from the start. And their garage-sized inventory is a bit deceiving. “We’re a lot bigger than you realize,” says Eileen. They rent warehouse space to store more machines, and at one time, they sold up to 80 Snapper units a year. •••• After working a couple of hourly jobs, Arnie signed on more than five decades ago at Hannaman’s Garage, near the legendary Hilltop Tavern (now Guenther’s). Renting a stall from Jack Hannaman, he began selling and repairing Snapper mowers. But winter was tough on the mower business, so he opened his own gas station, eventually settling in the mid-60’s with a Gulf oil station on Madison Avenue hill where Kober’s nursery is now. The business soon expanded with a new, adjacent showroom that sold snowmobiles, duckboats and travel trailers. In the heavy snow winter of 1965, Arnie had an idea of what to do with three rusty old pickups he had: he and wife Eileen opened one of Mankato’s first commercial snow-plowing businesses. The retail gas business was changing, and by 1976, the Wadekampers were out, making their hilltop home the headquarters of a family business. With the kitchen table doubling as boardroom, they added more plow trucks to deal with the severe winters in the ‘70’s. At their peak, with Eileen fielding service calls from the kitchen, Arnie was running nine trucks. Even today, with just four trucks, plowing is the core of their enterprise.
six snowplowers and shovellers in the winter, while two workers assist with mowing and maintenance in the summer. Most importantly, Eileen’s duties during their 57 years of marriage allowed her to be home while their three children were growing up. •••• If plowing and mowing provide the bread and butter for the family business, it’s maple syruping that supplies the passion. Arnie learned the process from his family as a youngster on the farm near Faribault. In fact, the tradition goes back four generations. When Arnie met Eileen, as she puts it, “I married into it.” That means she gets to wash about 600 Mason jars every year and call eager longtime clients when the syrup is finally ready in the spring. The season can start in February and run well into May. During that time, Arnie and Eileen don’t see a lot of each other. He spends a huge amount of time out at “Arnie’s Syrup Shack,” near a wooded area about two miles east of Mankato. A friend there owns acreage with maple trees, and another acquaintance lets him tap about 200 trees near Lake Jefferson. Arnie makes the syrup “the old-fashioned way.” The sap is hauled to the shack in old ten-gallon milk cans. One ten-gallon can will produce just one quart of syrup. About 400 gallons of sap at a time are poured directly into large pans to be boiled over a wood fire for two days and two nights. Stationed nearby for much of that process, Arnie uses the time to ready more firewood for his three stoves as well as to conduct business via phone. The boiled-down syrup is then run thru filters before it is canned. The mostly snowless winter of 2011-12 was painfully slow for both the plowing business and for maple syruping. With no snow, the frost didn’t come out in time to let the sap run. This year, though, brought a double whammy, as late snows came just as the trees were starting to run. Arnie had to scramble between the syrup shack and keeping his plow trucks running from March through April. Not a lot of time for sleep. The discipline for that probably comes from all the way back when Arnie was a high school state wrestling champ at 133 pounds. Didn’t the Wall Street Journal run an article that advised that the regimen required of wrestlers makes them the best hire of any athlete?
“We’ve tried everything that’s legal!” Arnie Wadekamper
••••
If Arnie Wadekamper had his way, he’d still be cutting and selling firewood by the cord. But last year, he sold off that business. He’s also given up trapping. Eventually in life, you make a few concessions. But one gets the feeling this is the kind of resourceful person who settled the American frontier: “I could always dig enough money out of the woods so we wouldn’t lose the house.” Eileen says that mantra, that the Earth will provide, has been passed down to their children and grandchildren. ••••
As she has for 50 years, Eileen keeps the books, does the marketing, and takes the phone calls. Arnie grins: “I’ve always liked having a LIVE person on the phone!” Eileen: “I think of myself as a salesperson. I really like marketing.” She’s a bit less enthusiastic about the bookkeeping: “Paying social security on the part-timers gets complicated.” Even with their reduced snowplow inventory, they employ
•••• Anyone who runs their own business knows it can get precarious. Arnie recalls one point in the late ‘70’s when
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