[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

ICY NORMAN:

It was mean. It was just terrible.

MARY MURPHY:

Were the people who first worked up in the mill from other areas? Mr. Haithcock thought that they had brought in a lot of people from New Jersey and Alabama to run some of the machines up there. And that's why a lot of the neighborhood was so rough.

ICY NORMAN:

I'll tell you, I don't know where they was from. I do know it was a lot of rough people. A lot of cussing and carrying on in the mill. But they finally got that all straightened out.

MARY MURPHY:

Was that mostly the men?

ICY NORMAN:

Just the men. Especially on pay day night, on the second shift. They get as drunk as, they didn't know what they was doing. They got that all straightened out. Over the years you hardly hear anybody say a cuss word up there. You never did see nobody come in there drunk on the job. They got out of their Little Chicago mess when the mills went expanding. Like I told Mr. Love one time, "A lot of times it is a lot and lot of yarn that is wasted." I says, "You're making waste. Which if people would just stop long enough and take time, they can run that yarn. You're losing a lot of yarn that could be made into good cloth." I reckon he told the boss man and they got to watching some of them. They'd go and check on them and see. It was terrible, awful that the waste them people made. They'd just tear off yards and yards of cloth. It was just a mess there for a while. They finally got the mill going and going straight. I reckon people went to getting concerned about their jobs, and all and I went to taking only a little interest in it. But as I said, a lot of people would go to the restroom and sit two and three hours and left their job standing. That's not right. I believe in doing your job and not laying down on it, not slacking back waiting on somebody else. Everybody who is in any kind of mill work, any kind of textile work, they give

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you a job and they expect you to do that job. They don't expect you to lay back and lay down and let it be in a mess when the next man come in on that job. I can always say that my job, when I left it, it was straightened out. The next one that come in on my job didn't have any problems. My trucks was filled up, my mills was creeled up. Of course, when we was skein winding, we had to run all of our yarn off and clean our swifts off and wipe up. But creeling, they had a thing that went around the mill and blowed the lint off. We didn't have to clean up. Maybe every two or three months we'd have to take all the yarn out, and as they'd say, "Wash the mill." We'd clean it with rags and alcohol. Then we'd creel it back up, thread it back up, start it again. I always left my job in good shape.

MARY MURPHY:

Was it very dusty in the mill?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah, it was pretty dusty in the cotton part. That creeling job was something on cotton until they put them fans that run around the track. That would blow the lint off of it. It was terrible until they put that up there. Out there in the cotton winding room, I don't know whether they ever did get anything. Now they did on the twisters, they had them blow things on the twisters that would run around the track. That kept the lint off of the yarn. But now the winding, they'd have to stop off about twice a day and clean up in the cotton winding room.

MARY MURPHY:

Did people have trouble breathing sometimes?

ICY NORMAN:

I don't know. I never did work in the cotton winding room. The only cone winding I done was on them little Universal winders. But I did work on the cotton creeling. Them fans kept it blowed. The lint, and it wasn't too linty. When the mill was stopped off and we was changing the mill or creeling a mill on it was pretty linty. But when we started it up them fans would start blowing. Then the lint would all blow off.

MARY MURPHY:

Do you ever remember any strikes up at the mill?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah.

MARY MURPHY:

When was that?

ICY NORMAN:

I believe it was in the latter part of '30 or maybe '31. They struck up there and I think they were out about two weeks. Then the old union would come to the mill and give out them old papers, wanted you to sign up. A lot of them did sign up. I never did sign up for it.

MARY MURPHY:

How come?

ICY NORMAN:

I don't know. I didn't understand all it was about. I didn't think it was a good thing to do, to be honest with you. So I never did sign up for it. But a lot of them up there did sign up for it. But they never did get the union. Three or four months they would be out there. Then they put that fence around the mill.

MARY MURPHY:

When was that that they put the fence up?

ICY NORMAN:

That there was along about '34 or '35.

They'd be out there at the gate with them old union papers wanting you to sign up. A lot of them in the Burlington Mill did sign up. And one time they thought that they really had the union, but they never did get it. But I never did mess with it.

MARY MURPHY:

Did people come around and talk to you about why you should join?

ICY NORMAN:

Yes. I'd tell them I wasn't interested in it and they'd go on and leave me alone. I didn't know whether it was good or bad so I didn't mess with it. Something I don't know nothing about I don't like to mess with. So I just never did mess with it.

MARY MURPHY:

When they went on strike, did everybody go out?

ICY NORMAN:

Yes, they had shooting. Up there at the Plaid Mill they shot

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out the windows and they done right much damage up there. I know they'd all gang up up here, but I don't think there was ever any shooting up here. Down at the Plaid Mill it was. They'd throw rocks, break out the window lights. All of that while they was on strike up there. I believe Mayfair and Plaid Mill both was out.

MARY MURPHY:

Why did the people go on strike?

ICY NORMAN:

They claimed they wanted more money. [Laughter] That's all I could ever hear them say. They did do right much damage up there at Plaid Mill and Mayfair.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you know Reverend Swinney very well?

ICY NORMAN:

Oh, yeah.

MARY MURPHY:

What was he like?

ICY NORMAN:

He was a sweet person. He was just a friend to everybody. When we come here the Glen Hope Church was in a little wooden building. Like you're going up Beaumont towards the mill at the stoplight. Over on the left after you turn, it would be on the right. It was a little wooden building up there. And that's where Preacher Swinney started preaching. In that little wooden building. Then they built the first church. That's the one that got burnt down. Then they moved. Where he was they kind of made a little apartment out of it. I think Holt owned that. They lived out in the field in a great old big house. But now Burlington Mills bought all that and tore that house out and made a parking lot and built a trucking terminal and all out there. They owned it. They had a three room apartment that people lived in. They finally bought so much of that land back over where it was at that they tore it down.

Yeah, Preacher Swinney was a fine person. He had a hand in making Burlington what it is. Really have to give him the praise for that.

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He really had a great hand in making Burlington Mill people and the rest of Burlington what it is.

MARY MURPHY:

He was very influential?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah, he was a good person. He was a likable person. He just had friends everywhere.

MARY MURPHY:

Did he and Spencer Love….

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah, him and Spencer Love was real close. Spencer Love would give money to that church, money to help build that church. When that first church burnt down, I think Burlington Mills give them money on the church now that they got. I think they put in a whole lot of money to start it back.

MARY MURPHY:

But they had helped build the first one, too?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah. Spencer Love give big donations on that. And they give a lot on this other church. All of them head officials of the Burlington plant and Swinney was real close friends.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you go to the Glen Hope Church? Would he ever talk about the mill at church?

ICY NORMAN:

You know like homecoming, he would always tell about. Sometimes Preacher Swinney would say that Spencer Love told him that whenever he needed anything to come to him and he would get it. Some of the rest of them might have told you that he would go and tell him the problem and Spencer Love would give him the money. Spence helped a lot in that church up there. I reckon they still give some to it, I ain't telling it for sure. But I do know that other church they did.

MARY MURPHY:

Did Reverend Swinney's brother used to work up in the commissary in the mill? I thought Mr. Haithcock told me that Jack Swinney ran the commissary up there.

ICY NORMAN:

You mean the one that started the commissary. Might have been him coming around. They started bringing a little long tub on wheels in twice a day, with ice in it with ale. Then they started bringing little cookies and like that in. It was a hand cart. Now, what was his name? Anyway, he opened the commissary. He run the commissary for years and years. Until they expanded and built a place for the employees to go eat. Get things, all kinds of stuff out of the machines. He quit then. Bill Hancock was his name. He went somewhere and then went up there and started a little ice cream parlor. That's the last account I have of Bill Hancock. But he run that commissary. I can't remember nothing about… unless it was, I don't think it was Preacher Swinney's brother. It could have been.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you know Mrs. Swinney?

