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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0133, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Flake and Nellie Workman Meyers were both born around the turn of the twentieth century. Born into a family of farmers and furniture makers, Flake first began to work at the age of sixteen, around 1913, in High Point, North Carolina, in order to help support his family. Flake worked at several furniture manufacturing companies during his career, spending most of his time at the Southern Desk Company. After working several years learning different jobs in the furniture factories, Flake became a foreman in the early 1920s. He describes in vivid detail what it was like to work in the furniture industry, paying special attention to techniques used to make furniture, the role of machinery in the workplace, and relationships between employees and employers. Nellie Workman also grew up in rural North Carolina in a large family. As the oldest daughter, Nellie spent a great deal of time helping her mother raise her nine siblings and tend house. Before her marriage to Flake Meyers in 1922, Nellie worked briefly in the cotton mills in Vale, North Carolina. Flake Meyers's job as foreman in the Southern Desk Company in Conover, North Carolina, where the couple eventually settled, provided sufficient economic means for Nellie to stay home and raise their children without having to work outside of the home. Together, the stories they tell reveal the nature of living and working in a southern working community during the early twentieth century.
Flake and Nellie Meyers describe what it was like to live and work in and around Conover, North Carolina, during the early to mid-twentieth century. As a worker in various furniture companies and as the foreman at the Southern Desk Company, Flake Meyers describes in vivid detail the various kinds of skills involved in furniture making, the role of machinery in the industry, and workplace relationships. Nellie Meyers similarly describes the kinds of family labor systems and social customs that shaped their lives.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . .where you were born?
I was born in Rowan County, Salisbury. We lived there until I was three years old, and then we moved up to Iredell County near Mooresville. Then from there we moved up here in Catawba County. Been living here ever since. Lived over in Vale section till 1961 we came over here, wasn't it?
We have three homes. Just out there are the homes we built.
Decided to sell out and move closer to town. I drove back and forth to work for years. It was in the . . .
Country?
Yes, we did. I'm a country boy.
It was two or three miles you walked through the snow every winter to meet your relatives.
Couldn't get gas, you know, way back in there much, and we'd pool rides.
You would go through the snow about three miles to get to the ride.
Were your parents farmers?
Yes, they was farmers. And he made furniture; there's where I got into it. He had a little furniture shop out in the country. He made all kinds of furniture, chairs and what they called kitchen safes back then. Those cupboards; there was tin up the doors with those little holes punched in.
Pie safes.
Called kitchen cupboards. He made lots of them, and then he made a few coffins. They didn't call them caskets back then; coffins, you know, back in them days.
Where did he learn how to do that?
That's the reason I learned how to make furniture; my father trained me up. We'd go in the woods and cut our timber and haul it in and dry it and make it into furniture. That was when I was at High Point.
How did he learn how to do that?
From his father. His father made old wooden clocks. They was interesting.
This was a family skill handed down?
Yes, that's right.
I hadn't talked to anybody before that was like that.
My grandfather was a clockmaker.
Was he from Germany, perhaps?
Yes, his folks were German, but he was born and raised here in the United States. His father was from Germany, and his grandmothers were Dutch.
Why did you decide to leave home and go to High Point?
We was kind of poor folks, and we couldn't kind of make ends meet. My
grandfather lived at High Point, and so I stayed with them and worked
over there. And I worked there for several years, and I came back to
Hickory and worked at Hickory and boarded over there at Hickory. My
folks lived out there in the Vale section, and I'd go home about every
month [unclear]
When you first went to High Point, what plant did you work in there?
The Alma Furniture Company. Then I left there and went to the Columbia Furniture Company.
What was your first job?
My first job was running a tenon machine.
Can you describe that to me?
Like this here, if this post is mortised out, you know, holes cut in
there, and then you cut a tenon to fit it in there and put glue on it
So a tenon machine would drill a hole in it?
The post had a mortise in it. Then you'd cut a tenon on it to put in that mortise there, and that'd hold it together, you see. I've got a little shop down yonder I make furniture. I ought to bring that table in here and show it to you, but. . .
