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Here's an anomaly. Los Gatos, in the heart of high-tech country, is home to a product that could be called the lowest of low tech. It's the Macabee Gopher Trap, and it's produced by the oldest business in Los Gatos. The patent was applied for in 1900, and the product has changed little throughout the past century.
"We don't change," says manager Ron Fink. "We can't change. We don't want to get any bigger." Moving to an industrial location in Campbell is not in the cards. The company produces 3,000 traps a week, roughly 150,000 per year. In the 1920s that number was 4,000 weekly, but it's scaled back since then.
To the untrained eye, the patent and today's product look identical. But today's wire is slightly thicker, of better quality and is pointed out. And the trap has been scaled down slightly and painted green. A Macabee green, one might say.
The patent holder of this amazingly durable product is one Zephyr A. Macabee. And his house and his business still stand at 110 Loma Alta Ave.
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Contributed photograph
Zephyr A. Macabee (circa 1880) designed the Macabee Gopher Trap before the turn of the 20th century.
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A barber by trade, Macabee built his own house in 1894. He was convinced the center of town would branch out that way, via San Jose Avenue (now Los Gatos Boulevard), instead of its steady progression down Santa Cruz Avenue. That may have been his only prediction that didn't come true.
The business operated out of the house and still does. The product was being sold for several years before the patent was acquired, so it's difficult to know just how to date the company's centennial.
The Macabee family moved out of the house in 1924, but the business continued there. Since it is in the heart of a residential neighborhood, the town granted it a nonconforming license. And the Macabee operation is very sensitive to its neighbors regarding noise and parking.
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A family member sits on the front porch of the Macabee family home in this photo, circa 1900.
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Double-parked trucks are whisked out of the way speedily, and deliveries of wire are made as infrequently as possible—twice a year. Transporting a truckload of traps to wholesalers occurs only once every three weeks.
When Macabee began operations, its product was aligned with the economic force of the area—agriculture. Los Gatos was composed of scores of orchards and gardens. And gophers are a scourge to farmers, notorious for destroying gardens. Anyone who could build a better gopher trap was a savior of sorts.
In more recent years, the late John Baggerly kept the gophers under control at Los Gatos ballfields by using Macabee gopher traps, so the company's local significance continues even into the 21st century.
The 1920s were the heyday of the Macabee company, what with increased demand and the family moving out to make room for an expanded operation. The traps were made in the cellar (where they are still assembled), and the whole family was part of the process.
Zephyr Macabee had four children—two boys and two girls. After his death, daughter Lucile Evans ran the business and son Raymond continued as part of the operation—for 75 years.
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Photograph by George Sakkestad
The great-granddaughter of Zephyr A. Macabee, Joyce Macabee Ridgely, stands in front of the historic house at 110 Loma Alta Ave. that has been home to the Macabee Gopher Trap Company for more than 100 years.
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Today Raymond's daughter Joyce Macabee Ridgely is the family member most active in the operation. She's the secretary and bookkeeper, handling most of the paperwork from her home in La Selva Beach. She comes to the business weekly. Another grandchild, Dick Hobbie, is president of the board, so he is also quite active. The shareholders are the six surviving grandchildren.
Fink has been the company manager since 1963, when Lucile handed over the keys to the truck to him. Her husband, Lanty, also part of the company, had just died and she was ready to step down.
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Contributed photograph
A young Ron Fink puts together an order in this photo (circa 1970s). Fink has been the manager of the Macabee Gopher Trap Company since 1963.
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At the time Fink was a student at San José State University and had worked at the company since he was a student at Los Gatos High School. The Macabee and the Fink families were close, and Ron's mother, Alice, had worked for the company for years before her son came on board. Fink's father was an apricot orchardist who had 33 acres off Shannon Road.
Today Ron Fink and his wife, Linda, live on the property where he grew up. The entire acreage had been sold, and by the time he was able to buy back a portion, that three acres cost as much as the original 33.
Linda is a medical technician at Good Samaritan Hospital, and their children are Shannon Alicia, 26, of Campbell, who works for the Girl Scouts; and Scott, 20, a senior at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, who also works at a computer store.
