safety demonstration board of his own 

in his basement workshop. From that 

time on, evenings and weekends found 

him busily at work on it. 

At his group's regular monthly 

safety meeting the other day, Mr. 

Bringer formally "unveiled" h i s 

hoard, and his fellow workers saw a 

variety of ladder, pole and electrical 

shock accidents, taken from company 

records, dramatically re-enacted. The 

men closely inspected the miniature 

laynut and discussed the conditions 

and actions which had caused the accidents, 

and how they could have been 

avoided had practices been correctly 

followed. 

Mr. Bringer's board is a precision 

job throughout. All of the parapher- 

nalia, including telephone and power 

pole lines, extension ladders, wire 

reels, figures of men, red flags, "Men 

Working" signs, pipe poles, cable car, 

house and tree were built to a sale of 

two-thirds of an inch to the fcmt. 

Every piece in the set-up works just 

like the real thing. To dramatize "hot 

(:lose-up of ;I I I ( I . ~ ~ ~ *)I' I I 

Lhe demonstriltio~~ boarrl. 

The base or the bor~rd ~ I I I ~ 

some of thc poles allcl 

llgurcs of r11c11 are mircrl 

so that elrctrlcal shock injrrrirli 

can he drtrmatized. 

All parts arc precision 

~rlrrrle 3t 3 scale of 2/:L 

ir1e11 to the foot. Mr. Bringcr 

is planning atldition~l 

items to make the layout 

more complete. 

wire" accidents, there are bus bars in 

the board's base, and some of the 

poles and men are wired, so that when 

a man on a laddrr comes into contact 

with a power wire, there's a shower of 

sparks and the man falls to the 

ground. 

Larlders are equippcd with mesen- 

ger hooks, pulleys. ladder locks. and 

spur wheels to keep the ladders from 

slipping. Rungs arc made of swab 

sticks. The tree trunk is a stick of 

wood, around mhich plastic wood was 

molded, then rambed with a wire 

brush to give the effect of bark. The 

foliage is an ordinary sponge sprayed 

with green lacquer. The men Jvere 

hand carved of basswood; their safety 

straps are rubber bands. 

Careful arrangement of poles, wires. 

figures of men and other pieces makes 

it possible to simulate almost any 

type of plant condition which has 

caused accidents. 

Mr. Bringer says he had a lot nf fun 

building his demonstration board. hut 

he isn't satisfied with it yet. To make 

the layout more complete, he's going 

to make additional equipment, includ- 

ing manhole guards, a truck, a cable 

splicer's platform, a tent, and a kero- 

sene furnace which cable splicers use. 


Nqtionol Safety News. April. 1942

A: Telephone equipat . . . 

Q: b-thirds of an inch to the foot. 

A: Yes something like that. 

Q: Yes? 

A: I don't rawmber now. 

Q: Says here in the caption. (chuckles) 

A: And &--see this? (indicates photograph of demonstration bard) I 

could--when I hooked these wires to this house over here on the side 

inside of it I had a po-r pack and it'd--when the tm wires wuld caw 

together it'd draw an arc and make a crackle like lightning and everything 

and &--I could draw an arc on there abut maybe an inch long and it'd 

smell like lightning or somthmg. There'd be light just like a peer 

flash as they called it. And ve used to take that--I used to take that 

all aver and one year they had me bring it up to the National Safety 

Co-il convention up in micago and I stayed up there with it for a mek 

and just left it on display. I didn't have to operate it or anything, 

they just wanted everybody fran all the telephone cqanies in the United 

States and Canada to see it. And I had an awful embarassing experience 

up there at that National Safety Council. 

The telephone campany had a suite of room up there where all the--Illinois 

Bell did--where they Ere the host to all the officials from all wer the 

United States and Canada telephone companies. And they got cocktails up 

there and they'd have their different discussions and little food to eat 

and everything and we'd go up there and sit around and talk and everything 

till t?aey had the big metings domstairs or different groups or anything 

or the banquet. And just before I mt up to that convention, you granbther 

bought re a beautiful camel's hair coat. by it was a tan coat and it 

was a honey. It ns a beauty. And I mre it up there. She told me I 

ought to have a good looking overcoat to go up there with so she bought 

this for m. And the felluu I went up with was my boss over in Springfield 

at that time. He's been retired. . . . he's still alive too and his . . . 

Q: bt's his name? 

A: Oh. . . . oh if you hadn't asked IIE . . . ( taping stopped) 

A: His name ws Hale Ebyd and he lives--he 's still alive and he lives up 

north of Springfield in som tom up there, little tom I forget &at it 

is but he 's still alive and he and I mt up to Chicago and he 'd show me 

all around &--it ms during the mr see and he was slmwing me all 

a r d 

the tom and everything and one night ve was walking dom the 

street and I said--as w'd ccme to a army or navy rnan or s-thing why 

there'd be a lieutenant or a second lieutenant or satething like that and 

they 'd all have to salute him-he ' d salute them and they'd all have to 

salute him back. And I m s walking dow the street and I kept saying, 

"Aw look at that. By gosh I don't how what the sense of that is. my 



do they do it? Now look at there, there cames another one of those shave 

tails showing his feathers. bok at him, he makes everybody on che 

street . . . " 'We11 ," he says, Ble Boyd] "don't forget, when he does 

that everybody has to salute him back, They salute him he has to salute 

them back too." 'hw,'," I says, "look at that, here comes another one of 

than shaved heads . . ." He says, '!Listen, that's just as hard on that 

second lieutenant as it is on thme fellows. I know, I was a second 

lieutenant in the first Lbrld %r." (laughs) But he got aver it. . . . 

I rubbed him the wrong wy. 

But that night we was going down to supper at a restaurant: dmtown, 

farther downtom and e got don there and I wre my coat dom there and 

e got down there and had our supper and come back up and on the way back 

why I reached in my pocket to get my gloves out and put than on because 

my hands =re getting cold and there wxen't any gloves in my pocket. 

And I looked in one arm and I looked on tk inside of the coat. I says, 

'Took at this1 Sonaebody took my coat and left rw this cnmmy d m thing. 

Sonrrebody took my real good brand new coat and this--left nae this old rag 

here, this junker. By gosh that had to be down. . . . by gosh. Wll it 

mn't do rcre any good to go back because it wn' t be there." 

So we got back to the hotel and rn went up to this suite of roans *ere 

we =re and I walked in and we ws standing there and I was still hot 

under the collar because somebody'd taken my coat. I walked in there and 

there was a couple a guys standing there and I--Hale and I walked over to 

them, Hale Boyd and I walked aver to them and I says, 'look it here. bk 

go out to supper down there at that restaurant and sebody took my brand 

new coat: and left me this darned old rag. Boy he sure caw out good. 

Look at what I got out of it." And one of the fellows there standing 

there he says, 'Wny , I got a coat like that in the closet. " And he 

walked over to the closet and looked in the closet and there hung my 

coat1 I'd taken his coat d m there and I felt like a nickel. And it 

happed to be that the guy was the president of the Canadian Bell 

Telephone company. 

A: He got a kick out of it but boy I felt like a nickel. (laughs) He 

really . . . 

Q: Called his coat an old rag and everything. 

A: And then he's just as nice and easy about it. He says, 'Thy that 

looks like my coat," and walks over to the closet and looks in there and 

there hung my brand new one in there. (laughs) Oh boy. I 'd had a rough 

day anyhow, everything up there, wery place I went with this safety 

board. . . . they muldn't let E carry it up to the hotel myself, I 

couldn't take it in a taxi cab. I had to get a drey truck to haul it up 

and they had mt pay ten dollars to register it in at the hotel and I 

couldn't take it out of the hotel without paying them another ten dollars-- 

just a bch of rackets that they pulled on people and I ws mad about 

that they wouldn't let rw have it at all. I said, 'Wherever it goes I go 

with it. " So. . . . I did ride in the drey truck with him and he didn't 

want rn to do that and I told him he was going to have to do that or he 

wisn't going to take it. 



Q: How long did . . . 

A: And.. . 

A: Yes go ahead. 

Q: Okay. How long did it take you to make that? 

A: Oh, I mrked on that thing for mnths in the evening. (tape turned 

of £1 

Q: This--this board wnt to a nmsseun. 

A: Yes they took it to New Yo&. Earl Miner asked me if they could have 

it and they put it: in the . . . 

Q: Earl Miner? 

A: Yes, Earl Miner, that's the head of the safety division of AT&T 

[American Telephone and Telegraph] tk in New York and he told E that 

they couldn't pay me for making it *at I was supposed to be kt they 

could give me a little recognition for it so they gave rrr? a check for tw 

hundred and fifty dollars for it and boy that time a check for tm hundred 

and fifty dollars ws big. And see at that tim I also got my expenses 

paid everyplace I wnt--my room and my. . . . and so &en I wnt up there 

why I got up there and. . . . They took rm everyplace I mt, they paid 

my way to everyplace and everything and I says , ' !Eby , I ' 11 just go back 

hare and turn this expense mmey back." And he says, Earl says, 'k 

don't do that. k '11 take care of that. Just keep the expense mney as 

part of your gratuity for paying for that--or to help you pay for that 

bard." And so T did and they took care--they w s real nice about everything 

like that, everyplace I wmt, all the shows and everything and all the 

big restaurants and everything. They paid all my expenses Aile I was up 

there on account of that because they couldn't give re what it w s mrth 

and write it off on the expense accmt. They took it and I shipped it 

to them and they kept it. 

Q: This is in New Yo&? 

A: Yes. It's in the AT&T kilding in New York. 

Q: Is that the main . . . 

Q: Is that the main office or the main . . . 

A: Yes, that 's the AmE!rican Telegraph and Telephone Company. He told 

=--I got the letter telling me &at they wanted to do with it and everything. 

And then there--right aftex-during brld kr 11--right after krld kr 

I1 things started to picking up. And see then--I was, after brld Wr I1 

I ws into abut everything I could be in as far as wrking on equipnent 



was concerned and. . . . I had a pretty good, you know a pretty good idea 

of all the equip~lent that w had outside and mst of it inside. 1 wasn't 

too good on sane of the toll equiprent I t otherwise. And &en I got out 

of there Wl.1~ I started teaching. Everything then. They decided they 

wanted to set up a cable school and that ms the first one. I went to 

Wcago and saw theirs and saw how it was and then I cone back here and 

set up a cable school of my own and improved theirs quite a bit and I've 

got pictures I'll bet . . . 

Q: 'Ihe original one? 

A: Huh? 

Q: Zhe--you improved the one in Qzicago that you'd seen? 

A: Yes. I improved on it to suit myself see and mde it mre. . . . 

mre. . . . designs I used them so that we could getmre out of it and I 

put a--I couldn't find a place to start with so I put it in the basmt 

of the St. Nick Hotel. I 'd been dawn tkre fizdng a switchboard and I 

saw this big row dom there and I asked him what they used it for and he 

says, 'Nothing." So I told the boss, I told the boss about it and so 

m t , w writ down and he made arrangemints and w took it over and put 

it down there and it ms there for sweral years and then w--the telephone 

campany took the kilding over on North Franklin Street and they didn't 

have anyt?xing on the second floor over there and so I went over there--I 

saw it over there and I wnt over and I says, m y can't e m e that 

school over there and make it bigger and put in some of these other 

schools?" Wll I'd started a couple of teletype schools and that msn't 

the place down there for teletypewriter and switchboard schools. I said, 

''I need mre roan, " so ve took over the . . . (tape turned off) 

. . . the second floor--over the cmrcial office on North kanklin 

there and made it into a school. k had cable repair schools ur, there 

and cable fault locating schools and then te wmt+ into h t thejt call key 

equiprrent, they =re just coming out with a new kind of equipwnt that 

had these keys on it and everything. And then I wnt into a couple--I 

had a cauple of big switchboards up there that w taught installation on 

and trouble locating and repair on them and then they come out with a 

different type of teletypewriter and, oh I put h a lot of those up 

there. I had a great big teletypewriter school. And E went through the 

equiprrent on those--installation and the mintenance and repair of them 

and then we had some just plain theory schools, on the Weatstone Bridge 

Q: What's that? 

A: Q11 that's a masuring device, it's one of the oldest ones in the 

country-in the wrld. Jbw they masure trouble in electrical circuits 

is called the *eatstone Bridge and . . . 

Q: Could you kind of explain it? 

A: No, I can't it's too . . . 


E;dmund A. Bringer 31 

Q: Too ccsrrplicated? 

A: Too canplicated. It's fiere you balance one set of wires against 

another and that way and t- measure it and everything's got a value see 

in resistance. And then we taught one in circuit reading aich is--the 

cixdts =re getting pretty complicated then due to the fact that they'd 

gone into transistors. And w taught basic transistor theory and then FR 

mt into--I took one of the basic schools in electronics and the rest of 

the-electronic schools were taught over in Springfield at that time Ixlt 

see--when I first--when I m ed aver to North Franklin Street and took up 

the second floor up there why they give mt a pramtion. I was made an 

assistant staff supervisor and the rest of the fellows on tk staff wre 

instructors and they made me a--wAl at that time there were four of us 

that Ere assistant staff supervisors and the rest of 'em =re all instructors 

and I--there ms the four of us four years that %re just assistant staff 

supervisors and then they finally trade all of thawthe fellows that =re 

doing that kind of mrk , training and teaching and . . . 

Q: Wa vies--do you rem~mber the other instructors? 

A: Oh yes. lbm of than are dead. Gene Wlls wis one with tw and Hoffackr, 

Mr. Hoffacker was another one and--there was one that I used to--trying 

to think of his name now, he--those three--those tw wre--tm of them 

and the other me ws . . . (tape turned off) 

Q: b n I was down in Cairo one time I had an interesting experience. I 

mt dow there on a repair job and ws dom there--took us all day to 

get there. We'd go aver there from here we'd ride the old milk train 

to--we'd have to put all our tools on the trains see, in the baggage car 

and then ship them wherever you wre going. 'Ihat ms before KP had 

automobiles. And then I 'd have to go to Mattoon and pick up an I.C. 

train fxm Mattoon that ent to Cairo. W11 that 'd k the one that' d go 

tho@ Cairo and none of them-they stopped there som of them did--& 

none of than, the big ones wuld go all the my to New Orleans, the big 

fast trains and everything see and I ' d get a, I ' d get a fairly fast train 

but it wuld take rn all day to get d m there from here and then &en 

I 'd get dom there why I 'd have to have somebody me my tools for me 

around town and that wuld k one of the rn that worked there in town. 

And I vent dom there one the, they wanted me to go dom there and put a 

bch of cables in a hotel d0w-1 there. So I vent down, it ws the Haliday 

Hotel is what it was called and it ws up on the lwee see. Cairo has a 

great big levee all around it and it's high. And we stayed at the Illinois 

Hotel and this Haliday Hotel ms up on the lwee behind us and the floor 

that w ere sleeping on in the Illinois Hotel was the third floor and w 

could look out our wlndaws on the back of the hilding where =--in the 

rm we had and look aut and see the top of the lwee, it ms right even 

with us see. k11 the water ~sn't that high, then. But it had at times 

got up that hi&. But I mrked in this Haliday Hotel over there and I 

WE putting cables in it and I had a--we had a heck of a time in the 

building. 

It was a brick hotel, it was abut four stories high and the basement ms 

all vaulted ceilings, all of them ere vaulted in every roan and the 

halls and everything and they ere all closed off and I asked the fellow 


Ednund A. Bringer 32 

that was the clerk there one time I says, 'Wll what did they ever use 

that basment for?" He says, "IXuring the Civil Wr--this hotel has ken 

here during the Civil War and it tias used as a stopover on the Underground 

Railway getting people out of the Sauth." But I had a heck of a tirne 

wrki.ng down there because the darn ceilings and the walls wre so hard-you 

know they mren't square ram they ere all vaulted and stone and 

brick and he told E about that lxlt VE went d m there and E Ere down 

there that--finished that job and just got back and then about the the 

vie got back up here to Decatur and had been here for a couple of w&s 

vhy the flood started. So we went hack dom and stayed at the Illinois 

ktel again and the guy that run that was a-he ms a card. Eberytime 

we'd walk in the front door or anylmdy'd walk in the front door he'd say, 

It 

Cane on in, cate on in, come on in and stay withus. mat do youmt 

to how? %'re going to hild a bridge here one of these days. k're 

going to tuild a bridge over the river one of these days." And he said 

that to everybody, '% 're going to bild a bridge aver the river one of 

these days ." So this time w wnt down there that flood was bad. And 

after vie got in there they closed the gates on the road into the citythey 

got great big iron gates in the lwee and they closed them because 

the water ms coming up and they couldn't get in the city. But it gets 

in anyhow because they have what they call sand boils dawn there and 

there's places in the city that the water caws under the levee when the 

pressure in the river gets up and these places are sandy and it just 

shoots up like a fountain in the city see and they have to, they have to 

sandbag those and build than up real quick. bee they--once one of those 

boils starts to bubbling they sandbag it, put sandbags around in a circle, 

mke kind of a w11 out of it and as the water raises why they raise the 

sandbgs up around it see to keep the water f r ~ running n and flooding the 

city on the inside and as long as they keep the water in this wll at the 

saw level as the river and put en@ sandbags around the outside it 

mn't run. 

%--they have those all the the d m there. And this--= =re dm 

there on a fire job that time and staying at the hotel--- slept up in 

the back end of the tuilding again and boy it used to be an eerie thing 

to look out there in the day tb and see the boats going by--the big 

steam bats wuld go by at the same level E =re. See they was right 

up. . . . you could over look aver the levee and see these stearnboats 

going down the river, the Ohio River there and it ms kind of. . . . 

(cbckles) kt I always liked Cairo, it a nice little tom. hk used 

to go out there they had--out at bbund City they used to have kind of an 

amusar~~t park and we 'd ride the streetcar out there in the evening. 

Hotter than the dickens. It ws nruggy dawn there and almys hot. And 

we'd go out there for dances. And ell . . . (tape turned off 1 

A: But w 'd go aut to these dances and they'd go out there and every 

doggone dance they 'd play mld be a waltz. 'Ihey never played any fox 

trots or anytu see. And I said to him one night-I said to the guy--1 

knew one of than that played the big bass tuba, he run a tire repair shop 

downtown. I says, '%y, when you go aut to those dances how cane you 

don't ever play anything exept waltzes?" He says, 'Wly it muldn't do 

you any good to play any of that fast music, you can't get these people 

dom here to rmve that fast." (laughter) And so--I had a lot of fun 

around that town. Right out on front of the hotel *ere w--the Illinois 


lZdmund A. Bringer 33 

Hotel where w stayed there used to be an old black man that had made 

himself a--he ms--I don't how whether he ms a little bit -tally 

disturbed or vhat it was but he had a machine out in front of the mtel 

there--or the hotel there that he 'd got everything that mld make a 

noise on it you could think of. He had an old squadcy autmobile horn 

and an old Claxton and different kinds of bells and bars of rnetal and 

everything hanging all over it. It was a--looked like a junk mgon 

actually and it was actually--it had pedals on it--it ms a grindstone, a 

big grindstone with a seat on it and it had pedals to it see and it made 

the wheel go round and everything and then he had all this junk hang% 

all wer it. And he used to out there in front and w'd go out there 

when he'd be out there and he say, 'bt IIE play you a tune, let me play 

you a tune." 

Q: A tune? (chuckles) 

A: And he ' d get on there and bat on all these pieces of iron and ring 

the bells and honk the horn and everything and he just enjoyed that and 

veld alwys give him a d i or ~ a quarter ox solmtthing like that ht he 

ms , he ms a character around dom there. He ms . . . . w used to have 

fun when w was out of town there wasn't much to do. And then on top of 

everything else why it was. . . . every tow was different. In those 

days they =re--cmmunication w s by railroad and E had to--that ms in 

the early part--& m had to go by railroad everyplace we mt, or 

interurban. I used to go home fram here, I&EII I was first here before I 

got married I'd go to Peoria to see my folks every Saturday. W'd yt 

off Saturday noon and w'd catch an interurban out of here at om o clock 

and be in Peoria about tw thirty or three o'clock, stay that night and 

then ten o 'clock on Sunday night why w ' d catch the interurban back to 

Decatur here and . . . 

Q: You and who? 

