May 2, 2003
I have been so far behind on my notes, I don't know if I will ever catch up. I worked all last night on them and rose before 4:00 a.m. to start back at it. I have made some progress. Because I have been so far behind, I have scheduled only one interview for today, with Irv Eisenmenger, the Case-IH dealer in West Point.
I went down to the radio station to tape a program with Bob Flittie. Bob does a program on arts in the region. It seems like I took only two breaths, but the board showed that Bob had taped twenty-three minutes worth of material. Perhaps I am a little obsessive about all this - that I can speak for twenty-three minutes without needing to catch my breath. Bob said he would fashion two programs out of the interview, one focusing on my West Point experience, the other on other aspects of the project.
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I arrived at my interview with Irv Eisenmenger a few minutes early. If I am not always early, it's nearly so. I am embarrassed to be late. I think I get this from my mother. My wife tells this story on me: Once, going to bowling league, I realized in the parking lot of the bowling alley that I had forgotten my ball. I turned around, drove home, drove back to the bowling alley, and I was still on time to roll my first ball right on schedule. Now - is that obsession or is it simply an instance of good, middle western promptness?
Irv Eisenmenger looks like the manager of a Case-IH dealership should look, grey-haired enough to be trusted, not so severe that he'd scare you.
He invited me to his office; "Manager" it says as you go in. I explained a little more fully than I had on the phone who I was and what I was doing and what I was after. You could tell that Irv has seen a lot, but maybe not a poet on a fishing expedition such as mine. Perhaps it helped that we both spent some time in the seminary, perhaps it didn't.
Irv came to West Point in 1973 to run the dealership he still manages. The business then was in downtown West Point, in a building that had been a dance hall, not an ideal location. In 1979 the business moved south of town to a piece of land purchased for building structures meant specifically for an equipment dealership. The business has grown quite a bit since Irv's early years here. There were seven or eight employees then, there are twenty-four today.
Irv grew up on a farm at Humphrey, Nebraska, fifty miles west of West Point. He was in the seminary for four years after high school; he left the seminary and finished his degree at Creighton University in Omaha, in education. Then he taught school for three years, he was assistant principal for two years. And then he got into the equipment business.
How does one make the leap from teaching school and being assistant principal to being an equipment dealer? "Actually, there are more similarities than you might think," Irv said. "There is a teaching role in being a manager and owner, you are always teaching your employees, trying to stay up with the times and the changes. With either teaching or being an equipment dealer, you have to put your heart into it."
The agricultural economy in the 1980s was tough, and it is in a downturn again. How do you grow an ag equipment business in those circumstances?
"You have to really pay attention" Irv said. "You have to be able to adapt and start doing some things maybe you thought weren't necessary. You have to add services for your customer. Instead of selling new tractors, maybe you're re-building the farmer's existing tractors."
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