Claire Schumacher
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Not Available
Veterans Memorial Hall Oral History Program
Interview with Claire Schumacher
Location: Claire’s home
March 19, 2019
Pippi Mayfield, Interviewer
CS: Claire Schumacher
PM: Pippi Mayfield
PM: This is Pippi Mayfield with the St. Louis County Historical Society. It is March 19, 2019, and I am in the home of Claire. Claire, why don’t you spell your last name for me, please.
CS: Schumacher: S-c-h-u-m-a-c-h-e-r
PM: Why don’t you give me a little background. Did you grow up in Duluth?
CS: I grew up in Proctor, up on the hill from Duluth.
PM: Tell me a little bit about your background. Tell me about your family, where you went to school, that sort of thing.
CS: Well my dad owned the hardware store in Proctor, Marshall-Wells store. There were five kids in the family. I was the second one. My brother Bobby was the first one. We went to school at St. Rose, a little parish school, to the eighth grade. And then we went to Proctor High School.
PM: What year did you graduate from high school?
CS: 1946. You weren’t even a gleam.
PM: Nope. Not at that time. [laughing together] What did you do after graduation, then?
CS: Well, first of all, when I was in the tenth grade, the war was still on and they couldn’t find enough people to work on the railroad.
PM: Oh, so you started in tenth grade?
CS: I started in tenth grade, yeah.
PM: Oh wow! I didn’t know that.
CS: Yeah, I started in the tenth grade.
PM: So what did you do on the railroad?
CS: I was what they call a “checker.” This book here that I wrote has got a picture of me when I was… I didn’t know a thing about the railroad, even though it was in our own backyard. It’s got a picture of me asking the conductor of the Jitney. The Jitney was a little car that ran up and down, bringing the workers to their work. There was a man that worked up at the… opposite the yard office, who sat there and sketched this picture of me [printed in the book], asking how to get up to the yard office. That was the first day.
Then, in the book it describes how the first day they took me out on the rails and told me how to check the car numbers. There are the numbers you see on the side of the car. It seemed like a menial job, and it was years later that I really realized it was an important job, because these cars went by their numbers, the kind of ore that were in the cars. They took them down to the ore docks, and if the wrong car got into that group that they took down, there’d be heck to pay, all the way to the East Coast where it was going. So, I had to put their position in the train and whether it was there or not. That was my first job on the railroad.
PM: What made you think to go get a job with the railroad rather than somewhere else?
CS: My dad’s cousin lived across the street from us; he was looking for people and he mentioned it to my dad. Of course, my dad knew everybody because he had the hardware store. That was my first job on the railroad. That first few days I was on the day shift, but before long I was on the afternoon shift. That was 4–12. And then, because of my lack of seniority, they put me on the night shift. So I was out in those dark yards – there were no lights out over there – climbing over the cars. I had to take the orders to the men over in what they called the “eat shanty.” So sometimes I had to climb over like 15 train yards to get over to there. I didn’t realize it was really kind of a dangerous job.
So I had to do that and check the car numbers. That was my job. I was up there in the Proctor yards for about three or four years. And then, of course the whole railroad is united. So it got to a point where there was a job listed on the board, and if you wanted another job, you bid on it. I bid on the job down at the ore docks down in Duluth.
PM: How do you bid on a job? Just like saying how much you would work for?
CS: No, you just put into the… I don’t know, I can’t remember how you do it.
PM: Was it kind of like how you would apply for a job now? It was just considered something different?
CS: No, not a job, no. Because you already had some seniority. So your seniority is what counted if you wanted a job there. So then pretty soon I had a job down at the ore docks. And I had to climb about 75 steps to get to the top of the ore docks. And there was an office up there at that time, which there isn’t now. So I worked on some big typewriters. What were they called? Anyway, there were some big machines that came out there from the…
They came over, those machines, and we took the orders off the machines and we put them on these big typewriters that they had. At first you put down the car number and weights and total weight. So we sat and worked on that. I was on the night shift then, 11 to 8. Yeah, worked on that. There were lots of cars that came down. They were still building things for the war, although it was towards the end of the war. In 1945, it was the end of the war thing.
PM: When you talked about being in the railyards in Proctor and it was so dark, was it scary? Were you nervous at all, doing that?
CS: I wasn’t really nervous, but I should have been. There was one time when… I had a little lantern with a little light on it. As I walked along, I marked down things. One night, a guy jumped out at me; he thought it was funny, playing a trick.
PM: That would scare me.
CS: It scared me to death, yeah. Yeah, that guy thought he was really being funny.
PM: Yup, I bet.
CS: Other than that, everybody was pretty nice to me, you know. When we’d go into the yard office, the car men were sitting in there. They were the ones that checked the train, that all the cars were in order. They were the car men. They saved their donuts for me and called me “Little Darling.” I was only 15 years old.
PM: Were there other females that worked there or were you one of the only ones?
