Merriam Webster’s collegiate dictionary defines the word “bender” as a spree or “an unrestrained indulgence in or outburst of activity esp: binge, carousel.” Thus, we might say, “Wow, Joe went on a heck of a bender that lasted all week.”
To many people in this community, however, the word has a different and far more nostalgic meaning.
A “bender” to those folks was the innovative machine located in the woodenware division of the Oval Wood Dish (O.W.D) in a department known as the “Benders.”
Developed in 1939, after almost five years of costly experimentation, the machine with its dies and plugs produced a wooden spoon that, unlike other flat wooden spoons on the market, had a deep, graceful bowl shape. The finished product was labeled the “Rite Spoon” and soon captured a large market share of the far-reaching wooden spoon business.
The chief designer of the “bender,” as I recall, was a man named Arthur Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins was a well-liked, highly regarded figure who became well-known here during his frequent visits to the “Dish” and this community.
Most people called him “Hoppe,” and it was widely rumored that he was also the developer of a product called Hoppes, a gun-cleaning solvent that could be found on the shelves of most gun owners in this country. This was at a time when ammunition contained potassium chlorate primers, which turns to potassium chloride when fired, a substance not unlike table salt and highly corrosive to gun barrels.
It should be mentioned that the invention and development of the “bender” was most timely for the O.W.D.
Like most industries in this country, the company was caught up in the desperate days of the 1930s economic depression and was in a struggle for survival.
Year 1940, however, saw an escalated demand for wood products due to the outbreak of World War II in Europe and resulted in its manufacturing and woods operations with employment reaching a high of 539 people. The following year, however, saw this nation drawn into the nightmare of global conflict with the sneak attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor. It was, of course, a singular moment in modern American history, a penetration of our borders by a hostile force. Almost a thousand men and women from this community joined the armed forces to fight the enemy. This severely depleted the available work force, and local women quickly rose to the challenge and became the backbone of production at the O.W.D. No one realized it at the time, but they would become a microcosm of the nation at large in which the old rules of gender and expectation changed radically. It would be the beginning of women in traditionally men’s jobs, a liberation that continues strong today and, as the parent of seven daughters, this writer can only highly applaud that change.
High school students also helped fill the worker shortage and with the cooperation of schools authorities any student willing to work was allowed to be released from classes in early afternoon to work an abbreviated four-hour shift. Along with many of my classmates, I worked in almost every department of that vast plant (the largest plant ever erected in Franklin County).
From driving the “mercuries,” towing dozens of trailers laden with packaged products through the corridors that linked the production facilities to the giant warehouse, which could hold two railroad cars standing at floor level to permit direct loading (a typical thoughtful design among many other found throughout the plant by designer John Graham). To the lumber yards where I piled lumber alongside an incredibly strong Al Becker (on my first day of work Al secretly nailed my lunch box to the bench in the warming house located mid-way on the tramway, much to the delight of fellow workers as I tried in vain to pick it up at the sound of the company whistle signaling the end of that day’s shift).
My favorite place to work was probably the “benders.” It was a busy, cheerful place geared to high rates of production. The doctrine of the “scientific management,” the system of which work is disassembled into its component parts and the tasks studied for maximum efficiency, was entering the industrial scene at this time. The theory was that there had to be “one best way” to execute any job. I remember being fascinated watching an officer of the company, stopwatch in hand, timing the ladies on the assembly belt where the spoon “culls” were removed and the final product packaged in a quest to make their motions less tiring, easier, and more efficient (a skeptic once told me: “Hell, you don’t need a damn stopwatch. Just watch the laziest person on the line”).
Overhead, above the “bender” room, were the “rattlers,” a large cage-like apparatus that made rattling noises as it tossed the spoons contained inside back and forth and every which way, effectively polishing them to a high luster. From the rattlers the spoons with a rich woodsy birch smell dropped into bins where they then were loaded manually (my job) into hoppers that fed the assembly belt. My foreman in that department was a lovely lady named Mrs. Beulah Delair, whose great smile and gentle manner (if you did your job) made the “benders” one of the more pleasant departments in the O.W.D. factory. Many of those high school students employed at the “Dish” would enter the military before the war’s end in 1945. They would return to a prosperous nation and begin to rebuild their lives. Some would go back to work, others would attend college (the G.I. Bill allowed one month’s free tuition for every month served plus a modest stipend. I think $50 per month, which, if you didn’t try to keep up with the “preppies,” was almost adequate). That bill would become part of the greatest investments in higher education that any society ever made and was a brilliant, enduring commitment to the nation’s future. For their part, the women who kept the O.W.D. wheels turning during the war’s labor shortage now found their gender at new heights. Dual incomes are now the norm and provide an increased standard of living in this community. An evolution still in progress, but given our choices in this year’s presidential election, it many not be long before a woman will be our next President.
You go, girl!