"In 1934, I went to Milwaukee and worked there with my brother Ed for four or five years at his tire re-capping shop. First I went to another shop in Chicago to learn how to do the process. I worked there for a week or so, and learned the fundamentals and how to handle the tire re-capping equipment. Then I came back and worked for Ed in his shop. Eventually, I ran the shop for him. But we never ever did get along very well. He was not a person to put himself out to talk or be congenial. He just seemed to have his own thoughts, and, as a result, I could never get close to him.
"Starting out, I was making $15 a week and he took $10 out for board and room. In those days that wasn't too bad an arrangement. He and his wife Isabel lived in Wawatosa, right outside of Milwaukee. They had a nice suburban home there. Isabel was a social worker with the county. We got along fine as far as the living situation was concerned. Of course, it was a little bit difficult to be living and working with him when he was a cold as he was, and hard to fathom. I don't think he meant to be that way, it was just his nature.
"I got the feeling as I associated with him that he was a little condescending towards the family. In my case, for example, he was the big benefactor and he was doing me a big favor -- which he was, of course, but it was his attitude that spoiled it. He had a circle of friends from the university. At that time higher education wasn't as common as today. A person with a college education was regarded as an intellectual and looked up to. Ed had a big circle of friends who seemed to respect him and look up to him as somebody special.
"He was an adventuresome sort. In fact, I learned a lesson from him because he was a little too adventuresome in business. He would never allow his finances to catch up with his ambition, so he was constantly head over heels in debt. Instead of setting back, letting the business consolidate and earn some money before starting to expand, he would expand on debt. That's a popular thing to do in business, but for him, it was unfortunate. In 1949, while he was pursuing this course, what we called 'the Truman Depression' occurred. Today we'd call it a recession. It was a slow down in business. That happened several years after I left Milwaukee. So Ed's business didn't materialize as he had anticipated and, as a result, it folded. . . . He wouldn't listen to anybody because he knew better than anybody else. It was his superior attitude that got him into trouble. I don't mean to say that he was not a good or caring person. Fundamentally, he was a thoughtful person. He did a lot of things for the whole family. He helped various members of the family at different times. He took two of my sisters to live with him when they graduated from high school and he tried to help them. And I certainly owe a debt of gratitude myself. He got me educated in the tire business.
"At one time he offered to back me in getting some equipment to go into business for myself. This was many years later in about 1940. We bought a few pieces of equipment, and kept it in storage, but that business never materialized. When he went broke, things kind of fell apart. We sold the equipment that we had accumulated for my effort. That was the end of that. If he had been able, I'm sure he would have gone all the way in financing the business for me. But it didn't work out.
"Ed and Isabel didn't have any children. As I mentioned earlier, she was a social worker for the county. When things got rough, she had a retirement fund that she cashed in, in order to keep him afloat . . . . After the business folded, he eventually ended up with liver disease which killed him."

from "Gram and Gramps," by Don Kampa (1997) pp. 55-59.