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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
H-0108, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
"I've had a hard life, " Roy Lee Auton remarks in this interview. Auton moved through a number of jobs, fought in World War II and the Korean War, married three times, and was still working at the time of the interview at age sixty-seven. Auton's violent relationships with his first two wives dominate the stage in this interview, but the supporting cast includes reflections on a long laboring life, descriptions of the rhythms of mill and factory work, opinions on unions, and Auton's commitment to maintaining his dignity and independence at the factory or in his love life. This is an engaging interview with a self-reliant white southern laborer.
Auton's wife, Mary Ruth, makes a very brief appearance at the end of the interview.
Roy Lee Auton reflects on a string of jobs and a string of wives in this engaging interview.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… born out here in the country about three or three and a half
miles from here in Lincoln County. There was five boys and four girls,
but part of them's dead now. And I'm a twin. We moved to Maiden when I
was about eleven, and I'd already cut so much wood that I didn't care if
I ever seen another fireplace or not. Because when I was a kid, that was
the only way we had to heat. Then I went to school, and I didn't learn
nothing. Walked every day that I went, because didn't know what a school
bus was. And I quit in the seventh grade and got me this job at the
furniture factory, a whole dollar and a half a day for a ten-hour day. I
went to work on Saturday morning and worked till dinnertime. At
dinnertime on Monday, then, a boy who was tailing a planer quit. So the
boss come back there and asked me if I wanted a job tailing that planer,
and I just spoke up, I says, "It pay any more?" He
said, "Yes, a quarter a day." I said, "I'll
take it." So I took that. This old man that run it was trying
to kill everybody that he got to tail it. And I just about worked my
fanny off for about two weeks, and I got the hang of it good then, and
it was easy. So I kept moving on up then, because I'm mechanically
inclined and do just about any kind of work. So I kept getting better
jobs, and one time I was on the triple drum sander, and my twin brother
is the only man that I've ever found that could catch what I put in it.
So he was off one day, out sick, and they put this old man up there, and
I was running chair stretchers. Must have had ten thousand on one truck,
and I was putting them in, just all it would take. And this old man over
there just a-hollered, and I just went on like I didn't hear him. He
didn't have a good armful on the truck at all. All the rest of them was
in the floor, piled up about this high. And I walked over there and just
laughed at him. I said, "You used to try to kill me. Now I was
just showing you what it was like." So I
So I was out of a job at that time. Things was pretty hard to find a job.
And they said they was going to need some toppers at the Ridgeview
[Hosiery at Newton], but they wouldn't pay you to learn. So I went and
learned on my own. It took close to three months to learn it before I
got a penny out of it. Then whenever they needed one I was ready, and I
got the job. At that time I was making a total of $17.50 a
week, and that sounds like peanuts now. But I traded cars and got
married and bought what furniture I could get by for two rooms and was
paying cash for my groceries and rent. Of course, my rent wasn't but
about four dollars a month. And you could eat pretty good on three to
four dollars a week, because the price of coffee was fifteen cents a
pound; a twenty-five-pound bag of flour was thirty-five cents; and gas
was running around nineteen or twenty cents. And I did buy it one time
for nine cents a gallon. But I worked up there it must have been six or
seven years. And I come out one evening, and there was a union man
standing at the gate handing out papers. Well, I stopped and lit a
cigarette, and he give me one of his papers, and the superintendent was
in the office looking out the window to see who talked to him. And I
never stood there two minutes, I know, but the next day they had my time
made out. And that was a pretty good thing, I guess, but I couldn't get
him to give me a reason why. Because I knowed I could get back pay if I
could get him to give me a reason why. So I just took off east and went
to Burlington—that was the hosiery center of the
South—and found me a place where they was just opening up a
mill and putting in new machinery. And I got a job there, and they'd pay
me a day's we got married, then… So
that shows you I've been married more than once.
