Sept. Side Roads.qxd 8/20/2003 12:08 PM Page 2 Side Roads Austrian Tailor Keeps Dying Craft Alive By Pam Blair A lfred Planatscher has a passion for music, but he was born to sew. The son of a tailor, Alfred—who now makes his home outside Anza, California—is keeping old country fashion alive, handcrafting authentic German leather pants known as lederhosen. Ironically, playing the bass and tuba in German bands led him to the craft. “When I had my band, I was dressed in lederhosen,” explains the native of Innsbruck, Austria. He was bothered by his band mates’ attire. “We need German clothes,” he told them. “This is a German band. I’ll make you all pants. I’ll make you look nice.” It was a natural progression for a man who has spent most of his life sewing—even though that occupation wasn’t his idea. Alfred’s father was a tailor back in Innsbruck. His older brothers found other jobs, so that left Alfred to carry on the family trade. “My old man said, ‘You are going to be a tailor,’ ” Alfred says. “So, I started sewing. You get used to it. It’s a trade.” In the old country, trades are passed on through apprenticeships. “It’s the only way to get a job,” Alfred explains. Fueled by his father’s expectations, Alfred went to Munich, Germany, and learned how to be a tailor. Celebrity Look-Alike Odds Are Many People Mistake Him for ‘The Gambler’ L onnie Stringer can’t help it if he looks like a star. People tell him all the time he resembles country western singer Kenny Rogers, who also is known as “The Gambler.” “At Disneyland, while waiting in line, a crowd was starting to form before the attendant convinced everyone Lonnie was NOT Kenny Rogers,” says Lonnie’s wife, Carla. Photo by their niece, Lynette Huss. ■ Do you know someone who could pass for a famous person? If so, send a picture to: Celebrity Look-Alikes, P.O. Box 558, Forest Grove, Oregon 97116. 10 SEPTEMBER 2003 Alfred Planatscher shows off a pair of handcrafted lederhosen he made in his shop near Anza, California. Following his training, Alfred immigrated to Canada, intent on work- ing as a tailor and patternmaker. That was in 1957, at the age of 21. Sept. Side Roads.qxd 8/20/2003 “But I couldn’t make a living at that,” he says, noting immigrants were not particularly welcomed. He says it didn’t help that he and his friend, Paul—who came over on the same ship—couldn’t speak the language. Ultimately, Alfred managed to land a job designing ski jackets for a large company in Montreal. When Alfred saw an advertisement for master tailors, he jumped at the opportunity to move on. “I interviewed in New York, and was sent to San Diego,” he says. “I was paid $250 a week in 1967. Every six months I had to be given a raise. I worked there five years.” When the company opened a factory in Tijuana, Alfred began making unisex leather jackets. After two years, he moved on, becoming general manager at a large company in the Los Angeles area. He lasted there just one year. “I got tired of working with these big shots, so I opened my own shop in Ramona doing upholstery and lederhosen.” His newly attired band mates were walking advertisements for his business. “When we played at Big Bear Mountain, people asked, ‘Where’d you get those pants?’ ” he says. Alfred found an eager customer base. “I just started making pants, and would take 25 with me when we played,” he says. “Sometimes I made more selling pants than playing. 12:08 PM Page 3 Tweet of Dreams By Audra Villarreal A lthough Cliff Perdell has never considered himself a woodworker, he has found an outlet for creativity in building homes for his fine-feathered friends. He builds fanciful birdhouses. “I just go out to the shop with sort of an idea,” he says. “They never turn out the way I think they will. They just come together.” At times, Cliff utilizes an idea book and the Internet for inspiration. People also custom order birdhouses to fit a particular theme or interest. He works from one hour to two days on each birdhouse, depending upon its complexity and detail, and sells them for $10 to $150. Cliff enjoys adding special touches to the houses, including sagebrush, branches, birch bark, waterwheels and chimneys. He adds detail work like framing on doors and windows. “I try to fix them so you can clean them out, too,” Cliff says of his outdoor birdhouses. To do this, he installs screws at the top of one side, which allows that side to be lifted from the bottom, making cleanup efficient. He named his favorite birdhouse “Gnome Cliff Perdell of Benton City, Washington, has built more than 200 unique birdhouses in five years, including his favorite creation known as “Gnome Sweet Gnome.” Sweet Gnome.” It was featured in the April/May 2003 edition of “Birds & Blooms” magazine. He sent in a photo almost a year ago and had forgotten about doing so. He was surprised to receive a copy of the magazine and a sun-catcher gift in the mail. A picture of the creation is shown in the magazine’s “Home Tweet Home” section. After friends learned of Cliff’s new hobby and skill, they furnished him with a blown-down fence as well as wood and shingles from a 50year-old barn. “I very seldom buy wood, unless I want to paint it,” says Cliff. He says most people prefer the unpainted, rustic-looking birdhouses. The older wood gives the creations character and helps them blend in with nature. Cliff and his wife, Marie, display at least 30 birdhouses on posts surrounding their lawn near a rock wall. He also has crafted wooden garden benches with birdhouses perched on top of the four posts supporting the armrests. A favorite birdhouse is located under an archway—a miniature he crafted special for his 2year-old granddaughter. “It’s a fun hobby,” says Cliff. ■ (Continued on page 13) SEPTEMBER 2003 11 Sept. Side Roads.qxd 8/20/2003 12:08 PM Page 4 Electric Car Wins Respect On Racing Circuit By Walt Wentz R ace cars line up four ranks deep along the starting line. The drivers are hunched in their cramped cockpits, tense and waiting. The green flag sweeps down and the race starts with an eerie whine, a faint grinding noise—no thunder of engines, no screaming of tires. It’s a long way from the Indianapolis 500, but to the high school