ICY NORMAN:

She's just the sweetest.

MARY MURPHY:

We're going to try to call her and see if we can visit her sometime next week.

ICY NORMAN:

Have you been up to Clarence's and Irene's? That's Preacher Swinney's daughter and son-in-law. He's the pastor of the church now. Clarence Vaughn. He lives right up there in that brick house. That's where Preacher Swinney and Mrs. Swinney lived. They built that for them. Swinney retired and they bought this house that they're living in, the church did, for Preacher Swinney and Mrs. Swinney. Then Clarence and Irene moved in the pastor's house there. But the church bought this home. You ought to go see them and talk to them.

MARY MURPHY:

Did your mother ever work in the mill?

ICY NORMAN:

Not here. My mother worked some in Schoolfield. My daddy never would let her work. She had a job and worked I reckon about three months. My baby sister, she was just a little baby. They had a nursery. They would

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take me and my brother and my baby sister—she wasn't four months old—to the nursery. Mama worked three or six months, I can't say. One morning there my daddy told her, "I didn't marry you to work. You got all the work you need at home and your children. It's not a wife's place to work. If a man can't make a living for his wife and children, he ain't no business marrying. Now if you going to work, I'll quit and come home and tend to our children." So Mama went in and worked her notice and come home. That's all she ever did work. My daddy wouldn't let her work. He didn't like it because she worked then. I don't think it was over three or maybe six months she worked. He says, "I'm not dragging these little young ones out in the cold carrying them to that nursery of a morning. Your place is at home and that's where you're going to be. If I can't make a living for you, then you can go to work and I'll quit and tend to the young ones."

MARY MURPHY:

What kind of nursery was that?

ICY NORMAN:

They had trained nurses, real nurses. I mean they had a degree. It was a big nursery that the company had. They would keep tiny babies, year-olds, two years on up until they was sixteen years old. They had a category for each one. They had trained nurses. They checked when you went in that nursery—they changed your clothes, they put their clothes on you. They checked each child every morning. The little tots, where they could set up at the table, they had a big round table about that wide with little chairs for them little young ones to sit there and eat. Then they had place for the bigger children. It was a huge place, you know. They went in age groups. They had doctors to come in once a week to check each child. If any one of the children was running a temperature they would send for its mother to come home, to come to the nursery to take that child home.

MARY MURPHY:

Did the mill pay for that?

ICY NORMAN:

The mill paid for that. Old Dr. Crumpler was the mill doctor there. They had a dentist. I forget what the dentist's name was. One time I had a toothache. My daddy carried me up there. That old dentist pulled my tooth. Didn't numb it, I thought I would die, sure enough. That made me scared of dentists. It was years before I'd go to one.

MARY MURPHY:

It sounds like the mill ran the whole city.

ICY NORMAN:

They did. They built a Y.M.C.A. and they had this nursery. Then they built a huge Hilton Hall. Oh, that was a huge building. It was eight stories high, counting the two ground floors, counting the basement. They built that. People could go there that worked in the mill and have a boarding place. They served your meals and everything. They didn't charge but so much a week. All they had to do was cross the railroad and right into the mill. Then they built that Y.M.C.A. Then they put a movie in here. They had a huge city park. That was the most beautifulest park you ever seen. It was then, I don't know how it is now. I ain't been over there in years. Schoolfield just run all of Schoolfield.

North Danville, they had a cotton mill down there. They went in together and expanded. They are kind of expanding like the Burlington Mill, expanding out. Seems like the Plaid Mill or the Mayfair did run some yarn, nylon, for the Dan River. They expanding out too.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you know Hester Taylor? She lives over on Rt. 100 going towards Elon. She came from Schoolfield and used to work up at the mill. She was a weaver.

ICY NORMAN:

I don't know but one Hester Taylor. I wonder if that there is my cousin.

MARY MURPHY:

Her husband's name was Ellis.

ICY NORMAN:

I don't remember this one. The one I'm talking about has been married twice. Her and her first husband is separated.

MARY MURPHY:

I don't think that's this one. I was just talking to her the other day and she used to board up in Hilton Hall. She couldn't remember the name of it.

ICY NORMAN:

Hilton Hall was the name of it. They had swimming pools there. They had exercise rooms, a gym. A huge gym. Once a week us school children we'd go swimming there. One day out of the week we'd go to the gym. One day out of the week we'd go learn to cook. One day out of the week we'd go learn to sew, the girls would. They had something else for the boys, too. But I never did learn to swim. I still don't know how to swim. It would just tickle us to death to go over to that Hilton Hall. It was so pretty. We'd go over to that gym, we'd play. They had all kinds of swings and things. Now they never did have no see-saw. When we went into that gym we had to have our white tennis shoes on and our white socks. If we didn't have no white tennis shoes we had to pull our shoes off. That floor was just like a looking glass. But if we had our white tennis shoes, we could wear our white tennis shoes in there. We'd go over there and have plays over there. It was just wonderful.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you like school?

ICY NORMAN:

I liked school up until I was in the fifth grade and my mama got sick. My daddy couldn't get nobody—back then it was hard to get anybody to stay with you.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

MARY MURPHY:

Did they hire their teachers as well?

ICY NORMAN:

Went to school over on Baltimore. Had a great old big school over there. It went to the ninth grade, was the highest it went. Then when you got to the tenth grade you had to go over there towards Luland Lake. You had to go over there to that school when you got to the tenth grade. Over there in Baltimore school you could go until the tenth grade. I wished I had a went on back. I see where I made my mistake. I thought I'd be out six weeks. I never would catch it up which I could have. But I never did go back.

MARY MURPHY:

So when did you get your first paying job?

ICY NORMAN:

When I first went to work? That was at Elkin. They have a shoe factory there. My aunt, my daddy's sister, worked in the shoe factory. She'd always come over there on Sunday night and my brother would take her to Elkin. She stayed down with my cousin all week. Dewey would get her and bring her and then she'd go on home. Sunday night she told mama, "I want to take Icy down with me and let her see the shoe factory. It'd be a curiosity to her." I wasn't but thirteen years old. Mama says, "We got a big day. Got a big washing to do, I don't care if she goes if she gets back and gets this washing out." So I went on down there. Aunt Leotta carried me all over the shoe factory. Fred Knees was over. We was looking at different things, the cutting room. We started from where they started the shoe and ended up where the shoe was ready for you to wear, to be sold.

Fred Knees come up and he says, "Miss Carter, who is this little lady you got?"

Aunt Leotta says, "That's my niece."

He says, "Does she want a job?" I looked at him and thought my goodness, he's crazy.

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Aunt Leotta laughed and said, "Yeah, she wants a job." Aunt Leotta was full of life, you know. He says, "Well, take her on up there with you and learn, show her how."

I looked at her and says, "I didn't come down here after no job."

Aunt Leotta says, "You come on here." Well, I went on. She told Dewey that Fred give me a job and he went home. Boy, mama had a fit. That young one down there, she ain't old enough to work.

I went in there and learnt to make shoes.

MARY MURPHY:

What was that like?

