Interview with Ike Jenkins

Retired from Jefferson Proving Ground

Date of Interview: 12:00 pm Thursday, December 13, 2007

Interviewer is Mike Moore

Side A:

     I was born in Milltown, Indiana June 14, 1926.  We moved to Madison in 1932, I believe.  My dad was the poultry-man at the Madison State Hospital. I went to school at North Madison and graduated in 1944 and went straight into the Navy. I came back to Madison after two years and attended Hanover College for one year in 1946. I worked on a farm at Pendleton, Indiana which is about one hundred miles north of Madison.

     I was just doing regular farm work and I started going with Betty Nicklaus in 1947.  She was a senior in school and I was a freshman at Hanover. We new each other because we went to the same high school. Our first date was at a fraternity dance at Hanover college. Well I guess I could say that she wouldn’t marry me unless we stayed in Madison. The people that I worked for at Pendleton were both sixty five years old. They said they would give me the farm, 120 acres up there, good farm, “lock stock and barrel”, and they would move into town and she wouldn’t move. Her dad was here. Her mother died when she was thirteen and she took care of her dad William Nicklaus ever since. She did all the “house cleaning”, cooking for her dad during the few years in between there. I gave up the farm and married her. We had two kids, a boy and a girl, Jeffrey Kent and Jill Renee. I wasn’t too smart in school, because I didn’t study, but I was pretty smart in choosing Betty, because she was the prettiest one in North Madison and  the smartest in her class.

     Our kids turned out good. Jeffrey is a, was a hospital administrator and Jill is a school teacher in Kentucky. Jeff has two kids. Lucas Kent and Aaron Renee. My daughter has three kids, Trent Douglas Woodward, Trevor Woodward, and Whitney Renee Woodward. All the grandkids has gone thru college. Lucas is an engineer, aaron is a Doctor in Psychology, Trent is a coordinator for the city, I can’t remember, he works at North Vernon, Trevor is still going to school. Whitney has graduated and she is a teacher in Special Reading.  She is working at Vevay.

Mike Moore:  what did you do when you quit the farm and got married?

Ike: I came back and went to Irvin’s and worked as a “Grease Monkey”.

Mike Moore:  what was Irvin’s?

Ike: It was a farm store. It also had Hudson cars. We did the repair and rebuilding of cars. I greased and lubricated the cars and changed the tires. When I wasn’t busy, I helped put tools together helping Herdy Bumen.

Mike Moore: You worked with Herdy Bumen?

Ike: Yes.

Mike Moore:  Was that in North Madison, or downtown in Madison.

Ike: No, It was down town Madison, right across from the Irvin Feed Store, the big building there. I worked there and I think for sixty cents per hour. Then I finally got a Job at Jefferson Proving Ground.  Walter Layton worked out there at the water plant. He wanted me to come and put in for a job out there. He made it strictly---, he said you never will know how long you will be working. He made that point.  You may be working 30 days or you may be working 30 years, but he wanted to make sure that I knew that before I quit this job.

    I went out there, after we got married, I think it was December of 1950. I started in as a Water and Sewage Trainee. It took three years to be qualified to be an operator. After getting that the guy that I worked for was Lucky Ferrar. His name was Shrunk Ferrar, Who was the one that fell off the bridge when they were building it and they called him Lucky after that.

Mike Moore:  Which bridge was that? The Madison One?

Ike: The Madison Bridge.  He was the only one that fell off. He fell into kind of a sand pile which helped him.

Mike Moore:  Is that spelled like Ferrar?

Ike:  No. It was Farrer.  He was my supervisor. After a few years, I got to be a leader.  I was over Water and Sewage. I worked my way up and learned the trade in both water and sewage. I learned to repair all the water lines and sewer lines and things like that. I worked my way up to a supervisor under Lucky Farrer.

Mike Moore:  You wouldn’t have a photograph of him would you?  It is just interesting, a guy fell off a bridge.

