© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0121, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Frank Gilbert recalls his laboring life in and around Conover, North Carolina. Gilbert worked a variety of jobs in North Carolina industries and also taught and did odd jobs until settling into a sixteen-year stint as machine foreman at Conover Chair. Gilbert, who is joined at times by his wife during the interview, spends most of his time discussing his family background and work life. This interview offers some insights into rural, laboring life in western North Carolina and touches on some themes of interest to researchers: dealing with poverty during the Great Depression, the tenor of rural communities, narratives of laboring, and racial integration.
Frank Gilbert recalls his laboring life in and around Conover, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Do you know anything about your grandparents or where your ancestors came from?
My grandfather was Jacob H. Gilbert, and my grandmother was Melinda Sigmon.
Do you know what country your ancestors came from?
They were English.
What did your grandparents do for a living?
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.
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.
Did he keep the farm while he was working for the railway?
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.
Really?
Yes, my mother had three brothers and Dad bought their shares of it. Old Grandmother just stayed with us.
Did anybody else live in your house besides your Grandmother Cline?
Just our family.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
My mother passed away in 1912, and she had ten children.
Where are they living now?
Well, a good many of them are dead. I have two sisters dead, and two brothers.
When they finally settled down, where did they finally end up living?
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.
Did they work in Catawba County?
No, they worked the whole Southern Railway.
They worked the whole thing.
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.
Yes.
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?
Yes, I went to school with him.
That's her son.
What does her husband do for a living?
He's an upholsterer now. He was an electrician for years, and he's been upholstering the last few years.
Where does he work?
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.
What does he do for a living?
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.
Do you remember the name of it?
That Yount Glove Company, I reckon it was. They built a new plant out in Catfish, in that section out there.
What is the name of that plant?
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
What does she do down in Houston?
She's sixty-five; she quit. She's got a daughter who lives there. That's the reason she went there.
What did she do up till then? Did she ever work?
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.
Who was the first one in your family to leave the farm and go to work?
I guess I was the first one. I was the oldest one. I left in 1916.
And you went to work at the Lookout Dam? Was that your first public work?
That was the first work outside of the farm, the first job I ever had.
What kinds of things did you do on the dam?
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.
Is that dam considered to be out in Catfish?
Yes. It's the Lookout Shoals, name of it.
Do you remember a lot of people losing their land because of …
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
Do you remember what people did after they sold their land?
They bought more somewhere. I don't know of any of them that are left around out there.
They just bought more and moved.
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.
And then you went to Illinois in the spring of '16?
'16.
How come you moved all the way out to Illinois?
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.
Did your uncles just decide to move out in that area because there were land opportunities, or why did they move out there?
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.
And you went into the Army. Where did you go when you were in the Army?
The first place I went was Fort Tuck, New York. I didn't
Where did you land in Europe?
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.
Really?
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?
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.
Oh, I bet.
Especially when you're moving from one little place to another, till they got the rations coming in right.
So you came back and started working for Southern Railway in '19?
Yes, ma'am.
What kind of work did you do for Southern Railway?
I was working with the Bridge and Building Department.
So that was working all around, not in one…
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 Thicket
Boy, that's a…
Gosh. So you lived in a kind of a camp?
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.
Did your father live in one of those when he worked for the railroad?
Oh, yes.
How often did you all see him while he was working on the railroad?
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
How many years did he work on the railroads?
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.
Did he farm any in between working?
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.
Did you all pay them for that?
Yes.
So you got married in 1919. How did you meet your wife?
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.
What church did you go to?
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.
Oh, I see. What section of the county is she from? Is she from Catfish, too?
You might call it that, but it's not… No, she's… Do you know anything about the country much out 16?
Yes, a little bit.
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.
It's not quite in the section they call Catfish, but it's out there in the country.
I told you about how big and how little Catfish was. That was was an awful big bootlegging country in one day.
Was it really?
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.
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.
So the name of the town kind of came from the name of the store?
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
So your family went to church pretty regular?
Oh, yes.
And you went to Bethel Lutheran. Do you still go there?
No, when we come to Conover, we moved to Concordia.
You got married in 1919. What did you do right after you got married?
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.
You didn't work too long for the railway. How long did you work?
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.
Then you said that you taught school for a while. Where did you go to school? How long did you go to school?
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.
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?
There wasn't no high school then. No, the eighth grade is as high as I ever went.
What school did you go to?
It was called Piney Grove.
And that was out in the Catfish section?
Yes, it was right about three-quarters of a mile north of Bethel Church.
Was this the parochial school you were talking about, the one that the church sponsored?
No, this just a grade school, what we taught at.
How about the one you went to when you were a child? Was this the same one?
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.
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?
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.
Oh, I see. Did a lot of your relatives live close by you when you were growing up?
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.
You, by rights, get to go to both.
Yes, and it's a big part of us. We just ought to have but just the one.
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
"Then," I said, "in the next place, I married a Moser."
"That's the way I got in it."
So you kind of jumped in it. Didn't step in it, just jumped in it. Do you all still have those family reunions?
Yes, the Gilbert reunion is going to be next Sunday a week, the seventeenth of July.
Where do you have them at?
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.
You have a president?
We have a president of the family.
Really? I had never heard of that. How does that work?
You just elect him, like you would a President of the United States.
Really? That's neat.
Yes.
Do a lot of people do that around here?
Oh, there's a lot of that. You can read in the little old
That's amazing. We always had unofficial presidents of our family, I guess. They weren't ever elected or anything formal like that, but …
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.
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?
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 …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… and she did.
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.
Do the Gilberts still own the old homeplace?
No, after my daddy died, we had a stepmother and she didn't
He made quite a …
Made pretty good.
