[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you know anything about your grandparents or where your ancestors came from?

FRANK GILBERT:

My grandfather was Jacob H. Gilbert, and my grandmother was Melinda Sigmon.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you know what country your ancestors came from?

FRANK GILBERT:

They were English.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did your grandparents do for a living?

FRANK GILBERT:

My grandfather was a miller. He had a mill back in that Catfish section, too. And I guess that's all he ever done all his life; it's all I ever knew of. He was an old Confederate soldier; he was four years in the war, I guess from '61 to '65. But you probably knew the dates.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] I don't know. I've not got a really good mind for dates. What did your father do? He was born out in Catfish, too?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, Grandpa Gilbert wasn't born there. He lived there. He was born in Lincoln County, I guess. And I guess Grandmother was born in Lincoln County. Of course, Catawba County was Lincoln County, too, then. It got to be Catawba County later on. The first thing I knew that my father done, he farmed, and the first public work he done, he worked on the railroad, the Southern Railway. He worked a good many years for Southern Railway.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he keep the farm while he was working for the railway?

FRANK GILBERT:

He kept the farm. We worked on that, and my old Grandmother Cline (my mother was a Cline) lived with us. It was her old original farm.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, my mother had three brothers and Dad bought their shares of it. Old Grandmother just stayed with us.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did anybody else live in your house besides your Grandmother Cline?

FRANK GILBERT:

Just our family.

PATTY DILLEY:

How many brothers and sisters did you have?

FRANK GILBERT:

My mother passed away in 1912, and she had ten children.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where are they living now?

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, a good many of them are dead. I have two sisters dead, and two brothers.

PATTY DILLEY:

When they finally settled down, where did they finally end up living?

FRANK GILBERT:

Ben and Fred—that was the two brothers next to me—were railroad men all their lives. Of course, they've both passed away. They was scale inspectors for the Southern Railway. That was after they worked up to that. That's what they did, both, when they passed away.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did they work in Catawba County?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, they worked the whole Southern Railway.

PATTY DILLEY:

They worked the whole thing.

FRANK GILBERT:

On the Asheville division, they call it, between Salisbury and Asheville. And another brother—the next to oldest brother, I guess, that's living—George, he was on the Catawba County ABC force. He was on till he retired. It was when he first started, and he stayed on that till he retired. His wife passed away several months ago, and he had a stroke then and went in the hospital, and he's still in nurse care in Hickory. And another brother, Boyd, worked for Herman and Sipe, a company here in Conover. He lives over here several blocks on the other side of town. And the youngest brother—now this brother is just a half-brother; my dad got married again, and he had two children by her—Kermit… I don't know whether you've ever heard of him.

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

FRANK GILBERT:

He was a tax supervisor a good long while. He's in the real estate business now. Then Karen—that's my half-sister—married Paul Simmons, and they live here on the east end of town. Have you heard of G. G. Simmons?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes, I went to school with him.

FRANK GILBERT:

That's her son.

PATTY DILLEY:

What does her husband do for a living?

FRANK GILBERT:

He's an upholsterer now. He was an electrician for years, and he's been upholstering the last few years.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where does he work?

FRANK GILBERT:

Conover Chair. And then she works with the tax offices. My other brother Boyde never did get married. He worked for Herman and Sipe about all his life after he left the farm. And then I've got three full sisters living. Pearl married Paul Lail. Right up past the post office, that first little road that turns up to the Reformed Church there, they live right there.

PATTY DILLEY:

What does he do for a living?

FRANK GILBERT:

He was an electrician, though he don't work. His health got bad a good many years ago. She worked over at that glove company, I reckon.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you remember the name of it?

FRANK GILBERT:

That Yount Glove Company, I reckon it was. They built a new plant out in Catfish, in that section out there.

PATTY DILLEY:

What is the name of that plant?

FRANK GILBERT:

Carolina Glove. Of course, she'd worked here in the glove company in Conover before that. My other sister married Clyde Rockette. She worked out there, too, in that glove company. Of course, they're both retired now. And my youngest sister lives in Houston, Texas. She was just

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here last week. That was my youngest full sister. Her name is Annie Minton.

PATTY DILLEY:

What does she do down in Houston?

FRANK GILBERT:

She's sixty-five; she quit. She's got a daughter who lives there. That's the reason she went there.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did she do up till then? Did she ever work?

FRANK GILBERT:

She worked in this hosiery mill in Conover. The Shuford chain. I don't know just what name it went under. But she retired. The last she worked, she worked in Dellinger's a good many years. But then she retired, and she has been in Houston probably a year and a half.

PATTY DILLEY:

Who was the first one in your family to leave the farm and go to work?

FRANK GILBERT:

I guess I was the first one. I was the oldest one. I left in 1916.

PATTY DILLEY:

And you went to work at the Lookout Dam? Was that your first public work?

FRANK GILBERT:

That was the first work outside of the farm, the first job I ever had.

PATTY DILLEY:

What kinds of things did you do on the dam?

FRANK GILBERT:

I didn't work on the dam. I just helped cut the timber out where the water would cover, you know, and helped burn the brush and everything. It had to be all burned off before they let the water back up over it. That's what I did; I didn't really work on the dam.

PATTY DILLEY:

Is that dam considered to be out in Catfish?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. It's the Lookout Shoals, name of it.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you remember a lot of people losing their land because of …

FRANK GILBERT:

They didn't lose it; they sold it. They had to sell it. Oh, there didn't anybody lose anything. They got more for their land than

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it really was worth, I guess.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you remember what people did after they sold their land?

FRANK GILBERT:

They bought more somewhere. I don't know of any of them that are left around out there.

PATTY DILLEY:

They just bought more and moved.

FRANK GILBERT:

In a lot of places, just a little part of the land would be covered with water. Well, they bought the whole land, and then years after, why, they sold it to other people, what the water didn't cover.

PATTY DILLEY:

And then you went to Illinois in the spring of '16?

FRANK GILBERT:

'16.

PATTY DILLEY:

How come you moved all the way out to Illinois?

FRANK GILBERT:

All three of my mother's brothers went out there. One of them come back; he didn't stay. The first two went to Illinois, and then the other one went over to Oklahoma. My uncle come here one time and wanted to know if I didn't want to go with him. He said one of his sons wanted somebody to work with him on the farm, and so I went out there and worked on a farm till the War come on.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your uncles just decide to move out in that area because there were land opportunities, or why did they move out there?

