1921
Four items from the Business Front: The first concerns Pick Ankeny whose name has long been associated with the eighth largest brewery in the U. S., a leading independent, the Theo. Hamm Brewing Co. of St. Paul, Minn. Molson Breweries, Ltd., of Montreal has announced its acquisition through an exchange of stock. In 1964 Hamm boasted of sales almost equal to those of Molson, second among Dominion producers. Why the deal? Presumably because: 1. Molson has less government restraint on corporate cooperation. 2. Molson has the advantage of lower labor, packaging, and advertising costs. 3. With only 20 million persons in Canada, Molson would like to put a head on the American market with over 180 million. The new emphasis may concentrate on better packaging, high-powered advertising, technological advances, streamlined plants, and sincere assurances that beer, rightly understood, is a thinning drink for all persons, not a burly drink for fat, blue-collared workers. Do Americans drink beer in quantity? The estimate for 1964 is 100 million barrels.
The second concerns Ellwood Fisher, Chairman of Fisher Foods, which has been bought by the Stop-N-Shop Group. The transaction consisted of a transfer of majority of the common stock of Fisher, estimated in financial circles to represent 54% to 55% of the 579,239 common shares outstanding. Anticipated for a long time in Cleveland supermarket circles, the sale was finally consummated at $10 a share, about $3,180,000 for the bloc of controlling stock, but with other stockholders possibly involved, the entire transaction could amount to $5,792,390. Founded in Cleveland in 1907 as Fisher Bros. Co., Fisher Foods has operated 74 supermarkets throughout northeastern Ohio. Other properties include a fresh-meat and frozen foods terminal, a fresh-fruit and vegetable distribution facility, and an ice-cream manufacturing plant. Employees number about 2,500. The latest financial statement shows sales of $66,122,418 for 40 weeks ending Oct. 3, 1964.
The third concerns Tracy Higgins and the Higgins Ink Co., which has a record of 80 years of independent existence. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of A. W. FaberCastell Pencil Co., Inc., of Newark, N. J., an offshoot of a 200-year-old company of the same name in Stein, Germany, near Nuremberg, the cradle of the pencil industry. At the moment Tracy is busier than ever because he is functioning as executive vice president of the Brooklyn operation. He has time, however, for social and community activities. With a power cart he plays the St. George's Golf and Country Club course in Stony Brook of which he is secretary. He has accepted a one-year uncontested term on the Smithtown Central School District Board of Education, which has regular weekly evening meetings lasting from 8 to midnight. Last autumn Tracy was instrumental in putting over a 6-million-dollar bond issue for sites for an elementary school and a future junior high and also a 4½-million-dollar enlargement of the senior high school.
The fourth concerns Bill Embree and Rittenhouse & Embree Co., which deals in lumber and millwork, founded in 1833, which remains still independent. Still keeping his eye alert and his hand in, Bill enjoys the stimulus of the workaday world and the playaday world of squash rackets and hunting.
No longer will Mason Dickinson as stock clerk issue all the physical education equipment for 2,800 Amherst freshmen and sophomores in their required exercise courses for the first two years. Retired, he will treat himself to unlimited piano and organ practice, photography, gardening, and writing profiles about life in Amherst since 1898. He may recall trolley cars, practice skirmishes of the military brigade at Massachusetts Aggie on the open fields with real power, noise, and gunsmoke, and the grocery and hardware store which his father operated for more than a half century and the Grange Store in which his two sons helped for 25 years.
Though 66, Rudi Blesh is so valuable that the 65 rule has been waived at Queens and NYU. At Queens he is teaching a new course aimed at music majors entitled: "Jazz, the Master Improvisers, A Study in Depth of Genius and the Creative Process of Jazz." Last fall Rudi did a 26-program radio course over Station WNYC for the University of the City of New York, "Dimensions of Jazz," with a study guide written by himself. He is presently busy with a book for Macmillan.
The 1921 globetrotters like Jerry Cutler and Ike Chester, Harry Mosser and Werner Janssen, Paul Belknap and Francis Hickman, Kent McKinley and Gus Perkins may prick up their ears when they hear about the itinerary of Bill and Teeter Alley. They sailed Feb. 10 on the "Constitution" for Naples and flew to Cairo where they sought out a variety of Egyptian excitements: the Manial Royal Palace, mosques (Sultan Hassan and Mohamed Aly), the bazaar of Khan Khalil, the synagogue of Rabbi Ben Ezra, night clubs (Caravan Tent and Sahara City), camel rides to pyramids and sphinxes, tombs (Ptah Hotep, Seti I, Amenophis 11, and Ramses YI), boating on the Nile, and Karnak by horse carriage. In Greece - well, you have heard of Daphne and Delphi, Nauplia and Epidaurus, Mycenae and Corinth, Piraeus, and Hydra, and Poros. If you have not, make it Athens. You know what is to be done in Athens even without Ellis Briggs and his 1921 automobile. Spain was brisk: Madrid, Granada, and Seville. France was still brisker: Nice and Cannes. With old-world smiles the Alleys will greet the Statue of Liberty, April 2. Should they not give a new name to their Hanover street and change Wren Lane to Eagle Alley?
Bord and Burd Helmer chose the new world. Having canceled Hawaii last month, they settled for ten days in Barbados. There Bord learned the reason for its name. Portuguese navigators, who visited the island in 1536, called it Los Barbados, after the bearded fig trees. An economist, Burd learned why the island makes no money from its forests; there are none because the soil though fertile is too shallow.
P, the middle initial of Bob Burroughs, stands for Phillips, but it might well be Peregrinator; Bob too is mobile. In November he spent a week in Bermuda with Rocky Flanders '14 and Mary at their home there. To give Bob a chance to meet the notables, Rocky gave a buffet dinner for 40 guests, mostly permanent residents, from England, Canada, and the U. S. In December Bob flew to Mexico to design a pension plan for a large organization and to visit old friends. Later Bob, his daughter Helen, her five children, and husband skied for a week in the Canadian Laurentians at Mont Tremblant.
In the extreme background were President Johnson's daughter, Luci Baines, and Paul Betz, a friend. In the left background partially hidden was President Johnson in a Navy blue overcoat leaving St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church, Washington. Left of center, fur coated, was Lady Bird. Well in the focal center in a double-breasted dark suit, no vest and no overcoat in 18-degree weather escorting the President and Mrs. Johnson was John 1.. Sullivan. The two-column picture in the New York Times was news because it was President Johnson's first public appearance after his illness. He looked "subdued." The occasion was the red mass, held annually to invoke the blessing of the Lord on those who make and administer the laws.
Secretary, Box 925 Hanover, N. H.
Treasurer, 12 W. Mystic Ave., Mystic, Conn. 06355