We can go out and look at it then after.
I don't have much down there.
He don't have many tools to work with.
Then I went to Hickory Chair Company. I run a shaper over there, shape up that post. Throw them out like this. Then from that I run a cutoff saw. Then when I went to Conover, I done a little of everything all over the shop. I was kind of the main man around there. And we made school desks, and we made kitchen safes there. They made them by the hundreds there. And hickory sticks for cotton mills, and all kinds of cotton mill supplies. And chicken coops.
Yes, I had heard all that.
I done a little of everything. Then the plant growed; it got a lot of big machinery in there, and they put me as assistant foreman there for quite a while. Then finally they sold out and went to Hickory. Worked there at Conover for years.
Yes, they had sold out to Broyhill.
Yes, that's right.
When you were working at High Point, how did you learn to do that first job?
Well, it wasn't hard for me to do it. The foremanwent in and showed me
how, and I went ahead and done it. I couldn't set it up too good
So you didn't have any kind of training period.
No, I just learnt the hard way.
Just while you were working.
He worked with a lot of machinery, but didn't get hurt on it.
That's amazing.
Yes, that's right. I've got all of my fingers. How much do you think I made a day there, ten hours?
I don't know.
A dollar and a thin dime a day.
What year was this when you first went to High Point?
1913.
How old were you then?
Sixteen.
Did you go with anybody over there to High Point?
No, I just stayed with my grandfather and grandmother.
Walked to work.
Did they work at the furniture plants there?
No. He was kind of a wealthy fellow. He had lots of houses he rented out. Of course, he didn't get too much out of it, but he didn't work for them.
This isn't the grandfather that was the clockmaker.
Yes, he made the clocks.
He made the baskets, too, didn't he?
Yes, I worked in a basket factory over there, tobacco warehouse baskets, and I nailed them together.
Was this while you were in High Point?
Yes. A lot of times on Saturday I wouldn't be working at the furniture plant, and I went with him to make these basket things.
Would your father sell the furniture he made just to local people?
Oh, yes, he would have to write his orders down, he had so many come in.
Were most of the people from around that area?
All around in the country, neighbors, good friends. They'd come from a distance when they found out he made furniture. He sold quite a lot of it.
So you didn't have any trouble finding a job when you got to High Point?
No. My grandfather went with me, and I remember he said, "Could you give my son-in-law [grandson] a job? He's a young boy, and he's trying to start out and would like to have a job." "Yes, we'll try him. Bring him in." So the next day I went in and went to work. A dollar and a dime a day.
Gosh. How long did you stay there in High Point?
About two years and a half.
And then you came to Hickory?
I come to Hickory.
Why did you decide to come to Hickory?
I got tired of High Point. I wanted to come home and be at home with my folks.
Was there a difference in the towns?
Yes, a lot. That's a large town, High Point is, but Hickory back in . . .
Hickory wasn't very big then.
No, not at first. And I knew quite a few people in Hickory, and I decided
to come on home.
So you first went to Hickory Manufacturing?
Hickory Chair.
Why did you go to that particular plant?
I just don't know. I was out job hunting and happened to start there first, and they give me the job.
Do you remember a man there, Ralph Bowman?
Oh, yes, sure. He was the superintendent there a while, wasn't he?
Yes.
That was after I quit there. Bratt [unclear]
I don't know Bratt Hall, but I've talked to Mr. Bowman.
Bowman was the assistant, I think, when I was there.
Were they good bosses?
Oh, law, yes. They were real good. But you didn't get no breaks like you do now. I worked ten hours a day and had to work right on through. They didn't want you to even have a sandwich or anything with you.
You had to really work hard.
Yes, you bet you did.
You had to work all ten hours you were there.
Yes. Get an hour for lunch, but go right back. You had to
You had to punch out for lunch.
Yes, when you'd go back in. Ten hours. It seemed I got two dollars and a
half there a day.
What were you doing then?
I run the shaper, band saw, boring machine to bore holes. Like for a pin to. . . .
Like for a dowel.
