Milestones on Mainstreet: December 2008

The Big Shakeout of ‘79

In January of ’79, Jose Cruz keeps things moving in the Sparta Foundry. Jose, known as Joe, works second shift. A straight eight from 3:00 to 11:00 at night. Life in the foundry is hard and dirty. But the money and benefits are good.

Twenty men work behind noisy presses to make the steel and dirt piston ring molds. It’s tedious, twisting work. Several men take aspirin for chronic back pain. Tethers keep their hands out of the presses. But a few are missing fingers.

A lineman for the foundry
Joe is a lineman. With an iron hook he pulls the heavy molds out onto the foundry floor. Joe puts his back into each move, like a football lineman. He works four lines, moving fast from line to line.

Joe prepares the molds for the molten iron. He puts heavy weights and pouring boxes on each. The iron pourer arrives, pushing a heavy ladle of molten iron down a ceiling rail.

Rivers of Hades
The iron pourers wear safety helmets with dark masks. The iron flows from the ladles in glowing orange streams. Steam rises and sparks fly when it hits the cool molds. Several pourers are busy. It looks like the Rivers of Hades.

The foundry is dark but Joe wears sun glasses to protect his eyes from the iron and sand. Joe is one of four linemen working the large floor. Everyone is in a hurry to make production. Fast and furious.

Within minutes the iron solidifies and turns gray. Its still 1200 degrees. Joe removes the running boxes. Hot sand burns his arms, but Joe is used to it. And the money is good.

Down to shakeout
Joe pulls the heavy molds down to the shakeout man. Shakeout is the dirtiest job in the place. Each mold is broke open by hand. Steam rises and scalding black dirt falls over the shakeout man’s boots through grates on the floor.

He pulls the rings from the mold with a noisy air-pressure lift. More hot black dirt shakes out. More steam. He lifts the molds on to the return line. Back breaking work. Joe pushes them back to the molder and the whole process starts again.

Set for life
Jose Cruz was born in Mercedes, Texas in 1947. The second of nine children. In 1965, with the rise of refrigerated rail cars, his father Santana Cruz lost his long-time job in a Texas ice factory. So the family came to Michigan where you could “rake money from the ground like leaves.”

Back in Texas, Joe earned a football scholarship from Corpus Christie University. But he joined the Marines, spent 22 months in Vietnam, fought at the Battle of Hui and earned a Purple Heart. After the war, he returned to Michigan.

At Bolthouse Farms in Grant he met Toni and got married. He attended Central Michigan on a Veteran’s Grant. But in 1977 he heard the Sparta Foundry was hiring. When you got a job at the Sparta Foundry, you were set for life.

The Oil Stopper Piston Ring Corporation
The Sparta Foundry began in 1921 as the Oil Stopper Piston Ring Corporation. It was soon acquired by the Muskegon Piston Ring Company. From the 1940’s through the 1970’s it became one of the largest piston ring factories in the world.

From lineman to mailman
By January 1979 the glory days of the Sparta Foundry were peaking. Global competition would rock the automotive industry. The great shakeout of the Michigan economy had begun. In 1984, Joe was laid off.

In December 1984 Joe joined the Post Office and became the familiar, friendly face on Sparta’s Village Route. Through snow and sleet and gloom of Sparta nights the post arrived, always with lollypops for the youngest residents along the way. In 2005, Joe retired with a bad knee. For more than 20 years, he was a real milestone on main street in Sparta. Just like the Sparta Foundry.

Today Jose Cruz lives with his wife Toni on Schultz Avenue in Sparta. He has five children and five grand children. The Sparta Foundry officially closed in 2004.

Milestones on Main Street is produces specially for Sparta Today. Input and contributions to this column are welcome. Please send your ideas to Dean Lettinga at hlet@hetnet.nl or contact Joan Lettinga at 887-2414.