FRANK GILBERT:

I guess so. Back when I grew up, there wasn't no place… The only place a man would get a job would be to go out West on a farm or go to Southern Railway. That was about the only place a young fellow could get work. I went out there and worked for his son—he was George—and stayed till the War come on.

PATTY DILLEY:

And you went into the Army. Where did you go when you were in the Army?

FRANK GILBERT:

The first place I went was Fort Tuck, New York. I didn't

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stay there long. That was on the East River up in New York, right in close to New York City. I stayed there a month or two and then went to Cook's River to Fort Schuyler. And I stayed there until July, '18. I come down to Camp Eustace, Virginia. They call it Fort Eustace now since in the Second World War days. Stayed there till we shipped out from Fort Eustace. It was twenty-some miles over to Newport News; we marched over there with a full pack to catch the boat to go across.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where did you land in Europe?

FRANK GILBERT:

We landed in Brest, France, and stayed there I don't know how long. Stayed there till… Then we went to a little old town called Montor and stayed there then… I never got in any battle. We was ready to get to the front line the fifteenth, when they ended it the eleventh.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really?

FRANK GILBERT:

[Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

What kind of effect do you think the War had on you? Do you think it had any kind of an effect on your life?

FRANK GILBERT:

I don't believe it hurt me any. I know that sometimes it was pretty tough. Even though I wasn't in service, sometimes, though, we got pretty hungry.

PATTY DILLEY:

Oh, I bet. [Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

Especially when you're moving from one little place to another, till they got the rations coming in right.

PATTY DILLEY:

So you came back and started working for Southern Railway in '19?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, ma'am.

PATTY DILLEY:

What kind of work did you do for Southern Railway?

FRANK GILBERT:

I was working with the Bridge and Building Department.

PATTY DILLEY:

So that was working all around, not in one…

FRANK GILBERT:

We built bridges, is the biggest thing we done. I reckon as far south as we got was Gaffney, South Carolina, and I worked on a bridge just out of Charlotte, between Charlotte and Belmont. We built one in Belmont there. And we built one across the Big Thicketunknown, they called it, a little old creek called the Big Thicket. They called it a river, but it wasn't much of a river. The last work I done down there, though, was they would put in new crossings where highways crossed the railroad tracks. They put in new crossings all along there, and the blueprints they had didn't show that the ends of that cross, the boards and that covering, was supposed to be edged off. So the last work I done on that was they gave me a colored man and a little old, whatever you call them little old tramway cars, and we edged all them off between Charlotte and Greenville, South Carolina.

PATTY DILLEY:

Boy, that's a… [Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

[Laughter] Get three or four done a day and go back to camp.

PATTY DILLEY:

Gosh. So you lived in a kind of a camp?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, we lived in what they called a shanty car. That was a little car built just purpose for the business, you know. They had bunks built in it.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your father live in one of those when he worked for the railroad?

FRANK GILBERT:

Oh, yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

How often did you all see him while he was working on the railroad?

FRANK GILBERT:

He'd try and get home every two weeks. One year of that, I know he… He was a pretty good concrete man. He drew the plan for a little… They had big trestles when a railroad was first built, wooden, for a train to cross on. What I started to tell you was, this one between Newton and Claremont, he worked a year on that while he built the big concrete [bridge] for the

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creek to run through. He was there, and it was about a whole year while they filled that in. They had to fill it in mules and drag pensunknown then, you know; they didn't have machines like they do now.

PATTY DILLEY:

How many years did he work on the railroads?

FRANK GILBERT:

I guess he quit in 1910 the first time. And then after my mother died in 1912, he went back and worked several years more. I just don't know how many.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he farm any in between working?

FRANK GILBERT:

We had our family there helped us. A fellow Travis lived up there. He had two big old strong boys. They helped us on the farm. That was before we got big enough to do much work.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you all pay them for that?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

So you got married in 1919. How did you meet your wife?

FRANK GILBERT:

I knew her about all my life. I never was around her too much, though. In later years, a while before we got married, we both went to the same church.

PATTY DILLEY:

What church did you go to?

FRANK GILBERT:

Bethel Lutheran Church. Of course, she had went to St. John's out here before. Bethel had a little parochial school out there, and they moved their membership out there so their kids could go to school in the summertime.

PATTY DILLEY:

Oh, I see. What section of the county is she from? Is she from Catfish, too?

FRANK GILBERT:

You might call it that, but it's not… No, she's… Do you know anything about the country much out 16?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes, a little bit.

FRANK GILBERT:

After you cross the creek and go up the hill, the first road turns to the right. She lived about a mile down there. I forget the number of the road, but it's out 16.

PATTY DILLEY:

It's not quite in the section they call Catfish, but it's out there in the country.

FRANK GILBERT:

I told you about how big and how little Catfish was. That was was an awful big bootlegging country in one day.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was it really?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. So if anything good happened along the river between… Anything good happen, no matter where it was, if it was near Hickory or near Charlotte, if they run down a liquor still and catch the other one at Catfish, no matter how near to Hickory or Charlotte they was.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] Oh, that's funny.

FRANK GILBERT:

I told Reverend Strelow, the preacher out at Bethel, that tale one time. He was asking me how Catfish got its name. I don't know how it originally got it, but when I can first remember there was a little country store back there, right close to Bunker Hill School. And it had a post office there called Catfish. A man would go to Catawba and bring the mail up from Catawba and dump the Catfish mail off at that store, and then he had three or four more places around he'd go, stores. The people would go in and get their mail like that then.

PATTY DILLEY:

So the name of the town kind of came from the name of the store?

FRANK GILBERT:

I don't know. That was the name of the post office. They had a lot of fishing for catfish back on that river. A lot of catfish in the Catawba River. I guess that was the reason they got the name from, that the post office was really Catfish. That was the name of it. That

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was before they had the Rural Free Delivery. You had to go to all them places and pick up your mail. We lived about a mile and a half from there.

PATTY DILLEY:

So your family went to church pretty regular?

FRANK GILBERT:

Oh, yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

And you went to Bethel Lutheran. Do you still go there?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, when we come to Conover, we moved to Concordia.

PATTY DILLEY:

You got married in 1919. What did you do right after you got married?

