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Legacies Project Oral History: Carl Guldberg

When: 2020

Carl Guldberg was born in 1917 and grew up in Suttons Bay, Michigan. He graduated from the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan in 1940. He began his career as an aircraft draftsman in Baltimore, but soon returned to Michigan to marry his wife, Julie Hart. Guldberg was a draftsman for the Stinson Aircraft Company in Detroit during World War II. He ran his own advertising agency, Guldberg Advertising, for 35 years in Ann Arbor. He passed away on July 21, 2018.

Carl Guldberg was interviewed as part of an internship at Applied Safety and Ergonomicsin Ann Arbor in 2010 as part of the Legacies Project.

Transcript

  • [00:00:10.19] LYNETTE SCORE: My name is Lynette Score. I'm interviewing Carl Guldberg. And today is July 16, 2010. All right, Mr. Goldberg. First of all, we're going to have to ask you some demographic questions just so we can store the information that we get from you. So please say and spell your name.
  • [00:00:28.99] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, my name? Carl, C-A-R-L, E. for Erling, E-R-L-I-N-G, Guldberg, G-U-L-D-B-E-R-G.
  • [00:00:40.23] LYNETTE SCORE: Thank you. All right. What is your birth date, including the year?
  • [00:00:44.55] CARL GULDBERG: June 1st, 1917.
  • [00:00:47.20] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. How would you describe your race or ethnicity?
  • [00:00:52.52] CARL GULDBERG: Norwegian.
  • [00:00:54.00] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. What is your religious affiliation?
  • [00:00:57.38] CARL GULDBERG: Lutheran.
  • [00:00:57.86] LYNETTE SCORE: Lutheran? What is the highest level of formal education that you've completed?
  • [00:01:03.41] CARL GULDBERG: Bachelor of design from the College of Architecture and Design, University of Michigan, class of '40.
  • [00:01:11.99] LYNETTE SCORE: Did you attend any additional school beyond what you completed?
  • [00:01:15.20] CARL GULDBERG: No.
  • [00:01:15.56] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. What is your marital status?
  • [00:01:20.45] CARL GULDBERG: I was married 64 years. My wife died three years ago.
  • [00:01:26.34] LYNETTE SCORE: How many children do you have?
  • [00:01:27.65] CARL GULDBERG: Four.
  • [00:01:29.42] LYNETTE SCORE: Do you have any siblings?
  • [00:01:31.70] CARL GULDBERG: Any what?
  • [00:01:32.45] LYNETTE SCORE: Siblings.
  • [00:01:33.56] CARL GULDBERG: Yes, one sister and one brother.
  • [00:01:37.69] LYNETTE SCORE: What would you--
  • [00:01:38.16] CARL GULDBERG: My one brother is dead. We had four in our family also.
  • [00:01:41.65] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, got you. What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
  • [00:01:50.64] CARL GULDBERG: A graphic designer and advertising executive.
  • [00:01:55.05] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. At what age did you retire?
  • [00:02:00.32] CARL GULDBERG: 70.
  • [00:02:03.17] LYNETTE SCORE: OK. We're now ready to begin the first part of the interview. This chunk of questions is about your childhood and growing up years up until, we'll say, the time when you graduated from high school. So to start off, where did you grow up? And what are your strongest memories of that place?
  • [00:02:26.68] CARL GULDBERG: I grew up in Suttons Bay, Michigan. It's a small village north of Traverse City, which is 250 miles north of Ann Arbor.
  • [00:02:41.10] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. How did your family came to live there?
  • [00:02:45.22] CARL GULDBERG: My father was a Lutheran minister and he was called there in 1919. I was two years old when they moved from Wisconsin.
  • [00:02:55.27] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. What was your house like?
  • [00:02:59.29] CARL GULDBERG: House?
  • [00:03:00.01] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [00:03:01.29] CARL GULDBERG: Well, it was a parsonage. It had four bedrooms and kitchen, dining room. It was a nice house. Wood shed.
  • [00:03:12.11] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:03:13.08]
  • [00:03:17.44] LYNETTE SCORE: How many people lived in your house when you were growing up? And what was their relationship to you?
  • [00:03:24.95] CARL GULDBERG: Well, I was one of four children. Three other siblings, my mother and father, and my grandpa Culsted. My mother's father came to live with us, I guess shortly after my dad and mother were married. He lived with us all his life. He lived to be 95.
  • [00:03:50.31] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, wow. What was your family like then?
  • [00:03:55.71] CARL GULDBERG: Like?
  • [00:03:56.65] LYNETTE SCORE: Mm-hmm.
  • [00:03:57.45] CARL GULDBERG: What do you mean by like?
  • [00:04:00.49] LYNETTE SCORE: Well, just what was life like when you were living like your family?
  • [00:04:04.71] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, life? Oh, it was an ideal childhood I guess. Suttons Bay was a wonderful place to grow up in. We had the Bay, Lake Michigan, swimming. In the wintertime, we went skiing and skating. In the fall and when I got a little older, I did some hunting with my dad. So all in all, I'd say it's a pretty good place to grow up.
  • [00:04:35.29] LYNETTE SCORE: What sort of work did your father and mother do?
  • [00:04:38.62] CARL GULDBERG: Well, dad was a minister.
  • [00:04:40.00] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, right, yeah.
  • [00:04:43.03] CARL GULDBERG: He had congregation there. And mother didn't work. Mother never worked until dad died. And then she had to get a job. That was later in life.
  • [00:04:56.69] LYNETTE SCORE: What did she do then?
  • [00:05:00.35] CARL GULDBERG: She went to back to Minnesota and-- my father, his last call was back to Minnesota, Fosston, Minnesota. And so she found a job in Minneapolis with friends and then ended up a house mother. She was a very talented lady and managed to have a pretty good life after my father passed on.
  • [00:05:32.78] LYNETTE SCORE: How would you describe your relationship with your other family members?
  • [00:05:38.70] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, I think it was probably good. I was the oldest member. I guess they all looked up to me. Of course, I remember that. Being the oldest kid in the family has certain advantages.
