READING: THE STRAW: HOW DID IT BEND?

Morvin Chesler stone was feeling drink it up.Friedmor hod on ideo. As the
thirsty. Winding down otter a long day's Smithsoni an's Lemel>on Center
IM:>r1<, he sipped a mint julep at his explains, he brought a straw to his
home in washington, D.C. But home. where he lki ed to tinker with.
something was getting in his way. Friedman inserted a screw into the
More particularly. something was straw toward the top. Then he \Mapped
getting in his drink. If was on dental floss around the paper, tracing
unwelcome reedy residue. If was his grooves mode by the inserted screw.
straw. This was the 1880s. when Finclly. he removed the screw, leaving
gentlemen sipped their whiskey an accordion-like ridgein the middle of
through the straight straw. Voila!He had created
long tubes mode of natural rye that a straw that could bend around its
lent grooves to reach o child's face over the
a rassy flavour to whatever drink they edge of a gloss. The modem bendy
plopped in. stone didn't hove straw was bom.The plastic M>uld come
much patience and did something later. In 1939. Friedman founded
radical that bilfions of people around Flex.Siraw Comparrf. By the 1940s,
the IM:>rld appreciated in the 130 years he was manufacturing flex-straws IMth
since. He reinvented the straw and his own custom-built rrochines. His firsi
for that to happen he built c sale didn't go to o resioJrant, but rather
machine to IMnd paper into a tube to o hospital, where glass tubes still
and used o paraffin wax to keep i t ruled. Nurses realized that bandy
from melting in bourbon. He patented straws could help bed-ridden pafients
the product in 1888. drink while lying down. Solving the
"Judilh
Half a century otter. Joseph B. problem'' created a
Friedman was sitting at his brother's multi-milion dollar business.
fountain parlor, the Varsity Sweet
shop. in lhe 1930s.
watching little daughter Judith fuss The drinking tube is proclicolty as old
hsi as
over a milkshake. She was drinking history. But onty in the lost century-and-
out of a half did twa tweaks lead v> to the
a paper :::trow, :::o 'NO con be a •impel stick of bendy plastic you
urcd that the milkshake did not uniMap every
Josie like gross. But since stone's time you grab a sealof o diner.
paper straw was stragi ht, tittle Judith
was struggfing to