Al Haunold Oral History Interview #2, August 1, 2017

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Alright. It is August 1, 2017. You are Dr. Alfred Haunold.

AL HAUNOLD: I think so.

TEM: You were born in Austria, 1929? Is that right?

AH: Uh-huh. Yep. October 7, 1929.

TEM: You were born, is it Retz, is that right?

AH: Retz, yeah.

TEM: Is that an agricultural region?

AH: Oh, yeah. That's in wine country. It's the center. One variety that they are real famous for is a Grüner Vetliner. I've seen that imported in the U.S. now and my son in Boise likes it. He buys it especially there, not because it's from Austria but he likes it there. I like other ones better than Vetliner, although lately they have improved it there and the quality's really super now. I can go with that one. I grew up in the wine producing region and that's where my 00:01:00grandmother had some vineyards there. We worked there.

TEM: She had vineyards and then did she also make the wine?

AH: Uh-huh.

TEM: Yeah.

AH: That's what they did. In the olden days. Nowadays people that grow their grapes sell it to a co-op and then it's being processed there and then marketed there, which is much better than what the individual vendors had to do there. They didn't make any money. They'd just subsist a living and the trade that made the money there. It's better now, but then many of the young people if they are small, medium size vineyards they've sold out there and they are larger estates now. That's the way to go there.

TEM: Did she have other vegetables or was she primarily a wine grower?

AH: No. Just grapes grown for wine. I mean, vegetables for home use, but it was nothing else.

TEM: How big was the town? How big was Retz?

AH: Retz at the time when I was growing up? Maybe 2,000. It was a border town 00:02:00with towers and fortification and things going back over 1,000, about 1,000 years now and then destroyed by various wars there, including Hussites there. There was a religious war and many others, middle age timeframe. Now it's about maybe 4,000 there. It's a tourist attraction, really. They are bringing every weekend there are loads of tourists coming there. There's underground cellars. The whole town is on top of cellars that used to be for wine storage and trade. Then, it's attractive there, but for people who just live there it's limited. You know, you're talking about 4,000 people. That seems like a tiny, tiny thing and Philomath has more than that. It's a different type of living there. You go 00:03:00there and you don't have the feeling's it's a tiny, little bitty town. It used to be border fortification, you know through the middle ages there, and therefore had all sorts of ups and downs. But, today it's okay. When the iron curtain was there and the curtain was within walking distance there, maybe a mile away, or closer than that, and they were the most cut off there. Now, it's open again and there's limited trade although the Czech Republic on the other side they accept the euro but they have their own currency there. There's still a difference in terms of standard of living and cost of living there.

TEM: In the Czech Republic versus in Austria?

AH: Czech Republic, yeah, they're just not up-I mean they were for so long on the communist regime there. They're still not completely caught up there. 00:04:00There's a certain cultural difference also. The saying is, we've had it bad for so long, you owe us something. Well, that's not the way it goes. But, I have nothing to do with that.

TEM: Yeah. So, what was the impact, though, on agriculture in that area? It being on the border like that?

AH: Up until World War I it was just one country. It was Austria and it was the Czech Republic and it was the Bohemian Republic and they were all part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire then. There was no problem then. My grandmother used to go to farmer's market in the town where I went, during the Nazi occupation, went to high school there, called [speaking foreign language]. It's now [speaking foreign language]. It was all mixed language but I would say 80% German speaking, 20% Czechs and the further you got in there the more and more there was Czech there.

After World War II, they drove all the German speaking out and these people that 00:05:00lost everything there and they mostly settled in Germany. Some of them settled in Austria there, but I remember we had two refugee families that we gave shelter for a few months until they could move on. The people were at the border who had fields across they lost it all there. Even now, they haven't gotten it back. That's one of the sticking points. The Czech Republic wanted it to go to, they're not in the European Union yet. They have to compensate people that lost these fields. The Czech said, no. The Nazis, they occupied us, and you owe it to us. Well, Austria was not starting the war. Austria was occupied by Germany and then became part of the German Reich Empire, and then of course all the German-speaking ones were put into the army there and had to fight. When Austria 00:06:00got what they call the state treaty, which is like a peace treaty, and it took ten years until they achieved that in 1955. They made sure that there was no collective guilt put onto Austria except in order to get the peace treaty signed. Austria had to agree to reparation of $150 million and plus other things there. That's all history now.

TEM: So, what was it like to grow up-so, you were born in between the wars.

AH: I was born before the war, yeah, before World War, in between World War I and II. Yeah, 1929. I don't remember much at that time, except I do sort of vaguely remember in the 1930s there was a lot of hunger and things like that. People would wander through the streets and there was no social nets or anything. My mother gave them soup and food and things like that. Then of course 00:07:001934, the Nazi party became stronger and they assassinated the chancellor, which was the equivalent of the president in the U.S. After that, the Nazi party was declared illegal. Anybody who was found to be a member of the Nazi party they lost their jobs there. Then 1938 when Hitler marched in there, Germany did everything they could to force Austria down to its knees. When they would not buy the the cultural products, milk and cheeses and so on, which Austria had plenty of it, they would not allow German tourists to take more of a token amount of money when they went on vacation to Austria. There was unemployment there and general dissatisfaction. The socialists and the conservatives did not really get along too well. Then there were some internal what you might call, 00:08:00not civil war in terms of a war, but fighting military style between the ultra left and the ultra right there. Then in 1938 there the then chancellor/president of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg, had had some meetings with foreign dignitaries, not so much with England but with Italy, which is the closest neighbor there and Mussolini said, no. We're going to be neutral. We're not going to interfere. Well, he had made already an agreement with Hitler there. When Hitler marched in in 1938 and occupied Austria, the Italians said, well, that's fine. You had it coming. Of course, Hitler made the big mistake.

The next thing he went into the Czech Republic, which was Czechoslovakia then. Of course, they were four million, three million German-speaking people in there 00:09:00who were cut off after World War I with their arbitrary border that was created after the Treaty of Versailles, that's in 1918/1919 there. There was also quite the dissention there because the German-speaking people were forced to speak Czech, which they didn't know all that well. Everything was made into Czech language there. These people welcomed Hitler marching in and liberating them and little did they know that the next thing they're going to be inducted into the army and have to fight wars there. Of course, Hitler attacked Poland and Poland had a non-aggression treaty with England that if Poland is attacked then England will automatically declare war. That's how World War II started there. That was 1939. 1938, in March 1938, Hitler marched into Austria and September 1938 he 00:10:00occupied both what they called the Sudetenland, which is part of the now Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia at the time, then less than a year later he attacked Poland. Again, it was a large German speaking population in Poland as well there. That was it. Then it went downhill from there. Although, it didn't appear like that in the beginning, because Germany was forbidden from having a large military but clandestinely they had all sorts of activities there. Not as an excuse, but after World War I, the French, of course, did everything that they could, you know, to keep Germany from regaining any industrial might again there. It wasn't until late 1936 that the French occupation finally ended at the Ruhr Bridge, which is a German industrial area. No wonder that the people 00:11:00chaffed and said, well, you know we got to get out of that because reparations were constantly going into France there up until Hitler had been in power for three years. I'm not surprised that there was a lot of hate, dissention of the Germans. Today, they seem to be getting along fine. The border's open and they go back and forth. Hopefully it stays that way.

TEM: What was the, your dad was a teacher, right?

AH: Pardon me?

TEM: Your dad was a teacher?

AH: Yeah. Middle school. He was briefly a superintendent of schools in another district. I don't think he really liked it all that much. He got that job as a political payback that he was a member of the conservative party, which at that time was in charge of the government. He had a brother who was high in the government, so he probably got that job through his intervention there. When the 00:12:00Nazis came then he immediately lost his job there. Then, the younger people, the younger teachers, were put all into service there then they needed him. After a few months unemployed he got his job that he had had previously before he became superintendent. He liked that better than being an administrator there. At that time, we lived in a different town but then we moved to Retz again. That's my hometown.

TEM: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

AH: One each. A brother and a sister and they're twins.

TEM: They're twins?

AH: Yeah. They're three years younger than I.

TEM: What did you guys like to do? What did you do as a family?

AH: We had lots of things to do because we lived with my grandmother and she had a small farm. Not big, just a few acres, but just enough. We worked there and as 00:13:00long as school was on, we couldn't really do that much because we were too busy studying there, but during the 2 ½ months in the summer we always worked at home there and we helped the neighbors out. Never got paid for anything. Never even thinking of we'd get paid for anything. So different than young people today there. So, that was fun. We lived fairly primitive life. I mean, sanitation the way we know it today didn't exist until probably in 1960s or so. We had an outhouse there. We didn't have any indoor plumbing there. We didn't take a bath when it got a little bit colder until it warmed up we could take a bath outside there. That was just a different way of living there, and people ask now didn't you smell? No, because nothing was heated in the house. The only 00:14:00warm room was the kitchen. Everything else was just ice cold.

TEM: How big was your house?

AH: Well, it was an old house. It's been in my mother's family by documentation in the 1800s. The walls were like three feet thick there. We had at the time when we grew up we had one bedroom that we as the kids slept in and then my parents' bedroom there and then there was the little study and then was my grandmother's room. When my sister got older and she was moved in with grandma, so that was it there. As I said, we didn't have any indoor plumbing there. It was okay. We never thought that we were poor. During the war, when everybody had to have rationing cards and so on, since my grandmother had the fields there and 00:15:00we could grow most of the things, including vegetables, although in the winter we didn't have anything. Just sauerkraut was the only thing. You got through the winter. Then we just grow our own vegetables in the garden.

TEM: Did she do canning? Did you guys do canning and pickling?

AH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pickling, oh yeah. They still do some of that. Big parchment paper and twine tied there. Today I think, no, you can't keep it. You can't sterilize it there. For some reason, they are alright there. Salicylic acid powder was sprinkled on top of the jam and that kept the bugs from going there, and I think the people still do that today.

TEM: Is the house still in your family?

AH: Yeah. My brother has it now. I don't know if his son is going to take over that but none of my sister's kids have any interest in it. She's got three 00:16:00daughters and one son. He's a lawyer there. He might, some of these people maybe have it as a summer home there. But I think my brother's son is most likely going to inherit it. Whether he's going to keep it, now, he grew up in the city there. He works in the city as an accountant, higher level type of administrator there. I don't know. I was the oldest one, so destined, if I would have gotten my estate there, I wouldn't have any interest at all.

TEM: Is it still a working farm? Do they still have vineyards?

