[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jenny is Dolly Moser's stepdaughter but you're her natural daughter.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That's right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember anything about your grandparents?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, I didn't even know my Moser grandparents. But I knew my Grandfather and Grandmother Holar. They lived on a farm, too, mother. She was Dutch, and he was Irish. She was a little, short, tiny, real pretty woman, and he was big, tall, and kind of rough-looking.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they live just down the road from where you were living when you grew up?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They was about four miles. But my grandmother would walk down to the house to see us. She'd come with a big basket on her arm with food; I can see her come down the road yet. Her children were all married then, and so she would make jelly and things like that and bring it down. You know how mothers are.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you see very much of your grandparents then when you were growing up?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, I did. We would visit quite often with them. They raised all kinds of animals and their own pork and beef. They had cattle, chickens, and everything that you have on a farm. And they raised all their food. About the only thing that was bought back then was sugar and coffee, rice, and things you couldn't raise on the farm. And usually they would exchange eggs and butter and things they had to sell for those things. That's the way my mother did. I can remember taking a little basket of eggs to the store and getting sugar and coffee, and so happy that there was a couple pennies left over that would get a piece of candy or two. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

So that wasn't unusual at all, just to take your eggs to the store?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No. That's the way we did back then.

GLENN HOLLAR:

That's the only money you had.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, we didn't have any. Cotton and sweet potatoes and things that you sold in the fall, and fruits through the year. We had an enormous amount of fruit all summer long we raised. Had so many fruit trees of all kinds, peaches and cherries, apples, plums, pears, even Damsons. Any kind of fruit you could …

JACQUELYN HALL:

What are Damsons?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They look a little like a plum, and they're shaped a little like a plum. But they're real dark blue, and they're sour. But they make delicious pie and jam and jelly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother would preserve the fruit?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Oh, all that. We had so many jars. And she would put a lot of things in crocks, like pickles and kraut and even pickled beans. And then she would dry beans. We had a dry kiln, and we'd dry all kinds of fruit and vegetables. I can remember drying beans and corn, and it was so good. And peaches, apples, a lot of those things.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Since she had gotten married so young, I wonder how she knew how to do all those things.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

She learned at home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She had already learned from her mother?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. And I can remember her telling me so many times that she and her mother had a cotton patch of their own the year she got married. The cotton wasn't ready to pick yet when she got married; it had just been hoed and cleaned. So her mother gave her ten dollars for her part of the cotton patch. And she went over to Claremont to this store and bought a bed and the ticking to make the mattress. (They used to make their own mattresses.) And material for the sheets and pillowcases, and the pillows.

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And she bought a little rocking chair.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Wasn't there a little dresser in it, too?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, she didn't buy that with this ten dollars. She had enough left over that she bought her a dress.

JACQUELYN HALL:

This was all for ten dollars. [Laughter]

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

All for ten dollars.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she tell you stories about how she happened to run away and get married?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. I know that her father and mother didn't want her to marry him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Pecause, you see, he had these four little children, and she was so young. It wasn't that they had anything against him. It was just that they didn't want her to marry into a family like that. And so they went off to camp meeting and got married down there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jenny told me that story, and I think his brother was the preacher at the camp meeting who married them? Your uncle?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, I don't remember who married them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I was kind of surprised that the preacher would marry them if they didn't have the girl's parents' permission.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Back then you didn't have to.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I know you didn't have to, but I wondered if people …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

You know how people in love are.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter] How did her parents take that?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They were all right. I guess they felt that that's what she wanted. Because it wasn't that they didn't like him; it was just that they didn't…

JACQUELYN HALL:

You didn't sense any tension between her parents and her over the marriage.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, there wasn't. But she really had her hands full with four little ones. But they listened to her, and do you know, I didn't know until I was almost grown that we weren't all brothers and sisters. I never knew, because she treated them all alike, and it was just like we were all brother and sister.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you find out that they were your half brothers and sisters instead?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I can't even remember. But I remember that I didn't know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you know how big your grandparents' farm was?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I don't know.

GLENN HOLLAR:

He had a pretty little patch of land up there, with a house and all.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

But then it had been divided up. A lot of his children… I don't know how much he had to start with, but he must have had fifty or sixty acres, maybe more.

GLENN HOLLAR:

He had to have right smart to raise enough stuff to feed all them kids.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, but you see Uncle Ed lived right out there, and Uncle Charlie, and they had got land from him. And Bertha had got some. It was on the back. I just don't know exactly how much it was, but I know it was a big farm. One time my great-grandfather owned from on there where he lived on back down to the river. But, you see, it was all divided up. It kept being divided up with the family. We had fifty or sixty acres there left. Our son bought our homeplace back there. She had sold a little piece to one of my half-brothers, because he had bought some land and

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he didn't have a roadway out, and she had sold him an acre. And then she had sold my brother an acre to build a house close to her there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You're talking about your parents.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Our homeplace, yes. But we still had about forty-nine, wasn't it?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I think fifty acres.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That's what he bought.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were growing up, did you have a sense that your mother had to work awfully hard or was having a hard time with so many children?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. But we all helped. The whole family helped and worked real hard. Of course, she worked the hardest, because she worked in the field and she would go to the house about eleven o'clock to get dinner and have dinner on the table at twelve when we got there. And she would make half a dozen or more pies, so she'd have enough for supper, too. A great big dish of beans and potatoes and corn and all that. And how she would do it in one hour I never have figured out. It'd take me a half a day. But she was so fast. She'd set down to peel an apple, and she'd go around that thing, phew!

