10/21/2026
CIGAR MAKING – In this photograph furnished to the Commercial by Harley Noles, Mr. Noles is seated at the left at his cigar maker’s bench. To his right is Elmer Kern and to his right is Billy Huffman. The young man wearing the hat, who is stripping to***co, is unknown. The photograph was taken at Rohrer’s Cigar Store around 1912 or 1913 when Noles was 22.
From a newspaper clipping from the Three Rivers Commercial, January 25, 1973, shared by Renee (Kline) Loucks.
Former cigar maker remembers
Binders, Filler and Wrappers
By Mike Eliasohn
PART ONE
“What this country needs is a good nickel cigar,” Thomas Riley Marshall once observed.
Harley Noles, 422 Maple, Three Rivers, not only can remember nickel ci**rs, he used to make them.
Now 81, Noles started stripping to***co for Carl Klocke at age 15. Klocke’s cigar store was located at 35 North Main, present location of Construction Sales and Service.
Noles still remembers the names of many of the men who worked at Klocke’s when he worked there, including Chris Schwartz, who later started his own cigar making business and was the last actual maker of ci**rs in Three Rivers; and Earl Houghtaling, who eventually bought the business from Klocke when the latter started going blind.
Houghtaling, who became St. Joseph County Sheriff in the 1940’s, closed the store around 1928.
Another who worked at Klocke’s was Bert Lewis, who at age 91 us currently spending the winter in California and should be returning to Three Rivers in March or April, according to his son Warren Lewis.
Others Noles remembers at Klocke’s are Henry Walburn, Dick Dunkin, “Sport” Clark, and Charlie Mallo.
Many cigar makers, however, Noles explained, “were practically a hobo.”
They would come into a town, present their union card to the local cigar makers’ union secretary, work at a cigar store for a while and then move on to another town.
Cigar stores, incidentally, in their heyday also sold chewing and smoking to***co, ci******es, pipes, and candy, as well as manufacturing and selling ci**rs.
After about six to eight months at Klocke’s, Noles moved down the street to go to work for another cigar maker, Fred Rohrer, at 13 North Main.
Rohrer offered him a better job including the opportunity to learn the cigar making trade. By age 18, Noles was a card-carrying member of the cigar makers’ union.
Noles, incidentally, was married in 1911, at age 20.
Along came World War I in 1917 and Noles went to Kalamazoo for his Army physical. He had had scarlet fever, however, and as a result only weighed 92 pounds at the time.
Too light for military service, the military authorities advised him to get a job in the defense industry so Noles left Rohrer’s and went to work in the machine shop at Fairbanks-Morse in Three Rivers.
After the war ended, he went back to Rohrer’s, there no longer being a need for war material, Fairbanks-Morse no longer had a need for as many employees.
This time Noles stayed at Rohrer’s until 1927 when he left to open a gas station on South Main. Why did he get out of the cigar making business? “Whenever I could get a better job, I quit,” was his reply.
When World War II and gasoline rationing started, however, there wasn’t much gasoline left to sell so Noles went to work for Armstrong Machine Works in their machine shop and retired from there when he reached age 65 in 1956.
