Southside Hooligan
Frank Kinderman was born in 1896. His parents were Bohemian immigrants who settled in Oshkosh in 1889. Frank was the sixth of their 10 children. The Kindermans were Southsiders. Their home was on Iowa Street in the old 9th Ward.
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| The former Kinderman Home, 1650 Iowa Street. |
Frank was living there when he was 14 and dropped out of school. He had learned to read and write, but there was little else they could do for him. The classroom didn’t engage his inclinations. He liked to prowl the night and get into things. The Southside was full of scenes to investigate: Railroad yards, lumber yards, breweries, factories, the back doors of saloons…
He developed a taste for petty crime. Breaking windows, stealing cases of beer from box cars, trespassing… that kind of thing. He was an infamous delinquent with a stack of arrests by age 16. He earned 20 days in the county workhouse, then a term in reform school, and finally, a two-year stay at the Wisconsin Reformatory in Green Bay.
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| Breaking rocks at the Wisconsin Reformatory, circa 1914, about the time Frank arrived there. |
Between detentions, Frank worked as a frogger for Emil R. Neuenfeldt, the father of Oshkosh frogging. Neuenfeldt sold frog legs to restaurants and hotels throughout the Midwest. He had a frog farm near 7th and Sawyer but also relied heavily on local “froggers” to supply his merchandise. Guys like Frank fished frogs from practically every backwater within 25 miles of town.
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| Emil Neuenfeldt with cigar and frog. |
Frank was out of the reformatory and working for Neuenfeldt when he was drafted in 1918. He landed a spot in the Naval Reserves, a unit established in anticipation of America’s entry into World War I. Frank shipped out that summer, but the war ended that fall. He returned to Oshkosh and frogged. He used his military money to buy a Ford Roadster that could do about 45 mph if he really pushed it. Frank pushed it.
He was 23 now. A man of medium build with blonde hair and blue eyes. He wooed a Southsider named Clara Metko. They were married at Sacred Heart in September 1920. In July 1921, Frank and Clara had their first child, a girl named Anna. Ten days later, they signed a land contract on a home and lot at what is now 1017 Knapp Street. Frank immediately put a frog farm there.
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| 1017 Knapp Street. Behind the home a now abandoned track for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad framed the west edge of the triangular lot. |
The Frog Farming Bootlegger
Frank had his own business, a family, and the legit appearance of someone making his place in the world. But the impression was misleading. He was bootlegging by the fall of 1921, if not earlier. The frog farm worked as a conduit into a booming underground liquor scene. Some of the restaurants Frank sold frog legs to also operated as speakeasies.
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| A Prohibition-era ad for the Bohmerwald when it operated as speakeasy at the southeast corner of 9th and Knapp, one block north of Frank’s frog farm. |
Oshkosh in 1922 was already awash in bootleg beer and booze. With a population of less than 35,000, the city was home to approximately 90 speakeasies. This had always been a drinking town. The local police had little interest in disrupting that culture – dry law or not. Federal and state Prohibition officials were far less tolerant.
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| Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 7, 1922. |
A company of 13 Prohibition officers landed in Oshkosh on the Friday evening of January 6, 1922. They raided twenty places in all, most of them speakeasies. Frank Kinderman was caught in the dragnet. At his frog farm, the dry-squad found two gallons of moonshine packaged for sale and 200 gallons of mash for future distillation. The officers dumped the liquor, confiscated Frank’s 10-gallon still, and hauled him to jail. One of the feds said it was “just a start of the cleanup” they were planning for Oshkosh.
Frank waived his hearing and pleaded guilty to the charge of manufacturing and selling illegal alcohol. As a first-time offender, he wasn’t looking at jail time. But the conviction relieved him of $250 (about $4,750 in today’s money). Saturday morning, Frank was back home with his family and frogs.
Woodshedding
At least one of the speakeasies raided that night in 1922 was connected to Frank’s operation. The Wisconsin Club Saloon at the northeast corner of 5th and Ohio had been converted into a speakeasy when Prohibition began. Adolph Novotny had a hand in both this place and the aforementioned Bohmerwald speakeasy. Novotny, a 37-year-old Bohemian immigrant, was in cahoots with Frank.
