[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

HOY DEAL:

I've got pictures all up here of all different kinds of people. There's Dolly (Parton), and up there is Little Betty Pruitt from Morganton. She used to put out records and tapes.

PATTY DILLEY:

The girl with the blond hair put up on top of her head?

HOY DEAL:

Yes. She telled… I believe nine or ten years old when she first started making records and putting out stuff. And then she got into a bad wreck and was about killed, and she was out a couple months, I think, on that. And then her daddy got to where he couldn't run around much with them, and her and her brother went to working down in the rest home up there in Morganton. And she don't do no putting out records or tapes now. I had one of her records that she made when she was about nine or ten years old, and I sold it here a while back to a fellow for fifteen dollars, and it had cost me five-something. But he wanted it.

PATTY DILLEY:

It was a collector's item, I guess.

HOY DEAL:

He wanted it and said he'd check in a while with me about it. And I said, "Well, I can't get any more of it, and the only way that I'd sell it to you at any kind of a price a-tall would be I'll call her and see if I can get any more, or if she's got any more or knows anybody she can get any from that she had sold." You know, she didn't put them out nowhere but just sold them around and mailed them to people and stuff like that. She didn't put none of them out in no regular store or nothing. And so she said there wasn't any way that she could get me nar'one. Said they had one, but they wanted to keep it in the family theirself. And I've got about a half a dozen that she made afterwards with her family, but she made this one just by herself, you know, and sung on it and everything, when she was just small. And I told him that I couldn't get any, and he said, "Well, what will you take for that one?" I said, "I'll take it off on my tape"—my tape taped pretty good back then—" and I'll sell you the record for

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fifteen dollars." And so he went to work. He'd been just loafing around, hadn't been working much and didn't have no money much. And he all the time wanted to buy something on credit or something. And so he went to work, and he come by here one day and said, "You say you'd take fifteen dollars for that record?" I said, "Yes, that's what I told you, but I hate to do that. I hate to part from it." And he went and pulled out fifteen dollars. I said, "Well, being I told you I'd take fifteen, I won't back out on you." So I sold it to him for fifteen dollars. I've got tapes and records of about all of the singers and stuff that's on the air, of any people that does the gospel singing and preaching and stuff like that. I must have forty or fifty records over here of different people, gospel records and tapes and that stuff.

PATTY DILLEY:

Who are some of your favorite groups?

HOY DEAL:

I ain't especially got no favorite bunch, anybody that preaches the word of God and sings religious songs, why, I listen at them and like to hear them. But take this whole bunch of rock and roll stuff and kids' stuff like that, when such as that comes on my television I cut it off. And I've got two or three; I've got a television in about every room… I mean a… Yes, a tape… I've got a tape player and I've got …

PATTY DILLEY:

A radio.

HOY DEAL:

Two there. One of them won't play hardly a-tall. You can't hardly hear it. And I've got one in that room, and I've got one there beside of my bed. It's got a clock on it. It's got to where it don't play as good as it did. But I can have music in every room I go in, some kind. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

So you mostly listen to gospel stations?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, I did keep that one on Statesville all the time, but

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somehow or another I can't pick up Statesville. I don't know; they've changed things around to where you can't get… Nothing I got, I can't pick up Statesville on it. I don't know whether it's because the other stations is built greater, and… I can get Winston on that one in there; I keep it on Winston-Salem about all the time. And I get a lot of music and stuff out of Winston, and I get the Southern Baptist Convention out of Fort Worth, Texas, I believe is where it comes from; I pick it up through Winston. I get it every Sunday morning, and it's mostly all the stuff that happened back years ago in… What is the name of that place? It's where the "Grand Ole Oprey"…

PATTY DILLEY:

Nashville?

HOY DEAL:

The "Grand Ole Oprey" station. Most of it's people that was in it way back years ago; them that's a-living still comes around and …

PATTY DILLEY:

And this is what you pick up from Texas?

HOY DEAL:

No, I don't pick up places like that. Since I found out where to get all these stations that I used to get through Statesville, I can pick up most anything through Winston-Salem. I keep it set to where I can… I put a little tape on it before I can tell where the station is to turn it on on Sunday morning. I get that on Sunday morning, get gospel preaching and singing and stuff like that. I've got several different places on these other radios that I can pick up gospel music and stuff on Sunday mornings. I don't have too much time on Sunday morning, because I leave here about 9:15 to go to my church and don't have too much. But on Sunday evening, why, I get people from all different places coming on Channel 14. I get about half a dozen different places that I can get preaching and singing and stuff. And me and my neighbor out here was aiming to go down to WHKY where Channel 14 comes on. We was aiming to go down there tonight,

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and I told him we'd better wait till next Tuesday night, on account of me a-going so many places and walking so much today. And then I didn't know for sure whether he would be on or not. [Interruption] … when you're doing something for accommodation for other people?

PATTY DILLEY:

I was reading your Biblical Recorder's. Is that something you get from the church?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, it's a church book from Temple Baptist Church.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where is that?

HOY DEAL:

That's down in East Hickory.

PATTY DILLEY:

How big is the church?

HOY DEAL:

This ain't none of the church or nothing. It's just a book that comes out through the Southern Baptist Convention of the Southern Baptist Church. So there ain't none of the people or nothing; it's just reading about all different things that happens at different places through the Southern Baptist churches, and pictures of different people in different places.

PATTY DILLEY:

What's Temple Baptist like?

HOY DEAL:

It's a pretty good-sized brick church, and I imagine it'll seat 500. And they've got Sunday school rooms all around over the downstairs of the church and bottom part and the back part, and they've got a kitchen downstairs in the bottom part in the back part of the church. When they have a church meeting and they have dinner on the ground, instead of having the dinner on the ground or anything, they have it in the back part downstairs. Some people don't think that they ought to have any place in churches to eat or anything, but I don't know whether that'd be wrong or not, as long as you don't cook or nothing on Sunday, and everybody cooks at home and brings their dishes and just takes it down in

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that room and puts it out, and everybody eats there. I don't know. There's one man, when we built that church, why, he said it wasn't right and he moved his membership and said it wasn't right to cook and eat or eat in the church. But that's not into where you have preaching or anything. I can't see where it'd be too much of a sin or anything. You've heared tell of churches, I know, having dinner on the ground and big dinners and stuff out in the yard. Well, we ain't got much place much to have dinner on the ground, because everything's marked off for cars to park all around the back of the church. And they moved one house when they built the church, that the preacher lived in, and they bought another. And now the highway has taken part of the churchyard and nearly all of the yard in the house the preacher lives in. And so we bought another house for the preacher, a whole lot bigger, and he's got a wife and two children, and so they built a bigger house for him somewhere away from the church. I don't know just whereabouts it's at, but I haven't ever seen it myself. I've got the picture of it here somewhere, the house that they bought, but I don't have any picture of the outside of the church or anything. But I've got pictures of a lot of the members and pictures of a lot of different things that's inside the church, and stuff like that, you know.