Yes, like for dowel pins. They'd drive dowel pins, and that'd hold a dowel together. If you didn't have this mortised, you see, you'd drill holes in there. Drill holes in this rail, and put about two dowels in there, and the dowels would go into the post there. And that's the way we'd put it together with the chairs.
Rather than nailing them together.
After I quit there, I went to the table factory before I went to Conover. It was called Highland Furniture then. I run a big planer down there. Then I kind of got mad at the foreman there, this Henry Clay, so I went down to Conover and worked there.
Why did you go from Hickory Chair over to the table place?
They offered me more money. I knew the superintendent. I was getting two and a half up there at Hickory Chair, and they started me in at three dollars a day at the table factory.
How many years had you been working for Hickory Chair?
Three. I worked at the table factory about a year and a half.
You worked a little at the Century [unclear]
Yes, I went over had helped them start up, but I didn't like the place.
They had a big automatic shaper, a double head, and I run it for six
weeks. They offered me a good price if I'd take it up, and Southern Desk
down there
What was it about that one machine that you didn't like, the big shapers?
That automatic?
What would be the difference between a boss like that and somebody that you did like to work for?
Well, when you go in, and it seems like you can't please him, and you just think, "I'm not going to stay here; I'm going where they'll treat me better."
They appreciate you.
Yes. Where they appreciate you. Well, they would let me stay on there.
told them I was going back to Southern Desk, which they gave me more
money to come back. [Interruption]
So you went from the table place, where you were running that big shaper?
No, that was the big planer at the table factory. I run that about a year and a half. And then I heard about Conover, and so I went down there and stayed a couple of years.
How did you hear?
Different ones were telling me about it. I knew some sanders
What would they say about it?
They'd say, "Meyers, why don't you go down to Conover? They have mighty good foremen down there, and I think you'd enjoy working for them. They pay pretty good. Why don't you try it?"
So there were people living in Hickory working in Conover?
Yes, quite a few of us. And she had a brother who worked down there, and
we was living out in the Vale section at that time. That was too far to
drive back and forth
What was your brother's name?
Logan Workman.
So you were a Workman.
Yes. Did you know Scott Workman?
I've interviewed him, too.
He worked up in High Point [unclear]
He was my baby brother. There was ten children of us.
I've talked to most of your brothers then, because I've talked to Lee Workman and Scott Workman and Memory Workman.
Memory died here a few months ago.
Yes. This was two years ago.
I got all them brothers jobs. I started first and got all them brothers jobs. Let's see, Lee and Memory and Scott and Zeb and Jake. In fact, there were five who got jobs there.
Gosh, that little place. If you'd gotten rid of the Workmans, they would have had to close the place down.
We moved over to Conover eventually.
How did you all meet? Were you from Vale?
They moved up there about two miles from where I lived. We'd see one
another back and forth, and so we got acquainted, and it was from then
on.
When you all first got married, did you have your own house or did you move in with parents?
He'd bought an old log house.
It was on a little old farm, a twelve-acre farm.
And it had a little log house on it, and it was plastered all inside. And
we'd take newspapers and decorate it all inside with it, and then we'd
put the pictures out of magazines around to make it pretty. And so when
it would rain, we'd have to get up of a night and move our bed around
and around out of the rain.
A cook stove.
Then he went to the store and got some little pots and pans, and we started that way. We didn't have nothing. I did have a bed and some bedding.
That you got from home.
No, I made myself. . . . I had about eight or ten quilts made when I was twelve years old. I love to do that.
I made the dining table and
This was an old tobacco barn?
No, it was an old. . . . It weren't used for anything. I
Okay, we'll see it.
In fact, we lived with her folks for awhile.
You did?
Yes, we was all real close.
And then we did have to move around the house.
So you all lived out there until you moved into Conover?
Yes. Moved to Conover. I don't know just how many years ago, though.
About forty years at the least.
And we lived up above the hardware store.
You were boarding in town during the school years?
Yes.
So you didn't have to catch a ride.
That's right.
Well, the money went a lot further then, I guess.