I went to work in a garage and found out that they was crooked, and I quit. Then I went to carpentry work and worked for a couple of years at that, and Uncle Sam called again. Had another quarrel going in Korea, so I had to go over to help with it, and I come back. I got broke all to pieces and was in the hospital nine months all together, the hospital and the rehabilitation. And I lost my balance; when I'd squat down and get up, I didn't know which way to go, so I thought maybe I'd better not house carpenter, because when I was carpentering I'd get up and walk around the house or anything. So I started plumbing then, took a job for another plumber, and then I decided I'd try for a license myself. And I went to Raleigh; I think it took three times before I made the grade. Every time I'd go, on the second day I'd take a sick headache and I'd fail. So the last time I got me some glasses, and I passed. But the little old prints they'd give you was so small, and you had to scale those lines and count fittings and all that. Why, it just run you crazy. So I come back and went in the plumbing business and did that until I got the job down at the hospital. And I've been down there ten years this past September. But I've had a hard life.
You sure have.
Married three times and through two wars and over 3,000 hours flying time
and rode motorcycles all my life. Still do. I've got a 450 Honda down in
the shop now. I don't fly too often anymore; it's gotten so expensive.
I'd like to start back at the beginning and ask you a few details about things as you went along.
Okay, anything you can think of.
When were you born?
Oh, that's been a couple weeks ago.
The twenty-third day of February, 1913. So I'm sixty-seven last Saturday.
Do you remember anything about your grandparents?
Oh, yes. My grandparents on my mother's side stayed with us quite a bit.
He had a long, chin beard down about this far. And he could set down and
read a funny paper, and every picture he'd read, he'd set there and
laugh a little bit before he'd read the next section. And I don't know
why he did, but every night before he'd go to bed he'd get his money out
and count it. He was a good old man. But my granddad on my daddy's side
was part German; that's where the name originally come from. And he come
from Mecklenburg County, over around Huntersville. They had nine boys
and five girls; they had a baseball team in the family. And all of them
had got married except two of the boys, the youngest and another one.
But my granddad had one of these old cars. I don't know if you ever
heard of it or not; it's called an Overland. And it had red rubber tires
on it; red-top Pierce tires is what they were. And they was the toughest
tires I've ever seen; you wore the car out, but the tires was pretty
good yet. And after my grandmother died, he started dating a widow
woman. And he'd drive this old Overland up there. And say this thing was
the house here. He'd just turn in off the road and come straight in
toward the front porch
So there were two still at home?
Yes, but the youngest one didn't even speak to her. When she come in the front door, he went out the back. But this one stayed a couple of years till he got married.
Why were they so hostile toward her?
I don't know. So this one that stayed is the only one in the family that's living now. All the rest of them died. My dad died at eighty-four. This one that's living is next to the youngest, and he's about seventy-nine.
What did your father do for a living?
He used to fire boilers like in a mill. Years ago this Union Mill down
here—it's called American Efird now—had boilers
that burned cord wood. They'd buy wood from everybody that wanted to
sell wood, and he fired those boilers I don't know how long for fifty
cents a twelve-hour night.
Where did she go to work?
Down there.
At Union?
Yes. When they was just kids, old Martin Carpenter was the one that built
the mill. Cotton mills never have went up too much. They're about as low
a paying thing as are in the textile line. Now hosiery has done pretty
good.
Did you get involved with the union at all when you went to Burlington?
No. I'll tell you, I seen so much of that mess around here that wasn't a union. Now that's the only union man that I seen that I knew to be a union man, though. There was a bunch in Gastonia that called theirselves the Flying Dragons?
Flying squadrons?
Yes, flying squadrons. And that wasn't a durn thing but a crazy mob.
Did you see them?
I've seen a bunch of them. They'd stop at a mill, and a couple of women
would go in to a woman that was at work and grab her dress and jerk it
up over her head. And while she was trying to get it back down, they'd
push her to a door or window and throw her out. And there was a good
many
The flying squadrons would come to a mill and …
Oh, yes.
There were women in the squadrons?
Well, I wouldn't call them "women" or "ladies." There's better words to use on people like that. Looked like a bunch of durn drunks to me.
Why did they do that?
I don't know. They didn't have no organization, so what could you look forward to? And there was several killed over to Gastonia. And some mills they closed down and never did open back up, and people darn near starved to death.
Was this during the 1934 general strike that went through the whole Piedmont?
It was in the thirties, in about '33 or '34.
Where were you that you saw a flying squadron?
I've seen them come through here and Newton, too.
