Butler, Pennsylvania - Home of the Jeep
Butler Pennsylvania XI
No one boasts about great things
our town has brought about
like the little car
designed here
in wartime.
We tend to eschew the lamplight
or are too busy
getting on with duties
to brag about tasks performed
or those on drawing boards.
Who, until now, has thought
of basking in the glory of
that one achievement?
One would think a museum
befitting, or annual meetings
for lovers of our car
the world over.
No, we allow our molds,
be they cars or people,
to leave our unwalled city
with what they have received-
their unique fashioning-
to unfold where they will and how;
such is our endowment,
painful though it be,
to the nation, to the world.
In the Square
on Main Street's summit
a small plaque stands
beside the great stone naming those
for whom we weep
that reads, modestly,
Butler - Home of the Jeep.
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The first Jeep was designed at the American Bantam Car Company in Butler by Karl Probst. All in all, the company manufactured 2,675 of its version of the car. But the demand was so great and the Butler plant so small that the War Department authorized other larger companies in Detroit to produce their nearly identical version of the Jeep to fill the urgent military need. The Butler company went out of business in 1956.
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from:
The Butler Pennsylvania Poems
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