GVEC Siepmann, Theodore - October 7, 1986
Interview with Theodore Siepmann
Interviewer: Karen Yancy
Transcriber: Karen Yancy
Date of Interview: October 7, 1986
Location: Mr. Siepmann’s Home, Cost, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Karen Yancy: This is Karen Yancy. Today is October 7, 1986, and I’m conducting an oral interview with Mr. Theodore Siepmann, charter board member of Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative [GVEC] at Gonzales, Texas.
Why did you become involved in the creation and establishment of GVEC?
Theodore Siepmann: Well, there were a group of us that were interested in getting electricity. Back in those days, no one or very few people had it, and what electricity there was at the time was what we called Delco plants, 32-volt Delco plants; a few people had those. Most, other than the Cole oil lamp and light, was the gas lamp, the gasoline Coleman lamp, and that was about it as far as electricity was concerned. A few of them had these Carbide plants. That was a form of gas that had to be charged, and all you could use that for was for light and nothing else. And we were interested, and so we found out about this REA [Rural Electric Administration] that President Roosevelt had started and given, made funds available for rural people to use for that purpose. I guess about that time the National Grange begin to try to activate the National Grange investments, and they started one here in Cost because that’s where the “first shot for Texas Independence was fired” and they thought that was a good starting point. And as a project, they are responsible for rural electrification because we built, and a group of us here in the community of Cost were very much interested in getting electricity, so we started talking and we went all over to different communities and talked electricity to the farmers and find out how best to get them to sign up and get interested in it. That was pretty hard thing to do in those days because the economy was bad and people just didn’t have the money. Lot of them were afraid of it; they were afraid if they signed anything up and can’t get no one to help them, they would have to pay that debt, and it was just—these people right in this immediate area, most of them are of German descent, and they are very saving. They’re not going to throw their money around. They’re proud of their homes, and they didn’t want to lose any of that, and about that time, a lot of people did lose a lot of their land and property and went broke. It was just hard to get started. They wanted the electricity all right, but they were just afraid to take a chance because they had never heard of anything like that before, and their city friends had electricity, and they probably visit them, and they knew what it was like, but that wasn’t for the poor old farmer. (Smiles)
Yancy: (Laughs) What years did you serve on the board?
Siepmann: What years?
Yancy: Uh-huh.
Siepmann: Well, I believe it was started in 1938. I don’t know how many years I served, but the reasons—it started right around this locality here in Gonzales County, and we had too many directors right here close, and after we spread out, then we had to get a director from the different areas that we served and divided up into different districts, and for that reason some of us had to step down. Mr. Lindemann was very active and instigated this rural electrification deal, and he was chairman of the board. We certainly wanted him to stay in there. He lived right over there at Cost, and I lived right over here at Monthalia. They’re about six miles apart, and that was too close, and for that reason I stepped down. Oh, we had another man from Wrightsboro, I don’t think it was ever mentioned that—Mr. H.C. Gillette, he was the secretary-treasurer when we first organized and started up, but then after we got our first lines energized, he was employed by the REA, and for that reason he couldn’t be a director. So then I was elected secretary-treasurer for a few years, but that didn’t have anything to do with it. I was young and didn’t have any money, and they couldn’t take anything away from me, so I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind singing all those notes for those— (Smiles)
Yancy: (Laughs)
Siepmann: —thousands of dollars that we were drawing from the federal government.
Yancy: How responsive and supportive were the people to the creation and establishment of GVEC?
Siepmann: Some of them were very much interested, and other ones we just couldn’t get them interested. It took a lot of talking, and they just couldn’t believe it. (Pause)
Yancy: Tell me about the early years of GVEC. What were they like?
Siepmann: Well, what do you mean what were they like?
Yancy: What did you do—how involved was the board in the day-to-day operations?
Siepmann: Well, we didn’t receive any money for meetings. A lot of that was free, gratis, and we didn’t even have enough money to get our charter. I guess we did have, but we didn’t—you know, we had no way of getting it. We had a man in my community that—Mr. M.K. Towns was rather wealthy, and he gave us the $10 to get our charter and gave me because he lived in a place in Monthalia pretty close to where I lived at the time; he even gave me a check for $25 for gasoline and to make all those meetings, for we had to go all over the country, you know, not only in Gonzales County but in Guadalupe County, and it was just hard to get started and to do anything because it takes money. People don’t realize really how cheap things were back there right after the Depression and during the Depression because, for instance, top hog prices were 3½ cents a pound, and a calf that we get $250 or 300 for today was sold for around $9–10, and corn was 20 cents a bushel, and that’s how hard it was. People lived all right, I mean, but we didn’t have any money. (Smiles and laughs)
Yancy and Siepmann: Money.
Siepmann: And it was just hard to get started, and for a long time we got a dollar per a director’s meeting. And another thing we did, we promised, one of the things we struck our necks out on, if we didn’t get this thing started, we had to have so many subscribers before we could send it in. And they had to put down a $5 membership fee, and then I believe it was $2.50 a month for so many kilowatts of electricity, and we guaranteed them that if the thing didn’t go through, we would give them the $5 back. In other words, we didn’t spend any of that membership at all. What money was spent because we were energizing as we started was money that we pulled out of right of our own pockets, and that was kind of short.
