DOWSING:

HENRY GROSS AND HIS DIVINING ROD & VIC YACKTMAN

Yet, there was more. He also described how he went over the galley proofs when they came from the publisher, and how he would shorten sentences and paragraphs when the chapter ended in three quarters or half a page, trying to shorten it in order to save paper and ink for the publisher!  He kept track of such details, and when there were 50,000 copies sold, he knew how much paper that meant and made notes of it.  Each book was followed with such details and a record made.  He did not seem to think of it as saving trees, but if anyone led the way for it, Kenneth Roberts, inadvertently, certainly did.

It seemed that I must have been led to read that book first, because next I found another treasure, Henry Gross and His Divining Rod, sitting among the group of Robert's book on the shelf, and as it turned out, if I had not read that one first, I would never have fully understood the second one. I took it home and read it, how he was told by the locals to get a dowser when the well on his newly acquired farm ran dry and how, being a man who did not easily accept anyone's word for things, he was skeptical of such antics. However, other farmers in the area also swore that the local dowser, Henry Gross, could divine water and when the well driller backed them up, Roberts made a call to the local celebrity. Gross showed up with his forked stick and after agreeing on a price, the Deviner went to work. Not only did Henry Gross show them where to drill, but he accurately calculated just how deep they would have to drill to reach the water. Now the dowser became a real person of interest to Roberts, who was a trained journalist and observer, and he proceeded to follow him around, to witness his activities, and to make notes. He became so covinced of Gross's talents that next he became sort of an agent for Henry and his dowsing rod. All of my prior reading, and most especially the details of how he did his research in his book I Wanted to Write, showed me how thoroughly the author researched the subjects of his books made me a believer in dowsing, whether I had witnessed it or not, whether I would ever need such services. There are some things that destiny seems to prepare you for, but the one book definitely prepared me for the other. Had I not encountered them in that order, the strength of my convictions would not have been the same.

I had heard a little bit about water dowsing before, and had also read articles in newspapers and magazines about it over the years, this was my first real introduction to it. I had read one article that was published in the Saturday Evening Post and in it they mentioned oil men known as wild-catters who made use of dowsers in the oil fields in Oklahoma and Texas. Obviously, while the field of science remains extremely skeptical, even harshly critical of such un-scientific methods, there is strong enough belief in them by a large enough group of people that dowsers are still used widely about the country.

And, as I read these books, without knowing it I was being prepared to add to the writing of another chapter in a book by Kenneth Roberts, and also to make my boss, Vic Yacktman, a great deal more money, as well as to strengthen my convictions about this strange ability that some possess by personally seeing Henry in action, and how they added to subsequent events that unfolded over the ensuring years as a result of his dowsing.

This story is all from memory and I have neither the time nor inclination to do any further research, especially when writing about Kenneth Roberts, so if a fact here or there falls apart, then take it for what it is worth and move on.

Vic Yacktman was the owner and President of the company I worked for at the time, the Readers Service Bureau of Chicago, Illinois. He was a good boss, given to yelling at times, which was not unusual for the day and age, but overall the office worked smoothly and the work was never unpleasant. While my title was, Assistant to the President, I was more the National Sales Manager, as the two men who had occupied my office before me had been. I think the change of title had to do with the fact that I came in to work for Vic at around $7,500 a year when the previous man had been hired at $15,000 from another company and did not do a decent job, and the man before him had been paid $12,000 a year for doing essentially nothing as far as the salesmen in the field were concerned.

We had sales crews out, traveling all around the U.S., and I kept in touch with them by telephone and correspondence, wrote the sales bulletins, generally ran the office in close cooperation with Vic's wife, Pauline, and did whatever else I could to be of help, including some of the hiring and firing.

Vic was always busy. He gambled a lot on the horses, pretty hefty sums of money every month, and the bookies had runners visiting the office to settle the account. They looked more like college kids the way they were dressed, and perhaps they were, but they collected or paid off some hefty sums of money. The first thing he did upon arriving at the office each morning was to read the Racing Form, and he didn't want to be interrupted. I'm trying to remember, but the losses at times were in the many thousands, and Pauline said that one month more than twenty thousand.  But he hit big some months too, and he kept very accurate records of every single bet, pages and pages of records that were printed up on a press in the basement and bound into large volumes. It was all written off as research; after all, we were publishers and Vic intended to write a book or was writing a book on how to bet and win on the horses. If things were not going well and he had a long losing streak, he also had the ability to quit for awhile, just quit cold turkey. Many gamblers just cannot quit; Vic had total control of his actions at all times.

