The Life and Times of the Backman Foundry: Part Two
A monument to a former world.
When we left off, the Backman Foundry was thriving in the post-war economic boom. It had over 50 employees, imported raw materials from around the country, and sent pipe fittings, castings, and other finished products across the county, and even, to some extent around the world. Although I had difficulties finding much detailed information for the first installment of this two-part series, I subsequently stumbled upon a very useful newspaper database that helped me make more sense of the entire trajectory of the Backman Foundry, and the kind of life it represented.
Looking through these old papers is an exercise in remembering—in seeing a different world, a different time. In this, there are moments of obvious beauty: idyllic celebrations and descriptions of innocent issues, baseball leagues sponsored by local businesses, notices of local families spending a week or two in Idaho or Washington, or of their out-of-state relations spending weeks with them, bowling tournaments (perhaps Robert Putnam’s utopia?), and wedding announcements. But there are also darker hints: minstrel shows, suicides, even murders. Life is perpetually stunning in its wide spectrum of events and issues, no matter the time period. However, one thing seems objectively different. One’s little corner of the world had a much stronger gravitational pull then. The local newspaper is a testament to that, something mostly gone, or struggling to survive, at this point.
Although we left off in 1965, we’re going to rewind a few decades to the mid-1940s—as I want to introduce a new voice to this story: D. Robert Carter, an 82 year-old local historian who grew up in Provo near the Backman Foundry. Mr. Carter obtained his bachelor’s degree in history, and master’s degree in Western American History, both from BYU, and taught at Orem-area junior high schools for 30 years. Upon retiring, he devoted himself to a second career as a local historian. He has written several books about the Provo area, including Founding Fort Utah and From Fort to Village.
He was kind enough to chat with me over the phone about the Backman Foundry and his experiences growing up in mid-century Provo. The following is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation.
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Adam Stevenson: Do you have any memories that relate to the Backman Foundry?
D. Robert Carter: I don’t recall too much detailed information but in the 50s they brought Provo a whale that had been preserved, in, I don’t know what, formaldehyde, and you could pay money to see “Winnie the Whale.” It smelled a lot like some of the steam and cinder smell that came from Backman Foundry. So whenever we got a whiff of Backman Foundry we called it Winnie the Whale smell. It was really quiet on the west end [near his childhood home and the Backman Foundry], because it wasn’t on the way to anywhere. You get past the railroad tracks to the south and the west and it was farm country.
Adam: What was your neighborhood like in southwest Provo growing up?
Robert: I grew up close to Franklin School, in an old adobe house that was built about 1880... about a two story house. That impressed me. It was the tallest house around. A lot of the neighbors were older, although there were some young people. It was during WWII, that was what brought our family to Provo. It was a mostly working class neighborhood, although there were a few professionals around. Our neighbor to the north was a teacher, another neighbor worked himself up to buying a car dealership. A lot of the older people I found quite interesting. Just down the street was A. Will Jones. He was the unofficial Provo historian. He had a yard that went back quite a ways, maybe a double yard. He raised eggplants and flowers that he sold for Memorial Day. He was basically retired when I came along.
One of the things I really miss about growing up in Provo, is the neighborhood grocery stores. One was on the block I grew up on, the other was the next block up. Going there was a little like going to a bar, and they would talk to you almost any time of day. The owner would buy you a Coca-Cola, they would boast about having the coldest cooler in town. The drinks sat right in the water. He would take the cap off the drink and take a couple of swigs and then put it in the corner. He would nurse a drink all day long. Then Albertson’s came in, and Allen’s. They were the first big sized grocery stores that came in. They came in and cut out the legs from under him.
Adam: What did you do for fun?
Robert: One of the big amusements that my mother and her friends enjoyed, she’d drive the old 48 Nash down and sit on Center Street and watch people walk by.
My mother usually knew my whereabouts, but the block was like your own little kingdom. You could roam around on your block about as much as you wanted to. If you went farther than that it had to be arranged. Golly there were about fifteen or sixteen kids on the block. Many of them had moved in because of the Geneva Steel plant. We played “run, sheepie run” and “kick the can” and “hide and seek” at night. Being one of the youngsters, that was a lot of fun.
As I got older, my territory expanded, and we played basketball out in the street about a block and a half west of our house. The basketball was fixed to a tree, and I got a lot of sprained ankles coming down on small pebbles and rocks. Across the street, the Franklin School was pea gravel, they had a softball/baseball diamond and basketball court that had been converted from a tennis court. Summers were just long and drawn out. Just the lazy hazy days of summer, where you looked for things to do to avoid yard-work.
Adam: What people do you remember?
Robert: There was a guy who sat on a platform, on Center Street, with wheels on the bottom and sold pencils to people. I always assumed that he lost his legs in WWI. He had the pencils in his hat, and you would drop your nickel in it. I think everyone pretty much had a home, but his was likely not a grand one. There was a WWI veteran, Mr. Sowards, who lived a block from me, on the east side of the street, who had been wounded. He had a big loom, and you would take the rags over to them, and he would make you a braided rug. There was a guy who lived close who had been gassed during the war, and he would be home on the weekends, as he worked in Price in the mines, but he would kind of signal things to you with his hands, that was the only way he could talk. We had some interesting vets in our area.
During WWII, most of the older boys in the neighborhood were gone. I don’t know how I was lucky enough to get it, but a little while ago I got a calendar put out by the Second Ward in the 40s, and they kept track of where each boy was and his furloughs.