Yancy: (Laughs) What kind of time commitment was involved in serving as a director?
Siepmann: What?
Yancy: What kind of time commitment was involved in serving as a director?
Siepmann: Oh, we had our meetings at night nearly all the time. After hours, you know, at six o’clock and sometimes they would run until midnight or sometimes later, and I believe we met only once a month. (Pause)
Yancy: So, y’all didn’t get that involved in the day-to-day operations once you got the charter established and—
Siepmann: No, no we hired—what do you call it? A manager.
Yancy: Yes.
Siepmann: Mr. Hassman, and he was the one that could help. He had a way of getting along with the people, and everybody liked him—we had a lot of trouble getting easements from some of these people, and he had a way about him. He could go and talk to them and when nobody else could do it, why, he would, and he had a wonderful way with them.
Yancy: What kind of relationship was there between the directors themselves and between the directors and employees and the community?
Siepmann: Well, the employees, that was entirely up to a selection of people; it wasn’t entirely, but a lot of it was the responsibility of the manager, Mr. Hassman. Of course, he recommended to them, and by being—we were small in that we had a director usually from each community who was pretty well-known and knew nearly everybody, and we knew who was working and who wasn’t, who was good and who was not good—who was reliable, I should say. We would go over the list, and the rest of it was the business of the manager. If they didn’t prove to be worthy of or were incapable or it didn’t make any difference, but it worked out real well, I thought. We had trouble one time with one of the directors; we were supposed to set a precedent. People didn’t like the poles being put in their fields because they got in the way of the—
Yancy and Siepmann: Plowing.
Siepmann: So, this man—we were going to put the line through his field and put one or two poles in there, and he had the easements around it. He was gathering up the easements around it so that the line would miss it. He didn’t want to have any of those poles. We said you can’t do that because the neighbors are going to say, “Yeah, look at him. He’s a director, and he’s pulling his authority and not having any of those poles in his field.” So we talked about it and talked about it, and he said they got in the way of his wife when she was plowing out there. We had a hard time in one of the director’s meetings, so we ask him to resign unless he put some poles in his field, and he wouldn’t do it, so he resigned and the line went by him, and he didn’t get electricity, and I think finally he did consent to put some poles in his field, and so he got electricity, but he wasn’t a director.
Okay, then we cut somebody’s tree down by mistake. Some of the crew wouldn’t look at the easements, you know, and cut a shade tree that was supposed to have been left or trimmed, or they would cut somebody’s fence whenever they were building the line and didn’t put it back right, but, really, you know, we didn’t have anything too bad happen. Once it got started and people saw what it was like, they were anxious to have it. Oh, they just couldn’t wait to get it to their place. The biggest trouble was getting them started; being the first group of nine energized, and I never will forget that first night. We got in the car and drove all over the country looking at the lights shining from the windows because that was something unusual because you didn’t see much light out of a house when they had very few lamps. (Pause)
Yancy: So, how did the World War affect the Co-op? Did it hurt trying to get members?
Siepmann: No, you mean the Second World War
Yancy: Uh-huh.
Siepmann: When you said World War, I still remember the first one. (Short pause) Yes, in a way it did. At the time I was living at a little town, a little place called Monthalia. Right after the war, I had an opportunity to buy a house at a real bargain price and move it down here, and I moved down here on this place. At that time, I was living—we had a big home—my mother was—my father had passed away, and my wife and I were living upstairs, and she was living downstairs, and it worked all right. But then we had a chance to buy this home, so we moved down here and moved the house down here, but there was no electricity and I couldn’t—they wouldn’t build any line, so here I was (laughs) help[ing] start this thing, and then I had moved away from the line, and I couldn’t get it. No way [that] I could get it because you had those rules, and, well, you couldn’t buy any kind of metal or anything. You couldn’t get any material to build the line. So I had to wait until after the war was over to get it. The line was going right down the road here, but I couldn’t get to it, and Mother—we had an old Delco light plant in our home, and we still had that thing, so I moved it down here and cranked it up, and I had electricity, a “local” electric plant (both Yancy and Siepmann laugh). Mother and Father had, I think we had an electric iron at one time that ran on thirty-two volts and had a radio that would run on thirty-two volts. No, I take it back. I had a washing machine up there that was one of the first things we bought, but when we moved down here, we couldn’t do that. So I had to get a little Briggs-Stratton gasoline motor to put on there, and I swapped that with my cousin who had a motor, and he wanted the electric motor to put on his washing machine, so I traded him my electric motor for his Briggs-Stratton, and we got along all right. But it was hard. You couldn’t get any electricity or build any lines during that time, but soon after you couldn’t buy any appliances; you had to put your—there was a long waiting list, and the Co-op even took orders, and that was one of the things—when the appliances came in, you took your turn about it, and whatever you wanted, whether it was a refrigerator or a washing machine or anything like that, you just—I still got an old refrigerator out there that my neighbor over here bought. We both put in at the same time. I bought a Westinghouse, and it wore out, and I bought that one from him. He moved to town, I think, or somewhere. Anyway, I got an old—it’s still running; just as efficient as it did the day I got it. I don’t think they make them like that anymore.