  • [00:05:53.83] LYNETTE SCORE: I know. What was a typical day like for you?
  • [00:05:59.15] CARL GULDBERG: What?
  • [00:05:59.52] LYNETTE SCORE: What was a typical day like for you when you were growing up?
  • [00:06:04.09] CARL GULDBERG: Oh. Well, I don't know. I guess a typical day growing up, I'd go to school. And when I got into high school, I played basketball, got on the team, became a pretty good player. And joined the Boy Scouts, and we did a lot of activities, what the Scouts do in the summertime. And then we had a band. We had a band and an orchestra. And I played clarinet in both the orchestra and band.
  • [00:06:53.05] In summertime, we just messed around, play baseball. We had a baseball team. We'd go up to the fairgrounds. It was called the Suttons Bay Fairgrounds. It was a nice, big, open stretch of country where we had a baseball diamond and we play baseball. And in the summer, then we'd swim, of course, down the beach. We had a nice, public beach. Had a lot of woods in back. We'd go walking through the woods, bunch of us kids just mess around, I guess what kids do.
  • [00:07:39.31] LYNETTE SCORE: Can you describe any chores or duties that you had when you were growing up?
  • [00:07:48.75] CARL GULDBERG: Well, let's see. I used to chop wood when I got a little older, split wood in the back. We had wood stoves, wood cooking stove and a wood stove in the living room, which they eventually took out when they put a furnace in. And we had a coal furnace. And I had to go down and shovel the coal into the furnace, of course. Then let's see-- what was that question again?
  • [00:08:30.41] LYNETTE SCORE: What chores you had.
  • [00:08:31.68] CARL GULDBERG: Chores. Later, when times got tough in the Depression, I used to walk a couple of miles up in the country to a farm where one of our parishioners had milk. And I'd get a gallon of milk and bring it back. I'd do that once a day. I remember doing that in the 30s. I was a teenager by then. I'd run errands for mom and dad, of course. I'd go downtown and get the groceries, bring them back. Guess that was about it. I had a dog. It was my job to take care of the dog.
  • [00:09:27.48] LYNETTE SCORE: What were your favorite things to do for fun?
  • [00:09:33.08] CARL GULDBERG: Swimming, playing basketball, and playing baseball. Then I learned to dance when I was-- I guess I was 14, first dance. That was a real thrill. We had dances every Saturday night in the town hall. So we'd go down there and dance on Saturday nights.
  • [00:10:01.91] LYNETTE SCORE: Do you remember around that time any interesting trends from the time or fads, maybe funny words you guys said at the time?
  • [00:10:15.79] CARL GULDBERG: Gosh, I don't-- nothing stands out in my mind. I suppose there were some.
  • [00:10:25.16] LYNETTE SCORE: For example, when you went to these dances, what sort of dances did you guys do?
  • [00:10:32.57] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, they were just couple dances. They played swing music.
  • [00:10:44.01] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, yeah.
  • [00:10:44.59] CARL GULDBERG: They'd play swing music. Sweet music.
  • [00:10:50.86] LYNETTE SCORE: What did you guys wear?
  • [00:10:54.05] CARL GULDBERG: Gee, I don't know. I guess I'd put on the best clothes I had. I don't think I had much at the time. I didn't have a suit. I just had a shirt and a sweater and a pair of pants, shoes.
  • [00:11:15.57] LYNETTE SCORE: You know how now kids used the word cool? Back then, if something was cool, you probably didn't use the word cool. Did you?
  • [00:11:25.10] CARL GULDBERG: No. I'd never heard of it until about 10 years ago.
  • [00:11:27.79] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:11:30.86] LYNETTE SCORE: Did you guys have different words that you used instead?
  • [00:11:35.71] CARL GULDBERG: I don't recall any specific words. Isn't that funny? There didn't seem to be any fads. I guess we were kind of isolated up there, small town up north.
  • [00:11:48.78] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, you would be. Were there any special days or events or family traditions that you really enjoyed growing up?
  • [00:12:01.44] CARL GULDBERG: When I was small, the day school let out. [LAUGHS] Special traditions, hm. Well, my birthday was June the first. That wasn't a tradition, of course.
  • [00:12:19.63] LYNETTE SCORE: What would you do on your birthday?
  • [00:12:23.01] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, my mother threw a big birthday party for me a couple of times when I was small. And when we got older, we never did anything. We didn't have a lot of presents like they have today. Christmas time came, I-- I guess we always kind of looked forward to Christmas. It was kind of exciting. We would have a tree. The few presents we had would be on Christmas Eve. And then I had to go to church the next day. When you're young, you get a little tired of that, too.
  • [00:13:09.93] LYNETTE SCORE: When you think back on your childhood and on your school years, what important social or historical events were happening at the time? And how did they impact you and your family?
  • [00:13:24.28] CARL GULDBERG: Well, I suppose the one thing that impacted was the Depression when it hit, '28. I was 12 years old at the time. And by the time 1930 came along, all of a sudden, it begin to tighten up. '32, of course, it was pretty bad when Roosevelt came in. And I do remember when he repealed prohibition. Why, all of a sudden, there was a big party in Suttons Bay.
  • [00:14:02.05] And a fellow had had a saloon down there. It had been closed for years. They opened it up, and he was serving beer. Big steins of beer, I remember that. I was still pretty young, so I didn't imbibe. I never had a touch of liquor until I guess I was a senior in high school.
  • [00:14:34.24] LYNETTE SCORE: What signs of the Depression could you see in your daily life?
  • [00:14:39.62] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, our little bank closed. Boy, that really bothered everybody. I'm sure it finally opened, and they opened the banks. But there was deep depression mental despair in the whole town. I still remember that as a young kid and the feeling that nothing was ever going to grow again. There was a feeling that the good times were over, and they were never going to come back. Outside of that, everybody kind of cooperated.
  • [00:15:34.24] I wasn't very much aware of it, but the government's program WPA and the CCC and everything else was coming along. And then one summer, mother and dad scraped up enough money to send me to Interlaken for two weeks for a special program in the summertime. So my best friend Jim Hendrix and I went there, and we played clarinet together. And I remember playing The Stars and Stripes Forever under John Philip Sousa.