What mills did they go to?
I know they stopped at Carolina. I don't know if they stopped at Union or not. And they went to the glove mill in Newton. And down in Gastonia, I was actually scared to go through that town.
Did you know people that were working down in Gastonia during all that?
No, but I was younger then, and I went to Gastonia quite a bit. But they
just about made a ghost town out of it for a long time. But they said
that Albert Campbell was a preacher and he was leading it. And I seen
him, but he made out like that he wasn't in it. But he was raised right
here
Was he down in Gastonia at the time?
Oh, yes. That's where he was living at the time.
He came up here with the …
Oh, they'd have cars and trucks loaded, maybe five hundred, and they'd just go to a mill and just take over.
Did any people in the mills around here go out on strike when they came through? Did they join them?
No, they didn't join them. They got out of the mill; if they didn't,
they'd put them out.
So they did succeed in closing some of the mills down around here.
Some of them never did open back up. My brother-in-law lived down at Carolina. They went out till after they left, and they went back in and started back up. And they went to a glove mill in Newton, and this old boy that run it had his pistol in his hand, and he said he'd kill the first s.o.b. that took over the switch. They was going to cut the power off. And he said, "If it has to be cut off, I'll cut it off." And he cut it off, and after they left he started back up.
Was that the superintendent or the owner?
He was the owner, Robert Macon Yount. That was a pretty bad time, though.
If there was any sense to it, it would have been different. But there
wasn't no organization to it; it was just a disorganized mob, about
Have you ever been in a place where there was a good, well-organized union local?
Oh, yes, I've been in them, but I've never worked under a union, and I don't think I ever would if I lived to be two hundred, from what I seen back in the thirties. But I know that in the better places, like these car factories and things, it helps the working people out. And they've tried to get in a lot of hospitals, and in a big hospital it might be right. But in a small place it don't work, because it just makes enemies among friends, is all it'll amount to in a little place. And I've seen them fight down there at Gastonia. You know, somebody wanting to work, and he'd start to cross the picket line, and I've seen two and three fists against one's head at the same time, just because he was wanting to work. Start to cross it, why, a bunch dive in on him and just beat the devil out of him.
Do you know what caused that strike at Gastonia?
No. Nobody else did. To tell you the truth about it, in later years I read a story on it. It was a Red Beal, I believe it was; he was a communist. [Fred Beal, organizer for the National Textile Workers Union] And he was the one that started it. If I knew I'd ever need it, I'd have saved that story.
Yes, and I know the guy you're talking about.
You know more than I do then.
I can't remember his name, but it was Beal.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
They found out that he was a communist. But from that time until the union come up there to try to pass out those leaflets, that's the first union papers I've seen in my life.
When did that incident at Ridgeview happen?
Oh, that was years after. That must have been anyway up towards '40.
Do you think the fact that the textile industry is not organized has anything to do with the fact that wages keep on being so low in textiles? Do you think a union could help get the wages higher in the textile industry?
It would get it higher here in the South, so that's the reason the union keeps trying to get down here. But a lot of the mills is paying better to try to keep people from voting it in. Now the union won't mess with Duke Power; they don't even try to get a-hold of them, because Duke pays a lot higher wages than the union scale is. So what's the use to pay to belong to something when no chance of it helping? The closer the union gets to a mill, they get a little nervous, I guess, because they'll give a little raise. You can notice that; it'll happen every time. If one mill goes union, the rest of the mills within a certain distance of it will give their hands a little more money and try to keep them satisfied. And as long as the hands don't vote for it, they can't come in. They can't keep them from having an election, but if the union don't win they can't come in.
Why do you think it is that people around here don't vote for the union?
I don't know. I've just been one individual working for myself
I wanted to ask you a little bit more about your mother. She
Yes.
What did her parents do for a living?
They worked in the mill, too.
Wow, so they go back a long way. Your mother's mother worked in the mill?
Oh, yes, they all worked in the mill. See, the mills used to build a house and furnish your house while you worked there. And they lived in the mill house for years. And now no mills furnish houses anymore, and you might be working fifty miles from where you live, so that's what's taking all the gas.
Do you remember your mother talking about her experiences as a working child?