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your father like?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I can't remember too much about him. He died when I was about five years old. But I can remember us little ones would fuss and carry his shoes to him and things like that, but I can't remember too much about him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was a good bit older than your mother.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, he was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your family life change after he died?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We just had to work that much harder. I was little; I wasn't

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hardly big enough to work. I carried a hoe ever since I was big enough to carry one, though. But he had just bought some land the year before he died, and he was supposed to pay for it the next year. And I can remember that Mama said that she didn't know if she would lose it or not, but said the next year the cotton crop and everything was so good, had such a good year, and they paid off the land.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So she didn't lose the land.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Didn't lose the land.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your father make most of his living by farming, or did he do other things as well?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He did other things. He clerked in a store when I was right little. I think he worked for about fifty cents a day.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just clerking in a general store?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, in a general store. But that was good then, you know. This was before my time, but he was sheriff. I know Mama said a lot of times she'd get so afraid that something was going to happen to him. But he was sheriff for a while. And when he was married to his first wife, he was jailer. And he was jailer when they hung the last man in Newton. I guess Jenny told you that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

No. How did he manage to run a farm and do all those other things at the same time?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I don't know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have hired hands?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I don't know. I was too young for me to remember. I don't imagine they did too much farming when the children were so little. When he was jailer was when he was married to his first wife.

JACQUELYN HALL:

After your father died, then your mother stayed there on the

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homeplace and ran the farm by herself?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. She lived there seventy-two years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And she supported herself and all of you kids by farming?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. Her and the children.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Had the children already been used to working in the fields before your father died?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So it wasn't such a big change.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, not really. Well, it was, too, being without a father and all. But I know Mama said a lot of times she'd go to bed of a night, and she wouldn't know where the food was going to come from for the next day. But, she said, there was always plenty there. I know she did work hard. She lived there for seventy-two years, and even after all of us were gone she still worked and kept everything clean around that house.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did she finally quit farming?

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown] after Jean got married. It was several years after that. I wasn't here to…

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

She rented the land out after she quit.

GLENN HOLLAR:

After the kids all got married off, she started renting it out. And then she farmed some of it, too. I know when we got married, I helped some there.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

It was about till after Jean moved away from out there, she did.

GLENN HOLLAR:

That's when she'd have to quit, after Jean left.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I imagine that was around 1950 or '60.

GLENN HOLLAR:

It was about thirty years ago.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did the children in your family start working doing public work, getting jobs other than helping on the farm?

GLENN HOLLAR:

When they started getting married. Willie started it. She was the first one, wasn't she?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No. Ross.

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown] you've got to feed the children and the grand young'uns.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They helped on the farm till they were grown. I guess Ross must have been about nineteen or twenty when he left. And he worked on construction work. He got married and took his wife along then where they worked. And my two oldest sisters worked a little over at Claremont. There was a hosiery mill over there. They worked there before they got married.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that Claremont Hosiery Mill?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. It seems like it was a Carpenter.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You think the Carpenters ran it?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

It seems like it was, but I can't remember exactly who ran it.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I think it was the Carpenters.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were these your half sisters?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, two of my stepsisters. I had a full sister, but she never did go out to work anywhere. But this was my two half sisters. They worked over there for a while, not too long, but they worked over there a little. That's the only place they ever worked before they got married.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they keep working after they were married?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

After they were married, they moved.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They moved out of the area altogether?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No. They didn't work over at the hosiery mill. Like I said, they worked there for a while, and then they quit.

GLENN HOLLAR:

But they still lived around here all their lives.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they didn't work anymore.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, they didn't work there anymore.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did they go out to work rather than helping with the farming?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They thought they could help, and they did.

GLENN HOLLAR:

It was the only way they had to get a little money, I guess, for the family.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, and of course they wanted a little money for themselves, and then they bought the smaller ones things, too. They were real good that way. And then my other half brother went off to work. He went to Hickory and stayed up at Hickory with some of our cousins.

GLENN HOLLAR:

He worked in the hosiery mill, didn't he?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He lived up there, yes, and worked. Then they built this railroad from Claremont up to Oxford Dam, and my three brothers worked on that and brought some money home. But they still farmed.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Your one brother went off to the railroad when he was about fifteen or sixteen, didn't he?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, after that then he went off and worked on the railroad. I think he was about sixteen or seventeen.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I think that one was real young, this little one.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He was small for his age then, but he grew up to be a big man. He grew till he was twenty-one years old. But he was real young when he went to the railroad, and he never did come back to stay at home anymore then. He worked on the railroad until he retired.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your mother feel about the kids leaving home?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

She knew that she couldn't keep them at home always. But now the rest of them didn't leave until after they got married. After they got married, they'd move out somewhere.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you get your first job?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

In 1927.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where was that?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

At the Conover Glove. 1 * She probably means Warlong Glove. It was over here where this shop is. That's where he worked. That's where I met him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were working at Conover Glove?