PATTY DILLEY:

What is the inside like?

HOY DEAL:

It's just got three rows of benches, and then the choirs and where the pulpit is, where the preacher's at, is back up here in front of all of it. And then they have an organ on one side and a piano on the other side. They have two, one playing organ and one playing piano. And then they have rooms in the back there where they take children and everything.

PATTY DILLEY:

Is the preacher you have there now a young man?

HOY DEAL:

No, I'd say he's around forty-five or fifty years old.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's not too old.

HOY DEAL:

I don't think he'd be over fifty. I may have heared, but I don't remember if I have, just how old he is. He's not too old.

PATTY DILLEY:

What's his name?

HOY DEAL:

Garland Early.

PATTY DILLEY:

Has he been there for quite a while?

HOY DEAL:

I guess four years.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did he come to be there? Did the preacher you had leave?

HOY DEAL:

They've had two or three different ones there. The first one that started the church was an old man, and he died before they got the second floor built. We just had the bottom floor and we had the preaching and everything in the basement. And then they'd started to build the other part, but he died before they got it all finished. He didn't even get to preach in there a time in the upper part. Then Preacher Baker was there after this man died, and he was a pretty old man. And his wife still comes there and helps to teach children, and when they have any kind of a meeting or anything she's there and helps to do things in the church.

PATTY DILLEY:

And then you got Preacher Early?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, they went and got him, and he preached a couple of sermons—they could see how he preached and everything—and then they got him to come regular. And wherever he come from, his choir leader come with him, and he was there two years, I believe, or maybe three. And he decided to go somewhere to some other church or somewheres, and then we got another choir leader. I believe he come from the First Baptist Church to lead the choir, and he'd been there six months or better before they taken him in as a regular singer. And he's supposed to be a regular singer from now on,

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and he said he was going to bring his family and join in with this church.

PATTY DILLEY:

Does the regular singer get a gift or a donation maybe at the end of the service? Is he paid in any way by the church?

HOY DEAL:

I don't know what they've been a-paying him. They're sure to have paid him something till he started in. They probably paid him out of the church salary that they have left over each Sunday.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did people like about the new preacher's preaching when they came down and they were proving and said he was a good preacher? What makes a good preacher?

HOY DEAL:

One thing is preaching the word of God, and another thing is about going and visiting the sick and everything, when there's people sick and in the hospital or anything like that. About going out and preaching and visiting the sick that's in the hospital and in the rest homes and stuff like that and having prayer with him and everything. I think that is more important than just preaching. Because there's so many people that's sick in the hospitals and rest homes and stuff like that that can't come to church every Sunday. And whenever anybody spends a lot of his time when he's not preaching in the church and stuff out going around visiting the sick that's in the hospitals and rest homes and having prayer with them, I think that's the most important thing, besides preaching the word of God, that he could do. And of course, if a man ain't going to preach the word of God, why, he ain't got no business in the pulpit. That's the way I look at it. Because if anybody don't preach the word of God, why, it ain't important for him to be in the pulpit at all. If a man gets up there and takes his touch on one thing, and then jumps off on something else and don't preach the Bible, why, people don't want to hear him long. And I believe this man's a good man, and he does go to visit the sick all

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the time. As soon as he hears tell of anybody being sick, why, he's ready to go to see them, and that's one thing, I think, that's mighty good about this man.

PATTY DILLEY:

How does he compare with some other preachers at the other churches that you've been in contact with previously?

HOY DEAL:

I don't go to too many other churches, but I mentioned a while ago about we was talking about going down to WHKY. There's a good preacher on there. We was aiming on going tonight, but we decided to wait till next Tuesday night to go to hear him preach. He's a good man preaches. He's a real old man, a white-headed man. He's been preaching for many, many years, and he goes to other places. He preaches himself on Tuesday night and sing and has stuff. And then whenever another group comes on, why, he stays with them and testifies and helps to sing and carry on part of their preaching and stuff for a while. Anything that he can do to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ, why, he's willing to do it. And that's one thing that any Christian is supposed to do when they get a chance, to witness to anybody about the Savior. Just anything that you can do to hold up the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, why… I don't know whether you're a real Christian or not. I can't judge you or nothing, but …

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

HOY DEAL:

I know you know enough about the Bible to know that Christ come into the world and gave His life on the cross to save all sinners, and that's one …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

HOY DEAL:

… go to church as much as I should, but I ain't got

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no way to go but just on Sunday, and I generally go every Sunday, rain or shine. But of a night I ain't got no way to get down there. The folks that carries me down there and back don't go every Sunday night theirself, because they're both old people and they don't like to drive after night much.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do they have a Wednesday night prayer meeting at your church, too?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, they have prayer meeting on Wednesday night.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do they ever have revivals?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, they have revivals every once in a while. And they had a meeting for the young children just last week. They had programs, all the young children, and then they had the people that finished high school there then telling their experience and stuff, telling what school they went to and where they went and what kind of work they was going into and all that stuff. There was two or three in our church that finished, and then there was a couple from other churches that was there, too.

PATTY DILLEY:

When you were home with your parents as a child, did you grow up within a church?

HOY DEAL:

I grew up in Newton in the Lutheran Church and was a Lutheran until I come to Hickory. I was about thirty years old when I come to Hickory, and for a couple of years I went to a Lutheran church down here part of the time. And then they started up a church in the old school building down there. We had church in it a while, and then this preacher decided to build a church up there next to where it's at now. And we first had church in the first floor till they then decided to put another storey on it. This preacher that died was the one that started to do all that, but he didn't live to do it all and get it all finished.

PATTY DILLEY:

What made you decide to change from the Lutheran over to the

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Baptist?

HOY DEAL:

I thought the Baptist was more a right church than the Lutheran after I heared the Lutherans and seen how some of the Lutherans carried on in the church that I went to up here after I moved to Hickory. I went to a little Lutheran church down there a while, and I went to it a few times. And then this preacher come to my house and talked to me about the word of God and all about the church and what they stood for and everything. And I figured that I wasn't really a Christian as I ought to be. And I went to this Lutheran church, and he asked me if I thought I was saved and whether I thought I was living without sin. And I told him no, I didn't think so. I didn't think anybody could live without sinning some, because there wasn't nobody ever perfect but Christ. Christ was the only perfect man that was ever on the earth, and He was born of the Virgin Mary. He was the son of God, and He was born without a father. And so he got me to start going to church up there, and then I joined the Baptist church because I didn't think the Lutheran church, the one I was going to down there… When you'd go out of church between Sunday school and preaching and when the members that belonged to that church would go out in the yard and stand and cuss and talk about going rabbit hunting and about what good dogs they had and stuff like that, I thinked, "Well, that ain't no kind of a church for anybody to belong to," so I never did join that church. So I joined the Baptist Church, and I've been a Baptist ever since.