AH: My brother still has-well, the fields were divided up. I got a few of them. My sister got a few of them. They were all little strips of something. Nothing huge where you could have equipment there. My brother sold the two or three 00:17:00fields that I had inherited there. He told me he got a fairly good price at the time there for the euro. He said he couldn't even get half of the price today. He still has two vineyards that he's leasing out and he's problem making enough money to pay the taxes on it and that's it there. He's attached to it. He still has the house. He spends the summer and most months in the summer in the house where he was born and grew up. Then in the winter he's in town there in Vienna there, or near Vienna there. He's got a condominium there. I don't know if he's going to-he's four or three years younger than I am so he's going on 85, if he's going to stay up there. He has certainly indicated that when he gets to the point where he can't handle it anymore he may have to stay in the city because you got central heating there. At home he does have indoor plumbing now. That 00:18:00was nice and we were there a few months ago. My daughter and granddaughter, and that was nice. But, I mean, we were survived without the plumbing as well, but it's not that. It's better now. He's got these amenities and he's got gas for cooking. He doesn't have to do what my mother had to do with the wood cooking. He's got the central water supply. So, he has that, but he doesn't have, he could probably install, hmm, maybe propane there, but I haven't seen any indication. He probably Wouldn't do that.

TEM: How far is Retz from Vienna?

AH: Vienna? About an hour.

TEM: Oh, okay.

AH: About 85 kilometers, but there's pretty good roads now there and some of the divided highway there. There's no problem there. Once he gets out of Vienna it's 00:19:00a straight shot there. But then being right at the border, and you can go across there. I don't know, he goes across and does a little bit of shopping in the Czech Republic, but not that much there. They're still, the last time we all were there was some years ago, maybe about eight or ten years ago, maybe longer than that, and they were still sort of the mentality was like in the communist type of thing. Nothing was marked but you could park there, and we went into the town some as I said and couldn't find a parking space, and was one spot open. Nothing in Czech when we stopped there. Two hours later he had the iron boot on there. Like $30 fine now. He doesn't have it marked. Okay, you can go over there and change the money and then pay us and then at that time there was a tourist 00:20:00that had driven into the center of that town, which is much bigger than Retz, probably about 20,000 or so and he was lost. Well, they told him you're not supposed to get in there. He didn't know. As a fine, $25 fine for having driven in there. He had to pay that there.

TEM: They're not really receptive to tourists.

AH: Not at all. It's probably different now there, because they have more concern about tourists there, bringing money in there voluntarily rather than being slapped with massive fines there. I haven't been over there. When we were there a few months ago I had no desire to go into that town again there. I had for five and a half gone there to the high school there, I mean prep school. That's not our high school type of thing. It's different, completely different there. So, I have no desire to go over there.

TEM: What was different about the prep school versus high school?

AH: Even today, in order to go to university you have to go what they call it's either gymnasium or realgymnasium, or something like that. It's a secondary schooling that is much more demanding than how high schools are here. Typically you go four years grade school there and then you apply and you have to have an entrance exam and you're accepted into these upper level middle schools there. They call it gymnasium or realgymnasium, things like that. Typically you've got at least two foreign languages. You got math through calculus, mandatory things, not electives that you can choose what you will do to increase your grade point average. So, if you don't get the graduation certificate, and that's not that easy to get done from this eight-year prep school type of thing you're not going 00:22:00to be eligible to go to university. You can go to, well, like what we have LBCC community college here. You can learn a trade and things like that. That's really would be desirable but you know that university you have to have that type of certificate, which typically comparable to what we have here would be the first two years of college. Then of course you immediately start specializing. You're finding out what you like. Many of these fields are closed. You can't get in there, medicine and other things there. But it's difficult here, too. My sister's middle daughter has three kids there. The oldest one was 00:23:00interested in ancient languages and so he's sort of got his bachelor's degree now, but he's got to go on from there because he wouldn't be able to do much with that, working maybe in a library or things like that ancient Greek and things like that and Latin. Then the next one wanted to go to medical school there. He wasn't going to be accepted there. They had hundreds of applicants for maybe 80 or 90 spots there. He finally, he worked as an EMT in the Red Cross and then was finally accepted at a university in Hungary, which is set up specifically for German speaking students that can't, that want to go into medicine and study medicine. He's studying in Budapest now. He's finished his first year there. His younger sister wants to go to medical school also, so I don't know. She's got one more year in prep school there, but then maybe. Both 00:24:00the parents are doctors there. That has nothing to do with them getting in there.

TEM: There's no pulling strings to get in?

AH: No, not really. Not really. They're all paying somebody off? No. They've had typically, you know, nine times as many applicants as they can accept there. Typically the applicants are somewhere around in the maybe even the thousands there. There are several medical schools in Austria. In other fields, it's a little less restrictive, but then your chances of getting a meaningful employment are not all that great. Languages, yes, they are doing that. I have my sister's oldest one teaches French and Spanish there. She's fluent in four languages, including English and German there. She's been teaching French and Spanish for 25 or 30 years there. So, she's doing real well and then she's got 00:25:00two of them, a boy who's an attorney and then his sister's also an attorney, but she works for an international organization in Brussels and her husband is a diplomat with the EU in Brussels there. So, they're all doing well there.

TEM: Do you have to choose, so you're choosing in the equivalent of probably early high school here? So you're starting to go on tracks when you're 14, 15 years old?

AH: No, no, no. You're starting on track when you're ten years old.

TEM: Oh!

AH: When you're ten years old.

TEM: So, much sooner?

AH: Yeah, oh yeah, much sooner. If you go to the prep school, if you're accepted in there you pass the entrance test, there's no restrictions as to the numbers that can go there, but you got to pass certain tests in terms of reading, writing, and math and so on there after fourth grade there. Once you've passed 00:26:00that test then you can go in and you go to these prep schools. They're different levels now that you can choose. You can choose something with a higher emphasis for languages there, emphasis on more on technical thing, computer, math and things like that. Or, they've got a few other new diversions there I'm not even familiar with. Once you go in the eighth year of program there, then you have to have a final examinations there which are comprehensive there. You pass that, then you actually do a university. You can if you have gone the direction towards trades there, like community college type of thing, and my brother-in-law, who is the father of these four kids that have all gone into the 00:27:00academic field there, he was an orthopedic German technician there, and he went on to night school then to get his equivalent. They call it GED or something like that, but that allows him to go to university there. He went to law school for three, four years there and finished that there. That's very rare. Not too many of them can do that because it's most of the time they have a job by then there and they're in their early 20s there. That's not that easily done, but he managed to do it and he did real well.

TEM: Did you know by the time you were 10 or 11 that you wanted to do something with plants?

AH: No, not at all.

TEM: Was there a track-?

AH: Not at all. I like foreign languages there. I thought that would have been an interesting thing, but at the time when I graduated from that prep school in 00:28:001947, that field was pretty well overrun there. I thought, well, no. I always liked plants and agriculture, so I thought well, I had an uncle that had done that so I thought I'll try that. That's how it started. But that was right after the war and it was pretty tough because just to find a place to live was almost an impossibility. Then, through connections got into a dormitory which at that time was partially bombed out. We didn't have any, we had to put cardboard on the windows there and no heating there and no chance of food or anything. You had to bring it from home. I came, I went home about once every two or three weeks and a supply of food there that I could survive there. So, it was pretty tough there.

TEM: Was it scary to be away from your family during that?

AH: Well, I was 17 at the time, not quite 18. Not scary, just something that you 00:29:00had to do. If you want to go to university that's where you had to go and there was nothing in my hometown there. so, yeah, that's it. But, you know, after the first years it gets kind of a little bit better there. We finally had some food thing we could get lunch there. I don't think we had dinner there. I don't know how we had dinner. At least we had lunch, I mean for a fee. Not always a nutritious type thing with different food types. Whatever was available there, but then I brought things from home, eggs and lard was a normal thing. Oil was unknown at the time there. I did [inaudible] there.

TEM: Did you cook? Were you in charge of your own cooking or were you?

AH: Whatever you wanted to cook. Called cooking heating up something. Yeah, I 00:30:00know how to make egg omelet and things like that there. We didn't have any cheese or anything other than, so... [shrugs]. In terms of living there and balanced meals, no. You ate whatever was available.

TEM: You weren't bringing back things from home to share, but were you bringing it to share with other people that it was your?

AH: No, they had their own, they were on their own there. They had smoked meat and things like that and lard and I don't know what about flour? I don't remember how we really cooked, especially the first year it must have been pretty tough, but I sort of survived there.

TEM: Did you feel the presence of the Nazis during that time? Was there?

AH: Yeah, because my father was on the blacklist and my uncle was in a concentration camp for about a year. Yeah, we were blacklisted there. But 00:31:00personally, as a kid, no. I took the train to the town side there. it took about maybe 45 minutes to get there, and then of course I came home sometime around 2:00 or 2:30. I had a piano lesson there for about a half an hour. By the time I got home it was like 3:30. I had lunch and then it was homework there. 8:00 I had to go to bed again because 7:00 in the morning I had to be at the train station there. it wasn't anything that was a lot of time to play or to do anything, no. It's a routine type of thing. It didn't change. That included Saturday. Sunday was the only day off.

TEM: You went to school on Saturdays, too?

AH: Yeah. Right, yeah.

TEM: Was your uncle who was in the concentration camp the one that went to University of Vienna?

AH: Uh-huh, yeah.

TEM: The same uncle?

AH: Yeah. That's the one. He got the degree in agriculture and then went on and got his doctorate and then he through political connections, and he was pretty capable as an administrator became an administrator in the dairy industry there and he rose fairly high ranks. When the Nazis came and, as I said, the illegal members of the Nazi party which was outlawed in 1934 after the assassination of the chancellor there, the prime minister, then he would can anybody that he found out that they were a member of the Nazi party. There were no proceedings or anything. It was just, you're out. It's just like what Trump says, you're fired! You know? [laughs] Then, of course when the Nazis came within a day he 00:33:00was marched off to Dachau, which was a feared concentration camp. He didn't die there. he was there for less than a year and then they needed somebody who had administrative capabilities there, and so they let him out again and he was subscripted into the army there. He was made a corporeal or something like that. They told him what to do. He never had to go fight, which was sort of surprising. They needed administrators also there, and he was apparently good at that.

TEM: Was there concern that your family would be put in a concentration camp? Did you worry about that?

AH: No. My father lost his job. As I said, but no. He wasn't that far in any decision making capacity. He was known to the Nazi administrators that he was not a reliable person there. If he would make any move then they wouldn't approve and there could be repercussions. As far as I know, nothing happened. I 00:34:00mean, it was illegal to listen to foreign broadcasts there and we were the only ones that had a radio that was capable of doing that. After Hitler came, they made it easy for people to enjoy life and, as I said, the unemployment almost overnight disappeared, because they created jobs and they said through labor that's how you gain your freedom there. They made it so that people could buy a cheaper radio there that they could get two or three stations there as news. Everything was limited, so you couldn't get any foreign, it wasn't strong enough there.