When she first started she had a little old box she'd have to push along
to get up to where she could put the ends up.
What was her job?
Spinning.
She was a spinner at the age of seven?
Yes. That's what she started out doing, spinning.
So she didn't ever go to school at all, did she?
Well, she went some sometime or other. The Blue Back Speller was all they had, but she was pretty good at reading and writing, So I know she had to have some. And my dad was, too.
Did your family go into the mills when they first opened here, when they were first built?
I would think so. That's just about the time it was built, about the time they…
Both sets of grandparents worked in the mill?
No, my dad's daddy had three or four farms out here on the Buffalo Shoals Road. He farmed and run a dairy, and there was something for all those kids to do.
How come your father had to work in the boiler room to get land? Could his father not give him any land or help him get started?
He probably could have, but he didn't, and my daddy just went to work and
bought his land. Fifty cents a night; that's pretty low wages.
What were your mother and father like?
I thought they was the greatest.
Were they pretty strict?
If my daddy told you anything, you'd better believe he meant it. But he never did have to whip me but one time, and I thought he was going to kill me. I found out who was boss right quick.
What did he whip you for?
It was over nothing, to tell the truth about it. We was visiting down at
one of my uncles', a bunch of kids sleeping on the floor, what they call
a pallet, just made a pallet bed. And my older brother was reaching
across one of my first cousins, picking at me, and I kept hollering at
him to quit. My daddy thought I was the one making the noise, so he come
in there and took his belt and tore me up. And then he felt bad about it
after he found out that I wasn't… Well, he was about to get
the doctor with me. Durn near killed…
How did you know he felt bad about it? Did he say something?
Yes. My older brother was sorry over it, too. He told him it
How old were you at the time?
I was just a kid about seven or eight. My mama was all the time using a long hickory switch, and that didn't hurt. She wouldn't hit hard enough to hurt any. I didn't mind hers, but I knowed I didn't want no more of my daddy's.
Did you live in a mill house when you were growing up?
No, I was born out there by the end of… They had already quit the mill.
Did your mother quit, too?
Oh, yes. She was staying at home, and my daddy was house carpentering and farming. I remember when I was five or six years old I started picking cotton, and I was around eight or nine when I started plowing. So after I started plowing, then I did all the plowing and the rest of the kids did the hoeing. My daddy'd go off to work carpenter work.
The girls and the boys both did the same work in the field?
Oh, yes, I did the plowing, and the rest of them done the hoeing.
Did you want to farm at all after you grew up?
No, and it's like I said a while ago. See, we had to cut our wood. Me and my twin brother'd take a crosscut saw and saw wood, and my daddy'd split it. And I cut so darn much wood when I was growing up that if I'd been in a twelve-room house, I wouldn't put a fireplace in. At that time there wasn't such a thing as a chain saw. I wouldn't have minded it so bad if we had the conveniences of stuff like that, but when you've got to do it by hand it's work.
Did you say your parents moved into town then later on?
They bought a farm that's just about a mile from here. It's right over across here, I'd say a half a mile out of the city limits. So we moved up there, and I started going to school over at Maiden. And whenever I turned fourteen in the seventh grade, I just quit and went to work.
Was the school very different in Maiden than it had been out in the country?
Yes. You couldn't be quite as mean and get by. It was a country school—it wasn't but two rooms—and if you didn't have a couple fights every day, you didn't learn much.
Were you one of the fighters?
Oh, yes. I had fun. See, I was a twin, so my older brother and his
buddies were about the same age. When we first went, they would just
shove us in on bigger boys, and it'd make them mad, so they'd start a
fight. So me and my twin both, we was smaller, but we'd both usually
take care of them. So in about the next year, then, I was doing it all
by myself.
What were the girls doing for fun all this time, while the boys were fighting?
Sometimes they'd fight. But it wasn't like it is now. People would fight
and enjoy it. It was a whole lot of pastime. Now I've stood up before
and fight until we give out. And I'd say, "Well, let's set down
and rest." Set down and rest till you felt like going again.
Look over at the others, "Well, you ready?"
So you just decided on your own to quit school and go down and get a job. Did your parents have any objections, or did they encourage you to do that?
No, they didn't say nothing to me about it.
