Are Your Family Stories Being Forgotten? | Pete Zimmer - Barn Secrets

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[Music]

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Welcome to author conversations with me, Chris Dabbs, presented by S.L.M. Global,

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where we sit down with authors to discuss not only the books they've written,

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but the experiences, the ideas and stories behind them. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to

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welcome Pete Zimmer, author of Barn Secrets. Now, let me tell you a bit about Pete

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Pete is a man whose life has taken more than a few interesting turns. Over the years,

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he's been a musician, wow, an inventor, a broadcast engineer, and also a businessman,

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a traveler, and a captain. And somewhere along the way, he became a collector of stories,

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and that may be the best way to try and understand Barn Secrets, I think. Now,

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but Pete describes himself rather wonderfully, I love it, as being nosy. You know, he wants to know

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how something came to be, who owned it, what happened there, and most importantly, what story

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might have been forgotten. So, together with his wife Pat, that curiosity has led him down old

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roads into small towns, onto farms, and towards Barnes, and forgotten objects that most of us might

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simply just drive past. But Pete, he stops. He asks questions, and sometimes something as ordinary

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as an abandoned car, an old building, or a conversation with a stranger opens the door to a remarkable

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piece of history. So, Barn Secrets is filled with those kinds of discoveries. Some are funny,

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you know, some are moving, some are mysterious, and some are considerably darker than Pete expected

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when he first started asking questions. So today, we're going to find out what happens when curiosity,

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history, travel, and storytelling come together. Pete, after that introduction,

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welcome to all the conversations with Chris Dabbs, presented by SLM Global.

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Thank you very much, Chris, I really appreciate the chance. Pete, you admit very early in Barn

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Secrets that, well, basically, that you're nosy, and that curiosity really seems to be the engine

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behind the whole book. You want you to know who owned something, right? Harry got there, and what

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happened before everyone else forgot about it. Have you always been this curious, and what is it that

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makes you stop when everyone else in pieces of like drives past it? Well, I think first question,

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I was always curious. My father was a scientist, basically, a teacher, so he instilled quite a bit of

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curiosity in me, how things work, why things are done the way they are. He tried to explain everything

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as best he could to me. And with that, I just grew up with a tremendous quest to find out what

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makes things happen, why they were. And just something that is what I see a barn

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are a box. I'm curious, I'd like to know what's in it, but more importantly, what's the backstory

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behind it? And that's where Barnes Secrets was started. So I had a couple of Eureka moments in my

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life, and one of them was, well, of course, you know that I've been collecting these stories for years,

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obviously. And the majority of them are all disrelated. And at that point, I'm looking at this

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on my computer now and thinking, how can I put all this together? This just doesn't make any sense.

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It's going to be jumping all over from one place, one subject to the other. And my wife and I were

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driving down one of the country roads in Northern Missouri, and we came across this ridge, and I saw

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this beautiful pastoral setting, barn pond. And as I saw the barn, I said, jeep, I wonder what's in there?

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And so many times, he starts to tell me, well, there's probably cows, chickens,

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that type of stuff. And I said, no, no, I mean, you know, anything that's once that last

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faded plank of wood falls off the ad bar and they decide to tear it down completely, something

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is going to be lost forever. And maybe there's something in there that we can find out about and

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keep it from being lost. And so that's where I had the Eureka moment. It's like, wow, what a tremendous

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way to tie all these stories that I have that are all unrelated. We can time together, but I just

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make believe that we drove up to these farms and buildings and restaurants and whatever. And,

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you know, I can draw them all together and make them work. Most of the stories that I have in there

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have something to do with my life. I've built the characters around people that I knew,

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the scenery around things that I've seen in my life. I've traveled around the world many times.

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I'm always amazed by it. It's always fun watching people and talking to people and meeting new people.

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And with that, I think that there's just naturally going to levitate towards wanting to

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know more and what happens and one wouldn't that stops. So that's that's my story there.

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Anything that you wrote to all the stories beforehand and now that you've put them together and

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packaged them in such a way? Or did you actually sort of like bump into people and experience the

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stories yourself? Well, a couple of stories, for example, are the about my family. One of them was

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my cousin Mike gave someone a goat as a wedding present. And that was a tremendous story for the family

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for years. But I was able to incorporate that into the book. Stories about the filling station where the

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kids filling gas tanks and people are coming in and out. And I was able to talk the owner of the

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filling station. Well, that was me in my younger life when I was actually working there. And the story

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about the old car that had been chopped up, which was after work, I worked at a service station

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up the street after work. We sit down and have a few beers. And it was a night grew on. We talk about

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other things. But hot rods were always in our minds. So George had just gotten in a 1932 Ford Victoria,

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Crown Victoria. And during the night we started talking about, well, what could that be? What could

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we turn that into? And so as the night grew on, I had a piece of chalk and I started marking on this

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car where it should be cut and chopped apart. Fast forward to the next morning, I walked into work.

