In this second column, we are remembering when the Penn Dixie Cement Company operated three plants in the Bath and Nazareth area. Penn Dixie provided employment for local residents for many years.

One of the former employees was the late Raymond Houser, of Bath, who spent more than 50 years at the plant. Young Raymond started at the plant at age 15 tying cloth cement bags for $3 a day.

When I interviewed Raymond in 2002, he recalled, “There were a dozen boys tying bags on the gang. There were no windows, and it was so dusty. It’s lucky we didn’t turn into concrete. You had to really scrub to get clean. I met William Gano, the plant chemist and asked him if there were any jobs in the lab. He said he would let me know. Mr. Gano, from Nazareth, was the chief chemist at the Penn Dixie.”

Mr. Houser relates, “A few weeks later, I was called to the laboratory and given the job as a sample boy. I worked six 10-hour days, and I can still see the money in the pay envelope. We were paid in cash. It contained $70 for the month, I felt liked a millionaire.

“As a sample boy, every two hours I went through the plant and collected samples of stone, coal, clinker, cement and anything they wanted to test,” Houser continued. “When I went into the lab, I was very interested in the testing and would help the men between sample rounds. I learned many lab fundamentals from Mr. George and Mr. Hock. The lab tested cement from our three plants — numbers 4, 5 and 6. We also tested cement from our southern plants — numbers 1, 2 and 3.”

Raymond loved his job at the Penn Dixie, but cement dust was replaced with wedding bells on June 21, 1930. Arlene Siegfried, a Penn Street Bath neighbor, became Mrs. Raymond Houser. They were married for 69 years. The Siegfried’s can trace their heritage to Colonel John Siegfried, one of the area’s most famous Revolutionary War soldiers.

The Housers started married life during the Great Depression.

“Work was tight for everyone. Many men weren’t working at all,” Houser said. “The Penn Dixie and other cement plants were full of cement they could not sell. I worked two weeks on, two weeks off. My salary was $108 dollars a month and was cut to $54 a month, which was more than many people had. When I was short, my mother helped us out.”

Houser said some local businesses were generous.

“I bought a ton of coal at $6-a-ton on credit, but they asked me to pay them from my next paycheck,” Houser recalled. “Most of the local stores extended credit to assist the families in need.”

Mr. Houser purchased his first radio, a secondhand radio for $4. He was so fascinated with the radio that he took a radio repair course from the National Radio Institute in Washington D.C. Houser ended up repairing radios for his neighbors.

The radio was a form of entertainment that helped people cope with the dark days of the Depression. The late Mrs. Majorie Rehrig, his daughter, recalled her father listening to Gabriel Heatter, a popular news broadcaster who covered the news from 1932 to 1965. Even during the Depression, he brightened listeners’ spirits with his opening phrase. “Ah, there’s good news tonight.”

When Ray moved from the bag house to the Penn Dixie lab, he studied every facet of cement testing and learned from veteran employees. One gray morning, Fred Newhard, the general manager, came to the laboratory and gave Mr. Houser his most memorable assignment.

In two weeks, we will write about one of Penn Dixie’s greatest construction projects. Do you wonder what it was?