A: Oh the fellows I wrked with, sane of the guys that were cable splicers 

at that time. They're all retired now all over the carntry. One tk VE 

tried to--= mnt up to Peoria in a Ford and it took us dam near all day 

to get there on account of w couldn't get--it rained and up around 

Clinton they had &at they called the Clinton Gap and it was so d dy VE 

couldn't hardly get through it. It took us a couple of hours to get 

through it. 

Q: bhat I thought I'd ask you abut today is if--I was--Fbn [Sarah 

Guinn, nee Bringex] told me that when she ms little they used to call 

her "Tar Baby", so I was going to ask you if you knew why they called Mon 

'Tar Baby". 

A: el1 there used to be a story abut a--1 don't know whether it m s a 

fairy tale or just a small tale--kt the character in it m s called 'Tar 

Baby Tinike" and *en you mther MS born she just had the darnedest 

blackest hair--boy she had aw£ul black hair! And she ms kind of ruddy 


Mr. Bringer's retirement. From left to right: E.A. Bringer, Mary Bringer, 

Guinn, Marguerite Bringer. 


Sarah 

2


crmplexed too, dark complezd too &en she was born so your gr-ther 

started calling her 'Tar Baby Tinike" and then she started--kept up 

calling--we called her "Tar Baby" from then on. And finally vhen she got 

fairly big why WE just ended up by calling her 'Tar". (cbckles) And 

when anybody wnted to how here she was why we 'd say, 'There's 'Tar ' ?" 

And she hew--you how, she'd recognize the nam and when w called her: 

by it she'd always caw or e could find her that my. So that's haw she 

got the name. 

Q: Jlid Mary [Mary Bringer] have a nickme? 

A: No.. . 

: Just Mary . . . (chuckles) 

A: Just Mary. always called her Mary. 

Q: h t =re--what ere they like &en they Ere little? Did they get 

along? 

A: Yes they Ere. . . . why yes, all the way up to. . . . they always 

got--well when they =re first in grade school they didn't run around 

together or--but at hme all the time they ere always together and 

everything they did MIS together and your granhther taught them both to 

take care of the house and everything and dxn they got bigger and your 

grandrmther mt back to wrk during brld &r I1 d-~y they took care of 

the house and they'd do the coolung and clean up, the house and everything. 

They did all the wrk around the hause. They were in junior high then 

see and then high school and they did everything around the house like 

that until they =re, of course until after school. But when they both 

vent to college why it wis a different thing. They 'd help a r d the 

house and everything kt not like they did when they were alone and w 

all did work around the house then they wnt to college. 

And then it vasn't long after that until Mary wmt to Boston to take her 

internship at Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital and she ms there 

one winter. . . . or one--supposed to be there a year straight and she 

wnt and the first winter, oh it a s a an one. That's the-rme of the 

winters they had so much snow in Qlicago. And so. . . . she got sick 

while she was there and they had to send her home. 'Ihe doctor-E talked 

to the doctor and he said he a s going to send her horrre for a while to 

recuperate so she came back. &e was supposed to get--= wnt up to 

Chicago, drove up to Wcago to met her and in this big snow storm and 

heck the snaw banks in Qzicago on the streets =re as high as our car 

ms. AW you couldn't even see cars going down the street the snow was so 

deep. And we wnt down to the depot--or d m to the, out to the ai 

to met her the day the airplane was supposed to care in and it didn TOrt t 

show up. It didn't show up and they muldn't tell us what happened to it 

or anything. They said they didn't have any reports on it. It was 

supposed to c m in ~ and it finally-it didn't caw in at all so w hung 

around until there us no chance of it cmirg in that day and mt hame 

and Mary called us fran Boston and said they grounded the planes there on 

account of the big snowstom and everything. She'd be in the next day 

on the Century. She'd cme in on the aicago--the train fran Boston to 

Wcago the next day. 


Eckmnd A. Bringer 35 

Q: k s this during the war? 

A: Yes. 

Q: Yes. mat was it--what ms wrong with her then she got sick? 

A: kll she had that rheumtoid arthritis. 

Q: Oh is that men she . . . 

A: Yes, that's when she first started to getting it. And it was all 

caused by . . . 

Q: She had rheumtic fever? 

A: No it was from--E think it wis frm wfking around in these places 

where she mrked to get her training. She mrked for Stauffers in Chicago 

for a long time. One smmer she tmrked for Stouffers up in Chicago in 

their domtom restaurant in the dietary departmmt as a trainee and it 

was in and out of the hot kitchen and into the cold refrigerators and out 

to the kitchen and everything like that and w think she just--it ms 

hard on her system that rapid changes of temperature up there so m h. 

The doctor [thaught so] too. 

Q: &re Mom and Mary pretty different? 

A: No. 

Q: el1 Mom seed like she's kind of mre of a tamboy than . . . 

A: 1 . . s s She-+ell I don't know, they wren't too mch 

different. Mary weis almys mre for &--going to school. kry took it 

mre seriously than yaur mther did. 

Q: Yes? (chuckles) Mom--I guess--she told m that she used to mstly 

hang out with the boys. 

A: Yes, all over the neighborhood. %re w s always one sitting on the 

front porch or around the yard and Mary didn't ham--wll Mary, when they 

ere around the house Mary was alwys around there too dxn they were 

young. But when they got into school and everything Mary w s all school, 

college, she m s all for her education. Your rmther ms kind of. . . . 

mt for a good time too. 

Q: (chuckles) F'un. . . . She told me she used to war overalls all the 

tim and run around barefoot. I guess . . . 

Q: . . . the doctor told her she had flat feet because she nwer wre 

shoes or satething like that. 

A: &, I don't remember that. She used to wear short shorts and they 

all--well they all mre shorts. Your xmther and your granbther and 

Mary all three mre shorts mst of the time around the house or anything. 


Echnund A. Bringer 3 6 

Q: Do you rmmkr any holidays or any trips or anything that you did 

with the kids that particularly . . . 

A: 'Ihe only thing w used to do--= never--wll w didn't do rrruch traveling 

or anything until after the girls grew up and then they wre both gone 

kfore your grandmother and I started doing much traveling. But w wnt 

places like over to %key Run and up to Peoria, [Illinois] things like 

that. k didn't go fax in those days. They never--1 don't think eitkr 

one of them ever rode on a train. 

Q: Didn't you use to do--you did your awn fireworks didn't you, on the 

Fourth of July? 

A: Oh yes. Lord R used to--well no, rn didn't, m almys had, or the 

nei&borhood had the firewrks party. We always =re out in the 

neighbrhood-there was fifty-tw kids there in the tm blocks and w 

used to haw big, oh, kind of picnics out in the backyards and all of us 

mld get together and have potluck or sanething like that. And Fourth 

of July, couple of Fourth of Julys ve had firemrks. Lk writ and got a 

bunch of firewxks and everybody and we had them out--vie had a front 

porch on our house out there then. 

Q: Wich house ms this? 

A: On North College, 2000 block North College. k had a front porch on 

it and so everybody sat up the front porch and it got dark that night and 

going to have the Eiremrks and your granbther was handing out-and I, 

just by intuition I put the hose, turned the mter on in the hose and 

laid the hose up where w could get it real quick if anything, happened 

and just by accident sdow or other she dropped a sparkler in the 

firemrks one year and boy it--they started to going off and I turned the 

hose on them and ruined abmt half of than ht w still had firewrks. 

She dropped a sparkler in them and set them on fire on the front porch. 

(chuckles) 

Q: 7he &ole big k h 

of them all at once? 

A: Yes. . . . no they all didn't go off, just the part over where she 

was--had dropped than. her &re I was I had the Raman candles and the 

sky rockets and the stuff like that t:t she had a bunch of sparklers over 

there and slnall firecrackers. kt w used to have great big--oh and then 

w'd have great big wienie roasts out in tb backyard or $-thing like 

that. I& always-oh, for tta or three years w wnt up to Peoria to my 

mther 's house for Christmas. My stepfather ms quite a one for Chrisms. 

.He rnade a big hooferaw out: of Christmas. He alwiys had his Chrisms 

tree and . . . 

Q: He tas German wisn' t he? 

A: Yes, he ws Gem. But it used to take him about a mth to decorate 

the Qlristmas tree. 'k'd put every piece of that lead tinsel on. And 

he'd put that on one str- at a tine. And w used to get so doggone mad 

at him fox taking so long to get the fire--or to get the Qxisbras tree 

decorated and he almys set it in the comer by the fireplace in the 


E&md A. Bringer 37 

front roan and he always used to go out and pick it out himself, get his 

om Chrisms tree. But then re used to have--Chxistms used to be 

quite. . . . in those days Christmas was quite a day. Around their 

house. They had--all their friends that they KUI-I around with all the 

time in Peoria on aristxnas Eve they'd grab a basket full of cookies and 

candies and wine and things like that and c m to their hause and then 

they'd care in and bring their baskets of wine and cookies and crackers 

and everything and mats and cheeses and evemhing, c w 

in and have a 

little to do at your house and enjoy a little talk and look at the Christmas 

tree and everythug and then they'd go to smbody else 's house and then 

everybody just kept going around in a circle see. Eberybody visited 

everybody and took their food with than and everything and it ws quite a 

bit of fun that my. 

But m used to go dm--&en w'd go up there Paul--my brother--lived in 

Peoria then and my stepfather he m s pretty-he ms a real Dutchan. You 

know he ws German but he ms a nice guy and everything kt w used to go 

down to domtom on Jefferson Street. They used to be dom in the--behind 

Clark's department store ms a rathskeller and they had beer and wines in 

there and all Gerrnan foods and everything and VE used to go dom there, 

he used to take us down there. be evening w'd go dawn there and sit 

around and eat and drink beer and eat German foods and things like that 

and cookies and. . . . But he WS. . . . he always had his Chrismas tree 

every year. 

Q: Did he make ornaments or . . . 

A: No he didn' t mke omarmmts or anything he just bought them and . . . 

Q: &s he from Gemmy I man . . . 

A: No, no he came frm Havana. 

Q: Second generation. 

A: Havana, Illinois. His family ere frm Havana, Illinois and I don't 

know--oh we11 he--he told IW one tine about his fdly dow there htt I 

did how some of than, I met sane of them d m there at Havana. I& used 

to go dom there to Havana to Matlanzas Beach too to visit people and then 

*.. 

Q: Matamas Beach? 

A: Yes. It ms a--wll there Is--Havana used to be quite a resort area 

dom there. They got a place called Snicarte Slovgh and then there ms Goofy Mdge and Matanzas Beach and Chautauqua Park see and Matanzas Beach 

ms smr cottages and everything and the--they =re along part of the 

one of the sloughs off the river. And Goofy Ridge ms up the river a 

little ways and it vas--oh it ws just a wildlife area around there. But 

there used to be an h l 

lot of people had sumner cottages over at 

Havana, on both sides of the river. It used to be good hunting country 

wer there. They'd come fran all over the United States to bunt ducks 

there and geese and that m s in the early part of this century about 1900 

on through 1920, 1925 but after that they--it didn't go so good, hunting 

around there. 


Edmnd A. Bringer 

Q: Did they have a chautauqua hause? 

A: Yes they had--we11 it ms not a hause, it ms an open--they didn't 

use it in the winter, they used it in the mm~r. And they 'd have speakers 

and entertairrment like that and may& plays or sorrrethimg, they might have 

had road cmpanies ow sonortthing like that and then they also had dances 

out there. And dom at Matanza Beach they did have a dance hall dow 

there and the people down a r d 

there had their places &ere they have--a 

lot of restaurants around there, there used to be a lot of--well they 

Ere not restaurants, they ere taverns and they had eating places in 

conjunction with them. And it--it used to be quite a notorious part of 

the country around there. 

Q: --about how old =re you you used to go down there? You mre 

A: Oh I was--~m E ere first wed to Peoria w used to go h there 

and then after your grandtrother and I wre rnarried I used to go over 

there on my vacation sometimes. %w of the fellows fram here m 'd all 

go wer there and rent a cottage and fish and run around over there and 

just you hm have a good the and relax for a E& or m. And then 

after that why w used to drive over there, your mther and I and Mary. 

k'd drive around over there and go aver there and get &--pick bitterswet. 

Wit: that's all gone now, there is no bitters~et over there. W used to 

go wer there and get it and w used to go over there and get melons and 

go out and--in s m 

of that mods around there and get nuts. Eut that 

ws just, you lam, a wek--oh on a wekend on a Sunday or sawthing like 

that we'd drive wer there. 

Q: You always-I was just thinking about Christmas again--you almys 

decorate. It's--you're kind of--it's sort of your thing that you do. 

A: Ever since your grandmother and I have ken mrried w 've had a 

Christmas tree. 

Q: Did you start out small? You didn't have a monster like you've got 

now? (c.bckles ) 

A: No e just started out with one and I didn't start mking and being 

interested in collecting QlrisWs ornaments until oh about ten or fifteen, 

twnty years ago. And then I started to collecting them and we did 

collect sate good ones. N've got sane o mmt that are irreplacable. 

I still got a little Santa Claus that a couple of years after e ere 

mrried your grandmther and I went dom to Saint Louis with another 

couple--Madge Stems and Elmr Stems--one day before Qlrisbnas and m 

bought SUE little mristmas gadgets dom there to put on the tree that 

=re made in Germany and I've still got one of them, it's a little Santa 

Claus that's over fifty years old abut, sixty years old now. All our 

other ornments-see I started to mkhg my om here--oh after one trip 

dom to Williamshxg [Virginia] is when I really started to &ing them. 

?here was a man that run a toy shop dm there--he ms a German-and he 

rnade all kids of Gemm toys and Chrisms toys and things like that and 

one time vie were d m there w wnt in and bought some off him and I 

asked him if it m ld be all right if I mde saw of themmyself just 


m d A. Bringer 39 

like the ones he'd made and he said it didn't bother him any because he 

said he's going to retire anyhow. And so I started to ding than. I 

bought several and caw haw and started to making them and then I picked 

up a couple of other ideas and started to making those too and . . . 

Q: Those are those little choir boys and ducks and . . . 

A: Everything. Those ducks and the soldiers and the hobby horses and 

the kids on the sleds and all those are. . . . And then, after I 'd been 

making than a kile your grambother and I went up to Bishop Hill, up to 

that Swedish settlement up there around Qzristmas one year and I got to 

talking to a wmm that run the shop up these telling her about these 

little toys I trade and everything and she said she 'd like to have a set 

of them. So I mde up a set and sent than up to her and then she told 

she me she'd like to have saw of them to sell in her shop up there so I 

made her a couple of--oh I made than for her for a while till she--1 ms 

selling them by sets see. I 'd sell one of each kind in a set and it'd be 

eight dollars or ten dollars a set. And then after the first year or the 

second year why she told m FJhat she wanted, she didn't want some of them 

and she didn't-mted mre of the other ones and I said, "I'm just--I'm 

through making them." But I just didn't quit making than, I just wasn't 

making than to sell her because I msn't going--I rnade them for fun, I 

didn't want to get into lnaking than for a hsiness. And so I still make 

them once in a while--1 got enough of them now I don't have to rrake any 

for a &leg And then .cl~ ent to--= 've got German filigree made out of 

brass, Qlnlsbms ornmts that you can't get mynaore. They don't mke 

them, they make all that out of plastic now, that plastic junk and it's 

mde in Japan and these I got are all G e m . And w ere fortunate 

enough when they cane out, KP liked them so wll that VE bought quite a 

few of them. 

h d the--one time VE =re down in Williamslwrg and w wnt wer to this 

church over by Surrey that is the first church that was ever hilt in 

this country d m there and it's still there. And in conjunction with it 

they had a gift and novelty shop to help maintain the church. And they 

had same of tkse German toys there, these good ones and they caw in 

boxes of six and I, just on general instinct I bought all they had, I 

bought every one she had. And that's a good thing I did because after 

that w never saw than ?ah. And we 'd already collected quite a few of 

them. I got abut, oh 1 d say maybe sixty of them for both trees. And 

w've got Qlrisms o mmts that R picked up in--up at the--in Rockford 

[Illinois] the Swedish and Nomgian place up there, w've got some 

Qlristms ornmts w bought up there. Eberyplace ve writ w always 

looked for them. And I bought sane down in FKllllamsbrg again at a 

&isms shop dow there. k've had--see I got three-one, tw, 

three-I rwintain three Chrisms trees at Christmas. And I used to 

decorate autside all the tirne and boy that--I quit that, that's too much 

trouble. 

Q: Did you ever make any of those snow sculptures, did you ever do any 

of tbt? 

A: You man snowmn and things like that? 


Ednund A. Bringer 40 

Q: Yes, out in the yard. 

A: No. I don't like the outdoors that nrmch anpre. It was--it' s fun 

though. I like arisbnas yet. I& got all kinds of things; Chrishms 

plaques and angels and e've got arisbnas ornaments that are made in 

Italy and France and some of than you just can't get them anynore. 

Tney 're handcarved out of mod. I 've got a couple of nativities-not a 

cauple of nativities Ixlt we've got one set of nativity that's mod, that 

asld a hch of angels that hang on the tree that are made in either--I 

don't know if it's Austria or Gemy. They're pretty big angels and 

they 're all handpainted . 

Q: W11 I was--I was going to ask you too abut the--this is not abut 

B~ristms but I m s going to ask you abut if you rmmkred when Man 

and--&I and Dad [Gene A. Guinn] first started dating. D3 you raember 

what they ere like and when Dad . . . 

A: Oh by. . . . (laughter) Wll I don't know, it's one of those 

things that--I don't r e r too much about it kt thy were both in 

school. I know that it made a heck of a difference in your mther's 

education. 

Q: Oh yes, that's true. (cbckles) 

A: She mldn 't even finish college and . . . 

Q: She a s out at mllikin warn' t she? 

A: Yes she went to Millikin. bk expected her to finish college and she 

didn't do that because they got--he--your father: [Gene A. Guinn] finished 

though when he ccm back £ran the service he got . . . 

Q: Dad gave it a few tries I think. (chuckles) 

A: Yes. First time he didn't do so hot either I don't think. 

Q: No. 

A: &It &en he care back aut of the service he finished it. 

Q: So they Ere just college, in college when they rxlet or did they 

meet--they mt in high school didn't they? 

A: Yes they mt in high school. Yes, they used to--they used to have 

same dingalings for friends though. Boy! 

Q: Eke who? 

A: I don't know *at the fellow's name ms kt one night--your grandmther 

always sat and read later than I did, early and everything. She hollered 

at me me night and says, "Al , c m on d m here. There's an automobile 

parked right up against our front door ." 


Edrmrnd A. Bringer 

Q: In the yard? 

A: In the yard. And VE had a little front stoop there with tm steps 

and it a s about oh, six feet square for over at the front door out there 

and so I cane rushing down there and sure enough there was a car parked 

out in front of the house, right smck up against it! Nobody could get 

in the house if they mted to. And so I--it scared n~ so I called the 

police and they c m out ~ right away and pulled up in the driveway beside 

the car and got in it and they said--they got in and said, "ky there's a 

young fellow--a young man in here!" And they asked him what his narne ms 

and he told them what his was and he was cane out there to see &ere 

Sally and Alan =re. They wren't hum neither one of than see. 'Ihey 

hadn' t been there and he just caw up . . . (laughter) So he ws a 

little bit inebriated. 

Q: I guess. (laughter) 

A: They wuldn't let him drive home. k e of the policemen took him in 

and the other one drove the car horne see and--kt--oh they had saw dilly 

friends . 

Q: So did you--you don't have to tell =--did you like Dad? 

A: k11 he ws all right, he vias just . . . 

Q: Kind of wild? 

A: k11 no, he was the only one in high school she ever vent with I 

think. 

Q: Really? 

A: W11, I think she wnt with another by a couple of tbes dm at the 

hi& school bt she went with your dad mst of the time dom there after 

they got: to going together. Wlt what--before she got dawn there--gee 

whiz there used to be a Eunch of kids around the house. In our neighborhood 

there ws a lot of them and they used to always be d m around our house 

or the little girl that lived dom the street fran us, there was another 

little girl that lived dawn the street £ran us that they =re at her 

house or atr kid's hause all the tk. Wen they got married they--& 

wnt to the service right amy and your mther muldn't stay here and 

mLk, she had to go with him dom there and . . . 