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| Players Pizza & Pub, formerly the home of the speakeasy at 5th and Ohio. |
Neither Novotny nor Frank was unnerved by the 1922 raid. The frog farm distillery was back in the news a year later.
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| Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 10, 1923. |
This time was different. This time, the raiders were Oshkosh cops. It was a duty they were reluctant to perform. But the persistent complaints of neighbors could not be ignored. Discretion was never part of Frank’s style.
The cops came knocking at his door with a search warrant on the Wednesday afternoon of January 10, 1923. Frank wasn’t home, and Clara refused to let them in. The Oshkosh police were unaccustomed to this sort of work. Instead of executing their warrant, they went back to the station for instructions. Meanwhile, Clara called Novotny and told him there was trouble.
Novotny rushed over and, along with a frogger named Otto Thoma, began getting rid of the evidence. They hid the main still and a barrel of moonshine in a woodshed next door to the frog farm. They dumped most of the mash down the sewer. Novotny was still at it when the cops returned. They arrested him and scoured the frog farm. They found what they were after in the woodshed. A sample drawn from the barrel of moonshine measured 94 proof.
Frank was arrested later that day and indicted the following morning. Police claimed the equipment and volume of contraband amounted to “the largest seized here by officers of the law in a long time.” He was charged on counts of possession and production of illegal liquor and as a repeat offender. This time he was facing jail time. Six months minimum.
But Frank was doing well enough now that he could afford the best lawyer in the racket. Frank B. Keefe was the favored counsel of Oshkosh’s hardcore bootleggers. The trial was set for the courtroom of Judge Arthur Goss. The judge knew all about Frank. Goss had presided over Frank’s criminal past and his initial induction into the penal system.
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| Judge Arthur Goss. |
Goss gaveled the court to session and Keefe went straight for the cops, mocking their bumbling raid. Goss was flabbergasted when the jury returned a not-guilty verdict. He sent the jury back to their chamber with a new set of instructions. They reemerged with a new verdict: guilty. Keefe called for a mistrial. Goss, incensed by the chaos in his court, rejected the motion, slammed Frank with a $500 fine, and sent him to jail for six to ten months.
Keefe promised to take the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it appears he quickly struck a deal. Frank was out of jail in a matter of days. He remained untamed. A few weeks later, Frank was busted in his roadster for speeding down High Street at 42 mph.
Betrayal
In September 1923, Clara gave birth to their second daughter. Despite having two children and two convictions, Frank remained oblivious to the potential consequences of bootlegging. Or most any other consequences. He racked up more speeding tickets and was busted for poaching in the waterways of Green Lake County. He kept the frog farm sputtering along while doubling down on his moonshining efforts. He built a bigger still and expanded his distribution.
The reckless ambition was fueled by his drinking. Like many bootleggers, Frank was a little too fond of his product. His boozing appears to have tipped over into alcoholism around 1925. Clara couldn’t stand it anymore. She filed for divorce in 1926. Oddly enough, their marriage was temporarily saved by another raid.
This time it wasn’t the Oshkosh police on an unwanted errand. This raid was arranged by Frank B. Keefe, the new Winnebago County District Attorney.
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| Frank B. Keefe |
The former favorite of the bootleggers had won the D.A. slot in the November 1926 election. A month after being sworn in, the man who knew all of Frank’s secrets sent a team of sheriff’s deputies to the frog farm on Knapp Street. Everything went as planned.
Frank’s distillery was flowing when the deputies barged in on a Friday afternoon in early February 1927. They found five gallons of finished moonshine ready for packaging, another eight barrels of mash on deck, and according to Sheriff Walter Plumber, “a large number of jugs in sacks, evidently on hand for delivery.” The wellspring was an elaborate 30-gallon still that could kick out 10 gallons of white lightening a day. A day like that would net over $100; more than $2,000 in today’s money. Tax-Free.
