Every town has a few fixtures that help identify the community.

Around Cullman, the green and white Buettner Brothers benches have been a familiar sight for more than 70 years.

The first of the benches were crafted in 1942 by a sign painter named Troy McPherson. He was a friend of the Buettner family and the benches were his idea. He came up with the design, then painted them by hand.

He produced about 10 to 15 benches each year until 1950, when Richard Buettner discovered that Silver’s Screen Printing in Cullman could turn out a more detailed design. “We made them here in the shop,” said Buettner recently. “We generally made them in the winter when other work slowed down. At that point we turned out about 100 of them a year.”

According to long-time Buettner employee, John Burgess, these days the shop turns out about 200 benches a year.

If these benches could talk, what tales they could tell!

They were here when Cullman was primarily a farming community where people came to do their ginning and pay their taxes. Farmers would have sat on them to visit while their cotton was ginned and their wives were shopping. They probably whittled a little, chewed tobacco and told lies. They were here on the courthouse porch when crowds of people came from far and wide to sing Sacred Harp music, and to attend the trials of the day. They sat silently while Richard Buettner and others of his generation went away to war in Europe and Korea, and later when Buettner left for college where he earned a degree as a forester. And even now they continue to turn up in the strangest places.

“One girl in our office spotted one in an antique shop in Tennessee,” recalled Mr. Buettner. “Former Mayor Green saw one while golfing in Destin, Florida, out on a golf course. I even came across one in a Columbus, Mississippi, parts store one time.”

A friend who lives in Florida was visiting relatives in Red Bay, Alabama, when much to his surprise he came across one there. “I’m seeing these benches all over the place!” he exclaimed.

Richard Buettner’s son John, who is a dentist in Montgomery, has a pair of them in his office. His daughter, Barbie, has on in her barn and another in her office.

The Buettner family has done a lot of advertising over the years, but the trademark green benches remain the most memorable of any form of publicity they have used. Sometimes they give them away, other times they sell them. Most businesses that have been in Cullman for any length of time have had a Buettner Bros. bench at one point in time.

“All of the nieces and nephews and grandchildren have one,” he said. “They are scattered everywhere, from South Carolina to Connecticut, to Tucson, Arizona.”

Richard Buettner has collected at least one of each edition of the benches, except one. Each time Ma Bell decided to add a new prefix, the signs had to be changed to reflect the new numbers. The elusive sign that will complete Mr. Buettner’s collection is one crafted in the 1950s, which lists the phone number as, RE7-4221, is the one he would like to find.

If you have seen one with this prefix, Mr. Buettner would love to know where it is located. He will work out the details if the owner wants to sell or donate the bench.