Gleda did say the reason she remembered was the street name, "Roach Road" , it's kind of unusual and it stuck in her head.

It was named after a local historical figure in my area Billy Roach who started the first pickle factory around here.

That's how I get my company name "Roachwerks Custom Machining".

It has nothing to do with bugs!

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"I'm a sandman. I've never killed anyone. I terminate runners when their time is up." Logan from "Logan's Run"

http://sandmandecals.com/

That explains your avatar

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Bill Cooke
NAR #31312
TRA #19705
SAM #0001
Huntsville, AL

My rocket blog
My rocket fleet

Very fitting!

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Dave, NAR # 21853 SR.

Unique address or not, considering the thousands of orders, that's amazing. Especially when she connected you with it out of the blue. It's easy to see that she was a big part of the hobby's success.

(theremin sound="background") oooooowwwwweeeee ooooooooooooooooo(/theremin)

Whoaaaaaaa! Radical dude!

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Roy
nar12605

Seems to me you can still have the old mail order Estes experience -- Just order from Semroc and specify priority mail delivery. OK, that sounds like a commercial plug, but there's plenty going on in the hobby today that offers the best of what made the hobby great in the 60's.

Been there, done that.

PS, the real reason Gleda remembered things like Roach Road was that the customers were REAL people to her and Vern, not just names and numbers. I remember a time a fellow employee made a disparaging comment about our customers. Vern proceeded to pin his ears back like you wouldn't believe.

The greatest thing that I remember about those Estes catalogs from the 1960's (well, besides the kits and motors ) was that you could get a pretty good intro to model rocketry by reading them - they were just packed with information. Even before the 1969 catalog, which had the whole handbook bound in it, there were plenty of great, informative articles included (as in, for example, the 1967 and '68 catalogs). The thing that attracted me to Estes Industries in those days was that Vern and company did not want to just sell you model rocket supplies, they wanted very much to teach you about rocketry. I remember that as even being a theme in their early advertisements. I was a kid who was really hungry for that kind of information, and when I saw one of those ads for the first time, well, they pretty much had me from there. My first catalog, in '67, and all of my mail orders during that period all delivered on that promise.


I had a real sense of that in all of my contacts with the company. There is a well-known picture of Vern showing a couple of boys (in a classroom, perhaps) something on a model rocket. It was printed in many of their catalogs at the time, and was in at least one of their magazine ads, as I recall. I cannot even begin to tell you what kind of impact that one photo had on me. It was things like that picture, and those catalogs, and the Model Rocket News, and the way that the company related to its customers, that really caused this man to become both a teacher and a hero to a certain young teenaged boy in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the late '60's. And you know, he still is. Stories like the one you just mentioned keep cementing that relationship, even after all these years.

Mark

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SAM # 0011

Back then 1958 - 1959, you had those who were dedicated to the hobby, who designed rockets and wrote about rockets and through their efforts, inqpired youth's to have fun while learning with something that was worthwhile.

Today, the only thign that "they" are concerned about is PROFIT, not the customer.

Well said, Mark! These are the same sentiments I had back in those days; my first exposure
was when I saw the 1967 Estes catalog on a friends bed (had the 1/70 Saturn 1-B on the
cover). Took it home to look over, with my mouth drooling, and my parents and I decided to
order the Estes Deluxe Starter Set. Never looked back since.....

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Dave, NAR # 21853 SR.

You too, huh? I did the same thing! I always had the catalogs with me - first I had the 1967 catalog, then I added the '68 catalog when I got it, and then the '69 catalog. In 1969 I was carrying around 3 years worth of Estes catalogs with me to all of my classes! At one time I did have that '67 catalog memorized from cover to cover. The thing that I loved most about that catalog was all the color liftoff photos. Seeing those shots of the rockets standing on their little clouds of smoke and their needle-thin exhaust flames just did it for me like nothing else. To think that I could build rockets and launch them like that just sent my imagination soaring. And you know something? It's 41 years later, and I still feel the same way!

For all these years I have been such a sucker for model rocket liftoff photos (and I'm sure that I will always remain one) - you have no idea!

Mark

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SAM # 0011