He also played the stock market very successfully, once pulling all his money out a few weeks before one very deadly downturn and then buying in again when they hit bottom.  His brokers advised him against the move, insisting that the market was still going up, but his research and experience convinced him otherwise and he moved decisively and speedily. His brokers highly respected his ability and paid more attention to what he was doing than he did to their advice, but that time they were wrong, very wrong, and his timing proved very precise. On his 75th birthday, when I flew to Chicago to attend the party to honor him, there was a large sign in the room from his brokers: "When Vic Yacktman speaks, brokers listen."

Vic also was interested in property and he bought a large farm near Morton Grove, right next to his home, a large rather palatial house for that area.  As new homes were built in the neighboring town of Glenwood on one side and Morton Grove on the other, he hired architects and worked with contractors to plan out his own development for the farm.  I was not a part of all of this, except through conversations with both Vic and Pauline. 

At one point they came up against a problem, the size of the lots.  Vic's plans called for lots of 5,000 square feet, which gave him a large number of homes that could be built there, somewhere around 280, if memory serves me correct.  Glenwood's City Council objected and wanted the Cook County Board of Supervisors to set the figure at 10,000 square feet so that it would be the same as the lot size allowed in Glenwood; the town on the other side had 5,000 square foot lots, so they were not bothered with all the fuss. As history tells us, graft was rampant in Chicago, and Cook County was well known for it. 

The word came down that Vic would not be able to complete his plans unless he did a little  negotiating with the powers that be in the area, and that's when I became involved.  For the Board of Supervisors to deliberate properly, it would cost $25,000 that would be divided between four of the Supervisors. They were the ones who would accept such bribes, but he was told that one Supervisor would not be included.  Supposedly, only twenty percent of the Cook County Board of Supervisors were honest!  After awhile it seemed to me that that would be a proper ratio for the area.

I was Vic’s assistant and the job of delivering the cash fell upon me.  One morning Vic called me into his office and explained to me what was going on, then picked up a satchel from the floor and putting it on his desk, opened it and showed me all the money in cash  It was in bills of smaller denominations, and I had to meet with a representative of the Cook County Board of Supervisors, and hand it over to him.  He closed the satchel and handed it to me. They demanded their money before the hearing on the lot size came up.  I was to take it to a hotel room and hand it over to an intermediary, which I did.  Yes, it was just like a scene from a movie, a cash bribe, but that's just how things were done in Chicago in those days, from the cop on the beat to the top-most officials in town.

Was Chicago and Cook County corrupt?  Certainly.  It was more like the movies of the thirties, with Dillinger and Al Capone and crooked cops.  We were small fry, but we witnessed it time and time again in small ways.  My first encounter with it was four days after we moved in, when I drove a mile or so to a church for Sunday worship.  On the way back I came to a six way intersection where two streets branched off and a sign, No Left Turn.  It was an odd set-up, but two cars ahead of me took the partial left in the direction I was headed, so I followed behind them.  We hadn't gone half a block when a motorcycle cop passed me, motioning me over, then the car ahead of me, and the one ahead of it as well.  Three stops, one behind the other.  He spent about two minutes with the first driver who then drove off, then the cop talked to the second one for a minute or two, and then he left too. Now, I was next, my car still with Oregon plates, and he came up and began talking to me, asked me for my license, kept talking, then fatherly like, walked around to the passenger side and opened the door and got in.  He was actually sympathetic with me, saying he was sorry I'd have to lose a days work and pay such a huge fine (I think it was twenty dollars), but perhaps he could pay it for me and save me the time.  Dolt that I was, I pulled out my wallet and showed him, "Look, I'm broke, all I have it five dollars to last me until payday."  Quickly, with two fingers, he plucked that five dollar bill right out of my wallet and as he put it in his pocket, said, "Look, Howard, I'll try to settle it for you and save you the loss of a day's pay," and with his ticket pad still in his hand, went back to his cycle, kick-started it and zoomed off.  Welcome to Chicago! He had obviously taken bribes from three drivers in a row, for that is just what I had inadvertently done, given him a bribe of five dollars.

