History of the Muetz's and the Soda Bottle as told by Otto Muetz
History of the Muetz's and the Soda Bottle as told by Otto Muetz
By Mike Muetz
History of the Muetz's and the Soda Bottle as told by Otto Muetz. We taped Otto telling these two stories. Otto Muetz was my great uncle. He told me the story himself when he was in his early 90's.
His dad Fritz would get very angry at all his young sons because they would not take care of his wagons, each with 4 horses, at the end of the day. They tried stopping at taverns on the way home with a wagon full of empty bottles. In the winter the horse manure would freeze and build up into piles that made moving the wagons more than difficult. So they tried sending the wagons home with no drivers while they went to the tavern. Fritz would find four wagons each with 4 horses out at his front door in the snow. Fritz had to put everything away.
Otto, one late afternoon, didn't want to be out in the dark in the winter weather so he took the wagon, full of bottles, and four horses on a short cut across the frozen lake. The ice broke through. The wagon and horses were lost in the lake. He doesn't remember how he saved himself because Fritz almost killed him for the whole mess.
Fritz, William, Otto, Fred, Frank and more Muetz's built a barn in Northern Iowa and using wind power had a 36 volt electric lighting system. To publicize this new enterprise they had a barn dance. They hired the 13 piece band of Rudy Valle. The band traveled by train from Chicago. The Muetz boys met them at the station in their Rio automobile. They fit all the instruments and 13 band members into the car. The dance celebrated the first electrically lighted dance in the State.
The photograph of the Lakeside Hotel has Fritz in the center, his wife on his right and his son Frank on his left. In the photo the lady on the right, Fritz's wife, is Dorothea. Fritz came to the US in 1874 from Germany and shortly after that Dorothea came over. Attached is a photo of Lakeside Hotel. I believe there is a crate of bottles centered behind the hitching rail. Fritz sold beer along with the soda until prohibition.
If you come up with more than one bottle that would be great. I have a cousin in Madison who is related to the "W" and my daughter got to stay with cousins in Anaheim Calif where we met Otto and found out the story of the bottles.
Mike