PATTY DILLEY:

Well, that's neat.

HOY DEAL:

And that's one thing that I see about the Baptist Church, that they don't go out in the yard and stand and talk and everything between preaching and Sunday school. When Sunday school's over, we go right on up into the auditorium where we have our preaching at and everything.

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They did a while have a little program for the children between preaching and Sunday school. And they have a man in the back that takes the children over and talks to them, except just once in a while they have the children up there when they have a program or something on by the little children. And there's several of the women that take the kids and have certain classes that they have them practice and stuff. It's a lot better to help the little children, too, in one sense of the word, than the Lutheran Church was. But we went to catechism in the Lutheran Church, and just what we learned through studying the catechism book and stuff like like. That's about the only thing that they learnt you, and just whatever you got out of preaching, is about all you got out of the Lutheran Church.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was there a lot of difference in the type of service between the Lutheran Church and the Baptist Church?

HOY DEAL:

There's not too much difference, really, in the preaching part. But back then I didn't know enough about the Bible or enough about anything but just what was in the catechism book to know when a preacher was really preaching the word of God. But now I've he ared so many preachers preach on the air and then heared this man preach for a long time and everything till I can tell pretty quick whether a man's a-preaching the Bible or not. If he ain't a-preaching from the Bible, I don't want to hear him.

PATTY DILLEY:

I want to go back to the early part of your life. Were you born in Newton?

HOY DEAL:

I was borned in Newton about a half a mile from the covered bridge in north Newton, where the old depot is. And I lived in Newton in several different places. I lived in north Newton in about five or six different places. We owned a big two-storey house in north Newton, and then we traded it for a place out on what they called the old Claremont

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Road going towards Claremont from north Newton. We lived in about three or four different houses out there, and then we traded one of the houses we had on the Claremont Road for a house out in the country a few miles, and we wasn't out there but a couple months till the house burnt down one night way up in the night, around ten or eleven o'clock. And we went from there back over to right close to where we had traded that one off at, and rented a house and lived there a little while. And my daddy bought some more land then, and he built another house on the other side of the road from where we was a-renting at. He built another small house and put up a shop in it and run the shop in it a while. And then he traded the stuff that he had in that shop off and then went to renting that little house, and he rented it a while. And then the people that lived in it didn't take no care of it. I believe it was standing empty when we moved into Hickory. He sold the one he had down there, but he give me a lot, and he give my sister a lot. After we come to Hickory he gave up the lot up here and built a house, and he give my sister a lot and he give me a lot. And he give my two sisters—my other sister and my older sister that was still living then—the house that he had. And I built a house on my lot, and then I traded it for one up here in Hickory back over here in the country, and I lived there then about thirty-five years, I guess. And then I come up here. I got rid of my place. Or some of my people got rid of it for me [Laughter] , and I had to come up here then and rent me a place up here, and so I'm stuck up here. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

What did your father do for a living?

HOY DEAL:

He was a carpenter, contracted and built houses and all that stuff.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did he do in his shop?

HOY DEAL:

His last years that he lived he was a carptenter down in Newton, and a car run over him there in front of the North Newton stoplight. He got killed right there at that stoplight in front of where the Northgate Drugstore… There ain't no drugstore there now, though, is there?

PATTY DILLEY:

No. It was in the basement of the old hotel?

HOY DEAL:

No. That building that stands there now is not any drugstore any longer; it's used for something else. His sister lived right across the road in that big old two-storey house in north Newton right across from the stoplight. He's got a sister that lives there. I don't know whether she's dead or not. But he was staying there and working down in the lower end of town. And a man down in town that he worked with stopped up there beside the drugstore and called him to come out there. And he started to go across the road, and the light was on "Cautious", and he speeded up to go under that light before it changed on red, and that was where he run over Daddy at. And he didn't live but just a couple of hours after they got him in the hospital, and he died the same night.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old was he then?

HOY DEAL:

I don't remember that.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old were you?

HOY DEAL:

I can't even remember that. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Were you real young?

HOY DEAL:

No, I was up in years quite a bit.

PATTY DILLEY:

When your family was moving around a lot, why did they move, just to get to a better house or a better location? Why did they move so often?

HOY DEAL:

Every time that he could sell a house and make quite a bit of money on it, why, he'd sell it and build him a new one. He done his own carpentry work and building on the houses, and, say, if he could clear a thousand dollars on a place or something, why, he'd sell it and then build him

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a new one. And that's one reason that he built so many houses, and then he decided that he would trade for that place over in the country and go over there and maybe farm some, where he could have more land and keep his cow and horses and everything. But he didn't get to stay over there long enough to do anything. And after we moved back to town then, he finally sold that over there and then he bought some land there in Newton and started building more houses.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's interesting.

HOY DEAL:

But I don't even remember just how old I was when I bought that place over in the country. He never got to come over there to see me but one time when I bought that place in the country, until he was killed.

PATTY DILLEY:

Up here in Hickory.

HOY DEAL:

He was staying at Newton most of the time working, and my two sisters was living in the house there in Hickory.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your mother ever do any work outside the home?

HOY DEAL:

No, she never did do nothing after she had married. I think she lived on a farm or something before she was married. I forget what town she did live in. She wasn't born and raised in Catawba County, I don't think; she was born and raised in some other county.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was your father born and raised in Catawba County?

HOY DEAL:

I don't know about that neither, but he had about five or six other brothers that lived around Newton. He had a brother Sid Deal that lived down below the courthouse in Newton. And he had a brother Will Deal that lived up here in Hickory before we ever come to Hickory, any of us. And he had a sister that lived down in the country, down in the Mt. Olive section somewhere. She married a McRee. He had a twin sister that lived, I believe, in Charlotte. He had Pink Deal; I believe he lived in Hickory

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a while. And Will Deal lived in Hickory. And Sid Deal lived down below where the First National Bank used to be. And there was a Rob Deal that lived in Conover.

PATTY DILLEY:

I'm familiar with that name.

HOY DEAL:

I don't know whether that's all the brothers and sisters he had or not.

PATTY DILLEY:

What were their jobs?

HOY DEAL:

Sid Deal that lived down in North Newton worked a bunch of men all the time; he didn't do anything himself. He just walked around with his collar and tie on and smoked his cigar and had other people doing the work.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where was this at?

HOY DEAL:

He done rolling all kinds of buildings, old houses and any kind of buildings like that. He had them jacked up and rolled them from one plot to another and stuff like that. As far as doing any work, he wouldn't know to do any work. I worked for him a little while myself way back when I was small. And me and him couldn't get along good. He was kind of a crabby-talking man, kind of a short-talking fellow. He wasn't like my daddy.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old were you when you were working with him?

