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Note: * Obituary *
CARL T. 'DUMP' WOODWARD, 65, of Owensboro, died Monday, Dec 21, 1980. He was born in Daviess County and was a retired tobacco calculator. Survivors include a daughter, Mrs. Norma Renteria, Barstow, Calif.; four grandchildren; a brother, W.T. 'Bill' Woodward, Owensboro; four sisters, Mrs. Helen Keelin, Mrs. Dorothy Jean Smith, Mrs. Margaret Maglinger and Mrs. Ida Coffman, all of Owensboro. James H. Davis Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
(The Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, KY, December 23, 1980)
'Grand-daddy was not too tall. He told me that is how he got the name Dump. When he was young, his friends would call him that because he was 'dumpy' (short).'
(per granddaughter Becky)
* Newspaper *
HE USED HIS BRAIN WHEN IT COUNTED
(story is about Carl's brother Bill, but refers to Carl also)
How fast can you multiply 186 by 0.57? If you do it with paper and pencil, it will probably take about 20 seconds. With a pocket calculator, you can whittle the time to about 5 seconds. But Bill Woodward of Owensboro can multiply those digits in his head faster than he can he write them down. Woodward learned quick multiplication during his career as a 'mental calculator.' Mental calculators were math whizzes who worked in the tobacco markets until they were replaced a few years ago by computers. Mental calculators walked up and down the rows of tobacco, following an auctioneer and a ticket man, who set the price and wrote it on a ticket. The mental calculator took the ticket price, usually a two-digit number in Woodward's day, and multiplied it by the number of pounds, usually a three0digit number. Auctioneers led a rapid pace through the baskets of tobacco, so the mental calculators didn't have time to scratch out figures on paper. They figured quickly in their heads. Woodward, 72, hasn't forgotten the skill, which he demonstrated in the living room of his West 12th Street home recently. 'You just hold the gifures in your head. The more you do it, the faster you get,' Woodward explained as he practiced on a few calculations. A slight man with a bass voice, Woodward can hardly contain his enthusiasm for figuring out long rows of multiplication, filling several notebook pages in a few minutes. Woodward started working the auctions in 1929 and followed the crop's seasonal swing from Florida, to Georgia and North Carolina and finally to Owensboro. Compared with the laborers who worked for 1? cents an hour on the warehouse floor, Woodward made big money. I started my first job at $75 a week. That was back when bread was 10 cents a loaf and hot dogs were a nickel.' Woodward said. Woodward liked his job, traveling through the South, earning good money and enjoying job security during the Depression. He liked using tobacco as much as he liked working in it, and he carried a Camel filterless cigarette with him when he worked. But he doesn't blame cigarettes for the bronchitis that kept him from working odd jobs at the Big Independent warehouse this fall. 'Yeah, I smoked cigarettes. I'm not going to lay it (bronchitis) on tobacco. No telling how I got it,' Woodward said. Today his cigarettes have been replaced by a cigar, which is unlit most of the time. In 1937 the Big Independent was the first Owensboro warehouse to bring mental calbulators to the tobacco market. Owensboro's other warehouses were using the system by 1950. John Calhoun, owner of the Big Independent, can remember Woodward and his brother, C.T. 'Dump' Woodward, who also was a calculator, in their heyday. 'They were really good. They were so accurate that we paid off our sales by their calculations. As fast as you could write a ticket those boys were right on your tail. They could calculate as fast as you could walk,' Calhoun said. Calhoun said the Woodwards were sometimes comical to watch. When their figures agreed, they got along fine. But if there was an error, an argument would sometimes erupt. 'Bill was easygoing and old Dump was just the other way around. Dump had a temper. And if they got through and their figures didn't agree, they would sometimes get in a fight. I've seen them throw tobacco at each other or throw a book at each other.' Calhoun said. But such antics weren't common, because intense concentration was needed to be accurate when multiplying long strings of numbers all day. 'You couldn't learn to figure overnight. And it took a lot of concentration,' said Joe Bill Arnold, who also worked as a mental calculator. Calculating became so natural to some of the old-timers that they multiplied for fun. 'I've seen them instead of doodling run a line of numbers while they ar talking - just playing with them.' said Calhoun, whose father also knew the skill. Woodward's job has been replaced by a computer, but he doesn't hold a grudge against automation. 'Those computers do an awfully good job. You've got to keep going forward. But back there when they didn't have the computers, I was awfully good too,' he said.
(Owensboro newspaper, early 1980's)
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