Ike:  No. I don’t believe I do. He lived at Lawrenceburg and he drove in from Lawrenceburg. He was really good. He taught me a lot and he made me a supervisor, I guess because I was a fairly good worker. Under him it was more like an assistant supervisor I would say. Over the Water and Sewage, The labor pool, (custodians,laborers, tractor operators) .

     We were laid off several times.  I was never laid of, but I got cut back in salary.  I had to go back to the water plant operator. I don’t know two or three times. I would lose my supervisor pay, but then I would come back, they would re-hire me.

Mike Moore: You mean you stayed on when the Proving Ground closed after Korea?

Ike:  I worked straight through from 1950 to 1981.

Mike Moore:  My Goodness! You mean you worked right on thru base closure.

Ike:  Yes. We got down to fifty at one time. I did water and sewage then I started helping the plumbers, electricians and stuff like that. All fifty of us worked together. They really did a good job.

Mike Moore: Did you ever know about that cannon that stood at the Courthouse for several years?

Ike:  Nobody knows where it went?

Mike Moore: No We know it went out to the New Veterans’ Cemetery, But Jim Griffith told me that when He was county commissioner in 1947, that JPG donated that cannon to the County and he put it on the front lawn in front of the Jail. I was just wondering where it came from.

Ike:   I was never connected to that.

Mike:  Who was your commander at that time?

Ike: I can not remember, but I went thru 13 Colonels form 1950 to 1981.

Mike: Did you always live at the same place?  What is your address now:

Ike: When we got married we moved to where my wife’s father’s farm was located. They had kicked him out of the proving ground in 1941. He bought a thirty acre farm from Yunker in North Madison.

Mike: Where was that?

Ike:  Do you know where the State Highway garage is?  We are right there on that corner, that stone house right across from the filling station, the Shell station with the big rock and the motel next to it. His name was William Nicklaus.  He sold all the lots off on Wilson and Seven. He sold a section off to the Baptist Church. The now Coleman printing company had part of it.  It was actually sold to the Pepsi Cola company. I think it was Pepsi. It might have been Coca Cola. Anyway they were going to put a plant there, but they never did. Coleman bought it from them.  They have a die factory there now. It was North Madison.

     When William bought that farm, it was right out of the edge of town. I have the picture of the original farm house. We remodeled in 1955. We had been married five years. It was a brick house originally. He added two rooms on the back which were wood. When we remodeled in 1955 we added a 16 by 32 foot room on the South side and had it stoned.

Mike:  Did Mr. Nicklaus ever talk to you about his family leaving the Proving Ground?

Ike:  He had a canning factory and he had thirty acres right south of the JPG Airport on Harbert’s creek. They remodeled their house out there in 1904. One of the stories I might tell you is that they did not have refrigeration or electricity out there so when he would work his grounds right North of the Canning factory with a team of horses. He would work over there all day and when he would come back at night, He would water his horses in Harbert’s Creek.  There was a large pool there right South of the Culvert on Paper Mill Road He would have a cane pole there and some worms already dug and he would go fishing there for ten or fifteen minutes, catch a bunch of fish, nice big Blue Gills and Cat Fish.  He would take them up and put his horses away, clean the fish and they would have fish for supper. That was their meat for the summer time. They had hogs and stuff like that later on. So with no refrigeration this was to be their meat for the day. That was one story he told me.

     Another pretty good one on the canning factory. They never kept anything locked. He started missing some canned food. He took his shotgun and loaded it with blanks, fastened it up on the wall. On the big door on the North side, he put a string down to it so it would pull the trigger and the shotgun would go off. About 2:30am his shotgun went off. I said what did you do?  He said I just turned over and went to sleep. He said, I never missed any more after that. He knew who it was pretty well, his neighbor up the road.