FRANK GILBERT:

The first thing I done after I got married, my old Uncle Bob Moser owned a cotton gin there close to where my wife lived. I got a job and worked there a little while, till I got this job over at Southern Railway. I worked there three or four months, maybe.

PATTY DILLEY:

You didn't work too long for the railway. How long did you work?

FRANK GILBERT:

Actually, I don't remember what month I started. It might have been April or May of 1919. The crew I was on got completely cut off in October, I think, 1919.

PATTY DILLEY:

Then you said that you taught school for a while. Where did you go to school? How long did you go to school?

FRANK GILBERT:

I didn't go to school enough to teach. I'll tell you what happened. During the War, a lot of the schoolteachers left. They could get better-paying jobs. And they just had to pick up most anybody they could to teach school in 1920 and '21. So I had an old uncle out there—in other words, he was my wife's uncle and mine—and he was on the school committee in that district. He wanted to know if we wouldn't… We didn't want to try it. We had never done anything like that. We, in fact, didn't have enough education to do that. But we took it. My wife didn't quite finish; she had to have an operation before we got through.

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I finished it out.

PATTY DILLEY:

When you were a child, how long did you go through school? Did you go all the way through elementary and high school, or what?

FRANK GILBERT:

There wasn't no high school then. No, the eighth grade is as high as I ever went.

PATTY DILLEY:

What school did you go to?

FRANK GILBERT:

It was called Piney Grove.

PATTY DILLEY:

And that was out in the Catfish section?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, it was right about three-quarters of a mile north of Bethel Church.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was this the parochial school you were talking about, the one that the church sponsored?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, this just a grade school, what we taught at.

PATTY DILLEY:

How about the one you went to when you were a child? Was this the same one?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, that wasn't the same one we taught at. No, me or my wife, neither one, went to that school. It was just my old uncle was a committeeman in that district. We had what they called the Hoke School then. And the one my wife went to was the Rockett School. The one I went to was Piney Grove. All that section goes to Bunker Hill now, all the kids around there. And a lot further up here than that goes to Bunker Hill. See, most of the schools then just had one room. I can remember when the first two-room schools were being built. When I first started school, they didn't have but one. Nigh onto all of them just had one room. I mean all that I knew. They built another room onto the one I went to and got another teacher. I couldn't say when, probably about 1907 or '8.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you go to school pretty regular, or did you have to get out and go work on the farm sometimes in the middle of the year?

FRANK GILBERT:

We didn't go to school but three or four months a year; that's all they had. We done the farm work. The farm work was done before we went to school, and then you was out by the time the spring planting was done.

PATTY DILLEY:

Oh, I see. Did a lot of your relatives live close by you when you were growing up?

FRANK GILBERT:

My old Grandpa Gilbert lived about a mile from where I lived. Pa was raised up there. And it was right close to this Bunker Hill School, too. Only three or four hundred yards from Bunker Hill School, where the mill was originally. And I had two uncles, Uncle John and Uncle Tom, and they lived fairly close there. I knew where both of them lived. Then Uncle Henry, who was one of my daddy's brothers, moved to a farm over in Iredell County and got to be a big farmer in his day. He bought one farm after another. I don't know how much land he did have when he passed away. And my two aunts on my father's side both married Mosers, my wife's uncles. That had one of the… They have a Moser reunion and a Gilbert reunion.

PATTY DILLEY:

You, by rights, get to go to both. [Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, and it's a big part of us. We just ought to have but just the one.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

Anyhow, one of the girls' husband lives in Charlotte, one of the offspring of the Mosers, you know. She introduced me to her husband, and he said, "How did you get mixed up in this Moser business? You said your name's Gilbert." I said, "Well, in the first place, my dad just had

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two sisters. They both married Mosers. One of them had fourteen children, and the other one fifteen. That mixed me up pretty bad there."

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

"Then," I said, "in the next place, I married a Moser."

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

"That's the way I got in it." [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

So you kind of jumped in it. Didn't step in it, just jumped in it. Do you all still have those family reunions?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, the Gilbert reunion is going to be next Sunday a week, the seventeenth of July.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where do you have them at?

FRANK GILBERT:

The Community Center in Conover. They didn't put in for it in time last year. Had to move it down to Claremont. You do have to rent that building, you know, and you've got to have it in ahead of time a little. We had a new president, I think. He didn't know too much about it. He lived in Hickory and didn't know too much what the setup was, and they just let it slip by, and they'd rented it; somebody else had it on our date.

PATTY DILLEY:

You have a president?

FRANK GILBERT:

We have a president of the family.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really? I had never heard of that. How does that work?

FRANK GILBERT:

You just elect him, like you would a President of the United States. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Really? That's neat.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do a lot of people do that around here?

FRANK GILBERT:

Oh, there's a lot of that. You can read in the little old

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Newton paper about every week where somebody's reunion is coming up or they done had it.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's amazing. We always had unofficial presidents of our family, I guess. They weren't ever elected or anything formal like that, but …

FRANK GILBERT:

When we first started the Gilbert, we made a rule that we'd elect a new one every year, but that didn't last long. After some of the young ones took over, they didn't pay no attention to that. [Laughter] The man from Hickory now, one of the older generation offspring is president now, Hal Bolick in Hickory.

PATTY DILLEY:

Before you left home, did your family ever change houses while you were growing up, or did you always live on your grandmother's farm?

FRANK GILBERT:

It really wasn't my grandmother's. It had been her old original farm. You see, my mother inherited one-fourth interest in it, and my …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

FRANK GILBERT:

… and she did.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

Died in 1924. I can remember, too, when my old great-grandma, Deal, come and stayed with us two weeks at a time, she'd spend before she passed her way around with all of her children. They were in the same section around there, not too far away. She'd go and stay several weeks at a time with each one of them.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do the Gilberts still own the old homeplace?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, after my daddy died, we had a stepmother and she didn't

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want to stay out there, and they wanted to divide it up. Offered her ten acres—that's Kermit's mother now—and the household and everything, and we divided up the rest of it among all of us. She first agreed do that, but she later on, I reckon, thought it over, and she was getting pretty old, too, didn't want to live out there, and we just sold it all. Sold the land, the timber on it, all of it, to Conover Lumber Company. And after they cut the timber off of it, my brother George, the one that's in nurse care now, bought it for three thousand dollars, thirty and a half acres, and he sold it a good little while after for $93,000.