ICY NORMAN:

It was electric sewing machines. They had a cutting room. They had sizes and would cut so many shoes out, vamps, and then they would cut the heel part. Then they would send it to the sewing room. Well, you take it there. They had it stamped. You put it on that brandisher, back part of the shoe to the vamp and you sewed. You'd go up this side and back down, make two little stitches along there. When you got that done, they'd take you along to the one that made the linings. The linings was made just like the shoe. And they'd make that and stack it and send it on in to where they put the soles on. Then they'd send it. Then put the heel on. It was interesting. I worked there then until it went bankrupt. Fred Knees then went into the woolen mill.

My daddy died in February. He come up there and he told mama. See, my daddy owned this farm. He told mama, "Now, I can give Icy a job in the inspecting room."

Mama says, "Can you give Barney and Dewey a job?"

He says, "No, I can't put them on right now. I ain't got no opening. But I can put Icy to work. I got an opening in the inspecting room." That's inspecting them blankets. I know you seen them Chatham blankets.

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Mama says, "No she's not going to go to work unless you give Barney and Dewey a job. If she goes to work they'll have to take her down there and go get her, bring her back. That's too much running. I don't want her staying away from home all week."

MARY MURPHY:

How far was the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

About nine miles. He says, "Let Icy go to work and maybe in a few days I can have an opening for Barney and Dewey."

Mama says, "No, if you can't put them all three to work, she ain't going to work."

MARY MURPHY:

Your mother sounds like a tough bargainer.

ICY NORMAN:

Mama knowed how to manage and she knowed how to make a living. Naturally she didn't want me away from home, me nothing but a young one. I wasn't but thirteen years old. Well, I was fourteen then, I just worked at the shoe factory a year 'till it went busted. So, it would cause Barney and Dewey to make a lot of trips. Mama couldn't see no point in that. Then we went to Linksburg and I got a job in the cotton mill there filling batteries.

I worked there a long time. And Dooley Carter, the fixer that was in the shoe factory, he found out that he run into Barney and Dewey. He was a boss man then. I know you seen the Craddock Terry shoes. He come over there on Sunday evening. He says, "Icy, I want you to go to work for me over in the Craddock Terry shoe factory." Talking about a shoe factory. That thing was three stories high. Boy, you walk in that mill you thought you was walking on a piece of glass. Everything was clean as a pin. You didn't see nothing out of place.

I says, "Dooley, how much will I make?"

He says, "I'll start you off at two dollars and a quarter a day." That was more than I was making in the cotton mill.

I says, "Allright, when do you want me to come in? I'll have to tell Mr.

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Sneed and work my notice."

He says, "You work this week's notice and then you be over there next week."

I went over there and I worked. Then work got bad. We'd work a week and stand two weeks. That's when we come to Burlington. See, I was working and making money. I come to Burlington and went into the Burlington Mills with nothing.

MARY MURPHY:

When you were learning to sew on the shoes and then in the cotton mill, did they pay you while you were learning?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah. They started me right off. I made five dollars a week in the shoe factory. No, five dollars and a half because we worked five days and a half. Dooley, he started me off at two dollars and a quarter a day.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you like the work in the shoe factory?

ICY NORMAN:

I just loved the shoe factory. I enjoyed it and I hated to quit. Barney and Dewey didn't get no work period. I was the only one that was a working. Then I'd work a week and be out two weeks. And so mama said she thought it was better for us to go see if we could get a job where all could work. So we took off and we come to Burlington and have been in Burlington ever since.

MARY MURPHY:

What year was that, that you came to Burlington?

ICY NORMAN:

Twenty-nine. Been fifty years.

MARY MURPHY:

When you and your mother moved from the farm to Linksburg, did you sell the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

No, not right then. We did later on. We sold it after we moved here.

MARY MURPHY:

Could you not make a living off the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

Oh, yeah. But mama just took a notion she wanted to sell it. I begged her not to sell it. She had the say-so, so she sold it.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you like living on the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah, I enjoyed it. I'd get out there about daylight. Dooley, he would be a plowing this field. I'd be in this field on a harrow I'd have that field harrowed by the time he had that field plowed. Then we'd plant our crop. Then when the stuff come in we worked from sun up to sun down. That was good days. Back then you could work in the field until it was so dark you couldn't. Then you'd come in and have to milk the cow and feed the horses or the mules, whatever you had. Then fix supper. Then wash the dishes. Then you'd have time to go somewhere in the neighborhood. You know, the neighbors there lived a half a mile, maybe a mile apart. Some of them two miles. Some would always come to my house. We'd take a circle and we'd visit everybody, they'd take a circle until they'd visited everybody. And everybody just had a good time. Now people don't have time. They have more things to work with. They don't even know what the next door neighbors is doing. That's the truth.

Now you take a lot of places here in Burlington, you can have a lot of sickness and your next door neighbor don't know you're sick. You can have a death in your family and they don't know anybody's dead. I don't believe in that. I believe in fellowship and being friends and cooperating with everybody. I reckon it is because the way my daddy and mama raised me. People this day and time, they don't act like they care anything for you. All for self. But me, the greatest joy is if I can do you a favor. I want to do you that favor. I get more joy out of that and more happiness. If somebody's sick that I know I can

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go to them and help them, any hour day or night. I'm ready to go. It's a joy to go in fellowship and do for people. That's my great—I said I didn't have no family. In the other sense of the word, I've got a big family, because I try to fellowship with the other fellow. If they need something, I'm there to help them. If I can do them a favor, I'm there to do it. I think that there is a lot of joy to me. Of course, some people may think that ain't no joy in doing that. But it is. You just come right down to it, you get more joy out of doing some little thing than anything in the world. You know, money can't buy happiness. Money can't buy joy. That's why I said I enjoyed working on my job. I got a pleasure out of it and it made me happy to do my job. When I come out of that mill, I know that I done the very best I could. Somewhere along the way I felt a peaceful mind. It's wonderful to feel that way. When I left the Burlington Mill, I left my family. They all felt like my brothers and sisters. I worked with some of them so long. I was the oldest one in Pioneer Plant, the oldest hand that they had. When those others come along, I got acquainted with them, I growed to love them. And I growed to fellowship with them. We'd all laugh and have fun together. It was just like leaving one of my family. I couldn't help but cry. I said all the time I wasn't going to cry. When I went out and started home I did cry, but they didn't know it.

MARY MURPHY:

You didn't think it was the difference between living in the country and living here that made that difference of neighbors?

ICY NORMAN:

You mean trying to be friends with people. My daddy and mother teached us eight children to love and fellowship. If you could share something with somebody, do that. I reckon it was the way I was raised. Now you take

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us children. If we had something that the other one didn't have, we shared it, what little we had, with them. Back then children didn't have things like children has today. We didn't know what toys was. We would get an allowance, each one of us, a nickel a week. We thought that was something. We'd go to the store and buy a nickel's worth of candy. We'd get a big sack full of candy for a nickel. My brothers and my sisters eat theirs all up and I had some. I just sat down and we share it together. That's the way we was. And if mine was gone, we'd share it until it was all gone. I reckon it was the way I was raised. I reckon it was one reason I took so much interest in employees. Now there was a lot of employees, different ones would learn them their job. They never did go back to lend that girl a lending hand if she got in a hole. I'd feel so sorry for her. I'd go over there and help her get straightened out. Really, it wasn't my place to go. I always put other people before me. I love to see other people have plenty and have everything they want if I don't have it. I get the joy of seeing them being happy.

MARY MURPHY:

What kind of things did people do together in the country?