You just told them that you were doing it?
Yes.
How did you get your first job?
I heard they was needing a fellow, so I went down and checked on it, and sure enough they was.
What was the name of this plant?
At that time it was called Maiden Chair Company.
What was your first job there?
I started tailing on a cutoff saw. I did it till dinnertime on Saturday and till dinnertime Monday. Then I took the other job, tailing a planer.
I don't know how that works exactly. What was the planer doing that made it so hard on you?
See, a planer is just a big wide machine; this one was probably this wide. And you run your lumber in there, and it's got the blades that planes it off smooth.
What is the man that runs that called?
He's the operator. So this old man would just cram it in there
Just by pushing it through real hard and real fast?
No. It pulls it through, but he'd keep it in there just as much as he could, as much as it would take. And after about two weeks, I got the hang of it, and there wasn't nothing to it.
Why was he doing that?
I don't know, but he had six or eight to quit on him. About two weeks is as long as he'd keep one. And I toughed it out.
Did they usually hire young boys to do that job, or did men sometimes do it?
Sometimes men did, but most of the time a young fellow goes who's never worked nowheres, something like that's all he can do. But I'd say after the first two weeks I had it made from then on. And then they seen I had a little potential to me, and they started moving me on up, and it wasn't too long till I was doing pretty good, to be in furniture work.
What was your best job that you had before the plant burned down?
I was running this triple drum sander at seven dollars a day, and I'd started at $1.50 a day. I've run all the machinery in a furniture place, but I've got all my fingers.
Is that unusual?
Oh, yes, you don't see many in the machine room that's got all their fingers.
What would happen when somebody got a finger cut off or got their hand hurt? Did the company pay for it?
Well, I guess. They'd take them to the doctor or a hospital, but I never did get one cut off, so I really don't know.
Which did you like better, working in the hosiery or working in furniture?
The hosiery is a lot better job. It's not as hard work and not dusty, and you've got some women around, too. In fact, there's more women in a hosiery mill than there are men. And it paid more money. It was a pretty good job, but full-fashioned is over now. It's all panty hose now. See, full-fashioned machines was altogether different from these little circle machines like the ones that makes socks or women's hose on, in just one little machine. It don't take up but about this much floor space. Well, these would make twenty-eight at a time, those big long machines. And the footer would put the foot on thirty-two at a time.
Were you a topper the whole time you were there?
Oh, no. I topped somewhere from a year to a year and a half, and then I started running a legger, making the legs. The topper had to put them on needles and transfer it over bars to put the foot on. They'd put those bars in the footer and transfer it onto the needles, and then it'd start up and knit the foot. But when I went to Burlington, the first machine I went to work on was what they call a combination. It did it all, put the foot on without topping or anything. So I liked that pretty good. A brand-new machine, too, and the one I was running up at Newton must have been twenty years old or more.
When was that that you went to Burlington, in the early forties?
Yes, around '40.
Where did you work there?
I worked over at the Glen Raven Knitting Mills at Altamahaw.
When did you get married the first time?
I wasn't but nineteen.
Where had you met this girl that you married?
She lived about three miles up the road towards Newton. And she left one time while I was at work.
She just left?
Yes, I was working the third shift. Well, she was mean as a snake. But
she left while I was at work, and it suited me so good I never have
asked her why. You know, back years ago, in the thirties, this little
talk about flying saucers and stuff like that? I've actually seen them,
because she
Was she like that from the very beginning?
Yes, her daddy was mean, too, but I always took his advice, I reckon.
What did he say?
She was slipping out dating, and he didn't know who. So I didn't think
much of that, and I told her I was coming over to the house next
Saturday night. She says, "I can't. My daddy'll run you
off." I said, "I don't think so." So she told
some of them down at the mill that
And I went back the next night and any other night that I wanted to. He never did bother me no more.
Did he get more friendly towards you?
Oh, yes. After he seen I wasn't afraid of him, he was all right.
What made you decide to marry this particular girl?
Just like a young'un, I reckon.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… a good year.
Had you had some warning from the way she acted while you were dating that she was going to be pretty bad tempered?
No. Not necessarily. But I know where she got it from, is her daddy, because he was the same way.
How long did you live together?