PATTY DILLEY:

He made quite a …

FRANK GILBERT:

Made pretty good.

PATTY DILLEY:

… bundle. Yes, that's pretty good. Did you ever have any particular jobs around the house? You said you worked on the farm when you were a kid. What kind of responsibilities did you have?

FRANK GILBERT:

I was the milkmaid, one thing.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

I was the oldest.Old Grandma Whisnut taught me to milk. We always kept four or five cows as milk for our own use. Then after I was big enough, those two little boys who worked for us taught me to plow. I never did do much hoeing after that. We farmed cotton, mostly, and you had to plow it and hoe it, you know, just like they do a garden.

PATTY DILLEY:

So did all of your brothers and sisters kind of grow up after you and work on the farm some before they left?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, they all worked some before they left. The oldest girl come out here not too long after I was married and got a job over at this

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glove mill here, the Warlong. And then they finally all come out here. Some of them worked in the hosiery mill. Pam worked in the hosiery mill. I guess the others all worked in the glove mill.

PATTY DILLEY:

Why did you leave home, to begin with?

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, I was getting old enough. I was going to have to get out. And then especially my old uncle was in there, and he said one of his boys needed a man on his farm [in Illinois] and was going to hire somebody. Told him to bring me along if I wanted to come, so that's why I left home.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you know anybody at the railway place when you first went to work there?

FRANK GILBERT:

Oh, yes. I knew all the men. Of course, I didn't till I went then. The foreman and the subforeman were both from Claremont, and most of them was around in this section in Claremont, Conover, and one man from Newton. The biggest part of them was Catfish men.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you have any relatives that worked for them?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, not then. My two brothers had done went with the railroad then, and they was on a different gang. And then they worked up till they got a chance to be scale inspector runner. Each one of them got a job with that. That big scales would run boxcars on and weigh them. And one brother of mine, Fred, supervised the putting [of] the scale in Knoxville, Tennessee that weighed two boxcars at a time. The train would run up to it and cut off what cars were needed on it, and the thing would just turn around. All that stuff had to be weighed before they shipped it.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's a big job. When you came to Conover, you first started working here at the cotton gin?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, ma'am.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did you get the job there?

FRANK GILBERT:

This old Uncle John Hollar that got us the school job got me that job there, too.

PATTY DILLEY:

And so you worked there until it burned down?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, ma'am.

PATTY DILLEY:

You said you helped build the houses that Mr. Brady …

FRANK GILBERT:

Mr. Bolick was the one I built houses for, the man that owned Conover Chair. I helped on some that were just started on. Didn't work but a couple days there before Mr. Brady told me he needed me in the shop. He rounded me up. Then I told him what I could do, and he let me work in the lumber and in the shop a little while, until he found out I knew something about lumber. His lumber checker had quit him. He quit and got him a job on the railroad. So Mr. Brady gave me that job, and that was about all I ever did.

PATTY DILLEY:

For Mr. Brady, was lumber checking?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

What kind of things would you do in that job? Would it be checking shipments?

FRANK GILBERT:

What kind of lumber?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

FRANK GILBERT:

It was mostly shipped in there from… Well, it wasn't then it is later on. Most of the furniture lumber that they used then come from Louisiana, sweet gum and tupelo, such as that.

PATTY DILLEY:

So you had the job of checking shipments?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, I didn't check. I just counted the lumber when it come in. You had to count it and see if it tallied with the man shipping it, see if it tallied with his count. I never did check but one car that come right.

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I checked one carload that was eleven or twelve thousand feet, and just missed it one foot. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Gosh. So that's all you did for Mr. Brady when you worked there, all eleven years? Do you remember when the Depression hit? Was that while you were working …

FRANK GILBERT:

That was while I was at Brady's.

PATTY DILLEY:

How often did you get to work while that was going on?

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, one time I was off eleven weeks straight.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really?

FRANK GILBERT:

But it wasn't that bad all the time.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did you all make do while the Depression was on?

FRANK GILBERT:

We never did have to beg. One reason we did make it, my wife kept several of my sisters that boarded with us that worked at the glove mill, these Rockett women I was telling you about. She kept three of my sisters and two or three of my cousins; they boarded with us. And I got a little out of that. It wasn't too much, but it kept the wolf from the door, kind of.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was your wife working any at this time?

FRANK GILBERT:

She didn't work any during the Depression.

PATTY DILLEY:

It was just doing boarding. When you all first moved to Conover, did you all have a hard time finding housing? Were there places available to live?

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, I'll tell you, this man Hollar's son-in law… Ever hear of Jim Deal?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

FRANK GILBERT:

You know where he lived?

PATTY DILLEY:

I'm not sure where he lived.

FRANK GILBERT:

Just right up several houses this road, side of 3D.

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It was really an old schoolhouse at times, and Old Mr. Hollar bought it and made a dwelling-house out of it. And Jim Deal married one of his daughters. They moved in there. And Old Jim Deal and Charlie and Tom were all brothers. You know where 40 crosses…

PATTY DILLEY:

Sixteen?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, they are right in there on the left. Well, Charlie's widow lives down there yet. And they all bought lots in there, several acres apiece. And Jim got scared he wasn't going to get his paid for—he was just working there for Brady—and he wanted to move back. So Old Mr. Hollar asked us if we minded moving. They had a brand-new house down there. We done that. When moved out here, Frank was a mail carrier, and he had two children going to school there at old Concordia College. And he said if we'd keep one of them and we'd pay board for one of them, and the other one, he would pay board, he'd pay for the other one. So we got the house rent, just boarded one of them free and then the other one paid for the house rent. We moved out in the new house, and that other Hollar boy, Frank, was a mail carrier at that time. Wanted us to move there and let Joe move back up here. And we finally agreed to do that.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where did you move that second time? Where was this new house that you moved to?

FRANK GILBERT:

You know where 16 crosses Interstate 40? The road went right over where…I always laugh. My oldest boy was born there. He tells people he was born right down there in that road.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] So this house is not standing anymore.

FRANK GILBERT:

Just changed the houses is all we done. We went down to the new house, and Jim moved back up in the old one he'd been living in.