Then of course was the Volkswagen there today was the people's car and Hitler proudly announced that everybody who had a modest income can afford a Volkswagen 00:35:00at $999 [Reichs]mark. People liked that also. In 1938 everything looked rosy there until the war started a year later in 1939, and then very quickly things changed. Pretty soon people finally, you know, there was a certain number, and I don't know if it's really a majority but it was probably something close to a majority of people that voted for Hitler there at the time, after they marched in and had a fake election type of thing. My father said, yeah, I didn't get out of the voting booth they already opened the ballot to see how I voted there. that's the way it was.

TEM: Yeah. Did people think about leaving? Did they want to go-?

AH: Where would they go? How would they go?

TEM: Yeah.

AH: Where would you go? How would you go there? I'm sure that some of the Jews that were fortunate enough to get out there, but after late 1938, you couldn't 00:36:00get out anymore. They were marched off to the concentration camp. Some of them committed suicide there. A few of them had managed to get away and after the war they came back and got their business back again there, not in the shape that they left. They had to rebuild it again, but yeah, that was...and people said well why didn't you protest or something like this? No. It's just... you make the wrong move and you're out of a job and the next thing you find yourself in some sort of jail somewhere there or massive fines which you couldn't pay because you didn't have any money there.

TEM: When you wanted to go to the university, you planned to go to university, were you at that point thinking that a degree, higher education degree would 00:37:00allow you to leave or were you planning to stay in Austria?

AH: Oh, no. Not at all. Not at all. I didn't think about until about my third year when they had programs where you could apply, like in agriculture. I liked plants there and I got in with that one professor who was working on wheat breeding and genetics there. There were a few summer scholarships available that you could apply to go to Sweden. There was a station in Svalöv, which is still prominent today there. Others went to potato breeding and so to Holland there. Switzerland didn't really have much, but there was Holland and Sweden there and I thought oh that would be interesting there. I think I applied but I never got the thing to go to Sweden. But in the fourth year in college I had a chance to 00:38:00work with that professor there and not with him directly but he had a couple assistants there and they also had doctorate degrees already and they were partly teaching there. So, I worked with them on wheat breeding there. Apparently I got pretty good at it. He suggested some topic there that I could work on a dissertation and get a doctor's degree. I started on that there. I worked all through the summer and next year I had to take a couple more classes but not many and had a bunch of oral tests there and got a year and a half got a doctor's degree there.

TEM: Is that fast? That seems like a fast...

AH: At that time it was a little bit faster but someone who really put their mind to it they could do it in about two years. I was not quite two years for me 00:39:00total there. But in my group of students the ones that started in 1947 and '48, and typically we're expected that the earliest to finish in 1951. Only three of them out of the group of maybe 100 that got that fast there. A few of them dragged on. They all got their undergraduate degree then, which is more than the bachelor's degree here. Maybe at the level of a master's degree but maybe not quite that master's degree as sort of an in between type of thing. The next step then is to go all the way through to the doctor's degree. They don't have that anymore. That's changed now. At that time what would be there the doctorate, and I recall some sciences, is probably an in between a Ph.D. and a master's here 00:40:00there. It's not at the level of Ph.D.s here. But then I got a Ph.D. in Nebraska, and then I knew that was the difference [laughs]. Then I was already working full-time.

TEM: How often did you... you were living in Vienna, I assume?

AH: Yeah, until I finished my doctorate there. Yeah.

TEM: How often did you go home?

AH: I don't know. Probably maybe once a month? Something like that. When I was an undergraduate probably out of necessity go home was to mostly get clothing get washed there and get food.

TEM: So, it's just like now [laughs].

AH: Well, there are laundromats. I'm sure the kids can do that, too. But, we didn't have that there, and there was no, I don't even remember if there was any laundry powder or anything. It was, people just used homemade soap and probably 00:41:00did okay. I never paid much attention, because I brought the dirty clothes home. My mother washed them [laughs], and then that's it. That was all set for the next typically three weeks.

TEM: Did you feel like that you were separated maybe from the wartime reconstruction because you were at university? Or did you feel like there was a lot of, I don't know, construction going on, people trying to fix bombed out buildings, people planting food again?

AH: There was nobody doing that. I mean, Vienna was divided into four zones, like Berlin was French, the British and American and Russian there. but it wasn't until Austria got its complete independence in 1955 that there was 00:42:00anybody who had any desire to fix anything there. It just stayed that way. This is the way it stayed in the communist countries behind the iron curtain there. There was just no, I mean, they had some construction there but nothing that you really fixed anything up. I know when we got married in 1959 and Austria had already been completely free, an independent country there for four years, but there were still bombed out buildings in Vienna there and the buildings were drab and dark and so on that there hadn't been much upkeep, of course, during the war and probably all not that much before the war either, there, because it was in between World War I and World War II there it was the big depression there. I remember, I mentioned my wife and I after I came back, and she hadn't been there since 1992 I think was the last time she went there. She had medical 00:43:00problems that wouldn't have been all that great for her to travel. She couldn't handle like a nine-hour flight there, so she hadn't been. I repeatedly tried to tell her. I said, no, I just can't make it there, which is okay. She's alright. She's not at the point where she can't function there, but there would have been too much over stress there, probably say, no the buildings are just beautiful and fixed up and so on. Of course, the traffic is horrendous there.

TEM: [Laughs].

AH: The foreign influences more and more and there are more and more refugees coming. Austria is still taking them in with open arms there. My brother said they're coming here, and not willy nilly, but they're still a lot of them coming that really economic refugees and not political refugees. You can't tell. Many 00:44:00of them form these little enclaves. They don't respect the fact that they are encouraged to assimilate. Many of them don't, especially Muslim type of thing. The get almost $900 a month for a year's subsistence there. They can go on, if they qualify, to go to university there and so on. All paid for there. The word gets through sub-Saharan Africa-go there. They give you $1,000 a month to live there.

TEM: Do they live in the cities? Or are they also living in the rural...?

AH: They live in the cities, but even in my little hometown there are three blocks now there they have been assigned there and I asked my brother, I said, brother are they not allowed to work there because it would take jobs away from other people that are there legally there? So, I don't know. I don't know what they do there. It's getting worse there.

TEM: Yeah.

AH: We went through a part of Vienna where one of my nieces lives. She invited us over for dinner one day and we walked through that one district there and 00:45:00there was no German word spoken anymore. It was like in a Balkan there were tables outside late at night selling their wares there and then tents and whatever there.

TEM: Change is a lot.

AH: It changes a lot there. Change is unstoppable there. I don't know. Now Hungary of course, that border is closed but they're coming in through Italy there and in France, but particularly in Italy there. I don't know how long this can go on like this there.

TEM: When you finished with your doctorate in Ag Science in 1952?

AH: Yeah. Late.

TEM: Then, you got a post doc...?

AH: I had a job when I was working on my doctorate. I already had a nearly full-time job in the institute there where I did my dissertation there. It was 00:46:00not, but I earned enough money that I could live on my own there that way I didn't have to have any help from my parents there. Then when I got the doctorate degree, then I had several options there and several offers there, but I had already applied for a postdoctoral Fulbright scholarship and it appeared like I was going to get it, so I turned down a couple jobs. One would have probably been pretty nice semi-scientific career there, both administration and research there. I had a friend, I said, you want to apply for that? I was offered that job. I was offered a couple others. Then I went to the states and before I came here I made contacts with extension service there and they said, yes. You go over there we need people particularly in wheat breeding and so on.

TEM: Extension service in the U.S. you were contacted here?

AH: No, in Austria.

TEM: In Austria, okay.

AH: I was doing the extension service there. I worked for maybe about four months for them, and then it was the understanding I'd take a one year absence there and then come back and then they have one job that they felt would, they really needed someone in that field there. When I came back after a year in Nebraska there I found out that my doctorate degree was not the equivalent to the Ph.D. there in terms of the, I had the skills in terms of making crosses on, but I didn't have the scientific background. We had, at that time, virtually no biochemistry there, and very limited what they call cytology and chromosome work and so on. We had a little bit there but nothing like what I was exposed to in Nebraska and no statistics there. That's the other thing. I said, wow, this is 00:48:00totally new there. I did take classes there, some of which I was not that qualified to fit in there, but I learned a lot there. Then I came back and they said, well, sorry that we job that we thought you know to really materialize it you got to go into extension, which was okay, but there wasn't extension working with the promise of the extension of bookkeeping there. I hated that. That was totally different [laughs]. More like when an accountant would do to go through ledgers there and type the thing, we had had some education in my undergraduate. I had one semester I had to take accounting there, but I never liked it there. So, I put up with it about maybe four or five months and I finally went to the administrator and said I can't do that there. Then they said, well, we're going to try something else. That didn't work out. Then tried something else again. In 00:49:00the meantime I was getting more and more discouraged that it was going to lead to anything that I could even build a career there. I stayed in contact with Nebraska and I said, well, when I left there, they had said, well, there's a guy that just got his Ph.D., he was an administrative assistant there and I said if you'd be interested in a job it'd be open there. At that time I said no, I've got to go back. I owe it to them. Then, the condition of the Fulbright was I had to go back there. So, I did in 1954 there. Well, when it got to the point where I got increasingly discouraged, I kept contact and said well, if you're still interested we're going to keep that position open until mid-summer. Will you let us know? By about late July, early August I finally said, you know, that's it. I'm 24 years old. I can't afford to go another two, three, four years maybe. I 00:50:00can only gain rather than hurt myself. So, I went. I quit the job.

TEM: What was it like, what are your early impressions, those early memories that you have of coming to Nebraska?

AH: Well, first of all, Nebraska's in the center of the country there. It's nice living there, but I got there in mid-September there and then the daily temperatures were about in 90s and up and sometimes 100 degrees there and of course I had a sleeping room there. Of course, my five dollars a week there. It was fine there. I was making $300 a month at that time there, and that was good living. I thought, oh my God. The first year was as a Fulbright there I was making $100 a month there. I could live quite well, but I thought, Holy Moses, 00:51:00how can anybody survive? There was no air conditioning there. I had an office at the university there, also. I shared it with one guy, a graduate student there, but I said how can anybody survive in a climate like this there? But, I liked the work and I liked the challenge, so that made up for it. Since I spent a lot of time in the fall somewhat out in the field, but then in the winter we were mostly in the office there analyzing data that had something to do with research. So, I enjoyed it then. Then in the spring I had adjusted there and then it wasn't that bad anymore, then. But the first few weeks, the first few months were just-and everything was so different. I mean, in Vienna you got the houses in two, three, four-story buildings right next to each other there. I remember when I got there, the chairman of the department happened to find a 00:52:00sleeping room near the campus because I had no car, but I was fine there. Two days later, one of the professors there who worked with [inaudible] said, well, we're going to central Nebraska, would you like to come along and help out? Oh, yeah why not? When they drove back home late maybe about 7:30 or 8:00 and they said where do you live? Well, somewhere there but I don't. I don't remember the street or anything [laughs]. I felt he picked me up, you know? I had to call the chairman of the department to find the room, you find out where you're supposed to live. Things are just so different there. I could understand, I had eight years of language, I couldn't understand but I didn't have the fluency in speaking because at that time that wasn't in school. You read and translate that 00:53:00but we didn't have any actual speaking experiences other than the normal school English what they teach you there. Today it's different, because there are many more tourists there. My niece and nephew are all fluent in English there. That one niece's daughter was here last summer. She was 16 there, yeah, she spoke English alright.