  • [00:16:15.83] LYNETTE SCORE: Wow.
  • [00:16:16.91] CARL GULDBERG: He was standing up there in front of us. He was an old man at that time, just barely moving his baton. And we were way back in the third row of clarinets. We were way back there. But we could see him up there in front, of course. I remember that was a high point.
  • [00:16:37.74] LYNETTE SCORE: Very cool. All right. This next segment of questions covers the time from when you graduated from high school up until when you retire, so a fairly long period of time. So after you finished high school, where did you live?
  • [00:17:00.65] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, I lived in Suttons Bay. I decided I wanted to get out to the college, go somewhere and get an education. And I sent for a brochure on the University of Michigan. Why? I don't know. I just had a hankering to do that. And I got a job with the-- WPA had a program out that time, public program. And I was paid as an athletic director of Suttons Bay. I was paid $30 a month, I guess it was. Yeah. It was my job to run the skating rink in the wintertime and then be a lifeguard in the bathing beach in the summertime and any other job that the town fathers wanted to sign to me.
  • [00:17:56.71] LYNETTE SCORE: Now, what was the WPA?
  • [00:18:00.29] CARL GULDBERG: Works Projects Administration. That was one of Roosevelt's programs to put people to work.
  • [00:18:07.82] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, OK.
  • [00:18:09.56] CARL GULDBERG: The other program was the CCC, the Civilian Construction Corps.
  • [00:18:14.41] LYNETTE SCORE: I heard of that.
  • [00:18:16.67] CARL GULDBERG: I tried to get into that. This is going back now. I'm still in high school. I tried to get into that. And they were all filled up. The local physician, Dr. Kurt Camp, was running it. And he said, well, they're all filled up. There aren't anymore positions left. But you could go up to Fort Brady for the summer if you want to. It's a citizens military training camp.
  • [00:18:46.43] So I said fine. I went up there to Fort Brady, and it was basic training to be a soldier. So I had six weeks of basic training. I learned how to shoot the Lee-Enfield rifle. There's athletic exercising and drilling and parading and marching and so on. I guess I was a precursor to the National Guard, apparently. I don't know.
  • [00:19:23.67] LYNETTE SCORE: So after high school, you came to an Ann Arbor to go to college, correct?
  • [00:19:28.51] CARL GULDBERG: Yes. I worked a year, and then I came in 1936. I graduated 1935 from high school.
  • [00:19:37.58] LYNETTE SCORE: And then did you stay in Ann Arbor? Or did you move around during your working life?
  • [00:19:45.13] CARL GULDBERG: When I graduated from Michigan, I had a degree in bachelor design. I wanted to work for an advertising agency as an artist, as a graphic designer. I could not find a job, because everything was closing up in 1940. At least I didn't have the right connections to get into an agency at the time. And I found a job with, of all things, Glenn L. Martin down in Baltimore. They were hiring anybody who could draw. And I became a aircraft draftsman.
  • [00:20:25.75] So I worked there for a year and a half and then got married. And my wife was very unhappy in Baltimore. So we came back to Detroit. Then I got a job at Stinson Aircraft in Wayne, Michigan. And they doubled my salary from what I was making down at Glenn L. Martin. So that made it very palatable to move. And I spent the war years there, actually, as a draftsman.
  • [00:20:57.44] LYNETTE SCORE: Well, I'd like to hear a little bit more about your wife and how you guys got married. So where and when did you meet your wife?
  • [00:21:08.30] CARL GULDBERG: I was a senior at Michigan, second semester. She came back one day to the drafting room where I was working. And she walked back there, and she looked over my shoulder and says, what are you working on? And I looked up at her and I said, boy, some dame.
  • [00:21:32.17] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:21:36.43] So the upshot of it was we went out and had a cup of coffee. And then we double dated and discovered that her sister was going with a fellow, Harry Hallock, that I had wrestled with in my freshman year. And I had not seen him for four years. Because he was in literature, science, and arts program, of course, and I was over in the architectural school.
  • [00:22:08.17] So we hit it off. I dated with her several times. And next thing I knew, we were going steady. And when I went to Baltimore, I kept up correspondence with her and drove home weekends to see her in Ann Arbor.
  • [00:22:29.51] LYNETTE SCORE: What was it like when you guys were dating?
  • [00:22:34.34] CARL GULDBERG: Well, I didn't have any money. So we would just go over to the coffee shop and have a cup of coffee. Then we'd walk around the arboretum. Then I walked back over to the apartment where she lived with her mother and sit on the front steps with her. I'd give her a kiss and then it'd be goodnight. I guess we were quite restrained in our attitudes back then compared to now.
  • [00:23:13.85] LYNETTE SCORE: Tell me about your engagement and your wedding.
  • [00:23:19.81] CARL GULDBERG: Well, we got engaged by long distance. I came up one weekend and asked Julie to marry me. And she accepted, then I went back to work in Baltimore. Then the wedding was set in June, June the 20th in 1941. And my father came down from Minnesota and married us in the Michigan League Chapel. It was a very simple wedding.
  • [00:23:53.48] Julie's sister and her husband then by that time-- they were married, the Hallocks-- they stood up for us as sponsors, I guess. And there were probably 10 or 15 people there that I knew, faculty, a couple of professors that I worked with. Jean Paul Slusser was there with them. I think Don Gooch was there and a couple of others. Oh, and the minister of course.
  • [00:24:31.67] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, yeah. So tell me about your children and what life was like when they were young and living in the house.
  • [00:24:43.78] CARL GULDBERG: Well, we started out with a little house on Sunnyside Street. It's over off of 7th Street here in Ann Arbor. Two bedroom house. And then we had two children. And there was a boy and a girl. So we decided, we've got to do something about it. So I built a home out on the North-- it would be the northwest side of Ann Arbor on Vesper Road.
  • [00:25:27.11] We had four bedrooms plus a bath-- two bathrooms, and one of them had full facilities, so shower and everything, and the kitchen, and a half a basement. It was on a slope. And the kids grew up there. And it was an ideal spot for them. There were a lot of kids around there, a lot of other families. And we enjoyed it very much. I hated to give that home up after 54 years. 54 years in one house is a long time. We got real attached to it.
