The Road to Madison Avenue

© 2012 Hal Hart (Hartvigsen). All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/6/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-2499-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-2498-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-2497-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962648

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Contents

OPENING THOUGHTS

THE EARLY YEARS

HIGH SCHOOL IN IOWA CITY

YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW

COLLEGE AND SPORTS BROADCASTING

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS CAREER

HOW I MET MY WIFE

SPORTS CELEBRITIES

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE INDY 500

MY FAMILY

VACATIONS

STANLEY PUBLISHING COMPANY

OUR DOGS

MADISON AVENUE

OUR BOATS

THE PLASTIC BOTTLE INSTITUTE

OTHER MS&L CLIENTS

A STORM BREWING

HAL HART COMMUNICATIONS

TRAUMA IN FLORIDA

SURVIVING IN HURRICANE ALLEY

FINAL CAREER – AUTHOR

CLOSING THOUGHT

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

MURDER IN THE RETIREMENT CASTLE

Vinn Struthers persuades his friend, Damion Fitzgerald, who once attended a police academy, to investigate a minor burglary in Mansfield Castle, their luxury retirement community. The two multi-millionaires soon discover that, instead of a petty thief, they are hunting for a murderer.

THE QUARTERBACK CLUB

Miles Heflin, a member of the exclusive football booster club, is seduced by the wife of a prominent club member, and is in trouble when he mentions the secret Church Fund to the wrong person. Finally, Miles reluctantly agrees to try and save the all-male club when a deceased member’s widow petitions to become the first female member.

THE MONTAUK TRIANGLE

Nick Redesco’s business is torching buildings so his clients can collect the insurance money. He botches a job for a cement contractor with Mafia ties, and is forced to pay the client what the insurance company won’t. His scheme to raise the money is a kidnapping , but he had to deal with untrustworthy associates and a fishing boat captain.

SUCCESSFUL SPOKESPERSONS ARE MADE, NOT BORN

In the first book of its kind, the author reveals the actual techniques he used to teach corporate executives how to handle media interviews, crisis communications and improve their presentation skills. Budding public relations practitioners as well as PR pros will benefit from the authors’ teaching philosophy and his success stories.

Preview the books at: Halhartcommunications.com

The book is dedicated to my family and future generations.

OPENING THOUGHTS

Writing this memoir was an intriguing journey into the past. The computer in my brain must be overloaded. Recalling names and events took time to process. A past event or name might surface in the middle of the night, in the shower, driving my car. One name popped up while leaving my urologists’ examining room.

What can the reader take away from this memoir? That hard work and dedication pay off. For public relations practitioners, that positive actions produce more than white papers, power point presentations or smooth talk. Finally, whatever happens, never burn your bridges behind you.

I urge retirees to record your life’s memories for your kids and future generations. Put your remembrances in a three-ring binder, a spiral-bound notebook. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Don’t turn off the engine, put the car on blocks, and let the mind rust away. A lot of talent is wasted and memories lost while there still is mileage on the odometer and fuel in the tank.

THE EARLY YEARS

When I was born in 1926, bread cost nine cents, gasoline twenty-three cents a gallon, stamps two cents and a new car 275 dollars. The stock market crashed three years later. I grew up through the Great Depression.

Encapsulating my linage, I am Danish on my father’s side, Scottish on my mother’s side. My maternal grandfather, C.E. Brown, a farmer all his life, married a farm girl, Anna. They owned farms in Iowa and Minnesota. As a youngster, he raced teams of horses the way kids now race cars. His given name was Columbus Elwood, which he legally changed to Charles Elwood. Can you blame him? I grew up in Elwood, Iowa, an interesting coincidence.

My paternal grandfather, Carl Hartvigsen, also a farmer, came to this country from North Schleswig, my grandmother from Schleswig Holstein. Both are Danish territories alternately controlled over the years by Germany and Denmark. My grandparents met and married in Maquoketa, Iowa. She died before I was born. Grandpa Hartvigsen started out as a bouncer and bartender in a tavern in the small wild-west-like town of Canton, north of Maquoketa. He was trying to bounce two men, but instead, they threw him off the second story of the building. He decided to look for other work. He found it working on various farms around Elwood. Grandpa finally bought a farm three miles north of town. His three sons, including my father, helped with the work load.

