NEWSLETTER
of the North Manchester Historical Society, Inc.
VOLUME X, NUMBER 4 (NOV, 1993)

North Manchester Airport Provided Flying Opportunities for Residents in 1930's and 40's

by Orpha J. Weimer


Yes, North Manchester did have an airport in the l930's and 40's. It's true it was scarcely even "kissin'-kin" to those of today, but that is what everyone called it. It was managed by Albert J. Weimer and located on his father's farm about where the Pizza Hut is located today. For a short while it was the only one in Wabash County.

Al's plane was not the first in town. That honor belongs to another young fellow, John Henry Wright, who had purchased a plane the year before and housed it in his grandfather's barn east of town. The two young men were friends but each had a different motivation. John Henry wished to sharpen his flying skills and log sufficient hours to enable him to apply for a pilot's position on one of the big cross-country airlines, while Al had in mind only local flying and pilot training.

The Weimer family came to North Manchester in 1913, bought land at the west end of Main Street and shortly afterward started Custom Canning as a family business. These were the depression years so the small plant blossomed. Work was hard to find. In l925 it was the only place in town where women and teenagers could secure work along with some men. There were over eighty names on the pay roll. To help the process, Mr. Weimer bought three or four small farms nearby as they came up for sale. These were used for growing tomatoes. Corn was contracted with local farmers. In this manner he could keep the canning work going steadily.

His last purchase was a 40-A field to the north. A small herd of cattle was placed there and fed much of the refuse from the factory. A young farm boy did the milking and helped clean up of evenings. Mrs. Weimer sold some milk and cream locally. But that work in addition to office work at the factory became too much for her. So the cattle were sold and a silo was built to care for the factory debris. The field remained empty.

The Weimer family had three young sons. Mr. Weimer had been a teacher and he was especially eager for his children to have good educations. The oldest and youngest of their sons attended the local College, then went on to get advanced degrees in science, but the middle one would have none of that. His mind was set on motors, wheels and speed.

Al did not have much interest in the family business but he did agree to supervise the very important trucking part. A major task was a weekly or, when a double shift was running, a daily trip to Elwood, Indiana to bring huge cartons of empty cans from the factory there. While his truck was being loaded, he frequently borrowed a car to go to the Marion Airport near by for a flying lesson. Soon he had earned his pilot's license and a trainer's certificate as well.

He did so well, they offered him a job but he had to refuse. He did not forget the offer; he really did love to fly. In the fall of 1937 Al acquired his first plane. It was a small single-engine J3 Piper Cub. All of the Weimer men were a little bit "dippy" over flying and it did not take much effort for Al to convince his father to turn the empty north field over to him.

My younger son laughs and recalls his first plane ride. He was nearly five years old. He sat, wedged between his grandfather's knees, just able to see out. He was carefully cautioned not to tell about the ride as it might worry his grandmother. This was likely a barnstorming trip. Pilots travelled about the country trying to earn a few dollars by taking paying customers for rides. He would choose a likely town, look for a near by grassy field to rope off for a runway, put on a bit of a flying show to attract a crowd and charge fifteen to twenty dollars according to the length of the ride. Airplanes were new and the pilot usually made a good profit.

Placid, even tempered, Mother Weimer did get a bit caustic and ruffled at times. She and her helpers at the factory could peel and fill cans but when they needed steam or some one to do the processing a small child had to run across the field for the men. They would be in the hanger of sorts they had built near the woods to house their "toy".

One morning Harry came home shortly after breakfast. I could tell by his face something was wrong. "Would I come help?" Back we came to the new hanger. He and Al had been up for an early morning flight. While trying to wheel the plane under cover, a playful wind had whipped it out of their hands and over against an old tree limb. A big snag was torn in one wing.

We looked it over. The wing was made of thin, closely woven cloth, stretched over a frame and then lacquered. It had been patched several time. Harry seemed to have a great deal of faith in my sewing ability. Luckily I did have a good sized piece of raw Chinese silk of much the same weight and color. With the men helping we stretched it tightly in place and loop-stitched it much like the other patches. Later Al applied two thin coats of lacquer, then polished the entire wing. It worked! That is one patch job I'll never forget.

In the early spring of 1938 Al acquired a new and larger plane, a Piper Supercub, I believe it was called. Now father and sons turned everything around. A section of fence was removed to open the field in the southwest corner to give plenty of inside parking. Next they built a small square building for an office, waiting room and storage space. Then along the west line fence they erected a low shed building open to the east for hanger space. Electric lights were installed and in front was space for two gas pumps. After the children's pet dog was killed crossing the highway a telephone was installed. Finally a nearly indispensable pop vending machine was added.

All was now ready for business and it came. Some came for rides and some just to see a plane close up; some were would-be pilots. It was immensely popular. Saturday afternoons and Sundays were nearly like a circus and many evenings were just as bad. Aviation was the new thing and Al almost had more student applications than he could handle.

For a bit of fun, he initiated his famous Shirt Tail Club. When a student had made sufficient progress so that he could handle a plane alone, the fellows ganged up on him and cut a two-inch square from his shirt. This was labeled and dated as a trophy to hang on the office wall. Eventually there were fifty or more hanging there. My older son made his solo flight on his sixteenth birthday which was the legal age to secure a state license.