Q: Ske tells rre they lived in a chicken coop. 

A: They did. 

Q: A real chicken coop? 

A: Yes, it ws a real cnmy chicken mop. And then the next place they 

mned ms over at Fort Leonard kod and the house they lived in it ws 

nice k t it was just hotter than the devil dclwn there and it ws crmy 

and everybody dom there hates the sight of military people and it was 

rough for them down there. And then they got into a trailer, bought a 


Ednnmd A. Bringer 42 

trailer down there and lived in the trailer for a *ile and w went d m 

and visited than there. 

And then £ran there that year w tent d m to New Orleans, along the 

coast. And we got into New Orleans just after a hurricane had hit and 

oh, it was just . . . bad. It WS--FR finally got to the mtel and e 

were right beside one of the canals or levees--see, a lot of New Orleans 

is lower than the land around there--and w got there and this canal was 

there and you'd look up Fn this canal and stand on the street or in this 

mtel w were staying at and you look up there and see the bats. Thy 

had them packed just as tight as they could get than h these canals and 

the water was so high in the canals that the bats ere higher than WE 

were. And they =re yachts and mtor boats and things like that, see. 

And it had hit *en ME got there Ixlt the water was still a r d and the 

flooding and everything ms still there. And I stopped into a filling 

station to get gas and his pumps =re bled half away, the tops ere all 

blowed out of them and everything and so w got down to the mtel and 

there m s debris all aver everyplace and it was hard driving so w mnt 

up to the mtel and checked the rocxn. And I asked the fellow, I says, 

"IS it safe to stay here now?" And he says, ''Oh yes, there's not much 

danger stayiqg now empt if the lwee bxeaks . l1 Jde said, "k 've had 

these before." They didn't think anything, of it. And I went mlking 

back to the . . . 

Fnd of Side One, Tape Three 

A: Let's start over again there where we cane back--I was caning fran 

the roan in the notel over to him [the mtel omer] to ask him about, if 

it ms safe to stay there that night and w cane by the swirmning pool. 

They had a swjmnimg pool, and I looked in the s w 

pool and the 

swimhg pool had--was just full of chairs and umbrellas and tables and a 

pop machine was in there and all the things that you find around a mtel 

that way so I vent in and I says, l&y, how caw all that stuff's in the 

swimning pool out there?" He says, "Oh when they got a hurricane warning 

out and you're getting close to it ke put everythm+ in the pool and fill 

it with water and then it don't blow away or it m n t blow araund and 

hurt anybody." He says, '% ' 11 take that out as soon as this is gone." 

( 1aWter 

Q: Interesting idea. 

A: So we =re--your grandmother and I got in the car and thought e 'd 

drive around and see what w could see around there so w drove out to 

a r d Ldce Pontchartrain there and gee &iz there ws boulders there 

that =re oh tw and three feet across that had been thorn out of the 

lake, off the riff raff up on the road and everything and all the palm 

trees =re blom dom and laying up with the roots gone and everything 

and the water--= look wer and one section of tom right on this drive 

and you could see over there and there's just for dies you could see 

these houses Ere just--the mter ms almst up to the roofs on them. 

There was--as far as you could see. And WE got up close to an amusmt 

park there and there ms an air force base there too or same kind and 


Ectrm_md A. Bringer 43 

here cme a guy running down to us and he says, '?ley, get out of herel 

This is restricted territory nm. &'re under martial law around here. 

You get out of here, they'll shoot you if you don't." I said, '%Jell how 

the dickens can I get out of here? I 've been trying to find my way out." 

He says, 'That's not my problem. You get out of here the best m y you 

can." So t+e finally got away frm there. And the amsement park ms all 

tom to pieces and the wves on the lake e re still real big because it's 

an aw£ul shallow lake, it's not a deep lake, Lake Portchartrain isn't. 

And so ME finally-we vent back to the mtel and stayed there and the 

next day it as just a beautiful day so =--about in the aftemoonm 

started to take another drive and E drove out: along this same road 

again, around the drive around the lake and all the palm trees =re 

standing back up again, they 'd put them up during the night and all--up 

in the mming and everything and all the rocks and everything =re back 

in the lake and everything. 'Ihe only thing ms that there ms still 

debris laying around the park and everything kt they really take care of 

hurricanes down there dm they get one. (laughs) But that's the first 

tine w ever--well we've been in the tail end of a couple of them. 

Q: Do r-br &en--around what year that was that you wre dawn there? 

A: No I don't. It ms while you father ms in the service but I don't 

remember a t 

year that ms. But I dm't r&r htkr he was . . . 

Q: Fifties, ws it in the fifties? 

A: k11 1-1 don't rmber. I don't--see I 'm not goad on dates. But I 

don't how whether it was when he ms at Fort Leonard Wd or whether it 

wits &en he was down at the other camp dm there. It was one of t?x 

tm . 

Q: You ere saying you'd been in the tail end of a couple of hurricanes. 

A: Yes. =re--tm of them! Up in New York. bk were in one coming 

d m frm New Hmpshire and Venmnt one time. k got down to the--well 

it started to sprinkling when v i ~ left the--where e ere staying up there 

in knnont. It started to rain on us and they told us that there ms 

going to be plenty of rain, that the hurricane had almst gotten up there 

and it was going out to sea. So VE started for New Yo& and it rained on 

us all day and boy we got to New Yo& and it ws just pouring and you 

couldn't hardly see to drive and w got on that George ~shington Bridge 

finally and oh the wind ms just blowing and you couldn't hardly see 

&ere you w s going and it'd darn near blow us off the bridge and w 

finally got over into New Jersey and stopped. I& =re going to eat lunch 

and when w got out of the car, your granbther and I made the mistake 

of opening the car on her side of the car d the car door on my side of 

the car door at the same time. And it w s just raining and that rain 

just blew right through the front of the car. Just soaked the inside of 

the car. So PE wnt in to eat and the gal said--where UP at there--& 

says, "kt are you doing out in this?" "k11," vie said, "we 're going 

down to Milliamsburg and . . ." She says, ''You're just luck because they 

just opened up the New Jersey Turnpike. Wy said they wldn't let 

anybody on it up till now. And they mn't let any trucks on it yet, just 


Etbmd A. Bringer 44 

passenger cars. " So she says, 'k 've had eleven inches of rain here." 

And it ms, it m s awfiil. I never . . , And then another t-. . . . it 

seam like that George Mshington Bridge, every time FR wnt over that 

darn thing caning home we'd get into those hurricane rains. But they 

rere--I don't know ht year that was even. But otherwise that ms a 

beautiful year. Once they get through with a hurricane the wather just 

seems to get beautiful. &It w got onto the turnpike and they'd opened, 

just opened it up and . . . 

Q: 'Ihis was on the my to Mlliamslxrg? 

A: Yes that ms on the way, vie used to always go dom that my to 

Ml liamsburg . 

Q: 

You went to FJilliarnsburg quite a few times, right? 

A: Yes. I don't how whether it m s twenty-eight or thirty tims w 've 

been to MLlliamsEurg. 

Q: lb you remember any particular trips you took that were particularly 

nice or anything that happened while you were there? 

A: Ch MLlliamsburg 's always been a nice place. See *--w =re going 

dom there when they--when it +as practically--they'd just started doing 

their repair wrk and reconstruction and everything and rehabilitation 

and everything dom there and we 'd gone dom there and noticed the 

difference every year. Now it's, it's getting so it's . . . 

Q: It's right by Busch Gardens, isn't it? 

A: Yes, the hsch Gardens are right by it and then there's another thing 

dom there called the King's Park and it 's a lot of condorniniurns and 

they've got a big golf club there and tm or three golf courses and 

they've ---the park of Willianrslxxg that has been reconstructed is 

all right yet--kt they've taken the atmosphere away £ran the whole part 

of the country dom there. It's a, a tourist trap ncw, all it is, exept 

the part there. Now they have done something at FKlliamsIurg about the-- 

see when w went first to Williarasburg you could walk dom the streets in 

the old part of it and saunter around and talk to people, the people that 

wre in the houses that were of historic value and everything. You could 

talk to the people in there, just stand there and talk and converse with 

them for a half an how or mybe twmty minutes or smthing like that and 

strike up a nice cmersation with them and then it got so the people 

got-mre people and mre people corning there and everything--and it got 

to be quite an attraction and it was free, everything ms free then 

exept a few of the houses, the big ones like the Capitol and the, oh tm 

or three of the houses and tAe Palace--you always had to pay to get into 

those and two or three of the great big hones and Carter's Grave and all 

of the plantation houses around there and Stratford-kt the fee that 

they charged msn't exorbitant or anything. It vas mre in keeping with 

the times. But the amsphere ias mre like it muld have been years 

ago, years ago when it ws really Wlliamhrg. Then they got to the 

place where they started to blocking off the real old part of the--what 

they call the Mlliamkurg itself--not the &ern WilliarnsIxlrg bt the 



old part-they got to blocking it off so you couldn't take any automobiles 

in there. You had to walk in weryplace or ride their hses. Wch was 

all right because . . . 

But the c rds started to getting bigger and then they hilt that b ch 

Gardens right dom there by it and they started to mdernizing everything. 

They put up a lot of new bildings d m at Jmestotxl that: should have 

never ken put up at all because it spoiled the historic value of that 

part of the country altogether. And they put up this Wlsch Gardens and 

that's nothing except a zmmmmt park. And then they--up a r d Wlliamslxlrg 

the "hawkexs" as they call them started to caning in and they put in 

places like a pottery factory up there and a candle factory and they got 

one place outside of Wlliamsburg now that is nothing except junk that is 

imported £ran all over the mrld, ma, Japan, Elorea, everyplace. 

Q: Souvenirs, like sowenir type stuff? 

A: It is, all it is is sowenirs. Now they do have som nice places. 

There's tw or three places but they put up =re rmtels and this last 

th w wre dom there you had to make appointnmts to get in certain 

buildings and IE never had had to do that for years. And now you b e 

make appoin-ts to get in and they just run you through like it's a 

circus or something, you don't get--you can't stop, you have to stay with 

your group, they mn't let you lo& at or talk to anybody. 'Ihey tell 

you, '??love on, move on, w've got sane mre people caning so you'll have 

to m e on." And it was like that this last tine. And they do have scrne 

nice things down there yet but they've c~rcialized it so and the 

mthod of putt* it on. They even, like-ell they did it all around 

thrmgh the East there. 

All the battlefields &ere you used to be able to wlk a r d t h and 

read on the tmnurnents and everything and talk to the guides and they'd 

tell you about certain things and everything, now they've got these 

doggone punch Ixttton loud speakers with tape recorders and you stand 

there and listen to sorne guy talk thraugh his nose and tell you about it. 

And they put up dom at Yorktom--another town, place where that should 

have been left alone as battlefields--they put up a dem big brick 

nuem and a restaurant and a gift shop and big parking lots and everything 

and they bring these truckloads or these big busloads of people in and 

when they bring them in then they don't see anything. All they do is 

say, 'Now this is this and this is this and let's c a on, ~ let ' s m e 

on. " And it's just hurry, hurry, hurry, and, 'You can't go here unless 

you pay." And the only thing that 's--it used to be that =--there was no 

hurry about anything. You can walk dom the streets now Ixtt they're so 

crouded and the buses are so crowded that it ' s alrmst--on a 'txzsy day d m 

there it's impossible to get around, you might as well stay out of there. 

And if they got anythhg going on--like the last time we ere dam there 

they *re making a ming picture and they mldn't let us see parts of 

the town and I heard one man remark, 'Wny I caw all this my and you 

mn't even let TIE see what I care to see now because you're making a 

rmving picture in there and you're keeping us out ." 

Q: Ib you remember what mie they w e making in there? 


to

Fdmund A. Bringer 46 

A: Yes. 'Ihey were making this-when ve =re dm there this year they 

=re making that IkshFngton, George Mshington picture. And he told us a 

bunch of people that =re in it. A guy by the name of--I man Patty 

Duke's in it I knw, she's not the one that's got the main part thaugh 

but she's in it. And they wuldn't let us around the Capitol. They took 

us through the Capitol--1 mean the Palace kt when w got to the back 

door the guards there and the security people push you d m to the sidewalk 

and say, 'You'll have to go out this way and you can't--don't go that way 

and don't go this way, ntrw stay amy £ram that: gate there, now don't get 

anywheres near the wall because they don't want any &ern people or 

anything in the pictures." Well if they'd tell people that before they 

corrre down there. And once before WE wre dotan there and w got out of 

there just a wek before Mitterand [Francois Mitterand] ws there, from 

France. And w got out of there the wek before that because if w 

hadn't-they said it was a mss the next wek. 

Q: I'll bet it ms. 

A: But every time they get anybody down there like that see they. . . . 

They forget anpre that sm of these people travel thousands of miles 

to see the place and pay a lot of money to get there and then dwn they 

get there they mn't let than see anything anyhow. And it is, it's a 

dirty shame that they 've--it's changed so mch. Because it's like that 

man said, he drove all that my and he expected to see sa~thing and 

can ' t see anything. 

Q: And you used to be able to talk to the people that ere--what do 

they--they call them interpreters don't they, the people that are in 

there they play the parts of the . . . 

A: Me11 s w places. Now that's scmthing that they shouldnt do either. 

I don't believe in that, I don't think that the ay they're trying to 

make you thi& you're part of the period that they 're--the Ixlildings were 

hilt and everything in--that's silly because nobody mts to do that, 

they want to know historical informtion and stuff like that about this 

and like to see stuff rather than stand there and take part in a eighth 

grade tableaux. But it ms--w enjoy it yet, kt it's not what it used 

to be, not by a long shot. And mst of those historical thugs aren't 

anymore. Anyplace yau go, every battlefield dom there had these loudspeakers 

that you punch a button. Jarnestown they put up a great big &ern brick 

mseum. Used to be there msn't anything dom there exept a church, a 

statue and the remains of a cauple of old hauses as they found th. Now 

they've got a glass factory don there and a k h of Indians--Indians 

runnhg around -king cigarettes, that 's part of the period. 

Q: Indians smoking cigarettes? 

A: Yes1 Sitting around the teepees and smoking cigarettes and . . . 

Q: This is at Yoxktown? 

A: No, that's dawn at JZKIES~OWI. 

Q: Oh, J ~ s t o ~ Wll . , that makes a little rmre sense. 



Q: Are they real Indians? 

A: Yes, they're real Indians all right. I know--I got a friend dm there 

at--that's the cooper dom there that makes the barrels and the kegs and 

casks and everything for the dole place dm there--& and his brother 

and tm or three apprentices--and I 've know him for years. He c m frm ~ 

-land and I--- I used to go d m there and talk to him and everything 

I'd strike up a cornrersation with him. k talked about Fxgland and 

everything and every time I go back he tells E about his family and how 

the kids are in college now and when I first writ dom there and talked 

to him the first time they =re just young kids yotl how, in school there 

in tom kt they're away at college now. And he's--1 get a little kick 

out of it yet Eut I '11 never go back there again, I don't think. 

A: No. Just like all the other things like that they've cmrclalized 

them to the place where they've lost their historic value. 

Q: That's too bad. That's kind of like Nauvoo, Illinois, too. 

A: Wll, Nawoo's the s e my, they've done that dth Nawoo and if 

they'd have reconstructed the hauses and left 'an alone and left out 

those museum and everything and. . . . Oh, we've been around to a lot of 

places like that, they've just cmrcialized them, over-cmrcialized 

them. It's one of those . . . 

Q: Talk abut the trips you tmk to England. 

A: kll, we've gone to %land--I think your granbther and I mt over 

there three different times. 'ke first time mas after she retired right 

away and w had--took a the eeks tour over there after VE got wer 

there and then E stayed in London for a couple of weeks and w enjoyed 

that, it was real good, prices =re not too high the first tk ve went 

over there prices ere reasonable on everything. And the Mlux of 

hopean travel people was just starting to rmve in there and so the S~IE 

way with the ethnic groups like, oh a whole lot of people £ran India and 

Africa and dom through there, they were just starting to me in there. 

And the trip ue had the first time ms real nice. W wnt from--it was 

called a--just a good tour of @land. And m mt--started out and mt 

to all the big toms and e had a very good tour guide and then w ' d get 

and say, 'Well, where's the bs?" or something like that he'd climb all 

over us. They 're not b es they're coaches, so w wre on a tour coach 

not a b. And we'd forget that and werytim anybody'd call it a b, 

wsly he had a box up in the front of the car and you had to go up and put 

a quarter h it--or not a quarter, one of their-I don't how what it 

ms, a shilling or something like that--and so they kept doing it all the 

way through. I got the pot one the. I mde a pretty good pot out of 

it. 1 think I got thr; first pot they had and it was a pretty good one. 

After that they =re a little bit leery about calling it a hs. But they 

were beautiful coaches. And they do the tauring business god, they're 

rnasters at it. 


Ectmund A. Bringer 48 

And w started out from Tandon and arrived at Heathrow and that was--the 

United States, you leave here at night and e got aver there the next 

morning and Heathroue [Airport] scares you to death right off the bat 

it's so big. And e mt through custc~ns there and of course ve didn't 

have anything to declare or anything. So it wisn't hard on us ht e got 

through cust~ and then they take you domtom to Victoria Station in a 

coach and they--you pay--it as--& price was very cheap then. And from 

there d ~y you could get a taxi to any place in tom or you could take the 

suhy--or the "Tube"--that's the subway is the "Tube"--or you could get 

a taxi or you could take a hts. Now they do have their bes. And so 

then you can get to a hotel or a motel, wherever you're going to stay. 

And everybody on those tours--it a s enjoyable, all three of than =re. 

k mt all the my--oh, I got a list of them around here saeplace, all 

the places w ken to and everything. I kept a mp of all the places in 

Fqland w've been in and Ireland and Scotland. But the tour FIR took 

writ all over Qland. k 'd go up--go towards Edinburgh and we'd get to 

Edinburgh and then we'd go up to the, way up to what they call John 

0 'Groats--which is the mst northern point in England that is--people 

live in. 'Ihere's another point that's farther up then that but there's 

nobody that lives out there kt that's the mst northern point. And then 

m'd take a tour around the perimeter of Scotland and over through the 

mtains and hills of Scotland and everything and corn back don to the 

west coast all the way dm and clear dm to Land's End Fklich is the 

mst southerly end of Fmgland. Now it's a--there 's no houses or anything, 

no town out there kt its got a rmtel--or a hotel--and it's been 

camercialized. And it ws one of the dirtiest places I ever saw on a 

tour in my life. It was just filthy. 'key sold food dm there and it 

wts a beautiful--the cliffs and the rocks and everything kt the wy the 

people acted and the thugs that they did around there was disgraceful to 

a place like that. And we mt there and then we'd go back and we saw 

lots of historical places. All the cathedrals were beauti£ul, every one 

of them was beautihl. 

And IE wnt to, back up to London. And then men w =re in London that 

tim wz stayed at the Cora Hotel which ms out by Houston Station--it's 

out by the British Museum and there's a Hebrew college right behind it 

and it's quite a--el1 it's a half camru3rcial and half a residential 

district &re this Cora Hotel ms and e liked it there. It was quiet 

and it was not very far from dowtom, we could take a bus or take the 

'"rube" over, get it right dmm there a little mys £ram &re w =re or 

we could take a taxi. And taxis over there were cheap so se used taxis 

dl the the. And they wre good taxis. Their taxis wer there are 

really good. And ve mt dom, w mt to everything ~LI domtown London. 

bk wnt to Fortnm and Mason, hich is a great big store d m there-one 

of the oldest in the wrld and expensive as the dickens-and they had a 

beauti£ul restaurant there. And WE mnt da~n to Harrods and all the big 

deparmt stores, the Liberty and all those dom around there and w 

walked dawn Bond Street. k were--writ to Picadilly Square and we wnt 

to the Traf algar Square where tlhe Nelson m-t is with all tk big 

lions around the fountain. And then te ~ nup t to the St. Jaws Park in 

front of the Buckingham Palace. bk 'd walk up there and w--in the park 

they've got all these geese and birds and the ducks are all fed, wen the 

little birds like the sparrows and those kind. And they've got a couple 

of places in there where you can buy food and sit d m and eat and you'd 


Echrrund A. Bringer 49 

be sitthg there eating a cake and drinking your tea or something and the 

doggone birds will catre and just perch right around on the table by you 

and they just eat the cnanbs, you tear off a couple of crumbs and hand to 

them. Hold out your hand like that they'll light on your hand and if you 

put some up here they'll climb up and they'll sit on top of your hat and 

everything see . . . 

