Going Home: DeKalb County on PBS 39 is made possible in part by a grant from the DeKalb County Community Foundation, supporting programs for DeKalb County citizens that address today's needs and prepare for tomorrow's challenges.

You always come back home.

A lot of it's probably because of family, but there's a comfort margin there... always had Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Helens and my Uncle Elmer's always and Sunday afternoons at at Grandma Metz were always had a great run in the summertime skiing and boating and raking leaves in the fall that was it feels like home it's the nest so you get that warm fuzzy feeling coming back home.

A common occurrence.

Family is raised in small communities.

Kids grow and leave the nest to explore the world.

Then there's this unexplained powerful need from within that finds them back home, visiting or staying to build a nest of their own.

Come along as we remind you of the treasures, traditions, and significant historical events of several small communities in Indiana that sometimes fuel the need of going home.

DeKalb County was organized in 1837 and was named after a Revolutionary War general, Baron Johann DeKalb.

Most of the DeKalb County residents migrated from Germany and England via New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio with some help from the railroad.

The most substantial settlement took place after 1836 and before 1840 when roads were cut, bridges, grist mills and sawmills were built and the forests were cleared for cabins and agriculture.

Spencerville was one of the first towns - villages - in DeKalb County because it was located on the St. Joe River.

And that made it easy for settlers to come up the river from Fort Wayne.

The St. Joe River allowed settlement in the Spencerville area, probably as early as 1825.

The town of Spencerville, however, was not plotted until 1842 by Reuben J. Dawson.

The little village is situated on a bluff overlooking the St. Joe River, which provided a natural dam site for a major mill, which the enterprising Dawson took on, creating an important commercial center in the southeastern part of the county.

These mill sites could not continue to build a community if people could not get to it.

AcCording to an 1863 DeKalb County map, a bridge was constructed over the St. Joe River to solve this problem.

It's not known what happened to this bridge, however, In 1873, a second bridge was built on the same location.

There were at least five known covered bridges in DeKalb County.

However, the Spencerville covered bridge is the only one remaining that, thanks to the care and pride of the Spencerville community, the Spencerville Bridge has been repaired and restored many times over its lifetime.

However, charming remnants remain with old advertising from area merchants who frequently painted their own signs on the beams and guardrails and the romance of the bridge being a popular place for courting couples to spend a lazy afternoon together is preserved in the many indelible marks of their memories left behind.

Many other settlements sprouted up, flowing along the St. Joe River.

Leading to its namesake in 1875, the town of St. Joe was plotted.

The Indiana tourism office has accused St. Joe of possessing one of Indiana's seven hidden treasures.

That treasure is the famed Sechler's Pickle Factory, which has been in the Sechler family for three generations.

The ambitious Ralph Sechler, born in 1894 in St. Joe, Indiana, devoted his early years to D.M.

Sears Company, a pickle company located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, beginning in 1912.

In 1921, Mr. Sechler decided to pursue a business of his own.

Sears agreed to sell him two of their receiving stations.

Eight years later, he purchased all of their receiving stations.

Ralph and Anna Sechler persevered through the Depression and a devastating fire that destroyed their first processing facility in 1937.

In 1938, that processing facility was rebuilt larger and stronger than ever.

Meanwhile, Ralph's son Frank, was growing up along with the business, naturally training to enter the world of pickles.

Like his father, Frank had dreams of growing a business that could be passed on to future generations.

First, I had a hoe on my hands I was out hoeing pickles and then picking pickles.

I think I was a sophomore, in between my sophomore and junior years in high school, as Frank White told me, he wanted to teach me how to make a pickle, you know, beyond the salting stage.

After college and being in the service, I elected to go into the business here.

Ralph Sechler died in 1962, after which his son Frank, continued the growth of the business to 30,000 square feet and the capacity for 90,000 bushels of pickles in brine.

Ralph instilled a commitment to quality that has carried on through Frank Sechler and now his son Dave.

Along with the motto “We could make them faster, but that wouldn't make them better.” I have heard my dad say time and time again is that as long as we produce a quality product, there will always be someone out there wanting to buy it.

And today, especially with the nature of the business and the retail business, I think we could we could go under real quick if we lost that train of thought.

Not much has changed in the way Sechlers Pickles are made or where they do business, which is in the original home of Ralph and Anna Sechler, where the first pickles were canned in the basement.

When we were growing more of our own crops, something that was fine for me.

It wasn't fun for my dad, but like on a frost, if there was the frost warnings, you go out and throw straw bales out and light them and try to create a little cloud of smoke coverage to help protect the plants from frost damage.

And as a little guy, that was pretty cool stuff.

But as a big guy actually worrying about that kind of stuff, it probably wasn't very fun for him.

The most noteworthy change has been in the farming of the raw materials.

For many years, the Sechlers farmed all their own materials.