CS: No, there were a couple others, two others that were checkers. And then there were a couple of boys. They were getting about anybody they could in that day.
CS: But anyway, let’s see, there are other pictures in here, too, in this book.
PM: So after you spent a few years in Proctor and then you went to Duluth Ore…
CS: Yeah, here are the ore docks.
PM: Oh, yeah.
CS: And there was an office in the middle. Up here there was a ridge and there was an office in the middle. That’s where… It’s amazing, no one could ever see it, but there were about seventy people that worked in that office.
PM: Wow, that’s quite a few.
CS: Yeah. They were the ones that were the head of the ore docks and head of… Let’s see… There are some other pictures here. Oh, there’s one of the big engines that pulled all the ore down to the ore docks.
PM: How many years did you spend at the ore docks, then?
CS: Well, I was at the ore docks about ten years.
PM: And did you do the same job with the checking?
CS: No. I bid on other jobs but those men were angry that a young girl would bid on those jobs. They didn’t help me to get those jobs done. No. And when the war ended, I got called down to the superintendent’s office, which he was in an office down below the docks. He gave me this big spiel about these men have to come back and get their jobs, so you should resign so they can have their jobs back when they come. I guess they did that in more places than one.
Did I already show you this?
PM: Yeah, that’s a very nice drawing.
CS: Yeah, that was very nice. So, anyway, I didn’t resign. There were two other women that were up on top of the docks, working on those machines that you put the car number in it and you put the number of the ore in, and you came out with it, with the tonnage that was going to go to the East Coast where they were building the trains.
I did that for about ten years. When I bid on another job, you were supposed to say, it was the cars coming down from Proctor, would come down to the top of the hill and then you’d tell them to leave the caboose on the high. And they’d send the rest of the train down onto the ore docks. I worked every shift. Sometimes the night shift during that time.
I had gotten married and I had gone to California. I had gone to California for a vacation, still in the winter time when we were laid off. My boyfriend came out there to California and we got married in my uncle’s church out there, St. Dominic Church in Eagle Rock, California. Have you ever heard of Eagle Rock?
PM: I haven’t. No.
CS: It’s right next to Pasadena.
PM: I’ve heard of that.
CS: And then, in a few years, I had a baby girl. Sometimes I got off for sick leave and different things like that. My life went on. And I had graduated.
PM: You went to college also?
CS: I went to college, yeah, for a short time. But I got leave to have this baby girl. One day I did a very dumb thing. Ore season was about to begin and I had… my life was in turmoil.
PM: Oh no.
CS: So I walked up there and I said, “I want those papers where I resign.” And in doing so, I was 14 months short the rest of my life, for getting…
PM: A pension of some sort?
CS: A pension, yeah. And you can never make it up, together, so 14 months short. So that has beleaguered me all my life.
PM: Yeah, you were so close.
CS: There was no way to make it up.
PM: Yeah. When you were there, working, did it occur to you that you were one of only a few women working on the railroad? Did you realize the novelty of that or was it just another job?
CS: No, it was… No, it wasn’t… There were two other women up on the ore docks that were working. They tried to get us to resign. We didn’t do it. The other two women didn’t either.
PM: Good.
CS: Yeah. I suppose we were supposed to when the boys came back. They took those jobs. But we didn’t do that. Anyway, it was kind of a fun job, in a way.
PM: That’s what I was going to ask you, if you enjoyed the work?
CS: Yeah, sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t. I had to be down there, when I worked days, I had to be down there at 7:00 in the morning. I had to take two buses to get down there: one to West Duluth and from West Duluth to the ore docks to be there at 7:00 in the morning. Now I never was a morning person. I’m still not a morning person.
PM: [laughing] I bet that was tough, then.
CS: Here where I live, they let me sleep until 10:00 in the morning.
PM: Wow, that’s nice. [laughing]
CS: And I can stay up as late as I want at night.
PM: Perfect.
CS: So anyway, that’s good. So I worked there for 15 years anyway, altogether. That was… In this book I kind of describe, this Lori Schneider, she’s the young girl that works on the railroad.
PM: So it’s kind of based on your life?
CS: Yeah. It is based on my life. Lori Schneider is me. The only thing is, it goes off into a mystery, which is not my life. So it’s one of those things.
PM: What made you decide to write a book?
CS: I always was a writer, in my mind. I started to write. I couldn’t help myself. It starts off with my diary; I kept a diary. I’d always write. And so it was right after I resigned from the ore docks, I sat down and started writing this book. Yeah.
This is the second book I wrote. The first book is about Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill Cody owned a house about a mile from Proctor.
PM: Really, he did?
CS: Yeah. I started researching that.
PM: Oh wow! That’s interesting.
CS: Yeah. So (I) found out it was a haunted house at the time and we used to ride down there on our bicycle.
(continuing after an interruption) Just the beginning. I had lots of jobs after that. I worked at UMD for ten years.
PM: Doing what?
CS: Then I worked for the Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
PM: Oh, ok.