HOY DEAL:

I wasn't but about sixteen or seventeen, I don't think, when I was a-piddling around working with him some. And my brother was working for him awhile. And he come around one day, and I was under the house setting a jack under a timber, fixing to jack it up. And he come around and said something to me, and he was kind of hateful. He didn't mean nothing by it, but he'd be short-talking. And I was pretty hateful myself then, and I didn't take no foolishness off of nobody. I wasn't living for

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the Lord or nothing back then, and I didn't take no fooling off of nobody. If anybody come around and said something to me I didn't like, I was ready to tell them off right quick. And he said something or another about, "Little Deal, do something," and I said, "If you want it done any faster than I'm doing it, you crawl under here and do it yourself, and I'll get out." And he waltzed on off around to where one of my brothers was at. My brother said he said, "That little Deal ain't like you. I told him to do something, do it different from what he had done or something or said something to him. I thought he was going to bite my head off." He says, "Well, he's like you. He flies off of the handle a lot of times when he oughtn't to, and he's just about as crabby as you are." [Laughter] And he said to my brother, "You go ahead and do whatever I tell you to do and don't say nothing back to me, but he cut me off right quick." [Laughter]

I worked on the relief work back during the Compression [sic] when you couldn't hardly get no work, you know, here in Hickory. That was later years, after I'd moved to Hickory. What little bit you got, you had to take it out in groceries and stuff. I've helped digging ditches and everything all around over here around the town of Brookford, digging ditches and cutting out thickets. He was digging some ditches around over in there behind the old Brookford Cotton Mill, and old Mr. Jim Hart—he's dead now—was another one of them men that come around a-short-talking and cussed lots, and he didn't do no work. He carried a little old stick, like, made with a chair and a walking cane made together. He'd set that three legs down and set that walking stick back and sit down on it, and he could shut that up and go around and use it for a walking stick when he had it shut up, too. And he come around there one day and …

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

HOY DEAL:

… and said something to me. He told me to backfill somewhere else or something, and he commenced to cussing. And I didn't like that a litle bit. I said, "You're an old man. You can come around and tell me what to do, but don't cuss when you talk to me. If you do, I'll take this shovel and trim your ears off." And he went on down the ditch. There was another boss under him, and he went on down the hill and told the other boss about it, and he come up there and said, "What got the matter with you and Jim?" I said, "Well, he come up here telling me to do something and was cussing and a-snorting, and I told him that if he went to cussing me or cussing when he was talking to me, that I'd cut his ears off with that shovel." And he said, "Well, go ahead and do what you was doing." And directly, old man Jim come back up the ditch then, and he said, "Little Deal, you go up on the hillside. Take your shovel along and go up on the hillside and pick up all of the loose tools that we ain't a-using." It was geting up pretty close to quitting time. "And pile them up in a pile up there where the truck can get to them. And when you get that done, if the truck ain't come just stay up there and wait till the truck comes." And so after that, when old man Jim come around me he was quiet. [Laughter]

And when we got through with that work up there, we went to the Hickory Airport up here and went to working on the Hickory Airport, building it bigger. And old man Jim would come around every morning. It was getting cold weather then, and we was cutting brush and grubbing out stumps and stuff, and we was burning it as we piled it up. We'd pile it up in piles and burn it. And he come around up there and said, "Little Deal, you're the only one that seems to know how to pile brush so they'll

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burn up. What about you keeping the brush put on the fire and keeping me a good fire going so we can burn all this trash and stuff up? They have everybody piling brush, just crosses them up every way, you know, and they won't burn up. They just burn a hollow out from underneath of it, and it won't burn up. You seem to be the only one that knows how to pile stuff on there so it'll burn up, and I need a fire to warm my toes by all the time." So he put me to just carrying the brush. I didn't have to do any more grubbing or digging or nothing. People'd dig them up, and I'd carry them and pile them on that fire and keep the fire a-going. I stayed around the fire about all the time. I didn't do much except taking around a drink of water once in a while. When it was cold weather, they didn't need much water. And I'd always carry the stuff and keep it piled up on the fire. And every morning, if the fire had went plumb out, I'd start a fire up and start putting stuff on the fire. You know, if you cross brush up like that, it'll just hollow out, but if you lay it all the same way and keep it packed down, it'll burn completely up all the time. And I kept him a fire built all the time. And on up when warm weather come, after we got through burning brush and stuff and went to digging ditches and stuff like that, about all I done was carry water around. [Laughter] That old man, he seen he couldn't get by with nothing and pull nothing over me, and so he went to taking sides with me kind of, too. Because I just wouldn't take nothing off of nobody. And when people got wrong with me, I got wrong with them.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where did you work after the Work Projects job?

HOY DEAL:

I went to Hutton and Bourbonnais and worked twenty-one years there. Nearly twenty-one. Then the bossman up yonder tried to make a fool out of me, and I told him off and quit after I'd built [up] twenty-one year

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out there. Then I went to Suggs and Hardin's and stayed about a year and a half. I worked there at Hutton and Bourbonnais for about twenty years and got a twenty-year pin, and I worked a while on the twenty-one years. They was starting the twenty-one year. We built boxes a while for the Army, the government, ammunition boxes and stuff for the Army. They built them for a good long while, and then they started making hardwood flooring and they made hardwood flooring till about the time that I left there. And they started making machine tops and table tops. And then they went to moving part of their furniture and part of their machinery up towards Granite Falls. And they moved about all their building material up there towards Granite, and they don't have much up here now. They just have the office and what stuff they have on the yard that they use around there. They've got a cement block building up there that somebody, I think, runs for them. They have some finish stuff in their office like paints and plywood and stuff like that to put inside of houses. That's about all they have up here now.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was your job at Hutton and Bourbonnais?

HOY DEAL:

I guess I worked on the ripsaw about ten years straight. I didn't run the saw, but I helped to keep the material to it. You have to keep the lumber cut. Every hack of lumber, they put a stick between every layer of lumber so it would dry when they put it in the kiln, and I taken the sticks off of them and hacked them up on the rack ready to haul back out and take out on the yard to put under the other lumber when they done that. And then they got that new smart bossman in there, and he tried to run everything. And that's when I got my hand all tore up, while I was on that ripsaw. I got that joint in that hand tore up, and they taken about fifty stitches.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did that happen?

HOY DEAL:

Got it under a gear wheel on the ripsaw. I was cleaning out under there, getting the dust unstopped out from under the saw, and I let that gear wheel run over my hand. Just run it under that and cut that hand all up.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was this new bossman you were talking about like? What kind of things would he do that would not be good?

