SOFT WATER AND SWEET MUSIC: MUNICIPAL BAND CLARINETIST JOHN BRASWELL RETIRES AFTER 30 YEARS

John Braswell is a gentle, slyly humorous man who grew up during the 1920s watching his grandfather mold metal in his blacksmith shop. He tried college but didn't like it. What he did like was making gadgets.

"I just had a knack for it," he said.

Braswell owns six patents for a process that softens hard water and designed his own water pistol 10 years before one appeared in toy stores. He also has had a longtime avocation as a clarinetist who has the distinction of having played in the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band for 30 years and, in much younger days, at the St. Louis strip club Eve's Red Dragon for a few weeks.

Braswell got in when water softening was just getting started as a business. In 1952, he developed and patented a system of ion exchange. Then he started working on automating the system, and he received five more patents. The 17-year patents are close to expiring, but the technology is still current. Braswell Water Quality Systems are still being manufactured in Jackson, Mo., and sold across the country. His brother, Earl, now runs the business.

These days, the Braswell system does more business in the rest of the United States than locally. The system is designed to be used on big commercial projects as well as residentially.

Braswell, 84, recently retired from the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band. He stopped playing not because his fingers don't work anymore but because it's too difficult for him to walk up the stairs from the band practice room to the stage where it performs.

"My legs won't take it anymore," he says.

He has arthritis and diabetes and undergoes kidney dialysis.

As hard as water gets

Braswell grew up in the Lead Belt, where the water is as hard as water gets. "Heaters would be so limed up they would sound like machine guns," he said. He went into business with his brothers Earl and Charlie in 1947.

After moving to Cape Girdeau in 1962, he tried getting a franchise for one of the existing water softening companies but either didn't like their personnel or their equipment. He decided to develop his own system. His wife, Nelda, ran his office.

For many years, Braswell operated a water softening business in Cape Girardeau called Sani-Soft Water Service. Both of his brothers were in the business as well, Earl in Sikeston, Mo., and Charlie in Flat River, Mo.

He says he and Nelda met when she picked him up hitchhiking. It wasn't quite that way. She was driving to Flat River Junior College every day, and he was walking to high school along the same route, so someone who knew them both arranged for her to give him a ride. But he likes the hitchhiking version of the story better.

After they married, they lived with Nelda's parents for a while. Braswell was always in the basement trying to rig up a water softener.

"I think the thing exploded," he said.

"He didn't make a good impression," she says.

Water pistol designer

He now has many awards from water softening associations. One of the things he's proudest of is his schematic drawing for a water pistol. He submitted the idea to the Milton Bradley toy company. Three years later he received a letter from the company saying the idea was good but didn't fit into their plans. Braswell didn't have the money to have the tooling done himself.

"Ten years later somebody brought me one," he said.

Dan Braswell, one of his sons, had the schematic drawing framed for his father.

Braswell's mother borrowed $25 on an insurance policy to buy his first clarinet. He wanted to play so he could be in the school band and get in the games free. This was during the Great Depression when a nickel to get in a sporting event was hard to find.

Braswell quit playing the clarinet at Eve's Red Dragon once his bride-to-be found out it was a strip club. He didn't mind. "After I had been there a couple weeks I found out the girls weren't girls," he said.

Playing the clarinet has been something Braswell did on the side for the camaraderie. He played in a polka band and in the Shrine Club band in addition to the Muny Band. From 1970 to 1980, he performed in the orchestra for the Notre Dame High School musicals. He and the late John Wiseman founded the Cape Shrine Band, which disbanded after Wiseman died.

The Braswells celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary Sunday.

He thanks Nelda for everything. "I've had a good life," he said. "None of this would have happened if I wouldn't have got picked up on the highway."