Jack Petrovic, 54, gardener for Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Avenue, Maplewood; and Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust Street, St. Louis.
FAMILY • Single with longtime (27 years) girlfriend, Penny Stephens, who works in information technology. No children, no pets. Petrovic is the seventh of eight children born to the late Lorraine and Martin Petrovic. Lorraine was a homemaker; Martin was a tool-and-die maker. The family lived in Affton; Petrovic and Stephens now own that house. Petrovic's siblings from eldest to youngest are LaVerne Murdick, Sunset Hills; Jim Petrovic, Jefferson County; Bill Petrovic, Affton; Mary Markowski, Jefferson County; Frank Petrovic, Jefferson County; Sue Spiedale, Sacramento, Calif.; and Jean Siudzinsky, Jefferson County. Jack has 17 nieces and nephews and nine great-nieces and nephews.
EDUCATION • South County Technical School, 1975; St. Louis Community College at Meramec, Associate of Arts degree in Communication Arts and Spanish, 1995. He also studied microbiology at the community college campus at Forest Park.
When did you become a gardener for Schlafly?
This is my fourth season.
What did you do before that?
I was a printer for 20 years. I did offset lithography when it was all done by hand. It was a real craft. I worked for more than 30 printing companies during my career and each time I moved to a new job, I moved up. I went through analog and digital printing and then one day I realized it wasn't the job I loved anymore. It had become all computerized and there wasn't much craft left. This was 1996 and I was 38 or 39 and I gave two weeks' notice that I was leaving.
Did you have another job?
No, I had no idea what I would do.
Is that when you decided to become a gardener?
No, I decided I wanted to brew beer. I had applied for years to work at Anheuser-Busch, but I didn't know anybody there so I couldn't get through the door. I fell in love with the notion of making beer when I was a kid and saw beer masters in TV commercials.
Did Schlafly give you a job?
Yes, but not as a brewer. They gave me a dirty job, cleaning kegs and fermenters. It's the hardest I ever worked in my life. I did that for four years and I took a microbiology class so I could be prepared to go to brewing school. I did everything. I literally would unload the grain from the truck, mill it, brew it, filter it, keg it and load it back on the truck as beer. But I realized at some point that I would never catch up because they had people a lot younger than me coming in with brewing backgrounds.
So what did you do?
I went and got my real estate license and sold for Coldwell Banker for 10 years.
Did you quit Schlafly?
In 2002 I moved into full-time realty work and I quit. Then they called me back and I would work a couple of days a week for them. I left again in 2004, but the real estate market got slow and Dan Kopman, the co-owner of Schlafly, asked me to come work on the bottling line. I did that and then they laid me off. They told me I was going to be their first gardener but then someone with a degree from the University of California in organic gardening came through the door and they dropped me like a hot rock.
How did you finally get the garden manager's job?
After I quit again, I got an invitation to the company holiday party. All employees and former employees are invited. I went because it's free food and drink, and I got to see all the guys and smoke cigars. A week later Dan called and asked me if I wanted to be the gardener. The first gardener was gone by then. At first I told him I would be an assistant because I didn't want to do all that work. Eventually I said OK, and I came to work that March with the idea that I could leave if I didn't like it.
Did you like it?
Not at first. Many a time I stuck my pitchfork in the ground and started for the car. The soil was not ready for a garden. I dug beds for three or four years, and I would dig down only to find layers of concrete slabs.
Did you have a gardening background?
I gardened all my life. I have about a quarter-acre garden at my house that was my father's and my grandfather's before him. I grew up working in that garden.
How big is the Schlafly garden?
It's about one-fifth of an acre.
How much do you plant and how much does the garden produce?
I plant a couple of dozen things and last year we produced almost 4,000 pounds of produce for the kitchen.
Do you like it better than you would like brewing beer?
I love it. It's changed my whole life. I love being outdoors.
What do you do when you're not gardening?
I'm a compulsive backgammon player. I play online — I play thousands of games a year.
Anything else?
I read incessantly. Mostly metaphysical and gardening books.
What was the last best book you read?
"Power vs. Force," by David Hawkins.
Your car?
A 1995 Ford Taurus. It's green and you know it because it has the "Compost Congress" bumper sticker on it that I came up with some years ago.
