Schwartz, after some consternation, finally gets 'ol "Hercules" running, a circa 1900 craft whose 1 1/2 horsepower engine sounds a lot fiercer than its meager rating would suggest.
Schwartz's most-prized possession: his Bibles. Schwartz recently talked with the County Commissioners, and they agreed to have one of these very Bibles put in the Courthouse. On loan to the government, of course.
From left, Frankie Schwartz, Dorothy Schwartz, Jamie Schwartz and Cora Dotson. Schwartz is passing his business on to his children, Jamie and Cora. As for the airplane, a 310 Cessna, Frank says he’s turning in his wings. “It ain’t the kind of plane that an old man needs to fly,” he says.
Frankie Schwartz in front of the world headquarters of the Schwartz Empire and Conglomerate, located just south of Salem. A few of Frankie’s favorite political slogans decorate the front of the building including, “The power to tax is the power to destroy,” and “No man escapes when freedom fails.”
Tyler McConnell
Here’s a snapshot of a few of the decorations adorning Frankie’s office and walls:
•Ross Perot signs,
•Pictures of old prop job airplanes,
•A picture of Frankie holding a puppy,
•Pictures of Frankie next to classic cars,
•Copies of The Salem News with headlines like “Frankie beats DNR” and “DNR vs. Frankie,”
•An old FM radio,
•A statue of what appears to be a Greek goddess in flowery robes,
•Pictures of old friends,
•A picture of Frankie holding two little babies,
•A magnet that reads, “Live Free or Die,”
•A sign displayed prominently on his desk, “Notice: New incentive plan, WORK or get FIRED,”
•A sign that says “We accept cash,” adorned with a hand holding a bag of money,
•A picture of Frankie’s Moser School Reunion in the ‘80s,
•An old shoe,
•A rusted bugle,
•Two gallon water jugs that Frankie drinks from frequently and has scattered all around the premises,
•Some primitive form of an axe,
•Four different versions of $3 bills (one with Bill Clinton blowing a whistle, of course),
•A printout of Adolf Hitler’s quote about the benefits of gun registration,
•And finally, a sign that reads, “We don’t call 911,” complete with a revolver hanging under it and one bullet dangling from the end of the barrel.
Frankie Schwartz is what journalists call a “one-source story.” To say that Schwartz is a character would be a massive understatement. He might be the most colorful character Salem, Missouri, has ever seen – and will likely see for a good, long while. A local legend, the mere mention of his name will nine times out of 10 elicit a reflexive, knowing chuckle – followed by words like “brilliant” and “genius.”
It would take a hefty book to catalogue all of Frankie’s stories, but it’s worth diving into some of the larger stretchers that have become Dent County folklore, the biggest of which is probably the story of Frankie paying his taxes with a wheelbarrow full of pennies.
Rumors have swirled around town for years about Schwartz, who has owned Schwartz Auto Salvage for 60 years, paying his taxes in pennies. Some say it was $500, some say it was $1,000. But $1,000 total is a conservative version. Growing up in Salem, a dump truck full of pennies was not uncommon to hear.
When asked about the pennies, Schwartz pulls up a newsreel he’s recorded on VHS. Turns out the actual amount was $42,725, and it was paid in fives and tens that he took to the St. Louis IRS office in a briefcase in 1979.
“That’s 7,000 bills,” says Schwartz. “It took eight days to get it.”
Schwartz says it took that amount of time for First National Bank to secure the cash from St. Louis. Sheriff Clifford Jadwin then escorted Schwartz from the bank to the Salem airport with the expensive cargo.
The TV reporter asks Frankie, “Why cash?”
“Why not cash?” replies Schwartz. “That’s what it’s for. Why not?”
“You’re a strong believer in cash?”
“Aren’t we all?”
The myth of the pennies isn’t far off. Schwartz has looked into it, but says there’s a federal law stating that one can only pay taxes in pennies up to 25 cents.
***
If you work for the government, and you want to visit Frankie's homestead, an appointment is required. He'll have to check his calendar first.
Tyler McConnell
A sign hangs directly in front of Frankie’s shop, reading, “All Local, State and Federal Government Officials, KEEP OUT. Seen by appointment only.”
Frankie’s battles with the government have been many. He first declared war on the City of Salem in the mid-1950s.
“They arrested me for having a junk yard in the city limits,” says Schwartz. “The only time I’ve ever been arrested was by the City of Salem.”
According to Schwartz, and a signed document hanging on his wall, the city drew up an ordinance just for him on Jan. 1, 1955. It was Ordinance 1922.
“It was made just for little ‘ole me,” says Schwartz. “It cost me a $5 fine.”
They ran Frankie out of town. He bought a single acre of land, where he currently resides, for $300. He’s since added substantial acreage to his salvage yard empire located just south of Salem on Highway 19.
Mayor Willie Chafin eventually called for a truce, says Schwartz. Frankie had steel the city needed, along with the only equipment for miles around to pump the city well pumps.
“The city needed me,” said Schwartz, flashing his gold tooth in a big smile. (Schwartz got the tooth in 1949 for $18 when he rode a horse named Smokey into town to see the dentist).
