John Ratzenberger's Made in America - Fallingwater; Cone Denim   View more episodes

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Aired at 08:30 AM on Thursday, Jul 08, 2010 (7/8/2010)      View all transcripts from this day

Transcript

00:00:00Wow.
00:00:01That's frank lloyd wright's signature, isn't it?
00:00:03That's his initials, that's for sure.
00:00:05Wow.one of his early works.
00:00:07One of his early pieces.
00:00:08I like the smoke coming out of the chimney, yeah.
00:00:11Probably was winter.
00:00:12That never got built.
00:00:14One day. one day.
00:00:15I better putthis back in here.
00:00:18Let's put that back.
00:00:19Man was a genius.
00:00:21Genius.
00:00:22Ratzenberger: Coming up on "made in america" -- we head to greensboro, north carolina, which, according to fashion designers around the world, isthe fashion capital ofthe world, thanks to cone denim.
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00:01:17Dr. scholl's.
00:01:17Pain relief isa step away.
00:04:25In the summer of 1969, I had a job driving a tractor at woodstock festival.
00:04:29It was a sea of denim. half a million people.
00:04:31At least 400,000 of them were wearing blue jeans.
00:04:34Afterwards, I asked a local farmer, " he says, "well, john, I don't think I've ever seen " OF ALL OF THE CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE 1960s, Few seem more remarkable than the acceptance of denim as a fashion statement.
00:04:52Ever since then, what miners, workmen, and, yes, farmhands used to wear for strength and durability is now seen on young and old alike, often even in business situations.
00:05:05Maybe more than any other item of clothing, americans developed an enduring emotional connection to their jeans, and, on average, own seven pairs of them.
00:05:15That's good news for cone denim, the world's largest denim manufacturer.
00:05:25Greensboro, north carolina, is considered the textile capital of the south, if not the whole country.
00:05:30And cone has been an important thread in the fabric of life here for more than a century.
00:05:36Back then, breaking in a pair of jeans or overalls could take months, and, unlike today, that was considered an advantage.
00:05:45tom McKenna is cone's president.
00:05:49You might look at this table and say, "wow, those products are really old.
00:05:52This must be denim that was made decades " and you'd be half right.
00:05:56One of the primary businesses here is to produce denims now that catch that heritage of the past.
00:06:02This one catches my eyebecause, back in the '60s, We used to dothis for real.
00:06:05You know, if you wore through, then you'd just get another piece of denim fromsomewhere else and sew it in.
00:06:11Absolutely.
00:06:12You wouldn't believe what our customers go through to make jeans look lived in and authentic.
00:06:16It starts with great, authentic denim, which is done no better place than here at white oak.
00:06:21The processes they go through, the amount of work that goes into producing these garments, and then processing them in a way to make them look like they did back in the '60s.
00:06:29Another waythey can do that is, when they wear the jeansbrand-new, go get a job.
00:06:33[ Laughs ] that's an interesting concept.
00:06:36..we used to work hard.
00:06:39I don't know what happened.
00:06:40The cone story begins with two brothers -- ceasar and moses cone -- and judging by their names, their parents had high hopes for them.
00:06:50The brothers worked for their dad, a wholesale grocer, and made frequent trips down south, where cotton fields galore supplied about 2/3 of america's crop.
00:07:00One day, the boys decided to capitalize on that and open what they called "proximity mills" for its nearness to the fields.
00:07:08Over the years, america's increasing industrialization meant more and more blue collar workers.
00:07:16Make that blue jean workers.
00:07:17The jeans' toughness and durability made them the fabric of choice for anyone doing hard, dirty jobs.
00:07:25Demand for the cones' product allowed the brothers to build what was purported to be the world's largest denim mill.
00:07:32Covering 30 acres,it was named "white oak" for the two-century-old tree on the grounds.
00:07:38The plant's weave room was large enough to cover four football fields.
00:07:41And that's not counting the 10 cotton warehouses.
00:07:45White oak even had its own power plant, the largest of its kind in the south.
00:07:51By the middle of the 20th century, the cones had opened four mills.
00:07:54But far beyond that,they'd created entire societies.
00:07:59When white oak was started in 1905, that supported and created social structures and created the medical and educational framework for all the workers at the plant.
00:08:14Like johnson-endicott up in new york?
00:08:17Very much so.
00:08:17So you provided not just a means of making a living, but, really, a life for the folks that worked here at white oak.
00:08:25And we like to believe that that spirit has remained.
00:08:27The mill villages are no longer, but a lot of the folks that actually work here grew up in those mill villages.
