4. VERSIONS – Simon Trefzger Jr. and Rising Sons
Jared Grabb “Prison Bars (Middle America Version)”
You are listening to the sounds of Middle America.
4A
My father, George Bauer, grew up in a mechanic’s family. For more than a decade of his childhood, he could be found working in his father’s garage. That was every day after school and a full shift on Saturdays. My grandfather had put him to work without pay since he was six in order to (quote) “keep him out of trouble.” George often grumbled to himself that my grandfather had just needed a work maid and a tool fetching lackey to make him feel superior. On more than one occasion, my father had silently looked on as his uncle reprimanded my grandfather for wasting his son’s youth in daily labors.
My father was learning a lot, though, certainly far more than I picked up fetching tools for him years later. At ten years old, my father was already in charge of all oil changes, grease jobs, lawnmower repair, blade sharpening, and brake job disassembly: this was on top of organization and cleaning. Yes, George may have had the grunt jobs, but he was paying attention. He admired his father’s skills in the shop and the shop’s reputation around town. George aspired to do what my grandfather had done and continued to do every day.
On this particular day, while cleaning, George came across a tool that he hadn’t encountered before. My grandfather was known to build his own tools when needed. He hadn’t thought of himself as an inventor so much as a working man in need of an easier way in the day to day. If a tool could be built to save time and effort, you can bet it got built.
Beyond saving time, automatic transmissions were gaining popularity and only the big guys could afford the specialized tools needed to do adjustments. In order to retain his business, my grandfather had built his own tools and developed his own methods for completing the work.
Still, for George to come across a tool that he did not recognize was unusual. Like I said, my father was at the garage nearly every day fetching tools. He knew his dad’s tools. So, he had to ask.
“Hey, Dad. What’s this long stick hanging on the wall?”
His father didn’t even turn or raise an eye.
“Describe it to me,” he replied.
George called back saying, “It’s a long wooden stick, like from an old broom. It’s hanging from a washer and then there’s a key attached to the other end.”
His father continued working and called back, “Your grandpa left that here.”
As a blacksmith, my great grandfather had been a builder and fixer in his own right: the mechanic of an earlier time. While in middle age, my great grandfather might have been quiet and stern like my dad’s father, but in his later years great grandfather’s quietness had become accompanied by an orneriness and a sly smile.
George hadn’t been so lucky with my grandfather. He was still as focused and stoic as ever.
Even on the day that my father had shipped out to the army, his dad had remained detached. No words of warning, advice, or encouragement were passed between men as George parted ways with his parents, sisters, and youngest sibling, James. George had been drafted but had volunteered instead in order to get officer training and less time overseas.
Decades later my father would tell me that he was hurt by his dad’s lack of vulnerability in this moment. My grandfather had fought in Europe during World War II. Now, his son was shipping off to fight in Vietnam, and he had nothing to say?
Today in the garage was different, though. As George looked on expectantly, waiting for further explanation, his father finally turned with his expressionless face and said, “You use it to unlock an elephant’s trunk.”
As my father assessed his dad, a smile finally started to creep across the eternally dour face.
“You take the key end and use the stick to shove it up the elephant’s rear. Once in, you give it a good turn and voila!”
A moment later, George joined his father in cracking a smile before they both returned to the silent labors of their day.
Jared Grabb “Roots in Gasoline” (Middle America Version)
4B
Simon Trefzger was a potter. He lived in a small village in the state of Baden in southwestern Germany. This village, Wehr (like Vee Are), is and was located just 20 miles east of France and 5 miles north of Switzerland. The village remains dominated by two old families, one of which being the Trefzgers. The Trefzger name, coming from trefze, a bramble found in the nearby Black Forest, populates village history as far back as 1333.
In Wehr, Simon had a farm on the river, where he likely gathered his clay and timber for his kiln fires. He also had 10 children with his wife, Juliana. Their oldest son, Joseph, grew up in the pottery studio and learned the trade of a master potter. With the family business claimed, the other male children would become a shoemaker, a plasterer, a sawmill operator, and the 9th child, Simon Trefzger, Jr., a land surveyor.
Junior had been born on October 16, 1831, seventeen years after his oldest brother, Joseph. This was also just 8 months before the June Rebellion in France and only 15 months after the July Revolution. Both French events had been inspiring fights against the aristocracy and toward democratic values. They sent shockwaves through all of Europe, including Baden.
By the time Junior was 11 years old, Joseph had taken over their father’s pottery business. Meanwhile, the region was plagued with crop failures, unemployment, social unrest, and political repression.
