Eddie Bowles's Many Jobs

When Eddie Bowles was growing up, his father told him not to be a “one-armed man,” hoping that his son would learn many skills with which he could make a living; Eddie took that lesson to heart and would go on to have many different arms. 

Bowles dropped out of school in the fourth grade but eventually returned to a private school, saying he “had the brains” to understand and learn properly then. Later he would attend classes for auto mechanic work. 

Bowles played guitar in several different bands in Louisiana, but quickly found that it wasn’t enough to support himself and his wife. In his own words, “if you didn’t know how to do more than one job, you starved.” Bowles’ wide and varied knowledge led him to Cedar Falls, where he laid the city’s original asphalt roads. 

Once the roads were paved and his friends had paid for his wife to come to Iowa, Eddie took up a variety of other jobs. Perhaps most influential is his work as a railroad foreman, laying ties across the state of Iowa. This work with the wooden ties led him to the invention of his famous saw, a gas-powered machine that could cut around 1500 ties a day, or 175 per hour, according to him. Bowles was reportedly a barrel-maker at one time, too, continuing to work with wood. 

His longest period of recorded employment was in the foundry for John Deere, a job he held for 22 years. Not much is known about this period of his life, but Bowles certainly took great pride in his work here as much as he did anywhere. 

Beyond this he worked other odd jobs, including selling fruit, repairing cars, cooking, baking in a bakery, building in a bed factory, trimming trees, trimming asphalt and even gardening for late UNI professor M.B. Smith and his wife, Mary. 

—Kellen Schmidt