GLENN HOLLAR:

She did work about a week, and I got a date with her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter]

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I worked there then, and I boarded out here because I had no way back and forth. And of course I gave Mama part of my money, because then there was just three at home to help her on the farm. And I gave her part of my money, and she was satisfied and she didn't say a thing about it. Because all the other girls were going out to work. She knew that I wanted to, too, and she didn't say a word; she just let me go.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your friends were going out to work?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you happen to get a job at Conover Glove?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Wasn't Jenny working out there?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes, that's right. Jenny lived out here, and I come out and had her to help me get the job, or talk to them and ask them for me a job. And I stayed with her for a while. Then I moved out to another place with a friend, and I stayed there till we got married.

Did you board at somebody's house?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. Paid three dollars a week for room and board. Good, wasn't it? [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who owned Conover Glove at that time?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Adrian Shuford. Adrian Shuford started out, and then Shuford bought Brady out, and Brady taken the furniture plant. Lumber yard

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or lumber plant is what it was. It wasn't nothing but a sawmill over here then. That's all they had, and a shed. They built old chicken crates out of [unknown]. My daddy worked there for him for years.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

And we worked there until they built this new plant right across from Mackie's here. The Shufords built that. And we moved over in that plant then. That was along in the late forties.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it still called Conover Glove?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, they sold out to Riegel's.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So this is a Riegel's plant.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No. It was, and Riegal …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

… milk products and …

GLENN HOLLAR:

Gulf States.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Gulf State milk. And so everybody scattered. We had to get jobs somewhere else. And I went to work over here at Southern Glove and worked over there a while until Fred Fox and Dan Long put a glove mill in this little building out here beside the service station [1961]. Then I come over there and worked SIDE and I worked for them till I retired a year and a half ago.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How would you compare these different places that you worked? Were some of them nicer to work in than others?

GLENN HOLLAR:

She's kind of under the same supervision about all the time, in a way, I mean the superintendents. Fred Fox was working in the glove mill when you did, when Doc Holland was superintendent.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I worked at all three plants. I worked at Southern, and I worked

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at Norton at Newton, but it wasn't Norton then; Norton hadn't bought it yet. But I'd rather work for this one than either one of the others.

JACQUELYN HALL:

For which one?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Southern Glove they call this one now. But it all kind of sprung from the Shufords, from the same management and everything. And I'd rather work there than either one of the others.

GLENN HOLLAR:

You retired from Conover Glove after.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did you like to work for Southern Glove better?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I liked their management and their, it seemed like, friendlier attitude toward their hands. These other places, you didn't see much of them. Well, Southern Glove you did, but they never had airconditioning.

GLENN HOLLAR:

She said Southern Glove there, and you was talking about Southern Glove, but you were really working for Conover Glove. That's what she meant; that's where she retired. She got mixed up.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I said Conover Glove sprang from Shuford's, you know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you're saying that you really enjoyed working for Conover Glove when Fred Fox and Dan Long ran it …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

More than those other places. Fred Fox, I guess, had been your supervisor when you had worked …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

GLENN HOLLAR:

He supervisor out here. And Millard Holland was supervisor for what started out as Warlong Glove. That was the name of it. The old one over here at the railroad. That was Warlong Glove, and Millard Holland was superintendent. And he stayed in there as long as it was there, and then they moved out here.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

And he was over there a while, too.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, he was out here, and that's when Fred started in. And then when Riegel bought them out and it closed up, that's when Fred started this one out here, him and Dan Long.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

And they called it Conover Glove.

GLENN HOLLAR:

It got too little, so they added an industrial part. And they built the big building out there. It still went under Conover Glove, but it's owned now by National Linen Service. But they still go by Conover Glove.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is Millard Holland alive?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, he's been dead for quite a while. But Dan Long still lives out there. Fred Fox got out about a year or so ago, and he's got a furniture plant down here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you got your first job in 1927, were you a sewer?

GLENN HOLLAR:

That's what she learned to do.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, I learned to sew.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who taught you?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Hazel Baker showed me how, and that was it. Then she pushed me to make all I could make, because she got paid for what I made. I got paid by the day, and she got paid what I made for teaching me. So when my six weeks were up, my learning period, I was making more than she was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Because you were able to sew faster?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I was able to sew faster. She never could sew fast. But I didn't make a good glove. Then after I worked several years, I learned then that I had to make a better glove in order to get along better. So then I had to teach myself to make a better glove. I had to work at it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did you have to make a better glove in order to get along better?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

So I wouldn't get so many bad ones back to repair.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Mender's eye[unknown], they called it. Raggedy sewing, sorry sewing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter]

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

See, she didn't teach me to make a good glove; she just taught me to make a fast one, to get the boxes in so she could get the tickets off of them, get the money.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you do differently so that you could make a good glove, instead of just a fast one?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I just had to be more careful that I didn't leave holes in them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have to slow down in order to do that?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, naturally it slowed you down some.

GLENN HOLLAR:

But after you got to where you could run it through there and got a-hold of it, I call it, why, it would just go right through.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

After I learned to sew and not leave holes in them, then naturally I got to where I could sew faster that way, too. But, oh, I made a mess there for a long time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your supervisors get angry when you made a lot of mistakes?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, not really. They never did say anything to me. They'd just bring the gloves back, and I'd have to repair them. The boys that steamed the gloves were the ones that got mad, because they didn't like to have to do them all over. See, they'd bring them back to me, and I would do them over, and then they'd have to take them back and steam them again. So it was double trouble for them; they were the ones that didn't like it. But I wasn't the only one. Almost everybody got a lot of…

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The learners, especially. Except the ones that were taught by good teachers. I just happened to get a bad teacher.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I've gone through a glove mill recently, but I was wondering how the process of making gloves is different now than it was in the twenties or thirties when you all got …

GLENN HOLLAR:

There's not any difference in it much. It's practically the same thing. The only thing they've improved on, it's nothing in the sewing. They've got better machines, yes; they're faster. But just from start to finish, it's all the same thing as it was when it first started out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about cutting?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Cutting the same way. Of course, they started with one little single die to cut everything. Now they've got them in sections; it cuts all the way across the table at one time. They've improved a lot of things, but as far as the sewing, it's all about the same thing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's what I thought.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That is, making the glove is about the same, but …

GLENN HOLLAR:

They've got automatic turners and all that stuff. It's just tempered[unknown].