Q: 

I 've seen pictures of Grandma with birds. 

A: (laughs) k got her with birds all over her. 

Ikd of Side %o, Tape Three 

Q: I thought I'd start by talking a little about your retirent. Wen 

did you retire? 

Q: In 1970. And that was after how many years with Illinois Bell? 

A: Forty-six years. I'd been with Bell Telephone Corrrpanies--not the 

Illinois Bell, the Bell Telephone Companies. I mrked for the Des bines, 

out in k s Mines for the Iow Bell Telephone Carrrpany--Northwstem Bell 

it was there-for a d ile first and then I cane to Illinois Bell. 

Q: It m s after you retired that you and Grandm started traveling . . . 

A: Well, m'd trirveled all wer before that. Every year w'd travel 

dow to--all wer the Mted States exept I haven't--= hadn't been out 

mch &st. We've been in all the eastern states and all the southern 

states including Texas and dom into Arkansas and Oklahom and Iow and I 

had hen up in Minnesota and your grandmother hadn' t kt I 'd been over-- 

everything fxm there cm east. We d been--covered all the states there 

in years. bk've been going frm--as I said before we vent up into the 

northern states for the fall and then we'd go down to the--& e'd get 

through with the scenery up there in the fall hen the trees are so 

pretty why we 'd go dom to Williarnslxlrg, Virginia, and stay a wtzile and 

then w'd. . . . finally it got to where traffic ws so bad in the East 

that we 'd just go to Williamburg and stay dom there all the tim and 

then w'd wrk around through that part of the cmtry and not go to the 

north anpre. That was about the tine they =re getting ready for a 

wrld fair up in the north part of the country anyhow, up in Canada and 

everything up there m s kind of--people ere raising their prices and it 

ms getting kind of bad to travel up in the northeast. But ve went 

to--tm years, for tm years after I retired, your granhther mrked see 

and then as soon as she got off, the year she got off in 1972, why that's 

the first year w mt on to Britain, Great Britain. 

Q: bll, how did you--how did you decide on going to Britain? 

A: W11, she always wanted to go there and she wanted to go on to France 

and Germany and I didn't. I didn't mt to go wer there. I got-well . . . 

Q: my not? 


Echnund A, Bringer 50 

A: I& Ere going to go--wl1, that canes in later, you'll see why later 

why I didn't want to go to France and Germany and Spain over there. 

A: But w decided--mil, she'd been reading abut all that, the English 

and everything. She read quite a bit of history and she, she always read 

up on everythug on it before we ent anyplace. And so she decided and 

we talked dom there to the people at the travel hreau and they--w told 

them we wted to go to Great Britain and take a tour and to fix one up 

for us and they did, they fixed one up for us. It ws a--the first one 

in 1972 was a tJhat they call the "Highlights of Brimin Tour" and it ms 

I think eighteen days long. I got the paper here that tells zne exactly 

how long it ms. (refers to travel brochure) No, it was fifteen days. 

And it tas a nice tour. k enjoyed it, it w s one of the better--it ws 

one of &--it ws practically the best tour we took, in 1972 as far as 

enjoying it ms concerned. I& started at 'London--ell, what w did, we 

Elm from here to 'London and got in on Friday. And w didn't have to 

leave until Saturday because jet-lag 's rougher than the dickens. I& got 

in &re Friday mrning and so w stayed in London that day and then on 

Saturday, vhy the tour started. And w mt fran London up through 

the-oh ve started and writ up through the toms of Maidenhead and Henley 

and then w! went to the Oxford University and that's quite an interesting 

town to go through. They muldn't let us go all through all of Oxford. 

In those days when they--they had--their tours =re under the control of 

the government quite a bit because they wuldn't let you go dm certain 

sreets in certain toms, you had to follow routes that they--the municipalities 

or the governmat--set up for you to use and you couldn't take the tar 

coaches dom any of the streets except those. And so w got to see part 

of Oxford University. W didn't stay here too long, w just drove araund 

in the tom and then VE writ on up to the tom of Wstock. That 's 

where--it's close to where Blenheim Palace is here [FJinston] Churchill 

ms born and we did stop there at bdstock and mt to the cetery and 

saw Churchill's fdly plot, where aurchill was married--or hried, not 

nlarried. And then WE mt on fran there to a tom called Shipston-on- 

Stour-that's the name of the river, Stour. And it ms a real nice 

little cotswld village. It had--the roofs were thatched and they tiere 

regular Fnglish Ixzildimgs, it ws just a typical English tom, it wis a 

nice little tom. And then w writ on to Stratford-upon-Avon. And w 

didn't stop there we only drove through it and w didn't stay there that 

trip though. 

Q: That's Shakespeare's place, isn't it? 

A: That's Shakespeare's hare kt we just drwe through it and we drwe 

the and looked at the places &ere he ms associated with and then m 

writ to *--next thing WE did m s go an to Udderminster and that ms 

the town, the next tom on the itinerary. And it was--it's noted for its 

carpets, they rmke beautiful rugs and carpets there. And te writ on to 

kitchrch fran there and there ws , oh I think there was sane fellow 

there that born there. Edward G e m , he ms a compser, he was born 

there, that was his town, that's what they told us and we didn't see 

where he ws born or anything. 



But then we mnt on and that night E stayed at Qlester. Now Chester is 

quite a tom. It was once called M a, it once ms ha, and that's 

spelled D-E-V-A and it ISIS a Roman station and still retains the city 

walls all around it, the walls are around the thing. And the gatewys. 

They had saw shops there that axe hom as the "Rows" and they =re 

these shops that Ere on three levels kt on the outside of the bilding 

all the way around there was balconies, you wlked all the my around to 

get to them that way. And they called those the 'Qows" and it ms a 

hole square block and then they had--the center of the Ixlilding also had 

kind of like streets dom through the center of it. And it was a real 

interesting-that 's the only place I 'd ever seen a hilding like that 

that was a--well actually it's comparable to our shopping centers is what 

it MS. And it ms all enclosed except that all around the outside you 

could walk around on every level of it on the outside of the different 

ones. And they had a--every tam VE wnt to had a cathedral, a beautiful 

one. And they had a beautiful cathedral there and it ws once a Benedictine 

abbey is what it ms, it was. . . . And oh it had--it ws beautiful. And 

E stayed there in bster and w had dinner there and. . . . TZze hotels 

e stayed at were god nice Fmglish hotels. 

Q: &re they cold? 

A: No! 

Q: Because I've heard, you how that . . . 

A: kll, they =re later when. . . . But then when w =re there it ws 

in September. It wasn't cold, no it wasn't bad. . . . there. And then 

the next morning why after we stayed there over night at the Blossoms 

Hotel ms the nane of it. They give saw of their hotels, they give them 

real nares, I'm telling you. And the next day E went on to Carlisle, 

that was our destination for the next night, see, kt on the way, why, VE 

had breakfast at the hotel there in bster and then w left for the--headed 

north. And e vent through Chesire country as they call it into Lancashire 

ms the next tom ve mt thraugh. And then that was--w Ere going 

through, when = =re going through there E were going through one of 

the big industrial areas. And we missed the industrial part of the 

country all together, VE didn't go through any of the big toms or--if 

they c dd help it they never took us through the parts that ere big 

factories and things like that or any place close to . . . 

Q: It probably muld have been interesting to see. 

A: Well, I don't know. &--later on w did hit one tom kt e didn't 

care too mch for it, Glasgow in Scotland. 

Q: Oh yes. Is that coal? 

A: k11, it's shipbuilding and everything. But one of the mtorways tie 

took--they called their supexhi&mys they called them 'btonays" and 

they got than mkred like we've got ours numbered here Ixlt they use "M" 

numbers, M6 and M4 and everythug like that. bk wre on M6 then and we 

vent through Kendal. And one of the things they told us about Kendal is 

that they made a sugar candy there that ms good so your grandraother and 


&hnd A. Bringer 52 

I got same of it and it didn't taste anything like anything to IW except 

just like a big hmk of, cube of sugar ms all it MS. And it ws supposed 

to be good to eat and werJrthing kt LE didn't care for it too mrh. And 

then we wmt on, wex the River Trent to the birthplace of Katherine 

Parr. See, she was one of old Henry the Eighth's wives. 

And w mt t:hro@ the Lake District then, e drove thraugh the Lake 

District and w ent to Endemre. It's the center of lots of mter 

sports and smr vacationing and yachting and things like that and after 

WE went through Mindemre why ve wnt to Grasmere and that's fiere 

William bbrdsmrth lived and Hartley Coleridge are both buried in the 

next town at kswick kith was, oh, it =S just a regular English town. 

And =--they got a castle there at Carlisle and it ws at this th--boy, 

it ms mrth your life to try and get across the street to get to that 

because the people they ddn't stop for you or anything, they'd just 

almst run over you as they tent a r d there. (chuckles) They Ere-people 

driving cars =re sething aver there. ZZley didn't b e any 

sped limit, I don't think. 

A: No, I don't think so because I nwer saw anybody get arrested over 

there. (c.huckles) And again they had a cathedral there and it w s a real 

old one, it ws--back to around the twelfth cmtury, I think it MS. And 

from June to August it rains open until 9: 30 p.m. every day, see, but 

after that it don't. So WE stayed in Carlisle that night. And then 

looking at the nares of hotels--this one that w stayed at that ni&t ms 

the Cr%m and Mitre. Taken from Old Fnglish. . . . kd then in tg 

rmming why PR took a sightseeing trip around Carlisle and oh, throu& 

the town and m w ed on to Scotland and w tent to Gretna Green, that 

ms our first stop. And that 's the tom that they almys celebrate and 

you read about it where they had runawy marriages wre performed on an 

.- 

mil. 

Q: Perfomed on an "mil"? 

A: 'Ihen dter it got so bad, after it got so bad over there that 

Parlimt in 1856 passed a law that you had to a t tmty-one days 

before you can get married anyrmre. (chuckles) 

Q: You said, "performed on an anvil"? 

A: &11, heck, there ~s just a, you know, it was just a makeshift 

church and everything and a lot of people vent over there to get married 

in a hurry see. And by the way, your grandmother and I were . . . 

Q: Is that where? 

A: 'Ihat's where w =re married, our second marriage. (chuckles) And 

they give us--they perfomd the ceremny just like they used to do it 

but on the paper they give us it said, 'This is not a legal marriage 

license." (chuckles) And then they took a picture of us--the whole 

party--and they put on-the bride &d the b&e8r---why they put a high 

gray hat on E like they wre, this great big old hi& stove pipe hat on 


Mr. and Mrs. Bringer's "wedding" at Gretna Green, Scotland 


Dinner at Knappogue Castle at Quin, County Clare, Ireland 

-----

Edmnd A. Bringer 53 

E and on your grandmother, they gave her a bunch of flmrs and put a 

veil on her head and everythimg. And WE wre married by this guy and he 

stood there in front of the anvil and read the ceremony to us and . . . 

it WE a blacksmith's shop was what it was, see. (chuckles) And then 

the people that stood up with us wre best man and the lady in wit- 

and they had them dressed up, too, and everybody stood around and they 

had us sign a do-t and everything and sign our names in the mrxiage 

registry there. It was just a put-on show for the dmle tqur to see. 

Q: Mow--how did you guys crme to be, I man lnow did it happen that it 

ms you tw? Mm volunteered you guys? 

A: No, vie didn't have to volunteer. They decided, the group decided 

they wanted . . . (chuckles) 

Q: You got voted in! 

A: k11, they mnted to know FJho wnt together the shortest time and 

when they found out that your grandtrother . . . 

A: . . , that your grandmother and I only writ together for thirteen 

days, why the . . . (laughter) 

Q: So you ere a runaway marriage to start with. (chuckles) 

A: They Ere getting a runamy mrriage to start with, see. (laughter) 

So VE wnt through that and then w m d on and w went up after tomrds 

Edintxlrgh is where w ere headed for and so w mt up to--the next tom 

we snt through wis Moffat. And Moffat's a molen tom. Yam and they 

make swters and everything out of yam and they're quite a--w bught 

sane, bought sane yarn there and VE got a couple of swaters and then w 

wed on along to tow where oh. . . . bk wmt fran there right on up to 

a road that took us out of bffat and then w wnt through sor~--we *re 

getting into the hilly part of Scotland and VE wmt around to a place 

that's called the "Devil 's Beef Tub'' and that's the one that Sir alter 

Scott wrote about in the . . . 

Q: "Devil 's Beef mb"? 

A: "Beef 7hb.l' And it's--and he wrote a book or a story, 'The Red 

Gauntlet" and he used the narne of that place in it you see, it's mtioned 

in it. And VE =re in the meedsmuir Hills then, so E wnt on up to 

Bcoughton and then from there w writ over to Peebleshire on the border 

of the Midlothian Country and dmve through it. 

And the next place w m t ms Piniaik, P-I-N-I-C-U-I-K. 'Ihey got saw 

aw£ul nanzes up there to try to pronounce. And after e wnt thraugh it 

why--they make paper around there, they u&e a lot of paper things there 

wt of paper in that town. Tnat 's why FR wnt th~ough these towns because 

they told us what all they =re noted for. And w writ to the Minburgh. 

k arrived--= got there about five o'clock that night and of course that 

is a beautiful town. And w spent tm days in Edinhrgh. And ve took 


Edrnund A. Bringer 54 

tours of the town itself in the coach and then VE had the rest of the 

t- to ourselves. On the first--whese the tour took us, they took us 

down and shomd us the castle on the hill and then I+E tent down on our 

om, w went don throupjh Holyrood Cas tie-that ms the queen of England's 

castle dam at the other end of the street. 

Then w 'd go up to, oh there tas a mountain thy call there Arthr 's 

Seat. & didn't go up to it, you had to climb up to that thing and it 

ms a little too hi& to climb. &en climbing up to the castle- 

Fdinburgh castle--was bad if you climbed up there. But they took you up 

and took you through it and everything. It's a beautiful thing. It sits 

way up on an old high rock hill and you look d m into the valley where 

the river used to run through. And they made that into +-put a railroad 

station down at one end of it nw and the rest of it's all railroad 

tracks and parks. You can't see the railroad tracks, there's park all 

the way d m through there, you can't see the railroad tracks at all. 

So we stayed there for tm days and vie did a lot of shopping there and I 

bought a Scotch hat there and we bought saw dolls and brought them back 

that =re one of a kind made by a Scotch lady £ram a tom around Edinhrgh 

there. That dam castle, the rock it sits on is 445 feet high, it's way 

up there, And w stayed at a keautiful hotel. It had bay windows on 

every £loor and we had one in the front and E could look up, both up and 

down Princess Street, which is the =in street of the tom. Ran one end 

of it clear to the other WE could see it out of our hotel window and w 

could see the big mmmmt up at one end of it and the other one of 

course you saw the big Fdinb3rgh Castle at the other end of it and all 

the good shops and everything =re on that street. That's called the 

Royal Mile--no that's Princess Street. The Royal Mile is the one on the 

other side of the valley that leads frm Holyrood Castle to Edinhr&h 

Castle. So E enjoyed our stay there real--had a real good time. 

And then on tk--w2len vie did leave Edinbrgh we ere supposed to go the 

n m night to Coylumbridge. And w tent to Stirling, the first time we 

stopped, that ww Stirling--& it's the "Gateway to the Highlands ," 

that's h t 

they call it, the "Gateway to the Jdighlands ," you're In the 

Scotch Highlands then. And there's a castle there. Everyplace w bent 

there was a castle or a cathedral. (chuckles) And a couple of the 

Jarreses were born there, J m s the Second and James the Fifth =re born 

in that town and they had a big battle there at one time, it was the 

battle of Stirling Bridge. But a lot of history ns involved in every 

town E ~ nto. t They told us that at Stirling, that bridge there was 

where Millace defeated the Earl of Surrey. There, of course, you're on 

the River Forth and for years everybody's almys heard of the Firth of 

Forth and it '$--the bridge is one of the biggest bridges, one of those 

steel bridges, oh it's a mnster. And then they put another one right 

next to it, a newer type of bridge. But that one bridge has been there 

for years and they alwiys take pictures of it, everybody takes a picture 

of it. And then re wmt to, oh I think the next place k~ went to ms 

Aberfoyle, it tas a small holiday resort and ve tent fran there, R just 

drove through it. @ didn't stop there. But when w got to Aberfoyle 

why that's known as the "Gateway to the Trossachs" and the Trossachs are 

part of the Highlands up there that are beautiM. And w fhlly ended 

up by going through Trossachs and then ve ent up to a small touring 


E&md A. Bringer 55 

center called Pitlochry and it w s a mmmr resort, there msn't mch 

there kt it was a s mr resort around there. And then w went to a 

castle and TR toured this castle, w wnt thou& this castle and it was 

called Blair Atholl and it was, oh the castle was just full of antlers 

off of stags and deers. The heads of the castle that had ken the people 

who lived in the castle, the men that have lived in the castle had killed 

them wer a couple of hundred years. And they had all kinds of arms in 

there, shields and swrds and broadsmrds and spears and everything and 

it took us quite a &ile to go through the castle because it was a, it 

was really an interesting place to go. 

And then ve ent through a place called Kingussie, and it 's another 

popular resort up there on one of the lakes. And then w vent on to 

Coylumbridge and that's in the, it was in the Glenmore National Forest 

Park. And e spent the night there and it ws not right in a tom at 

all, it was amy from the town and the heather was growing wild around 

there. YOU could just see heather all over everyplace and the pine trees 

a r d 

and there was a lake araund there or a river down beside it. And 

w had our dinner that night there and e stayed there that night. And 

then the next mrning we headed for Invemess. And w writ--keep on 

going north and msterly all the tb, w Ere going to--= mt by Loch 

Ness and te stopped there and looked at. 

Q: &re there people carping out? 

A: No not around there, you don't see pople camping out. 

Q: J3anging around to see . . . 

A: Aw, they wre talking about it but w never saw anybody there that 

ms watching for . . . you knw, sm people like to take pictures and 

everything. ht of the toms I couldn't wen pronounce their names but 

E did go to a tom that I think they called it Druttmadrochit on the 

River Eurick. 'ken w went to Strathpeffer--those towns '11 drive you 

crazy--and the river of that name and to Invemess horn as the "Capitol 

of the Highlands." And it ms associated, Invenxss was associated with 

Shakespeare ' s 'Vlackth. " 

Q: '~cbeth," yes. 

A: And rn spent the night there at Inverness. And I believe it was--mil 

not that trip. . . . And the next day why tie wmt on to Inve-~less, we 

wenr there to right straiqht *st for a vhile and re wenr to Beauly on 

the Beauly river. And it s quite a salmm fishing place a r d 

there ht 

all those places over there if you fish for fish you have to get a license 

pennit frm the people that om the land that the water runs through. 

You can't fish anyplace there without getting permission because the 

people that om the land around there om the fishing rights. And w 

vent--w11 Beauly Firth flows along there too. And then the next tm 

tow e went to =re little small little toms of Muir and Ord. Then we 

~ nto t Dingall hich as on the my. Tne -s were something. And 

then t~ writ on to the Easter Ross tom and it was on the Cromarty Firth 

and it ws created a royal lurgh in 1226. And then e turned northeasterly 

again and w wmt through the tow of Alness and the Royal Burgh [of 


A. Bringer 5 6 

Tain] road's now more, still mre going east again and we wnt from there 

w bent on through Tolbooth. 

Q: Tolbooth? 

A: Yes and they have a pal of bells there that's quite noted . . . And 

then FR went to T ab and vie to& a nortlxesterly direction again and wnt 

wer the 33urne Bridge I believe they call it--briar Bridge is what they 

call it and it goes across the Domach Firth. And then w wnt to the 

tom of Do=h and it had a cathedral and they'd almys date these 

cathedrals for us so we'd how what they ere. That one ms hilt in 

1224 and the Earls of Southerland are buried there, sixteen of them. So 

you see haw old the dam tom is. And then w wmt from Domach to 

Galspie and the small resort of Brora and then w e nt from there to 

Helmsdale, a small fishing port. Now we 're getting up towards the-- 

there's a ruined castle there = wmt through and then w wnt to the 

Royal Burgh of Wick and that's &re w stayed that night. Now we're 

getting up there where &--way up in the northeastern part of the country. 