Milestones on Mainstreet: October 2008

Sleepy Hollow
During the days of the horse drawn carriage, Sparta was booming and Mr. McGowan had elevated dreams when he began building his hotel. The farming community was considered the next best thing to the big city of Grand Rapids; therefore his capital venture seemed a
sure bet. Up until the advent of the auto, Sparta was a good stopover; whether by rail or trail, salesmen traveling their territories could always use a room. However, as life sped up remotely, it faded locally and there was no longer a reason to stop and stay in a sleepy, little bygone town. Or so it may appear. Beyond Division Street, could there actually be a division between the here and the hereafter?
Creative Divide
Currently the home of Print Metro and Creative One Gallery, the original exterior of the McGowan building remains undisturbed, but the same cannot be said for the interior. Looking through the elegant spindles and up the graceful banister highlighting the lost lobby, it’s easy to imagine the mortals who have crossed over those portals above; but what about the immortals that cross our paths in Sparta’s present Downtown Historic District?
It is said that ghosts return to places where their earthly counterparts enjoyed life and perhaps our local unexplainables need none other but to remain in that happy place. How else to explain a non-operating vacuum cleaner discovered running all night long while not even warm to the touch the next morning? Who would’ve turned it on after hours, was it purely an inquisitive interest in a contemporary contraption?
Then there are the giant, double doors that take a genuine shove to open; to the amazement of two witnesses, why would they suddenly swing wide? Nothing malevolent, but the apparent locking and unlocking, opening and closing of doors seem to be the work of an imperceptible prankster. While seeing may be believable, believing may also be in feeling a presence within. What does a surprised spectator say to a curious specter; fully dressed as a butcher, complete with long, white apron, rolled up sleeves and rumpled pant legs above untied boots?
Whodunit
Today’s Around the Corner Antiques displays its movie theater history in its vaulted ceiling where the projection room was once housed. If the upper floor is uninhabited, what explanation is there or the noises and constant commotion therein? Brimming with age old objects, why would they be continually misplaced? Are long-ago owners still attached to cherished possessions and unwilling to bury the past? Or is there an unseen projectionist at work?
Happily Ever After
Nelson Shaw appropriately named his spacious livery the Palace. Going ‘Round Again as a consignment department store, Moonlight Madness may not be so farfetched. Invisible footsteps have been heard so often from below that it’s become commonplace and hardly worth the effort of calling up, let alone walking up, to the second floor to check if anyone’s there. Broad expanse as it may be, double checking is always unrewarding. Upon hearing inexplicable squeaking hangers or possibly a moving rack, one still can’t help but wonder if Mrs. Shaw is looking for something special to wear. Who knows what she would be partial to these days?
Night at the Opera
Even into her nineties, plenty of stage presence kept Myrtie Brown in style long after her husband had passed. From the theater at the top of the Opera House to the Knights of Pythias and dance studio at the bottom, her theatrical residence overflowed with garments. While spending the night in Myrtie’s upstairs bedroom a young guest was astonished to be awakened from a deep sleep. Standing in the doorway before her was a man in full regalia, complete with plumed hat! With buried head in pillow, she trembled in fear and prayed herself back to sleep. The next day she cautiously wandered the halls and discovered Myrtie’s magnificent millinery, but it was what
was hanging behind the showcase that sent shivers down her spine. Amidst the costumes on display were the very clothes that her theatrical apparition had been wearing! Was her dramatic visitor Orly Brown, wondering who was sleeping in his bed or merely a dressed-to-impress vaudevillian?
History’s Mysteries
Full of history as well as mystery, present-day Sparta is haunted with many memories. Whether it’s a past remembrance of Arzie Pinckney’s from the Sparta Sentinel Leader or a more recent happening, local haunts have always been an interest to young and old alike.
Be it a favorite place of visiting or a place of supernatural visitation, both old and new accounts of our hometown hangouts are only meant as considerations as well as entertainment. As we face our future by reviving our past, we are simply making the village of Sparta what a neighborhood should be.
Do you have news to share of an ethereal event? Contributions are welcome, please contact toni@tonipayne.com or call (616) 887-0911.