TEM: How long did it take you before you felt comfortable on the speaking side?

AH: Three months. I had my dictionary with me. When I found a word that I couldn't even spell, I wrote it down and I said is this right? They corrected me. At night, I studied it and in three months I didn't have to have the dictionary. I still have the dictionary. I don't have to use it anymore. Occasionally, I still find a word that I can't spell. I ask my wife, and she can't spell it either [laughs]. When we used to, we don't anymore, play Scrabble I could challenge her and nine times out of ten I win [laughs].

TEM: I guess, you completely submerged, too. I mean, I'm assuming there weren't that many German speakers.

AH: There were some, surprising enough there were more German speaking people in Nebraska back then that I thought, even out in the country. There were farmers that were first, second generation there.

TEM: Oh, that's true. Yeah.

AH: Yeah, there were. But they also spoke English. But then after three months then I felt fairly comfortable and I could handle it okay there. So, it was alright there.

TEM: What about culturally from a food standpoint or social standpoint, what are some of the things that you remember feeling it was a big difference from Austria?

AH: You're talking about in terms of food?

TEM: Yeah.

AH: Well, first of all there was a lot more meat being eaten there. I never, 00:55:00mashed potatoes and gravy I never liked it. Today I don't like it, and people make turkey there which is edible, alright. Chicken is better than turkey, between you and me, there. I'm happy if on Thanksgiving I chose to not have a turkey, I have a chicken or a goose or a duck or whatever there. But, gravy? No. Just absolutely, even today. Peanut butter, no. I never liked it and I bought one jar of peanut butter. I ate it because I paid for it but that was it. Other things, blue jeans. No. The pockets aren't deep enough. I can't put anything in there. So, that type of thing, but these are all minor things. Other than that, there are a lot of things that I liked there. Shirts that button all the way down the middle rather than having it right here from here to solid there [gestures from mid-chest down]. But, then they make these over there also now. 00:56:00People do wear blue jeans in Austria. A lot of them there. I have never gotten used to them. I don't like them. I bought a pair once and gave them away there. So, these are all minor things. As far as, yeah, ease of living. People just don't have any idea what it takes to be thrown out yourself into an environment that is totally foreign to you when you started university at age 18 there. I had no advisors there to tell you what to do. You've got to figure it all out by yourself there. Today they have it there, but they didn't at that time there. Handholding type of thing, no. It's sink or swim and that's it.

TEM: What about, it's in the relatively immediate aftermath of the war were people asking you about World War II? Did people ask you about Nazis?

AH: You mean in Nebraska?

TEM: Yeah.

AH: Yes, they did, but they really couldn't understand why the people didn't resist and didn't revolt. Yeah, no. The same way we don't have a revolt today when Trump is doing stupid things in the White House, you know? Nobody did at that time speak up and surprisingly in this country I think I'm surprised that other than McCain no one has spoken up there. That's a total surprise to me, because this is a free country. You're not losing your job by making... now you can do profane things like the [incomprehensible] did. That was stupid there. But, other than that, no. But at that time, no. You knew fairly quickly that you make one wrong move and you'll lose your job or you're ostracized to being on the side of the street. The law didn't protect you in terms of, you know, people 00:58:00that's something that there not, that's against the law. No, they made their own law then.

TEM: Was that the same for other people in Europe? Like, if you encountered people from France did they assume that there would have been more resistance or was that more of an American attitude?

AH: Well, I really can't speak about France as much there, except that the French had been the marginal line in order to keep the Germans from getting over fairly quickly, the French territory there. But that didn't happen that much because it flew over to them and went through Belgium and Holland and around there. Within a matter of three weeks, four weeks, French was gone. Then there was a certain French government on the [incomprehensible] that was started there. They tried to cooperate there and some of them might have been sympathizers but some of them also did to make a bad situation acceptable there. 00:59:00That's what they did there and the people are busy and didn't speak up because the iron fist came down there fairly quickly there. It wasn't until two or three, the later part of the war, that there's more and more activity of sabotage and so on there. Now, the managers if the found out where draconian in there, I mean, even in Austria if you were caught listening to foreign broadcast, capital punishment. Capital punishment, there were no questions asked. It worked that fast there. So, people knew that and then people were, either didn't do anything at all or my father did listen and he almost got caught once there. A person whom he knew, not from the school where he worked but somewhere else when he was a teacher also, and he had a 14-year-old son who 01:00:00had told his friend whose father was a Nazi there that their dad listened to BBC or whatever else. I don't know if this guy was executed but he was certainly in long-term incarceration there. It was not unusual that people for what would we would consider minor offenses got executed there. It went that fast there.

TEM: Yeah.

AH: So, if you were occupied there or even people in German and not all Germans were sympathizing with Hitler there, and as it went on and more and more sons got killed in the war there, they sympathizers went against it. It was just very draconian measures and even in 1941 when this guy Heinrich who was the head 01:01:00honcho of what was the part of German speaking area of Czechoslovakia, he was at that time, the whole Czechoslovakia was already occupied by Germany and they had executed that guy when he was driving through, assassinated him, and the Nazis gave that village, including the priest there, the ultimatum. They said, you either tell us where you're hiding these people or we're going to execute the whole village of somewhere around probably a couple thousand people there [incomprehensible]. They didn't come forward with these guys whether they knew where they were hiding or some people probably knew where they were hidden there and executed all of them. Completely annihilated their village, just stamped it 01:02:00out, rubble and everything.

TEM: I just can't imagine what it was like for you to have lived through that and then come to America. It seems like there must have...

AH: For one thing, yes, I do remember that, as I said, when they executed these people they had newspapers they would put out on public display where they had the names of the ones that are going to be executed the next day there. I remember that there. Something in terms of freedom, we did have a certain amount of freedom, you just didn't say anything that you weren't supposed to say there. We could move where we wanted to go. We could take the train to school there and come back again and during my piano lesson and go to church, nobody kept you from doing that, at least not directly there. So, I didn't really feel that was, other than the political thing, that it was that much and people would still 01:03:00talk to each other. There was, never heard of anybody being raped or murdered at all there, other than the ones in prison there and executed there. One would think that there was a reason for that. The reason was not always something I would, you would even hear about why. So, the bad situation was after the war when we had the Russian occupation there when it was a free for all there and there were lots of women being raped there and people were being murdered there. I never heard of anything like that during the Nazi occupation there. I mean, we knew German worked for that for right there, but fairly quickly it became obvious in 1945, the eighth of May, the Russians were here. Of course, Stalin said oh let the boys have some fun [laughs]. They were away from home for so long, let them have some fun. That was pretty bad and for the next two or three 01:04:00years it was a very tenuous situation there. It gradually got better with civil authorities being a little bit more, having more local authority there. Then the Russian occupation, and I can only speak of the Russian occupation, where my hometown was there, it got to be tolerable. They tried everything that they could in order to favor the communist party, but of course the people, 95% of them were against that type of thing. But they were favored there as long as the Russians were there but they never got any majority on anything because the elections then were free, at least to the point where you knew that they weren't going to look at the ballot before you were out of there, like the Nazis did there. It was okay. People managed to survive. There was not a lot of optimism 01:05:00there, but people said well we are just going to tolerate and see. It can only get better. It did. But it didn't get better until 1955 when they finally signed the treaty there and Austria paid the reparations there and they were free.

TEM: So, you were in Nebraska for...?

AH: For one year, from '53 to '54.

TEM: Then, from '55 to '64, you met your wife in Nebraska, is that right?

AH: Huh. No, I met my wife in New York City.

TEM: [Laughs].

AH: That's a long story there and I had, the reason I really made it to Nebraska was that I had a friend and a fraternity brother in Vienna there who the year before, two years before, let's see, in '51, had gotten an undergraduate 01:06:00scholarship and I don't know how he, and he was in chemistry there, and he went to Nebraska in '51. He had already completed two years of chemistry studies in Vienna there. In one year, '51 to '52 he got a bachelor's degree in Nebraska in chemistry there. Apparently he did real well. He impressed the chairman of the department who offered him he could come back. He could work on a master's degree. I got the citizenship for you and whatever. In 19-let's see, I've got to look at that a little bit, 1951... yeah, 1951 he came to Austria. He came back to Austria, and he had been a busy boy. Somehow he managed to get a summer camp 01:07:00before he went back to Austria. He had his bachelor's in chemistry. He went to the summer camp there. He stayed in Austria for one year in 1952. He went back through America and had a reunion, yeah. They had their reunion at summer camp somewhere in upstate New York there before they went back to Nebraska there. I don't know how long he was there. Maybe just a few days or so, and they had a dance that night the night before they left. He met that girl, Mary Bacchi, there at a dance. He was smitten with her and he left the next day and he thought, gee. I'm going to write to her. Maybe I'm going to start a friendship. She was in New York there and she was still in college at the time. He wrote a 01:08:00letter to her and he only knew her camp there. There was a girl's camp nearby where she was a counselor there. He wrote to two [inaudible] camp so and so there and somehow she got that letter there. She didn't know who it was. She wrote back and then he explained to her. They had correspondence for about a year and two months or so. Nothing especially, as I said, she didn't even know at first who that guy was that [inaudible] there. A year later, I came in 1953 and he had my Fulbright. I only paid for the transportation. I had to find an assistantship living there. He went through the agronomy department and said, I've got this friend of mine. He just got his doctorate in agricultural sciences, would there be any chance for him to get an assistantship or 01:09:00something. Oh, yeah. They thought it was just great. So, he arranged it for me to get the assistantship. I had the passage which was ship, paid for and then had the assistantship which guaranteed $100 a month income for half, 20 hours a week work there, and then full time in the summer there. Well, I thought it was full time, all year long. I enjoyed what I was doing there. So, they got a free [inaudible]. So, when I came in 1953, when I got that Fulbright then he wrote to Mary and said, well, I've got this friend of mine, Dr. Alfred Haunold, he's come to America. Would you help him to get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so that he isn't lost in New York City before he goes on to Nebraska there.

So, she went with her mother out to Hoboken where the boat was docked and well, 01:10:00the way it worked. Once you get off the boat, they, you're citizens, and there's students and then immigrants and then the ones that had a visa, we're the last ones there. Well, it took me, it took several hours to get off and the captain said, well, I'm going to have a captain's dinner for the ones that have to be on board all that time so why don't you just go there? Well, I had free dinner and it was great then. Well, Mary was out there looking for somebody and couldn't find them after about two hours they gave up and went home there. She mailed them back the letter of introduction that I sent to her. Well, I never gave much thought. She said, how come? Well, I said we were on boat there and the captain had the dinner there and it just didn't work out. Well, big deal. We never talked about that. I don't know if he, he probably kept some correspondence with her, but then when I went back in October he said, well, I want you to go there and thank her for one thing. I said, I don't even know this person and this and 01:11:00that. I'm not going to go-Yes, as a fraternity brother, you owe it to me. You've got to go there and find out if she's got any boyfriends. So, I did.