     Another thing. My sister worked out there when she was sixteen. She would peel tomatoes. She would peel a three gallon bucket of tomatoes and they got ten cents for peeling a bucket. The way they kept tabs on it, they had a small card that was fastened to her clothes. Every so often Allison, His wife would come around when they got a bucket peeled and She would punch a hole in the card. When they got done, she would count the holes in the card and my sister was paid five cents for each hole.

Mike Moore: How did they peel a tomato in those days?

Ike: See he cooked the tomatoes. All you had to do was roll the skin off really. Then you took your knife and cut any bad places out. It probably went pretty fast to get a bucket full.

Mike Moore: Did he raise his own tomatoes?

Ike: No he bought them. He hired about 22 people. It was the only factory in the proving ground. I do not think He got any extra pay from the government for having the factory. He got $8,000 dollars for thirty acres, his house, the factory and all of it. You have a copy of the Bill of Sale right there.

Mike Moore:  Yes, I made a copy of it. Did they just can tomatoes? What was your sisters name?

Ike: My sister’s name is Mary Ellen Bramwell.  No He canned cabbage.

Mike Moore: I wonder if I could scan those labels in. ( We scanned in the labels that Ike brought.

Ike: Sure.  He had green beans, potatoes. He contracted it all. He actually canned and labeled them and sold it to Cincinnati. I remember one time they couldn’t pay him and sent back a bunch of canned food and it was not labeled. Actually when I first got married, he still had some of them left, so for supper my wife would open a can and we never knew what we were going to have for supper.

Mike Moore: That is pretty funny

Note: (Noise while Xeroxing and scanning the labels).  It will take a while for these are in color.

Ike: We were married October 6, 1950 and I went to work at JPG December 18, 1950.My Salary was a $1.34 per hour. Six years later I was promoted to $2.16. By 1979, I was making $12.00 as an Assistant Repair Foreman. When I retired in 1981, I was making $14.00 per hour. I had a perfect safety record and I retired with over 2,000 hours “Sick Leave”. I had four and one half days off sick in thirty one years. I was never late for work. I drove all types of vehicles everyday and never had an accident.

     In 1950 to 1951, I went to Purdue for a few days for schooling and Indianapolis.  I also was trained as a welder and as a fire fighter. I went to Cincinnati to study “Bacterial Drinking Water.” I learned how to tap a water line under pressure.

Mike Moore:  How would you do that?

Ike: We would not turn the water off.  We would take a machine that clamped around the water main and then we had a small valve that would open up and let the bit go down and drill the hole and thread it. We would take it all off and we would have a tap into the water line.

Mike Moore; I was wondering if your wife worked.

Ike: She worked. She worked at E. O. Muncie School. She started out as a substitute teacher. Then she worked as a teacher’s aide and she worked there for thirty years.

Mike Moore:  she almost worked at the same place as she went to High School.

Ike:  Well they tore down North Madison High School and built E. O. Muncie. She was on the same spot. You can see the old foundation of the old school in the front. They put a stone out front. Edgar Joe Goley, Humphrey, I think that was some of them.

Mike Moore:  Did your children go thru E. O. Muncie.  In other words was your wife there when the kids went through.

Ike:  Yes. It worked out pretty good.  The boy went to Junior High School in Madison one year then he went back up there. The kids could walk to school.  They could go out the back door there almost. She had to walk about a mile to school at North Madison, I remember and It was down below zero. She was walking home and her face was freezing almost. Her dad came down in the car and picked her up. She was really glad to see him. She was in about the seventh or eighth grade.

     I had to walk about a mile to school.  I lived over in the State Hospital. I had to walk out the North Drive there to North Madison High School.

Mike Moore: Did you ever help your dad out with the poultry at the State Hospital.? Could you describe that a little bit.

