By Staff
In looking at a 1924 souvenir book, I found a lot of interesting things about old Dowagiac.
There was a picture of a young Harry H. Whiteley, who was a state senator and publisher of the Dowagiac Daily News.
Also, a picture of the old Elks Temple building on S. Front Street when it had a balcony all the way across the front of the second floor.
There was a nice little written piece in the book about Earl Keyser, who at the time had 21 years experience in carpentry.
He started out as a worker and foreman for Ed Paxon before branching out for himself.
He was at the time building homes for Lyle Wooster, Verne Redner, Ross Buckles and Bert Armstrong.
I can remember as a boy back in the '30s when he finished off the second story of my friend Gene Biek's house, making it into nice bedrooms.
In the souvenir book was a picture of William Biek, who at the time was in the jewelry business with Joseph Krziza.
Joseph Gebhard also worked for them.
I remember Bill Biek and his brother Mike had a small factory in the second story of a building on Pennsylvania Avenue. They made fishing bobbers and other things.
I also remember Joe Gebhard running the Biek Yard on W. Railroad Street.
Seeing Joe's picture brought back a memory to Old Charlie.
It was when I retired in 1984 from the State of Michigan. Our traveling friends from Niles, Gilbert and Bonnie Caulder, Peg and I decided to get passports and go to Europe for our first big vacation trip.
Boy, we had trouble right from the get-go. My wife didn't have a legal birth certificate, just a validation paper from the hospital where she was born signed by the Coloma doctor who delivered her. This caused us a trip to Berrien County to get her a legal birth certificate.
And this was just beginning, because when we went to apply for our passports, I found out my birth certificate was no good as it was what was called a delayed certificate due to Dr. George Herkimer's laxness.
I was born in 1930 and never had a birth certificate until 1941. People at the passport office said if I could find someone who knew me and knew when I was born and would swear this before a notary that would be sufficient.
Luck would have it when I ran into my friend Joe Gebhard over at Village Market on Front Street. He agreed to sign my paper for me and it was notarized by my friend Joyce Bashaw at the Springsteen car dealership.
Well, we got our passports, but they ended up "virgin" passports. As we were making plans for a nice overseas trip, it was when the terrorists were hitting the foreign airports and our two wives said forget it, we're not flying anywhere except to Las Vegas, which we did several times with the Caulders.