PATTY DILLEY:

Why did he want to make that change? Was he not working for

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Mr. Brady while he was out there in the new house?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, but then didn't anybody make too much money, and he was afraid… That was a pretty big debt right at that time for a new house and six or eight acres of land. He was afraid he wasn't going to make it. His family was beginning to increase and all, and he just wanted to give it up. Frank was a mail carrier, and that was a pretty good-paying job. I mean it wasn't as good like it would be now, but good then. So Frank took the new house, and then Jim moved back in the old one. We went down, and Frank gave us the house rent to let him board with us. He was a cousin of my wife. So we stayed there till Frank got married. We moved so many times, I can't think.

PATTY DILLEY:

But these were always rented houses that you moved into until you moved here?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. When Frank got married we had to move somewhere, you know. I think we moved upstairs in Mr. Les Hunsucker's. He run the old hardware store there for years. And the next move we made then was one of the new houses Brady built over here.

PATTY DILLEY:

And you did a little bit of work on those?

FRANK GILBERT:

I just did a couple days when they started it. That's where I got a job.

PATTY DILLEY:

This was right after the cotton gin burned down.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, that's right.

PATTY DILLEY:

So then you finally moved into one of those. Why did Mr. Brady build the houses?

FRANK GILBERT:

I guess just to give people a job and give them a place to move. They didn't everybody moved in those houses work for him.

PATTY DILLEY:

When people started moving into town to get jobs working for the factory, did they have a hard time trying to find a place to live?

FRANK GILBERT:

I just couldn't tell you. About all I know about that is just my own self.

PATTY DILLEY:

Just your own self.

FRANK GILBERT:

They built houses along the… Oh, there was a few houses going up all the time up there. I just knew of Mr. Bolick; I worked for Conover Chair. I don't know how many houses we did build for him, and just in our spare time. In fact, see that white house through this woods here? We built three right there for Mr. Bolick while I was working for him at Conover Chair. We built, I think, sixty-some, just in our spare time, in the evening after work, me and three other men.

PATTY DILLEY:

So a lot of those aren't standing anymore.

FRANK GILBERT:

They're about all standing.

PATTY DILLEY:

They're all standing?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. This second house above me is one of them. When they moved it was moved down here, rolled down here, for Mrs. Hefner.

PATTY DILLEY:

Oh, really?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. Hefner lived in it up there, and he just give Mrs. Hefner that house if he could get someone to roll it down here. Ken Hefner was always a good rent-paying man, and he just give her that old house there, rolled it down here. I think he rolled it down for her.

PATTY DILLEY:

So most of them are still standing.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. There's a whole lot of them right in behind the Conover Medical Clinic. We built four or five on that line and then two across the branch over on the other side. And turning left after the first crossing, the buildings on both sides of that street. Five on one side and three on the other. I've built a house now and then all over town.

FRANK GILBERT:

He didn't build them for any of his workers. He had a little money and wanted to make a profit on it. Business had got good enough then, and he didn't have any difficulty selling them.

PATTY DILLEY:

So he just built them and then sold them. He didn't build them to …

FRANK GILBERT:

No, the workers didn't live in them. Like this fellow Hefner that I was telling you about. He didn't work for Mr. Bolick, but he lived in it for a long time.

PATTY DILLEY:

But Mr. Brady built his for his workers to live in.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

He built eight of them?

FRANK GILBERT:

I know there was eight. Then the one right below the Ford dealer over here, I believe he built that one, too. I know the man who lived in it worked for him.

PATTY DILLEY:

Who was that that lived in it?

FRANK GILBERT:

Robert Setzer. His widow's living here, too. They built a home not exactly on the highway over there; it's just back off the road there. She lives there yet.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was the rent that Mr. Brady charged lower than some of the other places would rent out?

FRANK GILBERT:

Five dollars a month.

PATTY DILLEY:

What was the price that other people were paying?

FRANK GILBERT:

It was more than that, I know, but I could just make a guess, is all I could do.

PATTY DILLEY:

So Mr. Brady really didn't build the houses to have a profit out of them.

FRANK GILBERT:

No, he just built them for the employees to live in.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you remember when they finally sold those houses, when they stopped renting them?

FRANK GILBERT:

All I know is, Mr. Bolick at Conover Chair bought two of them over there. And one of his men that's retiring next month lives in one of them yet.

PATTY DILLEY:

Who is that?

FRANK GILBERT:

A.W. Pacer. He lives in one of those houses yet that Brady built.

PATTY DILLEY:

I didn't ask you about Conover Furniture. Mr. Brady just saw you building the houses and then asked you to come to work for him? Was that what happened, or how exactly did you get the job up there?

FRANK GILBERT:

You see, what happened… Nobody didn't get me a job. I think I just went and asked him. I remember him asking me who my dad was. He said, "I've known him about all my life. Come on to work." [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he? That's something.

FRANK GILBERT:

They first put me in the machine room there. No, they first put me with Mr. Lee Lail to build them houses. And then after I'd worked in the machine room half a day, in the afternoon at dinnertime he comes up and says, "There's a little job that meanwhile I wants you to do. Go down and work with Lail today and tomorrow, and then come back up here and we'll have a job for you." So I did that.

PATTY DILLEY:

So that's when you finally started checking lumber?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, I didn't check lumber just right then. I run what they call a skewer lathe. It made spindles that they put in cotton mills, for the thread to turn on. I run that till I done left here to go to the railroad; he give me this job.

PATTY DILLEY:

So that was kind of a step up?

FRANK GILBERT:

I guess you might call it that.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you get higher pay for that?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, every now and then I'd get a little more pay up until that Depression come on; then it started stepping back down.

PATTY DILLEY:

Do you remember how low wages got during the Depression?

FRANK GILBERT:

I remember how low mine got.

PATTY DILLEY:

How low did yours get?

FRANK GILBERT:

Fifteen cents an hour.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's pretty low.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. There was some lower than that there.

PATTY DILLEY:

Down there at the plant, there were some lower than that?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did wages at the furniture plant compare to the other places to work around here, like the hosiery and the gloves?

FRANK GILBERT:

Wages practically was all about the same, only that upholsterer, he made more money, and he may does yet. Makes more money, and they ain't a-working, near about. [Laughs. The implication is that upholsterers don't work as hard as the rest of the men but make more money.] An upholsterer makes good money.

PATTY DILLEY:

Were there many upholsterers back then in those days?