With all this momentum, Al had to secure help. Soon he added four Student Instructors and an aviation mechanic to his crew. He also added to his number of planes. At one time he had seven available including J3 and J4 Piper Cubs, the large Piper Super cub, a Stearman biplane and a Stinson open cockpit monoplane.

With the growing public demand they also had to increase the hanger by extending it farther north. Several of the men of the town wanted to own their own plane and wanted to rent a place to keep it. The children enjoyed seeing Garman's local theater add pictures of the planes lined up on the movie screen to advertise
The Weimer Flying Service.

Others have helped me with this story. Edward Keller, Paul's brother, called me when he was visiting in town to wish me luck and to report that he had enjoyed many rides with Al in 1938-39. Eddie had been one of a group of College students who helped in the factory and then enjoyed a ride to cool off. Ned Brooks, a local man also gave me a friendly lift. He and a friend made a list of names of local persons who had taken flying lessons and who soloed under Al's teaching. Included were Bill Nordman, the three Gibsons, Bob, Bud and Harold; Bob and Bill Kimmel, Dean Brumbaugh, Bob Reed - Dale Guthrie, Dean Ginther, Homer Kissinger, Roy Linemuth, ---- Dickerhoff, Bruce Kramer, Byron Harting and Phil Werking.

Roy Taylor called to say he has in his Log Book that he took lessons in 1944. Mr. Taylor has a small flying field in Servia, and still does some flying from there today. Ned checked the NEWS JOURNALS of 1945. On June 11, 1945 the front page headline read SOLO AT LOCAL FIELD "Students who have soloed recently at Al Weimer's flying field school: Byron Harting and Raymond Brooks last Thursday evening, and Phil Werking yesterday."

NEWS JOURNAL, Sept. 13, 1945 Front page Headline. "Aviation Commission appointed by Town Board:
Two Republicans: Raymond Brooks - 3 yrs. Todd Bender - 3 yrs. Democrats: Bruce Kramer - 3 yrs. L.P. Urschel - l yr.
President ----- Bruce Kramer, Vice - Pres. --- L. P. Urschel, Secy ---- Raymond Brooks."

NEWS JOURNAL, Aug 20, 1945. "Al Weimer had a forced landing in a cornfield near Silver Lake after trying to take off from a clover field. Paid $25 damage to cornfield owner."

The story back of this entry concerned an elderly man at Silver Lake who had wandered away from home and could not be found by his family. They phoned to ask if Al would fly about to help look for him. He was glad to do it; but he had no luck. On one turn he was too low and tangled with the clover. Thrown off balance, he skidded across the roadway into the cornfield. The truck which came in to pull out the plane added to the damage and Al agreed that the irate farmer needed some recompense for his cornfield. Meanwhile the old gentleman, now tired and sleepy, wandered back home and all was well.

One of the men who had rented hanger space was a fellow from Wabash called Whitey DeArmond. He was a jovial, happy-go-lucky sort and a general favorite. He came in every few days to, as he said, "gas" with the fellows. Our small boys said he told them great tales and was always in a "picklement." His plane was quite different, a small white aluminum girocoupe, all metal, with two seats, side by side and a bubble canopy. It was one of the first all metal civilian planes. It did have limited power and limited controls.

One morning there was a lot of excitement. Al had taken Whitey up in his big Stinson, larger, with more power and an open cockpit. Whitey squirmed about trying to see all and hear all and managed to pull the ripcord on his parachute by accident. At once it started billowing up around him and partly over the side. The men below could see it! It threw the plane a bit off balance, so it staggered and Al hurriedly started down while Whitey yelled and frantically punched down on the big white marshmallow all around him. They landed and the men rushed toward them. Al crawled out, a little stiff-legged. "The darn fool, he could have killed us both," was all he said, but everyone realized it might have been pretty serious. After this they had a new calendar note -- before Whitey popped his chute or after.

Al was very generous in the matter of rides with the family. My mother had been visiting in Manchester and he heard she was leaving for home the next day, just after her birthday dinner.
He offered her a birthday plane rise and she was pleased to accept. She was 71 years old and I think his oldest passenger.

Al wasn't always so lucky. Mother Weimer, for several years, had a live-in housekeeper during the busy canning season. Mrs. Mary Hevel seemed almost one of the family and Al teased her unmercifully at times. He came in one morning as she was baking cookies and insisted that he was going to take her for a ride. She had always refused before. She smacked his fingers for snitching a warm cookie, looked him square in the eyes and said emphatically, "No, not until they make rubber pants my size!" He was flabbergasted and left. Later he told his mother he had never realized she was afraid. Quite honestly, he just couldn't comprehend that not all the older generation trusted airplanes. The younger ones took flying as a matter of course.

