LOOKING BACK AT WAYNEDALE HISTORY
Before the Great Depression, Waynedale was all for growth…new adventures, new businesses and exciting new gadgets to affect our way of life.
Bowser Pump had a good sales force and top-notch inventors, but they needed help to speed up production. The pump needed a sieve to screen out any foreign materials.
My Dad suggested a solution. Bowser would furnish us rolls of cotton cloth, with design specifications for the sieve. They would load these rolls on Fort Wayne trolley cars, transfer them to the Interurban cars, and then deliver them to our home in Waynedale. Evelyn (Lee) Carsten then sewed these filters to size and sent them back to Bowser for installation in their gasoline pumps. In a growing Waynedale everyone had a chance to do something to help get by.
Everyone has at one time or another heard someone say “See ya later, the Lord willing, and the stream don’t rise.” This was a common saying at 3631 Indianapolis Road (McArthur Drive) the home of Verl and Bertha Pribble. Soon their kids Wayne and Evelyn had heard it too. Pribble’s home was on a high bluff overlooking the Little River (Fairfield Ditch). Because they were Christians, their home was open to many that couldn’t cope with the flooded Indianapolis Road.
Overnight emergency housing was much appreciated when the stream went out of its banks, reminding us why the Indians had named this stream, Little River.
The Pribble Family was typical of many who, in 1926, came to Waynedale as one of the great exodus of families in the 1920’s. They moved to the suburbs of an industrial town, making Waynedale a bedroom community for General Electric Company.
Mr. Prible’s first job was loading flat cars with the enormous transformers made in GE’s Building #26. The hours were from 6am to 6pm, five or six days a week, at twenty-five cents per hour. On January 10th, 1934 Pribble celebrated an increase pay of one half cent per hour.
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