  • [00:26:16.10] LYNETTE SCORE: Tell me about your working years.
  • [00:26:19.63] CARL GULDBERG: Hm?
  • [00:26:20.54] LYNETTE SCORE: Tell me about your working years when you were working as a draftsman.
  • [00:26:26.35] CARL GULDBERG: Well, after the war, I was offered a good job to go to California with this aircraft company. They were bought out by a big firm out there, Consolidated Vultee, as I recall, and then later became Convair. And I decided at that point-- well, I was kind of torn. Because Jean Paul Slusser called me up and asked me if I'd like to come back and teach at Michigan. And I thought it'd be pretty nice to stay in Ann Arbor. I didn't want to uproot our family. I built a new home and everything.
  • [00:27:10.62] So I accepted the job as a teacher at Michigan. And I taught there for five years. And then I got antsy and decided I really wanted to get into business and just get going in something more, to be more productive in income and activity and everything. So I left and went to Detroit and worked as an industrial designer with a firm there. Am I talking about my career now?
  • [00:27:52.37] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, yeah, what it was like when you were working.
  • [00:27:59.37] CARL GULDBERG: Well, it was a nice job. I liked it. I was handling an account in Toronto. And I'd go over there, take the train overnight, and present plans to them and bring it back the next day. We'd would work on it in the office. And one bright morning I showed up there, and we had about seven or eight of us in that office working, and Karl Reynolds, the guy who owned the place, who was running the show, didn't show up.
  • [00:28:35.30] He didn't come in. Didn't come in all day. And we thought, well, he must be sick. We called his wife. She says, isn't he at work? No, we don't know where he is. We came in the next day, he wasn't there. The third day, it dawned on us that he wasn't going to come back probably. Just walked out and left us. The weirdest thing I'd ever saw.
  • [00:29:00.90] LYNETTE SCORE: So strange.
  • [00:29:02.99] CARL GULDBERG: So I scrambled and got a job in Ann Arbor. I was an ad manager for a local firm, American Broach & Machine. And I worked there for about four years. And then I saw an opportunity to go with a small agent's advertising agency in town. A fellow named Truman Campbell had come out of one of the big firms in Detroit, and he was starting his own firm.
  • [00:29:33.50] And he had this big account he was soliciting, AC spark plugs, I remember. And he was sure he was going to get it. But he never got it, of course. I worked for him a couple of years. One account was up in Saginaw, the Walbro Carburetor Company. And I forget what some of the others were. Then one day, he said, we can't go on anymore.
  • [00:30:13.08] So the firm dissolved. At that point, I decided I've had two firms drop out underneath me, I think I'll start my own business. So I went over and talked to one of our accounts. It was the Unilight division, or whoever bought at the time. And Cliff Baker says, sure, you want this account, you can have it. So I started with one account. Started a business-- a little advertising agency. And I built it up. I got credit card accounts around the whole area.
  • [00:30:59.47] I ran it for 35 years, and it was very successful. I was very happy that I did it. So I was an independent businessman who retired at 70. That's about the story of my life.
  • [00:31:18.94] LYNETTE SCORE: So when you were working, what was a typical day like for you?
  • [00:31:24.31] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, I'd go into the office between 8:30 and 9:00 and we'd have a meeting. I'd get everybody together and kind of lay out what we were going to do for the day, or they would report what they were doing so everybody knew what was going on. And then we'd make assignments and just go on with the business.
  • [00:31:47.71] I made calls on clients. I did a lot of handling accounts that I had brought in. I didn't want to give them up. I handled them myself.
  • [00:32:02.03] I had two artists and a copywriter and stenographer and a gopher. And then I expanded the art department to four artists, and we had a couple of writers, and that was about it.
  • [00:32:27.22] LYNETTE SCORE: So, during your working years, what did your family like to do together?
  • [00:32:38.04] CARL GULDBERG: Well, we had one passion that we did together.
  • [00:32:45.80] Shortly after we were married, my mother-in-law mom wanted to build a cottage up north. She remembered her childhood days up in Charlevoix and Petoskey area, and she had just wanted to have a family cottage up there where the family could come and visit. So I designed a cottage for her.
  • [00:33:09.81] First, we went and found a piece of land. I took her up north, and we found a piece of land in Old Mission Peninsula, which is little peninsula north of Traverse City. It's a nice piece of property on the lake shore, 200 feet of sandy beach. It was very nice.
  • [00:33:29.67] And she bought that, and I designed college for her and we built the cottage. Actually, we built two buildings. We built a cottage, and then a little bunkhouse over on the side a little later to put all of the kids that were coming-- the grandchildren.
  • [00:33:48.82] And that became kind of a sacred place. We went there every summer. My family would go up there and spend the summer there, and I would commute on weekends and then also take two or three weeks for my own vacation. I think that was the one thing that bound us all together. It bound the relatives together. They had cousins that they got to know very well live there at the same time.
  • [00:34:28.02] Aside of that, the kids all had their own activities. Tom was a swimmer in high school. Pioneer High. He was on the team that won the state championship, so I was really proud of him that he stuck with it, because swimming is a real-- boy, it's a real grind to stay with it. Hours, they put in.
  • [00:34:57.70] Ann was three years-- no, she was two years younger than Tom. And, of course, she was a girl, and so she did things that girls do. She did them very well.
  • [00:35:16.91] Peter was our intellectual. I guess you'd call him a nerd. He ended up going to MIT and getting a degree in mathematics and then took a master's at Michigan in atmospheric science. He's running his own business over on the east coast, north of Boston.
  • [00:35:47.71] Jimmy was our maverick. He was the most delightful person. I don't think he ever cracked a book in high school. I don't know how they got him through, but they did. He ended up an Amway distributor. He's still an Amway distributor, which I don't think is a very fruitful job to have, but that's his passion, so he's sticking with it.
  • [00:36:19.24] Tom, our oldest, went to work. He got a master's at Carnegie Tech after graduating from Michigan as an engineer. He went to work for Ford Motor Company. He spent his whole lifetime there. Just retired two years ago.