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was turning done in the twenties, as compared to the way it's done now?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Four or five steamed up like that. Four prongs come down and a pedal down here, and you tramp on it. Turn your thumb, and then turn the rest of the glove. Everything was by hand and foot.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They still use a pedal.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Some of them, yes. But some of them, they've got the big automatic turners on the regular work instead of by pedal.

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They don't have to have that foot turning.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They just slip them on these hand-like things and turn them automatically.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you like working in the glove mill?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Oh, I liked it.

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you like it better than you had working on a farm?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I liked it better.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How come?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

On the farm you didn't get to be with other people much.

GLENN HOLLAR:

And there wasn't no money, not hard cash, coming in, either.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, I never did have any money; that was the main thing. I never did have any money to carry or handle, no money to buy anything with or anything. And when I got there, I got a little paycheck each week, and that was really thrilling.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Buy a new dress sometimes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you do with your first paycheck?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I gave Mama part of it. And I paid for my room and board. But I don't remember what I bought with my first check. I probably didn't have much left.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Two or three dollars went a whole lots then.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you first started, did you feel pressured about trying to learn to sew fast enough ?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No. I was too thrilled to be there. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

How many people were working there in '27?

GLENN HOLLAR:

When you started, it might have been fifty.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

It was bound to be more than that.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, it was, too. But it wasn't but about twenty-five or thirty when I started there. It had growed.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I imagine it was about a hundred.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, that's close.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So that's a pretty big operation.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

GLENN HOLLAR:

There was three rows of machines, wasn't it, upstairs there when you started?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Three rows of sewing machines?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, through that big long building.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, three, so it had to be about seventy-five. Counting turners and steamers, there was probably around a hundred people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there quite a few people there that you already knew?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, there was a lot of people that I knew.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Like girls that you had grown up with out in the country?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Back in there, a lot of Gilberts.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, Gilberts and Sigmons.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Carpenters; [unknown].

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

And Browns. Yes, there was quite a few.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you socialize with people after work?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did you do?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

There wasn't too much to do except go to the movies.

GLENN HOLLAR:

There was a lot of pictures.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Sometimes different ones would have parties. They'd have dances

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Page 18

in the homes. Things like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you get to do a lot more things like that after you started working than you had before?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, I sure did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have any rules at the place where you were living about when you had to be in, what you could do and what you couldn't do, or were you pretty much completely on your own?

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown] when she lived down there, that woman she stayed with was from back in there where she lived.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Well, no, when I first went, you see, I was with Jenny, and she bossed me. In fact, she didn't want me to go with him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

She didn't like it a bit.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I was too rough.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter] What was rough about you?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I wasn't rough. I just…

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He had started running around young, I think. Getting out young.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, going with girls.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He knew too much.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I tell you, when they was coming over, I'd get in a ditch.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you asked her out after she'd been there for one week?

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown] not over two weeks when I got a date with her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your job?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I was fixing belts and cutting cuffs, run cuff machines.

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Page 19

And I turned and steamed a little bit when I started out.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Before I come out here to work, I'd go to Claremont a lot. There was a lot of girls over there that were my age. And they'd come spend the night with me some on Saturday nights, and I'd go there some weekends and spend the weekend. After my brother got married, he lived over there, and so I could go over and stay with them. And his sisters-in-law, his wife's sisters. There were about three or four of them, and I'd go over there and spend the night and have a good time. Enjoyed it a lot. And we always had a party in somebody's house. We'd all get together that night, couples, and have fun. But there wasn't much to do back then, many places to go.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Once you all started going out together, did you go out with anybody else?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Not often. Not but a few times, we didn't.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, a couple times.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How long were you courting before you got married?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

About a year.

GLENN HOLLAR:

That quick? I thought it was longer than that.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No.

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, it was about a year, I think.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I come to work in May, and we got married the next March.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you go out to meet her mother and get …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Oh, yes, him and Mama got along just like that. Always did. Do yet.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So she approved.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. Yes, they've always got along good together.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How old would you have been when you got married then?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Seventeen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember exactly how you decided to get married?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, I don't. Do you?

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown]

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I know we decided at Christmas that we were going to get married. I know we talked then about getting married, when we was going to get married.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, that's when we started talking about it.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Along about the first of the year, we decided we'd get married.

GLENN HOLLAR:

And then we coasted along a little while and finally got married in March.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

It wasn't very long.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you get married at a justice of the peace or at church?

GLENN HOLLAR:

York, South Carolina.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's where almost everybody that I've talked to got married.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Back then.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that? Could you get married quicker there?

GLENN HOLLAR:

We went down there and got married and come home. You have to go down there now, I think, and spend the night in South Carolina. My brother-in-law and my sister taken us down.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I knew I couldn't have a big church wedding, and so his sister and brother-in-law said that they'd take us to South Carolina, go down there and get married.