But for financial efficiency, some of the farming has been allocated to larger market farmers over the years.

Although the memories and work ethic remain.

A lot of the things we do are still done the way they were 40 years ago.

I mean, you can go out in the plant any day of the week and see guys with nets physically dip in pickles out of a tub or out of a tank and onto a belt moving in 50 gallon barrels around.

And it's there's still a lot of labor work in our plant.

What seems to work for Ralph Sechler and Sons in advertising is simplicity.

What also works is offering tours where you can see and taste the quality and freshness and the opportunity to visit the showroom to purchase your favorites off the shelf.

People come here, see them being made, have a chance to sample them.

Hopefully they're going to go back to Detroit or Toledo or wherever they're from.

Look for the product, tell their friends about it.

And so word of mouth is really the way it's always been.

A lot of satisfaction.

Pride to know that whether it's our pickle business or any other business, the odds of family success through the years are from one generation to the next drops with significantly.

I mean, so the fact that we are third generation and still have a good business going, the fact that it might even make it to a fourth generation is a wonderful feeling.

Ralph Sechler and Sons is very aware of the acceptance of the company into the community as it's very committed to St. Joe, Indiana.

People have been very faithful to us and all you do is be here a few hours and see the people that come here because they can't find them at home or they want larger quantities than they can get in a store or whatever.

And they just have so many good things to say.

So it makes you feel good.

Three generations of Sechlers Fine Pickles in St. Joe, Indiana, A bloodline of pride that's as strong today as it was over 75 years ago.

Whether it's cucumbers, peppers or tomatoes.

Agriculture is what helped the Sechler family carry on for three generations and provide a reason for the St. Joe community to exist.

Because of the rich soil in this area, farming became a very important means of growth over the centuries.

Although farming is not as small and intimate for families today as it was during the birth of this county.

It has proven to be a very important process and the foundation of industry as a whole in DeKalb County.

From the pioneer period, which would be up until about 1850, you just had farms and they were pretty much self-sustaining in that they raised about everything they needed on the farm.

They had very little money coming in because there was nobody to sell it to but let each other.

Probably some barter or some trading back and forth.

But it wasn't till the early 1850s that the railroads began coming through DeKalb County.

And then when the railroad was actually built, between 1852 and 1854, then you had a means of bringing raw materials in and then shipping the finished materials or livestock or grain out of DeKalb County.

So then the economy starts to move.

The other towns: Butler Waterloo, Sedan, Corruna were railroad towns.

They wanted to have towns about six miles apart so that they could have grain and livestock provisions to ship out.

And so that the towns got graded that way.

A couple of the streets uptown were cinders from the railroad.

They they spread the cinders out and they were terribly sharp.

I fell on a bicycle once, and I still have a black marks in my knees where I fell from this sharp cinders.

The steam trains were just like a big animal.

They.

They smoked and they hissed.

And they made all kinds of noises.

And even when they would stop, you think they were kind of quiet and there'd be some sort of a big noise.

Come, come out of them.

And there was lots of activity.

There were people waiting to get on the train.

There were people getting off of the train.

You would see people sitting in the dining cars, eating their dinners.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, more currently, the Chicago Division is responsible for the founding of Garrett, Indiana.

Beginning in 1871, while surveying land in the Midwest to construct a 262 mile stretch of railroad.

The Chicago division was almost finished by 1874.

Baltimore Land and Improvement Company sent a special agent out to find a division point.

The agent for the site of Garrett purchased 640 acres.

The original Division Point four miles east of Albion was abandoned because landowners unrealistically raised the price of their land.

The special agent then quietly negotiated farmland from the Auburn area before they knew what the land was to be used for.

The original plat of Garrett was documented at Auburn on April 9th, 1875, and named Garrett in honor of John W Garrett, then president of the B&O Railroad.

Because of this division point, within ten months of establishing Garrett, the town exploded with opportunities: Hotels, stores, a school, shops, saloons.

The population also increased due to all the job opportunities related to the railroad: engineers, firefighters, conductors, telegraph operators, clerks.

So many jobs that people were recruited from other towns in Indiana and Ohio, as well as immigrants from Poland, Germany, Romania, Italy and Hungary.

There were section crews that were responsible for a section of track, and these tended to be these were local people that just worked awfully hard out in the sun, out in the cold, and would maintain or rebuild the railroad.

And then you had the depot and the the station master, the telegraph office in Butler.

In the 1930, 1920s, 1930s, there were 26 passenger trains each day.

That stopped there there in Butler and Waterloo.

And so you had a tremendous method of commerce.

You had fresh oysters from the east, fresh, fresh fruit from the west.

It was a really good commerce system and really better than what we have now.

The working conditions for the trainmen were not up to today's standards.

They were paid a dollar $0.40 per trip, ranging from 12 to 55 hours for one trip.

Overtime and safety rules were unheard of.

Injuries were a common occurrence and seniority was not honored.