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And the car is laying in pieces all over the floor. What happened, George? And he standing there

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with a cutting torch. And George had been so inspired by what we were going to do with this

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hot rod. He came in early and cut the car apart on my chalk lines, which were just totally imaginary.

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I had no idea what I was doing. I was what, 20 years old, 21 years old, marking things up.

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And so I looked at, I was at George, I'm sorry, but you know, that was in the fun of the night. I really

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don't think you should have cut that car up like that. And he just gave me one of those looks out

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the side of his eyes, which I've been getting a lot of my life from that point on. I've noticed. But

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yeah, people look at me and say, oh, that's just, I've been had again. So there's some other stories

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about a tractor, for example. And that was just the summary. I've always said in my life, I want

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three things before I die. A jet engine, a steam engine, and a fire engine. None of them are related

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to anything, but they're all engines. So I wrote a story about an old steam farm tractor. It's about

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the Avery farm engine. And with that story, I was able to use a lot of the oral history from my

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family that I was told about my grandfather, great-great grandfather, who came across from Germany in the 1860s.

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And when in Chicago, as a master carpenter, and during one of the union uprisings, and he was down there,

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someone hit him in the back of the head with a hammer and blinded him. And so at that point,

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his life changed, obviously. He then moved down to southern Illinois, a little town called Radum,

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and raised a family there on the farm, started a farm. How does a blind man know how to run

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farm? I don't know, but he did. And he had a set of sons. And one by one, they all decided that

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you know, anything to do with the farm life, and they moved to St. Louis, which is the next largest city.

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So my father grew up in an area called Baden. And so I get all of my family history from my father,

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and most of his brothers and sister. And I've tried to pass that down to my family.

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And you know, if you have kids, you look at them and they say, "Did that get through?

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Did that, they're going to carry them on with them?" So that's what we do. We repeat ourselves over

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and over. It's not just being old. It's just, you know, being one to make sure the family history

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keeps going. So I was able to incorporate a lot of our family history into this book. And every time

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I'm writing, and I'm thinking, I hope that they read this and say, "Ah, yeah, I remember.

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Dad was talking about that." Or Uncle Pete told me about this one time.

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Or one of my friends, man, said, "Yeah, I've heard that story before." And I could validate it. So

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oral history, family history, cultural history. These are all things that we carry with us,

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and we'd like to hope that it's carried on in some way, a legacy that you can leave to someone,

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to carry on. And three generations, will they even remember my name. I'm pretty sure after two

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generations, everybody's forgotten about it, and you start with a clean slate. You figure that

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all the time, people were in prison, and you know, that type of stuff. And it's just

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start over again. And I'd hate to think that this life that I was living along with Pat and I,

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we've been married for 50 years coming up in January. And we've experienced quite a few things together.

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And I hope that all of this can bring some joy, some happiness, at least somebody after they

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read this book, they can walk away and say, "You know, I can know that. I'm glad I read that book."

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So if I can evoke an emotion and bring a tear to somebody, "That's great. If my writing can do that,

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I think then I've accomplished my life." Does Pat help you with the writing? Are you the writer? I mean,

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how does that work? She helped me quite a bit. She was the editor of the book, first of all. So I can

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say that she's probably read it two, three hundred times during it, but just in pieces. She's sitting

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right across from me right now. She didn't really want to be on the interview today. She said that

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all the questions are for you. It's all about you. But no, I could not have done it without her.

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She gave me some stories. She wrote some paragraphs for me. She cleaned things up.

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She is the number one speller in this household here because I'm not. This is your first book, right?

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That's correct. I've written articles from magazines, the newspapers, books, chapters.

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Mostly scientific type papers. I wrote this book as a test for myself for validation.

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I looked at this and said, "If I can write something that somebody is willing to pay to read,

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then that's my validation." But I looked at writing as a career at some point and said, "No, I just,

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I couldn't live on half-stellar." As far as a writer's life goes, I'm just starting out with it now.

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I actually have another book in the works right now. Another portion of this is not going to be

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barred in secrets, I don't believe. Interestingly enough, the "Alton Godfrey Rotorgeri Club," which I have

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been a member of for years, has asked me to write a book about their history from 1921 until the present.

