Old Ironing Boards, Pink Houses, John Mellencamp, and Learjets?

I know I've mentioned that I am really into company histories. I don't know why, but I find them very interesting. Naturally I've read a bit about the Singer company. There's a lot written about that, probably because SIMANCO is a HUGE international company. But, I never expected to find any interesting stories about ironing boards. I never really gave them much thought, until I realized just what a major role they play in sewing.

My old ironing board came from an auction lot of household goods I bought back when I did a lot of auction buying (i.e. back when eBay was more like Craig's List or FB Marketplace). I rarely used that ironing board until very recently when I started sewing, so I'm really not sure why we kept it all these years. I guess because some of my favorite shirts get so wrinkly that even I wouldn't wear them without ironing them first. At any rate, my old board is sort of unstable and seems to be an odd size which regular covers don't fit. There's a little metal iron rack on the end of the board that is sort of handy for setting a hot iron on, but I'd have to say that overall I don't care much for my old ironing board. It works, but it always seems like it's about to fall over.

Last weekend I hit a local thrift store in search an oversized shirt and hoodie to practice my alteration skills. When I found an ironing board tucked away in the back of the store, I jumped on the opportunity. Got it for $4.50, with three covers! That's not the history I was planning to tell, though.

My "new" board  has a sticker like this on the bottom:

I'm Guessing There Was Never a "Seymour Man" Version

My sticker is a torn away where it says "Lady," but the rest of it is in very good condition. So, I could easily make out the part that says "Seymour Tool & Engineering Co. Inc., Seymour, Indiana." And, that definitely caught my eye. I grew up not far from Seymour, IN and I'd never heard of Seymour Tool & Engineering. I had to look it up. I found it, and I found a little story.

Seymour Man - John Mellencamp

Seymour, Indiana is also the home of John Mellencamp (aka Johnny Cougar). I'd estimate he was around 12 years old when my ironing board was being made in a factory right down the road from his house. I'm not sure which street John grew up on, but Seymour is a small town - I'm sure young John could have ridden his bike to the ironing board factory very easily. (That's not such a weird observation if you understand the attraction of a loading dock to a 12-year old boy on a bicycle.) So, you're wondering what the heck this has to do with anything. Well, nothing, really. I just find it sort of interesting that my ironing board, which I bought at a thrift store in a totally different state, came from the same town as one of my favorite "singer-songwriters." (As far as I know, he never wrote any songs about sewing machines, Singer or otherwise.) I used to aspire to play drums in a band for a living and as part of that effort I actually met Mellencamp's main drummer (Kenny Aronoff) at a drum clinic in Indianapolis. I also sat in with Roadmaster, the band that Mellencamp's bass player (Toby Meyer) left to become Mellencamp's bass player. I met him one night hanging out with Roadmaster at The Vogue. That's about as close as I ever got to being a rock star.

It's a Small World. Ironing Boards and Rock Stars Come from Some Unlikely Places.

Back to ironing boards. As unlikely as it sounds (to me, anyway), Seymour Tool & Engineering was an ironing board plant. To me, the name sounds more like the kind of place that would make race car engines but ironing boards is all they've ever made. It was two plants, actually. They started out in 1942 and were renamed in 1966, which means my "new" ironing board was made sometime between 1942 and 1966. For no particular reason, I'm guessing that my board was made closer to 1966 (about the time John Mellencamp started playing guitar). It's metal, with tubular metal legs. But, according to a lengthy Encyclopedia.com post about ironing boards (!), all ironing boards made in the U.S. since 1940 have been made of metal. So, I guess mine could actually be from as far back as 1942.

Maybe I Should Paint it Pink

In 1968, Seymour Tool was bought by Lear Siegler (LSI), which is kind of funny because LSI actually is the sort of company Seymour Tool and Engineering sounds like it would be. LSI was created in 1962 when The Siegler Corporation merged with the Lear Avionics company - the company which originally manufactured Learjets. The Siegler Corporation itself had been created about ten years earlier when Siegler Heating Co. combined with Siegler Enamel Range Co. So, Lady Seymour ironing boards was sort of the adopted child of parents who made furnaces, cooking stoves, and business jets. (I worked at LSI as a mechanic for several years after they became a major defense contractor.)

The name of the little ironing board company was changed once again to something a little more intuitive, Seymour Housewares Corp. in 1993, and in 1998 they were bought up by Home Products International. HPI declared bankruptcy in 2006, but they seem to have recovered. They have an active website and are, apparently, America's only domestic ironing board manufacturer. At least one of their Seymour plants is still operating. Sort of a "Chestnut Street Incident," you might say.

Ain't that America. . .  Little pink ironing boards for you and me.