Fred Feick, Garrett's mayor from 1935 until 1963, took on the cause of the train worker.

Being injured in a collision himself, he became a part of Indiana politics as a Democratic state convention delegate in 1905, representing trainmen.

Feick established new laws which revolutionized the railroad industry and improved the lives of railroad workers everywhere.

Some of the laws, he wrote, were the first of their kind in the U.S.. Several labor organizations honored Feick in acknowledging that he had done more to advance the interest of the railroad employees than any other man in Indiana history.

The last railroad built in DeKalb County was the interurban system.

In the early 1900s, this system was designed to run by means of electricity.

Designed by a lawyer from Anderson, Indiana.

Charles L. Henry.

This new and innovative transportation concept took hold.

The interurban was part of a of a system that was prevalent in the Midwest, but particularly in Indiana.

And they were electrically powered like a streetcar and just an individual car.

And they.

This one started in Fort Wayne and would came up to Garrett and then came over to Auburn and came up right up the middle of the Ensley Avenue and then up Cedar Street and it went up to Waterloo.

And that met the New York Central Railroad in Waterloo.

So you could come up from Fort Wayne on the interurban through Auburn and catch the New York Central at Waterloo.

And then another branch of it went through Garrett and Kendallville and it was kind of a y-shaped system.

The wholesale grocers in Fort Wayne would send their commodities to DeKalb County merchants on the interurban, and the farmers along the line would shipped crates of produce utilizing the interurban light freight service.

Passenger service on the interurban was quick, easy and inexpensive.

A traveler could board in Waterloo at 7:50 a.m. and be in Fort Wayne by 9:21 a.m.. On the other hand, you could leave Fort Wayne at 4:39 p.m. and be back in Waterloo at 6:05.

Connections were also available to go to Indianapolis, Louisville or any city in between.

We dated boys from Auburn and they had to go on the last car of course, which was at 10:10 at night.

And the the conductor would wait at Harrison Street for our boyfriends, all the all the girls along Harrison Street had, boyfriends from Auburn.

And theyd clang their bell at the end of the street and wait until the kids all got there.

They all tearing down from their dates with us.

The depression and the invention of the automobile and trucks caused the decline of interurban travel and shipping.

Passenger service in DeKalb County was discontinued on February 15th, 1937.

Freight service to Garrett it ceased on May 10th, 1945.

The effects of the Depression created yet another type of immigrant bums or hobos made their way across the country in desperate search for any kind of job they could find.

Citizens compassionate to the social situation would often feed the hobos and give them shelter or odd jobs for food or cash.

Very few would turn them away because they knew they were good, hardworking people who just needed a break.

The bums had come through and stop at the hardware.

I'm sure they stopped other places too.

And Carl never would give them any cash.

He sent them over to the restaurant to get a meal and then he'd pay the restaurant.

But they had my house marked when I was first married.

I lived on the alley, and I know they did.

Harry knew it, too, because I mostly often had a bum sitting on my back steps eating whatever we had eaten.

We lived near the Wabash tracks on the on the south edge of Butler, and my grandmother was known to give a handout to.

She called them tramps or hobos, and they'd come to the door and say they were hungry.

And she was just a just a generous lady, a good Christian lady.

And she was a great cook and she'd always have pie or even fix them - fix them a meal.

And we discovered later, or we were told that there was some way that these hobos and tramps would mark a place that would be hospitable to them.

And so that's why so many tramps came to our door, was somehow we had been identified as a good place to stop and a good piece of pie.

The mighty railroad, through good times and bad, had loyal employees in Garret.

For over 100 years, there have been second and third generations devoting most of their lives to working for the railroad.

And there's no doubt that Garrett is very proud of its railroad heritage.

Garrett also utilized its most natural resource as a means of sustaining its community.

Probably one of the most uncomplicated, relaxing pastimes became one of the leading industries in Garrett, a pastime that sustained many families through some of the toughest times of their lives.

Fishing.

No, this is not a fish story.

The simple concept of designing a fishing lure to look exactly like live natural bait founded the Creek Chub Bait Company, a company in Garrett that reeled in the honor of being the largest manufacturer of wooden artificial fish baits in the world and the most collectible.

Henry Dills, George Schulthess and Carl Heinzerling are the men responsible.

They loved the business and they loved hunting and fishing and they wanted to make a go.

It was something they enjoyed and were proud of and had faith in.

The men were devout fishermen, and they knew all about these lures and they felt like they had the better mousetrap.

They had developed something better than was on the market.

A better mousetrap indeed.

By the 1930s, Creek Chub Bait Company lures were the most sought after in the world.

What was the secret?

They caught fish.

They looked good.

They were durable.

They were held a lot of fishing trips.

They had tested them well.

They had developed them and made wonderful product.

The scale finish that they put on the baits to make it look like actual fish gills.