students from Ukiah, Oregon, the Electrathon America Cup was a big race. The meet at Portland (Oregon) International Raceway (PIR) during Memorial Day weekend is the national event of electric car racing for high school teams. The Ukiah students—who built their car in two years of experimentation—were matching their sweat and ingenuity against other student teams from much larger schools from around the nation. The rules of Electrathon racing are ironclad and unforgiving. Each car may be powered by 64 pounds of lead/acid batteries— not an ounce more. Each car must continue racing for a full hour. 12 SEPTEMBER 2003 Its standing in the race is determined by the distance it travels in that time. Most of the cars can reach speeds of more than 50 miles an hour. But if you start too fast, you will drain your batteries and be stranded ingloriously along the track. Play it too safe, and you will end up back among the also-rans. The last 10 minutes of the race tell the story. Sixty cars from across the nation—some fielded by high school teams, others by adult builders competing in the “open” class—were scattered around the blacktop “pit” area of the 1.9-mile track, as team members tinkered feverishly to get them ready for the next race. Number 55—the sleek white car from Ukiah— was one of only three that started and finished all six races during the event. Shane Harris, a substitute teacher at Ukiah School, led his industrial arts students in building and racing their car. Shane and his students designed their vehicle literally by the seat of their pants. “We had one guy sit on the shop floor,” Shane explains. “Then we measured around him, and built the car to fit.” The first step was creating the streamlined car body. They built a form and molded the body halves from Kevlar fabric saturated with resin. They welded up the frame from steel box beams, bought special racing wheels from a supplier—and started running out of money. “The school had a total fund for the class of $1,800,” Shane says. Businesses and townspeople helped out with donations. But an up-todate electric racing motor would cost $1,000, and they simply couldn’t afford it. For $500, they got an outdated motor—“about 10 percent less efficient than modern ones,” Shane says—and installed it. Now, after a year and a half of work, they had a car, but they still had to build a racing team. The students had to think of the car and the team Sept. Side Roads.qxd 8/20/2003 12:09 PM Page 5 Preserving a Dying Craft (Continued from page 11) Above, Number 55 looks somewhat out of place on the backroads around Ukiah, Oregon. Photo by Walt Wentz. Left, Shane Harris, second from right, and other members of the Ukiah team prepare for the start of another race. Photo by Thad Sells. rather than personal glory. They also had to learn to think fast and work together in emergencies. In an early-season meet at Mapleton, Oregon, a crash wrecked the car’s single front wheel. They had no spare. They couldn’t afford it. With only half an hour until the next race, the crew hunted up a mismatched wheel, Shane modified it to fit and the crew had it installed just in time for the next race. Those local races—and the many miles of empty roads around Ukiah—gave the students plenty of time to get used to the tiny racer and build a team for the America Cup. “By the time we left for Portland, we probably had driven the car 500 miles,” Shane says. The crew camped with other students on the grassy, tree-lined infield of PIR, tinkering on their tiny, lightweight vehicle between races. Number 55 did well on all three days, making it through every race. Its tires—kept at high pressure to minimize rolling resistance—were wearing thin. “I wasn’t sure if our tires would make it through the last race,” Shane says, noting the team had no spare. Through the sixth and final race, Shane and his team were confident they were ahead in laps—the deciding factor of the meet. But after the meet was over, the judges decided the Hawaii team had finished one lap ahead. Now, a new school year has begun, and the members of the Ukiah racing team are busy with other pursuits. Some graduated and are headed for college, hopefully preparing for studies in engineering and other technical fields. Meanwhile, Number 55 rests in a garage, waiting for improvements, modifications— and another young team. ■ “I made pants because of the need of the band. Then I saw the market.” Alfred—who personally attends to each and every detail—discovered he had no competition making lederhosen from “scratch” in the United States. He starts by cutting pieces for the garment out of split cowhide. Alfred is a picture of concentration as he nimbly guides the leather under the needle of his old, well-used sewing machine, deftly stitching the pieces together. “It probably takes me about four hours a shot, from cutting to sewing,” Alfred says, noting that also includes adding leather accents and embroidering decorative designs. The finished product is a handmade work of art. “The first year I sold 400 pairs,” he says. “Now, it’s 50 to 75 pairs a year.” The pants are designed to last forever—good for his customers, but bad for his future market. Alfred used to sell lederhosen through the German-American Society in San Diego. “But they preferred to buy more expensive imports,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. He recalls proudly stitching in “made in America” tags, only to have a purchaser insist they be removed so it would appear the lederhosen had been manufactured in Germany. Alfred and his wife, Trudy, attend Oktoberfests in Texas and Oregon, taking lederhosen with them. But the market isn’t what it used to be. That has forced Alfred to diversify. In recent years, he has earned a reputation for making colorful custom Renaissance pants. He hit upon the new business while selling food at Renaissance fairs throughout the country. ■ To inquire about lederhosen or Renaissance pants, contact Alfred Planatscher at P.O. Box 390969, Anza, California 92539, or call (909) 763-2557. Alfred stitches together a pair of lederhosen. It takes him approximately four hours to make a pair. SEPTEMBER 2003 13
© Copyright 2024