Fun and games didn't last long. War clouds of WW II gathered closer. The new German submarines played havoc with our shipping. The airplane was recognized and accepted as a wartime necessity. But America had procrastinated and was not quite ready. Pilots were in short supply. The Weimer men folk were either too young or too old for military service, although two brothers were doing government work in the Manhattan Project. Al and his father decided to sell out, field and all. A Mr. Groff and his brother wanted to buy. They continued for a time under the name of Weimer Airport, but business fell off. Times were changing and small airports were not needed. The airport closed and the field sold to the Bolinger family who changed it to its present day commercial use. Al answered the government call for Civilian Instructor Pilots, the family moved to Ocala, Florida for two and a half years near the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

Perhaps you noticed there were no women mentioned. There were a few women flyers in the East -- some were very good. But in the 30's and 40's women lived in the shadow of men. Rosie the Riveter was not yet popular but not for long.

Recently when John Cave had worked on my car and I was taking him back to the J & S Body Shop, I mentioned my interest in planes and the old Weimer Airport. He was surprised, but when he mentioned it at the family supper table his wife recalled the airport. As a group of small children going home from school they loitered near the airport watching the planes flying overhead. Both boys and girls were soon indoctrinated.

To my knowledge, Raymond Brooks was the only one of our local group to lose his life in an airplane accident. He was flying in California when an unexpected fog rolled in and he crashed into a mountainside in 1950

Did North Manchester have an Airport? Yes, we did, an early one and a good one, too. So keep your small garage for the family auto, but do try a plane ride. It will give you a different perspective and make your blood run faster.

Grandstaff Rendering

presented to the North Manchester Historical Society June 8, 1992 by David Grandstaff

In 1917 my grandfather, Orin Grandstaff, established the business. He bought rendering businesses for seven sons. Of those original plants scattered around Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, we are the last of the remaining independent family operation plants still in operation. And, we are one of six surviving Hoosier renderers out of more than 100 such operations at the turn of the century. So we have seen a lot of consolidation. In fact, as I thought about it, even at our small size we have incorporated and consolidated two other operators in our district. We bought a plant that closed at Warsaw, Indiana a long time before I remember-up near Whitehead farms. We also purchased and consolidated the plant that used to operate at Huntington. So we've been a part of that consolidation. We're a small survivor.

The rendering industry, if you are not aare, is the recycling link with the food chain. Offal-slaughter plants-fat and bone trimmings in grocery stores-waste scraps from restaurants-the kitchen here at Manchester College in fact. Dead animals collected and recycled into products you come in contact with every day in your life.
The process is really one of reduction. We do on a grand scale what you do at home-we cook this inedible meat and fat product together, we grind in into course hamburger-1 1/2" particle size diameter and cook it in sterilizing temperature so the moisture is completely removed. Then we separate it by pressure, by squeezing and pressing, into its liquid and fat component or solid meat and bone meal component-continuous reprocess.

The high protein section, dry section, is an ingredient in poultry rations, hog rations, and now today we're beginning to encapsulate it and feed it to our ruminant animals. One time we thought there was not a market for this product because they couldn't handle it. Now encapsulated, it passes through and also becomes a high energy source for cattle. And if, of course, you have dogs and cats at home, almost every pet food label on the shelf has animal life products. Foods like Alpo start with and never reduce to the moisture level we do.

Inedible fats of not-for-human-consumption fats are used in consumer products ranging from highest quality soap, jet aircraft lubricants, mold releases for tires and cosmetics. That, of course, as I've already mentioned, is a high energy ingredient in many animal food formulations.

We're in fact a very energy intensive process. We burn a lot of oil-we're very sensitive to oil embargoes and gulf wars and things like that. We process about 2 million pounds a month of otherwise potentially hazardous waste material. We try to be environmentally good neighbors. We process all of our own biodegradable waste water in out on-site discharge waste treatment plant. We employ seven route drivers and seven process employees. Our production manager is John Eaves. My wife and I are the office at 218 East Main Street.

I have tonight a very brief video introducing you to the process.
*****************************************
You seem to be curious about this product. What does it look like? I brought some samples. I'm all right on the meal samples-open, pinch, feel, smell. I might have passed it out earlier but you'd have been nibbling on it all during dinner! I also brought a couple of jars of fat. Unfortunately the jars are a little too big and you can't get a very good indication of what the product looks like so I spooned some into these saucers and I'll pass them. You can see the color and so on. Our fat is a very soft product. Tallow is for the hard white white substance in soap, candles, that sort of use. Ours goes into feed and chemical industry as we've indicated. I'll also pass one of these saucers-I didn't pass that earlier because it looks so much like maple syrup. Doesn't smell like it though.