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Most of it's already been written, of course. All I have to do is get a bunch of pictures together.

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I think I can edit that. That would be fairly easy. But that's as far as what's in store for me next.

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I think a couple more books, at least, and see where it goes from there. We're talking about possibly

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this might work into a TV series of the week, the way the book is laid out with the 21 different

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chapters that there is. As a friend of mine said, "You wrote a book that is great for a parent with

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toddlers because I can pick it up and set it down and take care of business with the kid and then

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pick it up again and say, "Oh, yeah, I forgot about it. Here's where we are." As people said,

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it's an easy read. That's the great thing, isn't it? But as you say, as long as people read it and

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they've paid for it, they're new validated. You must have done something right. Did you retire then?

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You decided that, "Okay, now I'm going to hit the ground running and I may be later years of life,

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but that's it. I'm going to do what I want to do." Did it just come by accidentally?

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No, actually, there's where the second book is coming from. Through an event that had nothing to do

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with me, my company was run into the ground by an employee who embezzled. We still don't know

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how much she embezzled, but she embezzled and the iris came in and shut us down because of that.

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She took to prison for five years, and I'm glad for it, but I pulled the covers over my head for a

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couple years and said, "I'll just come out when I want to." I may write about that story in my life,

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may not, but as far as my retirement goes, I was forced into at that point. I have always had

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and relied on music. I'm a musician. I've been playing since I was seven years old,

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taking music lessons, and then I got in my first band when I was 12 years old,

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and I've been playing ever since I played keyboards and drums, and I have been on

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quite a few recordings and videos over the past 10 years, I guess, since those have really caught

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up and started a little Dixie Land Jazz band years ago with a friend of mine, and that's still going,

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Brad's keeping it going, and just my love of music has kept me going through thicker thin, I guess I

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could say, as well as my wife Pat. Number one, she took care of me during those bleak years, and

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she was able to gradually get the covers pulled off of my head and say, "Okay, the life's still going

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on out there. Get out there and do something." Do you think that living several very different lives,

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within one lifetime, that sort of helped you will train you to notice things and possibilities

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that you could write about that other people will probably overlook? Yes, I think because many people

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have told me that I should write these stories down, I should publish a book, and I looked at my life

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as saying, "No, look at this, it's in pieces, but you're right. I've heard this before and was quoted,

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given the quote by Kurt Vonnegut, said that everybody has at least one good book inside of them.

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Well, Kurt Vonnegut didn't really write that, that was a guy named Kurt Hitchens, and as Kurt Vonnegut

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then comes out to say, "I didn't write that, but the end of that was left off, which is,

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everybody has at least one good book inside of them, and that's where it should stay."

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So, I wanted to write this and show that anybody can write a book about anything.

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The validation of what you have is truly within your own mind, if you don't believe it, you don't

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believe in yourself, then it's not going to happen, but you've got to stick back and look what you have,

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and it'd be a surprising number of people that are going to say, "Yeah, I guess I could write

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something too," and there's going to be a whole bunch more people, right? You know, you look at

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2019 when COVID hit, that's when I decided to put all of these stories together into a book, and

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2020 is when I found out from a couple of publishers that, yes, during COVID, everybody wrote a book,

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and I mean everybody. The agents, the publishers, every one of them in 2020 told me,

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"Come back in about five years, because that's how long it's going to take for me to read through this

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last stack of mail that I've just received." So, there's a lot to be written still with my life.

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There's still a lot of things to be examined in my life, so I'm going to keep turning those over and

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looking to see what's underneath that rock or what's behind that door, and we're going to find out,

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my wife and I, now that we're both retired, she's retired attorney. She did a lot of research for my

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book as well, helped me do research, and we just have gone through live hand and hand. We went to bed last

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night about 10 o'clock, but we had dinner about six, and happy hour, January starts around five o'clock,

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or so, and we generally stay up and talk until she says, "It has time for bed," and then I catch up with

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the day's mail and come in and say, "Love you. See you tomorrow, baby." And that's hope that kids wake

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up safe the next day, and maybe they'll think of some of the things that I put in the book, and

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they'll be of some of the value to them. Your voice is very present throughout that book, isn't it? I

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think it feels much more like sitting across the table, kind of like this, listening to you tell

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these stories. I can imagine you doing that. I mean, did you really want to do it that way,

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rather than like a conventional history book? I mean, absolutely. I was in a speech class in college.