That was Henry Dills' idea.

He done his first scale finishes by spray painting through a bridal veil, a little netting, and then he got that process, patented and later on shared it with the Heddon Company, of which was a company that started it in the early 1900s, like 1902.

And they shared that scale patent and other companies paid them royalties to use that.

In 1906, the Creek Chub Bait Company started production in the basement of George Schulthess' home.

Parts were prepared by the three owners and assembled by one female employee.

By 1916, the company was housed in the old Garrett Hotel annex on Keyser Street.

Creek Chub remained in this buil The workforce grew steadily over the years to meet the demand, a workforce mostly occupied by women whose artistic skills in painting were greatly appreciated by the founders.

One reason there were so many women employed they were railroad wives, a lot of them.

And also there wasn't that much opportunity for women to have jobs in the early days, of course, and if they weren't educated to become a schoolteacher or a nurse, which was practically the only thing ever anybody ever became, why they went to work at the Creek Chub.

I remember one older lady that worked in a dipping room and she was always cleaning up her workstation.

She was one that dipped the baits in the lacquer, more or less the final coat.

And so she was always the last one to leave.

Well, when she would arrive to work in the morning, she would have her good dress shoes on and then she would change into these shoes that she would dip all day in the lacquer and have drippings all over.

So she changed shoes and so I would just grab a pair of her her lacquer shoes or good shoes, and I nail them to the floor and maybe she would be in a restroom and I'd lock her in.

I nail the door shut.

There was a little small opening and how this gal got all that opening because I thought she was banging around in there.

Mel, let me out of here.

Let me out.

and I hear that door pounding.

And then all of a sudden it was silent.

How did Pearl get out of here?

And she had escaped through that little bitty hole.

How she got out, I don't know.

But we had a lot of fun.

It was a good, fun place to work.

Oh, my... One small problem grew along with the success of Creek Chub.

Many letters began to arrive requesting specific baits and what problem could this be?

Well, the letters were from foreign countries in their native language.

Sometimes the Spanish letters particularly got very flowery and they would write a page or two about the personal experiences of catching such and such a fish in such and such a river on a Creek Chub.

Harry, did a lot of special orders for them too, especially in Africa.

Catalogs were an important part of Creek Chub marketing.

This catalog was from 1917 and in 1917 Creek Chub only had three lures.

By 1925, the catalog now had 44 pages with 22 lures.

In addition to lures, they were selling reels and rods and lots of other fishing equipment.

But not only did the catalog have things for sale, they're also information on how to catch bass, how to catch pike, and how to catch walleye and other information for the fishermen.

They continued to develop it.

They were well over 30 lures by the early thirties when this catalog came out with the girl holding the gigantic fish on it.

It's interesting when you look at the back of this catalog, there are Creek Chub artists making their catalogs were not beyond telling a good fish story in their catalog.

Look at the size of that fish.

Do you think that you could really catch one that size?

I think the whole Creek Chub story is great because it was born and bred right here in Garrett, started here and it became one of the five major bait factories in the world.

When you know about Creek Chub of every time you fish for bass, you're using ideas that were developed by Henry Dills.

His very basic ideas he used on the very first lure are still present in every fishing lure today.

Of course, the founders of Creek Chub, along with many of the loyal employees, had no idea that their collaboration would result in creating the most sought after baits among fishing enthusiasts today.

Lure collectors collect from all the different companies.

Some people will collect lures made just in Indiana or Michigan or Iowa, but Creek Chub has come on strong and has become very collectible simply because of the quality.

Because they hold their color, they hold their shine.

And even even when they're 70 years old, they look just like the day they were made.

My husband didn't know they were going to be collectible and he would never believe it any way.

He would never believe the prices.

When the ladies would get a hook embedded with their finger.

There was a doctor right down the street.

His name was Dr. Perry Reynolds, and they would send them down there with this fish bait in their hand and he would remove it and keep the bait.

That was he always told them, if I'm taking it out, I'm keeping the bait.

So I said, Well, he was the first Creek Chub collector in Garrett.

Keep it on that tackle box.

Don't let it slip through your fingers.

In 1998, the Creek Chub Bait Company reunion was formed to give back to the community the gift of keeping Creek Chub memories and connections alive, former employees and collecting enthusiasts, travel into Garrett to attend the reunion from as far away as L.A. and New York, where rare antique lures, magazine ads, personal photographs and stories from days gone by are traded and collected.

A lot of the collectors were fascinated with the small town atmosphere.

They've never been to Indiana before in their life, and they just couldn't believe how people talked to them on the street.

And they still talk about it, you know, and they tell us, you know, don't change a thing.

Just keep it like it was.

We loved it.

You know, the real fans of Creek Chub just love talking to the employees and people that made the baits they're so fascinated with.

They thought it was just a great, fabulous idea.

And far as I know, they'll all be back.