Keefe never said a word about his previous involvement with Frank. He said he began his investigation after receiving complaints about bootleggers at the frog farm. “The case revealed that Kinderman has been engaged in the illicit liquor traffic on an elaborate scale,” Keefe said. As if he hadn’t already known that.
At least Frank didn’t have to stand in front of Arthur Goss again. He drew Judge Daniel McDonald, whose affiliations were of a decidedly anti-Prohibitionist bent. Frank knew the score and pleaded guilty at his initial hearing. The judge went somewhat easy on the three-time loser. He fined Frank $800 (more than $14,000 today) and sentenced him to six months in the notoriously vile county workhouse. It could have been worse. McDonald could have sent him away for years.
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| Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, February 5, 1927. |
River's End
Frank got out of jail as the summer of 1927 was dimming into autumn. He was at a dead end. The frog farm had perished. He was 30 years old with two kids and a wife who despised him. Bootlegging was out of the question. He finally resorted to the sort of work he had always avoided. He got a job as a laborer at the Badger Lumber plant on Campbell Road.
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| A sanding room at Badger Lumber. |
He lost his job at Badger and then he lost his wife. Clara divorced him in March 1929, blaming the split on Frank’s habitual drinking and his inability to support the family. She said Frank had beaten her numerous times while he was drunk. Clara got the kids and the house.
Frank was going down at a steady clip. He lived at his parent’s home on Iowa Street and drifted along working sporadically at menial jobs. In 1932 he slipped back into the illicit liquor scene. He began bartending at a speakeasy on Wisconsin Avenue. The place was run by a couple of bootleggers, Butch Youngwirth and Eddie Kollross.
Frank was 35 now and hooked up with a 23-year-old named Ella Schneider. Ella knew the life. Her father had been a Southside bootlegger and may have been connected with Frank when the frog farm went wet. Ella got pregnant in the summer of 1932. She and Frank were married in December. Their child was born three months later.
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| Frank and Ella’s son, Dennis Frank Kinderman; March 23, 1933 - January 29, 2022. |
A few weeks before Dennis was born, Frank ruined his setup with Butch and Eddie. He got drunk and broke into their speakeasy on a Monday night in February 1933. Frank knew where they hid the money. He got $133 and was arrested two days later. He pleaded guilty and begged for mercy, saying his family was dependent upon him. There had to be some raised eyebrows in the courtroom when the judge said he would take “the previous good record of Kinderman” into account. Frank was let go with four years probation and a promise to stop drinking.
That, of course, was a promise Frank could not keep. On the Sunday afternoon of April 23, he was out with his older brother John and a bootlegger named Ralph Metko; a cousin to Frank’s ex-wife, Clara. They were drinking and decided to go fishing off a barge moored on the Fox River in front of the Cook & Brown Lime Company.
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| Cook & Brown on the north shore of the Fox River between the Main and Jackson street bridges. |
Something happened on that barge that was never explained. There were conflicting reports. One said Frank and his brother John were grappling when they fell into the river. Another claimed Frank was talking about “ending it all” and then clutched John before they tumbled off the barge.
In any case, they both went into the water. Ralph Metko used a pole to help John back onto the barge. Frank, who was said to be a superior swimmer, went down and never came up. John and Metko waited about five minutes and then called the cops. Police dragged the river and 30 minutes later came up with the body. Frank Kinderman, age 36, was pulled from the water onto the dock and pronounced dead.
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| Recent aerial view with a red oval marking the approximate location of Frank Kinderman’s drowning. |
The matter was brushed aside despite the peculiar death and the inconsistent stories.
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| Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, April 25, 1933. |
Was it murder? Suicide? Or was it just a drunken accident? Each seems plausible. By the spring of 1933, there was no place left for Frank. Prohibition was being repealed. The bootleggers were being made redundant by the return of legal liquor. Frank had always been a spectacular failure when trying to live a “normal” life. Despite his arrests, bootlegging was the only pursuit where he achieved anything like success. But those days were gone. Frank’s time had passed.
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| Riverside Cemetery. Frank Kinderman; November 21, 1896 - April 23, 1933. |
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