Ike:  He used to let me help him a little. I used to help him with the chicken stead, I guess you would call it. He put them up on a roost. I would go up there in the evening and help him some. He had about ten patients that worked for him. They did not get any money at that time. It was all self sufficient at the hospital then. He had poultry and Don Launtz was foreman then I think. Hinds was the gardener over the green house. Dr. McCormick was the dentist. Earl Little was over the cattle. I believe that he had pretty close to a hundred cows. They were Holsteins and they milked them. They had pigs there. I went up there and watched them scald the pigs and cut them up.  They had an Ice plant, a deep freeze like and they would store their stuff in there. It was electric.

     We moved up in 1931 or 1932 and they had electricity. The house we moved from we did not have electric. We had running water. We had electric during the night. They would shut off the electric in the morning. They would turn it on about 4:00 in the evening to save electric. They did have Ice there that they gave us as part of the rent. You would have to go on over there and get it, a block of Ice every other evening. One other thin they gave us was a gallon of milk every evening.

Mike Moore: Gosh was that part of the rent.

Ike: Yes. It was part of the rent. We had chickens all the time.

Mike Moore: How many chickens would you all have there at one time.

Ike:  Oh! That would be hard to say. They had big long chicken houses, probably almost a hundred feet long. They were full. He raised all the chickens. We had eggs and bacon for breakfast. We raised turkeys, ducks and geese. They had Turkeys and Geese every Thanksgiving and Christmas for all the patients. it was good for the guys to work too, but you never could depend on them. I remember this one guy. He was really good.  He never missed anything you know. He always fed and watered and everything. One day there he was sitting out front there playing with sticks. No chickens watered or fed, none of them.I mean that is just the way they were. One man, a negro, he worked there with the rabbits and stuff. And he cooked. He had a little old stove that would heat the front office where they loafed and he would cook rabbits and chicken or anything.

     At 9:00am they went over and got fresh bread, baloney sandwiches for a break. The patients did. The old Negro would cook anything.  I remember they cooked a Robin’s breast and a sparrow’s breast.

Mike Moore:  Oh my Gosh!

Ike: I had to taste it when I was about twelve. It was, It wouldn’t be any different than quayle. Small, just one bite all you got.

Mike Moore: did your mom work out there.

Ike: No she worked at the laundry where they did all the clothes and she worked as kind of a server. She was over the Officer’s dinining room. All the Officers came over to eat there. She would serve table style. She would put green beans and potatoes out on a table. Four people would eat there. She did not do the cooking just the serving. The cooks were in the basement and they run the food up on a dumbwaiter and she would serve the dining room.

Mike Moore:  So she was paid and you all had two incomes?

Ike: She wouldn’t take the job in the dining room unless I got to go over and eat. Cause it was right a five O’clock you know. I got to eat over there every evening. It was pretty good. It saved her from cooking at home and I got to eat too. I was a Senior at that time.

Mike Moore:  I think that was real interesting. To jump back to the Proving Ground. Did you ever like to go out there and hunt for mushrooms, or did you ever go out there and go deer hunting?

Ike: I did mushrooms once or twice. I never did care for it much. My wife did not care for the mushrooms. I did go deer hunting.  I took my Father-in-law amd my Father deer hunting about ever year, because they both liked to hunt. Bill Nicklaus and Wilfred my dad. My dad’s name was Wilfred Eli Jenkins and My mother was Mary Eunice Jenkins.

My Brother was Wilfred Jr. Jenkins. My Sister was Mary Ellen as I said before.

Mike Moore:  Mr. Nicklaus must have been a pretty good shot, since he was in the Army. Do you know where he served when he was in the Army?

Ike:  He was a cook. He also had a bakery in North Madison after he left the Proving Ground. He started a bakery there. You know where the taxi is at North Madison?

Mike Moore: Yes.