The B&O Railroad shops in Garrett attracted various craftsmen from German and English descent, bringing with them a multitude of skills and experiences.

Inventors and tinkerers by nature, they constantly look for a better, more efficient way of doing something.

They had machine shops.

They could actually build a locomotive - did build locomotives in Garrett.

And so when gasoline engines began to be developed, there were gasoline engines built in Garrett.

And then the Model Gas Engine Company was established by some some folks from Garrett and located in Auburn.

So here you had an engine company making gasoline engine and you had several major buggy manufacturers here in Auburn.

And it was just inevitable that they would get together and start building gasoline powered cars.

The Kiblinger family, the Zimmermann family and the Eckhart family were all building carriages all at the same time, and they all ended up seeing that the automobile was the way to go by the turn of the century.

So they all delved into horseless carriage and motor buggy manufacturing by the early 1900s, and they all competed against one another.

One of the more noteworthy entrepreneurs during this time was Charles Eckhart, a Pennsylvania born Civil War veteran who began his work career making and repairing wheels.

In 1874, he moved to Auburn.

Then he started the Eckhart Carriage Company in March of 1875, when the sons of Charles Eckhart entered the business, they could see very clearly where the carriage business was going.

Frank and his brother Morris started to build an automobile of their own.

They could see the writing on the wall that the auto industry was the up and coming activity again involved.

And so they started experimenting with autos.

And about 1902, they were experimenting with building prototypes of cars, and they thought these are marketable.

So they took some to the Chicago Auto Show in 1903, and they sold 50 and took orders for 50.

So they thought that was quite encouraging and they just flew higher and higher after that.

In February of 1903, with the success of their prototypes, the brothers side business, the Auburn Automobile Company, was producing and selling its own horseless carriages.

Auburn, Indiana, is very rich in automotive heritage.

Very few people realize that of all the cities of Indiana, more cars were manufactured here in DeKalb County and Auburn than any other city in the state of Indiana.

Most of them lost out by about 1915.

And when you're in the middle of World War One, they started dying away.

And after 1915, only the Auburn Automobile Company was left.

They were doing better construction of cars, better quality of product, better marketing, better organization and larger workforce.

So they lived on then for years after.

By 1917, the war caused many problems for small American manufacturers.

Raw materials were scarce and consumers were reluctant to spend money.

The Auburn Automobile Company was not exempt from this atmosphere and chose to close down production.

in 1918.

A group of Chicago financiers bought the company's remaining assets in 1919.

After struggling to keep the company alive, in 1924, the Chicago money dried up, leaving very little hope.

One last attempt was made to rejuvenate the Auburn Automobile Company.

A young man with an outstanding reputation in car sales was invited to Auburn from Chicago - Errett Lobban Cord.

After a tour of the Auburn plant, the financiers offered Cord a top management position and salary.

At a very ambitious 29 years of age, Cord had much more on his mind.

So he bought the company out of the company's profits for two years and these fellows were glad to get their money back out of the business because they they thought that they'd made a bad deal.

It took E.L. Cord with a vision to set this company not on a just a national level, but also on an international level with exporting the cars worldwide, which is what he eventually did.

And he wanted to have a whole family of motor cars.

So he started building the Cord car named after himself, and he bought the Duesenberg Company so he could add the very expensive, luxurious Duesenberg motor cars into his family.

So he had three strata of cars he could aim at affluent, motorists, the richest drivers and car purchasers in the country.

When E.L. Cord took over the company, he told his engineers and architects, “You build me the best car that mankind has ever seen and these cars will never grow old.” The style of these cars will always be fashionable, and it's really a privilege to own one almost overnight, Auburn Automobile developed a reputation for being a company of innovation.

It couldn't compete with the big guys in Detroit, but the company developed a style that distinguished itself far from the rest, proving that E.L. Cord lived up to his motto, “If you can't be big, you have to be different.” I think E.L. Cord, in the period of time he was working, was very different, vastly different from his contemporaries, his peers, Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, Ransome Olds, the people in the auto industry who had built their trade names up into familiar household names.

He was someone who liked to be independent, and that's why he ran an independent company that was not in Detroit.

It was in an out of the way setting.

I think he took the attitude that it doesn't matter where I build these luxury and sports cars, I can do it in a small farm and factory town.

I can do it in Indiana.

I could do it anywhere else.

With the Auburn Automobile Company now running with great power, Cord turned his attention to fulfilling his desires in aviation, which yet again impacted the Auburn community of Aviation, came on the scene in the early 1900s with the Wright brothers.

Young men in DeKalb County were becoming very interested, as were men all over the United States.

They wanted to be fly boys.

One of DeKalb Countys most interesting pilots was Wild Bill Fitzsimmons.

He involved himself in many exciting activities.

He was a test driver for the car manufacturers, a motorcycle racer, a truck driver, a pioneer aviator and stunt flier, an ice sled driver and a commercial pilot.