  • [00:36:40.67] Makes me feel old, all these kids of mine retiring.
  • [00:36:44.69] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, really. How about you, personally? What were your favorite things to do for fun during your working years?
  • [00:36:54.26] CARL GULDBERG: I always enjoyed swimming. So I've been swimming laps all my life. I swam down [INAUDIBLE]. I'm still swimming down there in the wintertime, they let you in.
  • [00:37:11.61] Golf, in the summertime. I played golf-- I belong to a country club here. I'm a life member. I've been playing golf all my life. I don't play very well, but I sure enjoy the game.
  • [00:37:27.17] Playing bridge. I love cards. I love to play bridge and poker. I highly recommend the game of bridge to you.
  • [00:37:37.32] LYNETTE SCORE: We've heard that a lot, actually.
  • [00:37:39.45] CARL GULDBERG: It's a great mind teaser.
  • [00:37:44.88] LYNETTE SCORE: How about during the time when your kids were growing up? Did you notice any difference between the culture when you were growing up and the culture when your kids were growing up?
  • [00:37:59.16] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, yes. Yes. Very much so.
  • [00:38:02.43] LYNETTE SCORE: What did you notice?
  • [00:38:04.07] CARL GULDBERG: There was the explosion of the '60s. My goodness. Well, you had an awful lot of technical innovations. When I grew up, my dad had one radio. That was one of those old ones with-- I guess it had-- yeah. They had an antenna. They'd snake the antenna outside so they could pick up a few things.
  • [00:38:41.98] We still had farmers coming into town on Saturday night, horse and wagons. I remember spending my summers as a kid in a farm of one of the parishioners. I'd go out there and spend two weeks there in the summertime.
  • [00:39:08.35] I'd call [INAUDIBLE], and they'd deliver milk early in the morning by horse and buggy. And they were still delivering milk incidentally, back then. You had milk brought to your doorstep in quarts. Glass quart bottles. It was because the advent of plastic.
  • [00:39:33.10] The car was just coming in, really. A lot of Model Ts around. Fella he had a Buick in town, and boy, he was king of the hill. He had a big Buick. Yes, go ahead.
  • [00:39:50.57] LYNETTE SCORE: OK.
  • [00:39:58.49] CARL GULDBERG: See, where were we?
  • [00:40:00.48] LYNETTE SCORE: So, thinking about how life was like when you were young and the way that you behaved and everything around then, when you were watching your children growing up during the '60s, did you notice changes in their attitude or their clothes or their music or anything?
  • [00:40:20.18] CARL GULDBERG: Well, yes, there were changes, I guess. I'm sure there were. Attitudes-- I don't know about attitudes. Both my wife and I, I guess, were quite lenient. We were of the school that the kids should be allowed to run and develop do things themselves, as long as they didn't get into mischief, which they did a couple of times, of course. We had to straighten them out on that.
  • [00:41:04.34] I don't know. It's a little difficult to really identify any particular thing. I know there was a change in the country, of course.
  • [00:41:26.27] LYNETTE SCORE: Did you notice any unusual trends or words that your kids were saying? Any unusual cultural things they were doing?
  • [00:41:42.72] CARL GULDBERG: In a small town like Suttons Bay, I don't think there would be much of a change. We had a schoolhouse that was a stone schoolhouse. It's now become-- they've mainly cut three or four condominiums out of it, I guess. But it was a school in which you went to school from kindergarten through 12th grade. It was all in the same building.
  • [00:42:14.68] And my high school class was-- we had 18 in my high school class in the ninth grade, and we graduated 12. So it was very small entities.
  • [00:42:35.55] The Main Street was about two blocks of buildings, downtown. Stores, and the rest were all houses that went up the hill-- residential. That doesn't answer your question, does it?
  • [00:42:53.62] LYNETTE SCORE: No, it's all right, though. If you don't have an answer, that's fine.
  • [00:42:59.67] CARL GULDBERG: I think there was a big change-- there was a big change that came-- well, from the despair of the '30s, we got into the war all of a sudden, and everybody pitched in. It was a time of complete dedication to winning the war. This whole nation just gathered together and went to work on it. Any job that was given to them, they did it.
  • [00:43:37.33] So you had the Army, you had the defense, you had the manufacturing. The manufacturing was awesome-- the way they turned out the airplanes. [INAUDIBLE] and the tanks at Crysler. I'm not sure what General Motors and Ford were doing. Well, Ford was involved in the airplanes-- the B-25s.
  • [00:44:10.70] Then came the end of the war and the euphoria of having won. Then the pleasant Eisenhower years. When the government decided to build the international highways which were put in all over the country, everybody felt great about it. Now you could drive north and get there in four and 1/2 hours instead of seven.
  • [00:44:45.57] And then came Kennedy-- Jack Kennedy came in, and of course, there was a euphoria about Kennedy. Well, things are going to be better, now. It was a new regime coming-- a new way of thinking about things. And then when he was assassinated, I remember the depression that just hit everybody in the nation. We could not believe that the President of the United States had been assassinated. It just really affected everybody.
  • [00:45:19.32] And then came the riot-- just the '60s, I guess you would call it. My wife and I had gone to Mexico for a short vacation, and we were going to fly back and stop in New Orleans, because I'd never been there. We wanted to see what it was like. Where the bands play and everybody was-- the mystique of St. Louis. St. Louis blues.
  • [00:45:54.75] And the pilot came on as we were flying from Mexico and said, I'm sorry, folks, we're not stopping at New Orleans. We're going directly to Detroit. And we all wanted to know why. And we found out when he landed that Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and they were not going to go to New Orleans. No way. Didn't want to let us in there.
  • [00:46:25.18] So that was another period-- all of a sudden, there was real turmoil. Then came Vietnam. I was violently opposed to it, because I didn't see any point in it. But you all know the story of Vietnam, pretty much.
  • [00:46:52.66] LYNETTE SCORE: So when you were raising your kids at home, were there any special days or events or family traditions you guys, had besides the cottage?
