Klein, Creator of Great Lakes Pizza

by Eric Chaet

Klein started out with a small pizza place in Chippewa, which is part of Fort Harrison now.

Jack told me about Klein, at the corner of the counter of the Farmer's Friend, by the cash register.

I had a newspaper spread out in front of me. I'd sat down between Jack & Big Frank, & started reading, drinking coffee & eating oatmeal—while they discussed the price of a pick-up truck that Big Frank was considering, or at least entertaining the idea of, buying—from the used car lot that Jack is affiliated with. Jack was offering to drive the pick-up over to Big Frank's, for him to examine it. But Big Frank didn't think he wanted to look today.

Big Frank drove a truck for the Army in Italy during the Second World War, at age 16—he lied about his age—then worked at one of the paper mills for 45 years.

"When I got there, I had to take orders from everyone older than me. By the time I left, I was taking orders from everyone younger than me, damn it!"

Upon retiring, Frank put on 100 pounds.

Big Frank already owns 3 vehicles. He is an expert at obtaining parts, & making repairs that would drive most people to a mechanic. And he is always studying the prices of parts, cars, & guns. Once in a great while, he'll find & pounce on a bargain. If he was a cat, he'd be carrying that bargain around in his mouth, & toying with it for hours, before finishing it. Then he wouldn't need to do anything for a long time. He'd lie around like royalty, living on his Social Security, fulfilled.

Jack buys cars for the used car lot, at auctions in New Berlin & Milwaukee. It's a job he picked up after being a guard at the reformatory for 24 years—he got hurt in a riot at the end. He also owns & manages several rental properties—he started buying them as soon as he'd saved enough money from the reformatory job.

Big Frank had been toying with the idea of Jack's pick-up truck a while. Jack was thru eating one of his enormous breakfasts, & Big Frank, who had been nursing an empty cup for some time, lifted himself off his stool with a grunt, & left.

Klein started out with a small pizza place in Chippewa, Jack was telling me.

(How did Klein come up?—I'm trying to remember.)

Jack's daughter worked at the pizza parlor, for Klein. Eventually, Jack's son worked for Klein, too, driving a truck all over the state—because Klein built the little pizza place into Great Lakes Pizza—a state-wide supplier of pizzas to supermarkets.

I'd heard of Great Lakes Pizza. You see it in the stores. It's one of 3 or 4 brands in the freezer—dozens of each brand, with brightly-worded paper labels inside cellophane wrappers.

Klein used to come into the Farmer's Friend, Jack said, & sit alone at the end of the counter. He didn't seem to know anyone, except Jack.

When Jack would come in, Klein would get a big grin on his face, & say, "Come on over." And they'd have a good talk, the way Jack & I do, now, & the way Jack does with others, & I do with others, & Big Frank does with others.

The Farmer's Friend isn't fancy, & the food is hardly gourmet. (Neither is Great Lakes Pizza.) But the place is clean, & there's a lot of information exchanged—some of it useful, some of it interesting, most of it (probably) true. When everyone isn't beaten down & overcast by bad weather, low prices for milk or low wages for laboring in the mills, or high prices for fuel or feed or fertilizer, & when they're coffeed up a little, there's a lot of friendly talk, mostly about cars or tractors or parts or prices or the Fort Harrison Wolves' chances of winning the Superbowl.

If we broke down, we'd be talking in group therapy, trying to become competent to cope, on the outside, again. If, on the other hand, we broke out (of the pack), & joined the celebrities in Los Angeles or Mumbai or Nashville, or the powerful in Tokyo, Beijing, New York, Washington, or London—we'd be talking in meetings in glamorous or purposefully decorated (say, dark-stained wood-paneled) rooms, trying to expand fortunes or territory or both, while simultaneously struggling not to be brought down, returned to the pack, like a rejected 6 of clubs.

As it is, we come in, drink some coffee with or without caffeine, read or don't read the paper, talk or don't talk, eat a couple of eggs & some toast, maybe; & go on back to doing what we are doing to try to stay ahead of taxes, debts, the prices of our housing, communication, transportation, heat, habits, & the demands—spoken or unspoken—of those we live with. You don't want to lose your balance—so much can throw you off. A good deal is at stake. And, once you're done, you don't have more dishes to wash.

A cup of half-decaf, half-regular coffee, plus a bowl of oatmeal, a napkin, & a spoon, plus tax—is two dollars & thirty-seven cents. That's what I have, except maybe a half-dozen times a year, when I get a couple of eggs & toast, instead of the oatmeal. Betsy, the waitress—who has worked at the Farmer's Friend for 3 decades, now, after a decade working as a bartender, late into the nights, & who is one of 2 people in the place who purchased my most recent book, & so, has a fairly accurate notion of who I am—lifts her eyebrows & smiles at me when I give myself such a treat.