Questions:
Q: That meal is mixed in with other things to make hog food?
A: Yes, this is a very high protein. It's about a 60% protein product. Actually tests a little higher than 60%-so you would put it in an average hog ration like Bob would have used or any of you. No more than 200 lbs. to a ton of this for a high protein ration along with soy meal, corn or other ingredients.
Q: How near is this to what many of us once referred to as tankage?
A: I thought about that as the video was talking about the marketing of the quality control. That's probably the greatest change that we've seen in our industry. Because I remember days too when an awful lot of our product went out the door to local and area farmers who would drive in and say "I need a couple bags of tankage." To be perfectly honest the product we sell today is not a lot different than what was referred to as tankage. The biggest difference is that we now know-we've been forced to really get a good grip and know nutritionally the composition and each renderer has a little bit different composition of raw materials and so on that goes into the product. Each of us has a different product even though it's the same thing-it's all a little bit different. Survival today means knowing exactly what you've got and exactly what and to whom that product is most valuable, then marketing only to them. Now there's no point trying to sell this product to someone who wants a low grade low protein high calcium kind of meat and bone meal. You might make it in the city where you go after a lot of fats and lots of bones from stores. This product has higher value in other areas so that's what we do and that's how we market it. That's a long round-about answer to your question, but tankage today, there are a lot of technical definitions. Tankage is kind of the lowest of the low grades. Tankage is a combination of about anything that you want to throw in-so our product here is not tankage. I market it under a trade name "PROfile 60"--60% protein content and I do that for the reason that this product does not fit any of the standard ATPI Trade technical definitions. It fits two of them exactly in the middle so I use a trade name which describes the product which is 70% poultry meal and 30% meat and bone meal.
Q: Is this the same kind of meal that you give to put on your plants-a bone meal?
A: When you buy bone meal you're buying steamed bone meal and that is a product that is generally from whole bone at the slaughter house. And yes, it's processed much, much the same way. But it is processed all by itself.
Q: What is your territory?
A: We cover parts of about 10 counties. As you are aware there's a lot of poultry production in this area and there is also a major slaughter plant that processes the spent fowl when the laying cycle is done. Those hens are slaughtered and the meat still tastes but is a little tough and goes into things like pot pies and Campbell soups, etc.-very tasty meat but not real tender. That's the target of that spent meat, and the offal of that slaughter I process. You are aware also that we have a fairly high concentration of hogs.
Q: Is there a market for hides?
A: There is a market for hide-the market for the rendered hide is very limited any more. There's enough production of slaughter-packer hides that the demand for what is obviously a lower grade hide as I used to produce has gotten to the point where I currently am not even handling any hides.
Q: What do you do with them?
A: They go right in the product.
Q: Unable to hear from tape.
A: As I am aware of the history of the industry there was a very, very short time that it was kinda thrown out-the solid protion was actually discarded, because you were after the fat. That's what the rendering industry grew up on. Think about the related industry-the whaling industry-is really a ship-side rendering industry. I've visited some of the sea prot museums and visited a whaling ship. It's a moving rendering plant. They boil it down to get the oil. They're after the oil. The same was true when the rendering industry was begun. We didn't have any outlet for the solids. The whole bone wasn't ground in the early days. It was cooked down in open kettles and the fat was skimmed off. The broth, or whatever, and the bone were thrown out. I'm sure that where it was thrown got pretty doggoned green after a couple of seasons of that. That's the only relationship I know to being called a fertilizer plant. But it's a misnomer that sticks very tightly. You may have seen inthe paper two or three weeks ago that there was a chemical fertilizer plant that burned. I got a couple calls from concerned friends from around the northern part of the state, concerned that I'd had another fire.
Q: Unable to hear from tape.
A: Tankage is that product composed of the tissue, bone of carcasses containing not more than normal processing amount-it's a real technical thing-but tankage is a lower grade meat and bone meal usually fortified with blood meal to get the protein level up. I usually contains blood meal and lowest grades of raw material. If I had a sample of tankage with me tonight it would look very much like this product that I have. I would be very much darker in color and the aroma would be more intense.
Feathers are processed separately. We do not process feathers. One of those interesting arrangements that occurs in the development of new business. When a Greek family bought this poultry processing plant over at Mentone, Indiana, nobody in the State of Indiana had any idea what to do with poultry offal. It's tough stuff to handle. It has some really strange characteristics. One of, if not the least troublesome of which, is when you cook it, it boils over like crazy and it foams. The vat just goes wild. It takes some specialized treating-very specialized expensive products from Dow Chemical to keep it from doing that during the processing. Nobody in Indiana-it was just trash-no renderer wanted it. My dad was smart enough to figure out that if he could learn how to cook it, there's probably be a buck in it some day. A neighboring, competing plant, on up the road-most of you all are aware of it unfortunately-got there the same day and so they decided they'd split it up, we'd handle the offal, and they'd handle the feathers. That's been the happiest arrangement I've ever had. The feathers are not only extremely abrasive, they just chew up equipment like crazy. They also, to be properly done, need an entirely different process. To be properly prepared for feed ingredients they need to be hydrolized which is really a pressure cooking kind of operation. If properly done, feather meal if you've seen it is a really beautiful white, fluffy product, great stuff. Improperly done it's about three grades below tankage.
Feather meal runs about 75% protein. Digestibility level is somewhat -we run 90% digestible. I don't think feather meal runs that high digestible. That can vary all over the place, depending on how it's processed. If you throw it in a cooker and cook it conventionally like you would other materials, you don't get a very digestible product. It has to be hydrolized to maintain its amino-acid balance and digestibility.
Q: Does that go into animal feed then?
A: Yes. And more and more research is showing that is one of the benefits of a concentrated species population in this area. More and more we are finding that species recycled species is most effective in gain and use. The amino acid balance of my product comes from primarily poultry and we feed back primarily to poultry because they benefit best from it.