Besides Fink and Ridgely, there are seven other employees at Macabee, all native Cambodians. "When I first came to work here, I couldn't believe there was a business here," says Tap Meng Phou about the residential neighborhood. He explains the process of putting the trap together throughout the 20 workstations—twisting, cutting, shaping, smoothing the wire parts.
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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Ol Pen, a Macabee Gopher Trap Company employee, works on the assembly
of gopher traps.
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One piece of equipment has been in use since 1912. Fink often does machinery repair, along with everything else. The company's management style, like the product itself, is low-key.
"There's no hierarchy," Fink says. "I suggest ways to do things, not command. Praise goes a long way.
"They work on their own schedule. If I can hear laughter and know the traps are being built, I'm happy. At the end of the day I thank them and they thank me. They are very hard workers, very dependable."
"We make sure trucks are here no more than five minutes," he adds, explaining that workers pitch in to load or unload the truck. Specially made boxes come from Western Box, a Los Angeles company. The boxes, too, have remained very much the same throughout the years.
The only thing that changes is the lettering: "Successfully used for more than 90 years." That number is changed every decade. The boxes hold 24 traps, packed in two rows of 12, very similar to the shoeboxes that Zephyr Macabee used originally to package his product. No plastic wrap for Macabee.
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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Macabee Gopher Trap Company employee Tap Meng Phou runs the heavy machinery that bends the wire to make the gopher traps.
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Today the traps are available locally through Ace Hardware and True Value and retail between $7 and $8. It's a price that makes Fink wince. "But there's nothing we can do about it." It's up to the wholesaler and retailer.
Directions come with each trap. "Buy Macabee. The most effective way to eliminate the destructive pocket gopher," the literature advises. Environmental groups like Pro Paws stand behind Macabee: Trapping is the most humane, most environmentally sound way to eliminate the pest.
"We're not selling snake oil here," as Fink puts it. "We won't cut corners [buy lesser quality wire]." The company limits its sales circle to stay within its original confines. Sales are largest in California, with healthy figures for Washington, Oregon and Arizona, and smaller numbers in Utah and Texas.
All this selling is done without any advertising—none since 1924. Word of mouth and a top-of-the-line product does it all, says the Macabee major domo. Of course it doesn't hurt that Sunset Magazine produces a piece on the company every 10 years and has since the '60s.
"Their gardeners use our traps." And thus does Macabee maintain the major part of the market, even if it has scaled back. "Some of our customers have been with us 70 years," Fink adds.
Family legend has it that Zephyr Macabee would load up his wagon with traps and make the local rounds, talking to area farmers. When he couldn't make a sale, he'd leave a Macabee trap behind on a fence post so the dubious could try it out. Eventually those doubters became his best salesmen.
Macabee convincingly corresponded with the federal government. When the government started buying Macabee traps, Zephyr could say to farmers, "If the government uses it, it must be the best."
Those were the days when government actually helped people, Fink mutters.
As the business grew, its sales went international, peaking during the teens and '20s.
There's a gopher trap maker in Southern California that is a direct clone of the Macabee, probably produced by studying one of the Macabee company's free directions, Fink feels. But he won't initiate a lawsuit. It's not his or the company's style.
If you build a better gopher trap, the world will beat a path to your door is the Macabee philosophy.
The company is no stranger to celebrities. Neta Southern, the Los Gatan who taught Amelia Earhart how to fly, was an employee. She helped produce traps in the days when parts were farmed out to housewives to begin the process before the final assembly at 110 Loma Alta Ave.
Hugh O'Brian (TV's Wyatt Earp) is a satisfied customer, using dozens of traps on his acreage overlooking the San Bernardino Mountains, where he runs a ranch for wayward youngsters.
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Contributed photograph
The Macabee Gopher Trap (photo circa 1900) is good, but four gophers at once?
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And Jack Benny devoted a radio broadcast in 1952 to agonizing over whether or not to buy a gopher trap as a gift for announcer Don Wilson. The name Macabee was never mentioned, but it's abundantly clear to Fink and the other Macabeeites that Benny was talking about the venerable company in Los Gatos that built a better trap.
"We're frozen in time, but we're making something people need," Ron Fink says. "Some things don't need to change."
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Photograph by George Sakkestad