TEM: [Laughs].

AH: Well, and boyfriends. Well, they were all my brother's friends, there, testosterone laden air about four or five boys, so I went there and they invited me for a spaghetti dinner and this and that. Two days later I left and I thought well, fine. It didn't work out that way, because we were out maybe less than 24 hours out on the ocean there and we were hit by another boat and apparently this is something that happens there in the shipping lanes because the traffic going east and along the coast coming north and some Norwegian or something freighter 01:12:00hit our boat there. So, I had to go back again to New York. At the time, they thought, well, it took maybe about a half day to get back in there and [inaudible] there was no mortality but their boat was really damaged there. So, they offered to fly us back. Well, as it happened, two days before there were two airplanes that had crashed in short order and I was not going, I was on American land I was not going to get on the airplane there with the propeller planes there sat down. Well, it will be about four days. I said, well, might as well go back and get another Italian dinner there. They invited me for twice there. I liked Mary there. I thought she's a real nice girl there. Then I went back to Austria and I wrote to my friend in Nebraska and said, you know they have several, one of them I think he's a boyfriend there. He seems to have a convertible but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, anyhow, so that was in the 01:13:00fall of 1954. That Christmas he decided to, he was in his final stage of his Ph.D. there. Had another year to go. He said he was going to make a trip to New York because he had a chance to look for job interviews there and work it out and seeing Mary if he could work something out with her there and get to know her better there. He went to New York and it didn't really work out all that well, he said. He said, you know I'm going to cede the field. If you have any interest at all. So, I did come back to America. I saw her just briefly there. I only spent maybe one day I was invited by somebody in Brooklyn who I had met the 01:14:00year before to spend with his parents there for two days I think. Then I went on to Nebraska. I started a correspondence that was sporadic there. That went on for about five years, but then here we are [laughs]. So, that's really. I only saw her a few times before we got married. One time I went to, it must have been about 1957. I had a couple friends. One was an M.D. who came over in 1953 at that time, and he had gotten a medical degree already in Austria there and then he finished his internships over here. I don't know all the details there, but he was practicing in Columbus, Ohio.

Then I had another guy I knew from college had gotten some sort of internship at 01:15:00the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I visited him. I had lined that all, and then my friend Heinz [phonetic] was already in Buffalo, New York at that time. Then I go back and go to New York and see Mary. Maybe not only occasionally corresponded with her. Well, I got to New York and Mary was in Mexico with her friend because she had a chance to get a ticket fairly cheaply to go on a three-week trip to Mexico. She was working at that time as a technician at the Columbia University institute there. So, I never saw her there. She apologized afterwards and then we sort of, I talked to her a couple times on the phone, but there was like you can talk today because there was a landlady there where I lived there and there was only one phone in the house. It was sitting right there, so you really couldn't talk much personal thing there. Then in the spring 01:16:00of 1958, I think, I decided to go east and visit her. Spent a week in New York. We had a good time. Got along. Went out for dinner and so on. But nothing super romantic there, but that summer she and two girlfriends decided, well, you know, I'll go see what this guy really looked like with his friends in Nebraska. So, they flew out at that time and I picked them up. I had a car at that time. We spent three weeks together with the three girls and touring the West. I had already seen a lot of these things before because my friend in 1954 we had taken a trip like that. So, I pretty backpacked that, but the Grand Canyon, through Los Angeles. Went to some of the national parks and in San Francisco there and then back to Nebraska. Most of my friends were gone by then, so she didn't have a chance to see a lot of them there. She saw some. Then went back and then I 01:17:00think she must have had second thoughts and then the Christmas of '58 we got engaged and went back to New York again and her mother said, now, this is all it. It's got to be about [inaudible] [laughs]. In July of 1959 we got married. I saw her maybe on seven different occasions, but the seventh was the wedding. It worked out alright.

TEM: Yeah. What was it that you liked about her? What was it that kept you corresponding so much?

AH: She was not like the typical American girls, which totally go for-she grew up in a very European household. She was sincere. She was good looking. Not anymore, but [laughs]. Had good values. She was, by the time we got married, she 01:18:00was 26. I was almost 30.

TEM: Then you were in Nebraska for five years beyond that. Did you?

AH: But her mother didn't like that. She said, he's a nice boy but does he have to go that far away?

TEM: Then you end up on like- [laughs].

AH: Little did she know [laughs].

TEM: Little did she know [laughs].

AH: Then I got my Ph.D. I had a good job. It was grant support out there and it was an interesting site offshoot of corn breeding there, because they had discovered the recessive gene that unfortunately didn't carry through all the way, but it was a good potential that could modify the cornstarch to make edible 01:19:00film there. It's still a possibility but when the funding dried up for political reasons there, I was guaranteed a job there. There were a few Ph.D.s in the program there. But I was guaranteed in writing that I had a job, but I had two technicians I had to go out and find, write grant proposals there, and I thought, you know, sounds okay. I liked it there. I liked the potential there, but having continued to bring in my own funding there, what if one of the proposals doesn't go through and I don't get enough funding there? I had another offer of a position in administration in Washington, D.C. which would have given me like a 30% boost in pay there. It wasn't the money, but I thought if worse comes to worse, I'll be right there at the center there and I can get in contact 01:20:00with agricultural research establishment and I could do in Nebraska. That's in fact, that's the way it worked out anyhow there. But I didn't know it at the time. I went there and it was unfortunately was good work. It was sort of interesting, but it was not really challenging to the extent that I would have expected it to be, because I was always on some other administrative higher up that would direct my work there. At that time, they were doing, got into the computer, indexing and retrieval type of thing there. I felt it was getting further and further away from agricultural science where I would like to be more involved in. I went out to [inaudible] and there was a job was advertised in the professional Journal of Crop Science there and I interviewed for that. The 01:21:00assistant branch chief at that time they interviewed me, knew people in Nebraska there, as a matter of fact. As an ex-Nebraskan there. I didn't know that at that time there and so they went back to Nebraska and they wanted to get a little bit more background for me and recommendations. One of the interviewers was a wheat breeder that I worked with there and he gave me high recommendations. I didn't know it at the time, but I was offered a job. There were 20 applicants for that job. I was offered a job there and Stan Brooks who was the research leader here, they didn't fly you out for an interview there. It was done by telephone and by writing, no email. But then he said, I don't know if we can offer GS12. Well, I said, well, I've been in GS12 for four years now. I'm not going to take the job for less than that. Well, we'll see if we can make that-well, they did.

TEM: Did you think about, in those kind of points of transition, so going from Nebraska to the Smithsonian as an analyst and then coming out here, did you think about returning to Austria? Was there a-?

AH: No.

TEM: No. Not a draw. That was not, you were here?

AH: No. I didn't think of returning anymore. As a matter of fact, when I applied for the federal position, then maybe it was before that I had made the decision I was going to stay here. We already had several kids at that time. I said, no. I could have gone back there. I could have probably gotten a position that would have led me up the ladder and I would have gotten several additional honors and so on. Probably led a fairly satisfying life, but probably more administration than actual research there. But I never even thought about it. At that time, I 01:23:00could see my directions in terms of prestigious position probably not, unless I really want to go back in the deep administration back at the Washington, D.C., which I had no desire whatsoever. I had seen the way it worked there. There's nothing bad about it there, but it's just a different culture that's so different from an academic type of thing there. Like, there was no way that we could even think of doing any overtime work, even if it was interesting, which it wasn't really. Whereas an academic field, you're completely free. I can go to the lab and I did on weekends to the greenhouse and do some work or whatever there. That free work and do what John Henning there, and go on a Friday afternoon and work on some of the job there. I don't know if you know about that or not. No, I don't want to be quoted on that.

TEM: That's alright [laughs].

AH: But, no. It's just, and even now if I would have retired to a location where there's no academic involvement there, like, we can let you see and so on. I enjoy that there. I would miss it there. That's it there. The decision was made not right when we got married but within about two or three years that I was most likely not going to be returning there.

TEM: What was it like to come to Oregon? Did Oregon feel more like Vienna?

AH: I had driven through Oregon once. My brother was here for two years and Nebraska and we took a trip out west and north through Yellowstone Park and Seattle and so on. I had sort of knew what Oregon, at least western Oregon, 01:25:00looked like, but not Corvallis. I hadn't been in Corvallis yet. Driven through Eugene. Spent about a day down there. It was more like Austria there, but that was not the major thing. I felt I was getting into an academic environment again there and that would mean much more than anything else. Yeah, I thought it'd be a chance at getting back into skiing again, which I hadn't done for about 15 years, but that was not a major factor. The big question mark was would Mary come along? Would they? Yep, she was willing. I had a chance to the night before I knew that was going to get that position I had made other inquires about getting away from Washington, D.C., again because the job was not stressful at all. It was okay. It was just no challenge there. As a matter of fact, I took 01:26:00over the position that somebody else had left for whatever reason. They said, well, gee, we're sorry about this but there's a two-year backlog there. You're going to be saddled with all that. It took me six months and I had it all up. They said, how do you do that? I didn't break my back. Putting in my seven hours of work there. Most people there, probably five hours, six hours of work at the most there. They'd call for breaks and lunches and this and they came late there. The administrators were all military people. I didn't realize it at that time. They were okay. They were not bad people there, but they just had a certain...it was a certain job there. The head was a colonel. There was a major there, major there. They were all military people there and got these lush jobs that had additional that had additional income besides their retirement. It's still the same way.

TEM: Oh that's interesting.

AH: It's still the same way. A lot of these guys, they're retired here and they're getting back in there.

TEM: You weren't doing fieldwork?

AH: Hmm?

TEM: So, there was no fieldwork?

AH: There was no fieldwork, yeah.

TEM: Which is something that it's obvious you enjoyed?

AH: No, even direct contact with research scientists because we got these research proposals. We had to evaluate them. Most of the people that did the evaluating they didn't really have the background to do that there. I could see that fairly quickly.

TEM: You move...

AH: And Reagan shut that whole thing down.

TEM: Oh.

AH: In 1986.

TEM: So, you come to OSU in '65, is that right? '65/'66?

AH: '65, yeah.

TEM: So, '65 to work on developing new varieties?

AH: No. I came here, I came here as a direct result of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. Yeah.

TEM: Okay.