… 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?
I was the milkmaid, one thing.
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.
So did all of your brothers and sisters kind of grow up after you and work on the farm some before they left?
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
Why did you leave home, to begin with?
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.
Did you know anybody at the railway place when you first went to work there?
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.
Did you have any relatives that worked for them?
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.
That's a big job. When you came to Conover, you first started working here at the cotton gin?
Yes, ma'am.
How did you get the job there?
This old Uncle John Hollar that got us the school job got me that job there, too.
And so you worked there until it burned down?
Yes, ma'am.
You said you helped build the houses that Mr. Brady …
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.
For Mr. Brady, was lumber checking?
Yes.
What kind of things would you do in that job? Would it be checking shipments?
What kind of lumber?
Yes.
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.
So you had the job of checking shipments?
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.
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 …
That was while I was at Brady's.
How often did you get to work while that was going on?
Well, one time I was off eleven weeks straight.
Really?
But it wasn't that bad all the time.
How did you all make do while the Depression was on?
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.
Was your wife working any at this time?
She didn't work any during the Depression.
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?
Well, I'll tell you, this man Hollar's son-in law… Ever hear of Jim Deal?
Yes.
You know where he lived?
I'm not sure where he lived.
Just right up several houses this road, side of 3D.
Sixteen?
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.
Where did you move that second time? Where was this new house that you moved to?
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.
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.
Why did he want to make that change? Was he not working for
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.
But these were always rented houses that you moved into until you moved here?
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.
And you did a little bit of work on those?
I just did a couple days when they started it. That's where I got a job.
This was right after the cotton gin burned down.
Yes, that's right.
So then you finally moved into one of those. Why did Mr. Brady build the houses?
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.
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?
I just couldn't tell you. About all I know about that is just my own self.
Just your own self.
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.
So a lot of those aren't standing anymore.
They're about all standing.
They're all standing?
Yes. This second house above me is one of them. When they moved it was moved down here, rolled down here, for Mrs. Hefner.
Oh, really?
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.
So most of them are still standing.
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.
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.
So he just built them and then sold them. He didn't build them to …
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.
But Mr. Brady built his for his workers to live in.
Yes.
He built eight of them?
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.
Who was that that lived in it?
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.
Was the rent that Mr. Brady charged lower than some of the other places would rent out?
Five dollars a month.
What was the price that other people were paying?
It was more than that, I know, but I could just make a guess, is all I could do.
So Mr. Brady really didn't build the houses to have a profit out of them.
No, he just built them for the employees to live in.
Do you remember when they finally sold those houses, when they stopped renting them?
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.
Who is that?
A.W. Pacer. He lives in one of those houses yet that Brady built.
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?
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."
Did he? That's something.
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.
So that's when you finally started checking lumber?
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.
So that was kind of a step up?
I guess you might call it that.
Did you get higher pay for that?
Yes, every now and then I'd get a little more pay up until that Depression come on; then it started stepping back down.
Do you remember how low wages got during the Depression?
I remember how low mine got.
How low did yours get?
Fifteen cents an hour.
That's pretty low.
Yes. There was some lower than that there.
Down there at the plant, there were some lower than that?
Yes.
How did wages at the furniture plant compare to the other places to work around here, like the hosiery and the gloves?
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.]
Were there many upholsterers back then in those days?
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 …
Showed promise?
If he could make it. Some of them made it, and some of them didn't.
This was for Brady or under Conover Furniture?
It was Conover Furniture. Brady never done any upholstery work.
Why did you end up leaving Conover Furniture and go into Conover Chair?
I didn't ever work for Conover Furniture over at that place. You wouldn't need to ask that question.
You really didn't work for Conover Furniture?
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.
Did he really? Why did he do that?
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.
The men got really angry over that?
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.
Was this the original Mr. Brady?
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."
Were they just four men that were really favored above the rest?
I figured that… What I wondered at, Mr. Jim Deal was one of them.
Really?
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…
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?
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
That's really something.
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."
Two big loads that you could count for him?
I'd trusted him. He wouldn't be the cause of me to go down.
So you came back.
Yes.
What did you first do when you went to Conover Chair after that?
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.
This was foreman in the machine room?
Yes, ma'am. And still, every Christmas, they send me down a big box of oranges, every Christmas since I left them.
Mr. Rhonie still does?
No, Mr. Bost is the boss now. Conover Chair.
Rhonie worked for a while, but he worked up the highway with him a good many years, too.
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.
How did that work that he was leasing the machine room?
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.
I see. So it was like two little companies together in the same
Yes.
So then Rhonie made enough money to where he could open up his own operation.
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.
I know Charles, so that's why… Brady started out making mattresses. He made mattresses first.
I never made any mattresses.
You didn't?
No, they was making …
He didn't help.
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.
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?
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.
His father and mother died at home, and mine did, too.
Yes, my father died in 1947.
So your stepmother took care of them.
She's still living yet.
Is she still living?
Ninety-six years old.
Who is she living with?
She's in the Shriner's Home in Greensboro.
Gosh. She's pretty old.
That's getting up there, about ninety-five or ninety-six.
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?
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.
Did your mother ever work outside the home?
No.
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?
We had a baseball team. I was on several baseball teams around there.
There wasn't much recreation for the girls, was there, Mama?
I didn't play base… I played pound ball.
Yes, we played bull pen there.
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.
That's not a new thing.
And you wouldn't have thought we'd have had a hot dog back then.
In later years we did; that was when…
I don't know whether they did things together or not. But everything we done, we had fun out of.
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.
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 …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… 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,
Yes.
Would you all meet at those and dance? Was that what you all done?
Well, now, he was kind of a strange