Seven years, something like that.
Did you have any kids?
Yes, one. I was working on the third shift, trying to sleep in the daytime, and she'd want to go somewhere and just put him in my room when he was just about a year, about, to a year and a half old. And naturally, put him in my bedroom he couldn't get out, the first place he'd come was crawl up on the bed and wake me up. And I've been laying trying to sleep a lot of times, and her set there and smoke and shake the ashes in my ears and stuff like that, just to aggravate me. She tried to kill me a couple times, and I was too mean.
How did she try to kill you?
Well, to tell the truth, every woman was a whore but her. We could go through a town that I'd never been through before, and if we met a woman walking on the street and I happened to turn my head to look at her, she'd say, "Now who in the hell is that goddam whore?"
She was real jealous?
I don't know, but she was hard to get along with. My mother was trying to
get me to leave her and said she was going to kill me. I said,
"Well, if she does it while I'm asleep, I won't know nothing
about
Your mother thought she was going to kill you?
Oh, yes, because she was all the time pulling a knife on me or something. And she grabbed the pistol one day, and I happened not to have it loaded, and it snapped. So then she tried to close it and got my shotgun, and it wasn't loaded.
What would set her off into such a rage?
It didn't have to be nothing. Just like when I was there at Burlington, I was working the third shift, and they was putting in some more machinery. And they offered me a combination machine on the first shift or a legger on the second. Well, with the leggers I could make about twenty dollars a week more money, so I figured I'd take the second shift, and that's what I told them I'd take. Either one was better than the third shift. So I went in on Saturday morning and was telling her about it. I was supposed to start on that job on Monday. I was washing for breakfast, and she said, "Well, which did you take?" and I said, "The legger on the second shift." And she said, "You goddam sonofabitch" and throwed a butcher knife at me, and it just stuck in the back of my leg. I just pulled it out and throwed it down on the floor, never even picked up a towel to dry, and just walked out. So I went off and got about half drunk and stayed three days.
Why would she…
I don't know, but when I come back she was just as nice as she could be.
What kept you with her for seven years?
I don't know.
Was she good-looking?
Yes, she was pretty. But when she left, she was up here a week
She took the car?
Yes. And I didn't mean to take her back. I didn't run her off. And so the
old man and woman wanted me to take her back with me. I said,
"No, she left on her own. I come to get my car; I need it. And
everything is just exactly like it was when she left and will be that
way till seven o'clock next Saturday. And if she's back by that time,
there'll be nothing said. But if she's not, I'm going to load every damn
thing up and bring it to her." So she wasn't back the next
Saturday morning, and I just got the mill truck and got a nigger to help
me, loaded it up and brought it to her. And then it wasn't but a very
short while till I got a card from the draft board to come up there, and
I went up there, and they said, "Have a seat." And
I'll be darned if they didn't know more about me than I knew myself.
Now, where they got all that dope, I don't know.
Did it go to trial?
Yes. So I got him.
What kind of arguments did your lawyer make that won the case?
Proved that she wasn't fit to raise him.
Had she been running around with men, things like that?
Well, she wouldn't get nowhere to live, and I'll tell you, she took up living in a damned old wrecked car in a car lot; there's where her and that young'un was sleeping. And when I found out stuff like that, I just decided I was done with it. And I took him then, and my mother kept him for me till me and this one got married, and then we took him and kept him till he had to go to service, and then he got married while he was in service.
How did you meet your second wife?
Oh, she worked… The second one.
She just talked like a lady. And I ended up marrying her. So she was going somewhere every night, and I always wondered where, but she said to a hen party and I wouldn't be interested. I didn't think that that was what it was.
You were living in Burlington at that time?
Right out the city limits. And we was over at her cousin's on Friday
night, and I had to work on Saturday and she didn't. So she was telling
her cousin about she didn't have to work the next day, and just like a
fool I said, "Well, being as you don't have to work, I think
I'll lay out." And she got hot as a firecracker. So I just
didn't say nothing else. I just got up and went to work the next
morning. See, the
What did she say when all of that happened? Did she try to explain anything?