HOY DEAL:

He was just a young guy, a smart guy, you know. He hadn't been working there but a year or two, and he hadn't been a bossman more than about five or six months. And whenever he got to be bossman, he tried to make everything look easy on his own self, tried to get the hands to put out more work than what they'd been doing, and didn't want to give them no more money or nothing. Whenever he started on me… Me and him had had words before, and that's why he wanted to jump on me. Because he had a little authority, and he could tell me what to do. And he wanted to jump on me, because he'd tried to be boss before he got to be boss, tell you what you ought to do when he'd come around doing things. When he was working around the flooring box, he tried to be smart. And after he got a little authority of his own then, he tried to get people to do more work and didn't want to pay them no more money and give them no raise. What he was trying to do was to work hisself up to a better job hisself. They got a new superintendent at the office, and Charlie got in with him. He put Charlie on as a bossman. And they told me it wasn't too long till they got rid of him and Charlie both. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Why do you think they got rid of him?

HOY DEAL:

They sent him away from down at this shop up on the other job. People around here wouldn't work for him, what was in the other office.

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And they brought people from the other shop up there where I was working then and put them on the job. And he tried to get me to do… Before he had offered to give me a raise, and he tried to get me to cut more furniture boxes than what anybody else had ever cut. And I knowed I couldn't do it, and I knowed he couldn't. He couldn't do it hisself, and I wouldn't try. I told him if that was the only way that I had to get a raise, he could just have the whole job and do it hisself. Me and Ralph Crowder both was working on there together, and Ralph told Charlie hisself, "Me and Deal both are doing lots more work than we're supposed to do. We're running two jobs, and you still think we ought to run more." And Ralph told me after that, "I had to cuss him out and go back down to the other place myself. We couldn't get along together." [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Who was this that told you that?

HOY DEAL:

Ralph Crowder. He'd been working down at the other shop, and he transferred him up there to help work up there and help get the stuff out up there, and he wouldn't stay up there. He stayed up there a little while, and he said right after I left he said he quit down there and went down to the other place. And they wanted him to come back up here, and he quit the whole business. I seen him up here about two months ago out here working for the City of Hickory. And I said, "What are you doing working out here for the city?" He told me how long he'd been with the city. He was bossman on the ditch line working for the city. He said, "I'm making a lot easier money than I made up there at Hutton. We worked up there for nearly nothing. They just thought we had to stay there. I finally decided I'd find something better or not even work a-tall." And so he quit, and they hired him on with the city, and he worked for the city a while and then they put him on as bossman over the city over the

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outside work, on digging ditches and stuff. I asked Ralph, "How long have you been away from Hutton's?" He said, "A long time. Just a short time after you left, I left and got a job working for the city, and now I've got up to where I don't have to work very much myself. I just go around and see if the rest of them works. I never made no money when I worked up there for Hutton's hardly to amount to anything, just enough to barely live on." And now he said that he was working for the city that he could finally make a decent living. I'm telling you, I was glad somebody changed their mind and got away from that bunch up there.

PATTY DILLEY:

When you quit, were you afraid that you might not be able to find a job somewhere?

HOY DEAL:

No. There was a fellow told me that they was wanting a hand down yonder, and he said he'd tell the man down there that he knowed where he could get him a man. He said he was pretty well sure he could get me on, and so I just quit anyhow in a couple of days. I quit before I even knowed I was going to get on down here. I knowed I could find one somewhere, because there wasn't no kind of machinery in a shop but what I couldn't tail… Catch the lumber, you know, comes from in the machine. And I got on down here then in the sanding room, and I wasn't fast enough to work with the other fellows that was on there doing that. And then they put me and the other fellow off of that job that we was on and put a man and his wife both on that job, but they was both used to doing that kind of work. And they put Shorty Bumgardner over there doing something, and they put me back there then with a fellow Bowman, tailing the cutoff saw. The boss part of the time run the big planer. And he put me over there, and then whenever he'd want me over there to tail the big planer, he'd call me and I'd go over there and tail the big planer. He said, "You've surely

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been the tail boy a lot before. You can tail anything that we've got to tail around here, and pack the lumber up on the truck so I can pick it right up and put it right back through." And I said, "Yes, I've done quite a bit of that kind of work. I've done that more than I have about anything else after I quit Hutton's, and a long time before." When I worked at the other shop, I done that kind of work.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was this other shop another place you worked at before Hutton's?

HOY DEAL:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

Could you tell me about that?

HOY DEAL:

There wasn't even much to tell about that. I just worked there a but a year. And we went out to bring in a truckload of lumber, and I smoked cigarettes back then. And I was out in the yard, and I was smoking while I was out there. And I went back in, and Carroll Somebody said, "Don't you know you ain't supposed to smoke when you're out in the yard?" I said, "What time you think a man's going to smoke? You don't get but one little break, ten minutes to eat a sandwich and smoke a cigarette." He said, "Well, I can't help that. You ain't supposed to smoke out here." I said, "I smoked when I wanted to before I come here, and if that's what it takes to hold a job, why, I'll give it to you." And me and Fred Little and Perry Bumgardner, all three, quit the same day and all went up here to Hutton's. And old man Sid Black was the boss there then, and he died while I was up there. And we went in there, and old man Sid hired all three of us at the same time, and we all three went to work there. Portions of this tape are inaudible due to the poor technical quality of the tape. Perry Bumgardner [was sick]… I believe he was the one … [He] wasn't able to work. He [was a crippled] fellow, and he couldn't … couldn't do two jobs … keep two jobs down at once. So they laid him off … Me and Fred stayed … [We] went to work… Fred quit later, some time before

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I did and went back to the farm … was farming… had a big farm down here in the country. He went back down there to the farm to take care of his mother, and I stayed there till Charlie come there. He tried to take over and be boss, and then I quit. [Laughter] … They let Perry come back after that, though, one time, and they put him on the ripsaw. But they knowed it took a lot of work to [run that]. He couldn't do that. One of his hands [was crippled]. He didn't have as much strength [in that] hand, you know, and [he couldn't work] with one hand. They told him that "that's all right," they'd try him out. He was able to do some things. He just went on back [home]. He didn't see no way [out of it] or something, you know. He never did try to work any more.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you think they did that intentionally because they didn't want him around anyway?

HOY DEAL:

Well, there wasn't much that he could do with one hand. He was just working with one hand, kind of. He just couldn't [do much]. There wasn't very much that you could do in there with one hand, and he didn't have much strength … They wanted to give him a chance to try to work … They told him he could work, but he couldn't run that [ripsaw].

PATTY DILLEY:

When you were working, did they ever bring in those people that timed your job, that carried a stopwatch around and timed people's work?

HOY DEAL:

I don't understand what you mean.

PATTY DILLEY:

I mean, some of the cotton mills and stuff would bring in timekeepers to time people's work and make sure they were working fast enough. And they'd follow them around all day … Would they ever have people like that?

HOY DEAL:

No, I don't think they done that back there … watch.

PATTY DILLEY:

So they never timed you.

HOY DEAL:

Not as I know.

PATTY DILLEY:

Not while you were there?