  • [00:47:07.93] CARL GULDBERG: Well, we did quite a bit with their birthdays, which always made me kind of laugh, because we would give them a birthday, and we'd have all these presents for them. And I'd think, geez, when I was a kid, I had a birthday, and they gave me one present and that was it. So there was a real difference in the way things were done back in the '20s and '30s compared to the '50s, '60s '70s.
  • [00:47:44.35] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. Well this is the last segment of the interview, and it covers from the time when you retired up until now. Tell me about any moves you might have made from when you retired up until you came to Glacier Hills.
  • [00:48:05.06] CARL GULDBERG: Moves?
  • [00:48:05.98] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, like, from house to house.
  • [00:48:08.73] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, we stayed in the same home. We stayed in the same home until 2003. My wife was having problems with dementia and some physical problems, and I was having trouble finding adequate help to come into the home, and we finally decided that maybe we'd better look at Glacier Hills.
  • [00:48:41.04] LYNETTE SCORE: Do you plan to live at Glacier Hills for the rest your life?
  • [00:48:45.98] CARL GULDBERG: Yeah. I don't really have any other place to go. I've sold the old home, of course. I'm reluctant to go buy an apartment at my age. I'm 91. I'm afraid I'm stuck here. It's a very nice place.
  • [00:49:07.25] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [00:49:08.03] CARL GULDBERG: I like the people very much. We have some very interesting people here, as you probably know from the interviews.
  • [00:49:14.53] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, definitely.
  • [00:49:15.81] CARL GULDBERG: And we have a lot of activities going on. I'll be going north the last of July, and I'll stay up there until the 1st of September at our old cottage. There's freedom-- come and go, with a friend, or--
  • [00:49:40.71] LYNETTE SCORE: How did life change for you and your life after the kids left home?
  • [00:49:49.85] CARL GULDBERG: Well, I think we both felt-- we commented on how empty the place was, of course. But they had left gradually, so it wasn't that they all left at the same time. So I guess we had pretty well accepted it and liked it.
  • [00:50:09.15] And we did a lot of traveling for the next four or five years. We traveled to Europe, Hawaii, the San Diego area. I'd say the next 10 years, we went to Norway, my ancestral home. My mother was in seventh heaven there, because she could speak still speak Norwegian. So I had a great time with relatives. Marvelous meals. Boy, they really eat well in Norway.
  • [00:50:41.40] LYNETTE SCORE: How has your life changed since your wife died?
  • [00:50:46.95] CARL GULDBERG: Until you've been there, you would never know. It's a deep void that you have to get over, and everybody goes through it, of course. I've adapted to it by keeping active-- very active. Doing a lot of things, physical and mental.
  • [00:51:13.06] LYNETTE SCORE: So what's a typical day like in your life right now?
  • [00:51:17.13] CARL GULDBERG: Right now? This afternoon, I'm going to go over to Busch's and get some groceries for breakfast. I like to eat my own breakfast instead of over at the cafe. I play golf on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
  • [00:51:42.52] My lady friend and I, with a bunch of other people from Glacier-- we went to the Purple Rose last week and saw Jeff Daniels' latest program-- some Slim and the Oklahoma Kid. I forget what his full title is. It's one of those weird plays. I guess Daniels liked to do that sort of thing. I thought it was very good, actually, when I finally thought it through.
  • [00:52:29.18] I go with my friend to the Ann Arbor symphony program in the wintertime-- fall and winter and spring, and also the University Musical Society Program. So we're pretty busy with concerts. And football in the fall. I'll go to a couple of games. I gave up my tickets, but I always get asked to go to a couple of games. That's about all I want to see anyway.
  • [00:53:10.30] LYNETTE SCORE: What does your family like to--
  • [00:53:11.45] CARL GULDBERG: I've got a little garden over here.
  • [00:53:13.06] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, good. Yeah, I saw those. Those are neat.
  • [00:53:15.34] CARL GULDBERG: I'm growing tomato plants.
  • [00:53:16.86] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, cool.
  • [00:53:19.39] CARL GULDBERG: Low maintenance, high return.
  • [00:53:21.69] LYNETTE SCORE: Definitely. What does your family like to do together right now?
  • [00:53:29.62] CARL GULDBERG: My family?
  • [00:53:30.50] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [00:53:32.53] CARL GULDBERG: Well, they're scattered all over. My son, Tom, just lost his wife this spring. That was kind of a shocker. She was only 64, so he's trying to adjust to that-- my oldest son, Tom.
  • [00:53:52.32] Peter and Alex are out in Lincoln Center. They have pretty much a life of their own out there. They have a place up in Kennebunkport, Maine that they go to-- a summer cottage. I see them about three or four times a year.
  • [00:54:13.91] And they have a son, Matthew, who is graduating from high school next year, and hopefully he'll come to Michigan. I know he has an application in for it. He's about 6'3" and still growing. I hope he stops pretty soon. He's a big kid.
  • [00:54:44.89] Let's see. Ann is retired. Her husband is a retired executive from Jackson, Michigan. They live in Sarasota in the wintertime and Traverse City in the summertime. Pretty nice life, the way they laid it out.
  • [00:55:09.32] And Jamie, the youngest, he works in town, here. He's still struggling with his Amway business. And he has three kids.
  • [00:55:22.68] So Alicia is in Chicago trying to get into acting of some kind. She has a degree in drama from Michigan and Southeastern University of Florida. She chased a boyfriend down there. I can't believe she left Michigan to do that, but she did.
  • [00:55:50.42] And Michelle's over at Washtenaw Community College. But she's working and she's taking part time programs. Eric, he's just growing up. He'll be in the high school next year. They're my youngest grandchildren. My oldest grandchild is his Bob Goldberg, who is a full professor at Georgia Tech. He runs a lab down there growing tissue and bone-- artificial tissues and artificial bone, which is kind of an exciting field, I guess, to be in.
  • [00:56:34.42] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah. So since you came to Glacier Hills, have you noticed any different social customs just about the environment here at Glacier Hills?
  • [00:56:48.94] CARL GULDBERG: No, I don't think so. Social customs. Most of the people here live from the area. The Ann Arbor culture is predominant.