ICY NORMAN:

At school they'd have a supper. They'd call it a box supper. The teenagers, the young ones, they'd fix it. Well, if we was going to have a supper tonight at the school, well, you would cook something yourself. And you'd fix you a box and you'd wrap it real pretty. But you'd fix your box so you knowed it from the others. You didn't put your name on it. They would give that box off. The one that bid the highest, well, you had to eat supper with the boy. That was a lot of fun. We would have ice cream suppers and we'd have parties. In the wintertime they'd have dances in some of the homes. Of course, my daddy never would let them have a dance there. But he didn't care if us young ones was going. The young people would meet at our house once a

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week. We'd have the biggest time. But my daddy never would let them have a dance. We'd go to dances at some of the rest of the homes. But we had to be home from that dance by ten-thirty, at the latest. No later. If we was later than ten-thirty we didn't get to go no more for a while. I don't know, all of us boys and girls go together. We all growed up together. We just had a big time. I reckon when you been with somebody like that and then you go into a textile mill, go to working, well, it come natural that you want fellowship with your co-workers. You want to be acquainted with them, to be friends with them. You take a lot of people come in the mill and work eight hours and never speak to you.

MARY MURPHY:

Would people in the mill village get together and do things like that?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah, they have the church. Senior citizens. They meet once a week and carry a covered dish. Then they meet, like the Sunday school classes, at your house. And the next month they meet at somebody else's house until it goes around. They have this big bus at the church, senior citizens go different places. I believe it was sometime along in March they went to Charlotte for the day. They go trips. People get together. Anybody can go on that wants to, if the bus ain't filled up. If you find out they're going, you just have to call Mildred and ask her if they got a vacant seat and you can go.

Another thing I enjoy, I like to get up real early and take my mile walk. But it's been so bad I ain't been this week.

MARY MURPHY:

Where do you walk?

ICY NORMAN:

I usually go out Piedmont Way, down Hopedale Road, back down North Mebane Street back in around to the stoplight back up to Beaumont then back home. It's a mile.

MARY MURPHY:

When you first came here, how big was the mill village?

ICY NORMAN:

Just a little old bitty place.

MARY MURPHY:

Mostly over by Piedmont Way?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah. Let's see, Piedmont Way and then Long Street was the mill houses. That street over there back of Long Street, it was mill houses. But the ones that was going from the corner of Piedmont Way on Beaumont down on the left side, they was the Silk Mill houses. But then from Piedmont back to that other street was Burlington Mill houses.

MARY MURPHY:

Do you know when this part of the town was incorporated into Burlington?

ICY NORMAN:

I don't remember.

MARY MURPHY:

Because people say it was a real rough neighborhood until it got incorporated because there wasn't any law out here. There weren't any police-men out here.

ICY NORMAN:

Well, the roughest thing was people moving in and out of the houses. They'd get drunk and they'd fight. But that never did happen on the street I lived on. Back there on that street where Lottie Adams live, that street was pretty bad. They'd get drunk and they'd get to fighting. I don't know what year it was they incorporated, but it's been a long long time. Might have been in the '35s, somewhere along in there they incorporated. Then the policemen would make a round, but they didn't go every street. If you needed a policeman, you had to call him. He would make a round, like it was Beaumont then. But it wasn't no name. He'd make a round, back around by the mill and back in town, up Church Street, North Main Street, rather. Then they built that road on in and called it North Church.

MARY MURPHY:

What kind of crops did you grow on the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

We growed corn and all of our vegetables. We didn't raise no tobacco. My daddy would plant one row in the back for chewing tobacco. That's all the tobacco he would plant. We'd have wheat, we'd have rye. When we gathered all of our corn, we'd cut them tops—now I was working in the shoe factory then, Dewey was, too. Barney wasn't there, he was somewhere in Roanoke. Me and him, we'd work until six o'clock. We'd come home and mama would have supper on the table. That's the only time my daddy would let me wear a pair of overalls, would be when I was cutting tops or pulling fodder. He'd let me wear a pair of Barney's overalls and tie them around the ankles on account of snakes. Me and Dewey we would come in at six o'clock. Well, in the fall of the year at six o'clock, it's dark. We'd go out there and cut tops and tie them tops and pull fodder by the moonlight until eleven or twelve o'clock by a night. To take care of our fodder and stuff for the cows and horses. Then we'd go pull the corn. Then we'd have a corn shucking. Now, that's when you'd have a good time.

They'd have a pile of corn bigger than this house. They'd shuck that corn. The mothers would always cook dinner, if it was dinnertime. At supper-time another neighbor would cook supper. Then after the corn shucking they'd give us young people a dance. That was a lot of fun. Then they'd have quilting. People would gather and have quilting at different houses. It would be the same way. They'd cook a big dinner, a big supper. And after that was through, the eating and everything, they'd pull everything back and the young people would have a little square dance.

MARY MURPHY:

Who would play the music?

ICY NORMAN:

Different ones would make music. My daddy never would let no dancing going on. But he never did care us having a little party, a sociable party. Back then, if we both went to a dance. You had a fellow and me had a fellow. Teenage girls usually have them a partner. Like you and your partner and me and my partner. We went over here to this house, they was going to have a little dance there. They wouldn't have it at the same place every week.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

MARY MURPHY:

Let's start when you were born.

ICY NORMAN:

I was born in Coalwood, West Virginia. My daddy was a bank boss there. Something like a boss in a mill here, but they called them "bank boss" in the mines. We left West Virginia.

MARY MURPHY:

When was it you were born?

ICY NORMAN:

In 1911. The thirteenth of April. It was on Easter Sunday, snow, mama said, was knee deep. As best as I can remember, I've had two birthdays on Easter Sunday. They left from there then—I wasn't but three months old.

MARY MURPHY:

Were you the oldest?

ICY NORMAN:

No, my brother that lives in Florida is eighteen months older than I am. My mother was married twice. Barney, he was born in West Virginia, but he was born in Dixon. But I was born in Coalwood. And he's eighteen months older than me. We left from there and went back to Wilkes County up in the mountains. My daddy stayed there. I think he put out two crops. Then he went to Schoolfield.

MARY MURPHY:

When he was farming, did he buy his farm or was he renting?

ICY NORMAN:

He owned a farm. Then we went to Schoolfield. I think I was around three or four years old. I don't remember going to Schoolfield then.

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Well then he took a notion to go back to the farm. Well, he went back. I was about eight years old when we left and went back to Schoolfield. Stayed there fifteen years and he worked on one job fifteen years.

MARY MURPHY:

What did he do?

ICY NORMAN:

He run an elevator in Number Four Mill. He worked there fifteen years. His health got bad. Back then, doctors was good doctors, but they really didn't know then what they do now. They didn't have the kind of medicine and they really didn't know what to do like they do now. My daddy got sick, he had high blood and sugar diabetes. He had heart dropsy. He got to the place he just wasn't able to work. He wanted to go back to the mountains to live and die there. So we moved back to the mountains in 1927, the fourteenth of February. He lived from then until the ninth of February of 1929. He died on the ninth. That's how long he lived after he did quit work.

My mama had him in all the hospitals. Winston-Salem and High Point. She had him in Danville before we left from there. Then she had him in Mt. Airy hospital. They all told her they wouldn't operate on him for nothing. Said his blood was so high that he would die. He had a fatted tumor in his stomach. That tumor was so big you could see the shape of it when he'd have his clothes on. He had high blood and sugar and heart dropsy and then that fatted tumor. He died kind of sudden on Saturday night.

MARY MURPHY:

All this time, how were you getting along? He wasn't working.

