Is there anything you make at Erlbacher Gear the might surprise people?
We’re working on remanufacturing Gearhart rotary sock-knitting machines. They were patented in about 1870. They’re antiques and they’re collectible, but most of them don’t work anymore. You can’t get replacement parts for them. We’re rebuilding them from ground zero. In the first World War the Red Cross owned 150,000 sock-knitting machines. They were operated by a hand crank and were used as therapy for people in the hospitals. That’s how the soldiers got their socks made even into early World War II. The last year they were produced was 1925. You can knit a pair of socks in an hour if you’re good at it. We’ll have machines completed within about 90 days. We’ll sell them on the Internet and through the knitting circles. Q: Tell me about your role as the president of Alliance Bancshares Inc. A: We put the stockholders together and started Alliance Bank. I was on the [now Region[‘]s] bank board when it was sold to Union Planters. Several of us that were on the board didn’t want to sell t