When I got back home, my sister-in-law, Elona, was there to help us and she went berserk, damning the corruption and the police and the mayor and the whole set-up in Cook County, because it was all around her, all around us the ordinary citizens, and we were helpless to fight it. When I went into work the next day and told my story to the boss, he took out his license and showed me three one dollar bills folded into it, all prepared for the next time he was stopped, and told me that this was standard procedure in the city. Jeff, my landlord, showed me the same thing, the three one dollar bills that the officers palmed while looking at your license.  One friend even told me a story of the night he was stopped while driving through the park and all he had was a single dollar in his wallet.  The cop actually argued with him for almost an hour, while his partner sat patiently in the car, stating that any guy driving a big Chrysler must have more money than that with him.  The cop finally took the dollar and drove off in a huff.  Am I accusing all officers of being on the take?  No, but enough of them were that the average Chicagoan felt the corruption down to his toes, and so too must the honest cops and politicians have felt overwhelmed by it.

Vic had a black man working for him who was a painter and a plasterer, and he used to do the walls in some of his apartments, so one day he set him to work in the downstairs hallway repairing cracks in the wall.  A couple of days later a Union agent walked by, saw him, asked him for his card (I don't think the Union had any blacks at that time), and then came up to see Vic.  For twenty dollars he walked out and we never heard another word about it.

One evening we were invited to have dinner with Vic and Pauline in their apartment , and while talking after dinner, came a knock at the door.  It was a Fire Inspector, working late I guess, and he claimed that the Exit signs on the different floors were not the proper ones to be legal.  Vic came back into the room, went into his office and opened the safe.  He returned and told us that the guy said he needed a new hat, a code in Chicago which meant twenty dollars, and with that, the signs were passed.  We saw it happen; we saw it with our own eyes, day after day, it seemed.  How can you clean up a city where the corruption was so blatant and pervasive?

After living in Chicago for a couple of months, I began writing letters to the Mayor's office about problems that I had observed. Each letter had to be answered by some in his office. Geoff, our landlord, and his brothers, owned a restaurant on the corner, a half a block away from our apartment. The delivery trucks for the restaurant always had to double-park because the spaces were always full along the curb, and this was a common practice for delivery trucks all over the city. Suddenly, after years of overlooking the double-parking for deliveries, the police began ticketing the trucks delivering to this particular restaurant and in a few days all the drivers were irate. Then a police official dropped in to see the brothers and casually mentioned that I was the neighborhood trouble-maker, that word had come down to them about me directly from the mayor's office. Geoeff knocked on our door that evening and told us that if I continued making waves, it would cause a lot of problems for his business. I didn't write another letter of complaint the rest of my stay in Chicago.

There was a famous restaurant on the outskirts of Chicago called: The Fireside. The owners had resisted unionization for several years and it was picketed constantly. Early one morning it went up in flames and burned right to the ground; I heard that the Fire Department was very very slow in responding to the alarm. This was how things worked in Cook County back then. I am sure it is still the same.

One strange incident took place in the early summer, when Pauline's brother, Bill Martin, was to leave on vacation and stopped by the office on that Friday morning to pick up something as well as to say goodbye.  He left his car parked in the alley while he ran upstairs, but when he went down fifteen minutes later, it had been stolen.  We called the Chicago Police Department and they arrived and took a report, then left.  Vic came in a short while later and Bill related the story to him, heartbroken that his vacation was spoiled and his clothes, fishing rods and all were gone.  Vic sat down and called a detective downtown whose brother was a bookie with mob connections, and the detective told him he'd see what he could do and call him back.  An hour later he called and said that Bill was to wait at the back door with $200 and his car would be returned.  That is exactly what happened, the driver took the $200 and walked away, and Bill climbed into his car, where he found everything intact, and left on vacation.