00:08:33In 1915, cone began supplying denim to acompany you may have heard of -- levi's.
00:08:40They also outfitted troops in both world wars, all the while meeting unceasing demand on the home front.
00:08:47Big smith.that's a good name, huh?
00:08:49Here's a great example. absolutely.
00:08:51 big smith, and you know, big smith's still around, if I'm not mistaken.
00:08:54But you can see some co-branding that was done early on.
00:08:57" gotcha.
00:09:01When we come back to cone denim, the warp meets the weft meets the dye, in surprising ways.
00:09:25things americans are the things we make.
00:09:29This has always been a nation of builders, craftsmen.
00:09:33Men and women for whom straight stitches and clean welds were matters of personal pride.
00:09:38They made the skyscrapers and the cotton gins.
00:09:42Colt revolvers, jeep 4 x 4's.
00:09:45These things make us who we are.
00:09:47As a people, we do well when we make good things and not so well when we don't.
00:09:53The good new is, this can be put right.
00:09:55We just have to do it.
00:09:58And so we did.
00:10:00♪♪ ♪♪
00:10:01this, our newest son, was imagined, drawn, carved,stamped, hewn and forged here in america.
00:10:08It is well madeand it is designed to work.
00:10:11This was once a country where people made things, beautiful things, and so it is again.
00:10:19The new jeep grand cherokee.
00:10:21♪♪ ♪♪
00:11:26Ratzenberger: Welcome back to cone denim, where four million pounds of cotton a week isn't enough to keep up with demand.
00:11:32White oak is, and always has been, a fully vertical manufacturing plant.
00:11:38From first step to last -- ..
00:11:42..
00:11:43..
00:11:45Finishing -- everything takes place here.
00:11:51And because the cotton comes from nearby fields, this is a remarkably contained operation.
00:11:57Cone goes through four and a half million pounds of cotton a week, which arrives in 5es that have already been tested and labeled for length, strength, and fiber diameter.
00:12:13First step is for a top feeder to pluck the top fibers from each bale in order to ensure consistent quality.
00:12:24The bales are then cleaned by a machine that opens, blends, and fluffs the fibers, extracting any remaining stubborn debris from a stubborn crop.
00:12:35Next stop for the cotton is a carding machine.
00:12:39It performs a final cleaning and aligns the fibers into a thin, weblike layer that is refined into a fine rope they call " six of which are combined by the drawing machine as a way of further blending the fibers.
00:12:56Brad johnson is plant manager.
00:12:59Inside of thisdrafting zone, there are three sets of rollers.
00:13:04Each one turnsprogressively faster, drawing the cotton fibers out, making the link as long as we can get it.
00:13:11Once we've completed this process, we'll havea can of sliver oto the roving process.
00:13:17But in order to get this thing to fly, you're going to need bigger propellers than that.
00:13:21The ropes of sliver are wound into drums.
00:13:25You can take the sliver, but if you pullon the sliver, you'll seeit just comes apart.
00:13:32What do you think?
00:13:33The sliver is drawn into what's called roving.
00:13:39It looks like thick yarn, but it won't be called yarn or have the strength of yarn until it completes the next step, called link ring spinning, which pulls and prods and prods and pulls the cotton into the proper thickness.
00:13:53Now comes winding.
00:13:55Irregularities in the yarn are spliced out, and the good stuff ends up on large bobbins, a.k.a. packages.
00:14:04[ Beeping ] 300 to 400 packages are placed on a creel for separating and condensing into a ball warp, which looks a lot like that bigball of yarn roadside attraction out on route 66 or somewhere.
00:14:19This is all prep for dying because you don't dye denim the way other kinds of cotton are dyed.
00:14:26That's cool.
00:14:26What gives denim that familiar denim look is indigo.
00:14:32What's interesting is that the dye apparently turns the fabric green.
00:14:37Not until it oxidizes in the air, after that first dip, does the denim show up as blue.
00:14:44Of course, denim isn't just any blue.
00:14:46It has to be just the right blue.
00:14:48That's where james white comes in.
00:14:51He works his magic on the dye boxes through which, at any given moment, 10 miles of yarn are running.
00:14:58Ratzenberger: Is it indigo?
00:15:00actually, each box of dye, you're getting 2% ofthe dye on the yarn, which, at the end result, it'll bea dark blue/indigo dye yarn.
00:15:09So, when you see a pair of jeans going down the street, do you ever say to your kids, "hey" -- oh, yeah, yeah, I'm very popular with my kids.