And then the next place m wnt to Ullapool. (chuckles) Stayed there 

overnight and w 're going round and vie went to John 0 'Groat ' s and that ' s 

the mst northern spot in--they say it's the mst northern inhabited spot 

on the British Isles. There is another . . . 

Q: How noany inhabitants are there? 

A: b11, there's abut four, I think. 

End of Side One, Tape Four 

A: &11, after w left Jaln O'Groat's we started towards the =st and 

after w 'd gone about five miles w cme to another big castle and it is 

the castle, one of the castles of the Queen Mother of Fmgland. And it's 

up there in the dismal part of the cmtry. Boy, it's nothing up there! 

There wsn' t no trees around there for miles. It ms just up there and 

you can look off over--on a clear day from John O'Groat's and frw there 

and you can see the islands north of &gland, out there a little mys. 

But the day m wre there this time it ms kind of hazy and foggy. Yau 

could see the shape of them, lxlt you couldn't see anything except just 

the shapes of than. And then e vmt fran there on dom to Thurso ms 

the next: town w e nt through and over to another named Bettwill and 

after we mt throw Bettyhill . . . 

Q: b d 

what? 

A: Bettyhill. 

Q: Bettyhill. 

A: Bettyhill of Farr wis mt the naw of it originally was and then 

those are fishing and agricultural centers all along there, fishing 

resorts. Then ue wmt to Tongue, which is a fishing village along the 

lake--or I rean along the ocean there. And then w vent, started to 


Fdmmd A. Bringer 57 

turning south there at Tongue w started to turning south and w wnt 

to--past Loch Shin, that 's where there's a great big hydroelectric plant 

there. And they also had hilt a oh . . . nuclear mr plant there. 

And they took us thxou&h the office building of that powr plant and 

shomd us a mock, or a mdel of the nuclear plant that they put in there. 

And then wz mt on frm there why w mt a little bit to h wst you 

know, getting over towards the =st coast of Britain all the the--or 

Scotland all the time. & writ to Ullapool ws the nexL one. And we- 

it's on Loch Brom is h t 

it is on. And then = spent the night there. 

And the next day why our, next night's destination ms Aboyne in Scotland. 

And w writ--£ran there e started northeast again and e wnt along Loch 

Brom and m wnt by the mir of Ord again. And it's--it was noted 

£or--& mir of Ord is noted for its cattle and its sheep and fairs that 

they had there and everything. And te went back to Iwemess again and 

Nairn--it's a wll-known burrough and the watering place and golf center. 

And w vent through, oh the next place we mt through was a town I can't 

pronounce, it ws Craigellachie village. They 're awful ! And then 

m2nt through . . 

A: . . . the Strath Spy, and it's ~11-know for its distillery Scotch 

whiskey. And Dufftom, e wmt through it. And went past another 

ruined castle kt R didn't stop at it. And then rn went through oh 

another tom-or not a tom, it ws what they call Glacks of Balloch 

Pass. And the last stage of the day why we wnt through Rhynie, 

R-H-Y-N-I-E, and that's--it ws founded on account of there's a hill 

there, a rmuntain they call it, the Tap 0 'Noth they call it and it's I 

think about 2000 feet tall. And w went by that and speslt the night then 

at Aboyne and w didn't see the castle that night, e saw it the next 

day. hk stayed at the Ihrntly Arm Hotel that night. And the Mxntly Arms 

btel was one of the best places m 've stayed. Now I don't know whether 

it ws this trip or one of the other ones, the night we stayed there it 

was cold. No, I'll take that back, it msn't cold there that night at 

all. kt w had a roan, a great big rom, your granckmther and I did, a 

mmstrous roan. It looked like it was one that probably royalty stayed 

in or som3thimg because it ms a big one. (chuckles) And they told us 

that that night why--el1 we had cane by Balmral Castle--that 's the 

wen's smr residence in Scotland--and w 'd corne by that and Abyne 's 

not too fax frcan it and w didn't stay right in the town lxlt we stayed 

out here at this btly A m and they hold these great big Scottish garrres 

there on the big field out west of there every year where they throw the 

caber and they have their Scotch dances and the bands and bagpipes players 

and everything and a11 the Scotch games and everything. It's quite a 

thing there kt e didn't get to see that at all because it msn't there 

while we wxe ht that night the guide for our trip he said w Ere going 

to have a real tim tonight. He says, 'They're going to throw a calie 

tonight." He said, 'They throw a die every time m caw in here." And 

w couln't figure out what a calie was. 

So--and the food there that night was wnderfirl. This guy that, this 

fellow that run the hotel he ws a real nice fellow and he ~s--had good 

meals. 'Ihe place ms old, the roan we had ws real old it was, but it 

ws nice. So w ate that night and then w went dom and that 's the 


Fdmnd A. Bringer 58 

first time w'd ever heard of a calie or seen one and I . . . everybody 

£ran the whole tom shows up in the tap room and they be--= had a 

group, three of them that lived around there, their name was bie, Mary 

Eurnie and her tm brothers. One of them played the d m and one played 

the coronet and she played t h accordion. ~ 

And they traveled all over, 

they'd just got back. I got, we got to talking to them that ni&t later 

on kt w also . . . 

And then a fellow there by the name of Angus McGlo~d. And Angus McGloud 

was one of the pipers to the Qxen when she ws in the castle, he ms the 

regular piper for the castle. And he was there in his Scotch kilts and 

everything, had his bagpipes and everything and w, KP mt him and they 

introduced him to us, Peg [Marguerite Bringer] and I. And w went in the 

bar and boy I never saw a guy that could put away whiskey like that, 

Scotch whiskey, he ms half Scotch F3tziskey. And w sat there and drank 

and drank for a hile and then E finally m t 

into the other roan and 

everybody in there ms drinking real good and so we got--and they had 

dances, they had som Scottish dances and everybody took part in them. 

We was supposed to take part in them and everybody was getting. . . . and 

the.n they fhally got up and danced by themselves, people could get up 

and dance by themselves you know and ve had a wild old time that night 

and the orchestra they played and then old Angus got up and played his 

bagpipes for us and he vas good. He played things and . . . Your 

grandmthex, she kind of took a shine to Angus and she asked him to . . . 

Q: (chuckles) That ' s what she told TIE. 

A: (chuckles) She got to, got him to play different things for us and . 

Q: Md she get him to play "Amazing Grace1'? 

A: Yes. 

Q: I bet! I knew she wuld. 

A: And then she tried to--and he played "The Bluebells of Scotland" for 

us and he played several pieces for her that she wanted and Mary Bumie 

and tlmn told us--I got to talking to them up there and I bought them a 

couple of drinks and they tiere telling me they just flew in from Belgium. 

'Ihey'd been aver at Belgium, in Belgium playing and they'd caw back by 

train and airplane and just got there in an autmbile and just got there 

that night abut five o'clock for this calie that they had. But it's a 

big shindig and everybody gets filled up on liquor and they have their 

dances and they sing and if they can perform. Anything, you know, it's 

just like a big party and R had a lot of fun there and boy the next 

mrning w had to leave there though, the next day we ms . . . left the 

next day for hmfermline, and w're still in Scotland, see. And so w 

wnt dawn to past the Balmoral Castle again. They won't let you in 

there. That 's one castle you can't get into, because there 's almys 

somebody there. 

Q: Oh, people actually live in this thing? 


E d d A. Bringer 59 

A: Oh, yes. Yes, they're always there. And then--they've got 

everything-the next place--by the way w went past what they call the 

Spittal of Glenshee. (chuckles) I don't know &at the heck tbr means 

kt that's what it ms, they call it that. And Blairgowrie and all these 

names up there Iln Scotland are almst impossible unless you how Scottish 

to pronounce see so we didn't try. And then w went to Perth. Now that 

was me I could get all right, I could say "Perth" all right and it's one 

of the ancient hrghs and once it a s the capital of Scotland. I& went 

through that and then d m to oh the town where Robert Bruce is buried 

and then ve stayed at the King Malcolm Hotel that night. See they still 

use Scotch names up there in IlnEermline. And w was ready for a night's 

sleep that night after the one at Aboyne, vie didn't get . . . 

Then the m day Wer~ w left Dunfernline we wnt dawn through firrowgate 

was our next stop and it ms . . . kll, w left hfermline and crossed 

the Firth of Forth on this new bridge that they'd put up beside the old 

one and C.~R went to bckerbie and £ran there w went into Qland, at 

Lockerbie e wnt and crossed aver back into England and wnt to Brampton 

on River Irving. And then w vent by, right along there betwen there 

and CZzollexford why w cam to a piece of Jhdrian's ell. So w stopped 

and walked along it and looked at it and that 's the old Rorrran wall that 

. . 

. 

k just looked at a covple of the guard's houses and everything that 

=re still there and then WE mt on to Hexham wis the next tom we mt 

to and they got a pretty priory church there, it's not a cathedral ht 

it's a nice church. And then e turned south and went to what they call 

Scotch Corner. (chuckles) In Fmgland. And it's a -11-hm junction 

of roads and everything and w wmt don through the Yorkshire country 

then to Harrowgate and w were supposed to stay at an old hotel there 

that they called the Granby Hotel bat rn couldn't get--for s a reason ~ or 

other they put us on another one called the Old Swan. 

And when E got there, at the hotel--this tom is horn for its springs 

and its health spas and its punproms as they call them--when w got 

there the Eellm, our coach driver and tour director told us, "Don't get 

out of the coach until the coach caws out and greets you." So we 

waited and pretty soon a little red faced little short guy, looked like a 

dwrf caw out there and he had a horn, a brass horn that ws abut six 

feet long, just like a @le that you how, it was just one great big 

long--no valves on it or anything. And he caw out and he had a great 

big long green coat, bright green coat that wmt clear dom to his feet 

and a lace collar around the neck of it, had a great big tall hat that 

ms about eighteen inches high on his head and he spoke and w couldn't 

even understand him, he was greeting us, see, and so the tour driver told 

us, 'b he gets thruugh just clap for him." (chuckles ) And then he 

blew a couple of sour notes on that horn and then he turned around and 

let us into the hotel, see. And he said he'd been doing that for years 

and years and years. (chuckles) And . . . . 

Q: Maybe too long. (laughter) 

A: But I got up the next mrning at Hasrowgate and they got som kautiful 

gardens there, they had beautiful flowr gardens and I writ over and took 

pictures of gardens and the park and I just-they =re--I nwer saw 

Uowrs that grow like they do in England. I never, anyplace, wen in 



greenhouses in this ccruntry they 're not that good. ?hey grow--and everybody 

grows flowers. 

Q: Good soil. 

A: b11, it's the iodine in the air. kll, our next stop then after w 

left Harrowgate ws dom at Stratford-upon-Avon, see. And so te wnt 

to--continued the next mming--w took one of those high speed superhighways, 

th~y called this one the A1 and then WE got onto M1 where the tw cmce 

together and that was another one of the superhighwxys. And VE bypassed 

all the big toms, we bypassed Doncaster, which is a big industrial tom. 

And then w ~ n ~ to n t Blyth and through Nottingham, and it's a university 

tom. There's a big university at Nottingham and it's also a big industrial 

town. And then ve ent through the tom of Nottinghamshire and that's 

where William Booth, the head of the Salvation Axmy started see, he came 

fran there, he ms born there in fact. Then w wnt through hentry. 

And Coventry is the "City of Three Spires," they call it that naw. 

There's a beautiful church there now, they got a real mdem church there 

and they've got the old one there. 

Wlat happened--tj,en w got to--they call it the "City of Three Spires1' 

for the simple reason that olze of the churches--or one of the cathedrals-- 

the city ms absolutely barnbed to the ground during krld %r 11 see and 

they bilt this new church, cathedral and the only thing that MIS left of 

the other one wrzs the autside part of it and the altar. And they made it 

into kind of a resting place and a park out in front and so w wmt 

through there and stopped, had lunch there. And they got a clock that's 

in the side of a kuilding there and it shaws Peeping Tam looking at-- 

every time the hour strikes why Lady Godiva rides around out in front of 

the clock on her horse and up above there's a guy looking out the window. 

And then in the park itself they've got a great big statue of Lady Godiva 

and so and they say there's a mn's side of the statue of Lady Godiva and 

there's a vanen's side of Lady Godiva's statue. If you've ever seen how 

she sits on the horse? kll, the men look at her from one side and the 

mnm look at her fran the other, see. And that's h t they told us 

there. (chckles ) 

FJe ate in the hotel there, had lunch there that: noon and then w wnt on 

to Stratford-upon-Avon and we stayed there that night. And there of 

caurse w wnt to Shakespeare's birthplace and w ent to Anne Hathaways' 

home and w wat to the church where he was hried and they got all kinds 

of sms in the Avon River there--Avon see, they call it Avon or &on, it 

just depends on who you're talking to. But they got a lot of swans in 

the river and there's tm different kinds of swns in the river. And 

there's a story connected with them and I don't how exactly what it is 

kt part of them belong to the royal family and the other group of sms 

belong to another family. And there ~s tw different kinds of swans; 

one of them ms the cygnet swm and I don't bow h t the other kind are. 

ht the swans are in the rivers all over there! They're just like k~ 

have ducks, ~ lthey l have ducks too, they have ducks all over. And the 

thug is the people over there feed than all the ttin;, the swans and the 

ducks, see, they just feed them all the time. But we stayed at the #ite 

Swan btel that ni&t and it is a real, real old hotel. The bearas in it 

were hand hem and the wlls ere those, that old mod and plaster that 

you see on English hildirgs and we had exellent food there. 



And then the next mrning why a lot of the people wnt to the [Royal] 

Shakespeare Theatre that night. bk didn ' t-- I didn ' t--your granhther 

and I didn't go and there ms one thing tkre; I tried to get a picture 

of one of the taverns there or pubs as they call them. They all have got 

their signs aut in front of them. 'Ihey all got different rimes and this 

one I looked at it £ram one side and on one side of the sign that hangs 

aver the street in frmt of the pub it said, 'The Black Swan Tavern," 

see, and here's a great big regal black swan on that side and thm you 

turn around and mlk on the other side of the sign and it said, 'The 

Drunken Ihck,." (chuckles) I don't how where they got the idea. 

But the next place after te got aut of Stratford--m left Stratford the 

next mming--e wmt to krcester and that's a big cathedral city too. 

They got--it's right on the River Sevem and they got a beautihl cathedral 

and it's another place, glove rdcing and it's porcelain and they got a 

wnderhl--id1 maybe you've heard of bbrcester porcelains? And then m 

mt through Kingston and New Radnor and then w a t through dom ta a 

place called Builth klls and it's another one of those resorts with 

baths and swimning and sulk wells and everything and it's one of those 

spa places. And then w wnt to Llamrtyd [Wlls] and now w 're getting 

dom into klsh country and boy you can't pronounce the n-s dom there 

at all, there's no use trying. And after vie traveled through quite a bit 

of kles why w arrived at a place called Carmarthen and it MIS a resort 

there and w stayed at the Ivy Bush Royal Hotel there. 

Q: bs Mles pretty? 

A: Yes, it's pretty, very pretty. Some parts of it, some of them are . 

Q: Lot of coal. 

A: Yes, and the kite piles of coal and . . . kt this Ivy Bush Royal 

Hotel we stayed belongs to the Prince of Fbles. It's, he--= had a good 

time everyplace w stayed. The evening w 'd stay there they'd have a big 

dance and a party and enterta-t for us, see. And when we stayed at 

that one at night the gal that, oh she sang with sm--the gal sang tkre 

that: night, why years ago sang with one of the great big know bands out 

of @land and I can't rmkr now what it ms. But after = stayed 

there that night and had a nice t k and then the next rmrning why we'd 

gone to south bhles and we--next thing E wnt through was Brecon Beacons 

National Park and then e thraugh east again to Brecon and w wmt 

on through a lot of towns that you can't pronounce their names and rn 

=re heading actually for--^ bypassed Bristol because Bristol's a big 

industrial city and so we just bypassed it and E wnt to Bath, and 

that 's the farmus spa. 

kll, the first tk w e re there they hadn't done any redigging or 

anything. bk ere here before they wen found out that: that other city 

was under it see, or the baths ere d m farther than the ones ME saw. 

But w wmt through the bath and they got--Bath is in a very interesting 

city because they had--& river there flows right through the center of 

tom and they've got one bridge there across the river: that is real wide 

and on both sides of the bridge there's shops, clear across the river on 



each side of it, little small shops all the way across the river on both 

sides and on the bridge. As it's just like going dotaz across the street 

there and the back of the shops are against the river. And then they got 

parks all along the river and everything and all the hildings are beautiful 

and E wnt, ve wnt through the . . . 

Naw Bath's the place where they've got a cathedral there and they've got 

the baths and the cathedral has got the, on the front of it--I took 

picures of it and braught them back with m--they've got s- carvings. 

That's the ones that I got that *en I cane back I show then and they've 

got the t w fallen angels that are falling, the ones that are climbing 

the ladders frun the front door clear up to the top of the tower and 

halfway up to you can see an angel on one side falling and an angel on 

the one, tm angels falling. (chuckles) But re enjoyed that because it 

ws beautifd, it w~ls . . . k stayed at a place there it ms the Francis 

Hotel and it overlooked a small park and I went: out the next day--= 

stayed there and before w left the next day I uat up and watched the 

people play, bowl in the park on bowling greens for a while. And then WE 

writ to bter from Bath and it's quite a tom. It's got a big wall all 

around it and it ws--w stayed at the Rag-nt Hotel the first the and 

then e wmt through a place to eat and e writ thr@ the row where 

if you don't how anything abut English history they had a judge over 

there and it ms called "Bloody Assize." Judge Jeffrey wits his rn and 

he put a lot of people to death there. 

Q: "Bloody Ozzie?" 

A: A-S-S-I-Z-E, Assize. That was Judge Jeffrey's "Bloody Assize" that 

ms held there and it ms where he had so m y people executed. And it's 

another: cathedral city. Getting--nw see that gets you d m to abut, 

oh, to Plymxlth next. Plymxlth, I liked Plymxlth because w stayed at 

the Holiday Inn there, it ws like staying at k. And ve went, when e 

went to Plpth why they got a great big park along the sea there and 

then there of course there's &ere the Pilgrims left from. And you can 

go down to that dock and they got a great big thing, a great big tablet 

in the dock telling you that this is the place &ere they left from. And 

they got Sir Francis Drake's statue up in the park. And the hotel we 

stayed at--it was a hotel VE stayed there-was right smack in the side of 

this park and you could look way out wer the ocean there and vie ate up 

on the roof, they had a roof restaurant there you could see all four mys 

out of it and VE could sit up there at night and you could just see the 

hole town and everything from there at night and it ms, it was a kautiful 

place. Then frm there I don't--then w mt dom through Tmro on the 

River Allen and d m through Helston to P-e, you've heard of that, 

they use that in the 'Tirates of Penzance," it 's a holiday resort. 

Fnd of Side Dm, Tape Four 

Q: bk =re on the thirteenth day of your first trip. 

A: Well, after leaving Bath w went dom towards Exeter, which ms one 

of the old R m t m s of . . . has a beautiful cathedral there. And 



while VE =re there they ere doing sane excavating cut in front of it 

for old Roman ruins that they =re trying to unearth and they ere 

cataloguing and had it all fenced in and everything kt the cathedral 

itself is a beautiful tm. Then they got several places araund there, 

I went around to--see, they had *t they called St. Mary's Qlurch which 

ms dom at the foot of a hill away frw the other, frcm the cathedral 

and it ms one that had a clock up in the frmt of the church up towards 

the peak of the church that had people that every tirne the half an haur 

chimed *y these people come out, the king muld come out on his throne 

and then the tm of the court people carne out and stq their staffs the 

same amount of tines as the clock chimed. And across the street frm it 

was a place they call "the b e that ~ e d and " it had--(chuckles) half 

of it hung out over the street and it ms a regular house, they'd fixed 

it and repaired it I guess bt half the house ws out aver the street and 

it looked like it had just wed. I don't know, I nwer heard the story 

about that. 

