Books by
Michael Barr
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Buttons
were once a big business in Stonewall,
Texas. And if you think buttons aren't important, just try keeping
your britches up without one.
Buttons have been around for a long time. You might even say the button
business began in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve's fondness
for fruit led to the garment industry.
Buttons were ornamental until some genius figured out a way to make
them functional. Button makers used seashells, bone, paper mache and
wood to make buttons until plastics took over the whole world in the
20th century.
In 1945 B. B. Bohls and his wife Lydia Lindig Bohls founded Capitol
Plastic Art Company in Austin.
B. B. could have gone into business with the guys who made Glastron
Boats, but he chose to make buttons instead.
The machines to mass produce plastic buttons didn't exist in 1945
so B. B. Bohls bought a metal lathe and built them himself. As a boy
in Taylor, Texas, B. B. was fascinated with machinery. While other
guys wasted time with bicycles and baseball bats, B. B. played with
lathes, drill presses and grinders. |
 |
Capitol Plastic
Art Company
Photo courtesy Stonewall Heritage Society |
In 1946 B.
B. and Lydia moved their business to Lydia's hometown of Stonewall
into a building located at the intersection of Loring Street and what
is today Ranch Road 1. The place was originally the Kallenberg Store.
After the store closed the building served as a movie house until
the projector broke
B. B. and Lydia's company was the only button factory on Texas. You
might say Stonewall
had the Texas button business all buttoned up.
Capitol
Plastic Art Company made buttons from a transparent thermoplastic
called Lucite. It came to the factory in 6 by 6 sheets. An employee
first cut the sheets into small squares and then fed the squares into
a machine that shaped and rounded them to the proper size. A tumbler
polished the buttons for 72 hours. Another machine drilled the holes;
then it was back into the tumbler for another 72 hours. It took a
week to make a button.
The first buttons were clear. The only color added was inside the
holes, applied by hand with a toothpick dipped in colored liquid plastic.
The color of the hole reflected throughout the button.
After a year or so the company made different colored button by boiling
them in dye. By 1953 the company could buy sheets of Lucite in different
colors.
In the beginning B. B. Bohls set the machines for specific cutting
jobs on weekends and spent the week on the road as a traveling salesman.
He sold buttons under the trade name Color Gem Buttons. At its height
the company sold buttons in 8 states - from Texas to Florida.
The
button business was seasonal - September to March. After March 1,
the company made dominoes. B. B. and Lydia guaranteed their dominoes
for life. If an overly enthusiastic domino player broke one, he got
a new set at no charge.
After Lyndon Johnson became president the company made and sold LBJ
souvenirs. Lydia and Lyndon went to grade school together.
The button factory was open to visitors. School children made field
trips to the button factory.
In addition to buttons, the Capitol Plastic Art Company of Stonewall
made a complete line of sewing notions. In the 1960s the company opened
a retail fabric store in Fredericksburg
and one in Kerrville.
There was a shipping office and warehouse in San
Antonio.
B. B. Bohls died in 1966. Lydia ran the button factory until the business
closed in 1977.
Even
today it's hard to imagine life without buttons. All of us over the
age of 5 spend a part of each day buttoning this or unbuttoning that.
Buttons are a big part of our daily lives.
There is even a phobia called Koumpounophobia - fear of buttons. I'm
not making this up. Steve Jobs had it. That's why he wore turtlenecks.
He even feared buttons on a keyboard. That's why Apple Computers have
touch screens.
Good thing I don't have Koumpounophobia. How would I keep my pants
up? |
© Michael
Barr
"Hindsights"
September 15, 2020 Column
Sources:
"The Stonewall Heritage Society Newsletter", vol 23, no.
4, October 2017.
Otto Lindig, 100 Years: Historical Recollections of Gillespie County,
pp. 71-72. |
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