  • [00:57:06.33] LYNETTE SCORE: Are there any special days or events or family traditions that you really enjoy now?
  • [00:57:11.72] CARL GULDBERG: Here?
  • [00:57:12.55] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [00:57:13.88] CARL GULDBERG: Well, we have a wine and cheese night every other Friday. Everybody enjoys that. Go down there and have a glass of wine, mill around and talk. You know, like how people do at parties.
  • [00:57:26.49] LYNETTE SCORE: Mm-hmm.
  • [00:57:30.61] CARL GULDBERG: The wellness center over here is kind of a nice place. You go in there and you meet friends, you exercise together-- do all those things. The cafe is a nice place to go for breakfast in the morning, because you'll have two or three tables of people there, and you lay out all the problems of the world and how we're going to solve them and that sort of thing. A lot of activity around here.
  • [00:58:02.20] LYNETTE SCORE: When you think back on the period of life that's taken place from when you retired up until now, what social or historical events were happening then, and how did those impact you?
  • [00:58:19.06] CARL GULDBERG: Let's see.
  • [00:58:26.69] Gosh, when did Reagan come into power? He was '87, wasn't he? Carter.
  • [00:58:41.50] Reagan had made an impact.
  • [00:58:52.64] There was a sort of euphoria in the country, I think, when he came in. I didn't vote for him, but that's what happened. Everybody thought everything was going to be real great. I don't know. Clinton came in, and it was very nice time for us in the '90s. It seemed like everything was great.
  • [00:59:34.34] When Bush came in, we thought we actually thought there was going to be a continuation, pretty much, of what's been going on. Then the real shock to me-- and a whole lot of people. We discovered that he was going into Iraq after September 11th-- the twin tower debacle.
  • [01:00:03.96] We couldn't believe what was going on when we saw those television shots of airplanes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing. Did that answer your question?
  • [01:00:18.20] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah. Definitely. When you think back on your entire life, what important social or historical event had the greatest impact on you?
  • [01:00:36.84] CARL GULDBERG: Hmm. On me, personally?
  • [01:00:42.17] LYNETTE SCORE: Mm-hmm.
  • [01:00:47.01] CARL GULDBERG: Well, I guess it would be Franklin Roosevelt's program, which came in.
  • [01:00:57.94] LYNETTE SCORE: And how did that change your life?
  • [01:00:59.99] CARL GULDBERG: It gave me a chance to have a job in the depression, which gave me a chance to build up a little nest egg in which I could use to go to college. The University of Michigan-- the tuition at the time was $50 a semester. Can you believe that?
  • [01:01:20.95] LYNETTE SCORE: I'm going to State in the fall, and I can tell you it's not that.
  • [01:01:25.99] CARL GULDBERG: I know. Because I worked a couple of jobs while I was in school, and then I was able to borrow money from the University at a very, very reasonable rate to finish my college training. So there was help along the way. I think everybody needs some help along the way to get going, in my opinion.
  • [01:01:58.95] If your family is rich, well, you're getting the help from your family. If you're not, you need a little help from outside forces of some form. I'm a very socially liberal, financially conservative person. I think it's too bad what's happened in this country. We're throwing away deficit. We've been living on borrowed money for years. So we're going to pay the price, I'm afraid. Can't go on forever. So I'm feeling doom and gloom right now about the economy.
  • [01:02:40.56] LYNETTE SCORE: When you think back over your whole life, what are you the most proud of?
  • [01:02:47.42] CARL GULDBERG: The most proud of? Well, I never had any outstanding achievements, I guess, of any kind. I guess the thing I'm really proud of is that we brought four kids up and launched them and they have stable lives. There's never been a divorce in our family.
  • [01:03:18.20] LYNETTE SCORE: What would you say has changed the most from the time when you were my age-- about 18-- until now?
  • [01:03:33.88] CARL GULDBERG: Well, the attitude. I guess it's the attitude that-- the attitude on money. When I was a kid-- boy, you didn't borrow to do things, you paid for what you got. And when you got to a point where you couldn't pay, you didn't buy. Today, apparently, people have taken the checks that have been sent to all the people around the country.
  • [01:04:28.48] I was watching TV this morning and they're pointing out that they were-- the Walmart-- the write out the checks that arrived in their hands, where the Walmart store was just loaded with people buying goods. Well, they weren't supposed to be doing that sort of thing, they were supposed to be using it to help pay their gas and oil. Instead, they went out and bought a lot of clothing or whatever.
  • [01:04:59.47] There's that attitude-- there wasn't a respect, maybe, for money that there used to be when I was a kid. Maybe that's the wrong term, but maybe you know what I mean.
  • [01:05:16.37] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah. I get what your saying. What advice would you give to my generation?
  • [01:05:27.82] CARL GULDBERG: Keep your options open. But that's my life. I just took opportunity where I could find it. And it wasn't necessarily in what I was trained in, I just grabbed it and ran with it. I think you should get a-- I think an education is very important-- an education that opens your mind. Take some philosophy, take some history, know something about your country.
  • [01:05:58.85] For heaven's sakes, take economics so you understand what the financial situation is in this country. Because economic illiteracy is part of our problem right now. The system has become so complex and so layered with safeguards for the people that have the money that they are using it sometimes in a poor way. It behooves you to understand how to write a check, and what it means, and what it can be used for and everything.
  • [01:06:38.39] LYNETTE SCORE: Is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven't talked about?
  • [01:06:45.69] CARL GULDBERG: Well, all I can say is I wish you kids luck. I'm afraid we kind of messed it up for you with what's been going on. And it just sort of happened. It caught us all by surprise, where we are right now. They've got to tighten up. They've got to start regulating financial instruments in this country. And I think they're doing it, right now. Congress is trying to come up with some common sense answers to it.
  • [01:07:26.89] I think there's a lot of opportunity. You get yourself a good education-- broad education. And if you have a hankering to get into some technological area like engineering or go to law or just-- set your sights high. Don't limit yourself.
  • [01:07:53.64] Do everything that you can do to learn how to live a life-- live a full life. For heaven's sakes, exercise. Keep healthy.
