I am amazed and mystified by the world in which we live.  On a daily basis, I’ll tell you.  One never knows what big-dang-deal is going to come around.

So.  Today is….. in fact…… a very big day for me… as you might imagine.  Yes indeed.  On this date, in 1930, a guy named Richard did something pretty spectacular.  Richard Gurley Drew invented Scotch Tape.    I LOVE Scotch Tape.  It is…. by far….. my Go-To Adhesive.  I like this stuff way more than Duck Tape, Super Glue…. or even flour and water.  I think it is superior… in that….. it is stealthy.

Yet. What’s the grand fuss about this invention?  Well… …. simply enough….. it didn’t exist before Mr. Drew came along. In fact…. it makes me wonder how folks got along before 1930.  Honest to goodness.

Richard Gurley Drew was born on June 22, 1899 , in Minneapolis.  He grew up in that cold, cold state.  Long winters give you time to think, I guess.  And.  He was inventive guy is whole life.

As a kid, he put the peanut butter and jelly on the outside of the sandwich, instead of inside.  Not his best invention, but as you can see… he was really thinking outside the breadbox as a child.  He liked the way things felt when they stuck to his hands.  Hence, the transposed and inverted sandwich.

So.  He grew up to be an inventor.  He worked for a couple of biggies….. Johnson & Johnson… and also 3M.  It was at 3M where he got his sticky-inventions start.

It happens that when Drew joined 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1920, it was a very modest manufacturer of sandpaper.   Fine.  Medium.  Rough.

While testing their new Wet-or-dry sandpaper at auto shops….  Drew was intrigued to learn about the two-tone auto paint-jobs  that were becoming so popular in the Roaring Twenties…. on cars.  These jobs were difficult to manage….. you know.  That age old problem of keeping that clean straight line at the border between the two colors.

In response, after two years of work in 3M’s labs, Drew invented the first masking tape (1922).  Yowza.    Now the first runs of this tape didn’t work out that great.  In fact…  it fell off the cars and the frustrated auto painters.   They snarled at Drew, “By God Man.  Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to shove it!”  (By “Scotch,” he meant “parsimonious”.)

The nickname would end up “sticking”……  both to Drew’s improved masking tape, and to his 1930 invention, Scotch Brand cellulose tape.

It was because of his tape-inventiveness, that 3M could continue to flourish through the Great Depression.

I looked him up in census records.  Found him in 1940 up in Minnesota.  Looks like he married a nice gal named Corna.  They had a boy Donald in 1939.  And what inventor household would be complete, without a maid named Rosa Schwegel, also born in Minnesota.

Drew’s occupation is listed as Superintendent of Tape.

I like that.
In fact…. I think I am going to change my occupation title to Superintendent of  Tape.

You see…. tape has a way of bringing things together.
It is a good feeling…… when things come together.
And…. that’s my story…. and I’m sticking to it.

“We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.” – Dalai Lama