Same goes for hogs. Wilson-their product will be a little better tailored to hog production.
Hoofs-often thought of as being the glue. That's a whole different process. I know of no renderer who is also in glue manufacturing. You can still buy horse foof glue, and as a historically oriented body you are all familiar I am sure with the glass that was popular (I'm lost, I don't know the time period) glass that has a very crazed, crackly surface finish to it that was manufactured by taking ordinary glass, coating it with horse-hoof glue, and then heating that. As the glue dried, it actually crackled off the surface of the glass. It was a popular decorative glass, I think, at the turn of the century-first 20 years of the century.
I don't know. I've seen it. know for sure what they called it. an art glass form. This is not that. This is a surface that looked more etched than anything else, one side only, like you might have seen in public rest rooms on doors and things like that.
Q: Regarding control
A: We are not federally controlled. We are state regulated in terms of the majority of industrial regulations. We are under Federal guidelines such as OSHA-Occupational Safety and Health. We meet Federal guidelines so far as waste water treatment because Indiana laws are in line with federal. Really under State licensing permitting inspection -I'd say harassment-but it's not too bad if you play the game. If you try to do it right, they recognize that.
Q: Is there any danger that your business will go the way of the tanning industry?
A. The largest renderer in the United States is currently in bankruptcy. I don't know if that's an answer to your question. It bothers me. It really does. There's more to that story obviously than just the fact that a large nation-wide company is actually in bankruptcy proceedings. They tried to lever too much too fast, but in California which is where a lot of our country's business problems seem to originate, the environmental regulators would really like to run the rendering companies completely out of California and they already meet incredibly high standards. They're putting out waste water that's practically ready to drink.
I don't like to be a pessimist but there are already areas in the country where there is no such thing as dead stock removal - nobody left there that will handle that kind of business. So little by little-and it's just been in the last year and half that I finally got tired of trying to fight the tight marketing problems-so little by little there's going to be some segments of that last. It's one industry that's going to supply 20 Empire State Buildings a day of inedible products with values beside the product that cannot be ignored.
Q: Regarding odor.
A: Basically what happens-we are cooking when we boil, the product steams. What carries the aroma is steam. What we do to minimize the conduct of that odor is to get rid of the steam. Immediately when it comes off the cooker we run it through a big cooler and we knock it back down and condense it instantly back to water which we can then treat on site. Water still has that aroma but it doesn't carry.
Every rendering plant in the world along with about every other industry (when the cannery was here in town it was on the river) -everybody uses rivers. We saw at the beginning of the Federal Corps WPES Permit system begun in the 70's we'd have to meet high standards for discharge. We decided it was good because our waste water is very biodegradable. No bad stuff in it-it's just odorous but it can be easily treated. We decided to do it, I think around 1976.
Discussion: There was a time I remember when I was a young boy riding on a truck with my grandfather-my mother's father who worked for us also-operated in Warsaw at the pick-up station. I can remember we'd go to the bank once a week and get a bag of silver dollars. We would give away silver dollars when we picked up a cow or horse. Times they have changed.
Q: How did you get involved?
A: How I got involved? O.K. I was Psychology Major - English Minor at Wabash College in 1962. I was pretty well unsure what that was leading to, so I was working in Ft. Wayne at State School for Mentally Retarded-practical experience in the field of Psychology to see if there was anything there that I really wanted to go to work at. During the Sectional Basketball Tourney, February 22, 1962, a few things occurred to people in this community. George Scheerer who was at Wittenberg University tripped and fell through a glass door, almost bled to death, and bears the scars. Maybe you weren't aware of that but George bears the scars of falling through that glass door that night. My father got called out of the basketball game to tell him that the plant out there was on fire. It wasn't on fire-it was all over fire. You can imagine a lot of old wood around, all that high grade fat not only in tanks but also soaked into that wood over the years. It did not take very long to completely melt down to scrap heap and so next day Jane and I said "Well maybe we'd better go back. It will be kind of a tough time for Dad." We went back to help out for awhile. I wasn't doing anything terribly important. School would wait -- go back and help Dad out to get this thing going again and we'd be on our way. I guess we're on our way!
We have a National Association. We fund a protein research foundation. Through that we support numerous research projects-pretty big bucks go into that. A really small operation like myself never could afford research. I don't even have lab facilities. I get all my testing done in outside laboratories. In much less time the research is done. Small guys really benefit by hanging together. By joining the National Association I benefit by the big companies' funding of research projects. They have an extensive and ongoing research program.
Q: I assume the plant at Plymouth is still operating? They do essentially the same as you do?
A: Yes they do. They don't do it nearly as well, I like to think. They're not only-I want to be a little careful-they have been very helpful to me in times of need-so they are not bad people. But man, they're sloppy operators. They are a disgrace to the industry. They are an embarrassment to the State of Indiana and they are royal thorns in the side of the lady who is the head of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. She would love to put them out of business. The problem with that is her approach would be to put all the rest of us out of business first. It's always a challenge.
Observation: It's really an industry we can't do without.
A: It is! As to recycling, we've been at it a long, long time.
We are a maintenance level. It is a very difficult-naturally I'll, when you open up the hotel, I'll be on your doors with my business card-take care of your waste-fryer fat, if you have deep fat fryers in operation. But new business in this area in terms of processing of major kind, it doesn't come along. Economics of going out to compete with an operation that's in 12 states, does not make much sense. If I behave myself they allow me to keep operating. If I get smart, they are capitalized to the point that they could come in and buy every account I have and I'm done tomorrow. That's the reality of being very small.
Thank you! You had a lot of very fascinating questions.




























