Frankie’s most recent battle was with the Department of Natural Resources, a court case he fought for four years and eventually won in 2014. The DNR took Schwartz to court for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, citing that he and Schwartz Auto Salvage had no general storm permit. Judge Sid Pearson ended up ruling in Frankie’s favor. Schwartz was quoted in The Salem News as saying, “We stood by our beliefs and convictions. … I think my heart skipped a few beats when I opened the letter from the circuit court and read that we had won our battle with the DNR.”
Schwartz, after some consternation, finally gets 'ol "Hercules" running, a circa 1900 craft whose 1 1/2 horsepower engine sounds a lot fiercer than its meager rating would suggest.
Tyler McConnell
Schwartz is kind and warm in person, a lovable prankster more than anything. It’s only when asked why he dislikes the government that he gets heated.
“In America, we have a government that works this way,” says Schwartz, just getting warmed up. “The tail is wagging the dog. Now it's gonna kill the dog. Because the dog is not designed to wiggle; the tail is designed to wiggle, but we have this government that was supposed to be the people’s. They hollered and the government jumped. Today, it's the opposite. The government hollers, and the people jump. … I don’t hate the government. I hate what the government has done to the working-class man in America.”
Schwartz relayed this comment shortly after telling a story about how he’d built his own machinery to make roofing and culverts, a very profitable venture. After paying a sizable amount in taxes, he was required to pay the same amount again for late filing.
“But I’ve got no education, so it didn’t do me no good,” said Schwartz. “The government took it all away from me. See, Farris (Craig, Frankie’s good friend and the late owner of Craig Distributing Company, based in Salem) had a certified public accountant to take care of his money. I didn’t. I’ve got a sixth grade education, so the government just ‘whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!’’
Schwartz made swooshing noises to symbolize the money being swept away.
This might help explain why Frankie doesn’t believe in democracy – he believes democracy only leads to slick politicians buying off the people. A republic is where his heart stands, and he’ll tell you quick that that’s what America was originally founded to be.
“Have you ever said ‘The Pledge of Allegiance’?” asks Schwartz. “What's it say? To the republic! This country was never designed to be a democracy. A democracy is nothing more than a total dictatorship.”
He dons a wry smile.
'You vote for me, son, and I'll get you a free cookie,'” says Schwartz sarcastically. “Politicians, why do they get elected? They're gonna get you a free cookie. You should never be a politician. You should be a statesman, and we should be a republic.”
But it seems that he does appreciate democracy at the immediate level, as long as the state’s not involved. He agreed to cut his long beard off when his family voted in the majority for a clean-shaven Frankie.
Fishing for a deeper understanding of Frankie’s political beliefs, it was asked if he believes in collecting Social Security.
“Do I?” Schwartz responded bewildered. “I’ve paid a considerable amount in taxes. And remember, I've been drawing it since I was 65. That Social Security woman from Rolla called me and said all excited, ‘Mr. Schwartz, what do you do for a living?’ I said, ‘Well, I've got a push cart. My wife gets behind it. I get in front of it, and we go up and down alleys picking up old mattresses and sodie bottles.’”
***
From left, Frankie Schwartz, Dorothy Schwartz, Jamie Schwartz and Cora Dotson. Schwartz is passing his business on to his children, Jamie and Cora. As for the airplane, a 310 Cessna, Frank says he’s turning in his wings. “It ain’t the kind of plane that an old man needs to fly,” he says.
Tyler McConnell
Then there’s Frankie’s flying career, which is a story in itself. “They [the FAA] gave me a private pilot's license,” says Schwartz. “I'm the only pilot they ever got tired of fighting with, and they just gave me a license.”
When Schwartz was 23, he bought a rundown plane, his first, in Iberia for $250. Moss was growing inside it. Frankie didn’t know how to fly it, but it was a good deal, and Schwartz never passes up on a good deal. He took the wings off it, took it apart, put it in his truck and drove it home. In a field in Dent County, back before Salem had an airport, Frankie put the plane back together and decided to take it for a trial run.
“I wasn’t too sure I had everything right,” said Schwartz. “But I got it pretty well in the air. Then I flew through a fence. You think about getting an airplane in the air when you’ve never landed one!”
Schwartz points out a stick hanging on his wall with a bit of yellow aluminum stuck in it, recalling a story from 1958. “That’s a propeller,” says Frankie. “It cut off here and stuck up there. That was down in Summersville. When Jamie was 10 days old, and my wife, she was with me – the first airplane ride she ever took – she broke her pelvis bone and had to walk with a chair for a month.”
After asking Schwartz if the incident was a legitimate plane crash, he responded, “Well, yeah! I didn’t know how to fly. I bought it, took my ride in it, and landed it!”
Perhaps most emblematic of Schwartz aviation career was summed up when he described an airplane engine he had “souped up.”
“Of course it was illegal,” said Schwartz, smiling. “But that never did stop me.”
The list of things Schwartz has rigged up from scrap is beyond incredible. For someone with a sixth grade education who never learned his ABCs – that same someone who also put together an airplane himself and had the courage to actually fly it – his accomplishments are too many to count. He’s manufactured vehicles, put together a Model T himself, built his own car crushing machine from scratch, and, at 81, continues to tinker with all things mechanical.