My mother, Ethel Brown, was born in State Center, Iowa, one of six children. When she graduated from high school, the family moved to Minnesota. Mother stayed behind and enrolled in the Teachers College at Cedar Falls, Iowa. She taught for one year in Minnesota, went back to Teachers College to get a higher level certificate. It landed her a job teaching fifth and sixth grades in Elwood. I’m grateful.

My father was both ambitious and ambidextrous. He was interested in mechanics. After finishing high school in Elwood in 1914, he completed a course at the Sweeney Automotive School in Kansas City. He returned home and opened a garage and repair shop in Elwood. He owned a motorcycle before he owned a car.

In the early twenties, he and his father bought the former City Hotel up the street from the garage and converted it into a grocery store. My father also began a trucking business and, with his father, operated an ice house. Dad drove a school bus. He organized a dance band. I wonder how he found time to court my mother.

Dad’s garage (right), cars, school buses, ice house in rear.

Judging from several letters I inherited, he poured out his heart and soul to convince her to marry him. Reading those letters for this memoir was a poignant moment in my life. I’ll share excerpts from letters he wrote her in the summer of 1923. She was vacationing with her parents on a farm in Minnesota.

I feel so lonesome and blue today. I absolutely do not know what to do with myself. I don’t seem to care for anything nor anybody except the one that’s gone, the one I can’t have and need so badly. (May 28, 1923.)

The time goes so slow I can hardly wait but sixteen days won’t be so bad. Wish I could do like old Rip Van Winkel, or who was it, go to sleep tonight and not wake up for two weeks. (August 1, 1923)

I wanted to write to you last night but I was so tired I had to go to bed early. I scrubbed the whole store yesterday. I mean the whole floor and finished about ten o’clock last night. Then I had a couple of business letters to write and about ten-thirty I crawled into my little old bed, alone. I fell asleep thinking that sometime during the nite you might come and crawl in with me. (December, 1923)

My mother wrote in her memoir several decades later: Every small town, I’m sure, has one or two young men that they consider special. One of these was Walter Hartvigsen, son of Danish parents, who lived on a farm near Elwood. He became my regular companion and after three years we were married on June 4, 1924.

A PRICELESS MEMENTO

I was rummaging through memorabilia in the summer of 1988 in the walk-up attic of our Darien, Connecticut, home. I was sorting it into separate piles to keep or discard. My wife and I were empty nesters and were downsizing. We had sold the house and were moving into a new condo across town.

I was rummaging through boxes of paper relics at a rapid pace. It was hot and I was tired. I tossed into the trash this nondescript red spiral-bound notebook. There was no cover label. I didn’t bother to look at the contents. Whether on a whim or a premonition, I retrieved and opened it. Inside were several chapters of what can best be described as a teenager’s memoir. I had written it nearly fifty years earlier when I was thirteen. We had just moved from Elwood to Iowa City in the spring of 1940, so my memory was considerably fresher than it would be now. The opening chapter gives a flavor of life in Elwood more poignantly that I could. The text was in long hand. I have not changed a word.

My story takes us back to the quaint town of Elwood, Iowa. Elwood is located in the western section of Clinton County, near the Mississippi River. Its streets were not paved; it possessed no water works, or bell telephone system; it had no large buildings; it had no noisy street car lines, or row upon row of automobiles plying through it daily. Rather, it was a quiet, peaceful village, home to about one hundred good Methodists, and catering to an equal number of surrounding farms. Elwood had no large doings and goings on every Saturday night, but instead, everyone went to the larger town of Maquoketa, nine miles north. In fact, a complete silence settled over Elwood on Saturday night. These death-like evenings were somewhat lessened by an occasional fish-fry at the local tavern.

The tavern was run by a shrewd businessman named LaShonsky. He always spoke to the ladies of Elwood, much to their distaste, for, as I have said, the people of Elwood were very good Methodists He was the friend of all, as long as all came and bought a drink or two in his tavern. I need feel no shame, when I say that the first tavern I was ever in all my life was this one. I had never had the urge nor the opportunity before to enter one. My mother, another good Methodist, had seen to that. Mr. LaShonsky was regarded by us as a bad man – one to steer clear of. Our mothers would give us long talks, mostly on the subject of intoxicating beverages. We had learned to stay away from Mr. LaShonsky.