Ike: There used to be three shotgun houses there. I don’t know which house was his. I think it was the middle one. The beauty shop is there. He had the bakery there. A little story on that. After 1941 He was running his bakery during a big snow. He didn’t have any flower. He had to come to Madison to get the flour, because the flour mill was down here along the river. He had a 1909 Ford, he put skis on the front two tires. He took barrel staves about four feet long and he strapped them on the two front wheels and chains on the back. He was doing good in the snow. When he got down here to Madison, The trolley that went on the railroad track up through town, well he hit that first rail and the skis up front turned up under his fenders. I guess he made it okay. He went on down to the flour mill and got his flour and made it back to the bakery in North Madison. This would have been around 1942 or something like that. He was a cook during the World War I, but he had a bakery in the early forties.

Mike Moore: We could stop if you are getting tired.

Ike: No, I am not getting tired, I just can’t talk.  

Mike Moore:  The one thing that we have not talked about is that you are a Veteran of World War II. Lets talk about that. Where did you serve in the Navy?

Ike: The Pacific Ocean. First I went to Samson New York for my training. Then I went to Pensacola, Florida.

End of Side A

Side B

Ike:  I went into the Navy June 13, 1944 to June 15, 1946.

     I went to Pensacola for almost two years. I went down there as a guard for the Base. After that, I went to San Diego and got a ship out there the U. S. S. Munda CVE 104, went over to Saipan. We went to Hawaii first. On the third day out we went though not a tornado, but anyway we hit some high waves. We were bobbing like a fish cork. The waves were way up there. Anyway when we got to Hawaii we had to dock there for two weeks while welders came in to weld our ship back. It was sprung in the middle. We got it back in shape and then we went on to Saipan. We were there and then we came back to San Diego. I was Seaman First Class.

Mike Moore:  Were you ever attacked?

Ike: No It was Christmas after the war was over. We still had to do watch. We still had to watch for Japs. Communication wasn’t that good. We did not know if they had found out the war was over or not. We did not have any problem that way. We were a troop Ship at that time. The converted an aircraft carrier into a troop ship. All the insides of the Ship was beds. They had beds six or eight high. We brought a bunch of them back. We got back to San diego and I had my two years in and I went to Great Lakes and checked out of the Navy and I hitchhiked home. I took a bus to Chicago. There wasn’t anything coming to Madison. So I started hitchhiking. I finally took a bus out of town as far as it would go. I think I finally got a ride on a White star bus. It was coming from Indianapolis at that time. I got out at the Madison State Hospital entrance and had to walk the rest of the way home.

     I came home and worked summers on the farm like I said before. My dad bought a  to farm from the Carter and Burnie Bramwells. It is right across from Oak Hill, that white house.

Mike Moore: I am not sure where that is.

Ike: Up there on Hi-way seven. It is before you get to Bramwell’s Corners. He bought a sixty acre farm there. Dad , my brother and I built that white frame house there. After my dad died my mother sold it to Russell Smart.

Mike Moore:  Oh I know him, he worked at the proving ground.

Ike: It has been sold again. I don’t know who has it now. It is just right across from Oak Hill, the first house on the right after the factories. It was sixty acres. My dad divided it up. He gave my brother 18 acres on the south side. I got 25 acres in the middle. My sister got the house, she was married and she got 15 acres. He did that before he died.. He and my mother both did it. My mother sold the house she was living in and she moved in on Wilson, a brick house.

Mike Moore: That about covers it. I just wondered if you remember anything outstanding at the Proving Ground.  Did anything stand out about the Colonels or any stories or anything.? You said no one got killed out there. I was wondering about that. Luckily it was pretty safe out there.

Ike: I think some of them got shot deer hunting. As far as the proving ground there never were any accidents. It was a nice place to work.

     Charles (Deb) Loos, a personal friend who was running for U. S. congress for the 9^th district asked me to write information pertaining to the use of JPG if they closed it. I went to the meeting and explained the information that I had prepared for Deb.