HOY DEAL:

I think they had enough bossmen … to keep you at work… If you didn't know how to work on one job, they'd put you to doing something else. Then they had plenty of work. They could give you some kind of job doing something.

PATTY DILLEY:

If the people working in the plant had complaints or problems about working, what could they do about it? How did they go about making complaints? Did they go to the bossman or what exactly could they do about it?

HOY DEAL:

[They had] about three or four different bossmen there while I was there. A couple of them just left themselves, because they weren't making enough, wanted a little more money. Sid Black, he didn't come back [one day] after dinner. Why, somebody called over to the house from work, [over to the] boardinghouse, called at Sid's room. [They] went in Sid's room. He was dead on the bed. They called back to the shop and said that they found him on the bed dead. They shut the plant down, and we was off a day.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was Sid like as a boss?

HOY DEAL:

He was a good boss … awful good bossman. He wasn't hard on us … he'd let you do about anything you wanted to do, in the line of work… pretty bad … He was an awful good bossman… walked on by… nothing. He didn't try to get us … work, you know… They hired another man after Sid died … He didn't stay … he didn't stay but … and then they put Charlie(unknown) … And there was one fellow … and then they started moving all the stuff up to Granite.

PATTY DILLEY:

Why do you think they moved all that stuff … Did they ever say why they moved the plant up to Granite Falls?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, because they condemned the building because it wasn't safe for hands to work anymore, and said the machinery was too heavy in it.

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

HOY DEAL:

… so bad, and they had to get the machinery out of it. And they built a building up there towards Granite and moved all the big, heavy machinery and stuff up there in it and around on the yard together to where all the building rough lumber and stuff like that that they wanted to use toward building houses and stuff, why, they moved it up yonder. And they just moved a few of the machinery that they had in the new part that they had built up there to this old part. And then they quit having any wooden or anything much up there to fire with, and they couldn't afford to buy the coal just to fire for that one little building, and they mostly put everything in it and hooked it up to where they could run it by electricity. And they didn't do much drying no more of lumber up here. And then they'd had to move about all the machinery off up here, so they didn't have much up here to work with. And after they done that then, they said they transferred Charlie up yonder to that other place, that they didn't need him down here anymore, and said there wouldn't none of the fellows worked up here work for Charlie because he was just too overbearing and smart-aleck. That's two reasons that they moved up yonder, because what was up here, they didn't need Charlie for no bossman, what few they had up here, because the fellow that worked in there knowed more about that work than Charlie'd ever know about it. Because he helped them to get started on this work and everything, and they kept him up here as bossman on that to help get to do the work and help to see that the work was got out right and everything.

PATTY DILLEY:

You were born in Newton?

HOY DEAL:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was your house like in Newton?

HOY DEAL:

I can't tell you. After I got about nine or ten years old, I seen a couple of little old bitty two- or three-room houses where they said that most of us was borned at. There was three older than me. I guess I was borned in North Newton, a big two-storey frame house. It had about eight or nine rooms. How old are you?

PATTY DILLEY:

Twenty-two.

HOY DEAL:

I don't know whether that house would have been standing when you was old enough to ever seen it or not. It probably was tore down before you got big enough to see it, because it was a tolerable old house, and there's been lots of houses tore down on that road. If you've been around Newton in the last few years, you know where, if you go up above the depot on that road, there's a little church there on the left-hand side of the road, coming across towards where the new depot stands? Just a little bit further there's a couple of buildings along there, and there's one road goes towards Conover, and one turns to the right going towards Claremont. Right up above where that road starts going towards Conover, there used to be a two-storey house right along there. I don't know how many years it's been tore down. And that was just a dirt road along there then.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your father build that house?

HOY DEAL:

I don't know whether he built that one or not, but that was his work that he done, building houses. He built lots of others around in North Newton and around for other people, and built two or three for his own self.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was your father's name?

HOY DEAL:

Poly Carp Deal.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you have any idea when he was born?

HOY DEAL:

No, I couldn't begin to tell you.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you know when he died?

HOY DEAL:

No, I don't know that, either. Things twenty-five or thirty years ago, I've forgot all such stuff as that.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where was he born?

HOY DEAL:

I believe he was born in Catawba County somewhere.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he ever go through school?

HOY DEAL:

I don't know how far in school he went, but he had a pretty good education to read blueprint and build all kind of houses and stuff like that.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was your mother's name?

HOY DEAL:

Matilda Jane Laws.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was she born in Catawba County?

HOY DEAL:

I don't think so. I believe she was born in Rowan County.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did she ever do any work to get any money?

HOY DEAL:

No, she was a housewife all the time. She never did do any public work of any kind as I ever knowed anything about.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you know if she could read and write?

HOY DEAL:

Very little.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you ever get to go to school?

HOY DEAL:

I went, but I didn't make much headway learning when I went. I know one thing: when I'd set down of a night, I'd set down and go to sleep. My daddy drug me to bed. [Laughter] If I'd've had the time to get my lessons up, and study my lessons like I should have. I'd have been further along in

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school than what I was if I would have took interest in learning. But I did't take interest in learning enough to try to learn anything.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you regret that now?

HOY DEAL:

I sure do.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you think you could have maybe gotten …

HOY DEAL:

I could have been a couple of grades higher in school than what I… I didn't get no further than the fifth grade. I fooled around and didn't… I could have made a couple grades more if I would have studied harder, I have an idea. But I was just a crazy young'un like and didn't put too much… I was more interested in doing something to get money right along then. Times was harder, and you didn't get much money, and us young'uns, if we got shoes and clothes and books and stuff to go to school, why, that's about all you got then, and what you eat. You didn't get no money to fool around and blow in like young'uns do now. Now when young'uns get big enough to get out and do little things and get a few nickels… This place here, the young'uns runs around over it all the time, young'uns that ain't big enough to hardly carry trash and put it in the trash box get out and want to do something to make a nickel or a dime, carry your trash out and get you to give them something to eat, some candy or an apple or something. It was altogether different back then when I growed up. If five or six of us got a dime's worth of candy, we thought we was lucky.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you go to school with a lot of the kids of the people that worked at the cotton mills there in Newton? Were you familiar with people that worked there at the cotton mills?

