My Neighbor the Inventor 🩵

By Gail Moore Woltkamp

Back in my beloved old neighborhood, our next door neighbor was an inventor. Lewis James had several patents and a couple cool products to his name, most notably, the James Dishwasher.

Mr. James, with son Duane, were granted several joint patents throughout their careers. Their family business, the James Manufacturing Company, was in operation from the mid-1930s through the late 1950s in my hometown of Independence, Kansas.

The James Dishwasher was one of the modern miracles of its time and if you were lucky you had one in your home. Since the dishwasher was not fully integrated into most American households until the mid to late 1960s, and even well into the 1970s, families really ranked in the 50s and early 60s if they had a “James.”

One of the first models that characterized the look of the modern dishwasher, the “James” was a stand-alone with glass top enabling you to see the wonderment of automatic dishwashing right before your eyes.

Traditional advertisements for the James Dishwasher often appeared in “LIFE Magazine” in the mid-1950s, right during the time my dad and Mr. James became acquainted…

On Sunday afternoons, my dad, who was one of our hometown barbers, and Mr. James would sit in lawn chairs in the side-yard between our two homes, against the backdrop of my parent’s middle class 1950s white picket fence. My dad spoke fondly of these times in his life, recalling conversations about the stock market, the latest trends in the barber business and of course, Mr. James’s most recent inventions.

Although Mr. James passed away before I was old enough to remember him, his wife, Mrs. Faye James, who was a friend of my grandmother’s, became part of some of my earliest childhood memories.

My grandma stayed with me during the day and Mrs. James would stop over now and then for a cup of coffee and visit. Once in a while they would catch up while hanging sheets on the shared clothesline between our two homes, just like a scene out of the “Flintstones.”

I will always cherish the era of my early childhood. My parents were married many years before I was born. Stories of their young married lives with no kids throughout the decade of the fifties and early sixties, always appealed to me.

I merely caught the tail-end of that classic period in American History where families were excited about the first suburb and new modern appliances. Most of my youth was spent in the mixed-bag decade of the seventies which seemed to bring a more chaotic approach to how we treated our surroundings and lived our lives.

The James home has had many residents since my childhood years. I don’t remember, exactly, when Mrs. James moved away. Suddenly she was no longer living next door and seven nuns had taken up residence. Many of our Sisters of Mercy worked at the local Mercy Hospital, which was situated caddy-corner to the West across the street from my house.

For me, this felt like a sign of the times. By then, I was in my last year of junior high school. The James Manufacturing Company had long since closed its doors, while the economy in our small Kansas town rode the changing tide of our country’s financial condition.

I have always felt a sense of pride and maybe a bit of luck that I got to spend the first eighteen years of my life in the same home and neighborhood. For most of my adult life I have lived more than three hours away in the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area with a few moves under my belt. Happily, I continued to visit and enjoy my hometown of Independence, Kansas for many decades after I left.

My dad passed away in 2004 and in 2014, Mom and I sold our longtime home in the “old neighborhood.” After sixty years of my family’s ownership, it was time for new neighbors to create new memories, new inventions…new Sunday afternoon conversations…about the signs of the times. 🩵