And then frm there, to get back up to the cathedral itself they had vhat 

they call St. Mary's Walk and it ws steps and the houses =re right-it 

was only about oh, ten feet wide and on both sides of it, up these steps 

=re k s 

or houses. %y =re Fnglish houses and old myk the seventeenth, 

eighteenth century or older than that some of th the sixteenth century--and 

they wxe right on the steps and them steps vas just the kind of--steps 

for just one hole block. And it was till you got back up to the cathedral. 

And we stayed right srxlack across the street £ran the cathedral. There 

was a hotel there that we stayed at that was called the Royal Clarence 

Motel and it ws right smack across fran the cathedral. It ms a nice 

hotel. And there was another place right across the street fr~n the 

Clarence Hotel that was called Moll's Coffee EEause and it was one of 

these old hglish hildings. It tnas as old as the cathedral about was I 

guess. And w toured the tom a little bit and saw tb shops there. 

Then we had tea there and they have--these tea shops ws right around & 

corner. Q went in there and your grandnother told the girl that she 

wanted tea and she wnted Devonshire cream and saw tea sandwiches and 

the girl brought tha to her and she brought this little cup in that ms 

about like a regular coffee cup and looked like it was full of yellow 

bttez and your grandmther says, 'Wly I don't want all that Ixltter." 

She says, "I wanted the Devanshire cream." And the girl says, 'kl1 , 

that's what Wonshire cream is." (chuckles) "It's that.'Ytfs rich, 

boy oh it's aw£ul rich. (chuckles) And e had tea there and then that 

night we ate at the Royal Clarence Hotel. 

And then the next mming, WE left there and started out for Southampton 

ws our next stop and after Sauthmptm e wnt through a couple of tow 

Ilminster and Ilchester and Wincanton all tms that--they all had historic 

places that w passed. kk nwer stopped at those three, w just went 

drove by t h 

and they told us what =re in the different towns. They 

were just things that wre pertaining to the history of the country and 

everythLng. And then PE did stop at Stonehmge. Now Stonehenge is that 

big place that they say is--they don't how how old it is or what it ms 

wed for ht they think it wis kind of a calendar. Now the first time e 

ere there--on this trip that w vent there they allowed us to go in and 

wander around though the--we just stopped there and that was a11 there 



was--there was no fence around or anything it ms just on a hill--and w 

mt in and w could walk around throu& these big mnstrous stones that 

Ere standing on end. They don't how here they came from, the stones, 

they don't know where they ever care frcm kt they surmise how they =re 

quite a distance that they had to be brought because there ms no stone 

like that around there. And te could wander around in there and look at 

them and look at the stone that was way off at one side that they did all 

their treasuring frm. k stopped there and looked at it and then FJF~ vent 

on £ran there to Salistury and at Saliskry they got another big cathedral 

there that WIS hilt during the thirteenth century and that cathedral has 

the tallest towr of any cathedral in England. And it is, it is--1 don't 

know how hi& it is, they didn't tell us haw tall it ws blt it is a 

mnster it ' s a- -bt it ' s a beautiful cathedral. 

And then fran there m drove on to Sauthampton through the country around 

there. bk wnt through the New Forest, vhich is about one hundred and 

forty square miles of moded country. 1t's a national preserve and it's 

bemtihl through there. And there's all kinds of small herds of ponies 

range through there, wild ponies. And they're cute, I took sm~ pictures 

of some of them, sane slides of them and they're all different shapes and 

colors and there's not just a few, there's lots of them. And they run 

wild and werythbg and there's enough food in there for than to eat off 

of I guess and get en@ off the ground around there to eat because 

they're real fat and chubby and £ran miniatures on up to . . . and they're 

all colors and sizes of them. And then tie ent to Southampton and that's 

your great big transatlantic shipping port for all around the world and 

it WS--w didn't go dom to the docks or anything but R could see the 

ships fran the hotel room and everything and see the shipyards and everything 

around there but vie didn't go don into the docks because it was quite 

a--it was, oh a district that ws kind of hard to get to and it was 

busier than the dickens anyhow with trucks and trains and everything 

going in and out kt it m s . . . 

We had dinner that night at--mll WE stayed at the Polygon Hotel and on 

subsequent trips ws 've stayed at the Polygon Hotel again. And then frm 

Southampton--after staying at Polygon Hotel on the fourteenth day--on the 

fifteenth day ve started out for bndon and the trip back to London was 

just througl---and oh as you got betwen Southapton and London why the 

villages and the Eurrou&s got closer and closer together and actually 

&en you got within about twnty miles of bndon you cauldn' t tell &at 

tom you ws in unless he told us, the guy told us where were. And m 

Rnt through-drave through-and VR ate lunch on the way--it took us a 

whole day to get back there, it msn't very far kt you don't travel too 

fast through that country in England like that, 

So we got back to bndon and re wnt back to the sarne hotel, the Cora, 

which was out by the offices of Frames, where the tour started and *ere 

it stopped. k ere only tm blocks £ran it so w wnt and stayed there 

and m were close to oh, a Jewish college was araund the comer from us 

and then there was--w wren't too far at the Cora £ran the great British 

uuseums and things like that. It was quite a part of the country where 

all those things wre and E stayed there. had anticipated when the 

trip was Over w mted to stay in London for a FJhile so WE stayed there 

for a couple weeks mre and just mt around bndm. & vent to everything 

w m ted to see. 



Now the first day w wre in there why of course UE did like everybody 

else did, w wanted to see Buckingham Palace. And we didn't take a tour 

on that day that took us into Buckhgham Palace ht--around it--kt E 

went on our om, your grandrmther and I like to go on our om and E wnt 

down there and walked up the. . . . frm the square &ich ws Trafalgar 

Sqgare. She wanted to see [Admiral] Nelson's mmment and the big lion 

fountain and everything so R stopped there and the pigeons down there 

are just thick as sparrows are in this cauntry. They wre just all over 

that place and everybody feeds the pigeons. 'Ihey just walk up to you and 

you can feed them out of your hand and sit dom and they COKE and on the 

edge of the fountain you can sit d m there and they ccm and eat right 

out: of your hand and everything and it MS. . . . There's all kinds of 

historical hildmgs around the place; there's a chrch there on the 

north side of it that's rather old and there's several galleries araund 

the Trafalgar Square. 

But then from Trafalgar Square you have to go up &at they call The &ll 

and it's through the great big arch, the Admiralty Arch and that takes 

you right straight up to the gates of Buckingham Palace. &It before you 

get to the gates of Buckingham Palace on both sides are just beautiful 

buildings, all the way up both sides and it ms the--that ws the best 

park of Pandon always, you bow, where all the beauti£ul kildings were 

and people lived on these streets out there on both sides of it. And 

when you get don to the end of it of caurse there's the old big statue 

right in front of the hckingham Palace, the Queen Victoria Memorial. 

And it, by it's a mnstrws--kt you can see it fran one end of the Mall 

to other. From the Arch you can walk, it 's about, oh, I would say six 

blocks fran the Arch all the way dom to the Queen Victoria m m t and 

nmmrial. And then right behind it is Buck- Palace. Now you can't 

get into Buckin&ham Palace. You can walk up to the gates and look through 

the gates and yau can see the guards at the front door in their red 

unifom with the black hats in their little cubby holes on each side of 

the door and everything. And at certain times of the day you can see 

thesn change the guard, what they call changing the guard, and they also 

at other times during the day they have these guards CUE up on their 

black horses £ran don the Mall, they parade dom the Mall and change the 

guard all around the place and by the time they get care down there you 

can't get anywheres near the Mall, it's loaded with tourist buses. There 

will be maybe seventy or eighty tourist hses lined up all tlw way down 

both sides of the street . 

Q: Every day? 

A: Every day. And it--you granhther and I, w'd get d m there early 

in the mming--when w'd go anyplace we'd go early in the mming when 

people wren't there yet if e knew mere rn Ere going. Then right 

along the Mall, on the south side of it is St. Jes Park. And then the 

north side of the Buck- Palace is a green park, tm great big parks, 

they're mnsters. Now that St. Jams Pa& has a great big lagoon in it 

and there's every kind of duck in that lagoon you can think of and there's 

black stars and white swans and the park is just full of birds. I tell 

you they got places in there you can buy bread, old bread to feed the 

birds and so on and they are--I took pictures of your grandrrrother with 

her hand out like this (narrator extends arm) and they'd be all the way 


Mmund A. Bringer 66 

up her am, there'd be birds sitting on her am and they'd cane and sit 

on your head. And w bought saw--they had a little kind of a pavillion 

there along the lagoon &ere you could stop and have tea and Cuns or tea 

and cakes, whatever ycru want. So e stopped there and got a cup of tea 

and got some h and s- cakes and w no sooner sat dam to the table 

then boy there ws as m y birds on the able . . . (clrmckles) The rest 

of the table was covered with birds. And m'd just sit there and feed 

them crwnbs and then we got s m more things to feed the geese and the 

ducks. And they just follow you dawn the paths and everything and w 'd 

sit dom there along the lagoon there and feed the birds and watch other 

people feed them and there were people that caw d m there they'd bring 

great big sacks of bread cnmibs and popcorn and feed thm. And they'd 

have them light on the end of their nose or sanething like that see or on 

the end of their finger and werything and feed thm. 

And had mare fun watching people in that park and then w 'd sit there 

in the park and we'd talk to some of the people and everything and one of 

the-I don't know how we got talking to this one person--kt they said 

that every mrning before just as the sun was coming up that the bobbies 

wuld go through the park--& people caw in, the itinerate people that 

didn't have anyplace to stay or anything d d 

sleep on the ground in the 

park on nights *en they could. And they 'd wrap up in newspapers or and 

old blanket or an old coat or anything they could. And they said wery 

morning just at daybreak why the police wuld go, the bobbies wuld go 

through the park and shake everybody and stir them and see they said that 

everyday they'd find mayk all the way frm tw to five or six people 

dead, they had just care in there and died in the park at night see and 

so they'd have to get them out of there in a hurry. Wlt they said they 

had to do that because there's an awful lot of people around there that 

ere in there you know, that--derelicts that e re in the park all the 

time. 

And then another thing that struck us funny abut the first day WE wnt 

to the park there, they got these--I asked where the toilets wre, the 

public toilets in the park. So they told us where they Ere and they 

wre real nice toilets, you know toilet facilities, oh they wre irzmaculate 

bcause they kept somebody there all the time keeping them clean and 

everything. 'key =re just perfect. But the one thing that struck me 

about the toilets is their toilet paper, in any public place aver there 

and lots of hotels and things it m s not like our toilet paper, soft you 

know. It vas kind of, oh, half my between toilet paper and oil paper. 

Q: Stuff yau could write letters on. 

A: &11, you could. No you couldn't because it ms too slippery. But, 

in the toilet paper ws a water rnark and it says, 'This is the property 

of the Qleen." 

Q: 'Ihe toilet paper? (chuckles) 

A: Yes. And I got a couple of sheets of it. I just said, '!Nbts, I'm 

going to take it anyhow, going to bring it back and show it to people. II 

(laughs) But I lost it someway so I don't know here it was. But it WEIS 

h y . Pick up a piece of toilet paper and see that it was the property 


Edmund A. Bringer 6 7 

of Her Majesty the Queen, ktermarked on wery one of the sheets of 

toilet paper. And =--oh w took several little trips araund there. 

took ttJD trips on the Thamrts River. bk vent dawn the river to the Royal 

Acadmy , a ma1 college which is dom belaw the river. And now when we 

ere there they didn't have this great big dam built that they =re 

bilding to save bndon if they ever have one of those big floods again. 

&It on the trip dawn there as you go dm w'd get an I think it was at, 

we'd get on at &terloo Bridge ms where ws got on the-yes, I how it 

was now because the minute w got on the river they got three or four 

boats parked you haw on exhibition along the river there. They got the 

"Discwery" and the "&llingt~n" and '%is Ikjesty's %ip the Chrysanthermrm'' 

and 'Ws Majesty's Ship the President" are all parked along--now you can 

visit those ships lxlt w didn't have, we didn't have time to do it, w 

didn't want to do it then anyhow. And on the trip don the river on both 

sides you can see quite a bit. You go under several bridges, the Black 

friars Bridge which goes dom in the south part of hndon. And then you 

go through the next on--el 1, there ' s bm or three mre. But London 

Bridge is not the bridge that people think it is. See, that's where this 

fellow got fooled that bought the London Bridge and put it out here in 

Arizona. He thought he was getting the bridge with the great big towers 

on it and everything. ?hat's the Towr Bridge and it's dcKJn there right 

by the London Towrs and the castle dom there--the Tower of bndm and 

Tower Hill--it's down there by it. And then from then on why you went on 

dom the river, maybe w mt dom there I think maybe fifteen miles or 

so and *en w =re there that river, the first time that river ms 

filthy 1 

Q: Yes. They've been cleaning it up. 

A: It ws so--I'm telling you there was everything you could think of 

right there at the bat docks where w? got on the boat. Going dawn under 

the river it just looked like a garbage dupe Fifty feet out in the 

river, old tires, boxes, bottles, tin cans, everything, just floating in 

the river, greasier than the dickens! And then e took another trip and 

went up the river to Kew Gardens. % didn't go in the Gardens because it 

was cold that day and that boat--= writ up that day. k had fairly 

heavy clothes with us kt PR didn't have enough. And that trip *--going 

up why E =re inside, had coffee and tea, and when w got up there VE 

mde the mistake of getting out of the cabin and going up on deck but 

when we carne back w couldn't even get in the part that was closed in. 

?here wis all the people that rere so cold, they was in there. We had to 

core back and ~nne like to froze to death comLng back dom the river. It 

w s a nice trip but . . . You see all the hildings along the river 

there, you see everything that 's along the river. ---you can see the 

Houses of Parlimmt, you can see the--dl the municipal tuildings and 

quite a bit of the padway along the park, there's a boulevard all the 

way down along the park, it's called the Victoria Fmbarhent. And through 

the mst part of tom there--it's qyite a wide e m m t and the traffic 

is--goes both wys--but it's a nice trip down there. 

took a trip--one day there WE didn't have anything to do for a while 

because ve had a dinner engaganent that night so we just got in a tard_, 

e m s going back up to our hotel, tb Cora. And taxls eren't too 

expensive to ride araund in and w liked them better than w did the 


EdrmJnd A. Bringer 6 8 

'Tubes, I' yaur granbther didn ' t care for the "Tubes" at a1 1 because you 

couldn't see anything and I didn't either, they ere all right, they got 

you there in a hurry. took them a couple times Ixlt vie usually went in 

taxis where we wanted to go. So TR =re going to dinner dom at the 

kberland Hotel that night with a friend of ours and w mnted to go 

back out to the hotel and clean up and rest a little bit so m got a taxL 

and I told the W driver I says, 'Iley," I says, "just take us for about 

an hour ride around domtow around the river and everything." So he 

took us down along the river, dawn Victoria Drive and he took US d m 

past St. Paul's Cathedral and up through the biness district and past 

the police headquarters and everything like that and the Bank of &gland 

and all the big Ixlildings and across the river to the other side and R 

saw &--aver on the other side there's another castle over there--I 

don't recall what the castle ncm is ht--it's not a very big castle-kt 

it ' s on the other side and you can go in it if you want to. I& didn't go 

into any of those. 

We did take one day, we took a tour of bndon--the Frms people's tour 

VE took one--and they took us to the &stminster Abbey dom through all 

the main streets of town, through Trafalgar Square and dm through 

across the river and writ dom on the east side of tom and over and back 

over on this side again and wnt down all ard. But it ws crowded. 

l4-m you go on those tours-now on the day e mt with that tour to 

bkshninster Abbey VE couldn't hardly get in the place it w ~ s so crowded! 

And it was just hundreds of people in there, just tour after tour after 

tour in there. 

But so after w did that, took that tour, w e nt back one day and you 

bow just mt to all these places by ourselves. lib wmt through the 

great big stores. k ' d alwys heard abut oh, Harrods , E wnt d w 

there, we took a trip don there and mt through there and that's a 

monster. by, you could get lost in there. bk went to the Fortnum and 

Mason's. Your grandrmther and I ate lunch there Mte a bit. Slk3 like to 

eat lunch up there. Oh that Fortnum and Masons is something. It was 

made for royalty, that's all. You just might see som kings, or not 

kings kt royal people in there, eating there. And they're just, you 

. kt it ms a beautifd place and the food was way out of this 

wxld. It wsn't bo high priced either. And w bought saw pewter 

goblets there, wine goblets and sent them hm. And we got a set of 

them. 

And then another time w wnt d m to on Carnaby Street. And Carnaby 

Street when e Ere there ms the old Carnaby Street that it used to be. 

It tms just a lxlnch of little junky shops and some of themmuld be only 

about ten feet wide and about fifteen feet long kt there was all kinds. 

It ms just--Carnaby Street ' s always been a kind of a shopping center 

for, oh I don't know. They've got everything dom there you could think 

of, and the hrildings , there 'd be shops--you'd go inside of one you'd go 

up the stairwy and there'd be little shops all around upstairs just in 

individual rooms. But they cleaned out Camaby Street and dedzed it 

and now it's not a thmg like it used to be when w were there. I& went 

down to the--several other places around there. bk ent to the, oh, the 

other squares , Picadil ly Circus. 


Ednrmnd A. Bringer 69 

Now Picadilly Circus is smething . Ihey--that ' s &ere all the, I don't 

haw, the hippies and werythimg hang around it. And they had a square 

in the middle and you'd go down there and they'd be just lounging around 

that stam in the middle of Picadilly Square just sleeping and sitting 

there and eating and smoking and drinking, just hundreds of young people 

see and they look--they were--well, I don't how. They =re frcm all 

different parts of life I guess because it was a side-just like a circus. 

kk =re walking down Mord Street one day and there was a bunch of them 

dressed in oh, crazy long robes and bright colored robes and everything 

and I don't know what they ere. But the boys had their heads shaved 

down through the center and they was just dancing and playing tamborines 

and coming up the street and just--eight or ten of than in a group. And 

it was-wll w liked London, your granbther and I really liked London. 

had a lot of fun in it. 

And m wnt to oh, several of the other stores, downtown, they got some 

beautiful stores, and w bought some things there, that 's you how mrabilia 

and sent it hame and everything. It--out around even &ere e =re staying 

there ms things that: they had to be seen. There was a couple old churches 

out there where E =re. It--= walked up and down Regent Street and we 

walked dom around Picadilly Square and w walked dorm the Word Street 

for as far as it writ. It vas shops and things like that. Now Oxford 

Street was--all the good shops -re on it, a lot of the good shops are on 

it, the expensive ones. And ve just took our time and all the time VE 

=re in bndon and tent where KF wanted to and this time, the first tim. 

Now the second time there ve stayed another wek or tm in London and did 

the satne thing; w mt wherever w wanted to. 

W'd go down to the park, to the St. James Park and feed the birds and 

watch tk people feed than and watch tha change the guards and go over 

to &--see right out behind Burkingham Palace down through there they 

got what they call Wellington Barracks, and that's where all the horse 

guards stay. And then down closer to the Buckingham Palace--or no, I'll 

take that back, that's the horse parade grounds dom there by the Arch as 

you caw in at the Mall--and that's eke all the horse guards and everything 

stay. Now the foot soldiers, the guards, stay dom at the Wllington 

Barracks, and those are right down by the Buckingham Palace. They're 

right beside Buckingham Palace there. The footguards are at Wdl3mgton 

Barracks and the horse guards are d m by the Mall. And the horse guards 

dom there--there's a lot of the gwemnt buildings are around dom 

there too, great big hildings; the Foreign hnmrmalth and the Home 

Office hildings are all down there and the Air Ministry and the hhr 

Mfice and all those m s 

axe down there and then you cane around 

&sWste+ Abbey and there's kstminster hrch and the &stminster 

School right around that, that's a school for boys. And then you got the 

Houses of Parliartent there and everything's ri&t around there together. 

kd of Side One, Tape Five 

A: k11 another trip we took was an Irish trip that included Ireland and 

Scotland and all of--well, in fact, all of Great Britain. And it was--= 

traveled on the Air Lingus, that 's the Irish free state's airlines ; they 


Ecbmd A. Bringer 70 

belq ta the gwemt. And w left New Yozk on the 7th of September, 

the first day and w flew over night to Skannon [Ireland]. ell, w 

started out the trip started out it was explained to us as one of the 

best trips that they had. It was supposed to be a deluxe tour. And the 

first thing that happened w were a little late getting off the ground at 

the airport in Wcago on this Air Lingus plane. The people that E 

dealt with in Qlicago =re real nice. And it ws--just seemed like the 

whole dam trip ms on thing right after another to spoil it kt R 

enjoyed it anyhow. We pt on the plane and xe took off finally and we 

had to--they told us we d make one stop to pick up gas in Montreal [Canada] 

and then w'd fly frm there to Shannon Airport. And d~en PE got on the 

plane why the girl wmt through her routine telling us the plane ms 

going to take off and please fasten aur safety belts and see that everything 

was tied down and wexything and w reached dom for our safety belts. I 

had one, your grandnother didn't. &rs ms gone. So I called the girl 

and I told her, I says, "She don 't have any safety belt there." So well, 

she'd [the stewardess] get her one. So she runs around and took one off 

another seat in the plane and run it back to her and give it to her. 