FRANK GILBERT:

They just had to train them as long as they needed them. There wasn't many, much done then. They first taught them putting springs in. Long about they stepped him up to an upholsterer if he …

PATTY DILLEY:

Showed promise?

FRANK GILBERT:

If he could make it. Some of them made it, and some of them didn't.

PATTY DILLEY:

This was for Brady or under Conover Furniture?

FRANK GILBERT:

It was Conover Furniture. Brady never done any upholstery work.

PATTY DILLEY:

Why did you end up leaving Conover Furniture and go into Conover Chair?

FRANK GILBERT:

I didn't ever work for Conover Furniture over at that place. You wouldn't need to ask that question.

PATTY DILLEY:

You really didn't work for Conover Furniture?

FRANK GILBERT:

You just asked that. No, Conover Furniture wasn't called that until after Broyhill took it over. Well, really I don't mind it. I got fired. Brady fired me there.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did he really? Why did he do that?

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, it's kind of a long story. After the Depression, after it got a little bit better, you know, why… Of course, he was running under some kind of law, and the government was looking after anything that went bankrupt. The government checked into all that. So the first raise they got, there was four men; he give them two cents an hour raise. I come in the next bracket; they got a half-a-cent-an-hour raise. That's what started the trouble.

PATTY DILLEY:

The men got really angry over that?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, there was an awful to-do about it. He fired a good many of them, and a lot of them quit and went somewhere else.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was this the original Mr. Brady?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes. He was the best man I ever seen, about, till that. Of course, you lose everything you had, any of us would get… The reason I got mad in there, I went to punch back in at dinnertime, and one of the men hollered, "Don't punch in, because we ain't going to work."

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I said, "How come?" They told me why. These four men wasn't a bit better than we was, I don't reckon. Give them two cents an hour, and then the rest of us half a cent, and then some of them down to a quarter of a cent.

PATTY DILLEY:

Were they just four men that were really favored above the rest?

FRANK GILBERT:

I figured that… What I wondered at, Mr. Jim Deal was one of them.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, and he just favored them a little. They weren't any better workers than the rest of us. He just liked them, you know, I always thought. Now that's my… [Laughter] But the reason he fired me, I started down through the plant. We always loafed down at the boiler room. I was down there, and I heard the whistle blow. I was just coming out of the boiler room, and Mr. Brady come in there. And he said, "How come you blowed my whistle?" I said, "Mr. Brady, I didn't blow your whistle." He said, "You did. You just come out of the elevator. I saw you come out of there." "Did you see me blow the whistle?" "No, but," he says, "you're the man done it." I said, "I'm not." "Well, who did it, then?" "I couldn't tell you." I couldn't tell him. I didn't see them, but somebody did. I heard after who it was. He kept on saying I did, and I didn't take that too long, you know. I told him he could take it and stuff the boogy man with it. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

That doesn't seem fair at all. Gosh. I mean really. Was there any kind of an organized thing of the men at the plant?

FRANK GILBERT:

No. There wasn't no organized labor or nothing there. They just met, and didn't any of them go back to work after. Some of them checked their cards, you know, and seen what they done. Didn't anybody go back

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to work. They were off a week in there. I know some of them did go back. unknown Maybe some of them go back several months later, but didn't half of them go back.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's really something.

FRANK GILBERT:

That same day, Mr. Bolick come over there. He was a good friend of my dad, and he found out what had happened. He come over there and said, "You count lumber, don't you?" And I said, "Yes, I count lumber." He said, "I've got two big loads here that you can work on."

PATTY DILLEY:

Two big loads that you could count for him?

FRANK GILBERT:

I'd trusted him. He wouldn't be the cause of me to go down. [Laughter] I went over and counted them for him. He give me a colored man to help me throw it around from one place to another. And I saved him about a hundred dollars on them two loads. The other man had… He said he didn't know too much about it, and knew there wasn't that much in it. But I did that, and he said, "I don't know whether you'll just do any kind of work." I said, "I don't know." "I've got a little job here I'd like for you to do if you want to make out the day. There's a ditch over beside the building and it's kind of filled up with rain, if you want to clean that ditch. unknown If you don't mind it, you can and work the night." Come to think, I didn't mind doing any kind of work. So I cleaned out that ditch, and it was about quitting time. And he come out there and set there and talked to me. He had a man building about twenty feet onto the original building that was up, twenty feet on out f ront. Wanted to build it for his office building. He said, "I believe I want you to work on for me. I ain't got nothing right now for you to do, but help Will build that building out there." So I helped him. We built that and made an office building out of it. Right after we built that, I was fixing to go home one day, and

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he said, "If you want to work on for me regular, come back in the morning. I'll find something for you to do."

PATTY DILLEY:

So you came back.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did you first do when you went to Conover Chair after that?

FRANK GILBERT:

He first put me in the machine room then, helping out there. I worked for maybe a year, and he made me foreman in there. Then I was foreman till when I told you about Rhonie come down there and leased the building. So when I went to Rhonie, I was the foreman up there, too. Went up there for sixteen years.

PATTY DILLEY:

This was foreman in the machine room?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, ma'am. And still, every Christmas, they send me down a big box of oranges, every Christmas since I left them.

PATTY DILLEY:

Mr. Rhonie still does?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, Mr. Bost is the boss now. Conover Chair.

MRS. GILBERT:

Rhonie worked for a while, but he worked up the highway with him a good many years, too.

FRANK GILBERT:

I worked three years for Mr. Rhonie while he leased Conover Chair's machine room. Then he talked me into going with him up there. I was up there sixteen years.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did that work that he was leasing the machine room?

FRANK GILBERT:

He leased the machine room there, and the boss just had a set price they paid him for renting it. And if he had time to make more than the boss needed, why, he could build frames for other people, you know. He built frames for several different other people while he was there.

PATTY DILLEY:

I see. So it was like two little companies together in the same

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building.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

So then Rhonie made enough money to where he could open up his own operation.

FRANK GILBERT:

He built a pretty nice place up there. It'll be His sons own it now. He was retired a good many years ago. Eight or ten years ago, I guess. But his sons still run it. I was working there when I retired.

MRS. GILBERT:

I know Charles, so that's why… Brady started out making mattresses. He made mattresses first.

FRANK GILBERT:

I never made any mattresses.

PATTY DILLEY:

You didn't?

FRANK GILBERT:

No, they was making …

MRS. GILBERT:

He didn't help.