Bill was a great big affable type of fellow that never grew up.

He was always a boy.

He even said, I always thought that it was true.

But you never know with Bill, he could tell some pretty good stories that he helped the Wright brothers when they would put on shows in Indianapolis.

And he probably did.

He was of the age that he could have done that.

Well, when Bill Fitzsimmons and his buddy reached the Indianapolis Speedway, where the airplane was, the people looked at them and here they were, they dressed in motorcycle gear.

They had the helmet and the goggles and the leather jackets.

And they looked at them and they said, “oh, these guys are part of this air show.” So they let them in the field.

They walked right up to the Wright brothers and examined the plane.

And then they the Wright brothers at that moment said, “well, would you grease the skids for us?” And after they greased the skids, they asked Bill if he would travel with them as an assistant and travel along with them.

Of course, Bill, asked his father.

And it was no dice.

He could not go.

So it was later years when he finally took his first lessons in flying.

You'd see him up in the sky, turning loops, doing barrel rolls and spins and everything else.

And so he just people just start calling and crazy.

Bill Fitzsimmons We hired Bill as our corporate pilot, and he he flew for us for several years.

Bill bought his own airplane in 1926 with the help of the Auburn Foundry founder B.O.

Fink, who was an employer of Fitzsimmons at the time.

Bill kept the plane at the nearest airport, the Bear Field Airport in Fort Wayne.

Many times Fitzsimmons would fly to Auburn for the weekend and he'd land in the field where E.L. Cord eventually built the old Auburn airport.

He taught E.L. Cord how to fly, and E.L. Cord then built the Auburn Airport as his own personal airport.

It was located right behind his house and built a set of buildings, a hangar, an office and such as that, E.L. Cord became involved in the industry of aviation.

He purchased Stinson Aircraft Company and he purchased Lycoming Engine Manufacturing Company and then reformed Canadian Colonial Airways and was a pioneer in aviation and of structuring of airplanes and in the airline industry.

And that turned into American Airlines.

So you can really say that in some ways that a lot of the air transportation industry in the United States started hear from Auburn.

When the Great Depression came along, the country changed its attitude toward E.L. Cords cars.

Americans looked down upon the affluent.

Even the wealthy tried to look poor.

With the economic depression of the 1930s, the car sales were difficult.

Auburn started out the Depression with a trend a tremendous amount of cash reserve and survived because of that cash reserve.

But they didn't have that ability in the 1930s to change with the times, and they probably offered too many different models if they had found a niche and had stuck with it, they may have survived and if they got into World War Two where you had lots of opportunities to use the facilities for other manufacturing, they probably would have survived.

And then Auburn may have been a big industrial center, but I'm not sure Auburn would be the nice little town it is now if that had happened because we didn't want it to be too big.

All told, 21 of America's early motor cars were created in Indiana.

Cars of style and prestige.

Those under the spell of the machines would easily let go of up to $20,000.

Perhaps the proud owners knew something that we didn't back then.

Considering that the Cords, Auburns, and Duesenbergs disappearing from the market in 1937 are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as collector cars, It's become a reunion for all the old car collectors of the world.

And if you are somebody in the car collecting field, you need to be at Auburn because everybody else will be there.

And it's not only the sale, it's the fellowship and the trading of ideas and the trading of parts and the my car is better than yours, bigger than yours, faster than yours.

Mine's the best.

They only made one of mine and they come here every year as a mecca just to meet and talk and share ideas and fellowship and friendship.

And so it's beyond a sale.

It is really, really an antique car reunion.

It's really becoming a place for people to come and see the advances in technology in the automotive and air and transportation fields.

It's quite important that we preserve the aviation history for future generations.

This is a one time go around those these aircraft are around most of them well will be extinct in the future.

And if we save them for future generations, they can see what we flew in today and you come visit the building today, you're seeing a very, very faithful recreation of the main showroom with the same makes of cars from the same era positioned in the same way they were originally.

That kind of historical context, that kind of authentic replication is not available anywhere else because there aren't any other car museums in America located in the auto manufacturers original home.

So when we say that this is the home of the classics, many people say that about the town of Auburn.

But we also saying about the museum, it's very literally true.

You're seeing the cars brought back to the birthplace where they were originally created.

The other museum that'll be built, which is the Victory World War Two Museum that's in southern Belgium.

It's the largest World War Two museum in the world.

And that's going to be moved here.

It's already been purchased by the Dean Kruse Foundation, and that entire museum will be moved to Auburn, Indiana.

And it is awesome.

But many people wonder why there aren't World War Two museums in the United States.

There's one just opened in New Orleans.

But the reason why is most of the equipment was left in Europe, and so most of the museums are over there.

And so it will be a great honor and privilege for us to bring the largest and I think the most desirable World War Two museum here to DeKalb County in Auburn, Indiana.