GLENN HOLLAR:

The funny part about it, I didn't have enough money to get married. I sold my payroll before I got it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you mean?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I was working down here at the furniture plant then, and I didn't have any money to get married. And I got the money from my brother-in-law and let him get my check. That's how we started; I didn't have nothing.

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Page 21

My daddy didn't have nothing to give me, did he? Her people didn't have nothing. We just root hog or die, is what I always said.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, and back then they didn't have showers like they do now, so every panny's worth we got we had to buy. I didn't have any money, and he didn't, either.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I went back to work in the glove mill with Mr. Shuford. He loaned me the money to get an acre of land down here with. I paid him, and we was putting a little in the bill and loan. They had just opened up a bill and loan up here, and we got a little saving in there. And then finally we got a house built down here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where did you live when you first got married?

GLENN HOLLAR:

My daddy's. We stayed there a little while. Then we rented a house up here. We had rooms uptown up here.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We stayed up there till we could find a place to… And get some money to buy some furniture.

GLENN HOLLAR:

And then my brother-in-law built a new house. He was living in a little house, and we moved out there and we lived out there a while, till the second kid was born.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We moved around a lot. Our youngest child was about two years old, I believe, when we built finally.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Two or three.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you have your first baby?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We were married on March tenth, and he was born the next March seventh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you stop working for a while when you had your baby?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, not too long. I was so sick that I couldn't work before much; I didn't get to work much before he was born. But I went back pretty

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Page 22

soon after, because I was so over[unknown].

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were what?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I was so sick all the time before he was born that when he was born I didn't weigh but ninety-eight pounds, and he weighed about eleven. [Laughter] I was so sick all the time. Oh, I was terribly… All the time I carried him, I was so sick.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have a midwife or a doctor?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

A midwife. We were living out in the country then, and my brother-in-law went down to get the doctor that I'd doctored with all the time. I went every two weeks. Part of the time I'd go every week. All the time I was pregnant, because I was so sick. And he went down to get him, and he said he didn't go out at night. So he tried all the other doctors, and wouldn't any of them go because they weren't my doctor. He come back up here to Conover, and old Dr. Herman was here, but he was too old to go out. So he started down to Catawba to get that doctor, and he said well, he'd been gone so long, and he was afraid that I might need somebody. So he stopped on his way going out from Conover here. There was a midwife lived there, and he stopped and picked her up and brought her over to the house. He was going to bring her over there and then go on after the doctor, and she wouldn't let him go after the doctor. She said if we needed a doctor, she'd tell him in time, so she wouldn't let him go. So I got along so good that time, the next time then we didn't even go for a doctor; he just got the midwife. But then the third one, I had the doctor over here. New doctors had moved in. Dr. Kim Clenninger had moved over here, and who was with him?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I don't remember. [unknown] wasn't anybody [unknown]. Well, I believe it was.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Anyway, he was over here and I went to him, and he was my doctor when I was pregnant that time. And he delivered that baby for twenty-five dollars.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Fifteen. The three didn't cost but twenty-five. The midwife, five dollars each, and then him fifteen.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That's right. He delivered him for fifteen.

GLENN HOLLAR:

You got three for twenty-five dollars at that time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter] That's a bargain.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, it was. Now they're three thousand dollars every time.[unknown]

JACQUELYN HALL:

When I was talking to Mrs. Gilbert, she told me a story about her father, your father saying before he died that he didn't want his children to work in any of the textile mills around. Do you remember anything about that?

GLENN HOLLAR:

That's the first I ever heard that.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

The first I ever heard anything about it. Of course, I wasn't old enough to know things like that, though.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you go to church here in Conover?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Bethel, back at Oxford community on the way back.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's the church you grew up in?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, that's the church I grew up in. We go down to old St. Paul's, near Newton, now.

JACQUELYN HALL:

After you had gotten married, did you keep going back out to Bethel, or did you start going to church in town?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We went out there some. We went to both our churches some. We'd go to his, because he belonged down to old St. Paul's.

GLENN HOLLAR:

After we built out here, then she decided …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

After we built down on the old St. Paul's Church road, I went down there all the time. I started going before that, because we took the children.

GLENN HOLLAR:

[unknown] take the kids.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Because we lived out here.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I tell you, when we rented this house out here, I think, from the Shufords.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You rented a house from the Shufords?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, he had bought a few over yonder behind the schoolhouse there, and we got one of them. And that was five dollars a month rent, five or seven. It wasn't much. And we lived there several years.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

The children were little, and so we could go to Sunday school down there, and we'd go down there most of the time. Once in a while we'd go back to my church, but I had joined down there and went down there nearly all the time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were first working at the glove mill, Brady and Shuford both owned it, I guess.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And then Shuford took the glove mill, and Brady took the furniture?