Schwartz's most-prized possession: his Bibles. Schwartz recently talked with the County Commissioners, and they agreed to have one of these very Bibles put in the Courthouse. On loan to the government, of course.
Tyler McConnell
Schwartz – a decade-plus attendee of the Mennonite Church, a church composed of “wonderful people” that he agrees with more than any other – says that his ability to envision new creations from old materials is a gift from God.
“The greatest thing in my life was when Jesus saved me in 1968,” says Schwartz. “God gives gifts, and the Lord gave me the gift of taking junk that people’s thrown away and making something out of it.”
“I just didn’t have a head for book learning, and I quit,” he said. “Farris Craig used to tell me, ‘Frank, if you’d of gotten an education, you’d of been dangerous.”
Schwartz operating the car crusher he built from scratch.
Tyler McConnell
Fellow long-time Salem resident, Dr. Ted Ziske, also has high praise for Schwartz’s ingenuity and political bravery.
“Albert Einstein said the mark of genius is to take the materials at hand and make something useful,” says Ziske. “Frankie could visualize a use and market for anything. And he was not afraid of bureaucrats. He enjoyed challenging anything that made no sense: legal, spiritual or mechanical.”
Taken from the Jan. 31, 1975 edition of The Salem News.
Ziske noted among the creations that impressed him most over the years was Schwartz’s homemade car crusher made “out of a bunch of pulleys and a monster sycamore log.”
And when it comes to Frankie and airplanes, the good doctor just said, “Stories! Stories!”
Farris’s brother, Jerry Craig, who has been instrumental in the Salem Area Community Betterment Association, has a favorite Frankie story as well.
“A number of years ago, I was visiting Hot Springs, Arkansas,” said Craig. “I decided to experience one of the baths in their natural, hot-mineral water. After the bath, you are ushered into a room for a massage. I lay down on a table, and the man who began massaging me asked me where I was from. When I told him Salem, Missouri, he immediately asked if I knew Frankie Schwartz. Of course, I did. He told me the story of how he is a blind man and was once in Salem, where he met Frankie. He had no money and nowhere to go. He said Frankie reassured him the Lord would take care of him, gave him money to get where he was going and provided a way for the man to travel on to his destination. He was able to get to Hot Springs and become a masseuse. He said he would never forget Frankie and Salem.”
“He has had his disagreements with people,” said Craig, “and has his critics, but as for me, I hold him in high respect for what he has done with his education, being from ‘the school of hard knocks,’ and knowing that, under all his conversation, is a heart of gold.”
Craig described Schwartz as a “very colorful character” and a shrewd businessman with a brilliant mind. Ziske also described Schwartz as brilliant, as well as resourceful, full of abstract ideas, imaginative and creative. Charles Whitmire, former president of First National Bank, described him as honest, and Sherman Odom, longtime friend and fellow businessman, owner of Vandivort Drug and Crossroads Inn & Suites, said he’d be the person he’d call if he was stuck in a rough part of town.
“You kind of count your good friends, as somebody always says, ‘If you’re broke down in East St. Louis, and you need somebody to come and rescue you, who you gonna call?’ Well, you know Frankie would probably be on my short list of people to call,” says Odom.
***
When two gentlemen came by Schwartz Auto Salvage recently to haggle with Frankie for a blue truck, it was a chance for this reporter to see the man do what he’s done best for the past six decades.
“I’ll take $1,000 for it,” said Schwartz.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the prospective buyer replied apprehensively.
“You can’t buy nothin’ today for $1,000,” said Schwartz. “And I’ll give you a guarantee. The same guarantee you got when you got your wife. What was it? Did you ever get married?”
“Yeah,” said the man. “Twice.”
“And what was the guarantee?” asked Schwartz, greatly enjoying himself.
“Didn’t have a guarantee. She gets all the money.”
“Til death do you part!” thundered Schwartz. “Well, that’s the same guarantee you get with that truck. You got a lifetime guarantee with your wife, didn’t ya say? Well, I’ll give you the same guarantee you got with your wife.”
“So you want $1,000 for it?”
“No, no,” said Schwartz. “I’d take $1,000 for it. I want $10,000 for it! But I’ll take $1,000.”
When asked if Schwartz likes making deals, his eyes light up. “Oh yeah,” said Schwartz. “I live for it.”
“That Model A, it took me five years to buy that,” said Schwartz with pride, pointing out one of the many classic cars he’s successfully bargained for over the years. “But I always get it in the end.”
Of all Frankie’s accomplishments and deals he’s made, he seems most proud of his 60th wedding anniversary, which he celebrated Feb. 11 with his wife, Dorothy, who has been by his side keeping the books the entire time he’s built what he calls the “Schwartz Empire.”
“We went together between only 10 and 11 days,” said Schwartz, dropping his pervasive humor for a moment and speaking with warmth, “And then we got married.”
Schwartz and family took out a two-page spread in a recent edition of The Salem News to thank the people of Dent County for their 60 years of business. And it’s fair to say that Salem could thank Frankie for his 60 years of memorable Dent County lore.