Auburn, Indiana was founded in 1836 by a land speculator, Wesley Park.

He purchased land in this area and started a town, but not just an ordinary town.

Auburn has the responsibility of being the seat of DeKalb County government.

It was very desirable to have a town that you were going to establish in the 1830s to be the county seat because you'd have a seat of government there.

And so he enlisted John Badlam Howe, for whom the town hall was named as a lawyer, and he also happened to be a member of the General Assembly that decided where county seats were to be.

And so between he and John Badlam Howe Auburn got named as a county seat, the historic courthouse square encompassed everything anyone needed.

The square is the heart of the county, especially the courthouse.

Birth certificates, marriage licenses, divorce, death certificates.

If anything important is going on, it most likely involves the square.

One of the key items is the DeKalb County Free Fall fair, which since 1907 has been a street fair around the square.

And all of the concessions and the eating stands and the rides and the the games that are set up around the square.

And very traditional, if you're an old time DeKalb County resident, you go to the fair.

My my mom and dad went to the fair.

They were dating and they took me to the fair right after I was born in a baby buggy.

And I think they're probably gone to every fair now for for 60 years.

We took our kids to the fair.

Many memories are kept alive for those coming home to Auburn by preserving downtown buildings such as the Auburn Hotel and the timeless Auburn City Hardware.

It was established in 1850 as the Pioneer Hardware and has been located on that site on Main Street in Auburn for 150 years.

And yet you go in and you think some of the merchandise is that old too.

It is just one of the last of the old fashioned hardwares anywhere in Indiana.

And you can go in and buy two nails if you want them.

You can go in and buy stovepipe.

It's just an incredible place to go.

And much of the merchandise has there for 50, 60 years, but that's what makes it such an interesting place.

The Auburn Hotel was established as the Swineford House in the 1870s and the main passenger railroad was the B&O and their station was at Auburn Junction.

So they had like a livery coach or like a stagecoach that would bring people from Auburn Junction about two miles into the Swineford House.

And they would stay there.

Many salesmen would come to town, would have what were called sample rooms and they would want those to show their merchandise there then and I think 1928 it was remodeled and made into the Auburn Hotel and was really a first class very nice hotel and that era when the Lakeshore and Michigan Southern Railroad was built, some investors established the town of Waterloo City on the railroad south of Uniontown, the town apparently inherited its name from the Napoleonic Battle of Waterloo.

Historically, there were several industries located there of interest.

There was a cigar factory in Waterloo.

The Revere Drug company was a major supplier of herbs and various medicinal items in the 1880s, up until probably 1920s.

Local people would dig ginseng and raise various kinds of herbs and dry them, and then they would take them to Revere and Revere then would package them in bulk and sell them to apothecaries and drugstores around the country.

DeKalbs history and communications started with the U.S.

Postal system in 1839.

The first post office was established in Auburn.

Soon, other offices were established in various towns and mail was received and dispatched by rail.

In the 1850s, as many as 50 trains per day stopped in DeKalb County.

Then came the press.

Their history can be traced back to the 1860s and ‘70s where the Higley Press published several magazines in DeKalb.

Telegraph Service began in 1876.

The first telephone was a private line set up by a hardware merchant to connect his two stores in Auburn and Garrett.

Not long after, two telephone companies operated in Auburn.

And then came radio and television.

WINT first telecast on September 29th, 1954, from the old bus station building on South Wayne Street in Waterloo with a staff of 17 people.

The Waterloo studio was the size of a two car garage.

Very simple.

All local broadcasts were live.

Some might remember Jack Powell as “Cactus Jack” and other programs that aired were Dance Date and Don Hoylman in the Weather Acccording to Hoyle.

The studio was in Waterloo, but the business offices were on the 19th floor of the Lincoln Tower in Fort Wayne.

In 1956.

The station was sold to the Indiana Broadcasting Company.

In March of 1957, the Corinthian Broadcasting Company was formed to operate the station.

At this time, the studios were moved to West State Street and Fort Wayne, and the call letters were changed to WANE-TV.

Along with the advent of the train, came the opportunity for families to seek out recreation and find a way to get out of the summer heat.

They would get off the train depot in Hamilton and they'd walk down through Hamilton and we had a launch where we owned an area where we had our boats shuttle people back and forth to cold springs.

Straddling the DeKalb County line is Hamilton, Indiana's Cold Springs resort.

The attraction, cold, sparkling spring water, which flows from the many natural springs along the lake's shoreline.

It all started with Simpson Watkins from New York State.

He purchased 96 acres along the east shore of Hamilton Lake back in 1870.

Soon, there were church picnics being held, family outings, camping, fishing and cottages started to appear.

Most of the cottages were very rustic.

They were just glorified ice chanties with outhouses in back and that's all people wanted.

And it was just the right little bit better than camping out.

And a lot of the people that stayed were very affluent.