HOY DEAL:

No, I didn't know too many people that worked in the cotton mill. We wasn't interested in finding out anything about the people's parents so

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much. But there was a couple boys that worked in the lumber company there at Newton that went to school when I did. I know I got a thrashing because they worked where my daddy did, and I stayed out of school one evening. Me and one or two of his boys and a couple others got one of these old lever cars that they use on the railroad. It was setting up there at the top of the hill in North Newton, and we got that thing and put it on the side track, and a bunch of us boys got on that thing, going down the hill. And there was some boys that come down the other end of the track by the ice plant towards the shop, and they seen us putting that thing on the track. And we got that on the track, and there was a big dirt pile for the boxcars, when they'd cut them loose, to run them down and stop them when they got to that dirt pile at the end of the line. And them boys drew a cross-tie that was lying there around on the front of that dirt pile to where our lever car would hit it. And I was crazy-like and jumped off before it got down there, and some of them stayed on it till it got down there, and it didn't hurt them. I thought it'd hit that crosstie and knock us off there on the railroad track. I jumped off of that thing, and I mashed my mouth and my nose and had it all puffed up. I went home that evening, and my daddy come in from work. "What happened to you?" "I was running and fell down." I told him a lie, and that's the worst thing I ever could have done, because I got a whipping every time I told him a lie and he found it out. If it was a week later before he found it out, I'd get a whipping. And so them boys went home, and they told their daddy about what we done and about me falling and getting hurt, and he went back to the shop the next day and told my daddy the truth about it, how we was out there playing and got hurt. And so I went home that evening from school, and he come home from work around about four-thirty or five o'clock. And he said, "Now I want you to tell me again

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how you got hurt. I done know the truth about it." And I told him. He said, "Getting hurt was enough, but you told me a lie on top of it." And he had brought some little strips about that long and about that wide and about as thick as your finger of rich pine home, and he'd laid them under the edge of the table. We cooked on an old wood stove and used pine to make the fires every morning. And I told him how it happened after I'd told him a lie about it and he had done found out the truth about it. And so he said, "I'm going to give you a whipping for telling me a lie. Getting hurt was bad enough, but if you wouldn't have told me a lie, getting hurt would have been enough, maybe, to learn you to come home where your place was." And he give me a whipping with that piece of pine. (He'd generally bring two or three home every day if he'd run across any in his work.) Then after that he said, "You better come home of an evening and not be playing along the road. If you do, you'll get into some other meanness, and you'll get another hurting and get a whipping, too, if you don't come home from school." And me and a couple of boys was coming home one evening from school, and there was mailboxes all along the road. And we was throwing rocks at that mailbox post. Old man Mark Hewitt was a brickmason, and he didn't live too far from the house, just maybe ten minutes' walk up there, and he come up there and told my daddy about it. He said, "Your boy and such a boys was throwing rocks at my mailbox. They didn't hit the mailbox, but they was throwing rocks at it." You know, crazy young'uns, just seeing which could hit it the quickest and stuff like that. My daddy said, "The next time I hear tell of you throwing rocks at anybody's mailbox, I'm going to whip you for it." So we didn't throw any more rocks at that man's mailbox. I don't know whether we ever throwed any rocks at anybody's or not after that. But that old man was funny anyhow, or we thought he was,

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but of course it was his mailbox and it was government property, and if we'd have bent his mailbox up or something, he could have had us put in jail for destroying property or something like that. It was a foolish thing to be doing, but we didn't think nothing about that. But at that time, if we'd have bent the box up, it was government property, and any time that you destroy any government property they can give you a year and a day. I learnt that after I got big enough to have a little sense by going to court and being on the grand jury and stuff like that.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you think of your father as being a pretty strict disciplinarian?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, I thought so, of course, but he made us listen. If we done anything that we knowed was wrong and got a whipping at school for it, why, he'd give us one when we got home. It was just like I was telling that woman out there a while ago. I was talking to her. She was telling how she used to have to whip her two oldest boys for not listening to her. Said she could whip them, and they'd just take the whipping and still wouldn't do what she tried to make them do. They had a wood stove, and said they had to have wood to cook, and said she'd try to make them two oldest boys carry in the wood so she could cook her meal after she got home from work. And said that they'd just take a whipping and set down beside the woodpile, wouldn't even carry in no wood after she whipped them. But she just got to where she felt sorry for them, and she'd whipped them and it wouldn't do a bit of good. Said she'd tried talking good talk to them, and that didn't do no good; they just wouldn't carry in wood.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your mother ever do any of the disciplining in the family?

HOY DEAL:

My mother'd try to make us listen. Some of them would listen to her, but I had a habit, when she'd get after me, I'd go out and climb up in a peach tree or apple tree or something. And she'd try to get me to

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come down, and I wouldn't come down. I'd sit up there maybe an hour or two at a time, and I wouldn't come down till she had promised me she wouldn't whip me if I'd come down and not run from her no more. But I'd still run from her a lot of times and climb up a tree or something when she'd get after me. But if she'd tell my daddy, why, I got a whipping then when he found it out. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Who was in charge of the money when you were growing up?

HOY DEAL:

My daddy always done all the buying for the family, buying all the groceries and everything and bringing everything in. My mother didn't work and didn't make no money, and all she done was just stay at the house. We'd all go to church on Sunday, and all that she done was just stay at the house and do the cooking and the washing and stuff like that. My daddy done all the buying and handling the money. Of course, if she needed money for anything and he wasn't there to buy or to get, he always give her the money to pay for it when she wanted it. Because he worked all the time, and he couldn't be there all the time, just on Saturday evening and Sunday and the nights was all the time he was there.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he ever keep his money in a bank?

HOY DEAL:

No, I never did know of him keeping any money in the bank. He generally kept it at home all the time. People back then didn't have too much money to keep nowhere. Up till I got big enough to go to work myself, I never knowed of him having more than just money enough to buy what he needed and pay his bills and stuff.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was his job working as a carpenter a better job than doing other things like working in the cotton mill?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, you made good money working. He'd set down and figure about how long it would take him to build a house and figure about what the material would cost, and he'd figure what he could build it for and make

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a few hundred dollars above his day's work. He'd figure about what he could build a house for and make a little extra money, and then he'd take the bid to build a house, complete it and everything, for a certain amount of money, and thataway he'd make a few hundred dollars extra that way.

PATTY DILLEY:

So he never did want to go work in the mill or anything.

HOY DEAL:

No. He worked in the shop a few years back in his early years.

PATTY DILLEY:

What kind of a shop?

HOY DEAL:

A lumber shop. I was telling you about the Setzers that was working there. And getting up into years later …

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

HOY DEAL:

Oh, there was quite a few people building houses then. You could build a house then for about what it'd cost you to build one good room now. And up in the years when I got big enough to work with the carpentry trade some, I worked with him for a few years around and about.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was this when you were still real young?

HOY DEAL:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old were you?

HOY DEAL:

I must have been about seventeen, eighteen. And when he made several hundred dollars extra above our work, he'd give me part of that. Like we taken one job building a little storehouse on the road going up towards Conover for a fellow Campbell. And he figured about what it would cost him to build that, and we built it in about four days. And he'd give me so much a day, and then when the job was done if he made a couple hundred dollars extra, he'd give me maybe twenty-five or thirty dollars extra to have of my own.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did you spend your money on? Were you living at home then?

HOY DEAL:

Yes, I was still at home.

PATTY DILLEY:

What would you spend your money on?