ICY NORMAN:

Well, see mama has been married twice and she had five children by her first husband. So my daddy, he helped raise them five children. Then she had three by my daddy. Barney and me and Florence, my sister that lives in Greensboro. She's the baby. The baby boy by her first husband, he was

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grown. He farmed. And me and him, we would put a crop out. Then they had a shoe factory there in Elkin. My aunt, my daddy's baby sister, would come home. She'd stay down there with Jenny all week and then Dewey would go get her on Saturday. She'd go home and stay and Dewey would take her back Sunday night or Monday morning. One Sunday night she stayed all night at our house. She told mama, she says, "Let Icy go with me down there, I'll take her over to the shoe factory and it will be a treat for her." It tickled me to death. I wasn't but a young one, thirteen years old. I wanted to go see it.

Mama says, "Well now, we got a big washing to do. If she'll get back in time to help me start-that washing, she can go."

I got up next morning and went with Aunt Leotta and Dewey, carried her down there. She was showing me over the plant, how they cut out shoes and how they sewed them. She sewed, that's what she done. She showed me where they put the bottoms in the heels. She showed me where they smoothed them off and polished them, ready to ship out. That just tickled me to death. We started back up the steps and we run into Fred Knees.

He says, "Miss Carter, who is that little girl you got with you?"

She says, "That's my niece. That's my brother's daughter."

He says, "Does she want a job?"

Before I could say "No," Aunt Leotta says, "Yes, she wants a job." Well, it scared me to death.

I says, "No, I don't want a job either."

Aunt Leotta says, "Yes she does, too! Put her to work, Fred." "Alright," he says, "You come along with me, little girl." I was scared to death. I didn't go for no job. I just went to see it. He carried me over

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there and he told me to stay with Aunt Leotta. She showed me everything about it. Well, I could sew on a [unclear] sewing machine, but these here was electric. Anyway, I reckon it was electric, too, because you just mash a pedal and the thing would just fly. He put me out by myself. He put me on the leather part, he put me out making the linings. Well, I messed up I don't know how many. That machine would go so fast and I was scared to death, too.

Well, I didn't go home and did mama throw a fit. She told Dewey, "You get in that car and you go down there after that young one. She's not going to go to work."

Dewey says, "Mama, I can't. She's already at work."

My daddy says, "Aw, Charity, they'll cook her. She'll come home if Dewey goes down there."

Dewey says, "No, Aunt Leotta told me to tell mama to fix some clothes and send Icy and we'd be home Saturday." I stayed down there and stayed at Jenny's. Well, you know, I loved to sew anyway. I just enjoyed that after I got the hang of it. It didn't take me over a day to get the hang of the machine. So then he put me out sewing the vamp of the leather onto the sides. After I got on that I made a little more money. I made five dollars and a half a week for five days and a half.

Saturday I went home and mama just had a fit. My daddy says, "Charity, now just hush. Let that young one work if she wants to. She don't have to work. If she likes it, let her work a while."

Well, I went back. Aunt Leotta come back Sunday night. Instead of going to Jenny's Sunday night we went to work Monday morning. We would just cross that little old branch, at dinnertime, and go in Jenny's house. She'd have a hot dinner on the table. We'd eat dinner and go back. We'd work until six

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o'clock. We'd eat supper. I was really liking my job. Of course, I didn't make nothing but I thought that I was rich when I got that five dollars and a half. You know they didn't take nothing out of it. I'd go home and I never would open—you know then they would pay you in a little brown envelope about that long, and it was sealed up and would tell how much was in that envelope—I never opened my envelope. On Friday night—no, on Saturday. On Saturday Dewey brought my daddy to the doctor down there. While my daddy was in the doctor's office he come up there and got me and Aunt Leotta. Well, went on home. That was my first paycheck. We got back home, my daddy had to lay down and rest a little while. See, we had to go nine miles from Elkin to where we lived. So mama had the dinner on the table but he had to lay down and rest a while. I went in there and I says, "Papa, here's my money. Look and see how much I draw." He looked and he says, "I'm tickled for you."

I says, "It's yours."

He says, "I don't want it. That's your money."

I says, "Uh-uh. It's yours."

He says, "You take this and do with it whatever you want to do with it."

I says, "No, papa. I want you to have it."

You know as long as he lived I give him my money. He go to Elkin, he'd go like sometime through the week. He would surprise me when I went home on Saturday. Mama didn't like it at all because she was short of me helping her do all that work. I'd go home on Saturday—we got paid every week. I'd take my money and give it to my daddy.

He says, "I'm tired of you giving me that money. I don't want it. It's your money. You take it and buy what you want to. If you don't want to buy

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nothing, you save it.

I says, "No, I want you to have it."

He says, "I don't need it."

"Well, you take it."

He'd go down there. I'd come home on Saturday. About once a month he'd have me the prettiest outfit you ever seen. He was the best somebody to buy clothes. I know one Easter he went and bought me a new dress and a new pair of shoes and he got me a hat and he bought me a spring coat. First spring coat I ever remember seeing. Oh, I thought it was the prettiest thing I ever seen. You know right today I can't buy nothing I'm satisfied with. My daddy, he could go buy things for me and it was just perfect. My mama, she couldn't buy nothing that I liked. Mama would go buy me things but I didn't like it. But just seemed like my daddy knew exactly what to buy me. And today I can go see things that I think that I like. I get home and I don't like them. That's one thing I think my daddy ruint me. He ought have made me start buying things. He was the best thing you ever seen. He would go to town. He bought all of mama's clothes. Mama never did offer to go buy her an outfit. She was like me. She would get home and she was dissatisfied with it. He'd go pick out. He knowed exactly what to get that would look good on her, that would look pretty on her. Well, after he died. The shoe factory then went busted and I was out of a job.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you like working in the factory better than working on the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

Oh, yeah. But I'm getting a little too fast. In the meantime me and Dewey still put the crop out. He was there by day and I would help when I got home, you know.

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Well, Fred come and told me one Saturday, "You tell Dewey to come in. I need a hand in the cutting room."

I says, "Goody. Goody. Goody. I get to go home every night." So I told Dewey. And Dewey, he went to work. Well, we had the crop planted and it was coming up. We would work. We'd have to work until six o'clock. We'd get home and since we eat, we'd take off to the field. He would plow and I'd hoe. We worked that way and raised our crop.

MARY MURPHY:

What were you raising?

ICY NORMAN:

We raised corn, beans, stuff like that to eat on the farm. Back then you couldn't go to the store and buy vegetables. You had to raise everything you'd eat through the winter. We raised wheat for flour. Of course that wasn't no trouble. All you done, you sowed your wheat in the fall. That's all you had to do to it until you thrashed it. Then a man come around with a wheat thrasher and with a crew of men and they'd thrash a big field of wheat in a day. Yeah, you had to raise everything you eat. We would always raise potatoes. I've often wondered why people can't do that this day and time. Back then we would raise potatoes anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred bushels of Irish potatoes. My daddy would have Dewey there in the field take this wheat straw and put down and put a shock of fodder and corn right in the middle and stand it up and pour them potatoes around it and then cover them up in wheat straw and pack dirt all the way around them. And we done our sweet potatoes that way.

MARY MURPHY:

That kept them?

