The Strangest Jobs of Toledoans - The Story

Max Hahn

This series of articles from the Toledo Blade of 1927 and 1928 that profiles the 'out-of-the-ordinary work of Toledo wage earners,' including that of Frank Barey whose job it was to pick the bullets out of the beans before roasting at one of Toledo's coffee plants. The author of this series was Max Hahn.

[Note: Many of these newspaper clippings are fragmentary. They have been enhanced, straightened, and cropped to maximize their legibility. They generally print well on normal sized paper.]

1. The Paris art student is the inventive genius for DeVilbiss designs [image/GIF]
2. The man who handled enough poison in a day to kill millions of people [no text/image available]
3. The man in the railroad tower [image/GIF]
4. Meat cutters' school [image/GIF]
5. 'Kickers' who sew grain bags [image/GIF]
6. A worker who smokes and blows glass at the same time [image/GIF]
7. A girl who works on Christmas in July [image/GIF].
8. The man who runs the machine that makes ice cream bars for kids [image/GIF]
9. The man who runs the thirty ton press used to make high school pins [image/GIF]
10. A worker whose only protection from 2000 degree heat is a steel mask [image/GIF]
11. Maker of false teeth [image/GIF]
12. The birdseed buyer [image/GIF]
13. The people who make firefighters' hats [image/GIF]
14. A chef who specializes in fish cutting [image/GIF]
15. The man who counts coins for a local bank [image/GIF]
16. Workers at a Toledo candy factory [image/GIF].
17. Frank Barey, who job it was to pick bullets out of coffee [image/GIF]
18. A photographer of dentists' drills [image/GIF]
19. A woman who scribbles and tests pens at the pen factory [image/GIF]
20. The chemist who purifies water [image/GIF]
21. Toledo's sausage stuffers [image/GIF]
22. An optical lens grinder. [image/GIF]
23. Gordon Dressel, leader of Toledo's Chamber Orchestra [image/GIF]
24. Workers in the deep freeze at the ice cream factory [image/GIF]
25. The keeper of the dog pound [image/GIF]
26. The workers who make paper dishes [image/GIF]
27. A professional check signer [image/GIF]
28. A diamond setter [image/GIF].
29. The disappearing trade of the wood engraver [image/GIF]
30. Inventor and manufacturer of a new chair [image/GIF]
31. An asphalt tester [image/GIF]
32. Window shade makers [image/GIF]
33. An iceboat builder [image/GIF]
34. A worker at Tiedtke's department store [image/GIF]