Yeah, four and a half a week.
When you were working for Conover, how many hours a day would you work?
Ten. I got to be assistant foreman there. I had to put in a lot more
hours, though.
He had mentioned that you were some kind of foreman.
And I run a lot of the machines there; I run a tenon machine and a ripsaw
and
As assistant foreman, what would you do then, extra?
Had to do a lot of machine setting up. Set up the machines and see that the stuff went through right. The right amount and all that.
But during all of this time, you
That's right. Go in and set it up and see that the men had a job they were working on. That's nerve-racking.
If you didn't get your stuff out right or get it on time. The superintendent would come around: "Why is this behind here? Meyers, you'd better get busy and get it on out." That was about the hardest thing.
To get the people to get going.
"Get this man on it over here.. He's standing there. I would get him to
work."
Who was the superintendent at that time?
Bill Roberts. He's passed away a couple years ago, I think. If you didn't happen to know, Ralph Simmons was the one in Conover.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have interviewed Ralph Simmons.
Ralph Simmons was my foreman when I first went down there. We made school desks.
Yes, and Frank Gilbert.
He's dead. Ralph is living, isn't he?
He was last year when I talked to him.
He's in bad shape, heart.
I knew that Mr. Simmons knew a lot about machines. Did he teach you some of your jobs?
Oh, he sure did. He was a real good saw filer. He kept all the saws sharpened up. He'd sharpen saws and band saws, and he was real good at it. He learnt me a lot. But they quit the school desks and put me up as a foreman. And then the new superintendents come in there, and we finally went to Newton Furniture Company. I left Conover and went to Newton. And the new management over there put me in as as assistant foreman.
What was the management change? Did Mr. Brady die or what?
No, it got so it wasn't making very much money. It kind of went in the
hole, and they had gotten way in debt, and they sold out to Broyhill.
So Mr. Brady was still living during that time?
Oh, yes.
But he wasn't in charge of it.
No. His son-in-law had taken over, and he really wasn't too good at it.
That's what I heard. His name is Bill Barker?
Yes, but that's what ruined the place. If he hadn't come there, probably the place would be running yet. Mr. Brady ran a sharp outfit.
What kinds of things did Mr. Barker do? Did he just not know that much about the furniture industry, or what?
He had a good college education, but he didn't know beans about furniture. He tried to change everything from what Mr. Brady did.
I believe Mr. Brady had a partner, one of the Shufords in town?
Yes, Maynard Shuford. Maynard run the glove will down there, Warlong
Glove,
What was the name of that glove mill? Was it Warlong?
Yes, Warlong.
Did a lot of the wives of the people that worked here at the plant work at the glove mill?
Yes, they did. Lots of them. She never did get to go up there.
Did you ever do any public work?
I worked in the cotton mill.
When was this?
That was in 1919, right after World War I.
Were you married then?
No.
Where did you work?
At the Clyde Mill in Newton. Knitting all these socks. They've got
something else over there now; it's not
Were you still living up in Vale?
Yes. Mr. Will Stanley was the boss there at this mill. Back then hands was scarce. A lot of them was in service. So he found out that Dad had a big family, and he came over and got us to move over there.
Did your whole family move?
Yes. We was there three years. Then Dad got tired of it,
What kind of job did you do?
I run a spooler. You wouldn't know what it was.
I sort of know. I've been in a mill a couple of times.
You had a cone thing, you know. You'd hold a spool down, and there's your thread and you held your hand like that and tied the threads. From a bobbin to the spool.
And it rewound it?
On a spool about that tall. And I enjoyed it, because I like working. It was very good pay; it was very hard.
When your whole family went there, did your father go to work, too?
Oh, yes.
And your mother?
No, she had to cook for all of us. And do all the washing for us. She had it hard.
How many kids did you have in your family?
There were three girls and seven boys.
You could almost run one shift with that crew.
Yes.
But your father didn't like the work too much.
Mr. Stanley gave him an easy job. He was getting pretty old. It was 1919.
He used to run a blacksmith's shop.