Oh, she was sorry she was like that, but she wanted me to…
Said she thought a lot of me and wished I'd stay and live with her. And
at the time I was thinking about trading airplanes, and the one I was
going to trade for was $3,000 difference. So she made the offer
if I'd stay with her and let her do as she pleased, not say nothing
about her, if she brought a man in and shacked up with him that'd be her
business, and if I wanted to bring a woman in and shack up with her it'd
be my business. She said if I'd stay with her and live like that, she'd
pay the difference on that plane. And I was kind of hot anyhow and I was
already mad, and I said, "You can stick that damned airplane up
your fanny with the wings
And it looks like we might make it. We've been married over thirty-two years now. And she had a daughter by her first husband, and I had the boy by my first wife, and they're both married. My boy has got two boys, and her daughter's got two girls. And I think just as much of her daughter as I do my boy. In fact, I don't believe I could have thought any more of her if she'd have been mine. They all live in South Carolina.
I wanted to ask you just a little bit more about the places that you worked. Did you know the Carpenter family that started the mills here?
Yes. I really didn't talk to the old man too much. He had a son that I
talked to a lot. They had two big houses downtown. I remember when the
electric lights first come to town. A hundred and ten volts was all they
were. But they were the first that had an electric stove. Now it cost
them to get it, but they had one. They had to put up three transformers
back of the house in order to have power for an electric stove. And this
one old house burned down, and I don't know just how long it's been
since it burned, where the old man lived, but he was already dead. But
they had the first running water in town. Of course, they had pumps
theirself, and this old house was three storeys high. And up in the
attic above that third storey, they had a tank about as big around as
this kitchen, and it was probably this deep. And they had a pump would
Did you find Burlington a very different place to live and work in than Maiden and Newton?
Oh, yes, because it was the hosiery center of the South. And I believe there was 127 hosiery mills down there, compared to one in Newton. Plus they had some weave mills, too. But I don't know where any cotton mills were. But it was a growing town. I don't know just what the population is now.
Did you have any difficulty getting a job in hosiery in Burlington? Weren't jobs scarce at that time?
Not when I went. This mill was just starting.
And you had experience.
Oh, yes. They were just putting the machines in. They had two machines in
it when I got there. And they put me on one of them on the first shift.
It'd take close to two months to put a machine up and get it to running,
and then I'd come up here and get somebody else to go. So in the long
run I had most of my friends over there anyhow
Weren't there enough people in Burlington that were wanting jobs in hosiery mills? Why did they have to send you back here to get workers?
What they want is experienced people. And see, it takes six months to teach anybody to run one of those things. And if they've got to pay somebody while they're learning, if they can get somebody that's already experienced, it's a lot better than paying somebody six months to learn. It makes a whole lot of difference. You see, that was around '39 or '40, so things was improving some then.
You said one nice thing about working in the hosiery mills was that there were more women around. Were there not any women in the furniture industry?
Not at that time, there wasn't a one. In the office maybe they had one or two, but there wasn't a one that worked in the plant. And when I went to Conover and worked in one up there a while, there wasn't any there.
You worked at Conover Furniture?
Conover Furniture. That's the first thing I did after this one burnt down. I went to Conover and worked up there six or eight months.
When Mr. Brady owned it?
I don't know who owned it. It was Conover Furniture, is all I knowed. I never did even notice who signed the checks.
Why did you leave there?
It was on the night shift, and I don't think they run that shift but about three months, so when they closed it off, then I went to the hosiery. I don't know why they started up the night shift for three or four months; they must have been behind with orders or something. But it'd work all night, ten hours a night, as long as it lasted.
How did it make things different to have women working?
Well, you wouldn't want to work somewhere where everybody was women,
would you? Never see a man?
Well…
You've got to enjoy the pretty things in life, too. That's the way it is down at the hospital, too; it's mostly women.
What is your job at the hospital?
Well, I went and took a job as a maintenance man, and then I ended up
getting the engineer's job. The one that had it before I went went off
and got him a college education, and he come back and got the personnel
job, so that put him over me. And he tried to kick me out; when I turned
sixty-five he tried to retire me, and I wouldn't leave. It made me mad,
and I stayed for meanness'sake. He had done promised the job to a
younger fellow. It didn't make any difference to me; it kind of made me
mad at the time, what he was trying to do. But I'd let him push me all I
meant to be pushed. First he called me in twenty-three days before my
birthday and said, "Set down. I want to talk to you about your
retirement." And I said, "What retirement?"