  • [01:08:09.47] Exercise your mind and exercise your body. You can handle a lot of bad things that might happen if you have that good attitude. I guess that's about it.
  • [01:08:27.04] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. Well, if you don't have anything else you'd like to add, I have a couple of questions to ask that just aren't in the script? Just some things that sounded interesting. I'd like to hear more about when you were growing up up north during the depression. I'd like to hear more about what kind of effects that had. Do you remember-- were there changes in what kind of food was available during the depression?
  • [01:08:58.67] CARL GULDBERG: Well, in the latter part of the depression, it got pretty darn tight. There was one year, my dad-- his parishioners had no money, so we got bushels of food. They brought it in. We canned it and our mother canned a lot of stuff. I don't know. It just tightened up-- everything. We didn't spend any money on anything. to It was just one pair of shoes and one pair of pants.
  • [01:09:41.15] LYNETTE SCORE: Were there tricks that you developed to make things last longer?
  • [01:09:50.87] CARL GULDBERG: I don't know if there were any tricks. We had our own chickens, I know. Started growing our own chickens in the back yard. It was my job to chop off a chicken's head when it was time to have a chicken dinner, and help pluck the feathers. I never was very fond of chicken after that. I learned to like it, eventually.
  • [01:10:12.85] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [01:10:17.30] CARL GULDBERG: It was-- you know, when you're growing up, the awareness of what was going on comes on you gradually. It hit the adults, I'm sure, just overnight. But for kids, we could feel a sort of a depression in the household. They didn't laugh like they used to. My dad used to laugh all the time and take us on fishing trips and hunting trips.
  • [01:10:58.93] There used to be jokes around the family. Depressing times. It was like the old Puritan days of yore, I guess.
  • [01:11:12.02] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [01:11:15.02] CARL GULDBERG: Bad looks on their face. Our antidote, I guess, was to get out and play. We did some malicious things, of course, as kids.
  • [01:11:29.31] LYNETTE SCORE: Like what?
  • [01:11:30.90] CARL GULDBERG: Oh, Halloween, of course. Halloween night-- traditionally, you went out and you soaked windows. The tricks and treats I had never heard of until my kids started doing it. Isn't that funny? I don't know. It's still an old farm community.
  • [01:11:52.78] It was a ritual. We would tip over an outhouse somewhere. [INAUDIBLE] found one, and we would tip it over-- or the older guys would. I never actually got into that sort of thing. I remember they'd hoist a bug buggy up on top of the school and leave it up there.
  • [01:12:17.71] LYNETTE SCORE: A buggy.
  • [01:12:18.63] CARL GULDBERG: Mm-hmm. And at Pioneer High, kids-- didn't they hoist a Volkswagen up there?
  • [01:12:28.82] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah, they did.
  • [01:12:31.08] CARL GULDBERG: I think my son, Peter, was in school at the time. But the one that was really funny as hell-- and I wasn't involved, because I was too young, still. One night, a bunch of the older guys got a county trailer. There was a county garage next door. They had nothing. They pulled it out. And this was a great, big wagon with big wheels and a tongue on it to be attached to a tractor to pull it.
  • [01:13:10.59] And they pulled it down to Main Street into Suttons Bay and parked in front of Mr. Donner's place-- he was the water commissioner-- and loaded with all the junk you could think of. They went to the junkyard and filled it up and brought it in. And then they found an old water closet-- toilet-- you know, that you sit on. They put that in front of the front door and they sat a sign that said, pay your water tax here.
  • [01:13:47.89] Of course, the whole town laughed at that. So Junior and I-- my brother and I, we came down one morning and we were walking down because we'd heard about it. We wanted to see this thing. And Otto Bailey-- he was the leading merchant in town. Bailey's Store. If you ever go to Suttons Bay, you'll see there's a big store-- Bailey's.
  • [01:14:12.07] Otto intercepted us, and he said, boys, don't go down that street. Fred Donner is standing out there with a shotgun and he'll shoot at any one of you kids that shows up. So, boy, we skeet-ed back home. That was pretty serious stuff. That was about the biggest thing I ever heard of in pranks.
  • [01:14:40.27] Pretty harmless stuff, actually.
  • [01:14:44.33] LYNETTE SCORE: So, during the depression, did people's clothing change?
  • [01:14:54.14] CARL GULDBERG: We didn't have any clothes to speak of. We wore the same thing over and over and over again.
  • [01:15:08.53] You know, I don't have any recollection of a change.
  • [01:15:14.11] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah?
  • [01:15:15.31] CARL GULDBERG: They wore flannel shirts like they do today. Oh, they had jodhpur pants. And once in a while, you'll see somebody in one of those fancy jodhpur pants-- like, riding pants.
  • [01:15:34.06] LYNETTE SCORE: Oh, gotcha. Yeah.
  • [01:15:38.79] CARL GULDBERG: Overalls. A lot of overalls. A lot of overalls-- which, I guess, people don't wear anymore. That would be a change. The overalls.
  • [01:15:51.86] And suspenders. A lot of people wore suspenders-- men wore suspenders. Now they wear belts. And I think the freedom that ladies have today, walking around without a corset or a girdle, was unheard of then. You were pretty well gussied up all the time.
  • [01:16:25.03] Bathing suits.
  • [01:16:28.58] LYNETTE SCORE: Did you have a bathing suit?
  • [01:16:31.14] CARL GULDBERG: Yeah. I had a pair of trunks. But my mother still had her bathing suit, of course. And dad had the bathing suit that they had in the 1920s. There's a picture of him. Their bathing suits look pretty much alike.
  • [01:16:46.94] LYNETTE SCORE: Yeah.
  • [01:16:59.08] Do you have any more questions?
  • [01:17:01.29] SPEAKER: I don't think so.
  • [01:17:03.83] LYNETTE SCORE: All right. Well, in that case, I think we're just about done.
  • [01:17:07.30] CARL GULDBERG: OK.
  • [01:17:08.06] LYNETTE SCORE: All right.
  • [01:17:08.75] CARL GULDBERG: Thank you.
  • [01:17:09.64] LYNETTE SCORE: Yes.