(chuckles) And VE got in the air and they told us &--how w rere going 

to enjoy the evening and everything and said after w got in the air why 

they muld give us a dinner, soon as they got in the air. So w took 

off, it ws a real m t h take-off and got in the air and after we got 

ready to eat why she [the stewardess] says, 'Wow," she says, 'WE will 

serve dinner now so please pull your lunch trays dom out of the seat in 

front of you so = can put your d i ~ on ~ them ~ x for you." And I pulled 

mine dom and your grandmther pulled hers dow and it fell on the floor. 

(chuckles) 

Q: Grandma had a bad seat. (chuckles) 

A: (chuckles) So that ms in trouble. And we got in the air and finally 

they got it fixed so she could eat off it and rn had an excellent mal, 

they give us a good ma1 that night. And thm WE got in the air and it 

got a little bmqy and you could hear sanething rattling around and w 

looked up across the aisle f ran us and one of the luggage cornpar tmats on 

the other side of the plane right even with us why there was--half of it 

was hanging down and they couldn't get the thing shut and it rattled all 

the way and it just kept rattling and te got used to that. 

And w got to lhtreal all right and they stopped there and took on a few 

passengers and loaded it up with--evidently put gasoline ox oil or whatever 

they needed in the plane and w sat there and we sat there and they 

finally said, 'Wll, we're having a little trouble getting the luggage 

door shut. bk can't get the luggage door shut on the luggage cmpartroent 

or storage deparment. " And they finally got it closed. And LF took 

off. And through the night the trip--through the night R slept pretty 

good and it m s a nice, nice smooth ride. The next mrning we woke up 

and it was beautiful all the way over and w got aver there and about the 

th w get in to Shannon Airport why the captain cane on and says, "It's 

cloudy over here," ?x said, "and the sky is kind of overcast ,'I he says, 

"and w ' 11 be landing at Shannon Airport in a few minutes." Heck, w 

couldn't see a thing out the windw. 



So, w started down and he says, 'We're going to land at Shannon Airport 

nm," he says, "there's cloulds in the sky," he says, "kt thy say w 

can land so we're going down now." J3e says, ''Fasten your seat belts." 

So we fastened our seat belts and they get dorm so far and he says, 

'%Wel, they waved us off. They said the fog and th clouds are wing in 

again so we '11 rmke another trip around and care back and try it again." 

So w wnt up in the air and flew araund for a little bit and he says, 

"Qll, we're going in for another landing and try another tine." 

And w wnt down a second time and the clouds wuldn't break enought so 

they could see the airport and everything and I don't think they had oh 

the kind of landing-what they call radar landing--and everything there. 

And so he says, "M1, we'll have to--we'll take one mre try at it, then 

if E can't make it on the third try ~'11 have to take you to Dublin 

Airport and then will shuttle you back on another plane as soon as the 

clouds and the fag clear awy frm Shannon here." So e wnt down for 

the third t h and he went down for the third tine and got dom there and 

boy all of a sudden he turned the plane right up and maned her up and m 

dam near stood on end going up in the air. He c- dam near into 

running into the nmntains on the other side of the. . . . '%Jell," he 

says, "we can't make it. Visibility's so bad VE can't make it so we'll 

take you to Dublin." 

So they took us to Dublin and w got into Dublin and they finally let us 

dom there and they didn't even bow w =re codng to Dublin, I guess--the 

airport people didn't or anything-because when e got off the plane why 

they told--= asked than which way to go and they told us and we tried to 

get--w mt to one gate and they said, 'You can't go thraugh this gate 

you'll have to go dom through custm. " W went dom through the custams 

gate and there wasn't anybody there. They said, "Go on through anyhow 

and go up and sit in the lobby and we'll give you your lunch while you're 

here and give you a ticket for your lunch." 

And so they give us tickets for ouu lunch and w mt upstairs and sat 

around for a while and came lunch time and w mnt over to pick out our 

lunch and they wuldn't let us have what w wanted. They said, "You'll 

have to take &at ve give you." And they give it to us and your grandnother 

and I couldn't eat it, it m s such a lousy mal. bk didn't eat, e just 

ent to another place and bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee on our 

om and ate it. And finally they said, "It's cleared up enough in Shannon 

so m 're ganna put you on a plane back there." So they loaded us all on 

the plane back there and w got in there at Shannon at past noon. 

It wis bright and sunshiny and we was supposed to get in there about 

seven o'clock that morning and m got in there about four o'clock in the 

afternoon and our coach ws there and the tw taur guides wre there. 

They told us to hurry on, they =re going to take us to the hotel and as 

soon as w got to the hotel, why to just msh up and go to the bathroom 

because we had a appointmmt for a big banquet at Jhappogue Castle that 

lught and m had to get up there. So w wnt in the hotel e stayed at. 

And e =re supposed to stay at all first class hotels and we went up to 

the room where IE had to stay that night at that hotel and I'm telling 

you I never saw such a crumny hotel in all my travels and around the 

United States in my life. 


Edrrmnd A. Bringer 72 

And so we looked the roan over and R wis getting pretty tired anyhow and 

k~ left our luggage and wmt dom and got ahold of the coach and they 

started out up to this castle that we =re going to have our banqyet at 

that night. And w got about ten miles up the road and it was a one lane 

road and E got abut ten miles up that road and here caaae a hayrack and 

a tractor down the other way on the sane road and te had to stop, because 

you couln't pass each other on the road. And the fellow that got off the 

tractor, he says, 'Thy you =re supposed to be through here an hour and a 

half ago. Lk thought you wren't caning so e came on through. " "So, " 

he says, ''well," he says, "we'll have to find a place dom the road there 

some place to turn off so you can go an." We backed up a rdle and a half 

so they could pull into a wheat field with the tractor and the hayrack 

and then R e nt forward and got up to the castle and vie got there about 

a half an hour late kt they =re waiting for us and they had the--they 

sat us all around in the castle at the tables and your granhther and 1 

=re a little bit slow getting in there so we sat alone at a table by 

ourselves and everybody else sat at great big long ones and everything. 

had our nice om little table and it was ccdoztable and w enjoyed it 

and had a good place to see the pageant that they ere going to put on 

far us after the ~ al. So they started to serving the meal to us. The 

first thing they brought us -S a great big jug of wine, decanter of wine 

and set it on the table. And then they brought us a great big loaf of 

Irish Bread, a big round loaf of Irish Bread, coarse grain bread and 

soup. No hives or forks or anything. bk ms going to eat a regular old 

Irish feast. And so re asked them what w do. k11, You're supposed to 

take the bread and break it up and dip it in the stew or vegetable soup 

or whatever it was and boy me ere hungry anyhow and it m s good. bk'd 

been drinking this wine and E had a couple of glasses of the wine and 

had the food or the loaf of bread and T~R &aught maybe that ws about all 

of it so w ate the whole dam loaf of bread and all the big bowl of wine 

and all the bowl of soup and everything then they brought us in our ma1 

and oh it was a four course ma1 on top of that. They just loaded us 

with food and here that big wine bottle full of wine ms disappearing and 

E got throu& with the ma1 and everything, your granbther and I was 

feeling pretty good. 

And m had a little black-headed girl that was a beautiful girl that 

mited on us. She was also part of the pageant. Everybody in the pageant 

Ere waitresses and miters around there and they mited on us and this 

girl, I said--there was a person wandering around there wanting to know 

if w mted OUT picture taken in the castle and everything and I says, 

It 

"Yes, I says, "if this girl here will pose with us rrhile we'll sit 

down." She says, "Sure, she says, '7 '11 sit d m and pose with you." 

So she sat dom and this fellow took aur name and address and says, 

'We '11 have to--=' 11 mil the picture to you at your haw address in the 

kted States. " And I paid him for it and thanked her and everything. 

So E sat there and they started this pageant that they =re supposed to 

put on for us and it was a beautiful pageant and everything and I was 

getting so dogone groggy I couldn't stay awake. I slept through abut 

half of it on accaunt of drinking so dam mxh of that wine. I didn't 

know it-was that strong. And w had an enjoyable evening there. And 

then w drove back to the hotel that night and = wre just all in £ran 

the airplane trip more than anything. 



Q: 1'11 bet. 

A: And so KP wnt back up to the hotel and that roan was a raess. The 

bed was a bad bed and everything. Your granhther and I, VE couldn't 

use the bathroom because it was in such a bad shape. k11, w could use 

the toilet kt I man w couldn't take a bath or anything. h, it was-- 

the door on the bathroom ms off the hinges and w jumped into bed and 

slept. Boy, w never wnke up one minute that night: until the next mrning. 

k slep all that night. 

So the next mming WE started for Limerick. Tnat night--* were staying 

actually at Linerick that night see--and w started the next day to go to 

Adare an Killarney and--it ms a village of Adare. bk drove through it 

and it was pretty and we took soa;re, I took some pictures of soarre of the 

thatched cottages there. And then w wnt on to Killamey, &ich was a 

beautiful little tom and we stayed at what they called the Aghadoe 

bights Motel and it was out--overlooked--it ms out frun town a little 

bit and it overlooked Lake Killamey. And at the--= had a little time 

hen w got up there so I wnt and took--= vent d m and I talked to 

som people around there and oh, the Irish people about-the mmn next 

door, I talked to her and I talked to the people at the hotel. 

Then rn wnt down that--we took a trip araund the lake and mt aver on 

the other side and VE also wnt dm to these--this castle on the other 

side--in these little tw-wheeled dolly carts that wre driven by Irish 

mm, horse carts, and they were rough riding. And KP was only a couple 

mile dom there; E vent dom there that afternoon and care back that 

night and stayed at the hotel. And then after w left Killarney WE went 

to Blarney Castle where you kiss the Blarney Stone. 

Q: 

Did you kiss the stone? 

A: b, I didn't kiss the stone. I wouldn't stand on my head to get in 

there. You have to lean wer backwards and smebody sits on your feet 

while you stick your head d m a hole and kiss the stone and . . . 

Q: No thanks. (chuckles) 

A: And boy I wasn' t gonna do that and they got a man there that sits on 

your feet while you do that so yau wn't fall aver and fall off the side 

of the castle. But I did climb up there. Your grandmther wuldn' t go 

up. It was too dam high. So I writ up and tried to take a picture up 

there and I couldn' t get one. 

And so ve left there and wnt dm--w drove through Cork, through the 

country down to Cork, which is the capital of that part of the country 

and iihrough a resort town called Youghal and then e wnt to kterford, 

to t h kterford--where ~ 

all the kterford glass factories are. And the 

hotel there ws supposed to be out of this wrld. ell, we got a roam 

there that ws a rotten one too. They had a shelf right aver the top of 

the bed and you couldn't get up out of the bed and sit up straight or 

anything, you had to roll over the side because you'd crack your head on 

that shelf *en you sat up in that bed if you mted to. And it--oh--I 

don't know w just--everything it seed like smthing ms wrong everyplace 

Kc? mt. 


Fklrmmd A. Bringer 74 

And e wnt down to Miterford and they told us where the--w wre overnight 

and VE had son^ tlrne on our hands so they told us where the kterford 

store was, their big store in tom and KE- wnt dcm there and mnt thraugh 

it and I 'm telling you I never saw so nasch kterford glass in my life. 

It was just full of it and some of those pieces =re old, real old, six 

and seven hundred years old and sme of the prices . . . . ell, kterford 

glass is high anyhow, kt soroe of those pieces they had there run as 

high as ten thuusand dollars a piece. And it wasn't just one or tw. I 

was draid to touch anything in there. 'Ihey had everything you could 

think of. And som people, they didn't m i d it though, they just run 

around pawing all over the glass. I wuldn't have touched it under my 

condition. 

And so KP left there the next m a . & =nt through *at they call 

the "Garden of Irelando--it's the cmty MLcklow is what it is--and VE 

stopped at a sixth century mnastic settlement called Glendalough and it 

extends up along a lake for oh, several miles on each side and it's real 

old. It ms from the sixth c.entury they said. And E--it w s a walk all 

through it and everything. They had these hildings there; they had a 

little chapel, the first chapel in there w s only abut--I think it was 

St. Mary's hpel--and it ~s only abut tmty feet sqyre and it was 

the first one that =s built in there. And they had to-rs around there. 

k didn't walk all through it, ie walked through quite a bit of it. 

So w wnt frm there, w had--left there and e got up to Dublin oh, had 

quite a bit of the day left, practically the whole afternoon was left 

when E got to kblin. And w stayed at the Burlington Hotel there. The 

hotel wsn't bad. So we had the rest of the day to aurselves so your 

grandmother and I got on a bus, we took a Eus and mnt dmtom. bk went 

through the stores and bought sorne Irish s-ters there and one of the 

big department stores w wmt through wznt in the front door and 

bm&t our stuff and mt thraugh it and m t out the back door--they 

told us that we could walk right out the back door and catch our coach or 

he$--these Ere buses--back to the hotel there. So e wt out the 

back door and wnt back and after we got back out to the hotel why VE 

heard that they'd had a bomb scare in front of the department store we 

=re in kile e wre in there and ve didn't how it, w just went out 

the back door and got on the Eus and didn't know nothing about the bomb 

scare. 

And the next day they took us for a tour around kblin and they wnt on 

the coach and w didn't see too mrch there. They just yau how took you 

down the streets and pointed out things to you and w wnt to--wll w 

did see one thing that was real interesting, w writ to Trhity College 

&re and w saw the Book of Kells and several other old books there and 

they =re kautiful. 1 had--1 bought a set of slides there of s m 

the pages in those books and they're real old books and they're all hand- 

painted and hand-designed and everything and they were beautiful. And 

then they had all kinds of old things in the college. kt everything in 

the doggone college itself is so, oh . . . bleak looking. All the old 

gray stones, granite it looked like bildings. Nothing pretty around 

there. Just cobblestone. Oh the center--walk around in there and it'll 

kill you! The cobblestones are all over the center between the college 

hildings and everything. The library is part of the college and it was 


of


beautihl in there. And then ve wnt to St. Patrick's Cathedral and it 

ms nice. 

And in the aftemoon w =re free to shop again so we went shopping 

again. This tk vie took a trip. And the hotel ws--one thing I didn't 

like, the dam--when R got there, the first thhg--the hotel was a real 

nice big hotel and the row wre beautiful--kt when we got there they'd 

left the linen on £ran th~ people that had been there before. And it was 

dirty. And that night they didn't change than, the second day. So I 

took a great big sheet of cardboard and made a great big sign and pinned 

it on the bed the next mrning. I said, 'W'd like to have s a clean ~ 

linen of our own. k're tired of sleeping on everybody else's linen 

around here. "% Soy didn't change it kt they did that day. And the 

rug was dirty and they didn't give us any soap, just left a half a cake 

in there and the wsh towels were the sarne and everything. They made you 

use stuff offer as long as you Ere there. And w used it over from the 

people that wre ahead of us. 

And w took the--so that afternoon why they told us that night w were 

gonna visit the Abbey Theater and w wmt dom there and the Abbey Theater 

had gone out of hsiness, they wnt bankrupt or sanething I don't know. 

It was supposed to be a great theater. So ie went to the Gate Xheater 

and w sat there and they had a play there--I don't know what the name of 

it--we couldn't wen get the drift of it. And WE didn't like the play so 

tJhen the curtain time came for the changing of acts d ~y your grandmother 

and I got up and left. bk said, 'W're going to leave." And a lot of 

the people in our: group just left too. And w asked the fellow if there 

was any place around there where w could go until the show was over and 

the hs cane back after us to take us back to our hotel and he said, 

"Yes, there's Mocnrtie's Tavern dom there." So m mt dom and set down 

in this Mode's Tavern and it ms a real old Irish tavern all right. 

People sat around and sang and they played darts and it was a great big 

tavern. But the kids that waited on us =re sea urchins--or not sea 

urchins, street urchins. I get that . . . 

Q: I kind of like sea urchins. (chuckles) 

A: Sea urchins, street urchins. 

Q: That sounds scary. (chuckles) k s this before or after you drank? 

A: They *re young kids. The one that waited on us and brought us our 

drinks, it was 11: 30 then see, and the kids that waited on us ere in 

their--twelve, ten. Little kids. And they said they didn't have any- 

I--=Id asked the guy, w 'd asked on of the the fellows there. I said, 

"Lkll, how c m these kids are waiti on us instead of barnids and 

people like . . ." '74211 ," he says ,'they're kids that don't have any 

hou~ or anything and t'hey just sleep wherever thy can and eat and get 

wherever they can and the mrk in these places to get enough money to 

eat. " So we stayed there until tin^ for the Ixls to take us back to the 

hotel and e Ent back to the hotel. 

And all the time we ere there they muldn't let us eat in the main 

dining roan, WE had to eat in the grill for sane reason or other, even if 



m mted to pay for it. I wanted to pay my OW bill there and they 

wuldn't let me. I said I wanted to eat in the min dining room. And 

they said, 'No, you have to eat in the grill. All the tuurs eat Fn the 

gill. That made me mad. But on the next day w went to another-the 

next night E went to another hotel, Juries Hotel and they had a cabaret 

there and w got a good m d 

and the entertaimmt ms mnderful. They 

had good Irish singers and people that played the harp. And it was nice 

and vie had good food there. 

Eighth day vie left for Dublin. And I was getting md. I told the tour 

director-he was a kind of a-not m h force--he was a gwermmt employee-- 

and he wan' t mch force. ken = left the next day, why the tour directors 

tent with US to Scotland and through England and everything but the bus 

couldn't and when e left &re why sanebody that ms Qlish told us to 

get rid of all of our Irish nrmey before WE got to Britain or Scotland 

because they muldn't take it over there. They'd--in Ireland they'd take 

all the British mney that you give than and American Ixlt in England you 

couldn't get rid of Irish mney , they wuldn' t take it. So IR wnt to 

this Juries Hotel the n w night and it was a real nice entertainment, m 

enjoyed it. I& wnt back to the hotel and then next morning &y E 

wed, they flew us across the Irish Sea again, t~ writ out to the airport. 

And we got to--in an Irish plane again, it vas another Air Lingus plane-- 

and ve got aver to Edinhrgh and one of the hostesses was telling us they 

were going to kild a new airport over there, a new runway at that airport 

because they wre having trouble with if the winds =re strong it blew 

the planes off the runmy. k11, that cheered us all up. bk got wer 

there and put down at the airport and we sat in the plane and ve sat in 

the plane and they said, '%Jell, we ' re going ta have to let you go out the 

emergency exit in the back of the plane. b& can't get the front doors 

undone." So w all wnt out the back door. And they had a a s or a 

coach met us there. 

Now they muldn't let the Irish bs driver drive in %land or Scotland 

or use their coaches. They had to use English and Scotch coaches. k 

had an kglishm then drive us thxough Scotland w ith an English coach, 

all throu& Scotland and England. So I m s still mad abut the treatmmt 

E e re getting. It WLS an awfully expensive tour E e re taking and IE 

wren't getting our mney 's mrth out of it. And I kept hollering at the 

fellow, our tour coach driver. There m s tm groups of us in this--there 

was tm coaches full instead of just one coach alone like m were on all 

the Qlish tours--there =re tw coaches full of people so we had tour 

guides and tm coaches. Now we always f o l l d each other. And this one 

rn had, the fellow e had was almys the hind one. He always-he didn't-he 

wsn't n~lch force. The other guy was--that run the other tour-he was 

pretty good, he took care of his people. 