Yes, just that once I was a Bagman.  But when living and doing business in Chicago, that was the way you survived,  Capone's influence and the way the mobs operated was still felt all the way up to the top; you cannot have such widespread corruption with such impunity at the very bottom unless those tentacles have the eyes and the brains in City Hall or the County Courthouse.  Read about my conversation with "Joe", the local cop on the beat.** 

WATER, THE NEXT PROBLEM WITH THE DEVELOPMENT (DOWSING)

It was some weeks later when the compromise was made for the lot size to be 6,500 square feet, but now Vic was faced with a different problem.  Naturally, when you're sub-dividing and groupole to build a few hundred homes. you need to supply them with water, but Vic found out that he was closed off to a water supply from either Glenwood on one side or to the township on the other side.  He had brought it up a few times how his negotiations were not going anywhere, but it did not seem to involve me at all.  It was about this time that I had read I Wanted to Write and then Henry Gross and His Divining Rod.  In a couple of conversations with Vic, I had brought the subject up, but he found it laughable and would not discuss it any further. That was hogwash to him, just folklore with no scientific basis to it.

But as things progressed, he found himself in a deep delimna, one which could sabotage the whole project and expressed a deep concern to both Pauline and me.  Again I suggested dowsing and was rejected.  That evening I visited the Library, checked out the book and waited for him to show up the following morning at his usual time, around eleven, to begin working on the Daily Racing Form.  Soon after, I waked into his office with the book, and actually  slapped it down on his desk, quite dramatically I might add, and said, "Vic, here's the Kenneth Roberts' book about Henry Gross.  If it's still here after you go home, I'll take it back to the Library," and I walked out.  We did not talk anymore that day.  At six o'clock when I checked his office after he had left, the book was gone.  At least he had taken it home with him.

The folloiwing morning when Pauline came in, her first words where, "Howard, what in the Hell did you do to Vic?  He sat up all night and read that damn book three times."  It was obvious it must have interested him.

A CALL TO KENNETH ROBERTS

Vic came into the office a bit later than usual that day and called me into his office.  He was all smiles and said, "Howard, I want you to get your friend, Kenneth Roberts, on the telephone."  "He's no friend of mine," I said, "All we have in common is the same birthday, December 8th," but I did as asked and shortly was speaking to the famous author at his home in Maine.  I turned the call over to Vic and he spoke to Roberts for quite awhile, ending with a firm agreement for Gross's services, which he followed up with a letter, to dowse the farm property which was not going to become part of a city.

I don't know what the financial arrangements were, but a few days later Henry Gross flew in and we picked him up at the airport.  They drove him to the house out on the farm, and I went there for dinner with them that evening.  Gross discussed some of his dowsing exploits, but the fun came after dinner.  In the book about Henry's talent, Roberts had said that he could locate hidden coins, so Pauline had carefully hidden some quarters around the house as a test, because she disagreed with the whole project from the start.  She was determined to stop her husband from spending any more money on this foolishness.

Well, Gross went along with this test good-naturedly, but he did not locate a single coin and the evening soon came to an end.  The next day Vic and Gross toured the property and marked out three spots where the rod bent and they were to drill.  What surprised those who participated in it was that Gross told them that these wells were going to come in at one thousand feet deep, a very expensive drilling project, and one which Pauline was now totally against.  The drilling progressed and I got daily reports from Vic and Pauline, the costs mounted, and while Vic never lost faith, Pauline's objections grew stronger when they went beyond the thousand feet and the well driller told Vic to quit wasting his money.  At eleven hundred feet, still none, but they hit at twelve hundred feet and it was a very good flow.  They erected a water tower that held half a million gallons, I believe, almost on Pauline's front lawn.

All I know is that whenever I spoke with Pauline in the ensuing years, right up to her death, we'd laugh about that story and she referred to the water tower as "Howard's monument" on her front lawn.  They had to comply with the many Government regulations, dealing with those who supervised or enforced the laws about Public Utilities, and I believe that they were allowed to earn a 6% profit on this operation, but again, this is from memory when talking to Vic or Pauline over the years.  Vic died and Pauline took up the reins.  When it came time to sell, the buyers found that they faced a very astute business woman, and she enjoyed telling me how she fought them on different issues and won out. 

