An emblem for automobiles

A Commercial Club committee, asked to settle the matter of a Bend emblem, reported in favour of the one the Emblem Club already had — and the club told the town to use it in any way it saw fit.

In June 1922 a committee was sitting on “the matter of a Bend emblem” — which means the question was open enough to need a committee. It reported in favour of the device the Emblem Club had adopted “several years ago”, and the club gave its permission for the emblem to be used “in any way it sees fit”.

That sentence is the closest thing this archive has to the moment the emblem stopped belonging to a club and started belonging to the town. It is not a transfer of ownership and it does not read like one. It reads like a club being asked and saying yes, without conditions.

The practical end of it was aluminium badges for cars, which the Bend Iron Works was “already prepared to manufacture”. Thirty-one years later the same foundry bought a full page in the paper’s Golden Jubilee edition, told its history in three photographs, and captioned the last one “1953: OUR FIRST TRADE NAME” — over a sign reading Bifco. Whether it ever cast a single emblem is not recorded.

The weekly edition repeated the report a week later.