Grandstaff Rendering
presented to the North Manchester Historical Society June 8, 1992 by David Grandstaff
In 1917 my grandfather, Orin Grandstaff, established the business. He bought rendering businesses for seven sons. Of those original plants scattered around Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, we are the last of the remaining independent family operation plants still in operation. And, we are one of six surviving Hoosier renderers out of more than 100 such operations at the turn of the century. So we have seen a lot of consolidation. In fact, as I thought about it, even at our small size we have incorpoated and consolidated two other operators in our district. We bought a plant that closed at Warsaw, Indiana a long time before I remember-up near Whetehead farms. We also purchased and consolidated the plant that used to operate at Huntington. So we've been a part of that consolidation. We're a small survivor.
The rendering industry, if you are not aare, is the recycling link with the food chain. Offal-slaughter plants-fat and bone trimmings in grocery stores-waste scraps from restaurants-the kitchen here at Manchester College in fact. Dead animals collected and recycled into products you come in contact with every day in your life.
The process is really one of reduction. We do on a grand scale what you do at home-we cook this inedible meat and fat product together, we grind in into course hamburger-1 1/2" particle size diameter and cook it in sterilizing temperature so the moisture is completely removed. Then we separate it by pressure, by squeezing and pressing, into its liquid and fat component or solid meat and bone meal component-continuous reprocess.
The high protein section, dry section, is an ingredient in poultry rations, hog rations, and now today we're beginning to encapsulate it and feed it to our ruminant animals. One time we thought there was not a market for this product becuase they couldn't handle it. Now encapsulated, it passes through and also becomes a high energy source for cattle. And if, of course, you have dogs and cats at home, almost every pet food label on the shelf has animal life products. Foods like Alpo start with and never reduce to the moisture level we do.
Inedible fats of not-for-human-consumption fats are used in consumer products ranging from highest quality soap, jet aircraft lubricants, mold releases for tires and cosmetics. That, of course, as I'be already mentioned, is a high energy ingredient in many animal food formiulations.
We're in fact a very energy intensive process. We butn a lot of oil-we're very sensitive to oil embargoes and fulf wars and thins like that. We process about 2 million pounds a month of otherwise potentially hazardous waste material. We try to be environmentally good neighbors. We process all of our own biodegradable waste water in out on-site discharge waste treatnebt plkant. We employ seven route drivers and seven process empleyees. Our production manager is John Eaves. My wife and I are the office at 218 East Main Street.
I have tonight a very brief video introducing you to the process.
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You seem to be curious about this product. What does it look like? I brought some samples. I'm all right on the meal samples-open, pinch, feel, smell. I might have passed it out earlier but you'd have been nibbling on it all during dinner! I also brought a couple of jars of fat. Unfortunately the jars are a little too big and you can't get a very good indication of what the product looks like so I spooned some into these saucers and I'll pass them. You can see the color and so on. Our fat is a very soft product. Tallow is for the hard white white substance in soap, candles, that sort of use. Ours goes into feed and chemical industry as we've indicated. I'll also pass one of these saucers-I didn't pass that earlier because it looks so much like maple syrup. Doesn't smell like it though.
Questions:
Q: That meal is mixed in with other things to make dog food?
A: Yes, this is a very high protein. It's about a 60% protein product. Actually tests a little higher than 60%-so you would put it in an average hog ration like Bob would have used or any of you. No more than 200 lbs. to a ton of this for a high protein ration along with soy meal, corn or other ingredients.
Q: How near is this to what many of us once regerred to as tankage?
A: I thought about that as the video was talking about the marketing of the quality control. That's probably the greatest change that we've seen in our industry. Because I remember days too when an awful lot of our product went out the door to local and area farmers who would drive in and say "I need a couple bags of tankage." To be perfectly honest the product we sell today is not a lot different than what was referred to as tankage. The biggest difference is that we now know-we've been forced to really get a good grip and know nutritionally the composition and each renderer has a little bit different composition of raw matereals and so on that goes into the product. Each of us has a different product even though it's the same thing-it's all a little bit different. Survival today means knowing exactly what you've got and exactly what and to whom that product is most valuable, then marketing only to them. Now there's no point trying to sell this product to someone who wants a low grade low protein high calcium kind of meat and bone meal. You might make it in the city where you go after a lot of fats and lots of bones from stores. This product has higher value in other areas so that's what we do and that's how we market it. That's a long round-about answer to your question, but tankage today, there are a lot of technical definitions. Tankage is kind of the lowest of the low grades. Tankage is a combination of about anything that you want to throw in-so our product here is not tankage. I market it under a trade name Provial 60-60% protein content and I do that for the reason that this product does not fit any of the standare ATPI Trade technical definitions. It fits two of them exactly in the miccle so I use a trade name which describes the product which is 70% poultry meal and 30% meat and bone meal.
Q: Is this the same kind of meal that you give to put on your plants-a bone meal?