Oh, yes, my dad did. He made wheat cradles. It had six fingers to it in
the side, built all together, and them six fingers would come around and
catch the wheat straw and throw it all in bundles, and then
Would your father make these himself?
Oh, yes. And then he'd run a blacksmith's shop, too, and make wagons and all different things like that. And he would always call on me to run the bellows, a little fire to heat things. Had a big bellows. It was fun.
Did you like helping him?
Oh, yes.
It was better than working out in the fields.
Yes. Oh, that was real hard.
Yes.
That's the way it is
Yes, that's right. They have more to do than the rest of them. Then I worked some in Lincolnton. Had to to help feed the rest of the family. Dad didn't make much in the blacksmith's shop.
Would you board in Lincolnton, or ride?
Yes, with my aunt. There wasn't but just a few cars then.
I'm trying to keep track of everything. I want to get both of you all's stories. How old were you when you first went to work?
About fifteen years old I quit schooling. I had to to help the family. I
just quit school and went to work and give him my wages to help raise up
the children.
The oldest girl.
Did your older brothers go out and find any jobs, too?
The second brother did.
Where did he work?
With me.
Gastonia? And you all went to Gastonia?
We boarded down there.
How old were you all when you all got married?
I was twenty-two, and he was twenty-three.
Was that old back then to get married?
No.
Back then they didn't get married quite as young as they do now. Isn't that right, Nellie?
Well, I just didn't see nobody that I thought I'd love enough.
Have you worked since you've been married?
No. I've done the housework. Tend the farm.
So you didn't ever work after you were married.
Let me get back to your work over there in Conover. What year did you leave to go up to Hickory?
Was that when the plant set up?
Yes.
Did you have any people that you knew at Southern Desk?
No, I didn't, but I had some friends who worked there.
A lot of your friends were going?
Not a lot, but some.
Did you just go up to the plant and ask for a job?
Yes. I went there on Friday afternoon, and the foreman said, "Come in on
Monday morning." "I'm from over in Conover," I told him. And I told him
what-all I could do, and He says, "I've got a tenon machine sitting over
here waiting on someone. It'll be a few days before it can be fixed, but
I'll give you a job around here before I get it started." [unclear]
Did you work with a tenon machine the whole time you were there at Southern Desk?
No, I looked after it. I run it for about two or three years. Then he put
me as a setup man with an automatic shaper, getting things around there
set up for the men. They had a panel sizer, and that was about the
biggest job I had, keeping it set up, and keep the stuff moving in and
out and stacked.
Did any of the men that ran the machines set up their own machines?
Yes, they could set up. Nothing very particular about it. I'd have to
okay most of it. Just the ordinary stuff I would, but anything
particular, I had to do it. [unclear]
I guess the setup man would be a pretty skilled job.
Yes, it was.
What is involved in setting up a machine?
You've got to know just what to do to it. A paper would spell it out,
tell exactly what to do to each piece, and how to cut it on a forty-five
angle. Cut tenons on it or whatnot. Or maybe a tenon
Then you was making most of the church pews.
Stuff for classrooms and dormitory stuff, I guess.
Church furniture, pews and pulpits and . . .
So they made institutional furniture rather than stuff for home use.
That's right.
Did that plant ever change hands at Southern Desk?
Yes, Drexel taken it over.
What year was that?
1959, I believe.
Was there a difference when a big corporation like Drexel took over?
Drexel owns several plants. There's one big Drexel in Lenoir, and then in Drexel.
What kind of changes would they bring in?
Very few. They were generally making the same furniture.
Would they bring in their own supervisors?
No, they left the ones there. It was the same supervisors, the same president.
The same president in?
Yes, that's right.
So I guess just the ownership changed.
That's right.
Who owned Southern Desk?
The Iveys. Mr. George Ivey and Leon and Elbert, his two sons. There was three sons. Mr. George Ivey was the founder of it. He had a big sawmill there. That's where it started out in. People would bring hickory logs in, and they'd saw them. They'd start sawing in the fall of the year about September and saw till way up in the summer, say in June.