FRANK GILBERT:

Conover Chair now is making mattresses. The first thing they ever made here. Of course, they made a few of them after I was out here, but the other men made them and all.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's interesting. I want to come back another day and talk more about all the work and everything, because that's really interesting, to find out what-all happened all those years that you worked there. When your parents died, were they being taken care of by some members of your family, or did they work right up until the day they died?

FRANK GILBERT:

My mother passed away pretty young. Passed away in 1912. Well, my dad got married a couple of years after that, a year and a half or something like that. We all lived there, all living there until they were old enough to go out and work for theirselves.

MRS. GILBERT:

His father and mother died at home, and mine did, too.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, my father died in 1947.

PATTY DILLEY:

So your stepmother took care of them.

FRANK GILBERT:

She's still living yet.

PATTY DILLEY:

Is she still living?

FRANK GILBERT:

Ninety-six years old.

PATTY DILLEY:

Who is she living with?

FRANK GILBERT:

She's in the Shriner's Home in Greensboro.

PATTY DILLEY:

Gosh. She's pretty old.

MRS. GILBERT:

That's getting up there, about ninety-five or ninety-six.

PATTY DILLEY:

That sure is. When you were a child, who made most of the decisions in your family, your father or your mother or both of them?

FRANK GILBERT:

When I was young then, my mother had to because he was on the railroad. She was the one that hired these two boys to help us on the farm. When he was at home, he made the decisions. Of course, I reckon they talked it over. I don't know, but he'd tell you what to do.

PATTY DILLEY:

Did your mother ever work outside the home?

FRANK GILBERT:

No.

PATTY DILLEY:

What did you all like to do most when you were a family growing up, when you all weren't working, for recreation or entertainment?

FRANK GILBERT:

We had a baseball team. I was on several baseball teams around there. There wasn't much recreation for the girls, was there, Mama? [Laughter] What did you do?

MRS. GILBERT:

I didn't play base… I played pound ball. [Laughter] And then straight catching. The boys played what they called bull pen, and I can't remember anything about that, at school. I don't know whether he did or not; he went to a different school from what I did.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, we played bull pen there.

MRS. GILBERT:

It wasn't too far apart. These two-teacher schools wouldn't be too close together, but not far enough apart that couldn't done something. But way back then, at Lyle Creek, we had some bottom land there, and we had to cross that creek, and we crossed that creek in a buggy to go to St. John's Church out here. And when we'd go to work in that bottomland we swam there in that creek when we got out—we was hurrying to get through, you know—and then it was sand up on the side, and we roasted hot dogs away back there, that long ago.

PATTY DILLEY:

That's not a new thing.

MRS. GILBERT:

And you wouldn't have thought we'd have had a hot dog back then.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] Did you ever do anything with much of your family? Did you all ever get together and do things as a family?

FRANK GILBERT:

In later years we did; that was when…

MRS. GILBERT:

I don't know whether they did things together or not. But everything we done, we had fun out of.

FRANK GILBERT:

All the kids around there would get together. One place on one Sunday, and the next time it was another one's, any kind of game or anything you wanted to play, you know. Wouldn't all be at the same place every Sunday.

MRS. GILBERT:

You know, in a way, what you folks do now, it's kind of tiresome. I believe we had it better. Maybe I'm just oldfashioned and think it was true, but we had woods all around and we had dry grape vines that we'd go on. And we'd cut them off at the bottom and swing …

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

MRS. GILBERT:

… maybe. And I had an old hen, a rooster and two hens. And we'd do that at home. Or we'd have these meetings,

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kind of like you have a fair, anywhere, and show off what we had. We done such things as that, had prizes. I went to Rockett School. And then we had the young folks', we called it a social. And about once or twice a month, we'd eat up there. And this… I forget what that person's name was. It's been so long ago. Mr. Mast is all I can remember, but there was another little old man would come, and Myrtle Rockett was the head of that. But we made country music away back there. There was a family there of Sigmons, Millie Sigmon and… What was the other girl's name, Frank? Their family, and several more. Her daddy, Fawnunknown Sigmon, now they all come. One played the fiddle, and then others would play the banjo, and we had what they called the tater bugs. What do they call them today? Mandolins?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes.

PATTY DILLEY:

Would you all meet at those and dance? Was that what you all done?

MRS. GILBERT:

Well, now, he was kind of a stranger to me in a way, because he went to Bethel Church, and about how many miles would it be apart, Frank? Right across these creeks over here, if you've ever been out Taylorsville Drive.

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes.

MRS. GILBERT:

Like out to that creek, I went to that church out there on the hill, St. John's. Now he went back further from the… He was from Catfish. I was out at Oxford now. But I met him at one of them socials that we had up there. He left and went to Illinois. He had uncles—well, just one of them lived out there—and he helped to farm in Illinois. He was out there about four years.

FRANK GILBERT:

I didn't get anything for it, either.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] Yes, he had told me something about that.

MRS. GILBERT:

When he come home, why, we had one of them little

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what we called hot dog shindigs. We were having this little fair, and we'd show it in the school. It was in the evenings, but we had a box supper. Did you ever go to box suppers?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes, I've been to one.

MRS. GILBERT:

And this was in the spring of the year, and I thought I'd made myself a real pretty one. I took yellow paper and orchid ribbon. And my mama was pretty good to us. She fried some chicken, and we baked a cake. We had chicken and cake and everything in those boxes. And some of the boys up there [Laughter] found out he'd come home and I'd been writing to him, and they run the box up on him. It brought right much for the school. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Yes, I remember people doing that one night when my father was bidding on my mother's box.

MRS. GILBERT:

Then this lady who lived close to us, Mary Rockett, was kind of an old maid. She taught school. But she had a boyfriend at that time, and they run hers up. How much was hers, Frank? They run it up to—that was money, you know, back then, when they didn't earn so much—seven dollars and something. Or did you give that much for mine? Do you remember?

FRANK GILBERT:

Eight dollars and something, I think it was.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter]

MRS. GILBERT:

Well, then, hers was seven and something, and they run it up on her. [Laughter] He bought two. He bought one; somebody told him it was mine, and it wasn't mine.

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, that one. That one didn't cost so much. I got that one for two.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] Oh, you all had such fun.