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My very first one was for communications. I wanted to be a broadcast engineer, so I had to take some

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radio theater. So I gave a talk and I had a podium, so I came up to the podium, and I just sort of

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leaned up on it and gave the whole talk from there. And you're right, who is reminiscent of a

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fireside shed? I wanted to bring the audience closer to me. I didn't recognize that at first that

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I was trying to do that, but my instructor did. He gave me an A on it, and he said, "I like your

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presentation." He said, "It's very casual, and you were able to draw everyone in the class into it."

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And I don't remember what the story was about, but everybody liked it, and we made through with it.

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There you are. So you're a born communicator there, in that case. So you've transferred that into the book,

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which is great. But let's talk about the book, great briefings, some of the stories that were in there.

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One of the most discoveries that I find is amazing, of course, that sounds so romantic.

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You impact, I guess, a travelling along Route 66. You're driving along, and you see this old Lincoln

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beneath the pole barn. Apparently, it's all shut up or something. What's that story about?

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That story was one that I just had fun with. I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood.

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I always thought that I was very well off. I loved where I came from. But after I got out of college,

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or during college, and after I got out of college, and when people asked me where I'm from,

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and I would tell them, "Oh my God, and you came out alive?"

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And then I looked back on it, and the other's probably five or six of my friends that had died

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some sort of a violent death in their younger years. And I'm talking about gunshots,

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robberies, that type of stuff. They've been in prison. I have them.

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And with that, I look at that Lincoln, and yeah, that was an old, you know, it was shut up

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in my mind by some just rival gangs, not that I had gangs in my neighborhood at that point.

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But at the end of the street, there's a motorcycle gang. There's a lot of violence there, and there's a

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the idea really is that you found something and you've built a story based on your background,

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right? Or your wider background, your larger neighborhood, your city, that sort of thing, right?

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This is another benefit, then, I guess, of being able to write in later life,

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because you've got some strong ideas coming all the way through, right? Absolutely.

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There is one story that to be specific, chapter number one, when I talk to book clubs and

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different places, want to know how I develop my characters, I know this was my mother's great aunt,

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and the house that she lived in was this old three story, Victorian style home. And as a three or four

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year old boy, this place, it looked like a funeral parlor to me. I mean, everything on it pretty much

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scream, do not touch. And, you know, I wanted to touch everything, of course. But, you know, the story

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there, Inaz, that was my mother's great aunt, and what little known of her family, I tried to squeeze

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in there behind that story. And then there was another story about the, as I said, my great-grandfather

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was blinded. It's all, you know, it's all some of its tragic, but that's the way life is when you go

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to examine it. Yeah, there's a lot more fun than there has been to our duty. One of the biggest

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messages of a Bar of Secrets is that you feel, and I think that you're trying to show you this,

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that extraordinary story is really that they can exist almost anywhere. But, but what would you say

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to someone who wants to write a book and who believes, you know, that their own life, family or hometown,

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or simply doesn't have a story that's worth telling at all? What would you say to them?

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Close your eyes and think of some, just think of anything in your life. There's obviously,

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there's been years taking up of your existence. You didn't just sit there and breathe. You can talk

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about a career, you can write about your love, lost love. You can write about your hobbies. You can

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write about your neighbors. It's always fun. I have a neighbor, a bad neighbor's theorem. Everybody

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talks about their neighbors, and my bad neighbor's theorem is if you look on either side of you,

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and you've got nothing but good neighbors, you're the bad neighbor. So, maybe there'll be some stories

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there. Well Pete, listen, Bar of Secrets is ultimately a book about curiosity, isn't it? About noticing

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things and, you know, the stories, all about other people, that they overlook things, and asking one

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more question for a story disappears, I guess. And I suspect there's still plenty more sort of

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bonds and backroads and unexpected discoveries that you can weave into your stories that you've

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got left, especially with Pat's help. So, Pete Zimmer, author of Barn Secrets, thank you very much for

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joining me on author conversations with Chris Dabbs with SLM Global I hope you

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enjoyed listening. Now Pete, actually, tell us your website or any socials that you've got

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so that people can now sort of look up with you afterwards. Barn Secrets are one word,

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barnsecrets.net. And that's where you can find out everything about Barn Secrets, and you can find

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my Facebook page there, Instagram. I don't stand behind a certain them, so Peter Zimmer,

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I'm the only one that's right in that book. Excellent. Well, Peter is being lovely to meet you.

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I hope you meet again in the future with you the next one. And yeah, great. And Pat, it's

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shame we can't meet you, but I know you're there in spirit and everywhere else. So take care then,

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thanks very much. And again, thank you for watching Author Conversations with Chris Dabbs,

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presented by S.LM Global. And I'll see you in the next one.

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