When those boys came back they were our heroes. The lady who lived down the street near 6th West and 6th South recounted a moving experience once. Her brother was in the army, being shipped out, and was traveling through Provo on the train, and they knew what time the train was coming through, so they stood out in front of the house, and the train came by slowly. She saw her brother for the last time on that train.
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Hopefully this interview places us a bit more firmly in mid-century Provo, the setting for our case study in time and change in Utah—the Backman Foundry. It seems the place was more parochial, more tightly knit-together, a place on the edge of growing placelessness perhaps.
From information gleaned from newspaper advertisements, articles, and the occasional obituary it appears that the Backman Foundry continued operation through WWII although a few of the Backman brothers headed off to war. In the few years leading up to the war, the Backman Foundry, in participation with the national defense program and Central Utah Vocational School, trained 10 WPA-employed men at a time in foundry work under the supervision of Elmer Backman.
Upon the war’s end, nearly 1,600 Utah County veterans returned home and started looking for peaceable work. In a 1946 edition of The Daily Herald, I found a wonderful ad imploring local businesses to employ veterans. “A friendly pat on the back, a handshake— ‘It’s good to see you home’ all sounded fine to the veteran returning home—but now every Utah County employer should examine his own staff of employees and see if he can make a job for a veteran.” I can almost imagine a Walter Cronkite-like voice reading this over the crackle of radio static.
Reading through the local papers is strangely nostalgic, vicarious nostalgia one might call it. Wistful for parts of a past I never knew. Through the decades you pass new milestones and events in this little foundry’s life. In 1955 it was the only foundry in the Intermountain West to produce ductile iron (a cast iron that can be bent)...In 1960 we find it employing 30 men, mechanizing its processes, and taking orders from France...In 1971 the foundry is putting in electric furnaces at a cost of $200,000, devices expected to decrease air pollution...In 1973 Ira Watkins, a former employee of Backman Foundry and Army bugler in WWI, dies at 82...In 1980, foundry worker and Vietnam War veteran Danny Hendren tragically drowns in Utah Lake...In 1983, Lola Backman, the Backman Foundry secretary and Elmer Backman’s wife, dies at 62…In 1988, its 50th year of operation, the Backman Foundry has 55 employees and Elmer Backman is quoted as saying “the Backman Foundry can survive for another 50 years if someone wants to run it”...In 1995 the Foundry now employs 34 hourly workers (the first sign of slackening?) and Alan Backman says they’re “trying to maintain the family business spirit” that “Backman Foundry and Machine is in business to make a living, not a killing; basically, we just want to stay in business”...In 2004, Angus Backman dies— the last of the three brothers (Everett and Elmer being the other two) that helped get the foundry off the ground.
Though this may be a breathless, blurry, and kaleidoscopic image of a half-century of life for the Backman Foundry, I hope it conveys the idea that our foundry was inextricably tied up in the workings of Provo and surrounding Utah County—as it formed, and was formed by, the people around it. James Baldwin once wrote that “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” What is true about this larger story, I believe, is true about the countless smaller and more local stories that contribute to it—as our collective history is the story of these countless stories and worlds colliding, sometimes coalescing, and sometimes repelling each other.
Though the Backman Foundry may not have had some elaborate rationale for existing (something like ‘I make ductile iron, therefore I am’)—as Elmer Backman put it in 1988, when they started “it was just a matter of trying to survive, you really didn’t look into the future [during the Great Depression]”—it played its part quietly and with surprising longevity. There were tragedies and disappointment along the way, but it’s long life speaks to the ethos of these founding founders, and their era. Even now, seven years gone, it still seems to stand nobly on the side of the railroad track and 9th South.
One of the last public records of the Backman Foundry I could find online seems an ironically fitting one for our era, a time sometimes referred to as “late capitalism.” In 2012, two years before the Backman Foundry closed down, Alan Backman was deposed as part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) “post-trial findings of fact and conclusions of law” with regards to the their complaint that McWane (a ductile iron manufacturer) conspired with two other large companies to set and maintain prices for pipe fittings, and that McWane illegally maintained its monopoly power in US markets. It seems that Alan Backman was deposed so that the FTC might ascertain whether they were a competitor of McWane that was harmed through the alleged price fixing and illegal monopolizing. In the interview it comes out that the Backman Foundry now employs 32 people, a decline (though only a slight one) from 1995. It also comes out in the course of the deposition that the foundry is not a competitor to McWane, as Alan Backman says, they “can’t compete.” At this point, the foundry manufactures “customized fittings” and other “non-standard” fittings. When asked if they have a competitor, Alan Backman responds by saying he doesn’t think so, and that he believes they “are the only facility left in the United States that specializes and manufactures custom pipe fittings.” So here we are, at the end of an era—of businesses in it to “make a living, not a killing,” that have the poetically understated objective of “staying in business”—but by so doing, providing the dignity of work to those seen not only as employees, but friends and neighbors.
Former worlds don’t pass out of existence all at once. They go out of business one by one. Or pass away slowly, as each individual piece of them makes their destined passage through the local obituaries. The places and structures comprising these worlds become monuments to former times, and symbolize not only their specific function in time, but also the systems that gave them their being, and the ones that made it obsolete. Former worlds are all around us, their vestiges sometimes hanging on tenuously for a time, before slipping away entirely. In any case, it’s easy to say when the Backman Foundry closed down, but much harder to know when its world ceased to exist.
I grew up on the far west side of provo. The man you interviewed mention small grocery markets. I was lucky enough to see the last of the farm land and Clarks, the little grocery on center street and geneva road. You could look into that little shop and see if you can interview clark himself. Hes probably passed on but he might be out there still. Clark was a tough old man, but also a kind one.