At 17, Simon Trefzger, Jr. witnessed more turmoil at home. After yet another revolution took hold in France in 1848, peasants in Baden began burning the mansions of the aristocracy. Revolutionaries in the state then fought to overthrow Grand Duke Leopold. The middle and lower classes were pushing for a bill of rights, universal male suffrage, popularly elected representation, a new constitution, and the unification of German states.
An abundance of rebellions and revolutions then spread over all of Europe during the course of the year in what is now referred to as the Spring of Nations or the People’s Spring.
The fight in Baden found the Trefzger family on both sides, with Franz Joseph Trefzger leading the revolutionaries alongside instigator Friedrich Hecker and Wolfgang Trefzger speaking out as a member of the mayor’s council in support of the aristocracy. When the Prussian army decided to back the Grand Duke in 1849, the revolution came to an end, and revolutionaries fled south to Switzerland and overseas to America. This American migration happened to include a couple of Junior’s friends, Meinrad and Catharina Berger.
As Baden returned to its old ways, Junior began courting the woman who would become his wife. On April 11, 1853, Simon Trefzger, Jr. married Katharina Scherr (like share). It was a dual ceremony with Junior’s brother Johann marrying Maria Weber (like Veber) on the same day. Most of the village attended the ceremonies at St. Martin’s Church. Junior and Katharina would have their first child before the end of the year.
Soon after the wedding, word came back from the Bergers that they had landed in what they referred to as the “metropolis” of the new world, Cincinnati, Ohio. The city already held a population of between 115,000 and 160,000 people. There was a large German population there and plenty of opportunities. Junior and several of his siblings began discussing the international move. Junior also began studying baking, as surveying was proving to be a struggle professionally.
Sadly, 1854 began with the death of Simon Trefzger, Sr., and the passing of the family patriarch was a revolution of its own. Joseph turned the family business toward producing stove tiles and built a new commercial building to meet the community’s needs in an industrial upturn. Junior and Katharina had a second child, and with two of Junior’s other siblings, finally decided to emigrate.
With a permit from the Grand Duke’s local representative, the group traveled into France, boarding a ship to New York from Le Havre (like Luh Ovra) on April 29, 1855.
After 27 days traveling through France, 30 days in the steerage of a ship, and more days by train in America, all with two children under the age of 3, the Trefzger family finally arrived.
Blessed be the great metropolis of Cincinnati.
Denim Dragon “Father Soil”
4C
Simon Trefzger, Jr. was a baker. But, maybe Cincinnati wasn’t quite yet the blessing that he had sought.
While the family lived at 71 East McMicken Avenue, Junior was initially unable to find work as a baker or as a surveyor, likely due to his inability to speak English. He wound up working on the docks of the Ohio River and for a cigar manufacturer instead. He eventually did acquire a baking position at Schneider’s Bakery on Walnut Street but quickly left for a more lucrative position 40 miles north in the town of Oxford, Ohio. The family remained in Cincinnati while Junior traveled by stagecoach between work and home. Katharina worked from home as well, sewing for a tailor, in order to supplement their income.
In 1858, the family received a break when brother Anton, who had moved on to the German community in St. Louis, Missouri and then north to Peoria, Illinois, sent word of the need for a baker in his new home. The family relocated, and Simon, Jr. briefly worked as a baker in the nearby town of Pekin before landing a job in Peoria at Frank Field & Company.
After three years of baking in the area and learning the people and the land, Trefzger’s Bakery was opened. Junior made a home with his family above the bakery. At this time, it was located in Peoria on the north side of Fulton Street, halfway between Adams Street and Washington Street.
The bakery’s opening coincided with the presidential inauguration of the Illinois man Abraham Lincoln and consequently the secession of seven southern states that formed the Confederacy. Lincoln had campaigned on banning the monstrous practice of slavery in all U.S. territories. The southern slave-holding states saw this as a first step by the Republican Party toward abolishing slavery, the foundation on which their economies were built. Civil war followed.
Simon Trefzger, Jr. being no stranger to rebellions and revolutions was unphased. As such, he quickly acquired a contract to provide breads for Lincoln’s Union troops based at Birket’s Hollow, now Glen Oak Park. In this first year of the war, the Union had 7500 troops based at the top of the park at Camp Lyon (like Leon). In the following year, Camp Peoria was added near the bottom of the current park grounds. This means that there were more than half as many troops in town as civilians.
Junior worked long days seven days a week in order to meet the demand. By 1864, he had made enough money to purchase the building that housed his family and his bakery. However, as the war ended, he found that these labors had taken their toll on his body, leaving him with sores covering his legs. Knowing of healing springs and a trusted family doctor back in Germany, Simon Trefzger, Jr. set up two employees to keep the business operating during his leave. Then, he, his wife, and now five children traveled back across the ocean.