MILESTONES ON MAIN STREET SPARTA!

Summer 1908 Looks Great

For Nelson A. Shaw, things look great in July of 1908. His new business, the Shaw Palace Livery, is doing well in its first year of operation.

In the fall of 1907, he finished construction of a two-story building on main street Sparta to house his livery. The American flag, now with 46 stars since the admission of Oklahoma, waves proudly in front. A blacksmith is right next door. The harness shop is across the street. The railroad depot is just around the corner to the east.

Things to Move
Horse drawn wagons from Shaw’s livery move supplies that arrive by train to the farms and small manufacturing businesses around Sparta. The late summer will be busy. Many German and Swedish immigrants have settled in the Sparta area. They are growing fruit, mainly apples and peaches, on their farms. As the harvest ripens, these products must be transported to markets in Grand Rapids.

22 Cents an Hour
So business in July 1908 looks promising for Nelson Shaw and his wife Jessie. They need that. The building, horses and wagons are large investments that need to be paid off. And good help can cost as much as 22 cents an hour.

Living expenses at the Shaw home just south of Main Street are increasing as well. Sugar is up to four cents a pound, coffee 15 cents a pound and eggs 14 cents a dozen. Plus there is a delicious new product on the market, Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes, from a new company down in Battle Creek. Nelson and Jessie have never tasted anything like it.

Imagine the Profit
As their business flourishes, they dream of the things they can do with the profits. Perhaps attend a baseball game. The Chicago Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers in the 1907 World Series. The way things are going, the two teams will meet again in the 1908 Series. Or maybe visit the Grand Canyon someday, which President Roosevelt has just designated as a national monument.

Down in Detroit
There is, however, one thing that concerns Nelson Shaw. Down in Detroit, a man called Ford is making horseless carriages. Shaw has seen one in Grand Rapids. They are the strangest things. They make an awful noise and smell terrible. But maybe there is a future for these contraptions. How will they affect his livery?

A New Business Model T
By the summer of 1908, there are 8,000 cars in the United States. That same year, Henry Ford introduces the Model T. In 1909, its first full year of production, about 18,000 units are built. By 1920, Ford produces more than one million cars a year. What will all this mean for Nelson and Jessie Shaw? For the Shaw Palace Livery? For east Sparta?

From Palace Livery to Transfer Line
East Sparta remains a transportation center for several decades. Shaw Palace Livery becomes “Fields Transfer Line.” Horse drawn carriages are replaced by motored vehicles, but still operating from the two-story structure that Shaw built.

The building is a cornerstone in Sparta as one of the first erected on main street. It is renovated in 2007, exactly 100 years after construction, to restore the original materials and display the original header: “N.A. Shaw Palace Livery 1907.” It has been a downtown business location for more than a century. Today it houses ‘Round Again consignment shop, a dance studio, a used book store, and an ice cream shop.

Enterprising in 1921
As for business in east Sparta, the harness shop, the blacksmith and the train depot disappear with the rise of the automobile; but not without economic compensation. Just south of main street, a new enterprise begins in 1921, an important supplier to the industry that Henry Ford is driving.

It’s the Sparta Foundry, an iron foundry that becomes one of the largest piston ring manufacturers in the world. It also becomes a major employer in the area and backbone of economic activity in Sparta throughout the 20th century.

Nelson A. Shaw was born on 18, May 1856 and died on 8, January 1933, 26 years after he started Shaw Palace Livery on main street Sparta. His wife Jessie was born on 18, December 1862 and died on 4, April 1932. They are both buried in Sparta’s Greenwood Cemetery.

This is the first in a series of Milestones on Main Street articles specially produced for Sparta Today. Input and contributions to this column are welcome. Please send your ideas to Dean Lettinga at hlet@hetnet.nl or contact Joan Lettinga at 887-0013 in Sparta.