MRS. GILBERT:

So that's how we met, and sometimes when I look at it, it's the best thing in the world we could have done. I was on the list

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where they judged the chickens that afternoon. Oh, they brought fruit and brought everything they had, just like any other fair. And I thought he never would get through those little chickens, and he was kind of an elderly-like old bachelor, and I was so tired I didn't know what to do. So I went in the schoolhouse [Laughter] when I got through, and I got me a big old apple. I didn't care whose it was; I was tired. And I got up in the schoolhouse building, and I had that apple in my hand, and I looked up, and he had a camera and was going to make my picture, and I pulled the window down. [Laughter] And he said he was going to get me in a good pose for him. He said, "How about throwing me that apple?" I told him he could come up and get it, and then he did.

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] Was that kind of a hobby, taking pictures?

FRANK GILBERT:

I still have the camera.

MRS. GILBERT:

He's got that same Kodak.

PATTY DILLEY:

Really?

MRS. GILBERT:

And it's about fifty-eight years old.

PATTY DILLEY:

Gosh.

MRS. GILBERT:

I don't know how long he had it before he met me.

FRANK GILBERT:

I'd say I had it probably a year before.

MRS. GILBERT:

But during that time; he went back out there, and he went in the service from there, and a little bit after that we decided to get …

PATTY DILLEY:

Did you ever have any other hobbies like that? Like working with wood or anything, after hours of working at the furniture factory?

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, I've done a little work after hours.

PATTY DILLEY:

What kind of things would you do?

FRANK GILBERT:

I made a good many picture frames.

MRS. GILBERT:

He started making his grandchildren little chairs, and he'd upholster them. But he got tired; he got too many grandchildren. [Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

And Mr. Bost was up at Conover Chair. I don't know how many, a good many years I made a good many picture frames every Christmas for him. He's retired now from up there. Now, I saw him not too long ago. I said, "Done threw all those picture frames I made for you away, I guess." "No," he said, "my wife wouldn't take a million dollars for them."

PATTY DILLEY:

[Laughter] That's neat.

MRS. GILBERT:

I crochet, and I've got a lot of my crocheting work here. And I tatted. I tatted my little baby brother a little cap out of pink medallions. I got his picture made in it. And I made a yo-yo bedspread. Did you ever hear tell of them?

PATTY DILLEY:

Yo-yo bedspreads? Yes, I've heard of them.

MRS. GILBERT:

You sew it around. You've seen little dolls where you made those little… Now that's the way you made the spread, only you just put them together where you'd put them on a doll's leg. You've seen those little old dolls. It's just like that.

PATTY DILLEY:

Those make pretty bedspreads; they sure do.

MRS. GILBERT:

But I never did crochet a bedspread. I've got one that my sister-in-law… Did you know George Gilbert at Newton? His wife died. What's the name of that church that George goes to?

FRANK GILBERT:

George Gilbert?

MRS. GILBERT:

Yes. I know it, but I can't think of it. It's the same kind we go to; it's at Newton down here.

PATTY DILLEY:

Grace Reformed?

MRS. GILBERT:

No, it's the Missouri Lutheran.

FRANK GILBERT:

It's the new Lutheran church. Probably been there ten or twelve years.

MRS. GILBERT:

But his wife just done some of the most lovely work you ever saw. She had cancer of the bone, and while she was at it, during that time while she was up. And George came up here one evening, and he had that and I almost cried. It was the prettiest thing. And he said, "Vivian wants you to have this." And she had so much pretty work. She got forty-some dollars for some of those bedspreads.

PATTY DILLEY:

Ooh, that's a lot of money.

MRS. GILBERT:

I'll show you mine. I left it on the bed. I shouldn't have done it. I don't know how it's going to look, but I don't let anybody else wash it; I wash it myself in the washing machine.

FRANK GILBERT:

Well, got through with me, and then she wants to talk to you a while. [Laughter]

MRS. GILBERT:

Well, I'd better keep my mouth shut, I guess. May be I'd better go back. [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

Well, we'll get you in a minute.

FRANK GILBERT:

Yes, this name stuck on that tape recorder won't be right [Laughter]

PATTY DILLEY:

I'll just have to put both of the names. [Laughter] I don't have too many more. Some real general questions. How do you feel that Conover has changed over the years?

MRS. GILBERT:

Oh, if you'd come down here, you'd have seen. There wasn't nothing in here when we moved down here but woods. [Laughter]

FRANK GILBERT:

We built this house here in 1938, and there wasn't another house along this road in this section anywhere. Miss Sarah Bolick lives way over there to Graded High, and Earle Bolick there. At least a mile and a half to the nearest house.

MRS. GILBERT:

The two houses right below that second brick house, Frank helped to build. They're still down there. Farrell lives in the first one.

PATTY DILLEY:

So you see that it's grown a lot in size and people? Do you think that people have changed any over the years?

MRS. GILBERT:

Oh, my, you wouldn't believe it.

FRANK GILBERT:

Just as long as it comes, you don't notice it too much, I don't think. If you'd been here then and not been back till now, you'd have saw a wonderful change in the people and everything else, but I didn't notice the change in the people too much.

MRS. GILBERT:

The young people is what's changed. They're so much different and live different. Of course, you've got more modern things than we had, too, and different things to do. But of all they've got to do… One of my sons lives in that second brick house there. They're gone to Carowinds today, and they've got three active children. Now they make music. The two older ones are in the Newton band. Denise plays the clarinet, and Donnie plays the saxophone. And they didn't think… He was kind of… I don't know what they call it. He couldn't communicate too good or something. He hadn't spoke a word till he was in the fourth grade, I mean to his teachers, but they let him write everything, see? He made awfully good grades. So when he got in the high school there at Newton, at the first school they went to, Denise had a clarinet and she had played that, her class did, and Donnie wanted to try it. And what's his name, the man that teaches …

PATTY DILLEY:

Stockner?

MRS. GILBERT:

Stockner. And he said, "He wants to try it so bad, let him try it, and if he can't do it, why, it won't cost you a thing."

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Page 38

And you know, he marched in the band last year and played.

PATTY DILLEY:

I was in the band when I was in high school.

MRS. GILBERT:

You come in there last year, too? Or you was in the band?

PATTY DILLEY:

I probably wasn't there. I was in there five years ago. Five or six years ago, I was in.

MRS. GILBERT:

Yes. Well,