A child shall lead them
Growing up on Greenhouse row.
will&ralph.jpg - Will Goetz teaching his boy right from wrong. Ralph Goetz (now in his 50's) grew up to be a fine man. The right mix of love and discipline makes all the difference :)
will&ralph2.jpg - A couple of minutes after the prior picture. Truly the right mix of discipline and love. These people were and are no strangers to family values :)
ralphwatering2.jpg - From an early age the children of the area learned the skills needed to become good growers. This picture and the following one inspired the name for this section. As in many of these pics the range in the background is Funke's. My cousin Ralph could never have imagined the foreshadowing these pictures present when he was watering Gramma's flowerbed :)
ralphwatering.jpg - Have I put enough water on them yet??
ralph&chickens.jpg - Back before the City decided we couldn't keep livestock here anymore the growers here had the basic compliment of chickens, hogs, goats, horses, cattle etc. Farm kids knew well and good where chicken and bacon came from :)
ralph&momma.jpg - They also knew well and good when momma called you'd better listen.. :)
ralphwagon.jpg - The little red wagon has been a childhood favorite for many of us as it was for this happy little camper :) About 20 years after this picture was taken I showed up at these very same steps at about the same age as Ralph is in this picture with my little red wagon and some lettuce I'd just cut trying to sell heads for a dime apeice to my Uncle Harry :) Uncle Harry bought 7 heads.. 70 cents! wow! I was rich! hehe :) What a sweet man, he had about 15 houses full at the time :)
Goatwagon.jpg - Hey! let's hook the goat up to the wagon and head out for the prairie! yippee!
tuckeredout.jpg - All that watering and wagon riding makes a boy tired ya know :)
tuckeredout2.jpg - Huh? ya mean I gotta go back to work?
loadoflettuce.jpg - Yep, there's always plenty to do, lettuce to cut, tomatos to pick, trucks to load etc. etc. :) This one shows Goetz's front field with Funke's greenhouses in the background. Funke's owns this field today. We intend to use it for display gardens of the shrubs and perennials we carry so that gardeners can see the mature forms of the starter plants we sell.
prince.jpg - The Goetz's plowhorse, peeking out of the stable :)
infrontofframe.jpg - Taken in front of the frame house on the Goetz place. The gardener boys did their part to preserve our freedom. Many served overseas to ensure that our way of life would be preserved at home. This is Ed Kattleman (husband of Louise Goetz) during WWII holding a young Helen. Louise's shadow is present in the foreground as the photographer.
carolefunkesfront.jpg - Carole Funke (Coleman for the last what? 40 years?) in Funke's front yard twirling a baton. Notice the now HUGE Norway spruce in the Goetz yard has just been planted and the greenhouses at spring grove across the street. Since this was obviously taken in the 40's it has corrected my thought that Funke's front hot beds (technically cold frames) were installed in the early 1900's. Since they are not present in this picture and the front end is plowed for vegetables they were obviously put in much later. The young tree to Carole's left is the silver maple still in the front yard at our office. Bob told me he got this tree as one of the Arbor day seedlings given away in those days by the public schools. The tree give away I am told was sponsored by Mabley & Carew for Arbor day. Most years Funke's continues this tradition by giving away young evergreen seedlings on Earth day. This pic is from Helen's teenage photo album.
carol@springgrove.jpg - The majorette from the previous picture and her pal from next door (Helen) take a hike across the street :) Spring grove Cemetary has been a great place for kids for generations and continues to be so today...
helen@springgrove.jpg - Doing the typical teenage girl thing modeling for the camera :)
helen@springgrove2.jpg - Another pose :) The dog even got into this one!
louise&tom.jpg - Helen's sister Louise with her baby boy in the yard at the Goetz's.
louise&tom2.jpg - This shot shows a great view of Funke's in the background. Tom grew up to be a top race car mechanic. He and Mark Oswald started out together with a homebuilt car. In the 80's their team was at the top of the national drag race circuit.
trike.jpg - 1961 or 62 A small red head in the Funke's yard on a favorite mode of transportation :) This picture shows the Wischmeyer Greenhouses which sat where our Side and rear nursery now stand. The foundation wall behind D3 was a part of this small four house range. The field in the background is our current parking lot and the barn across the field had been so poorly maintained that I took it down in the early 90's. The wood that could be salvaged became our windchime display.
richosled.jpg - 1971 Rich Osterbrock partaking of a favorite pastime of the kids in this area behind the market shed on the Osterbrock place. Even Helen when viewing the pic with the bulldozer in the Building the future section reamrked how the hill they'd cut in that pic had been a slow but good sled riding hill :)