GLENN HOLLAR:

They split up. They had this lumber plant or whatever you want to call it and the mill together, and then they split up. Mr. Brady taken the shop, and Shuford took the glove mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there some conflict between them?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No. It just got to getting a little bigger and bigger, and Mr. Shuford had some children coming on, a few, and then Mr. Brady had a bunch of boys and a couple girls. He had a big family. And they decided

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Page 25

they wanted to split it up, and one run one and the other the other. And my daddy worked up there for Mr. Brady for years back during the Depression. Had a flu epidemic in 1918, about the time the War was over.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[unknown]

GLENN HOLLAR:

After the First World War. [unknown]. And Daddy had pneumonia, and Mother had pneumonia. [unknown] a baby born during the time of it. My sister was in bed with pneumonia. We couldn't get anybody to come in to cook or anything. We had a time. And Mr. Brady would bring groceries down every week. He'd give us a bag of groceries, something to eat on. I was about eleven or twelve years old then. Then I'd get out and cook and just keep the house going. I tell you. I taken it first, but I didn't get sick. I never will forget that. And the baby born dead.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The baby was born in the midst of this flu epidemic?

GLENN HOLLAR:

My mother had pneumonia when the baby was born. I tell you. I never… Phew: I don't know how we ever survived that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You couldn't get a doctor …

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

GLENN HOLLAR:

That's when that flu epidemic hit so bad.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That was when it first come around.

GLENN HOLLAR:

It was after the First World War.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were Mr. Brady and Mr. Shuford very different from each other?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No SIDE not a whole lot of difference. They was just good

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Page 26

people, and they was trying to treat everybody good so they could live and make a little something to live off of. Mr. Shuford was awful good to work for. He'd look out for his help. If things would get a little rough, he'd work out some way to give them work. I've seen one time there that it got so bad that he couldn't sell gloves. So if a man would order fifty dozen, he'd give him six dozen. If he'd order a hundred, he'd give him twelve dozen extra. Just to get the orders, so he could keep the hands together and work. He was really good. He had a head on him. I learned more from him than I did going to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did you learn from him?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I don't know how long I'd been there, but I got in the shipping department, and I was over the shipping and all that for years. That was mostly figuring and planning things. You learn a lot that way. I worked with him about twenty-eight years, I reckon.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you in the shipping department in the furniture?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, in the glove. I never did do much in the furniture. I did after I got out of the glove mill there. For a while I worked in the furniture plant. But I finally went back to the glove mill after a so long time, and retired from that here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Since your father was in furniture, why did you go into gloves instead of into furniture?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I took the first job I could get. Because you couldn't get a job back then. There just wasn't any jobs. And I wouldn't have got one if it wouldn't have been for my daddy and Mr. Brady and the Shufords all…

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

You started real young, didn't you?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, I wasn't sixteen yet. I quit school, and I got a job. As I said, I could get a job; they'd give me a job. In fact, they'd come

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Page 27

around and check you every once in a while. They wasn't strict on it. But I was a pretty good size for my age. They never did question me. But I still wasn't old enough to go to work when I first started. But I got by. Because I wanted some clothes to wear. I didn't have anything, hardly. My daddy, every time he'd buy me a little pair of brown pants, and I got so sick of brown I couldn't stand to look at them, hardly. After I got a little money, I got to buying my own clothes. It was a big family; there was nine of us.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Let me go back a little bit and find out a little bit about your family. Do you know anything about your grandparents?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, I knowed my grandparents. I stayed with them a couple years and farmed with them when I was about twelve or thirteen years old.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where did they live?

GLENN HOLLAR:

They lived over here out on old St. Paul's Church. And then they did live right down back here at Conover for a while. He didn't own his home or anything for years. They'd just rent from people. You know, back then you'd live in their house and farm their land for them.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That was your Sigmon grandparents. But your Hollar grandparents.

GLENN HOLLAR:

They lived out here. They was on a farm, too. When I grew up my mother, she'd rent pastures out for cotton. And hoe it and pick the cotton for a third of it, to buy clothes with for the kids. And my daddy, what little he made in the shop, would take in what he made, too. He was in the shop then.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother would do what?

GLENN HOLLAR:

She'd rent maybe two or three acres, whatever she felt she could work, and hoe it. And then we'd plant it and plow it and everything,

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Page 28

but she'd hoe it. And we picked the cotton, and we'd sell it. She'd get a third of whatever it brung. That's how we'd buy our clothes and things to go to school. There was nine of us. We'll, there was eleven; there was two dead, but there was nine still living. As we'd get a little bigger and the other ones come along, we'd tend to them while she was working in the field. [unknown] around in the dirt; even dirt can feel good to little ones. If we tried to go through it now, we'd never make it. And I know out here, one brother popped his hand on the stove one time and burned it. We had an awful time with him. You had to put up with what you could get a-hold of. We lived out here in a log house, and we had a little stairway that went up. Me and my oldest brother slept up there in the wind. The mud between the logs was old, and it'd drop out, you know, dry. I woke up more than one time with snow on the bed. But I was still warm. You'd get up and go down them stairs with your pants in your hand, just might near freeze. And head for the kitchen stove, get right back in the corner where you'd stay warm. You'd walk to school. We went to school out here, this old schoolhouse. A path come up through the pasture back through there. You walked everywhere you went, in snow, and you didn't miss a day; you'd go every day. And then I got out here I went to work, and I'd walk to work. That was every day.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you keep living at home when you started working?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, I stayed there, and then I stayed with my grand parents, when they moved down and were living behind where we lived there. Me and my Grandmother Sigmon was always good buddies. I'd stay with them sometimes. I stayed with them about a whole year there one time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why would you go out and live at your grandparents'?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Me and my daddy, we'd kind of get on the outs. He was

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Page 29

too strict on you. I wanted to get out a little bit and go after I got to working and made a little money. He was pretty strict.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you have arguments about?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I'd want to go to the movies, and he didn't want us to go to the show or anything like that, hardly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why didn't he want you to go to the movies?