Arriving back in Wehr in 1867, Junior took up work at a notions store, that is a sewing accessories store, and the family moved into the apartment upstairs. The children would assist their father with stocking before and after school in order that he stay off his feet as much as possible.
Before Junior could completely heal, the Franco-Prussian War broke out, pulling the independent southern German states into the fight alongside the Prussia-controlled northern states. Officials in Baden were unwilling to allow a return to the United States during a time of war, and as such, the Simon Trefzger, Jr. family did not make it back to Peoria until 1872. There, they found their bakery storefront boarded up, without employees, and without customers.
Keeping his focus on the future, Simon, Jr. purchased the two-story building on the corner of Main and Monroe, where he then built a new Trefzger’s Bakery. Eight years later, the business allowed him to purchase the residence at 108 South Monroe Street, and six years after that, his son Charles was brought on as a partner.
By 1890, Simon Trefzger, Jr. was able to retire from the bakery work and merely manage city real estate that he had acquired over the years. His son, Charles Trefzger then took over the business, followed by his son, Charles Joseph, and then Charles Joseph’s sons, Joseph and Thomas. The bakery eventually left the Trefzger family’s ownership when purchased by Jeff and Martha Huebner in 1993, but Joseph continued on as a consultant for years. Trefzger’s Bakery stands today as a 158-year-old German scratch bakery in Peoria Heights, Illinois.
Jared Grabb “The Potter’s Son” (Acoustic Demo)
4D
Upon returning from Vietnam, my father found himself disenchanted. My grandfather had been impressed by his son’s ability to rise in the military ranks and as such pushed for George to make it his career. After all, in a family where no one had seen anything higher than a high school diploma, how could one expect anything better than a job as an officer in the military? My father had already been kicked out of college once for his low high school grades and lack of an ACT score.
But, George didn’t see it that way. After all, his father hadn’t needed to make a career of the military.
And, upon return, George had married the woman who would be my mother, Judy. She was a sweet Christian pacifist that he had been courting throughout his tour. She had been her high school’s valedictorian, and George believed her to be the most brilliant person that he had ever met. Despite my grandfather’s wishes, my father had come to adopt her anti-war beliefs. Upon my father’s return from the war, she transferred to an Illinois school where he could enroll in an engineering program. My mother highly valued education and encouraged my father to do the same.
He was already on the path, though. While in the service, he had sensed the confidence of the college-educated officers around him. George had desired that confidence. Plus, the GI Bill was now available to provide him with much needed financial backing.
The two of them moved into a small-town trailer home. My father made money while working overnight shifts at a gas station or at a nearby country and western bar. He hated country music, but part-time bar money is better than most.
George didn’t have a garage at this time, but he kept up his childhood skills working on a 1960 Ford Falcon that he’d drag race at the town’s strip when he could. With little money to spare, all of the parts were from junk and he was doing the work in his front yard. For the love, he kept at it.
Even with this love of fast cars, my father did end up selling the couple’s T-Bird to his father soon after marriage in favor of a more reliable vehicle. My parents couldn’t let themselves be caught missing class while sitting on the side of a road somewhere...
Eventually, my father walked away with an engineering degree while my mother came away with a degree in math and computer programming. After a few different starter jobs, they both wound up working for Peoria’s yellow and black manufacturing giant, Caterpillar.
By the time I was born, George and Judy had mortgaged a family home with a two-car garage. George no longer went drag racing on the weekend like he initially did with my older brother. I still grew up helping him wire-brush Jaguar heads and sandblast pistons, but I never really grew to understand my father’s love of automobiles. Living on the road as a musician, I’ve probably spent more time in autos than most, so I can change out a spare tire and keep my fluids full. But, that’s as far as my knowledge or attention goes.
My parents both wound up going back for further degrees later in life, with George making a far better living as a managing engineer than he would have made in the military. As a serious and stern patriarch, he was inhabited by a bit of his father, but he also made sure to make quality time with my brothers and me.
As my grandfather entered his later days and George gained perspective on how he had been raised, a dull pain began to come to the surface. The T-Bird had never been paid for; the childhood labor had been taken for granted; and with my uncle James experiencing a far older and more relaxed version of their father, James had gotten to be more of a buddy than a disciplined employee.
Overlooking my father’s hardships, my grandfather had seen it all as having come too easy for his eldest son. There was most likely jealousy at play in one or more parties, and my grandfather never let George know the love that was given to James. James was the one who grew up with his parents attending his sporting events, and in later life, James was the one who went on the family fishing trips.
All these years later, I don’t necessarily think my grandfather was a bad guy. I am grateful, however, that my father forged his own path. A son cannot help but be a version of his father, but as the son rises, he becomes the one who decides which version that will be.
Jared Grabb “Movies with No Camera”