“Adding pictures to words is like having flowers on the rosebush,” says Elmer Krueger. He added more than 400 of them to his autobiography, Endless Echoes. Would you like to see his first car–a used 1923 Model T? Or his latest–an ’82 Buick Riviera? There’s a picture of every car he’s ever owned, and also a verse:
By all these cars that I have bought!!
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“They had only four screens to begin with,” says Krueger. He held his own. But when Star Cinema added two more screens, Krueger’s business dropped “drastically.” Now he’s invited Star Cinema to buy him out.
Endless Echoes is crammed with old report cards, photos of pets and teachers, pictures of Princeton’s churches. You can read his literary efforts for the school paper, his script for the glee club play. But the section he calls “High School Years” is followed by the darker “Farm Years.” The Depression hit, the tenants left, and his family moved to the farm. His dream of becoming a writer or actor or maker of movies died. “I got more invitational letters from colleges at the time I was a senior in high school than I– But I just had to forgo. I would not let my parents down.” There’s a questioning look in his eyes–Can you understand? “My parents spent the major portion of their life trying to stabilize me and keep me alive. So that couldn’t be forgotten.”
In 1967 Krueger and his mother sold the farm and moved to Reedsburg. By 1975 he’d given up all the theaters but the Badger and was finding it harder with each passing year to show “good family pictures.” To stay in business, he reluctantly allowed R-rated movies onto his screen. Which ones? “I have no idea,” he says. “I don’t watch them.”
Timeless Treasures, Endless Echoes, and inspirational tapes may be obtained by writing Elmer Krueger, 548 Vine St., Reedsburg, Wisconsin 53959. –Richard Knight