ICY NORMAN:

Yeah. And we done our cabbage that way. And turnips. My daddy would have us pull our turnips up. They call them holing them away. And we'd

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fix them. We had all of our sweet potatoes and cabbages and turnips and Irish potatoes and stuff like that holed away. Then mama would always can all of our beans and made her jelly and canned all of her fruit. You didn't know what it was to go to the store and buy something because they didn't have it. All you could find in the store would be this green coffee, and even then you had to parch it. You could buy sugar and salt. We had our hogs. We had our chickens. We raised everything we eat, you know. They take the wheat and have it ground up in flour. We'd take our corn and have it ground up for corn bread. We had plenty of milk and butter. What more do you need? You had everything. When the crop was laid by, me and Dewey would come home and pull fodder, tie them bundles of fodder by the moonlight. By the time we got home then it was dark. We'd eat supper and we'd take off to the fields. We maybe have ten or fifteen acres in corn. We'd pull all that fodder and go back and cut all them tops and tie them. Shuck them, and stack them up. Then we'd go back and pull our corn. We done that by the moonlight. Then they'd have a big corn shucking. People would come in and help shuck your corn and throw it in the crib. Maybe the next neighbor would have his ready and we'd all go to his house. That's the way they done until everybody got their corn shucked. And put away in the smoke house. Then on Saturday evening me and Dewey would cut wood to last all the woolen week, to burn in the fireplace and cook with, too. We'd stay there all evening until late at night sawing wood and packing it up to do all the week. That was our Saturday evening's work.

Then the shoe factory shut down. My daddy he died the ninth of February, 1929. So, Fred come up there. He told mama, he says—he went to the wool

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mill, he was overseer there—"I can put Icy to work. She'll make good money in that woolen mill. I can put her in there inspecting."

Mama says, "Well, will you give Barney and Dewey a job." Well, Barney and Dewey had a job down there and I don't know what happened. Well, I do too. I think they got sleepy. Went out there and crawled down in a car and went to sleep and left the machine running. They fired them.

He says, "No, I can't give them no job. Now you got your home here. You got your living made at home. Let Icy go to work in the woolen mill. I've even got her a ride so she can come home. To go every morning and come home every night."

Mama says, "No, if you can't give Dewey and Barney a job I ain't going to let her go to work."

I just begged mama to let me. We had a home there and had everything. My daddy had three great big hogs killed. We had over fifteen hundred pounds of meat hanging in the smokehouse. No, mama wouldn't do it. So we went to Linksburg.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you sell the farm?

ICY NORMAN:

No we kept our farm. Mama's twin sister lived at Linksburg. She wrote her and told her to have Uncle Hugh see if he could get us a job. He wrote back and said, "Yeah, they said they'd give us all a job." In the meantime Dewey and Barney both had married. So we took off then to Linksburg, where Rosetta worked a while. But she didn't get to work but three months because she was pregnant with her first. That was Dewey's wife. So Mary, Barney's wife had a little baby. He wasn't quite nine months old. He was born the fourth of December, 1928. My Daddy died in February. Then we moved to Linksburg on my birthday the 13th of April. That's how old Gilbert was.

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So Mary, she didn't try to go to work. Me and Dewey and Barney and Rosetta worked—she worked about three months and then she had to quit. At first she didn't know that she was that way when she got her job. We worked there then until August. They closed the mill down for two weeks. They'd work a week, then stand two weeks. You know, back then you didn't draw no unemployment. So the two weeks that the mill stood, Mama told Dewey and Barney, "We can't live here like that. You don't know, the thing may shut down for good. We're going to go hunt us a job, hunt you all a job." So we got in my daddy's old T-Model. The whole two weeks that the mill stood there, we was on the road hunting jobs. We went everywhere. Back then it was in the Depression was starting. Mills was closing down. So you just couldn't get a job. Every freight train that you seen pass was loaded down with people going from town to town, hobo-ing.

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

ICY NORMAN:

We tried there, and Mama said, "Being we're this close, let's just go on to Durham and see Don." That was Mama's oldest boy by her first. Him and his wife lived out on the Raleigh road. I don't know what they call it now. And they had built a home there. So we went down there and spent the night. And Mama was talking to Don and said, "We've been everywhere, and they can't find a job. They've still got their job in Linksburg, but they work a week and stand two weeks." And Don says, "Well, I might could get them on there at the Golden Belt." That was a hosiery mill. "Next week I'll see what I can do. Mama, while you're this close, don't go home tomorrow." That was Sunday. Says, "Don't

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go home Sunday. Go up to Burlington. Somebody told me that they was hiring help. They're starting tearing out the cotton and putting in rayon. You might get on up there." And Mama says, "Well, we ain't tried there. We have to go back that way anyway to go back to Linksburg." You see, we had to go through Haw River and Danville and then to Linksburg. And so we come. Back then, they didn't have no fence. There was a little old bitty mill; it was a little old wooden mill, two rooms, and they had everything in it. What they had, they had a few frames of spinning, and they had two slashers, and then they had I forget how many dobber-headed looms. It wasn't many. And then they had spooling, and they had spinning. It was all in that little two-room building. It's up there now where they got the…. Of course, they built on to it and made it much bigger. They made a warehouse out of it. And then they built on to it and made it bigger. And so we drove up, and Dewey and Barney got out. You know, anybody could go in, any time day or night that they wanted to. There was a little old bitty machine shop; it wasn't as big as this porch. I can just see that little old shop now. And they didn't have but two hands a-working in it. And so Barney asked that man, "Can you tell us how to find Mr. Copland?" And he says, "Yeah, he's right down younder on that first…. There ain't but two slashers. You can't miss him. One of them's broke down, and he's down there helping us get that slasher going." They went down there, and he had his sleeves rolled up, and he was greasy as a hog from his elbows on down. And he seen Barney and Dewey, and he just had a fit. He says, "Well, where in the world is your mama and my little girl?" My daddy worked for him there in Schoolfield, and he'd come every Sunday evening and spend the evening with

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my daddy after he got to the place he couldn't work. He thought the world of my daddy. And Dewey says, "They're out there in the car." And boy, here he come. He grabbed up a piece of old cloth, and here's the way he was coming, just like this, a-wiping it off. He come out there, and he was just tickled to death. And he told Mama, he says, "Well, I promised, the last time I seen Mr. Norman—I take it that he's gone." And Mama says, "Yes." And he says, "I promised Mr. Norman that if you ever needed any help and I could give you all a job, that I wanted you to come to me. I reckon that's why you all have come, ain't you?" And Mama says, "Yes, we've been everywhere hunting a job." And he says, "Well, you don't have to hunt no farther. You've got a job. I can put Dewey and Barney to work tomorrow, but I can't put my little girl to work under three or four weeks. I can put Barney and Dewey to work tomorrow. We're tearing the cotton out and putting in all rayon."

MARY MURPHY:

What year was this?

ICY NORMAN:

1929. And so Mama says, "No, if you can't put Icy to work, we'll not come."

MARY MURPHY:

Your mother was a hard bargainer. [Laughter]

ICY NORMAN:

And so he says, "They can go to work tomorrow. I need them." And she says, "No, if you ain't got nothing for Icy to do, we'll come back when you can give her a job." And he says, "Well, you come back, and don't make it over three or four weeks." You see, Barney and Dewey knowed everything in the mill. They could do anything: they could spin; they could doff; they could fix; they could do anything. And me, I was helpless; I didn't know nothing.

MARY MURPHY:

What had you done in the woolen mill?

