The Gettelfingers retire

The folders on the window bench next to my work table are full of on-going projects. Here lie ideas not yet ready for germination but too promising to entomb in the file cabinet.

These folders constitute my “tickler” file. All we professional columnists keep one, you know, from which to extract inspiration when deadlines loom.

And so today, the story of Herb and Irvin Gettelfinger and the Gettelfinger Popcorn Company, a story that has been languishing in the tickler file since last summer.

No, of course I am not making up that name. I feel compassion for people with unusual last names, regarding as a burden a name that requires constant spelling.

The Gettelfingers retired near the end of last year, and their story is the kind of success story we Americans think is unique to our do-it-yourself nation. Like people from Europe and Asia and Africa never heard of free enterprise.

The Gettelfingers did all right. Here's how:

Herb and Irvin were sons of Henry F. Gettelfinger, who worked two jobs to support his brood of eight children – in addition to running his 100-acre dairy farm in Palymra, Ind.

In the spring of 1936, Herb and Irvin and several of their sibs wanted a bicycle – one bike for the lot of them, that is, not one apiece. But even that simple wish was beyond the reach of a large family during the Depression years.

Persistent, the boys asked their father if they could plant a half-acre in popcorn. Why not, the senior Gettelfinger no doubt reasoned. Let the kids see what it takes to earn luxuries.

The popcorn harvest was so successful the boys spent Thanksgiving shucking and shelling corn with a small hand crank sheller – and then didn't know what to do with the 1,000-pound yield.

Their father sold it to area Kroger stores, where it was poured out onto tables with 6-inch rims from which customers could scoop up and bag what they wanted.

Don't you know, the boys made $36 from that first harvest, more than enough for the bright red and white bicycle of their dreams, sold by Sears for $24.50.

Herb and Irvin found their father somewhat more amenable when, the next spring, they proposed to plant an acre in popcorn. By the 1940s, the dairy farm became a popcorn farm, and Kroger was marketing the product as Spee-Dee Pop.

From 1948 until 1956, the business was organized as H.F. Gettelfinger & Sons, and when Henry retired, became Gettelfinger Popcorn Company, Inc. Irvin ran production and Herb managed the office, sales and marketing end of the business.

The years brought changes. From their beginnings with South American yellow popcorn, the brothers eventually switched to hybridized strains, a product much improved over that of the 1940s. And today, stores stock popcorn year-round, since summer's customary scourge of weevils is no longer a problem.

Popcorn farmers are always at the mercy of drought and extremes of temperatures. The old joke about Indiana summers being so hot that corn pops in the fields is only slightly more far-fetched than reality, that in steamy weather pollen sometimes cannot travel up the silk tubes, and cobs develop with no grains of corn.

The Gettelfingers’ worst disaster was a fire in the processing plant in March, 1968. They had just finished signing contracts with local growers and knew they had no choice but to work day and night to erect a new building before harvest.

And they did.

Popcorn made Herb and Irvin wealthy. By the time the company celebrated its 60th anniversary, millions of pounds of Gettelfinger popcorn were selling internationally, all of it still managed by two Indiana farm boys.

With retirement in mind, in 1995 the Gettelfingers merged with Preston Farms of Henderson, Ky., another family business, producers of Kentucky Poppers Microwave Popping Corn.

When the time came, the brothers dealt with retirement differently. The Prestons gave each of them a framed print of a little boy on a bicycle, from the 1936 Sears catalog.

Diagnosed with heart problems, Irvin wrote a letter thanking the Prestons; he believed that retirement saved his life. He puttered with machinery he has invented and talked of building his dream house and visiting his own eight children.

I met Herb and his wife Marilyn the summer they were here for the Olympics. They were nice, unpretentious people, who asked only for a ride to Mass on Sunday morning.

Excited as they were about plans to travel to the exotic places their popcorn has already gone, I've heard since that they were finding it difficult to stay away from the day-to-day operation of the business. Their house, after all, is next door to the plant.

The Prestons finally got Herb to clean out his desk and begin to focus his energies elsewhere. But he was still in love with popcorn when he died in 2003.

On many mornings, when workers came to the plant, they’d find footprints in the dew, leading from the house next door.