A: When you buy bone meal you're buying steamed bone meal and that is a product that is generally from whole bone at the slaughter house. And yes, it's processed much, much the same way. But it is processed all by itself.
Q: What is your territory?
A: We cover parts of about 10 counties. As you are aware there's a lot of poultry production in this area and there is also a major slaughter plant that processes the spent fowl when the laying cycle is done. Those hens are slaughtered and the meat still tastes but is a little tough and goes into things like pot pies and Campbell soups, etc.-very tasty meat but not real tender. That's the target of that spent meat, and the offal of that slaughter I process. You are aware also that we have a fairly high concentration of hogs.
Q: Is there a market for hides?
A: There is a market for hide-the market for the rendered hide is very limited any more. There's enough production of slaughter-packer hides that the demand for what is obviously a lower grade hide as I used to produce has gotten to the point where I currently am not even handling any hides.
Q: What do you do with them?
A: They go right in the product.
Q: Unable to hear from tape.
A: As I am aware of the history of the industry there was a very, very short time that it was kinda thrown out-the solid protion was actually discarded, because you were after the fat. That's what the rendering industry grew up on. Think about the related industry-the whaling industry-is really a ship-side rendering industry. I've visited some of the sea prot museums and visited a whaling ship. It's a moving rendering plant. They boil it down to get the oil. They're after the oil. The same was true when the rendering industry was begun. We didn't have any outlet for the solids. The whole bone wasn't ground in the early days. It was cooked down in open kettles and the fat was skimmed off. The broth, or whatever, and the bone were thrown out. I'm sure that where it was thrown got pretty doggoned green after a couple of seasons of that. That's the only relationship I know to being called a fertilizer plant. But it's a misnomer that sticks very tightly. You may have seen inthe paper two or three weeks ago that there was a chemical fertilizer plant that burned. I got a couple calls from concerned friends from around the northern part of the state, concerned that I'd had another fire.
Q: Unable to hear from tape.
A: Tankage is that product composed of the tissue, bone of carcasses containing not more than normal processing amount-it's a real technical thing-but tankage is a lower grade meat and bone meal usually fortified with blood meal to get the protein level up. I usually contains blood meal and lowest grades of raw material. If I had a sample of tankage with me tonight it would look very much like this product that I have. I would be very much darker in color and the aroma would be more intense.
Feathers are processed separately. We do not process feathers. One of those interesting arrangements that occurs in the divelopment of new business. When a Greek family bought this poultry processing plant over at Mentone, Indiana, nobody in the State of Indiana had any dea what to do with poultry offal. It's tough stuff to handle. It has some really strange characteristics. One of, if not the least troublesome of which, is when you cook it, it boils over like crazy and it foams. The vat just goes wild. It takes some specialized treating-very specialized expensive products from Dow Chemical to keep it from doing that during the processing. Nobody in Indiana-it was just trash-no renderer wanted it. My dad was smart enough to figure out that if he could learn how to cook it, there's probably be a buck in it some day. A neighboring, competing plant, on up the road-most of you all are aware of it unfortunately-got there the same day and so they decided they's split it up, we'd handle the offal, and they'd handle the feathers. That's been the happiest arrangement I've ever had. The feathers are not only extremely abrasive, they just cew up equipment like crazy. They also, to be properly done, need an entirely different process.To be properly prepared for feed ingredients they need to be hydrolized which is really a pressure cooking kind of operation. If properly done, feather meal if you've seen it is a really beautiful white, fluffy product, great stuff. Improperly done it's about three grades below tankage.
Feather meal runs about 75% protein. Digestibility level is somewhat -we run 90% digestibel. I don't think feather meal runs that high digestible. That can vary all over the place, depending on how it's processed. If you throw it in a cooker and cook it conventionally like you would other materials, you don't get a very digestible product. It has to be hydrolized to maintain its amino-acid balance and digestibility.
Q: Does that go into animal feed then?
A: Yes. And more and more research is showing that is one of the benefits of a concentrated species population in this area. More and more we are finding that species recycled species is most effective in gain and use. The amino acid balance of my product comes from primarily poultry and we feed back primarily to poultry because they benefit best from it.
Same goes for hogs. Wilson-their product will be a little better tailored to hog production.
Hoofs-often throught of as being the glue. That's a whole different process. I know of no renderer who is also in glue manufacturing. You can still buy horse foof glue, and as a historically oriented body you are all familiar I am sure with the glass that was popular (I'm lost, I don't know the time period) glass that has a very crazed, crackly surface finish to it that was manufactured by taking ordinary glass, coating it with horse-hoof glue, and then heating that. As the glue dried, it actually crackled off the surface of the glass. It was a popular decorative glass, I think, at the turn of the century-first 20 years of the century.
I don't know. I've seen it. know for sure what they called it. an art glass form. This is not that. This is a surface that looked more etched than anything else, one side only, like you might have seen in public rest rooms on doors and things like that.
Q: Regarding control