HOY DEAL:

He'd give me extra money like that, and he didn't charge me no board or nothing, and he'd let me buy my own clothes. All I made, I had it to… I'd take money to the church, and I'd buy my clothes and stuff like that. There were a lot of jobs that we done like that. He'd give me extra money when he'd make good out of it.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where did you go after you stopped working with your father as a carpenter?

HOY DEAL:

I worked in the glove mill in Newton for a while.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was that like?

HOY DEAL:

It was a pretty good job. I worked in it a while, and I went to the cotton mill and worked a little while there, but I didn't like that; it made so much racket and everything, and I couldn't stand that racket. And I went from there up to Conover and worked in the glove mill there several years.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did you do at the glove mill in Conover?

HOY DEAL:

I turned gloves. They're sewed up wrong side out, and then you had a machine there with a pedal on it, and you put that glove down on the thing. It had four fingers. You'd turn the thumb first, and then you'd turn the four fingers, and they was ready to wear then. But before you sewed them, you had a thing there with a hand. Have you ever been in a hosiery mill where they'd put socks and stocking on a hot board to press them?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

HOY DEAL:

Well, this hand in the glove mill was like that. It had a little

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thumb there. You'd put the thumb on that bore, on one of them, and then you'd take that hand—it just stood up there like a man's hand; water went up in it; it was hot—and you'd put that glove down on there. You'd press that thumb, and then you'd turn that thumb around against the hand, and you'd put that down on that hot hand, and that pressed the wrinkles out of it, and then they was ready. You'd pair them off, two like that together, and they was ready to tie up in a bundle. Put a dozen pair in a bundle. And they had people to do different parts of it. Part of the time I turned that way, and part of the time I steamed them on that steam hand. The girls'd go get them some water and maybe take a glassful back to the machine they worked on to drink later instead of having to get up, going to the spigots so often. And if you got one of them gloves that they had spilled water on while they was drinking or something and put it down on that hand, why, you'd get burnt. [Laughter] I think it burned through them gloves and burned you just the same as laying your hand on a hot stove.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did the company try to stop that?

HOY DEAL:

No, they didn't pay no attention to that. You just had to go on and… The girls couldn't possibly get up and go every time they wanted a drink of water. If they did, they wouldn't get nothing done, because they …

PATTY DILLEY:

They wouldn't get their production.

HOY DEAL:

They wouldn't get enough gloves made that they could make any money on sewing them up. If you didn't get around fifty or seventy-five dozen or a hundred dozen a day, why, you didn't make too good money doing that sewing.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was it mainly women that were doing the sewing?

HOY DEAL:

The girls done all the sewing, and there was about four or five

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women that steamed on them hands. There was three of us that done the turning, and if we got caught up to where we didn't have much to turn, some of us would help the women steam part of the time on the steam hands.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you have any kind of breaks?

HOY DEAL:

I don't remember whether they had any breaks during [between] the morning and dinnertime or not.

PATTY DILLEY:

I guess maybe that came in later.

HOY DEAL:

In the later years I imagine they got to where… I know way back up in the years after I was married and went to work on my own, that things got different to where you had time sometimes to go out and smoke and maybe have ten minutes off to eat a sandwich or something between dinner and … But back in the early days like that, I don't believe they had too many breaks. Because I know after I got to working at the other work in the shops and stuff, like I told you the other day, there was three of us quit at one time on account of they wouldn't let us smoke when we went out in the yard to take a break. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

What was the name of the place that you worked at right before Hutton and Bourbonnais, that the three of you quit at because you couldn't smoke?

HOY DEAL:

That was the Martin Furniture Company.

PATTY DILLEY:

And you didn't work there very long, did you?

HOY DEAL:

No. A year or two.

PATTY DILLEY:

And what was your job there at Martin Furniture Company?

HOY DEAL:

Helped getting in the lumber and cutting it ready to make furniture out of. In other words, it was taking it from the dry kiln and bringing it in the house and helping cutting it up.

PATTY DILLEY:

And at Hutton and Bourbonnais, what was your job there, tailing the saws?

HOY DEAL:

Yes. We brought the lumber in from out of the shed and cut it up, and I helped rack sticks there for a good many years. And then they put me to doing different kinds of jobs and stuff around over the shop.

PATTY DILLEY:

And that was twenty-one years.

HOY DEAL:

Twenty-one years.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old were you when you got married?

HOY DEAL:

I was twenty-one years old.

PATTY DILLEY:

How old was your wife?

HOY DEAL:

Eighteen.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was she like?

HOY DEAL:

She was just a small mountain girl. [Laughter] Did you ever hear tell of Hendersonville, North Carolina?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

HOY DEAL:

That's where she came from.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did you meet up with her?

HOY DEAL:

I was up there working and staying up there with a fellow Herman that went from Newton up there, and me and my daddy and brother, all three, was working up there and staying with him.

PATTY DILLEY:

Building houses?

HOY DEAL:

No, we were working on a high school building.

PATTY DILLEY:

So you met her up there?

HOY DEAL:

Me and my daddy didn't stay up there too long. I didn't know too much about carpentry work, and after they got the main foundation down up to the first floor, my daddy was getting up into years and he couldn't do too much climbing around. And they laid me and him both off, and we come back to Newton. And then my brother and the fellow that we was staying with, he moved his family back down here, and my brother and Herman went

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backwards and forwards the end of each week. And they worked on up there, I think, till the job was finished. And whenever Herman moved his family down here, this girl come back with them. I met her up there, and she come back with them down here and stayed with them a while till we got married. She was born and raised just a short ways from Hendersonville, out at what they called Flat Rock. And then they moved over in Hendersonville, a couple miles out of town. And her daddy had gotten married the second time, and she didn't like her stepmama, and she took off and come with them Hermans down here.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did she have an eye out for you then?

HOY DEAL:

I don't know. I don't think she was doing any courting or anything then, but she was just a rough-ridey little girl, a-running around there climbing up trees and everything else then. But after they come back down here, why, I started going up there in my old A-model Ford and taking her riding around places. It was, I guess, three or four months after I started hauling her around before I went to going out regular or anything. I never went with her over six months, I don't reckon, till we got married. We lived together about… I don't know how many years we did live together. Long enough to raise four children of our own and taken three grand young'uns and kept them till they all got up big enough to be out on their own, about. And then we… Of course, I stayed in the same house where she was at.

PATTY DILLEY:

With the Hermans?

HOY DEAL:

No, a house of our own. Whenever we got married, we left the Hermans right straight. I had a house of my own in North Newton that I had rented. After we got married, we didn't stay with my daddy but just long enough to give the man the notice that had mine rented, and said we'd

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get him a place to move to. And then we moved in my own house. My daddy give me a lot and helped me to build my house on it, and I already had it.

PATTY DILLEY:

And so you just rented it until you got married.