So E get to the hotel and I told him I said, "You tell srr; who your 

representatives are here in Edinhrgh. I'm going to th em and cqlain 

personally and tell them what a lousy trip and IE aren't getting our 

money's wrth and VE expect to be either taken care of letter or somthing." 

And IE got to W s next mtel we ms going to stay at and they assigned 

the rooms to us and everything and they took us up to it. Your grandmnther 

and I mt up to our roan and boy they had given us a suite. 


l?dmund A. Bringer 77 

A: It had a living roan and a kitchenette and a bedroom. And in the 

living roan there ws a table and radio, a television and in the bedroam 

there ms a television and there was also the bathroam and this kitchenette. 

bk didn't have any use for the kitchenette there when w got there but w? 

did before w left there. They also had in there--you could punch a 

tutton on the wall and there was a kind of cabinet there and you could 

punch httons and get the kind . . . [of liwor you wanted] 

A: Yes w =re getting. . . . k didn't do that though, we wanted good 

old Scotch so I went--1 asked Jim, that ms his name, the fellow that was 

ouz: tour director. I says, "Is there anyplace around here where I can 

get any?" So I went down to. . . . He said, 'Yes." So w got on a tus 

and drove oh about a mile dorm the street and we got off and I got into a 

place and bought same tea biscuits, Scotch tea biscuits and some, a 

bottle of Scotch. And they allow you to carry it in your grip wer there 

*en you're traveling that way SO I just bught one there and IE went 

back and used our om. 

And then the next--= wnt through Edinburgh the next day, e spent the 

whole day in Edinbrgh and they took us domtom and let us do our om 

shopping and everything if e mted to--= had the day to do shopping--so 

your grandmther and I had been to Minhr@ before so wz! hew *re all 

F~R mnted to go and everything, up and dm Princes Street and places 

like that and e walked around to the different stores and everything and 

WE did that that day and e nt d m and had a couple of drinks at one of 

the hotels we'd stayed at before. And then =--next day why w--or that 

afternoon they took us around to a repeat trip of Fdinlxlrgh Castle and 

dom to Holyrood Castle--House as they call it, it's a castle also. And 

then a little tour around through the tom ht vie had been over all that 

before and w enjoyed mre going by ourselves than anything. And then 

the next: day why Jjn the mrning we left Scotland and wnt down into 

England. kk mt--on this trip w wznt to Yo& Minster. 

Now e'd never been to York Minster before and it's another one of the 

big cathedrals. There ms a wall araund the old tom and everything and 

you can walk around the will and you can go through the cathedrd. And 

the--all their cathedrals are beautiful, it's just-well , you can't say 

that after you've seen one of them you've seen them all because they're 

all different lxlt you how what I mean, they're so mssive and magnificent 

that you get so you expect everything the same ones; like the stained-glass 

windows and the beautihl marble inside of than and the beautiful mods 

they use in their pews and h their chancellories and everything like 

that. And their altars, they're magnificent and the mdwrk in then is 

beautiful. 

And then frm York why w ent over to Harrogate and w'd been there 

again also. And at Harrogate why, I don't remember--oh ve stayed at the 

Old Swan Hotel there again. And then VE went frm Hacrogate dm to 

Chester. Naw &ester--m 'd been there before and E just loved Chester. 

That's the one *ere they got the big wall around the city that you can 

walk all a r d and the clock's ri&t over the tuain street on the wall, 

great big four faced clock. And I have walked around that thing twice, 


Ecbmmd A. Bringer 7 8 

it ' s abut six miles around the will. And it ' s and they 've got a big 

cathedral there too. See every tom yau writ to had one. And they've 

also got a set of hildings there--I was telling you about it once before 

I think, about the one &ere they're on levels? These shops are on 

levels and they--you can mlk around them on the outside and inside the 

hilding too. They're just all kinds of shops and the kuilding is on 

several different levels and you can walk around the outside of them any 

of the levels and look in the windows just like you wre on the ground 

floor. 

k11, w wnt down through--on this trip again FR e nt down through Wales 

and we stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon again--or Avon of you want to call 

it that, either one. And tie did go through Llangollen. Now that, it's a 

beautifd little village where they have these music festivals every 

year, wrld rmsic festivals. They caw from all aver the wrld to this 

musical festival there and folk dances and all kinds of dancing and 

songs. And then E went into England and VE went through Shrewshry on 

the hem, everyone of these towns are on a river. hk didn't go to the 

Memorial 'Iheatre. They got us tickets if we wanted them at Stratford h t 

w didn't want thm. k 'd been there twice before. k'd been to Shakespeare's 

home and where he was buried and m'd been to Anne Hathaway's house and 

we'd been through up along the Avon. And I used to like to go up there 

and watch the swans though. Again they've got a lot of smns on the Avon 

River there and people use house boats and travel up and down there and 

they dock there at the oh--not the gates bat--what do they call those 

things that--I can't think now--locks. See they dock and tie up above 

the locks and then go and then go and see the toms and then *en they 

want to go on to the next tom why they have to go throqjh these locks in 

the canal-like they have on the Mississippi River and those other rivers. 

And I used to go up and watch around there a lot. 

But the hotel w stayed at there the first time, it was beautiful. And 

th frm Stratford e mt on dom to oh bbrcester. kk stayed there for 

a while and VE wmt on dawn to Bath. And &en FR eot to Bath this time 

they wre mxking on the-this w s after they'd fo& out about Che other 

kth being below the Bath that they 've got there new-and they were doing 

this research mrk and they'd dug the place all up and everything and 

hadn't put it back yet. They had only a certain length of time that they 

could get dow under there and wrk and then they had to restore it to 

its original condition again. And while R =re there this time they 

were--had that all tom up. There wasn't anything--we'd been fortunate 

enough to see it before. &It it was in its regular shape then. k'd 

eaten in the tea room. And you see they'd found out the water was 

contaminated and people had been drinking it for years and everything and 

they had to find out what ws contaminating it. 

And this the &en we ent past Stonehenge they muldn't let you in it. 

All yau could do was look at it from a distance. They'd put a real big 

wire fence there and you had to stand outside of that fence, you couldn't , 

you couldn't go in around the stone at all. They said what had happened 

was these tourists had becane--had been starting to carve their initials 

in the stones and chip off pieces of than. And the influx of tourists 

from Europe and the Scandinavian countries and from India and Africa and 

those places wts getting bad. It was really bad. And they =re hard to 



get along w ith on that--wherever KP wnt M? had--= run into trouble 

where they Ere having trouble with the Germm and the htch people and 

the--and the Spanish and the--what the dickeris--oh, the Indians, They 

Ere overbearing. All of those people. They're--they get excited and 

thy =re hot-headed and everything else. 

And then after e'd been to Stonehenge and Bath why KE -2: back to the 

hotel in bndon and this time they put us up at a hotel--this tour put us 

up at a great big hotel dom in the southeast end of London, right dom 

by Earl's Court, I think it ms the South Hotel is &at they called it. 

And it was a mnster. It w s a nice hotel tut everybody in it was foreign 

except--well, they did have same mitresses and people like that kt all 

the people that run the hotel-and it ws just over run with foreigners 

and FR didn't like the hotel itself on account of that because there was 

nothing English about the hotel at all. 

And so ve wis supposed to have a sight-seeing tar of England the next 

day and have a banquet that night ht the people at where E was supposed 

to have the banquet didn't wen know we was caning, they got all balled 

up and everything so we didn't get any banquet out of it. So your grandmther 

and I thought, 'Nts, we '11 just leave." W had a tour leaving the next 

day anyhow for Wales and dom thr+ there that w =re going an it. W 

didn't care if w? did lose t w days on this trip that cost us about five 

hundred dollars. But after the trouble e went through on the tour--= 

*re disappointed in the Irish tour and the treamt w got by Irish 

people wasn't too god in Ireland itself. 

Q: Did you get in--did you see any of the troubles that they were having 

there? 

A: Pb. bk were in Ireland--1 talked to a man--we Ere eating one mrning 

in the hotel over there--I thi& it was in kterford--m =re eating 

break£ast and a man cane in--werybdy--that table was full exept there 

ms a place at the one your grandmther and I =re sitting at and this 

man ccme ia and introduced himself and he says, 'kuld you mind if I ate 

breakfast w ith you?'' J3e says, 'T'm going to a funeral dom here." And 

xe said, 'No." J3e sat down and--no, that ws at brick, that's where 

it was because I reumber now when we sat down--he introdwed himelf, he 

was an undertaker up in Belfast see, &ich is in the north Ireland. And 

I told--I asked him I said, "Did you--it mst be kind of rou& around 

there isn't it? b you--with all that fighting going on and everything 

it mst be kind of disturbing up there." And he says, 'Wy I live right 

in Belfast," he said, and he said, "I have never seen anything of any 

fighting or anything up there." W11 so he says, 'No, I haven't seen any 

of it. It's not as bad as they say it is." 

ell, so we let it go at that and when I got dom to this-where we 

stayed at this hotel dawn on Lake Killarney the gal that lived next door 

to us that took care of the cemetery--she was rmd at the cetery sexton 

because he didn't keep the grass cut and the weds cut and everything and 

didn't keep the place looking good and all of her folks for three hundred 

years or so Ere kried wer there. She says, 'T take care of the cemetery 

aver there and the old church and he gets credit for it." She had a 

sister that was a nun sameplace and she vas visiting her but she wasn't 


E d d A. Bringer 80 

there. I says--1 says--I don't know how it caw up ht I said samething 

about this talk that morning at breakfast with a nun that was an undertaker 

in Belfast and I said, '!He told IIE things aren' t as bad up there as they 

say they are. He says he hasn't seen anything, any of the fighting or 

any of the other trouble they're having up there.llAnd she says, 'Re's 

just a dam liar!" &11, I says, 'That's it." 

I hadn't seen any of it. No w didn't--the only thing TR had was that 

bomb scare and PE didn ' t how anything about that so it didn ' t bother us. 

But people =re insulting to us all over Ireland, everyplace ue ~ nthey t 

kind of called us you haw, "those rich kricans," "those filthy rich 

Americans" and everything like that. And a couple of places they sat 

dom on eth kt they didn't do too much. When GP got througjh with the 

tour, oh w wre disppointed in it because w'd paid so mch for it and 

it wasn't anywhere near what re had in the Fres tours and they mre a 

lot better. Better treamt and everything else. 'Caurse w wren't in 

Ireland. k learned afterwards that the tour company w had--= should 

have taken their trip through Ireland and ~ ' have d had a lot ktter 

treatmat because they'd have had English--their own people and everything. 

And so FJhen we got thraugh with this tour with them why ve left days 

early and e =re glad of it because we 'd already mde our reservations 

and everything to take this other tuur of the south part of hgland. 

k'd never been over there to kles and up through there. And that was 

the part of country that you hear so much abut, you law it's. . . . Oh 

it's one of the parts that they write stories and everything about. It 

was called the 'West Tour of &gland." And the first day WE wnt--it 

retraced sorne of the places we 'd been before. It retraced us back to 

Southampton and we wmt to Southmpton the first day and again e stayed 

at the Polygon Hotel. And w went through oh there was qpite a few 

places that e s nt through. 'Ihe interesting country getting d m there. 

Then frm Southampton T~R ent back to Plymuth. Now Plym3uth--I don't 

know &ether E 'd been there kfore or not. Yes, w had. bk 've been to 

Plymxtth twice. And Plyrrwxlth is right on the end of the bay and it's a 

beautiful town. k stayed--that's the only Holiday Inn w stayed at and 

it's a beauty. It's about tmty stories high and it's right on the park 

overlooking the bay and you look d m on the bay and there's hauses and 

places to live all around dom the bay on the cliffs and then along 

the--around this park there 's big courts and werything and there's a 

statue of Sir Francis Drake, a great big statue right on the top of 

the--in this park on top of the bluff and then right wer off to the side 

is a great big old fort, old brick fort up there. And I took--one tine I 

just took a trip and walked down to another &arE that they had d m on 

another part of the bay that ms over the hill from where we were staying 

at the Holiday Inn there and on this tsharf is *ere the May£lowr started 

fran--the Pilgrims-and there's a big plaque in the--mrble plaque laid 

in the wharf down there saying this is the pint where they took off 

frm. So then from Plymxlth E went to--oh w went up through *re Jane 

Austen lived and saw that place and run into quite a few towns there 

along the. . . . 

bk left Plymxlth and w tent to Bude. Naw Bude's up--and that tour's 

beautiful down through there. b m t along the ocean quite a bit through 


Echnund A. Bringer 81 

there. Lk went through Trruro and several of the towns along the ocean 

there. And w wmt to Bude and stayed at the Falcon Hotel. And it was a 

real old hotel there and the couple that run it--he wis in his fifties or 

sixties and he'd just mrried a young gal in hex twnties and they had a 

baby. 'Ihey wre real nice people. And it ms getting kind of chilly 

wZlen w got up there and the room E had they didn't have any heat in it. 

h y got little gas heaters abut the size of an electric toaster in the 

roan and we turned that on and heck, you couldn't even get your feet warn 

by it. They had plenty of stuff on the bed you know, blankets and things 

like that so ue didn't ha. any trouble keeping warn sleep- lxlt it was 

cold around there. 

They had a nice tavern dom there and the bartender in the tavern--he was 

wire a card. I& 'd go in there and he'd be in the barroan and we'd go in 

there and talk to the people from tom and everything and associate with 

them and listen to them tell their stories and everything. And then when 

I+F got through and wnt into the dining roan whey here he cane in in a 

tuxedo as our waiter in the dining roan too. (chuckles) He ms all over 

the place. 

And it was a--we wnt to Bath again, up to Bath frm there. And FR 

stopped at a tom along the coast called Cavelli and it's hilt on the 

side of a cliff and the only m y you can get down to part of the tom is 

by mule or walk. And they get all-everything they need dom there is 

taken d m on mle back. All your luggage and all the food to take in 

and out and the coal and everything they take dom on mles. And you can 

ride a rrule down if you mt to ht people usually ride the mules up. 

But then you--= walked dom to the bottom of it and when w got to the 

bottom they told us that there was another road out of there by paying a 

pound apiece why they'd take us up a back road up to the top of the cliff 

in a jeep. So youx grandmther and I e re in pretty damn bad shape so w 

took that trip back up there in the jeep and got back up there. 

And then e went over to Bath again and wnt through the church wer 

there again. W alwys liked Bath on account of the hotel w stayed at 

was a nice hotel, the Francis Hotel. It overlooked the park and w could 

walk around the whole town fran there. could go dom to the church, 

or could go dawn to the baths and w could go dm along the river and 

they had a park dom along the river there. And it was--then the next 

day we wmt wer to Salislxry . bk ' d nwer been to Salisbry before. And 

they again had a big cathedral dom there and it was quite a tom. 

And thm after veld been to Salisbury over at the kite Hart Hotel--that 

was a pretty--quite a d em hotel there they'd &lilt. It was--it was 

one that we'd never been in one like it there in England before or Britain 

or any of Britain as far as that goes. They drove the tom hses right 

in through a part of the hotel that ms cwered aver and everything so 

you how you--and you just stepped right into the lobby of the hotel from 

there. And it--it was a pretty good one to get into. It was-but all 

&--all three trips w took to Fagland . . . 

And then of course we wmt back into London again and stayed there and 

wmt all wer sow mre of London again. That trip w went dom to 

Rochester after ve were through--Rochester and Canterhry and--*ere the 


Mmmd A. Bringer 82 

Cantertury Tales are written about. That's *ere I got that plaque 

there, at Canterbury and had it fred there--it caw in four pieces and 

e dam near missed- tb lxs d m there because they couldn't find all 

fax pieces of one of those plaques for rre and they finally found it and 

so I took it with me because I didn't mt to break it and everything. 

(Indicates plaque of Cancerlu Tales characters on wall of family room) 

And w ent through t 6 cathe ramre and then *en m were at oh--what 

did I say the other om. . . . where oh what the dickens was his narre was 

killed? 

Q: Becket? 

A: [Thomas A. ] Becket . And saw where his grave was in the basement of 

the cathedral. And I took a lot of pictures dom around through there. 

And at Canterbury your grandmother and I ate in one of the. oldest tea 

roams that I ever was in in all of our trips over there. It was up over 

a shop downstairs and it was real old and it wis right by one of the 

gates, wall gates down there that you go through and I was out taking 

pictures and caw back and your grandmother had been eat% and had her 

tea and everything and I got up there and gee whiz there was a big plate 

of tea biscuits sitting there and my tea ms there ready for me so she 

vaitd while I ate. And the tea biscuits =re there and they had saw 

things there that ere made out: of just pure chocolate and things like 

that and oh, I'll tell you it was rich. 

So e wnt back to Iondon £ran there and mnkeyed around London again for 

a couple of days. k t to--had sonre friends of ours dom to eat with us 

at the hotel ane ni&t. Funny thing about people over there; w noticed 

that--= invited this m and--this wmm and her husband dom to eat 

supper with us, dinner that night at the hotel and they said sure they'd 

COKE. And they cam down and they brought their tw sons and one of the 

son's daughters--or one of the son's girls and ate with us. kll, ME 

thought that hats kind of odd because we'd--kt we just--I footed the bill 

for all of them. And they ordered the highest darrmed priced stuff on the 

m. And I didn't--I thmght it was kind of odd that they did that but 

then this wman that w ran a r d with from Canada-Qlarlotte-she 

invited the tour director and the tour driver of the British tour that M? 

took and his wife down to the Cumberland to eat in the farevell party one 

night and so she had them set the table for your gradmther and myself 

and krself and this tour driver and his wife. And doggone if he didn't 

bring his kids with them! And b~t there sears to &-when you invite the 

nother or father or anybody the hole family canes d m and eats with 

You* 

But =--that ms one thing I noticed and it--when they eat--they take you 

now--= took this one ---this one mmm that yaur granhther and I 

took out downtom WE wanted to take her tp Formm and Mason's and eat 

with us one noon because vie liked the food there and everything. They 

had mnderful food there. And their elevator is lined with velvet and 

it's got all around hese edges of the inside are velvet seats you sit on. 

You don't stand up in their elevator. And evewybody in the-all the mn 

in the bilding are in long tails, black tie and long tails, the clerks. 

And they're red polite and weryth;ing. And so she said, 'No." She'd 

rather we'd eat dom at this fish and chips place that they--she said 


Fxhund A. Bringer 83 

that she and her husband ate dm there a lot. k wnt down there to 

that place and I 'm telling you I don't how what kind of fish they were 

or chips either kt by it ws awful. Stunk in there and everybody ms 

hot and sv~~ty. They don't--their idea of a god place to eat and mine 

aren't the same. 

And they always used to make cammts. &'d ask for certain things--why 

heck, they couldn't understand why e mde such a big to-do abut pancakes. 

b y they never made them--didnl t wen know how to make th. Pie, they 

don't go for pie. They go for their--in England and all over up there 

they go for these things like oh truffles or something. I don't know 

what they call them. They're kind of like runny custard and they put 

that on cake and things like that for their and. . . . Everyplace you 

ate, I don't care what kind of a restaurant it ms , if it was a good-- 

wll I'll take that back, the real good restaurants stuck with their type 

of cuisine that they were noted for--but mst of the hotels you'd eat at 

they wld have Brussel sprouts and broccoli for the vegetables and they 

wld have three kinds of potato every doggone ~ al. You'd get boiled 

potatoes and I don' t know hat the other tm kinds viere ht you always 

got three. . . 

Q: At one meal? 

A: Yes. You'd get your pick of than. &It they didn't know a t 

corn 

was or beans or peas. You never heard of--they never got those any place 

E ate. It ws just--their food in mst places had a lot to be desired. 

Now sarrle of their places their breads were good. & run into--- we'd 

go to a bakery on our own and get fresh hammade bread or something like 

that. 

Fmd of Side ke, Tape Six

Edmund Bringer Memoir - Brookens Library

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