A Short History of Tony’s Turkey Talker®
This is a shorter version of our history. Longer version, printed and bound, is included in the Collector’s Package.
No history would make sense without a little background on the Founders.
My Grandpap was a character. He was born just down over the hill from St. John’s Church near Grange, PA. Last time I looked, that house was still there. As a kid, he loved to shoot. He had a Winchester 22 automatic. He shot that thing so much that he shot the barrel right out of it. The riflings in the barrel just disappeared.
Grandpap was a dead shot, never missed anything. Running or still, it was dead meat. One day when he was a kid, he was at the farmhouse; shooting this, shooting that. His Dad ( Alphaeus, my great-grandpap ) came in from the fields and saw him shooting everything just like he knew what he was doing. So My Great-grandad walked over to the plum tree, picked off a ripe plum, threw it up in the air and said, “You’re so smart, HIT THAT!”.
My Grandpap hit it. Merriment ensued. All on my Grandpap’s side. I imagine my Great-grandpap continued on into the house for supper, wishing he’d never thrown that plum.
Well, on to my Dad. He was somewhat of a character like my Grandpap. The Perry Township School was just a few hundred feet up the hill from our farmhouse. Later on we came into possession of it and stored our farm equipment inside it. That school had a copy of that unfinished portrait of George Washington, the Father of Our Country, in it, just like all the schools did back then. Wish I had that picture now, just for a keepsake.
When my Dad was a kid he got a job as the janitor at the school. He would sweep the floor, go in early during the winter to light the pot-bellied stove and warm up the school before everyone came to school.
Well, anyway, Dad was a hard worker, just like all the family. He saved up money from that janitor job at the schoolhouse and bought a Daisy Model 25 pump BB gun. He always used to say that he had shot a bushel of BBs through that gun.
My Dad was in the Navy in WWII. Because he was in the Navy, he always had to have a good shine on his shoes. If he left the farm, his shoes had to be shiny. We went into Punxsy on Friday nights to get groceries, just like all the farmers did. His shoes were shined. He had pride. I think we buried him in his “Navy shoes”.
When I was a kid, he always used to give me a quarter to shine his shoes. As an adult, if I have leather shoes that will hold a shine, I like to have them shined. It helps out. In 2006, when I was looking for a place to live, within 5 seconds of meeting me, my prospective landlord looked me over from one end to the other. The landlord looked me in the eye and said, “Were you in the military?’. I said, “No, but my Dad was in the Navy in WWII and he used to give me a quarter to shine his shoes”.
Guess whether the landlord rented to me.
So I suppose you’re wondering when I start writing about the history of Tony’s Turkey Talker®.
You’ve been reading it. Forged in the fire of the Great Depression and WWII, my Dad & Grandpap couldn’t help but come up with Tony’s Turkey Talker®.
Dad & Grandpap could do anything and make anything. If they needed a tool they would build it. They worked wood until the day they died.
They would buy something, or someone would give them something. Then they would look at it and say, “I can make some of those” or “I can make that with fewer pieces and it’ll be stronger and cheaper”.
Kinda like “Name That Tune” with wood, pipe fittings and flat iron.
That’s how they got in the turkey call business: “I can make a better one”.
I can’t say when the development phase of Tony’s Turkey Talker® started or ended. We began doing mass production in the summer of 1964 in the ‘old’ workshop above the garage at the Poultry Farm on RD 5. By that time ZIP codes had come out, ours was 15767. How do I know production started during the summer of ’64?
I helped in the manufacture. The sides and tongue of the calls were brought to final dimension in a thickness sander that, of course, had been built by my Dad & Grandpap. I either fed the strips of wood into the sander or caught them as they came out; I don’t remember which. It was dusty work! There was very little ventilation in that shop.
We sold eggs retail at the farm, so no doubt calls were sold to the customers who came by for eggs.
On Oct 23, 1964 a call was shipped to Texas, another to Baltimore.
At least some manufacturing was done after the move to Austin, PA.
Tony’s Turkey Talker® was advertised in the Outdoor Life, FurFish&Game, Field & Stream, Southern Outdoors, Moose and Railroad Journal magazines beginning 1964 thru the late 1960s. The first ad was placed in the Nov 1964 issue of Outdoor Life. Just one of the “tiny classified ads” in the back. Also, when first “launching”, we took out a ¼ page display ad in The Punxsutawney Spirit. The ad was paid for on Oct 15, 1964. Ha, I wish I had a copy of that ad now!
But truth be known, a lot of the credit for getting Tony’s Turkey Talker® into the hands of its many dedicated fans, should go to my Mum. She was the “silent partner” in this enterprise. I don’t know how many times I went with her in late summer as she would get in the family car with Tony’s Turkey Talker®s all boxed up in “dozen” and “half-dozen” cartons, hoping to sell out.
My Grandpap, Dad & Mum pretty much had only each other for support. They all poured heart & soul into Tony’s Turkey Talker®. It never reached escape velocity. But now we are coming back.
After Grandpap died, Dad continued to receive orders via mail. Orders were written longhand and delivered, both ways, by U.S. Mail.
After Dad died, Mum continued to sell them through the mail, receiving a steady stream of orders into the late 1990s.
“Tony III” 02/21/2018
Tony’s Turkey Talker® – A Legendary Turkey Call
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