GLENN HOLLAR:

He was just that much of a Christian, he didn't believe in it. Back then, those people were strict.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about dancing?

GLENN HOLLAR:

He wasn't too bad against that, because he made some music hisself sometimes for the square dances. They'd have little dances.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He played …

GLENN HOLLAR:

He had a banjo he picked, and he'd play a harp. I was so little, he'd bring me up on the table on the bedding. In that corner of the room, they'd have a table setting there with bedding tacked on it. He'd set me up in there, and I'd watch them dance. I was too little. But he never did approve of going to the show and things like that.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Oh, he loved his string music and singing and dancing. He loved to sing. Even after we were married, his friends and neighbors that belonged to the church would gang up and sing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

At somebody's house?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things would they sing?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Church hymns.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Hymnals, yes.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I'd go with him, and I got to singing in there with them, too.

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Page 30

Sid Killian down there and Fred Settlemyre and George Hunt and John Hunt and my daddy.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They were all real good singers, and they'd gang up and get together and sing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they sing any music that wasn't religious music?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, not hardly ever. Back then you didn't have all this kind of music and stuff. There wasn't that much back then. Some of them had phonographs, but there wasn't no songs, not anything compared to what it is now.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they would have square dances and play music?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Oh, yes, they'd have square dances. Well, they'd have cornshuckings. They'd have square dancing. They'd have a big old pot full of dumplings[unknown]or something. After the shucking, they'd eat the dumplings and then they'd have a square dance. But it wasn't no drinking-or-anything party. Well, there'd be some of them, some of the older ones, but you didn't see nothing. You wouldn't know it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about the boys, though? Would the boys start drinking?

GLENN HOLLAR:

All the parents were pretty strict on them. They couldn't just get out and do anything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they sneak off and drink?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Well, yes, some of them. I have a time or two. But you had to be awfully careful, though. In fact, there wasn't too much in this… I guess it was some sections, but out through here it wasn't too bad.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But your grandmother wasn't as strict as your father?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No. When I stayed over there with them and farmed them two summers, they'd send me to the store every once in a while to take eggs or something, and she'd always give me money to get me a poke of smoking

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Page 31

to bacco. Well, my mother would do that for me. My daddy never did do it, not then. I'd go to the store. Where we lived down there then, I'd walk up here to Conover to bring eggs or something. [unknown], she'd say, "Have two eggs or whatever it takes to get a smoke of tobacco."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Are you talking about your mother's parents or your daddy's parents?

GLENN HOLLAR:

That was my parents there. My grandmother would do the same thing for me, too.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

That was his mother's.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother's parents.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, my mother's parents. She was a Sigmon, and they were pretty easy-going. But they wasn't rowdy or nothing; they'd just give in a little quicker.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He didn't have too much to do with his dad's parents, because his grandmother [Laughter] was kind of a strict woman. They always thought she was so mean, but it was just the way she talked more than anything else. But she bossed them a lot when she'd come to visit. And they didn't like her because she was bossy, and they thought she was mean and all. That's why he's not talking about those, because …

GLENN HOLLAR:

We'd have to be quiet if she come out and stayed a couple days.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So the Sigmon side of the family was a little more easy-going to get along with than the Hollar side.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, they were good. They'd treat me just like one of their own kids, about.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you suppose made it different? Were they different religions?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, they were all Lutherans.

GLENN HOLLAR:

There was just that difference in the people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you know Blanche Killian and… Are they …

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Blanche Settlemyre and Katherine Killian.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, I went to church with them and growed up with them.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Have you met them?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

They're good friends.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Their daddy and my daddy, that was some of the singers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's what I wondered. I remembered that they talked about their daddy singing.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Bradford Settlemyre.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He's one that liked to sing so good, too.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I loved to hear him sing.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

He would sing real good.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your daddy work in the furniture plant the whole time that you …

GLENN HOLLAR:

He did up till he got the shaking palsy and his health got bad. He had to quit.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

She means when you was little.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, because I'd carry him lunch up here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he farm at all?

GLENN HOLLAR:

He didn't do much farming then after I was…He did for a while till he got in this plant. But I remember I'd bring his lunch up here. I was about eight or nine. I'd walk and bring him his lunch.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How far was that?

GLENN HOLLAR:

It was about a mile or a mile and a half, I reckon. We lived out towards Rock Baptist, Rock Pond Road out here. Out there

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Page 33

where they're building them new condominiums. We lived right on this side there. That's where the log house was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You lived in a log house …

GLENN HOLLAR:

In a log house out there when I was a kid. And then we lived down here below St. Paul's Church. I started school out here. My brother and sister went to school down there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your daddy's job?

GLENN HOLLAR:

When they first started him there, he was just helping build these chicken crates [unknown]. The material was all cut out, but you had to build them to make the crates. You've seen what they haul chickens in now, those [unknown]. That's what they made. Then when the plant started making… Let's see, what did they make him start out with after the chicken crates? I know they'd get lumber in, and he was out on the yard. He'd check the lumber in the trucks that come. He was the lumber yard checker. He wound up as that, and then when he got out of there, a man that worked in there opened up a place over here on the other side of the railroad called the Hickory Picker Stick place. Him and my daddy was buddies—Preston Yount—and he went to work for him. He run a planer and a joiner there. That's what he was doing when his health got bad on him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did Preston Yount get the money to start his own factory?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I don't know how them Younts back on behind him, but they had always [unknown], and he inherited some of it as the older ones would die off. And he was tight when he worked. I imagine he saved, held to every penny, about. In fact, I think he was one of the first of them that ever bought a Copperhead car out here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

A Copperhead car?

