William Max Seidel

June 24, 2012

Peg asked me to say something about my dad and I can do that.

This is Richard talking about William Max Seidel

He was like my grandson who is named after him.   He is smart and likes to talk.    Our grandson asks Leona…   “Lets talk awhile”….   “What do you want to talk about?” Leona says.   He says.   “Pick a category”.    So if he gets a category he can talk for a long time.    But my dad was pretty smart too.    He knew a lot of different categories to talk about.   

He never did go to the army but he did go to the CMTC which is the Civilian Military Training Corps.   It was in Battle Creek, Michigan.   It might have been 2 or 3 weeks.     He would talk about his experiences at CMTC till I got tired of it after a while.    

He started out as a chicken farmer.   He would send his chicken’s white eggs to a New York market.   We probably had 400 or 500 chickens.  Every chicken had a band on its leg and Dad kept track of which chicken was laying eggs.   He would write down the numbers and it took him a long time.   Even if it took him all day he would still do it.   But during the depression they couldn’t afford to send them to NY anymore so he went out of business as far as his chickens were concerned.    The depression was his business misfortune.

He was pretty handy.  He would rather work a half a day than go to town to fix something.    He was more handy with machinery and tools than I was cause he could do  things so quick that someone else wouldn’t even get started fixing it.    He was a hard worker.    Only problem was that he couldn’t utilize his time very easily.    I would want to go to the field to farm and he would still be working on the tractor or something or the other.  

I suppose most of my siblings remember him having this loud voice all over the neighborhood calling the cows or horses or when he got mad.  (at me).    But most of his tantrums were about his tools or his equipment.  He had a good hollering voice.     But he was nice to work with.  He was a hard worker and he knew how to do things faster, better and quicker than anybody else.    I would work pretty hard with him most of the time.    He never talked deep about anything with me except when he took me to the Y for me to go into the army and he wept before I was picked up.    He told me later when he was older and in Florida that he still remembered that and that he was afraid he wouldn’t see me again.    Lucky me,  I made it back.    Sometimes I used my intuition and sometimes I used my training but it got me back.        

This is Dick Seidel on Historic Railroad Avenue