The Indiana University Center in Kokomo, 1958-1960

Seiberling Mansion, c1890

Don and I enrolled at the Indiana University Center in the fall of 1958. The Center, located in the old Seiberling mansion on west Sycamore Street was a striking Victorian edifice, built in 1890 with an interior of magnificant wood paneled walls, fireplaces in every room, and a large carriage house in back. It is now owned by the Howard County Historical Society, and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some of the guys on campus, Dick Conwell, 2nd from left, 1960

The Center became our hangout and social outlet for the next two years. Student volunteers converted the cavernous basement into a club house. Many joined in cleaning the three connected rooms, painting walls, one with a mural, and filling the place with an eclectic collection of furniture. Thereafter we had our own place to go between classes, of which most were scheduled on weekdays during the evening. It was a popular place where students could be found in a penny-ante poker game, or lounging on couches, talking, reading and studying. We even had a couple parties down there on Saturday nights. The IU Center was a friendly, informal place to start and restart our college careers.

Ed Raab, Don and Sarah Raab on Campus

Don signed up for business courses, and eventually received undergraduate and master degrees in that major. I was starting out and took basic core subjects, but gravitated almost immediately toward math and science. Most of the students at the Center seemed to be business majors, but I was the exception. That was because I had no idea what I wanted to major in or be when I grew up. The only thing certain was my complete disinterest in business. I signed up for composition, literature, algebra, chemistry, and German, but wisely dropped the German after the first semester - no talent for languages.


Campus When John Kennedy Stopped by, 1960

Seiberling Mansion today

Don liked business classes, and became involved and happy for the first time in several years. He started dating a girl named Susan, and it was about then that he got a job driving a late-night delivery truck for the Cuneo Press. I don’t remember much about the job other than it was a graveyard shift, and he backed into a gas pump at a filling station one night. I don’t recall the incident as causing a fire or anything dramatic - mainly a bit embarrassing for him.

John Kennedy on Campus, 1960

We worked through the summers and signed up for college classes each fall. The most memorable event at the IU Center for me was when John Kennedy came to town in the spring of 1960. We heard that his motorcade would pass by the Center on its way to a rally, and the student body went all-out to decorate the campus with banners and posters in the hope that he would stop. It worked. I had an 8mm movie camera and captured the event for posterity.



Ed Raab meets John Kennedy, 1960

Dad steered us toward a union job early in the summer 1959. It was on a highway construction site on US 35, heading east toward Greentown. A short section just out of Kokomo had been duel-laned, and we got the job of laying sod in the medium. It was hot and sweaty toil. Eight or ten of us young men were dropped off along a section each morning where the cut sod had been delivered. The strips, rolled and stacked, measured two by four feet each and weighed fifty or sixty pounds. We’d unroll a strip, grab two fistfuls of grassy blades, lug the sod to the desired area, drop it in place and fall to our knees to maneuver it into position - one after another for ten hours a day. Several workers were let go because they couldn’t keep up the pace. That particular job was completed in two weeks and we had to go back to the union hall and sign for another job. Luckily we became self-employed before another position came available.

Jim Caine meet John Kennedy, 1960

We became house painters. Don and I had mastered a working knowledge of painting from our experience at “Buckingham Palace“, and added expertise by painting our house on Sycamore Street after negotiating with Dad to trade the paint-job for a fishing trip to Minnesota. .We enlisted our friend, Lamar Hammer, to help. It took us most of the summer to turn our respectable white house into a shockingly yellow warning sign. Dad had supplied the paint, one called “Canary Yellow”, but we soon referred to it as “city yellow”, as it closely resembled the tone used on barriers seen at construction sites, stop signs and highway warning signs. That moniker persisted all the years the house bore that particular coat of paint.

Ed Raab, 1960

I don’t recall exactly how we got into the business, but our first job was to paint the house of the parents of a college friend. I had graduated high school with Ed Raab, but did not get to know him until we met at the IU Center. Don and I became good friends with Ed’s family - his parents, and three sisters and younger brother. His father, Mr. Clarence Raab, offered Don and me one hundred dollars to paint the family home, a modest house on east Mulberry Street. We were experienced and knew preparation was the most important part of the job so we spent considerable time chipping loose paint and cleaning the boards. We finished the job in four days. Mr. Raab was pleased with our work and got us several more jobs during the summer. Also, it didn’t hurt that we worked real cheap.

The next house was a huge two and a half story behemoth that occupied most of the lot it sat on. Our extension ladder barely reached the eaves as we clutched the slow oscillator with one hand while working with the other. The old sailor adage of “one hand for the ship and one hand for yourself” still comes to mind when I think of that high altitude sway job. We spent more than two long weeks completing that job. Our price was probably a third of what a professional quoted, and the woman gratefully gave us a check for more than we had quoted.

 

An old guy, well into his seventies, requested a bid on the eaves and windows only, not the siding. Don quoted thirty-five dollars. It was a cheap trick, and the old fellow knew it. He told us later that everybody who had quoted the job misjudged the amount of work. He had the sides painted one year and the windows and eaves the next. The place was only one story but had several windows on each side. The eaves were long, projecting over the side of the house three or four feet. Each window had many panes, maybe a dozen or more. I don’t remember needing to caulk many, but it was time consuming to paint them, as it required great care to avoid getting paint on the glass. The old guy bragged that he had had the house built in the 1920’s and had paid the workers a ridiculously low wage - like eight or ten cents an hour. Don and I laughed about the irony, figuring that we were earning about the same rate as those who built it in 1920.



We did quality work and did it at a reasonable price, so we were in constant demand - one job led to the next. Some came to us through friends and others through people affiliated with the Moose Lodge. Advertising was never needed as we were able to get jobs by word-of-mouth. We worked two or three summers at that endeavor, between 1959 and 1961, earning money toward the coming college year.