Yancy: No, they don’t seem to.
Yancy: What do you see at the future of GVEC?
Siepmann: Well, I can’t get over it. I keep being amazed [at] how it keeps growing, and I think there’s a great future for it, and I’m very happy to know that they’re going to try to build their own generating plant. And I was always a firm believer that people would reverse this trend of moving into town and turn and come back to the country, and I think it’s happening now. At the time we started, people would just, especially the renter—and so many people lost their property. They couldn’t make a living out in the country, so they moved to town, and they got them a job, and they stayed in town, and that’s what happened. We used to have [a] pretty thriving little community out here in Monthalia. We had two stores and a barbershop and a cotton gin and a church and a school—a three-room school. Well, there’s two houses down there now. It’s just that everybody moved away, but if you drive up and down the road, you begin to see trailer houses and new houses all up and down the road, and people are retiring and moving back out to the country, and a lot of the young people are building there and commuting back and forth to town. Those have got a whole lot to do with it, and I think that thing is going to keep on growing, and I think that’s where the rural electrification people had a lot to do with it, helped us a whole lot, and I’ve always been amazed at—I always thought there was a saturating point to the sale of appliances and things, but my brother-in-law used to run this store at Cost, and he sold appliances, and I worked over there part of the time, trying to make a living on the farm, and I helped deliver a lot of those things like water pumps. We put in indoor toilets and put in those drain fields and put down hot and cold water lines, and I told this salesman, I said, “I can’t see where you’re selling all these things.” He said, “Well, they’re always making something new and something better, and people want it, and they’ll buy it.” We couldn’t imagine how in the world we would pay $2.50 a month electric bill, or how we could ever use that much electricity, but now it’s nothing for a person to pay $100 or $150 or $200 a month for electricity, but we had no idea what you could do with that thing. There’s so many things you can do. Sometimes I wonder what’s going to happen to the United States if suddenly we had an enemy of some kind come over here and give us a blackout, destroy our power plants. Just look at the refrigeration we depend on now; our air conditioning, our buildings, the way they’re built.
Yancy: That’s true.
Siepmann: We just couldn’t live; we’re used to it. People in the country used to preserve a lot of food in cans and jars and did all those things. Well, I don’t own a chicken. I don’t own a milk cow. I don’t have a hog. I buy all—
Yancy: Buy all of that.
Siepmann: —all of that stuff and put it in the freezer, and the grocery stores are the same way. If we had a sudden blackout, in two or three weeks’ time, all that stuff would spoil, and we’d have a food shortage. We have no backup, no generators to take care of that. When we first started out, there used to be a few hatcheries around here. Most of those people had an extra unit that they could crank up in case something happened to the lines, and we would just take it for granted. We just flip a switch, and there it is, and that’s the same thing with water. We take water for granted, in the city especially, and out in the country now we’ve got rural water lines out here in the country. Our life has certainly changed in the last fifty years; I’ll have to say that.
Yancy: When y’all were forming GVEC, what decisions were made on the source of electricity? Did y’all automatically decide y’all were going to go and buy wholesale, or did you want to generate your own electricity, or was there a choice?
Siepmann: Did you say now?
Yancy: When you were forming.
Siepmann: Oh, when we were forming.
Yancy: Uh-huh.
Siepmann: Well, it seems to me like we had a pretty good offer from some of these companies, not the big major companies but somebody like Lower Colorado River Authority [LCRA], they offered us a pretty good price, and that was the way to go, and the only reason GVEC now is trying to do that is because they think they can build more economically than they can by buying it and more dependable, probably, too. (Pause)
Yancy: In the first years, did y’all start selling the appliances, offering appliances or anything? Or did y’all wait for a while? Because I know that some electric cooperatives did start selling appliances and offering that to the consumers and such.
Siepmann: No, we didn’t. The Co-op didn’t sell anything. They encouraged the dealers around the county, and it was very competitive. There was no reason for us to do that. The only reason I think they finally hired a director for—I think the only reason they did that was so that people could have a choice, and, you know, you wait in line to get it, so that when they got some things in and they could get it by bulk, the companies that sold these appliances and things didn’t have any trouble getting rid of them. Everybody was running short and wanting it. Co-ops were being built all over the country at that time, and it was a case of helping our membership out. (Pause)
Yancy: Did y’all ever have any trouble with the major power companies trying to stop you from building electrical lines?
Siepmann: Well, not too much. We had a little bit around some of these cities. They would come try to grab up a choice part, but it wasn’t too much. We swapped out in some places. I think they were kind of surprised. They had their eyes opened too because they didn’t realize what a juicy apple that was out there. They didn’t think it could be done, and after the REA started and they saw what was happening, then they tried to come in there, and it was almost too late then.
Yancy: Do you have anything you want to say because I’ve about run out of questions?
Siepmann: No, I’m just happy and thankful that I had a part in getting this thing started, and I enjoyed working with everybody. I’m for co-ops 100 percent. I really think that’s the only way to go, especially for the rural people.
Yancy: Thank you.
End of interview