One day, my cousin, Cynthia, asked me to come up to the tavern with her for a moment. She wanted to ask her father something, as he happened to be in the tavern playing cards. We walked up the four stone steps, and Cynthia yanked open the door, and walked right in. I resolved that if my younger cousin, and a girl at that, could walk right into a tavern, so could I. Looking down the street toward our grocery store to see that my mother was not watching me from the door, I walked in. I was walking into my first tavern. It rather thrilled me; it made me think I had suddenly grown up. The smell of beer and the smoke in your eyes were almost too much for me, but I braved all dangers. I took in the long bar at a single glance (I was at the time a member of the Junior G-Men Club), finally spotted my uncle. He was almost hidden in the fog of smoke, some of which he was producing himself. My cousin tapped him none to gently on the shoulder, and asked him if he would be sure to stop for the mail at the Post Office on the way home. He nodded his head, drew in on his cigarette, and slammed a card down on the table. We headed back for the door. Mr. LaShonsky greeted us from behind the bar.

Care to have a bottle of pop before you leave?

No, thanks just the same. I – I’ve really got to get down to the store. I quickly stepped out into the fresh, pure summer air. I returned to the tavern only about five or six more times while we lived in Elwood, even though it WAS practically next door.

Elwood had no industries or projects, and so most of its inhabitants were either merchants, retired farmers, elderly men and women on relief, school teachers or the like.

Elwood, circa 1920. Main Street from upper left, our store and apartment, storage buildings, commercial garage. Center, the tavern, hatchery and homes. Far right, Methodist Church. Inset, Main Street from the opposite direction.

Our property included four buildings in a row – the former hotel converted into a general store with our apartment above, a small storage building, a commercial garage and an ice house. A building on the other side of the store, also a former hotel, had burned down years earlier. Add the Post Office on our side of the street, and the tavern and hatchery on the opposite side, and you have all of the businesses on Main Street. The lumberyard was at the end of the street, where it made a 90 degree turn toward the Methodist Church.

Mother in our Elwood grocery story.

Our grocery store had a gasoline pump out front. Inside, were long glass-enclosed display counters on both sides. Farther back on the left were shelves of canned foods and on the opposite side, the office. A low railing with a gate separated the office from the rest of the store. The centrally-placed stove was probably oil-burning. At the rear was a soda fountain complete with counter and stools. I can still taste those chocolate milkshakes mother made, my favorite. I couldn’t find it, but recall seeing a picture of me lying in a crib in the store. It was my nursery. Mother said I learned to talk by visiting with customers.

Farmers brought in eggs and chickens to trade for canned goods and bulk sugar and flour. Bartering was normal during the depression.

When I was growing up, Grandpa Hartvigsen stayed with us off and on when he wasn’t visiting in Denmark. He enjoyed sitting on one of the soda fountain stools spinning tales of his past experiences to anyone who would listen. He relished his cigars and beer. Grandpa loved to play cards with his Danish friends. Their favorite was a Danish card game called Sqvichala. On Christmas Eves, he and his Danish friends, sometimes my Uncle Eppe, would play Sqvinchala well into the morning hours.

Two of the store’s main products were gasoline and, in the summer months, ice cream. Our grocery store was the only one in town, the only gas station. George Francis of Maquoketa supplied the Standard Oil gasoline. The gas was transferred from the delivery truck to a storage tank in five-gallon buckets. The single gas pump had a large glass cylinder on top which held the gasoline. When it became empty, one had to use the hand pump to refill the cylinder. Large vertical numbers on the cylinder showed the number of gallons that had been pumped out. My dad bought the ice cream in bulk in Maquoketa, nine miles away.

Dad started a trucking business, the first in Eastern Iowa, primarily to transport cattle and hogs to the Chicago Stock Yards. He had two trucks, a large one he normally used, and a smaller backup truck when the shipment exceeded the large truck’s capacity. This was before semi-truck trailers.

He and helpers cut chunks of ice from the Maquoketa River six miles away and hauled it to the icehouse located next to the garage. They buried the ice in sawdust and it lasted through the summer months. I was allowed to climb up into the storage area one day. I put my hands in the wet, cold sawdust. By sweeping aside a thick layer of the dark colored wet stuff, I could touch the top of a large chunk of ice. Dad supplied homes and businesses with ice for their ice boxes before refrigerators.

