Algoma Dowel Co. and Aluminum Christmas Trees

Thoughts of artificial Christmas trees never entered the mind of at least 99% of Algoma’s 1950 population. The rest of northeast Wisconsin was not far behind. Fragrant snow covered evergreen Christmas trees came from a farm woods or from the vendor on a corner lot in town. Christmas trees were generally put up on Christmas Eve, though some might have beaten the rush on the 23^rd. Trees were real and trees were green. Some raised an eyebrow at the flocked trees here and there, but they started out as real green trees.

Ten years later things were changing. By then there were those in Algoma whose income, in part, depended on artificial aluminum Christmas trees. They worked at Algoma Dowel Co., the factory that stood at 80 S. Church Street on the southeast corner of Michigan and Church Streets. The Dowel Co. was founded by commercial fisherman Melvin Keller years before as a box company that manufactured and repaired fish boxes for Algoma’s booming commercial fishing industry. It became known as the Box and Dowel Co. and then Algoma Dowel Co.

By the time Maynard Feld bought the company in 1959, boxes were nearly a thing of the past and dowels were going strong. Bed slats were a side product. Birch bolts bought from Warren Halstad  – though hard rock maple, elm and other woods were used – were sawn into lumber in the sawmill behind the plant. Wood strips separated the sawn birch which was dried in the company’s huge kiln. From the drying, the lumber went to the planer where Feld or his brother LeRoy fed it so fast that it took two tailers to keep up. From there the boards went to the saws where Butch or Stanley Haegele, Jerry Vandertie, or perhaps the part timers on the night crew, would saw them to the appropriate width. Then it was on to the rod machines run by Frank Weisner, Joe Schmidt and Wally Engelbert. The long dowel rods were sawn into specific sizes by Aggie Langer, Elsie Schmidt, Viola Serrahn and Mary Kustka. Some dowels were tumbled to ensure smoothness and some were chamfered.

Spiral grooved glue pins were used in the manufacture of fine furniture and in sash and door products. Algoma Net Co. used longer dowels – 36” or longer – in the manufacture of hammocks. Used as spreaders, the supporting lines from the hammock went to the spreader and then converged to the ring, or rings, which attached the hammock itself to the stand. Dowels were used as barrel spigots, in looms, chairs and hundreds of other places where nobody recognized them. Then came the artificial Christmas trees.

Jerry Waak of Aluminum Specialty Co., known as AlSpecCo to those at the Dowel Co., was married to the cousin of the Feld brothers. It was AlSpecCo that introduced aluminum Christmas trees to a mass market and thus to Algoma. How AlSpecCo, maker of house wares and toys, got into the aluminum Christmas tree business is a story in itself. More about that can be found in past issues of Voyageur, in the website of Wisconsin Historical at www.whs.org or by simply Googling.

And what happened at Algoma Dowel Co.?  After the long dowels came from the rod machine, they were cut to specific lengths.  An employee laid the shorter sections in a cradle and, when held firmly with both hands, the ends were simultaneously drilled by a machine custom developed by Maynard and Leroy and constructed by the Beitling brothers. Steel pins inserted into the drilled holes held the sections together to form the tree trunk. The tree trunk sections enabled efficient packaging when the time came. Algoma Dowel’s work was finished and the tree sections were shipped to Manitowoc.

For a time the wooden trunks were covered with aluminum foil. Later they were painted. Holes were drilled for 100 or so aluminum branches, each of which had its own sleeve in the packing box. Trees were originally silver, but eventually there were some gold and even pink trees. Possibly there were other colors. Living rooms looked somewhat commercial when the revolving stands came about. That was kicked up a notch with revolving lights that worked something like a strobe light.

Algoma and Manitowoc enjoyed the economic heydays of the aluminum Christmas trees, which faded from popularity by the early 1970s. The trees that seemed so garish fit a 1960s culture. Inexpensive in their day, the trees now are highly prized collectibles. When in the late 1970s teachers could no longer have real Christmas trees in their classrooms, some brought the aluminum trees. Primary kids oohed and aahed over the trees which they thought were so “beauty-tee-ful,” which just goes to show beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Beautiful or not, the aluminum Christmas trees are fun to look at. For those who worked at Algoma Dowel Co. during that time, Christmas came on payday. Fifty years later, the trees bring memories of people in a time that was. Nobody knew then that aluminum Christmas trees were on the cusp of the consumerism that we know today, a half century later.

Note: The tree is from a picture taken by the blogger while the Box and Dowel Co. is from a section of a postcard in the blogger's collection.