Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Charles Elmore Burford

Just picked up yesterday's Dallas paper and saw the quarter page obituary for Charles Elmore Burford.  I once had two boy students named Burford - great students and pretty doggone good athletes in Manor and very nice trombone players - and their mom was an excellent band parent person.  I miss those types of folks.
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The obit said that he was an inventor.   Charles, or Chuck, or Charley, invented the twist ties for bagged bread.  The obit goes into the stone a bit more than I.  Now, that was a good invention.  Before that we used a little piece of plastic and, frankly, I cannot remember what we used before that.
. I see he was 81 and a Baptist.  Wait, the article calls him  "CB" not Chas.  He was born in Lindsay, Okla and became a farmer.  In 1945 his father Earl invented an automatic hay baler, a wire-tying device.  So in 1961 CB made some adjustments and Whammo we have the polypropylene bag ties. Makes you tear up somewhat.

Also, he invented the machine that put sesame seeds on McDonald's hamburger buns.  I would have missed that one too.  How do these guys think up these things?  In the 1960s, ole Burford got the original patent on the 12-can refrigerator pack carton.  He was ahead of his time cause refrigs were too small at the time.   
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My favorite though was that he was working on spray aluminum that you could spray on a potato before it was baked.  I'm not sure that product made it to the shelves.
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Moving on:  the last part of the obit states that he made 18 safaris to Africa, 2 trips to Australia  and hunted in South America.  A quote:  "If you've only been to Africa once, you were too old when you went the first time," Burford said in 1997.  Apparently he was into providing good habitat for critters - nothing mentioned about cockroaches - they are critters too.  I bet he was quite a guy.
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This was not meant to be a soul searching, drama filled blug today.  It is what it is.  Interesting to me.

m3

2 comments:

  1. Dad, that was interesting. How can I put that in a sermon?

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  2. print it out - put it in a file named"?" and the day will come. You may remember that I have told you to start making files of stuff.

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