Our apartment above the grocery store occupied the rear third of the building. A long flight of stairs in front led to the second floor, accessible from doors inside and outside of the store. We used three of the former hotel rooms up front for storage. A long L-shaped hall led past more unused bedrooms. The back portion had been converted into our kitchen, dining room, living room and two bedrooms. I assume my father did most of the remodeling work. He was capable of most anything and I don’t recall any carpenters living in town. A balcony in back of the apartment ran the width of the building. Stairs led down to the first floor porch. A storage shed was attached to the main building. Next to that was our outdoor rest room facility.

A writer friend, reading this chapter, asked if the outdoor facility was available to store customers. The thought had never occurred to me. I doubt there was a law that retail establishments had to provide rest room facilities. Under dire circumstances, I’m sure my parents made exceptions.

There were sidewalks along most of the graveled streets in town except in front of our garage and the ice house. The Milwaukee Railroad station was behind our buildings, probably one hundred yards away. Some of the goods for the store were delivered by rail. You became accustomed to the sound and hardly noticed the steam engines puffing and the rail cars clanking. Bums riding the rails often got off when the trains stopped. They usually looked for a handout at the store. Mother always gave them food.

LIFE WITHOUT A FATHER

I was six years old when my dad was killed in a car-truck accident in January, 1933, near Rochelle, Illinois. He was returning home from hauling a load of cattle to the Chicago Stock Yards. He had promised mother some months earlier that he would stop making the trips to Chicago. She was worried because the roads were only sixteen feet wide at the time and the trucks were eight feet wide. Several accidents had occurred even in good weather from trucks meeting under those dangerous conditions. A combination of snow and ice that winter had made driving even more dangerous. Father assured my mother this trip was necessary, that it definitely would be his last. And it was.

There were more cattle to be shipped that fatal day than the larger truck could carry. My Uncle Lawrence drove the smaller truck, my father the larger. The newspaper article said that the road was icy. Dad’s truck skidded off into a ditch. He was putting on chains. The driver of a car lost control, his car spun around and struck and killed dad instantly. The driver was an Illinois state representative whom the newspaper story said reportedly was drunk at the time.

I remember seeing my father’s body lying in a casket in the center of my aunt and uncle’s living room. Their house was across the street from our store. The room was crowded with silent mourners surrounding the casket. As I walked around it, people patted me on the head. Some quietly said they were sorry I had lost my father, most said nothing. There was a short funeral service there, followed by a more formal one at the Methodist Church, the only church in town. I don’t remember the services; I gleaned this from his obituary. His burial was in the Maquoketa cemetery.

After the burial service, my mother was lying on the sofa in our living room, one hand on her forehead. What will I do? she said. How can I handle all of this? What will become of us?

I was on my knees beside her. I held her hand and said, Don’t worry Mother, we’ll help you.

My Uncle Howard came down from Minnesota after my father’s death to live with us and help in the store. He fell in love with Gladys Ryan, an Elwood school teacher. They were married, and moved into the only house, other than my Uncle Lawrence’s, on the opposite side of the street from us. Howard and Gladys later moved to Cedar Rapids where he became a career-long Metropolitan Life insurance salesman.

I was the talkative son. My younger brother, Don, seldom spoke but when he did it usually was purposeful. At age three or four, he broached my uncle one day, You want me have one stick gum or a whole bott? (Package of five sticks.)

MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

Two memories about dad stand out clearly in my mind. I had pumped kerosene from a storage tank into the street to form a lake for my boat. My mother promised dad would spank me when he came home. I was hiding under a bed when he came in. He pulled me out, put me across his lap, tapped my behind a couple of times lightly, and asked me to cry. I did. It was my first acting job, the only one with my father.

The summer of 1931 Dad decided to fly the family to mother’s parents’ farm near Hayfield, Minnesota, a short hop from Rochester. Mother’s memoir said she was adamantly against it, chastising my father for wanting to expose their two sons to such a dangerous way to travel. Father prevailed. I was five, Don, two. Dad chartered an airplane in Dubuque, a town in Northern Iowa. It apparently was the closest air transportation he could find. He had fallen in love with airplanes, wanted to learn to fly. It was a pioneering way to travel in 1931. Dad obviously had a pioneering spirit.

