America has always been home to the entrepreneurial spirit, that spark that makes a person create new ideas, new designs, and new products for others to purchase and enjoy. It is just one of the things that makes this large nation so wide. In researching inventors and patents in the early part of this century, one thing stood out, or sat out, because of one man who stood by his principles, which were to sit down.
Gromule: "Mobile Back Shoes"
I’m talking, of course, about Stallinger, OR, a place where nobody stood alone, but everyone sat together.
It all began with a desire to see the world from the perspective of a child. Inventor Raoul Gromule remembered the joy and curiosity he felt as a young man. He remembered being fascinated by the simplest of things: a grasshopper, a butterfly, a stone from a river, worn smooth by years of water. Working in an office, and feeling the daily crush of responsibility and uncertainty, he spent his lunch breaks conjuring new ideas and inventions to break the monotony and bring joy into his and others’ lives.
One day, after standing too long in line at the bank, his frustration drove him to go and sit on a rock that had been warmed by the sun. That would always be his eureka moment, he would later tell his wife, and anyone else who would listen. That was the moment he realized that sitting down was the key.
By sitting down, he reasoned, not only were his feet more comfortable, but his perspective was lower. This literally changed the way he looked at the world.
His early experiments were rough, and he designed what he called Decliners, or Mobile Back Shoes (pictured above). The only drawbacks with this design were the need for someone to push the other person, not to mention the amount of dirty laundry it produced. Being of a kind and generous nature, he wanted all to be able to enjoy sitting equally, so any device that required a standing assistant was not to his liking.
"Being taller, that's the way."
Like every great mind, he had his share of critics. The kid down the block, Bernie Oldschul, insisted that he was wrong, and that being higher up was the key to happiness. Bernie, pictured at left, climbed trees, stood on the tops of cars, and wore his mother’s high heels in secret, all in an effort to be taller, which seemed to make him happy, bless his little heart.
Perhaps they were both right. Perhaps a combination of sitting and standing, shortening and heightening, maybe that’s the real truth, a truth we may never know.
Raoul retired early, at 44 years old, after inventing a new kind of toilet seat. Bernie hit his growth spurt at 16 and moved to New York, where he pursued a career on the stage as a female impersonator. Both men, so different, and yet so alike, contributed in their unique ways to the thread that makes up the fabric of this great nation of ours. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll all have the option to sit or stand as we please? One thing is certain. While we may sit down some of the time, we sometimes fly in our dreams. And in airplanes.