GLENN HOLLAR:

A Copperhead Ford. Around the radiator was copper; they called them "copperhead." That was in about '17 or '18. And he was one of the well-off. Old Mr. Brady had a car. I don't remember what he had.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was Preston Yount a supervisor at the …

GLENN HOLLAR:

I think he was over some of this over here with Brady first, and then he… They made picker sticks over here, I believe is the way it was, and they went out of the picker stick business. He moved out and started a shop of his own. And my daddy went with him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The furniture industry had a hard time during the Depression, didn't it?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Oh, yes. They sure did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They would close down. Did your father get laid off during the Depression?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, I don't think so. He worked most of the time, as well as I can remember. Some of the older ones, the better hands, they'd keep on and try to give them something. There was right much trouble over here in the glove mill back then. They had a hard time in the Depression. I was helping unload coal. We'd fire the boiler with coal. It come in coal cars, and they dumped it off. We'd have to shovel it up on a truck, and they'd have to shovel it off the truck. If we didn't have nothing to do in the mill, didn't have no orders or nothing, we'd do work like that. And then when they built to it there the first time, I helped wait on brickmasons, and I hauled dirt, do anything. He'd give me something to do. That's when we was raising our family, too, I reckon, there. Yes. So I got to work about all the time through the Depression.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

No, he never was off any. I was off a week or two a time or two, but that's about all.

GLENN HOLLAR:

If they'd get an order, he was there to ship it out. If

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they didn't, he'd say, "Well, you want to do this or do that?" I'd say, "Anything," because I knew I had to work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember your daddy talking about any of the strikes in the furniture plant during the thirties?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No. Well, I knew about [unknown]. But I know when they'd strike and had all that trouble. And during the Depression, out here at the mill, you'd see freight trains come along here just setting full of people. The only transportation they had, hoboing, get on the train and ride. There was so many on they couldn't run them off. I've seen them more than one time, the trains come by here just loaded.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you remember about the strikes at the furniture plant? What caused them, or what happened?

GLENN HOLLAR:

They were dissatisfied, I think, with the way everything was going, a lot of it. And then business got rotten, too, and it was first one thing and then another piled up. But we didn't have any trouble at the glove mill or nothing; we worked about all the time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was your daddy involved in the strike?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No. He never would have nothing to do with them. They tried to pull one there at the glove mill one time. They wanted me to get in on it. I told them no, I wasn't in on it. I said if they shut it down and nothing doing, I'd have to go home, but I said, "As far as me having a hand in it, I'm not in it." I didn't believe in it myself. I thought they just made trouble and made it hard on everybody. And Mr. Shuford even told us that he had enough to live on; if they wanted to try, go ahead. He got them together and talked to them, and he had some of them crying; they went back to work, and that's the last we heard of that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did he say?

GLENN HOLLAR:

He just talked to them and explained to them and told them how everything was and how it would affect them if they… They couldn't find nothing else to do, and so they knew they had to live. But after he got back to work and everything, it kept getting better and it'd straighten out and [unknown].

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who tried to organize in the glove mill? Did some labor organizers come in from outside?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, it was some of the hands. You know, you can find some bullheads [unknown] in any place you go, about. A couple of them get something started, and it keeps building up, and everybody grow up to it and agree, and first thing you know you can have something started.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were they trying to bring in a union?

GLENN HOLLAR:

No, they just wanted to get more money, trying to get better wages. But they couldn't afford to pay it. I wasn't that sharp on it, but I knew what we was shipping and what was going out. And if you don't sell nothing and you don't have nothing coming in, you can't put it out. I figured I'd be better off if I just stayed for what I was a-drawing; it beat nothing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who were the ringleaders of it? Were they young men or women? Were they the sewers?

GLENN HOLLAR:

One of them was a couple years older than I am. He was pretty hot on it. But I don't remember who pulled the switch. It was one of the girls pulled it, I think.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Who?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Gladys Ackery[unknown] was one of them. Wasn't she in on that thing?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I don't remember.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I know Ed Poovey[unknown] talked it up right smart around the men.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, and then he wouldn't have anything to do with it.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, he wouldn't have nothing to do with it. I know he returned.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

After that he didn't have a thing to do with it.

GLENN HOLLAR:

I told [unknown] "If they shut it down, then naturally I'll have to go home."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Weren't there a lot more women workers than there were men in the glove mills?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Oh, yes, there was five or six times more women. Most of it is women in a glove mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Except for the cutters and the turners.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Cutters and a couple turners. I don't believe they had any women turning the steamers then. Mostly men.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, they did, though. Smith.

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, they did. Della Smith. There were several of them. Walt Bellinger's wife turned and steamed some. When they started out, one of them would turn the gloves and send them over to you, and you'd steam them on this hot form. That's what I was doing when I started, with Walt Bellinger's wife. She was on one hand, and I was on the other. She'd steam one glove; I'd steam the other one. That's the way I started. But I don't think I made but about ten cents an hour or something. Don't remember what I made to start with. Might have started for nothing, just