It was a four-passenger, single engine plane with a high wing, the first airplane I had ever seen up close. Dad sat in front with the pilot. Mother, Don and I squeezed into the narrow rear seat.

The engine roared and the airplane gathered speed. Out the window, I could see the ground slipping past us, faster and faster. The plane lifted off slowly, then the pilot bounced it off the ground once, twice, thrice, higher each time, before skimming over a row of trees. Fun for a five-year-old, nearly fatal, mother said later. The pilot confessed that we were lucky to have cleared those trees with the plane so heavily loaded.

Dad and I before take-off; at play.

The flight was uneventful. We landed in a grassy field, not far from my grandparents’ farm. People showed up in cars and pickup trucks to gawk at the aircraft, and us. I guess they viewed us as creatures from outer space. Events like that were rare in those early days of aviation. Dad and the pilot flew back to Dubuque. En route, they had to make a forced landing because of engine trouble. Dad did not fly again.

MUSIC

We had a piano in our living room and lessons were mandatory for Don and me. I progressed steadily, tutored by Gertrude Rutenbeck, a farmer’s wife. I finally hit the wall with The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. My mother offered me the C-melody saxophone she had played in my father’s dance band. It was almost as tall as I was, but much easier to play than a piano, and more fun.

A woman named Odete Keen from Maquoketa came to town offering lessons. The carrot she dangled was the promise she would start a band in Elwood. She obviously was a good salesperson. Mother contracted for weekly lessons for my brother and me. He started on Dad’s coronet.

Odete had coal black hair and wore the most makeup I had ever seen. Mother said her hair was dyed. Mother did not approve of makeup. She said the woman probably was twice as old as she looked. Nevertheless, I was energized with her promise to organize a band. It never materialized, but she had inspired me to want to learn to play the sax. The episode could have served as the plot for The Music Man.

Mother arranged for me to play a saxophone solo at one of our Sunday morning church services. It definitely was her idea, not mine. She was a devout Christian and Methodist church member. She wanted to show off my talent more than I wanted to perform in front of the congregation. The song was O Sole Mio. It required several hours of practice to memorize. I was dressed in my Sunday best and performed the song standing in front of the altar. I’m sure the applause afterwards was more in recognition of my age than ability, and the fact that the parishioners were compassionate Methodists.

My brother and I attended Sunday School religiously (pardon the pun). Mother saw to that. She was proud when her two sons earned fifty-two blue stars one year.

My father played coronet in the band he organized and directed. Mother alternated between piano and saxophone. They played mostly for local dances which I’m sure included church affairs. I still have his cornet in my retirement village apartment in Gainesville, Georgia. My older son, Dave, played it for several years when he came to visit. All he asked was that I keep valve oil handy.

My father also played several woodwind instruments. According to my mother, he also mastered the guitar, ukulele and drums. I can’t recall hearing him play any of them. I never heard his band perform. He must have practiced in one of the rooms at the other end of our upstairs apartment, out of my hearing range. My brother played our father’s coronet for a short period of time before he tired of music.

I have thought about my father sparingly over the years. I was so young when I lost him. Reading his letters for this memoir, I know more about him, his concerns and his doubts. What would it have been like to have had a father? With his many talents and ambition, how might that have changed my life?

I wish I could have helped him break the ice on the river, traveled to Chicago with him in one of his trucks, listened to his dance band. I wish he had been there to share my successes and failures. What would he have thought? What would he have said? How would he have advised me? Had he lived, how different might my life have been?

We survived the 1930’s and 1940’s without television, computers, I-Pods and cell phones. We lacked an even more important convenience – indoor plumbing, mentioned earlier. In Elwood, winter temperatures often fell to 20 degrees below zero. My brother and I set Olympic records racing to and from the two-hole facility.

We did not take fifteen-minute hot showers as some youngsters do today; we had no running water. We took our Saturday night baths in a large wash tub, which cleansed us for Sunday church and the rest of the week. I imagine the other kids fared the same, though we never discussed it. We had indoor plumbing in our Elwood K-12 school, and my Uncle Eppe’s family had indoor plumbing in their farm house north of Elwood. I was impressed with this sophisticated method of relieving myself whenever we visited the farm, particularly in the winter.

One early morning on the farm, my Cousin Russ showed me how to milk a cow. I sat down on