CS: Yeah. And I helped some of the professors put their books together; they always had to write books. Something like that. Then I worked for the Army Corps of Engineers for four years. And I worked for the U.S. Army Air Force until it closed.
PM: Wow.
CS: Anyway, that’s getting off the subject.
PM: It’s interesting, though. So are any of the rest of these books about your time on the railroad also?
CS: No, not my time on the railroad. They’re all researches, kind of, I’ve done. You come along with me in most of my researches. One of them is about Frank Lloyd Wright, because that was his tragedies I wrote about. Nobody’s ever just done that.
PM: You said you’ve written ten books?
CS: Thirteen books.
PM: Thirteen, wow!
CS: Yeah. So anyway, that sort of covers my railroad adventures, I guess.
PM: Are there any memories of being with the railroad that really stand out to you, whether they were really fun times, or a time when you wished you weren’t there? Anything like that?
CS: Yeah, lots of times I wished I wasn’t there. [laughing together]
PM: How come?
CS: Well, sometimes they teased me a lot. And that was OK. But they didn’t like it that young girls were being teased that much.
PM: Were there some of them that stood up for you, then?
CS: (Here’s) what’s on the back of my book.
PM: (pausing to read)
CS: Perhaps you could read it aloud and get it on your tape.
PM: (reading) “Claire W. Schumacher is the author of six local historical booklets – Cody View: Buffalo Bill’s Link with Duluth; The Whiteside Island Story: Emerald Isle of St. Louis Bay; This is our St. Rose Church in Proctor, Minnesota; The Raleigh Street Saga: Shattering the Legend: 101 Adventures in Saudi Arabia and Passage to Jerusalem – fiction books: Ghostly Tales of Lake Superior, and autobiographical novels, Ore Dust in Her Shoes and Strangers on the Shore. She has written short stories and articles for national magazines and a weekly column for the Budgeteer newspaper.
[Claire has two adult children: Anne Marie (Harold) Nynas and John Schumacher. Her grandchildren include Lori Piowlski , Julie Nynas Anderson, Tasha Majerle, Amber Zimmerman, Ashton Zimmerman, and Samantha Zubucover. Her great-grandchildren include Nicole Piowlski, Nick Piowlski, Jayden Anderson, Kylie Anderson, Nia Wuebkers, Mason Majerle, and Camden Zimmerman.]
Proctor, Minnesota, of 3,000 population, is the small city where Claire was born to Bob and Ruth Wombacher, who owned a Marshall-Wells hardware store. She loves her small city, which is adjacent to Duluth, but also loves to travel to such far-off places as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Europe, and most recently to Italy and many places in the United States.
Ore Dust in Her Shoes is being republished for the third time and was her first attempt at a novel. It brings to fruition the yearbook prophecy that she would write a railroad novel, because in her high school years during wartime she actually was a female railroader. Lori Schneider, heroine in the story, which was written many years ago, resembles the author.”
So what year did you write this?
CS: I wrote that in 1959.
PM: How long did it take you to write it?
CS: I don’t know anymore. It was the winter after I resigned. So…
PM: Well it didn’t take too long if you just did it in that winter. It must have come pretty easily to you.
CS: No. None of my writing has ever been easy to get it all together and everything. But it’s necessary to myself.
PM: Do you still write, now?
CS: I can’t write very much now because my eyes have gone bad. I have macular degeneration. I’ve still got my computer over there, but I can’t write much anymore.
PM: Well that’s understandable.
CS: I’m trying to figure out a way I can write. Maybe I can talk into a recorder.
PM: Yeah. They have that.
CS: I was just thinking that, yeah. So, anyway, I just turned 91 years old.
PM: Oh wow, congratulations.
CS: Thank you. March 2nd.
PM: Did they have a party for you?
CS: Yeah. Well, last year they had a big party.
PM: Oh, I suppose, on your 90th.
CS: And this year our family gets together. There are about ten of us that get together.
PM: Well that’s fun.
CS: Yeah. And many of my grandchildren… My children all live here, so I get to see them all.
PM: That’s good.
CS: So that’s nice.
PM: Do you have any other stories from the railroad that you want to share for this piece?
CS: I don’t really think so.
PM: Do you know how much you made an hour working on the railroad?
CS: No, I can’t remember that. But it was pretty good. My mother, to the day she died, always said, “What did you do with all that money that you made on the railroad?”
[laughing together] And what I did was (I) went down and bought clothes. At that time it was Freemus. That was right where Lake Avenue is.
PM: That was the place to shop, huh?
CS: Yeah. Because we had so many kids in our family, I never did have really nice clothes. So I went to town and bought some nice dresses.
PM: That’s a good thing to spend your money on.
CS: We were wearing dresses in those days. Now it’s coming back to that. I found in my life that everything is circular.
PM: Yup. That’s very true.
CS: Yeah. Just in several generations. And you’re back doing the same thing.
End of recording
Track 1
28:51
Transcribed by Mary Beth Frost