AH: Where they finally pointed out some of the dangers of excessive use of herbicides and pesticides, particularly pesticides at that time. That's when you found out that DDT, that was the soft shells of the birds there, and that type of thing. I was supposed to work on downy mildew, which was a major disease and still sort of is today, but not as much as it was at that time because they didn't really have the varieties that had a smattering of resistance. They were still growing mostly clusters in Oregon, except here in the Willamette Valley, they were fuggle and then bullion brewer's gold. That was it. In Grants Pass they grew a cluster of talisman and up along the Columbia basin near Hermiston, there was still some hop production in eastern Oregon in Ontario. They grow all clusters there. They're all susceptible to downy mildew, but in Grants Pass and 01:29:00in Hermiston and in Ontario, that was that much of a problem there. It was sort of a problem, but they could manage. They could get decent yields there. Not here in the Willamette Valley. That's where the major hop producing area was. Bullion Brewer's Gold was sort of resistant. Fuggle was resistant to a degree that the growers did okay, but it didn't have the yield. It was an early maturing hop. It was a good hop there. It's a good flavor hop there, but it didn't have the yield potential there.

TEM: So, you were here... I know that everything switched when Stan Brooks left, but your immediate, your first job was not to develop disease-resistance?

AH: No. The first job was to develop disease resistance.

TEM: Oh, okay.

AH: That was the initial thing. I worked on that but I had to get up to speed 01:30:00first of all, which varieties and I fairly quickly realized that there's no way you can work with cluster and develop that into something that would continue to be a cluster and a good producer, which is a fabulous producer in the areas that's suitable. Not in the Willamette Valley. Not the way they went about it. At that time they were still using sediment to toss it onto after the pruning in order to keep the shoots coming up from being infected. They were doing things that were totally different from what I thought a plant should be treated. Severe pruning. Not only on top but also on the sides. With luck you get some clean shoots and you can train up there. I didn't say that and I didn't even see 01:31:00that when Stan Brooks was here because he had me confined most to the lab work and greenhouse work. The second other thing he said we ought to do and that fairly became obvious even before he left that the disease resistant work with clusters was something that was desirable but not achievable. I fairly quickly saw that. The other thing that that was achievable was and something that was another thing that particularly Anheuser-Busch wanted, they needed a replacement for fuggle. Fuggle was a hop that they liked. Their head brew master, Frank Selinger, said, I like it. They said, Oregon fuggle, there's not a hop that comes to close to it in terms of aroma but we can't get enough. What they did at that time we had a market order. They gave the Oregon grower's a special fuggle allotment of one million pounds above and beyond the market and what they could 01:32:00grow until they could produce one million pounds additional fuggle. Nobody would take that up completely. They planted additional acreage above and beyond the marketing, which was great. Fuggle fitting in real well in the production scheme, because there's a limit on hops but by the time the other hops are ready for harvest the fuggle is already harvested, but it still didn't make as much money as they could with Bullion Brewer's Gold for a lot less effort. Nobody could fill the fuggle allotment there. Stan Brooks said, maybe we ought to develop a fuggle replacement. That's when I started working with fuggle, double the chromosomes, chromosome number. It took a year to do that and then made a cross and then sampled and before long I came up with Willamette and bang! All of a sudden Willamette was there and then at one time and apparently now it's 01:33:00coming back again. That was the first big success.

The one with Cascade I was in there, but really Cascade was-my input, Jack Horner's was that we took the 30 plants that were there and started the field testing there and developed it and did the large scale testing. Stan Brooks never did that, not because he didn't want to but there was no interest. Nobody wanted it. Even then, we went off station in 1968, I think, there. We got the first crop in '67. We got the first crop in '68 and then it took three years and three years of production sitting in a warehouse and nobody wanted to try a brew with it until Joe Coors said at that time the imported German hops and we had mistakenly advertised that Cascade being a direct replacement for German 01:34:00Hallertau Mittelfrüh because the only thing we looked at, we didn't have the instrumentation was the alpha-beta ratio. That's the only thing we had. The total alpha content and the beta content and ratio. We had nothing else to go by. We had no instrumentation to do any fractions of the alpha acid cohumulone. We couldn't do at the time. We couldn't do the oil fractionation other than the total oil there. That was a mistake there. Of course, Coors bought that hook, line, and sinker. They're thinking that's a complete replacement when [inaudible] said, I'm going to offer $1 a pound for any Oregon grower that wants to grow this new hop called Cascade. $1 a pound? That was a lot of money, because fuggle was maybe $.60/$.65/$.70? Bullion Brewers Gold was in the $.50s. 01:35:00They all planted like crazy and before it went up into Washington and Coors bought before they had knew it they had millions of pounds sitting in the warehouse and they found out they couldn't do 100% substitution. They changed the flavor. The flavor was different.

TEM: In Washington?

AH: No, no, no. Cascade flavor.

TEM: Oh, oh, oh, flavor.

AH: Cascade, so the beer was different. The beer drinkers said, well, you know one beer is good but then the second one you open and comes to your nose and there's a flavor that's so different. Coors found out that they couldn't do a 100% substitution.

TEM: Did you feel like in the late '60s and early '70s were the brewers, was there a certain level of urgency from them to release new hops? Had-

AH: None whatsoever.

TEM: Okay.

AH: They were totally happy with what they got for the price they had to pay them. What they had to do in order to keep people's clusters a good keeper there, it doesn't lose the alpha quickly there and Bullion Brewer's Gold, yeah, 01:36:00if you have common storage. Half a year later, you lose about 20% or 30% of the alpha there, which doesn't mean it's a total loss but its alpha isn't treated with a certain expectation of having that. You get 9% or 10% Bullion Brewer's Gold in common storage half a year later you're down to 7%. You do the analysis in order to charge how you do the dosing in the brew kettle. They had to put more in there. Then they realized it wasn't a total loss. It was real difficult for the brew master in order to handle these hops. It wasn't until the extracts came in, then it was stable. The extracts came in in about the early '70s. Then they went fairly quickly from there.

TEM: How did you, so obviously wheat and hops are different. The product from 01:37:00wheat is different from what you would put hops into. Did you have an interest in beer at that point?

AH: I always liked beer, yeah.

TEM: [Laughs].

AH: Always. Not excessively, but I always like a beer with a meal.

TEM: Yeah, so did you come with a certain level of knowledge of what you wanted beer to taste like?

AH: No. None whatsoever. Even today, there are so many different. My son has a different taste in beer. I like, there's one at Trader Joe's that's called the Halibut, which is a tad of sweetness. My son doesn't like it. It's too sweet. I buy it, I bought, as a matter of fact I got some yesterday. Also, an amber. It's Full Sail, the amber one. I like that one. It's got a touch of sweetness. That's 01:38:00one that my son likes. There's another one that I've had which is, I think I am forgetting what that one's called, yeah Woodland Pass. That was made by Columbia Brewing Company up in Portland. For some reason they quit making that there. That was a good beer. The others are Pyramid over on the coast. I like that one there. It's a little different. There's one that they call, it has something to do with hop pursuit and I forgot the-that's one of the microbrewers over at the coast. Maybe it's the one up at Cape Kiwanda there. That's too bitter for me. I don't like that one. But people's ideas are different today. 50 years ago they didn't have a choice. It was Budweiser and Budweiser was pretty good at the top. 01:39:00It had a good hop flavor and then it was Mill Brewing Company. Before that it was Schlitz and it was okay. Olympia out of Olympia, Washington, they had a pretty good beer called Olympia, but then as they started playing with extracts and the pellets, they wanted to make beer more palatable and less bitter for the female consumer. It got down to the point where they say oh we can sell beer with a lot less in there and the people still like it. they came in with this light beer and there's nothing wrong with that, but then light is okay, but too light is too much.

Now they're at the point in order to sell a lot of these major brands they've 01:40:00got to cut the price. By cutting the price in order to make money you have to do one of two things. Either you take a loss or you cut back on ingredients. What's the easiest way to do? Malt. Use high fructose and that's how the cheap beers are being made today. They have the alcohol content. There's nothing wrong with the alcohol, 5%, 6% alcohol. That's an easy thing to do, because the yeast doesn't know what it eats. They're making alcohol. They take the glucose and make alcohol out of it and CO2 that goes off. But you don't have the, but really mouth feel there. That's what's missing. If you just want the alcohol, buy the cheap beer. If you want more than that, and a little bit of flavor, buy microbrew.

TEM: Pay for it.

AH: Some of the microbrews that are finally being bought by major brands there, 01:41:00but then the major brand are changing and the beer in Europe is different. It's totally different. I just came back there and the beers and the major brands, the major beers there, they don't have that many microbrews there but the major beers are what all major brands were about 30 years ago.

TEM: Interesting.

AH: They're getting thinner.

TEM: It's interesting, because I think we think of European beers as having such a big influence on the microbreweries.

AH: Don't even think about it.

TEM: Yeah, so now for them to...

AH: I have a son-in-law in Colorado, and he buys nothing but German beer and I said, you know what, for the money you spend there it'd be much better buying microbrew. No. He likes the German beer, which is fine.

TEM: So, you spent a lot of your career in the fields and in the lab, but I'm curious about the kind of, did you feel like you wanted or needed to work all 01:42:00the time? What did you do besides hops, I guess is my question?

AH: Oh, well, I did all sorts of things. Of course, on my house you do things. I built and I took some classes at community college in carpentry there. I started building cabinets and furniture and things like that. I still do a little bit of that. We like to go camping with the family all the time starting with a tent and then went to a tent trailer and then went to a regular 27' trailer. We like to go to the coast. Almost every weekend we went somewhere. On the way out of town and on the way into town I stopped at the greenhouse to check my plants there. It was always in the back of my mind. We had lots of other interests. I like to play tennis and I did that until fairly recently. Even today, I mean, 01:43:00right now I'm working out at Dixon every day, which I enjoy.

TEM: You have five kids?

AH: Seven.

TEM: Seven kids!

AH: [Laughs] What, we went from five to seven and the eyes popped open.

TEM: I have one. The jump from one to seven would be amazing.

AH: A boy or a girl?

TEM: Girl.

AH: Girl, yeah.

TEM: Did any of them want to go into hops or brewing? Was there a draw for them?

AH: Not into hops. One of my middle daughters was always into plants and she got a degree at Oregon State and she wanted to get botany as a minor there. She liked anthropology and they would not let her take botany as a minor. She was a 01:44:00lab assistant over at the herbarium there with the students. She could not take it as a minor. She's still like gardening and doing this and that she could not do that. That's the only one I think. They all like to help me out in the field particularly during harvesting and baling and so on. They didn't have that much of an interest in agriculture, which fine. They develop their own feelings, their own interests. Today I don't have anybody other than a daughter who's got a, no I got two daughters, one up in Tigard she's got a huge garden with flowers and some vegetables and fruits. I can't have it because my whole 1/3 acres is all forest and so on and so on. It's too shady, but it's fine. I tried that but it just the forest alone isn't suitable, although they are trimming the trees 01:45:00along Witham Hill Road now and maybe I'll get a little bit more sunshine in there. They're doing a massive amount of trimming.