I mean, people would bring their maids up to their cottages for the summer.

And, you know, this was, you know, just as good as it got for these people.

In 1898, a small hotel was opened to accommodate the rush of vacationers - beaches, bowling, dancing, nonstop-family fun blossomed.

It was very a very upscale hotel in its day because in rural areas they didn't have electricity or sewer or lights.

They didn't have anything in this.

This place did.

And we had 25 rooms in the in the old hotel.

And the dance hall was built in or opened in 1898 as a dance hall.

And we've been having so we were we've been having dances over there for 102 years.

They put an orchestra, they might be here for, you know, half the summer, you know, a couple of weeks at a time.

And they would play that one orchestra would play every night, and they would put my family would put them up in a hotel and feed them.

And there was a bunch of guys.

I mean, you might have 25 guys in an orchestra, and they had a lot of fun around here in those days because you had all the kids and people in the park and the band was all living here at the same time and all activities going on.

And a lot of the older people, when they remember the good old days around here, that some of the women anyway start talking about the guys that were in the bands.

The Cold Springs Dance Hall became a very important stop for recording artists, especially in the 1950s and sixties.

The bands needed to sell records.

They had to get exposure at Cold Springs because of the big draw of kids who bought those records.

Also, WOWO Radio in Fort Wayne would broadcast for our shows from Cold Springs every Saturday night to listeners as far away as Pittsburgh.

In the early sixties, entertainers arriving in Fort Wayne would appear on WANE-TV's Dance Date, much like American Bandstand, before performing at Cold Springs.

It's funny because when I listen to the bands that we have now, playing the old time, ‘50s, 60s, ‘70s rock and roll, I think I remember the bands that made all those records when they were playing here.

I would say playing “Hang On Sloopy.” I remember, you know, when the McCoys played here, the Yardbirds played here two weeks later.

They went to England and some of them formed Led Zeppelin and they were just there was just a whole plethora of talent that went through here for six generations.

The Watkins family continues to keep the summer vacation concept alive in northeastern Indiana from dancing the oldies to the traditional like atmosphere.

Cold Springs Resort stands strong.

The Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Rail Road joined with the Logansport and Northern Indiana Railroad on July 31st, 1856, and filed the plat of the Village of Butler.

The name of the town changed many times initially, but most likely the name Butler originated from Charles Butler, who was a director of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Rail Road at the time.

It was built through the town.

Butler was my hometown, an idyllic town, a kind of a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post type of town.

I have the fondest memory.

It's just a this was a little old place to grow up.

I have fond memories of the Butler Theater.

They had matinees on Saturday afternoon, all for kids.

And they'd be they'd be cowboy shows, Sky King, The Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, and the theater would be full of kids and they cheer and then theyd groan if the good guy got hit.

$0.17 to go to show.

And your parents would get rid of you for about 2 hours by give you a quarter of $0.17 for the show, a nickel for a bag of popcorn and have a few cents left to go across to Mr. Hunkers grocery store and get some people candy on the way home.

The Butler Company established in 1888, made and sold wind engines or windmills until May of 1997.

The company made hand pumps, pneumatic water pumps, storage tanks, feeders, even bicycles.

However, the company gained a worldwide reputation with their windmills.

Windmills were used primarily to pump water on the farm, and they were.

They worked great when the wind was blowing.

And but most farmers would keep a tank.

They have water on hand.

So the wind was blowing and you still had water.

In the 1950s, when electric power pumps came along, the Butler Company searched for locations where this technology was not yet established and they survived by exporting windmills, by rail all over the world.

Tess and White made very high quality leather jackets and different leather products, and they were located on Broadway and would get in big hides, cowhides and then would cut it into pieces and sell it and make leather jackets out of it.

You'd go in there and you just had that really unique smell of leather.

And even walking by, you handle leather.

Then Mr. Tess was he was in his 90s when I knew him.

He lived up on the very north edge of town in a nice house, but he walked to work every morning and in his 90s he'd go in the tavern and have a shot of whiskey and then he would go and work all day and about 4-4:30 he'd leave, go to the tavern, get another shot of whiskey and walk home.

They always said, That's why he lived so long with those two shots of whiskey.

Kept him going all that time.

When I got to law school.

I could have gone where I wanted to.

I could have gone to Chicago, could have gone to New York.

But I chose to come back to DeKalb County because I like it.

Here is a good place to raise a family here in DeKalb County.

We're here.

We've always been here.

We like it here.

And were going to stay here.

There is so much pleasure in Indiana that slips by without being enjoyed and appreciated.

Without warning, little moments of history or a childhood memory will be upon you.

Take the time to go back home.

You just might find one of those moments waiting for you.

Going home.

DeKalb County on PBS 39 is made possible in part by a grant from the DeKalb County Community Foundation supporting programs for DeKalb County citizens that address today's needs and prepare for tomorrow's challenges.