They'd haul it in carloads and truckloads and things. They made picker sticks for the cotton mill. Dowel pins. You know what a dowel pin is; I was showing you a while ago. They run a dowel pin factory up there yet.
So he started out doing that.
That's right.
And then built the Southern Desk.
Yes, built the church furniture. All kinds of college and school
supplies, school desks. Like I say, he didn't make any household
Do you remember during the times of the Depression and what happened?
I sure do. I was at Conover then.
How long would you go without work at times?
I was really fortunate. They was making samples, and the bossman and I
and one or two more men got to work. We worked the whole time, making
samples, trying to get something started. Maybe the men would work two
or three days a week, then maybe'd be off a couple weeks, or even
months, at a time.
What did the other people do, who weren't as lucky as that and could only come in and work for a couple of days?
They'd run the whole plant when they'd come in there like that.
When they'd get an order?
Yes. They'd have a few orders and work it out. Maybe one man would bring
in the lumber, and another would cut it up in the cutoff saw, and then a
couple would rip it up and band-saw it and run
Right. Was it a drum sander?
No, that's a
You don't even have to use any muscle.
Yes. A drum sander, you've got to hold it on the drum.
A machine sander and drum sander.
I believe you know a lot about . . .
I know a little bit. But I'm out here talking to a lot of people. I learn it round-about. I feel like I ought to know enough to go in there and just turn the switch on.
Do a little bit.
Have you ever visited one of the plants?
I've been through the Bassett plant over in Newton. I know Hoyt Lewis over there; he's the superintendent. He took me through two years ago. They've made a lot of changes there since.
Pretty interesting to anybody that cares anything about looking at it.
Yes, it is.
We'd have lots of people visiting, like the schoolteachers would bring the children in from the schools, take them all around and show them everything, how they worked.
Was this at Southern Desk?
Yes. Mr. Ivey would come in
What was Mr. Ivey like as a person to work for?
Oh, he was real good. If he'd see you make a mistake, he'd say, "Hee!
Yah! I want you to do that right now." And he'd show you how. He'd
really call you down. If you were maybe running one piece, "Can't you
run two pieces?"
Did he know a lot about the stuff?
Oh, law, you don't know. He really did know. If he'd see you doing
something wrong, he'd tell you in a minute.
Oh, goodness.
Well, when he was coming through,
Speaking of making church pews and all, we made opera chairs, too, theater furniture. And folding chairs. A lot of them little plain chairs, and some of them would be padded. They'd really look nice.
So you did a little upholstering there, too, at Southern Desk.
Yes. And then we made all kinds of. . . . During the War, a plant like that had to make a lot of material for the War, and we made a lot of stakes. And I just can't think of what-all we did make. Something about a boat. I forget what they call them now, to fasten the ropes. I know I done it on the automatic shaper, cut out just little blocks and shape them out by hand. We made a lot of them things. We made tables to fold parachutes on. Made hundreds of them. They'd go to camps where soldiers trained. I'll show you one of the opera chairs I made. Now, that was a long time ago.
He'd been away from home right much. And I'd have to control the children. We had five.
So you were kind of in charge of . . .
The home when he was a-working. I always had supper ready when he'd get there, before quitting times.
Did you ever take his meals up to him at the plant?
No, that would be way ten miles back over there, when
This is one of the cheapest ones. [He shows the opera chair.]
Would they make the metal frame for the chair there, too?
No, they didn't. They ordered the pipe, and then they'd cut it off and maybe put it together.
How would they give the piece in there a bend like that?
They got forms and pressed a press down. They'd glue this together; that's just thin stuff there.
Oh, it's several layers glued together?
Yes, it is. They'd put it down and put glue on each piece, and they'd clamp about six seats down together and form. . . . This is like your seat Underneath and on top, and then there's a big leg comes down and holds it down for about three hours. When the glue dries, it's ready to take out and saw up.
So it's all in the right shape and everything.
And then before we got that automatic shaper, we shaped it out. You'd have to put it on the trim saws; the panel sizer would just shape it all around here.