TEM: Are they? I haven't been up there.

AH: I mean, I don't see it from my deck or from my house and I look up there, but I go down Witham Hill Road, the trees close to the, but they're not under the powerline, but they've got to be 30' from the powerline. They're just trimming everything away. They've got trimmed trees like that big [gestures with hands]. There's not much I can do about it. They probably bush out again there. So, I said, well, the only good thing is maybe I'll get a little bit more sunshine into that part of it, my backyard.

TEM: Did all your kids stay in America?

AH: Pardon me?

TEM: Did anybody move back to Europe?

AH: No. They're all here, from Colorado to California to Tigard and Boise.

TEM: With seven kids, how many grandkids do you have?

AH: Twelve, I think. Yeah, 12. I got two, one boy, has never gotten married. He had a number of relationships and he's got a real nice lady now but they can't get married because she's divorced and she's getting alimony from her husband so she would lose that. So that's that. The other daughter, she's a got a stable relationship and they are planning to get married next year. These two are the ones that don't have any kids.

TEM: After retirement, you obviously have stayed involved professionally, but what was that transition from being so work focused for so long into retirement like? Did you feel like you still wanted to be involved with hops?

AH: Well, I was. The first year I retired they wanted me to run the program 01:47:00because they would take a take a year and then they would hire somebody. I did that, and I said, well, I'm not going to do for nothing. I don't really need the money so how about $500 a month? I did that. It was fine. Then I still kept in touch with the growers there, had almost weekly telephone calls. They sometimes asked me to come out there and look at it. Did that one for about ten years or so there, then less and less. People like Dave Wills kept and touch and Ted Cox down there and I talk to some people, home brewers and so on. Little by little, it wasn't until the last two or three years it's almost completely tapered off and now I don't get any, it wasn't [unintelligible] came back and bought again. Let's see, what's her name, I'm forgetting her name. Nancy still had me on her 01:48:00mailing list and I get the monthly news and invitation to the board meetings, which I obviously didn't really need to go. I want to go there. Now, after since Michelle came on board there I get absolutely nothing anymore. I don't know what the crop prospects are. I don't know what the last year was there. I haven't gotten any information. I don't know if that's by design. I might send an email. Maybe they dropped me off for some reason. Supposedly, the Indie hop guy, Roger Worthington, he sent me an email here about a couple months ago. He had some medical problems. He's down in California, you know, Worthington from Indie Hops. He said they're going to have a field day at the Goschie's Farm. He'd like 01:49:00to see me again there. I said, yeah, let me know whenever that happens. I haven't heard a word. I don't know, has it happened?

TEM: I don't know. Nobody's asked me [laughs].

AH: You don't know, too [shakes his head].

TEM: I'm really [unintelligible].

AH: So, I don't know. Typically they have a field day sometime around now. I haven't heard a word at all.

TEM: Yeah. Well, I guess I'm curious. I just lost my own train of thought. I got curious and then I lost my train of thought.

AH: About the Oregon Hop Commission, or?

TEM: Maybe, yeah. I don't know.

AH: Michelle Peluso's I think is the administrator. I think she's still in Hubbard there?

TEM: Yeah. Oh, I know what I was going to ask you. It actually wasn't about hops 01:50:00here at all. So, you went back to Austria and Germany? You went back to Europe a couple months ago?

AH: Oh, yeah, just Austria, yeah.

TEM: Are there hops growing there?

AH: They have hops growing there. As a matter of fact, we walked through the vineyards there with my daughter and granddaughter. There's hops growing wild there, but there's no hop production. There's hop production in south central Austria near the Slovanian border. They grow mostly fuggle. That's Samina Gold they call it, a Styrian hop there. It's fuggle. It was brought into Sylvania after World War I, and maybe before World War I even there. They called it 01:51:00Samina, that's that region there, golden. It's a fuggle. I've got a publication on that one and they've done the research. Everything is just, it is. It's a good hop. It does fairly well there and, as I said, it's had a fair resistance to downy mildew. They're doing okay but they don't produce what an American grower would consider really living wage type of thing for the effort they put into it, but that's the export type of thing. They continue that. They've got other varieties they're growing there. In that part of Austria, that's the one they grow. They have another one there near Linz, which is about three hours west of Vienna, and I don't know which hop they're growing there. There's one that's a northern brewer, which is a high alpha type hop. I think they grow that one there. Again, it's a hop. It's got a fairly decent aroma, but it doesn't 01:52:00have the yield potential there. They can make it probably for mostly local consumption, local businesses, they have contractor buying it there. The same as the fuggle in southern, south central Austria. But it's local type of thing. It's not a massive production. They're doing a good job as far as growing. I've never seen any of the hop fields there and probably never will.

TEM: Are they growing Cascade there?

AH: They are growing Cascade in Germany now. I don't know if they're growing in France there. they've tried them in England. Apparently in Germany they are making courses with Cascade in order to get that terannual component in there and German microbrewing industry is gearing up but they are not nearly where the 01:53:00American brewers are. The major brewers are having trouble. Their beer consumption is going down a little bit there. The young people are drinking other beverages. I don't know if the microbrewers can really make that, but they are facing some of the same problems there that all major brewers have faced there. Price is one thing. They are cutting back. They are not particularly in Bavaria. I don't know of other parts of Germany, but they've got the Reinheitsgebot, the purity law, where they've got to have hops, yeast, water, and malt there. In other parts of Germany they are not that strict, so they can probably make beer that is competitive price-wise there. The major brewers, what used to be German brewers, are all owned by foreign companies, mostly InBev now. 01:54:00They're making the beers cheaper and cheaper. Still drinkable there, but what all major brands were about 20 years ago. I notice the difference. They don't have the mouth feel. They're not what they used to call liquid bread. No, they're not like that anymore.

TEM: Do they grow Willamette there? I'm just curious if they-

AH: I don't think so. No. I don't know. Then you ask me a question I really can't answer that. Sometimes they may grow something and give it a different name.

TEM: Oh, yeah.

AH: So, I don't know. It may also be that although Willamette some of the fuggle there. I don't know if they grow it in England. In England the whole hop industry is going way down. They don't have any government support anymore at all. They have what they call Why Hops, which is a group of English growers that 01:55:00formed their own corporation. Peter Darby used to be the last breeder there. I understand he is thinking of retiring there. They may not even keep that up anymore. At one time they had problems with, they've never been very export oriented because they've still had a certain amount of seeds in their hops there. But then they will compete with Germany and mainly French and Slovanian hop growers there. So, I don't know. Peter Darby wanted to work on dwarf hops there. There's nothing wrong with dwarf hops. There's a lot of problems there. You can't grow a regular hop on a lower trellis there because they couldn't-I could give you three or four reasons why this isn't all that great there. You can still get a production but you don't get the quality. He developed some dwarf hops that do fairly well on a 10' trellis. He developed picking machines 01:56:00that can pick it out in the field. They don't get the production that you can get with-you're sacrificing about 20% production there.

TEM: They didn't want to rebuild the architecture there?

AH: Well, they didn't have to go through the regular thing again. Then you're competing with worldwide scale, and they just don't have the varieties that they can do that. The equipment the business behind it there, because let's face it they got China Hosboth which is a big one and Steiner, and then you got the hop union there. Then Yakima chief. You got Australian hop [unintelligible], which is owned by China Hosboth there. I don't know about New Zealand. They are trying to come in the market with organically grown hops because they don't have the 01:57:00mildew diseases. They do have major problems with mites, spider mites.

TEM: In New Zealand?

AH: In New Zealand, yeah. That's a major problem. They can go in certain areas grown organically there, but I don't know how big of an export market they have. The total area is small there.

TEM: When you think back on your many, many years in science-related to hops, what makes you feel really proud about your impact? What is that point of pride. You had so many important variations.

AH: Obviously, we failed to mention it with Cascade where I came into the tail end. I mean, Jack Horner and I really pushed that when I got it out rolling, and 01:58:00Willamette and Nugget. Nugget, the only thing I'm sorry about that I didn't grow would I have should have done with Nugget, I had it ready in about 19-I'd say when we came up with Nugget there, probably about '76, '77 I was ready to go with that one. I paid attention to Hop Growers of America would say, this is not the way we want. We want the Bullion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? We don't want anything more than high alpha because I had it and we knew that it had, I could easily go to 14% or 15% alpha. They had us that they said, well you know, what do the Hop Growers of America want from hop research? Well, high alpha hop was #9 out of 10. They wanted disease resistant and cluster and all of 01:59:00that. Yeah, I'm sorry that I didn't-I waited and then [unintelligible name] came out with Galena in 1979/1980. Well, then I thought, well that's for the birds. If they, and now, of course, Galena was meant only for the Idaho growers. Oh, they brought into Washington and planted like crazy there. As a matter of fact there's one guy, Pete Samanski [phonetic], he got root rhizomes and he plotted them on 3' spacing on a short trellis and he said I'm not going to compete with anything on high alpha. A year later he dug them all up and sold the rhizomes. I don't know how much he got per piece there but a good price. Five years later, he quit all hops and went to Alaska. That was Pete Samanski [phonetic]. There's nothing wrong with that. Bob Romanko released Galena and I said I'm not going to study it anymore. He went from 30 plants to three acres there in one season. It 02:00:00was Paul Sears [phonetic] who managed to get the contract because in 1980/'81 the price of alpha shot up to $11 a pound there and Miller Brewing Company came to us and said, well, we want your release that and we're going to pay alpha premiums. They paid alpha premiums that's more than the price that they got for ours. Paul Sears [phonetic] got a three-year contract, three or four-year contract sold so many cents per percent of alpha. A quarter percent of alpha above nine.

TEM: That's with Nugget?

AH: That's Nugget, yeah. And Miller Brewing Company signed a three-year contract and within two years they had all these Nuggets hey could buy there for less 02:01:00than what they paid on the contract and went out to Paul Sears [phonetic] and said, gee, sorry you know, we got two more years. Can we buy back the contract from you $.50 on the $1? They paid for something that he didn't even have to produce, like close to over $2 a pound. He didn't have to produce. He acted all out there. I remember he said he had just finished stringing on a Friday and on a Monday a Mexican farmer and said, sorry, we got to go back and pull the strings down. They couldn't figure out what was going on. But Paul got paid for not producing, so just pull it all down. But that's the way, that's the one thing that I'm sorry that I didn't grow some of that. It still helped the industry, because when I showed that Sam Likens I remember him about '73/'74 I brought the samples into the lab, and he said I thought the samples there, they 02:02:00can't be 14% alpha. I said, Sam, let's go out in the field and you pick the cones and you analyze them and he did. He said, I can't believe it. But that was it. We had it.

TEM: Then you had to grow it, though, was that-I feel like I've heard part of the story that then they wanted to grow it somewhere else to check?