00:15:16You know, I can't go home and say I'm a doctor or a firemanor a police officer, so, you know,i tell my kids, "you know them jeanshannah montana wears?
00:15:25I had to process and help in making that " so I'm very popular with my daughter.
00:15:30The dark yarn will be laid lengthwise on the loom.
00:15:35This makes it the warp yarn as opposed to the weft yarn, which goes crosswise.
00:15:40The weaving process can be pretty rough, so for extra durability and strength, the warp yarn is treated with a special starch.
00:15:50Then the treated yarns are separated before being rolled on to warp beams and placed on the looms.
00:15:58At last, it's time for the weft.
00:16:00It's pushed through the warp from end to end.
00:16:03And warp and weft are woven at warp speed from weft to right.
00:16:11Behold the finished fabric, which, as a matter of fact, is just what inspector terry foust does.
00:16:17So your eyes -- you've trained your eyes to scan that as it's passing through?
00:16:21Mm-hmm, that's part of being trained.
00:16:22You'd be a good spotter from a helicopter flying over 'cause it goes over about the same speed.
00:16:28Look at that.
00:16:30Uh-huh.
00:16:30But the visual inspection isn't the final inspection.
00:16:35That comes from samples sent to the process control lab.
00:16:42Once they receivea passing grade, the fabric can be rolled and shipped to clothing manufacturersaround the globe.
00:16:50No doubt, levi strauss himself would be amazed at the world's appetite for denim.
00:16:57And so, for that matter, would ceasar and moses cone.
00:17:01Our journey continues next time " (Sandra Pinckney)IN THIS EPISODE OF "FOOD Finds," we celebrate california craftsmen, people who m in san francisco, we'll meet a baker ..
00:17:23Sourdough french bread.
00:17:26Then we visit a tiny chocolate factory where they still make it the old-fashioned way.
00:17:33And in sonoma county, we'll meet a farm family that turns out a whole line ofaward-winning specialty foods.
00:17:39All these stories are next as wehighlight california craftsmen " ♪♪♪♪♪♪
00:17:58.. I'm sandra pinckney.
00:18:02What makes some foods so special?
00:18:03Maybe it's because they're crafted by people who are nearly obsessed with making the highest- quality product they can.
00:18:10In this episode we're gonnavisit three different companies where craftsmanship has been the key to success.
00:18:16We're gonna start in san francisco, here at the boudin french bakery, which has been in business sincethe california gold rush.
00:18:24♪♪♪♪♪♪
00:18:36and on saturday mornings atthis fisherman's wharf bakery, it looks like the gold rush all over again.
00:18:42Crowds of locals and tourists line up for boudin's sourdough french bread made from a recipe that datesback to the bakery's founding in 1849.
00:18:52What we have rightnow is a baguette.
00:18:53You can have a baguettefor two dollars.
00:18:55(Sandra) BOUDIN FRENCH BAKERY CLAIMS ITS Founder, isadore boudin, actually invented sourdough french bread when he came to san francisco in 1849.
00:19:04Before long, the story goes, his bread became so popular that people were lined upoutside his bakery every morning and a san francisco tradition was born.
00:19:15I've been comin' here ever since I was a little kid, and it's great.
00:19:19(Sandra)TODAY BOUDIN FRENCH BAKERY HASGROWN To more than 40 locations, and they all bake their breads with exactly the same ingredients isadore boudin used from the very beginning.
00:19:30.. wake you up.
00:19:32Okay, so now I'm gonna put it in the mixer.
00:19:34(Sandra) THEY EVEN USE A STRAIN OF THE SAME Yeast boudin used so many years ago.
00:19:39It's so valuable, they call it their mother dough.
00:19:42That so-called mother dough is the starter that gives sourdough bread its distinctive flavor.
00:19:48And willie waclaw, who's the master baker at this boudin's location, knows the recipe by heart.
00:19:55For a batch of 350 pounds dough there is a mother dough, salt, flour, and the water, and I am going to mix for twelve minutes.
00:20:07(Sandra) IT SOUNDS AMAZINGLY SIMPLE, But how does this ancient recipe produce bread sophisticated enough to please the demanding palates OF 21st-CENTURY CUSTOMERS?
00:20:16Boudin french bakery believesa big part of its success comes from the pedigree of its mother dough.
00:20:22Our mother dough, our sponge, our bacteria, which leavens the bread and imparts the sour flavor, has been reproduced daily since 1849.
00:20:32(Sandra) MAYBE THEY OUGHTA CALL IT THE GREAT-GREAT-GREAT- Grandmother dough, but however old it is, it's the key to producing dough that rises naturally without any chemical additives.