ICY NORMAN:

I didn't do anything in the woolen mill. I filled batteries in the Linksburg Cotton Mill. That was in the weave room, filling batteries. I knowed how to do that, but see, they didn't have nobody doing that here. And so we come back, and he told Mama that he was ready for me to go to work. And he says, "When can you move?" Mama says, "Well, if you'll give Icy a job, we can move any time." And so he called up a moving van, but before he called them Mama says, "Have you got a house empty?" And he says, "No, not right now, but I'll have you one empty in a week or two weeks, a five-room house. I know Mr. Andrews up here in the Post Office. He just finished building a new house. Go up there and see him." Went up there, and Mr. Andrews said no, he hadn't rented it, and so he give Mr. Copland the keys and we went up there and looked at it. Oh, it was the prettiest little house; it was a little rock house. That was the prettiest thing, and I was tickled to death over that. Oh, it was so pretty. And so we went back by the Post Office, and Mama paid him the rent. And so Mr. Copland asked Mr. Andrews, "Can I use your telephone to call the transfer?" And he says, "Yes." And so he called a transfer, and the transfer says, "I'll be there in a half hour." And Mama told Barney, "You take Rosetta, Mary, and the baby"—that was Barney's little baby—"and Icy back to Don's, and me and Dewey will go with the transfer, and we'll be back tomorrow evening." We went back, and it just tickled Don to death. But I still thought…. I was so green, I didn't ask Mr. Copland would I make any money. And come to find out, anybody that didn't know nothing had to go in and learn the job, and if you learnt the job and they was satisfied with you, they'd give you a job. Well, Mama and the transfer come in. We left Don's and

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come on back, and the A and P store was there where the old Duke light place where you'd pay your light bill, where they tore down, do you remember it? They tore it down the other week. Then it was an A and P store there. We stopped there, and my mama told Barney, "You stop and get some coffee." She told us to stop and get some coffee and get some flour and some milk. And we stopped there at that A and P store and got it, and we went on up there. We had the key to the house. We went on in and took our suitcases in. All at once, Gilbert started screaming and a-crying. We couldn't get him to shut up, and instead of getting sweet milk Barney got buttermilk. And Gilbert was on the bottle. [Laughter] It was right funny. You laugh at it now, but Lord, it just worried me to death. That young'un screamed. And there was two big old pear trees out there. Well, there we was. We didn't have a bite to eat, no way to cook nothing, and so we set there. And so Mary says, "I'm going out there and get me one of them pears. I'm about to starve." So we went out there and got us some of them pears and eat them pears. And poor little Gilbert. We'd carry that baby and we would give him water, and we'd try to give him that buttermilk, and that give him the colic. And we had a time. And so there was a big old house right across on the same side, and that woman come over there and says, "What's the matter with that baby?" And Mary says, "He's hungry, and Barney got buttermilk instead of sweet milk, and he's wanting his bottle." She says, "You come on home with me." It was Mrs. Jones. "Bring his bottles, and I'll fill his bottles up with milk, and we'll fix that little feller something to eat. I kept hearing that baby a-crying, and I couldn't figure where that baby was at. Then I seen one of you all with him, a-carrying

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him." And so we went over there, and [she] says, "Have you all had anything to eat?" And I was bashful. I never opened my mouth. And Mary says, "No, we ain't eat nothing since we left Uncle Don's house in Durham." And she says, "Well, we'll fix that. We'll fix you all something to eat." And oh, she was the nicest somebody and a sweet woman, but I was bashful. And I was starved to death. I was bashful, but I wouldn't eat but just a bite or two. Oh, Lord have mercy, I could eat a whole cow, if it had been. [Laughter] But I was bashful. And so she fixed six bottles for Gilbert. They always kept six sterilized bottles ahead. And so Gilbert was happy as a coon when he got, and the little old feller, he took that bottle and he sucked that bottle, and he went to sleep. We fixed him in the car. And it was hot, and Barney run the car up under that pear tree under the shade. We opened the car doors. The little old feller, he just died. Well, it went on, and poor old Mama and them, they didn't get there, it was nine o'clock that night. Back then you didn't have no electricity; you had to use lamps. We didn't have no light. Mama and the truck and Dewey come in. Gilbert woke screaming again, wanting his bottle. The little feller was just hungry. [Laughter] And Mary stuck one of them bottles in his mouth; we didn't have no way to warm it. Mary says, "I'm not going back over to that lady and ask her to heat that milk for me. He can suck that or do without." And so he took it. And so nine o'clock Mama and them come in. Well, we was all getting hungry again. They unloaded the furniture, and we put the beds up and fixed our beds where we'd have something to sleep on. Mama brought some kerosene oil with her. We lit the old oil stove, and Mama says, "I don't know where none of that

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stuff is. They packed that stuff." And we rambled around in a box, and we found a ham. We was already eating on the shoulder. Mama wasn't going to let us cut our ham until we eat all of our shoulders up. And that's what we was hunting for. We'd got down to the good lean meat on that shoulder. Oh, it was so good. And I just couldn't wait to get a piece of it. I was so hungry. I didn't eat but a bite or two, because I was bashful. And so Dewey says, "Mama, here's a ham. I can't find that shoulder we was eating on." Mama says, "I don't care. Cut it. I'm getting weak." [Laughter] So he got the lamp lit, and he cut. He just went right down the heart of that ham, and he sliced it. And Mama and Mary and Rosetta all was in there, and we had on two frying pans full. And we fried a platter that long and that high of that ham. And Mama went and fried some eggs. We had a big old pan. It was that wide and that square—it just fit in the bakery of the stove—she made that thing full of biscuits. Made some hot coffee. We set down there, and we ate every bite of that platter of ham. And she made a big bowl of milk gravy. And boy, was that good. That was the best stuff. And we sat there and we ate. There was Rosetta and there was Dewey and there was Barney and there was Mary and there was me and there was Mama and there was Florence. That was seven of us, and it didn't take long for that platter of ham to get gone. And it didn't take long for that bowl of cream gravy to get gone. We ate that big old square pan of biscuits. And I have never in my life eaten no ham that I thought was as good. My daddy could really fix meat. Oh, Lord, I wish I could get some like that now, but you can't. But don't nobody know how he fixed his, but he could fix meat.

MARY MURPHY:

Did you know how he did it?

ICY NORMAN:

Yes, me and Mama would fix it like Papa. We had hogs after we come here, too, and a cow. We didn't have no cow in Linksburg, but we bought us a cow when we come here. Me and Barney and Dewey went to work Monday morning. That was the twentieth day of September, 1929. Barney and Dewey went to making money right off. They carried me over there to Dewey McBride. He was weighing up yarn. He told Dewey, "I want you to fix a place for this little girl. She's going to learn to wind. Give her two spools of thread and show her how to tie the weaver's knot." If I had knowed that I had to have done that…. You see, Mama was a weaver. If I had knowed I had to work through all that rigmarole learning to tie that knot, my mama could have showed me and I could already know. I sat over on that old box all day long tying old weaver's knot. I thought, I'll never make it. Jim Copland come by and Old Man Smith, they come by and they set down there. Jim says, "How's my little girl doing?" I says, "Mr. Copland, I ain't doing. I can't tie that knot." And he set there and watched me. The more they watched me, the scareder I got. I never could do nothing with nobody looking right at me. Can you?

MARY MURPHY:

No.

ICY NORMAN:

So he had showed me how to tie it. And I sat on that old box two days. When I started home, Dewey MacBride give me two spools of thread with just a little bit of rayon on it. Says, "You take this home, and you practice this tonight." And I said, "Well, I'll take it, but I'll never tie that knot. Why can't you just tie a knot like this?" He says, "You can't do that, Icy. It's got to be a weaver's knot. It

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can't be no chickenhead knot." Well, I went home and I set down there and I started after supper. I told Mama, "Mama, I've had to do this all day long. I can't tie it." Well, Mama showed me how to tie it. You know, you're supposed to tie a weaver's knot on that middle finger and the thumb, and hold it with this finger. I couldn't do that. Mama would show me. She could just shut her eyes and just tie them just as fast.

MARY MURPHY:

Where had your mother worked?