So that would take out some of the skills that the other
Before we got the shaper, they'd have to take it and run it on the panel sizer, and then they'd take it over to the band saw and have to have a markout boy to mark it out. And then the bandsaw man would have to . . .
Would cut along the line.
Yes. And then we'd have to take it to the router and smooth it
That's an old yard chair he made that we use outside.
We made lots and lots of them.
What are some of the changes that you've seen in the plants since World War II?
I know one thing: we didn't get to work much, only war supplies. When we
wasn't doing that, they made lots of little old toys. In fact, Mr. Ivey
got up a thing to make wooden tires. You know, you couldn't get tires
back then a lot of times, and we made wooden tires and put on a car, but
it didn't prove out too good.
It's kind of a rough ride.
This was when they had dirt roads.
In between doing the war supplies?
Yes. Didn't run out of no church pews back then. We'd make five million things. Like I said, anything that the government would need, we'd try to make it there.
What kinds of things did you like to make the most?
Church pews.
Were they easy to make, or fun to make?
Well, they wasn't too hard. They wasn't as much work as some other kind
of furniture. Wasn't so much different pieces. Let's see, you
Did they ever do any fancy carving?
Oh, yes. Like church pews and pulpit furniture, that was all carved by
hand. They'd have nice scroll-things on it. We made lots of them. There
was several churches here in Hickory got our furniture. There's a big
Baptist church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Once in a while we
Have you gone out in churches and seen work that you've done?
Yes, I have. That's right. When we got our pews, that Clapp fellow got me to go with him. He knew I knowed a lot about the church furniture, and so I went and helped him pick out what he wanted. When they decided on that, taken the order to Mr. Ivey, and you know, he give us a big discount on it, by me working over there.
What church did you belong to, or what church did you grow up in?
The Methodist. You know where Rhodhiss is? We go over there.
Is it called Rhodhiss Methodist Church?
Yes. Rhodhiss United Methodist Church. [Points to photograph.]
Were you brought up in the Lutheran Church?
Oh, yes, ever since I was three weeks old.
Did you switch over when you were married?
Yes, after we had the children. Their schoolmates was going to his church, and they wanted to go to his church, so I told him, "Well, I'll just go with you." So we've been going to the Methodist Church ever since.
You can't hardly [have] the wife go to one church and the man the other. It's best they all go to one church, I think.
What's the difference between the Lutheran and the Methodist church?
It's a right smart difference.
What are some of the differences?
Well. . . . What are the mostly difference between the two churches?
I don't see that much difference.
The Lutherans has closed communion, and the Methodists has open.
We've got Catholics; we've got Baptists; we've got Methodists and Lutherans, all in our family. If they're happy in their church, we're happy with them.
The Lutherans don't believe in a lot of things that the Methodists do,
and the Methodists don't believe a lot of things they do. The Methodists
has
You all have five children?
Five; four boys and one girl. The girl lives next to us over here. One boy lives in Oklahoma City and one is living down in Lexington, Kentucky, and one in Lexington, North Carolina, and one in Gastonia.
What did they end up doing for a living?
The boy in Oklahoma City is an accountant for a big oil company. They
drill oil wells. They drilled about ninety-some wells last year, he
said. The boy in Kentucky is a Tom's Peanuts distributor. He's got a big
territory; he has thirteen trucks there. He's got a real good
business.
They turn metal parts?
That's right.
Did he get any of that from you, learning how to work with machines?
He worked with Southern Desk. I'd learn him how to run that panel sizer. He kind of fell out with their foreman and went to Cramerton, North Carolina, near Gastonia, and worked in that Burlington Mill. He was there about twenty years. They sold out and went to the bad, and so he went to the machine shop then. In the meantime he was a foreman down there all the time in the slasher room. I don't know what that is; maybe you do.
I sort of know. I've heard the job mentioned a lot.
Anyway, he was the foreman in there for about twenty-some years. When they closed the mill down, he got the job at the machine shop.
Did any of your other sons ever go to work with you at any of the places that you worked at?
They all did. Every one.