00:20:44Most bakeries--white bread, french-- we use a baker's yeast.
00:20:48This is a naturally occurring yeast that we use.
00:20:51(Sandra)BUT THERE'S ANOTHER INGREDIENTTHAT'S Not listed in the recipe, the craftsmanship of master bakers like willie waclaw.
00:20:59(Willie) I'M DOING THIS FOR 36 YEARS.
00:21:05It's 36 years this month.
00:21:06My father, he told me that he needs somebody to learn how to make the bread, so I told him, "yeah, okay,i'm going to take " and I like it, and I'm doing it up till now.
00:21:17(Sandra) THIRTY-SIX YEARS OF BAKING SOURDOUGH French bread has made willie a culinary craftsman capable of turning out hundredsof loaves every day.
00:21:26(Willie)ON A BUSY DAY WE DO 1000 A DAY, This kind of bread.
00:21:31And we do another 500 long, 500 round, .. about 2500 a day total.
00:21:40(Sandra) THE PROCESS IS MORE AUTOMATED TODAY Than when willie started 36 years ago, but he's not sure he'd call that progress.
00:21:48When you do it by hand, you are a real baker.
00:21:54But when you do in the machines,you're just like a machinist, a production man.
00:22:00(Sandra)BUT WHEN YOU WATCH WILLIE WORKTHROUGH The bakery's big window, you can see he's a baker.
00:22:05In fact he's an artist who leaves his mark on every single loaf that goes into the oven.
00:22:11This is called scoring.
00:22:13(Willie) I'M SCORING THE BREAD SO THE BREAD...
00:22:17You don't score, the bread cracks on the side, so we got to give a cut on the top.
00:22:22(Sandra)OKAY, SO THERE IS A PRACTICALREASON For scoring the dough, so it won't blow up in the oven, but willie makes the most of this mundane task, scoring each loaf like a sculptor working his clay before it's fired.
00:22:35Only now are the loaves ready to go into the oven.
00:22:39So the bread is inside, and nowi'm gonna put 20 seconds steam and bake 'em for 25 minutes.
00:22:48(Sandra) THAT BLAST OF STEAM IS VITALLY IMPORTANT Because that's what turns thecrust of sourdough french bread a crunchy golden brown while the inside stays soft.
00:22:57And that is what has keptboudin's customers coming back for more than 150 years.
00:23:04Definitely has the best crust, and that's what you look for in good sourdough.
00:23:09It's so good.why's it good? why's it good?
00:23:11.. ha-ha. 'cause it's in san .. ha-ha.
00:23:15'Cause they're celebrating 150 years.
00:23:20(Sandra) ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR ITEMS AT Boudin's is a steaming bowl of clam chowder that's served in a hollowed-out sourdough loaf, just great for those foggy san francisco mornings.
00:23:31(Larry) I THINK IT'S TRULY THE ULTIMATE COMFORT Food.
00:23:34There's something about a loafof bread true ..
00:23:38Made by bakers that have dedicated their life to the practice of making bread.
00:23:43What could be simpler and taste better?
00:23:47(Sandra) EVEN THOUGH BOUDIN BAKERY'S BREADS Are popular with people all over the country, larry strain says the companyhas no plans to go national.
00:23:56And why not?
00:23:57Because boudin might have trouble delivering the same high-quality product its customers have come to expect.
00:24:05Next, we'll visit the san francisco home of premium chocolate makers, whose products truly are handcrafted.
00:24:44♪♪♪
00:24:44everyone wants inon the petperks super summer sale& sweepstakes.
00:24:46Use your petperks card ..
00:24:49...Plus you'll be automatically entered in our sweepstakes which will award hundreds of prizes.
00:24:54Petsmart.
00:24:56We love to see healthy, happy pets.
00:24:59Healthy choice is all about making great food, like these new lobster cheese ravioli.
00:25:03You sound like a spokesperson.
00:25:05I know, I do, don't i?
00:25:05You know they want me to be the spokesperson?
00:25:07How much would they pay you for this sort of thing?
00:25:09A boat load of cash.
00:25:10I think you should do it.
00:25:11..
00:25:12I don't.
00:28:21It sure doesn't look like much from the outside, but this is the san francisco home of a premium chocolate company whose very name is a mouthful.
00:28:30Welcome to scharffen berger chocolate company, which makes high-end chocolatebars you can munch on oks to use with their own recipes.
00:28:41Scharffen berger chocolate is so popular it's used by restaurants all over the bay area.

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