ICY NORMAN:

My mother worked in the woolen mill after her first husband died. She rolled the sample blankets there at the woolen mill. She was the one that made the samples that the salesmen took out on the road. She set there and she showed me. I said, "Well, that's the way they said I had to do it at the mill, but it won't do for me." So I kept messing. Next day, on the old box I sat. Well, I sat there. The more I studied about that thing, the more I hated that. Oh, I hated that mill. Ooh, how I hated it: And I thought, "Well, if this is all they got for me to do, I don't want it." I went home and I was crying. Mama says, "What are you crying about?" I says, "Because I can't tie that old knot." And she says, "I've told you how to tie it, and I've showed you how to tie it. That's the only way you can tie a weaver's knot." I said, "Mama, there's a way you can tie that knot. I don't care what they say. There's a way that I can tie that knot and it's a weaver's knot, and it's all the same thing." She said, "No, you've got to tie it and make your loop around it, take this finger and hold it, and bring it through." I set down there. She said, "I want you to hush up that crying." I says, "Mama, I wisht I was back in Linksburg. I hate it up there." I says, "I wish I was either in the

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mill there or back up there at Craddock and Terry's Shoe Factory." I went to work there in Craddock and Terry's Shoe Factory in Linksburg, and I made pretty good there. But Mama, because the cotton mill was running slack…. You see, in the meantime, when we wasn't hunting a job, Dooley Carter had let me work up there in the shoe factory. Dooley was a fixer in the shoe factory there at Elkin, and he let me work when we wasn't on the road hunting a job. I had a good opportunity, but Mama wouldn't let me take it on account of Barney and Dewey. No, mnm-mm. So she says, "Sometimes I think we might have made a mistake. But things are going to work out. It's got to get better." And Mama was a good Christian woman, and she says, "You just forget about it. I have prayed about it, and I've left it in the Lord's hands. And the Lord ain't going to make no mistakes, and the Lord is going to look after us. We might not have the best; we're not promised nothing but bread and water. You read the Bible; it says the Lord promised us bread and water. All the finery and all the fine eating…. The Lord just promised us bread and water. And I'm looking to Him. I don't have no doubts." I couldn't figure it out, and I just cried and I just cried. Well, I went ahead, and you know, one day there on that box, I was doing my best to do like the bossman told me, and that thing would slide out with me every time. So all at once something come to me just like it spoke: Tie it on your forefinger. And I looked down at that forefinger, and I fixed that thread just like I fixed it on you. I put it on there; instead of taking this finger and holding that down like that, I took this finger and held it down. And you know one thing? I'd tie them

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things as fast as you could wink an eye. And there come Jim Copland and Old Man Smith. And I thought, "Lord, I better not let them see me do that." Well, I went back. Oh, Lordy. I hated it; I hated it so bad. Jim Copland says, "Well, how's my little girl doing? You can tie that knot now, can't you?" I says, "If you'll let me tie it the way I want to tie it, I can tie it." He looked at me, and he said, "What do you mean? It has got to be absolutely a weaver's knot, and it can't be clipped. You've got to leave it a half an inch after you clip it." Well, you know you had your scissors stuck on this finger. You kept your scissors on your hand all the time, never took them scissors off. You run that finger through there, and there you clipped it. And I tried and tried. I says, "I can't tie it." And I says, "Well, let me show you how…. Something told me to tie it like this." He looked at me so funny. He says, "‘Something told you’!" I said, "Yes. Something told me to tie it on my forefinger." He said, "Well, let me see what you're talking about." I'd put that thing down there and I'd just tie them and I'd just tie them, and he looked at that knot, and he said, "Do it slow." I got so I could do it just as fast. And I did. I fixed it on this finger just like I done on that, but I couldn't tie it on that. I fixed it, put it down…

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

ICY NORMAN:

Just hugged his neck. He is just like a daddy to me. Because he has been in our home and went to our table. Sat down and eat whatever we had on the table. He acted like he was just tickled to death with it.

MARY MURPHY:

I heard he was a pretty rough man.

ICY NORMAN:

He was hateful. Now, if he liked you, he liked you. That's the kind of man he was. He was a regular old tyrant if you made him mad.

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And old man Smith, now he was a fair old scratch. I've seen him pick his hat off. He'd had great big old chewing tobacco that big. Him and old Spivey unknown, too. I've seen them get mad. They'd pull their old hat off, throw it down and spit in it and jump on that hat and stomp it. Yeah, Mr. Copland, he was a bird if he was mad. And boy, he was strict. But he never did say one harm word, what I mean, like he was mad at me or anything.

MARY MURPHY:

What kind of things would get him mad?

ICY NORMAN:

That would make him mad? If you done anything on the job he thought you wasn't supposed to, he would tell you right now what he thought. And it would have to be done right. It went on then, and then they took me off of my box and carried me over there and put me with Essie Gammons. Old man Smith told her, "You teach her everything about handling the yarn, how to tie it up, how to find the ends."

Well, you know, she was on piecework. She was after making every penny. I could understand that. I could understand it. She wouldn't let me open a pack of yarn. She wouldn't let me touch that yarn. All she'd let me do, she let me take the full spools off and put the empty ones on. She never let me try to put up one end. Well, it went on there about the middle of the week. Mr. Smith and Dewey McBride come over there. Mr. Smith says, "Mr. Copland says to give you that little winder, that forty-three end winder over there. Come on."

I thought to myself, I'm going out the other door. It scared me to death. Went on over there, Dewey, he weighed up. They was in ten-pound packages. And it was five skeins in a hank. They called them a hank. You'd pull a hank out and shake it out and you had five skeins there. Dewey marked me up ten pounds. I said, "There ain't no need to mark that up." He says, "Why? They give you a job."

I says, "I can't help it. I don't know one thing about that. Old man

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Jim, he looked at me. He says, "What's the matter?"

I says, "Well, you want me to tell you the truth, don't you? I don't know nothing about that. I've never fetched one of them packs. I've never opened a pack. I've never pulled a skein out. I've never put a skein on. I don't know how to cut the tie bands. I don't know which way the tie bands go." About that time Jim Copland come over. Old man Smith, I can see him. He had a wad of tobacco in his mouth. He yanked that old hat out. He throwed it down. He spit in it, jumped on it. He was just cussing up a storm.

Mr. Copland come up. I was sitting there crying. I was scared to death. He sat down, he put his arm around me, "Honey, what's the matter?"

I says, "They give me that pack of yarn and told me to go to work. Mr. Copland, I don't know nothing about it. I'm going home."

He says, "No you ain't going home. I give you a job and you going to work on that job."

I says, "You ain't give me nothing for I don't know nothing about it."

He says, "Didn't that girl teach you?"

I looked at him. I says, "You want me to tell you the truth? My daddy always told me to tell the truth if it hurt me."

He says, "Yeah. I want you to tell me the truth. I'll believe what you'll tell me."

I told him, I says, "All she ever let me done, she let me take the full spools off and put the empty ones on. She never let me cut a tie band, she never let me touch that yarn. She never let me open my pack of yarn. Mr. Copland, I don't know nothing about it." I was just a boo-hooing. Tears was just rolling. And he was trying to get me up. I says, "I'm not touching that

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I'm afraid of it." And Dewey McBride, he opened it up.

He says, "Come here."

I went over there and I stood. And he showed me how to open a pack up. Well, there lay it all. It was the prettiest whitest yarn, as white as snow. And five skeins in a hank. He took up a hank and ran his arm through it and kind of shook it. There was five skeins. He showed me how to put a skein on. You run your hand in it and kind of straighten it out. Then you pick this reel up a