On one visit with them, Vic told me that the Roberts' book had been updated and the story of Gross' visit to Chicago and the subsequent formation of the water company told, plus the fact that Vic duly paid Gross when the two additional wells had been drilled and also the fact that Vic was the only client they had who had dutifully lived up to his word.  Vic was proud of that, as well he should have been.  He was an honest and honorable man, as well as great fun to work with and for.

Not too long after, I left Vic and Pauline and Chicago.  Vic had come into my office a few days before Christmas and told me that he had raised my salary; it was about seven hundred dollars more annually. I went home that night with a heavy heart, knowing full well that he should have doubled my pay.  It wasn't long after that when an accidental meeting with the owner of a company in Seattle, Washington, and two discussions over dinner, brought an offer of a salary of twelve thousand dollars a year, which was over $4,000 above what I was making, so we left the windy city, Vic and Pauline and our friends there, and moved once again to the west coast.

They built lovely brick homes on the property that Vic was selling, one of which was earmarked for me and my family, close to Vic and Pauline and their family.  Two years later, when the Seattle company went down the tube, Vic made me another offer to get me to return to work for him, but I turned it down flat as insufficient. They were very good people to work for and their employees remained with them for many years.  Pauline and I continued our correspondence, but she always felt that both Vic and I made a mistake by not getting together and compromising.  She said that he was willing to do so, but I had made it plain in my refusal that I had closed the door on that chapter of my life.

Pauline told me that they had had offers for the water company, but they refused to sell.  She ran it after Vic's death.  Finally, she made the decision to sell because of the heavy load of reports that the government required. She said that the buyers treated her like some unknowledgeable widow that they were going to take to the cleaners in the beginning, but when she finally closed the deal, she got five million dollars for the company, with the three deep wells dowsed by Henry Gross and His Divining Rod.

Vic told me that even in the construction of the homes, they still had to pay under the table to the Plumbing, Electrical and other building inspectors.  Only, it was all bundled.  Every house that was built in that development had a set price for the inspectors, which if memory serves me correctly, was $175 per house.  One of the inspectors who felt that he was not getting enough began to his the builders up for more, but even crooks have their code of honor and when Vic finally reported him to the right man, the inspector was either transferred or fired from his city job.

As I have stated above, Henry Gross said the well would come in at 1,000 feet and water was found at 1,200 feet.  The experts had all said that there was no water in the area, including the well driller, but Henry Gross divined (dowsed) not one, but three wells.

DISCUSSION WITH A CHICAGO COP

Every night about an hour before closing, one of the local policemen used to drop in for a cup of coffee. Jeff had introduced us to each other, so when I'd stop in for a cup of tea, we'd sit together and talk, talk about everything, tell jokes, banter with one of Jeff's brothers working behind the counter. 

Then, one night we got onto the subject of police accepting bribes, and I remember how he came up with almost the same words that the motorcycle officer had my first Sunday in Chicago, that by taking these small amounts of money they were doing the public a favor, saving them from the loss of employment time of going to court, saving them on the amount of the fine that the Court would impose, perhaps the expense of a lawyer too, and that we were learning same lesson about breaking the law that all the rigormarole would have taught us, don't speed, stop at Stop signs, don't run a red light, etc.

As he was talking, he took out his wallet and began pulling out business cards, and I'd swear that there were a couple dozen of them in it.  These were all from men whom he had stopped and who had promised to pay him some way or other.  I do not clearly remember, except for one card he snapped down and using an epithet, said, "This guy called me and asked me to come down to his office and he'd give me twenty bucks.  Yeah, I could smell that one.  When I got there and he handed me the money, I'd have the Chief walking out one door and the Feds out of the other.  But I've got his license number and one night I'll see him again."  He seemed to have quite a memory for some of the infractions, but he felt entirely justified about his involvement in this chain of corruption.

I cannot say that I felt justified or comfortable about my part in it, but it was nationally known and often discussed or written about for years before we moved there, and it could not have been unknown to the reporters and columnists working for the Chicago Times and other newspapers.  There was no way at all that you could avoid seeing it if you moved about town, did business in town, or conversed with your fellow citizens.  It was a case of the first to stick his neck out would get it cut off.  If you lived there, you experienced it, it was that simple.  There are many people living comfortably today whose fathers or grandfathers built the family fortune through such corruption.