AH: What happened there, Lloyd Rigby who was the vice president and head chemist of our [unintelligible] in Yakima, he told me about 1970/'71 said if somebody could come up with a hop, no it was earlier than that-maybe '68 or '69, he said, with a hop that would be 1% more alpha than the Bullion Brewer's Gold which had around 9% or 10%, 11%. We had one hop that had that, but we couldn't grow it. It was so late, it wouldn't mature until late October or early November. There was 02:03:00[unintelligible]. They had 11% failure rate in Australia but we couldn't, it was too late here. He said, it will be worth millions to the industry. I said, I can't believe it. I said, yeah, just think of it. Soon so many millions gallons of beer being produced here. We can save, get another 1% more it'd be really worth a lot. Then it was to think in terms of making extract. He was at that time working on designing an extraction plant for hexane, and hexane is a very volatile compound but they got one going and it worked pretty well until they came in with the CO2 extraction, first in normal-regular and then the super credible CO2. Before that they only had methylene chloride there and alcohol and 02:04:00methylene chloride and there was another compound and I was fairly quickly found to be very dangerous, health wise there. anyhow, that was that. He said, we could really, we need buy-in by the pound. We get more alpha free. That's just millions in the industry as far as the processing goes. He said that and then of course I made the cross in 19-when did I make that cross? '67, '68, '69 somewhere around that time. I'd have to look that up. Then we didn't really do the analysis until two years later because the baby crop you don't really, I must have gone into the field in 1969 and did the first analysis in 1970. In '71 Sam finally saw it and said that can't be there.

Then, of course, we wanted to try it in field and the Hop Growers of America 02:05:00shot it down. Said, no, don't do anything. It was until Lloyd Rigby said, and I had about 36 selections there. Jack and Horner and I made the decision, and Lloyd Rigby said, well bring them up. I wanted them to get them into [unintelligible]. Chuck Zimmerman was in processing at the time, and said, no, no. The Washington growers would not want them, no way. Don't bring them up there. He was a federal employee, so I didn't. Then Lloyd Rigby said, well, if the experiment station doesn't want them, I offer through [unintelligible] to give the land and bring them up here and begin testing them. Five plots there. So, we did. All hell broke loose. They were going to bring the police in there and force him to yank it out. Lloyd Rigby said, no, this is not it. This is a federal program there and we are cooperating and put a chain-link fence around it and had night guards that watch them so they wouldn't go in and sabotage it. 02:06:00That's the way it was. My name was mud with the Washington Growers. They didn't know that Bob Romanko worked on his own 45 Idaho growers there. He had, and I sent over some male pollen there. I don't know anymore which ones, and he collected seeds and he had like 80,000 seedlings that he screened there and whittled it down and whittled it down and finally got the bunch where he had two of them and he was ready to release them. One was Galena and the other one was [unintelligible]. [unintelligible] was just three weeks later than Galena, but Galena had 14% alpha and we don't know what the male percentage is. It's one of the males that I sent over there, but I don't know which one. Because there's open pollination there. He did okay. We did the analysis for him.

TEM: Was that the point, were there any brewers who were growing their own 02:07:00fields at that point?

AH: No, but there were brewers like Schlitz who wanted high alpha hop and there were extractors there who wanted to get hops, like not only Bob Romanko [unintelligible]. As a matter of fact they sponsored him to write that book on American hops, Hopsteiner did. Not much was said about it, and we didn't ask questions. The Association of Hop Growers didn't find out about it until he released Galena there. Of course, we knew because we did the testing. Gail Nickerson and Sam Likens did the testing. We knew that he had that but we didn't realize that he was going to release it there. He released only for the Idaho growers. They're not supposed to get it in Washington, but they did anyhow. There's nothing wrong with that, except it was illegal. They weren't supposed to do that. They had a law.

TEM: There's nothing wrong except it was illegal [laughs].

AH: There are lots of things that are... well, I'll tell you what it's 12:00.

TEM: I know, it's time for us to eat lunch.

AH: Did it do you any good?

TEM: Yes! That was wonderful. Do you have anything that you wanted to say that you didn't say?

AH: Huh?

TEM: Before I turn it off do you have closing words?

AH: I have no [unintelligible] hops.

TEM: [Laughs].

AH: The only other thing that I'm sorry that I didn't pursue at that time, and you know what happened with the zero alpha hop. That's the one with all beta.

TEM: Oh yeah.

AH: I made that cross the same year I made the cross that resulted in Nugget, because I thought that selection, where you go the maximum one and zero the other way. If I can go zero maybe I can go to 100% alpha. It worked to go to the nearly zero alpha there with one cross. It did not, I could go up to as high as 02:09:0075% or 80% alpha and with beta but never much above that. Maybe you know, but at one time they thought they could use the zero beta hop, the zero alpha hop, in order to enhance the flavor. We grew a five-acre plot for Miller Brewing Company at that time. It's past riverside ranch. It was a [unintelligible] ranch at riverside near the river north of St. Paul toward the Willamette. We had it in there and it did okay. They did some trial brewing with the hop that had no supposedly no alpha, maybe 0.5% or less of alpha.

They found out about nine BUs, Bitter Units, came from the beta there. The beta 02:10:00is not a total loss, but it's the solubility of the beta that's a problem. They finally yanked that out. My technicians always used that hop to make the hop tea there, which they drank. They put their handful of hops in the water and set it out in the sun after two days they liked it. I tasted it. It was not that great, but they liked it. At one time, they brewed somehow somebody did some home brewing there and we tasted it at a hop convention at the Hop Research Council meeting and they called it technician hop. I simply lost touch of it. I never paid much attention to it, until two things happened. I was at a meeting and I was sort of retired and I talked to some of the people that worked at hop 02:11:00inspection plant, someone at Milwaukee, and they asked me about the, I forgot again how that went-yeah, I had translated a research paper that I got from a guy that worked in the [unintelligible]industry in Europe. They had a chemist year by the name of Pollock [phonetic]. He did some research because they had problems of controlling the [unintelligible] growth and extraction, typically [unintelligible] up on these big vats there and leech it out and then make the sugar. They liked the [unintelligible] were growing would reduce the efficiency of the extraction because it coats the heaters there and then they'd have, when you're heating up a little bit it leeches it out. It's a reducer. They had problems with that. For a number of years they used formaldehyde there. all of a 02:12:00sudden that was outlawed. Formaldehyde percentage in there. The chemist found out that he could put 50 parts male in the extraction vats to control the [unintelligible] there. That was great. I translated that paper and showed it to these people who were that were working in the sugar industry. They said, oh this is interesting, but I said we can still use the formaldehyde. Well, the company years later that formaldehyde was outlawed in the U.S. also. They said, we'll just raise the temperature. The temperature, energy prices went up. They gave me a call, they said you remember about four or five years ago you told me about that research. Can you send it to us? I did. Didn't take long, where can we get the beta? Oh, I said, I tell you what. I gave the name of Bob Smith who was a chief chemist at S.S. Steiner because I talked to him before and he said, 02:13:00yeah. We got trouble getting rid of this beta but because it's an extract we can't dump it in the extraction plants in Yakima. You can't dump it into the municipal waste disposal thing because it's overloaded there. They won't let us do that. We got three years of drums sitting out there that they don't know what to do with it. They sold the whole damn thing.

TEM: So, they would extract out the alpha?

AH: And the beta's leftover?

TEM: The beta's left over-Oh! Okay.

AH: The extract there. Mostly beta there. So, they said, oh we sold it there for $.05 a pound or something like that. Now we got rid of it. We didn't have to pay anything. They won't let us do it. That was an ongoing thing. That's apparently still working today. They're doing that and they extract and sell that and the sugar people are pretty happy and it works out. Well, I didn't realize at that 02:14:00time when I should have probably that maybe there was an additional potential there, and let me think about that how that worked there. Somewhere along the line, Bob, Lloyd Rigby had already retired from [unintelligible name], and he was working with one of the Washington hop growers on trying to grow the zero alpha hop there. He called me one time and he said, do you still have that one? I said, well, yeah. I released it probably as a germ plasm line. It didn't seem to have any potential or anything else there. Can we still get it? I said, yeah, it's probably at the process station. You can get it. Left it at that. How did that thing with the zero alpha hop, I have to think about it now...

TEM: Is this with the patent, where the patent wasn't submitted?

AH: It's all tied up in patents now. It hasn't gone anywhere. Anyhow, they went there and finally did, that's who it is, and finally did some feeding trials there with Tyson foods. That paper was published in 2006. It was at that time that I realized, oh my God. I should have thought with the sugar industry, the [unintelligible], it inhibits the growth of that. But I never even thought about poultry feeding or animal rations. The Tyson people did that testing there and they found out again with anywhere between 30-50 parts per million, actually they said, about half a pound per ton of poultry rations, tons you know, which 02:16:00have all sorts of things in that. I don't know what they do. Obviously in order to feed them very rich foods so that they can get this produce out. Nine weeks-would you believe it? Nine weeks and they're ready for market. They did that. It's all tied up in patents now. I wish I had at that time thought about it, about this. But, and today they've, [unintelligible name] has a subsidiary, they call that beta something there and they are still pursuing that. Whether or not they still have it so their commercial feeders can use it. I don't know. Not much is being said about it. The Oregon Hop Growers and Washington Hop Growers in Oregon, the hop industry, they don't say much about it. It's still on the backburner somewhere. So, I don't know. But that was the other thing I wish I had pursued. But, so many other things.

TEM: Was there any talk about early on and by early I mean '70s/'80s about using cannabis, low THC cannabis-you couldn't do research on it, I guess, at that point?

AH: We were approached at one time because of some guy down in Eugene that wrote a book called The Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana. It was published by the University of Oregon Press or something, no, some private outfit there. It was sold, and in that chapter where he says how to grow secret grass. Secret grass you graft hops onto hemp roots and then you can harvest the hop leaves that have cannabis oil and cannabidiol in there and then you smoke the hop leaves and you get the high. Well, it doesn't work that way. You can do the grafting alright, 02:18:00but cannabis is an annual and hop is a perennial. You can do one of two things, once you have the graft [unintelligible], and that can be done, you can get the grafting done. You can grow it and have the graft unit above ground and when the weather turns and hops die, everything dies, and you've got the cannabis down in the ground which is an annual and it won't work. But if you got the graft unit below ground so that it doesn't die in the winter and then your roots and stuff and you got a true hop and not a cannabis. That hasn't worked there anymore.

TEM: Was anybody talking about trying to brew with cannabis flowers?

AH: No. Not at all. It's a totally different compound. You don't get anything. I mean, you get something that probably gets into the liquid, but nothing that is comparable to hop in terms of alpha acid bitterness or hop aromas, no. Totally 02:19:00different. But, I guess that's it.

TEM: That's it! We'll end with cannabis.

AH: I finished all my-