He said, "You told me you was going to retire." I
said, "Like hell I did. I told you last summer when you made me
mad about that damn fan upstairs, I said, ‘If it's going to
be a rat race around here like this all summer, I'll take early
retirement and see what the hell you can do with
it."’ So I went on and had my birthday, and nothing
else said. Then the first of March was going to be on a Wednesday, so he
come down there on Friday and said, "Well, I'm going to take
you off as department head the first of March and let Neil take over.
And you'll work on at the same money." I said, "By
goddam, that's what I've been wanting all the time." And he
just done me a favor and didn't realize it, because I don't have no
responsibility and don't work as hard
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
With the different supervisors that you've worked under along the way, have you had conflicts with them or had to stand up for your rights in that way?
No, just tell them what I think, and if they don't like it, I don't care. Because a fellow like me can be kind of independent, because I do anything. I'm an electrician, a plumber, a painter, a paperhanger, ceramic tile. I've got my state plumbing and heating license plus a pilot license, and not many of your fools got stuff like that.
With what you say a sixth-grade education. I had just started in the
seventh grade when I went to work. And I'd say, on the average, I'll
out-spell any of your high school students and stuff like that. I think
education is the greatest thing that there is, if a fellow has got any
sense to go with it. An educated fool is the damnedest fool that there
is, too. I've seen them that didn't know nothing that had seven years of
college. In fact, we had one in the Army, and he actually didn't know
his left from his right and had seven years of college. And anything
that was in a book, if you asked him about it, he could tell you pretty
well what
Ride along with one hand on the switch key and the other one on that old emergency brake. And that boy never did learn to drive.
How did you learn enough about plumbing to pass the state license test?
I worked for another fellow that thought he was a plumber, but he wasn't.
He was working under his uncle's license, but he didn't do too good a
work. In other words, I learned how not to do it by
working for him. And I just decided I was going to go try it, and I
didn't know a thing about it. I hadn't seen any books or anything. I
didn't know what to expect the test to be like, so I failed the whole
durn thing. So then I ordered me four little books from Alden
Did you prefer plumbing to working in hosiery?
When I come up here and got married, I left the hosiery mill. Because
that one that I wasn't with but five weeks was still working there, and
I just thought I'd better just get away from here
You just wanted to get away from Burlington?
Well, I'd started dating this one in here at that time. Well, right here is the new book. There's a whole lot of people got it now. See, I'm the first one listed in Maiden. I was the only one for years.
You were the only licensed plumber in Maiden?
For a long time.
Could you have brought your wife back down to Burlington to work down there if you had wanted to? Why did you decide to move up here?
We didn't. She lived here.
You had already come back up here. You had quit your job in Burlington when you and your wife split up.
Yes, and just left over there.
You just left because you wanted to get away from town.
Yes.
It's quite a feat.
Every time they have that exam, which is twice a year, they'll send a little pamphlet, maybe four or five pages, just who passed during that exam.
Did people around here ever open up small hosiery mills in their own homes, in their garages? I know that happened in Burlington quite a lot. People would get a couple old machines and start …
Kenneth Parker started in his car shed up the street here, and he ended up building more to it, and then he built more, and he must have been working fifteen hands in it. And then he sold it out, and whoever bought it moved it somewhere else.
About when was it that he started?
It was back about the time that me and my wife got married, about thirty years ago.
He was the only person you've known of around here to do that?
Yes, except downtown there's been mills come and go. The building's there, but a mill would rent it and move in, maybe stay a couple years and then move out, and somebody else move in. And then they'd go out. I don't know if anything's in the building now or not; I don't believe they are.
What were working conditions like at Ridgeview?
Well, like normal, I guess. And the faster you work, the more money you can make while you are working. If you don't stop the machine off except when you make your changes, you can run a dozen in about forty minutes. After you run your warp, right at the top of the stocking it's about this wide after it's doubled? But it comes out single, about this far. And then you pick those bars up—they've got little hooks on them—and set it down with the needles like that and come up, and you