A: We are not rederally controlled. We are state regulated in terms of the majority of industrial regulations. We are under Federal guidelines such as OSHA-Occupational Safety and Health. We meet Federal guidelines so far as waste water treatment because Indiana laws are in line with federal. Really under State licensing permitting inspection -I'd say harrassment-but it's not too bad if you play the game. If you try to do it right, they recognize that.
Q: Is there any danger that your business will go the way of the tanning industry?
A. The largest renderer in the United States is currently in bankruptcy. I don't know if that's an answer to your question. It bothers me. It really does. There's more to that story obviously than just the fact that a large nation-wide company is actually in bankruptcy proceedings. They tried to lever too much too fast, but in California which is where a lot of our country's business problems seem to originate, the environmental regulators would really like to run the rendering companies completely out of California and they already meet incredibly high standards. They're putting out waste water that's practically ready to drink.
I don't like to be a pessimist but there are already areas in the country where there is no such thing as dead stock removal - nobody left there that will handle that kind of business. So little by little-and it's just been in the last year and half that I finally got tired of trying to fight the tight marketing problems-so little by little there's going to be some segments of that last. It's one industry that's going to supply 20 Empire State Buildings a day of inedible products with values beside the product that cannot be ignored.
Q: Regarding odor.
A: Basically what happens-we are cooking when we boil, the product steams. What carries the aroma is steam. What we do to minimize the conduct of that odor is to get rid of the steam. Immediately when it comes off the cooker we run it through a big cooler and we knock it back down and condense it instantly back to water which we can then treat on site. Water still has that aroma but it doesn't carry.
Every rendering plant in the world along with about every other industry (when the cannery was here in town it was on the river) -everybody uses rivers. We saw at the beginning of the Federal Corps WPES Permit system begun in the 70's we'd have to meet high standards for discharge. We decided it was good because our waste water is very biodegradable. No bad stuff in it-it's just odorous but it can be easily treated. We decided to do it, I think around 1976.
Discussion: There was a time I remember when I was a young boy riding on a truck with my grandfather-my mother's father who worked for us also-operated in Warsaw at the pick-up station. I can remember we'd go to the bank once a week and get a bag of silver dollars. We would give away silver dollars when we picked up a cow or horse. Times they have changed.
Q: How did you get involved?
A: How I got involved? O.K. I was Psychology Major - English Minor at
Wabash College in 1962. I was pretty well unsure what that was leading to, so I was working in Ft. Wayne at State School for Mentally Retarded-practical experience in the field of Psychology to see if there was anything there that I really wanted to go to work at. During the Sectional Basketball Tourney, February 22, 1962, a few things occurred to people in this community. George Scheerer who was at Wittenberg University tripped and fell through a glass door, almost bled to death, and bears the scars. Maybe you weren't aware of that but George bears the scars of falling through that glass door that night. My father got called out of the basketball game to tell him that the plant out there was on fire. It wasn't on fire-it was all over fire. You can imagine a lot of old wood around, all that high grade fat not only in tanks but also soaked into that wood over the years. It did not take very long to completely melt down to scrap heap and so next day Jane and I said "Well maybe we'd better go back. It will be kind of a tough time for Dad." We went back to help out for awhile. I wasn't doing anything terribly important. School would wait -- go back and help Dad out to get this thing going again and we'd be on our way. I guess we're on our way!
We have a National Association. We fund a protein research foundation. Through that we support numerous research projects-pretty big bucks go into that. A really small operation like myself never could afford research. I don't even have lab facilities. I get all my testing done in outside laboratories. In much less time the research is done. Small guys really benefit by hanging together. By joining the National Association I benefit by the big companies' funding of research projects. They have an extensive and ongoing research program.
Q: I assume the plant at Plymouth is still operating? They do essentially the same as you do?
A: Yes they do. They don't do it nearly as well, I like to think. They're not only-I want to be a little careful-they have been very helpful to me in times of need-so they are not bad people. But man, they're sloppy operators. They are a disgrace to the industry. They are an embarrassment to the State of Indiana and they are royal thorns in the side of the lady who is the head of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. She would love to put them out of business. The problem with that is her approach would be to put all the rest of us out of business first. It's always a challenge.
Observation: It's really an industry we can't do without.
A: It is! As to recycling, we've been at it a long, long time.
We are a maintenance level. It is a very difficult-naturally I'll, when you open up the hotel, I'll be on your doors with my business card-take care of your waste-frier fat, if you have deep fat friers in operation. But new business in this area in terms of processing of major kind, it doesn't come along. Economics of going out to compete with an operation that's in 12 states, does not make much sense. If I behave myself they allow me to keep operating. If I get smart, they are capitalized to the point that they could come in and buy every account I have and I'm done tomorrow. That's the reality of being very small.
Thank you! You had a lot of very fascinating questions.