     Madison Courier, Madison, Indiana, Friday, February 14, 1992. “ Ike Jenkins, a retired JPG employee of 31 years service told me he felt  the airfield was a key asset that should be revitalized. Even though it has deteriorated greatly, it has tremendous potential if rehabilitated.  I will work closely with the JPG Re-use Committee and will work hard in Washington to secure funds for the rehabilitation of this field..”---Deb Loos

Mike Moore: I was wondering if you could say anything about Paul Wells.  His daughter donated some of his JPG papers to the Research Library, but I don’t know a lot about him? I have some of his 201 file and his photograph, but not much else.

Ike: He was in the Army as a gunner. I don’t know much about him other than he worked at the heating plant. As far as I know that was the only place he worked there.

     I went to his auction. He did have a big picture of himself in the work room out there. You might talk to the daughter and get it.  I think he worked on guns after he got home. He was in World War II also. He was in gunners, I know that.

Mike Moore: That is about it. That will take me several days to type that much up.

Ike: I got it typed up for you there.

Mike Moore: Yeah you do. The only thing is some of those stories about Mr. Nicklaus, I really like them. Who was all in his family? He and his wife and  he had three children.

Ike:  No!. Bill Nicklaus had Betty and her brother Don Nicklaus. Cora was Bill’s sister.  Mame was his other sister. Mame married John Andress. He is the one that had the shopping center for years. She has it now.

Mike Moore: Was he from Alaska?

Ike: He went up there and worked for several years. He was born and raised here, but he went up there to work. After he went up there for awhile, he came back and bought tat. Mame is still alive. I am pretty sure she is alive yet.

Mike Moore: It seems everything has worked out well.  Your kids and grandkids are doing well.

Ike: Yep.I am very pleased.

Mike Moore: There is a cemetery up at the State Hospital Grounds. Did you ever see anyone buried out there?

Ike: No, But I knew when I lived out there that several of them had been buried out there. A few years later it all grew up in grass covered over and my dad went out there himself and cleaned it out. He cleaned it all up real nice.

Mike Moore: They don’t seem to have numbers on the crosses. I don’t know how they keep track of who is buried where.  

Ike: I don’t either. It was just the poor ones who could not afford anything else. They buried them there. Anybody that had a little money they wouldn’t bury them there. They would take them home or something.

Mike Moore: I went out taking pictures and discovered three tombstones that had 1937 on them and I wondered if there was some story there.

Ike: There was one story there. There was one guy came by the house everyday. He worked over at Dr. Hamilton’s house. He cut the grass, fixed the furnace and  he came by one day, I was sitting on the porch. He said, “You think I crazy don’t you.”  I said, “no Charley I don’t think you are crazy.” He said, “ I gotta be this way or they will send me home. ”He did not want to leave. He had meals, a nice warm place to sleep. He did not have to work. I believe he was smarter than what they gave him credit for.

Mike Moore: You are about the most organized person that I have interviewed. You have all these pictures, they are all labeled and you have your work history all together. I really appreciate that. My goodness we have been down here four hours. I did not realize hw much we were going to talk about. Your wife must be wondering what in the world is going on down here. It takes a long time. That is why a lot of people won’t do it.

Ike: After I retired, one winter, I worked on my history.

Mike Moore: I am glad you did.

Ike:  Another little story on Bill Nicklaus. He bought a new gun. A 25/20, I believe. It is a saddle gun. At his home he shot straight due West. He just took a shot and shot it up in the air. It broke out his neighbor’s window a mile away. He went down a fixed the window for him and that was all that was said.

Mike Moore:  Well it took forty five minutes for the computer to scan in those canning labels.  I guess the color makes the computer work a little harder.  Here you are, I thought that they would never finish. I scanned them in at 1,000 dots per inch.  They are so pretty and bright, that I wanted the highest resolution possible.  I believe,  that now we could paper the side of a barn with those labels of the Nicklaus canning factory.

     I am going out on the internet to see if I can find a picture of your Ship, the U. S. S. Munda.

Okay that is the end of our interview here.

The End.