KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - 2020 is the year the term “dumpster fire” was brought into everyday speech to describe the general absurdity of our pandemic lives.
Urban Dictionary defines a dumpster fire as “a colossal mess, often created by incompetence.” Murder hornets, “Tiger King” and COVID-19 were the kindling to this year’s flames.
But you can’t have a dumpster fire without a dumpster, and the world wouldn’t even have dumpsters without the innovation of one Knoxville man.
George Dempster changed how folks think about trash by inventing the Dempster Dumpster, the first-of-its-kind waste disposal container now routinely used to move trash from container to truck.
“It was brand new,” James Dempster, George’s nephew, said upon the company’s closing in 1987. “For years, if you could sell the concept, you had an order because we were the only ones that had a patent on it.
James Dempster was the last member of the Dempster family to run the company.
INVENTING THE DUMPSTER
George Dempster’s 1964 obituary described him as one of Knoxville’s “most controversial figures” who, in addition to hitting a “financial jack-pot” with his most famous invention, also served as mayor.
The Henley Bridge, sewer disposal system and certain city parks all owe thanks to George Dempster, the obituary said.
George Dempster was nearly 50 years old in 1935 when he came up with the Dempster Dumpster concept while working alongside his brothers for their very own construction company. The company built highways, railroads and water supply dams across the southeast, according to writings from Dempster in the Knox News archives.
The dumpster was designed to be used in rock quarries and in road construction. It wasn’t until later on that the Dempster brothers realized it also could be used for trash.
Construction competitors took notice of the receptacles, even asking George Dempster to create similar devices for their jobs, according to the writings.
“I then patented the idea and shortly thereafter, ‘the tail wagged the dog’ and we quit the construction business entirely,” he wrote.
The dumpster was used by the U.S. military during World War II, which turned to Dempster Systems for Navy pontoon boats. Soon, dumpsters became part of people’s everyday lives.
“Every manufactured product of any consequence somewhere in America uses Dempster-Dumpster Equipment,” he wrote around the age of 70.
Eventually, the patent on the dumpster expired, resulting in competition.
George Dempster filed 75 patents during his career, including licenses for other trash-management creations. There was the Dempster Digster hydraulic shovel, among others, but nothing was more widely utilized than the dumpster.
FROM HOBO TO ‘BENEVOLENT MILLIONAIRE’
It wasn’t George Dempster’s innovative mind that made him controversial but, rather, his spirit.
“Mr. Dempster as a teenager started out as a two-fisted hobo and a member of a railroad construction gang: he ended up as a benevolent millionaire industrialist,” his obituary read.
But his “aggressively belligerent characteristic” stuck with him after leaving the steam shovels in the Panama Canal, and he ended up in “almost constant controversies,” according to the obituary.
He became known as a man unwilling to budge, earning him his fair share of enemies upon entering politics. But more importantly, some would argue, he got things done.
George Dempster made sure the Henley Bridge was constructed, despite the critics, who he suggested could shoot him during a city council meeting. He once described an opponent as “the only man I know who can strut sitting down.”
Coining such phrases was part of this personality, as was speaking in “the most explosively colorful terms,” his obituary said.
But he also was known for being charitable and, in some cases, heroic. At 72 years old, George Dempster was dragged 50 feet after tackling the driver of a convertible driving wild on South 22nd Street.
Sitting in his office with a broken foot propped up in a cast, George Dempster said, “There’s nothing wrong with me that 25 years won’t cure.”
Dempster Systems closed in 1987 and stopped its Knoxville production. A sale, along with strikes and layoffs, led to the eventual shutdown.
“It hurts,” James Dempster said at the time. “You hate to see anything that’s been there for that long close.”
But the legacy of the dumpster lives on seemingly everywhere trash needs to be disposed of in large quantities - from major manufacturing plants to small apartment complexes.
‘IT’S AN UGLY MONSTER’
In 1961, a dumpster sat on the campus of Wake Forest University in North Carolina and was described by student newspaper the Old Gold and Black as a “rather disgusting” device causing a “serious sanitation problem.”
“It’s an unsightly monster,” the paper said. “It creates an offensive odor. It draws flies.”
Students responded by doing what they thought was best.
“Occasionally they set the dumpster on fire and gleefully watch the excitement when the fire truck comes roaring to the stie to extinguish the blaze,” according to the Old Gold and Black.
What will be the truck that extinguishes the dumpster fire known as 2020? Whatever it is, it can’t come fast enough.
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