Jack & I frequently talk about the governments—federal, state, & county—& we started out this conversation talking about the upcoming primary election. There are 3 Republican candidates for sheriff of the county (there are no Democratic candidates), & 3 Democractic candidates for governor. You can only choose among the Republican candidates or among the Democratic candidates, not both, in the primary.

Neither Jack nor I knew much about the sheriff candidates, except Jack said, "This guy," & he pointed to the picture of the head of one of the 3 candidates in the newspaper I had open next to my cup, on the counter, "just does whatever anyone says. He'll do what someone else will tell him to do"—& one of the candidates seems to have an idea how to spend a little less money taking care of the prisoners in the county jail.

(There are more & more prisoners, & they take up a bigger & bigger chunk of the revenues of the county—& the state & nation—all the time.)

As for the gubernatorial race, I'd seen a 3-way discussion on TV, the night before—no moderator—among the 3 Democratic candidates, running to see who gets to oppose the incumbent Republican, whose plan for solving the deficit was to stop sending the two-thirds of the state's revenues that it now sends to the counties—let them deal with the deficit. But there was such outrage from county officials, & the people these county officials made sure were aware that it was their programs that would have to be eliminated, that he withdrew his suggestion, & now has no plan. But he's handsome. And the President flew in, to Milwaukee, to raise funds—& raise fears of foreign enemies—so the governor can show himself a lot, in TV commercials, heaving a sack of feed into the back of a truck, & talking about how you have to be willing to clean out the barn.

The state is facing its biggest budget deficit ever, by far—&, tho all 3 Democratic candidates seemed above-average intelligent, & less dishonest than most elected officials, & each had a good idea or 2 or 3, none was willing to say exactly how they would pay for the state to continue doing what it does.

One had, he said, figured out how to save 700 or 800 million dollars out of the $1.3 billion necessary to fill the gap for the first year, which will start in four & a half months—tho the others pointed out in several cases—of tens of millions of dollars each—that he wasn't cutting costs, only shifting them from one department to another. Neither of the other 2 candidates made an attempt to specify how they'd accomplish the miracle of balancing the budget, tho both acted confident they could do it.

None of these 3 Democrats, nor the current Republican governor who is running for re-election, plans to raise taxes—at least, so they say. We already have the 3rd highest tax rates among the 50 states, which situation discourages tax-paying businesses from coming here, they all agree. Nor does anyone intend to cut funding for education, prisons, or health care—which accounts for most of what the state spends money on.

"So where does that leave us?" I asked Jack. "Commit suicide? I guess, whoever is elected, they'll declare an emergency within 6 months or so, & raise taxes."

"Sky-high," Jack agreed. It was then—I'm guessing, because conversations morph faster than I can keep score; faster, for instance, than the orderly progression of events in a history book—that he launched into telling me about Klein.

While Klein built up the pizza business, over decades, his relatives had all worked for him, & taken merciless advantage of him. Recently, Klein sold the business to his bookkeeper. Now, Klein kept some money in the business, & the bookkeeper proceeded to drain the business of that money, then run down the business, & lose it.

Jack said he talked to Klein one morning, & Klein had just driven past the Great Lakes Pizza office, still in Chippewa, & it was no longer his, & it was no longer operating. The bank had foreclosed that morning. Klein said it was the hardest day of his life.

Klein still had plenty of money, but what he had built up from scratch no longer existed.

Now, Klein had bought 2 lots along the river road, where the road has some sharp turns, over by Louis Fourteen Rapids—where the sanitorium used to be. But it seems that no one had ever cleaned up the place after the sanitorium shut down, & there was a lot of expensive work that would have to be done, to bring the place up to current environmental regulations, before he could build a house.

So he went back to the realtor, & got his money back, & bought 2 lots on the other side of the river, & built his big house. He was really happy with it, & invited Jack to come & see it, & visit. That's the kind of guy he was, Jack said. He wanted to share his good fortune.

(I was trying to imagine what Klein looked like, but I had only a vague notion, a kind of humanoid cloud emanating from Jack—who is short & kind of broad, rugged, handsome face, bald, with grey eyes that easily meet your own.)

Anyway, Jack saw Klein the morning the business was foreclosed on, & Klein was really unhappy.

Just the next day, Jack saw Klein again, at the Farmer's Friend. Now, Klein had a little dog that he always had with him. Whenever Klein was in the Farmer's Friend, the dog would be in Klein's car, with its window cracked open, & the dog would yap like mad, to be noticed. But this morning, the dog was nowhere to be seen. Jack thought that was odd. Also, Klein was sitting in a booth by the window, alone, instead of at the end of the counter, way opposite the windows.

Jack started to sit down next to Klein, but Klein said he hoped Jack would understand, but he just wanted to be alone today.

And the next day, Jack read in the paper that Klein had died—an overdose of medication.

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2003