[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

LU ANN JONES:

You say you grew up here in Charlotte?

TESSIE DYER:

No, I didn't. I grew up in Cabarrus County, but I moved to Charlotte when I was eleven years old.

GEORGE DYER:

You can't hardly say you grew up in Cabarrus County. You must have grew up. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

No, I said I was eleven years old when we moved to Charlotte, but I attended school here in Charlotte—over here at Villa Heights School. When I was old enough to go to work, I was signed up and I went to work down here at Highland Park. First went in the spinning room, and then from there, I went to the draw-in room. I stayed there until 1969. The mill closed down.

LU ANN JONES:

What had your parents done in Cabarrus County?

GEORGE DYER:

Mill work, textile. That was all was in these towns. They call them textile mills, but they called them cotton mills back then.

TESSIE DYER:

They're not any cotton mills here now in Charlotte. They're all closed down.

GEORGE DYER:

They were small works but didn't manage too much.

TESSIE DYER:

This was the last one—Highland Park #3. Highland Park #2 and Highland Park #1 is in Rock Hill. I guess it closed down too; they all closed down.

LU ANN JONES:

Had your grandparents also worked in textiles?

TESSIE DYER:

No, my grandparents didn't work in the mill as I know of.

LU ANN JONES:

Did they farm? Do you know what they did?

TESSIE DYER:

On my father's side, they farmed. On my mother's side, I believe they did live on a farm one time. Moved from Albemarle here, I mean Cabarrus County.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your grandparents live close to you?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, yes.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you visit them on their farm?

TESSIE DYER:

Yes, my grandfather did. My mother's parents, they didn't live on a farm. They moved to Concord off the farm.

LU ANN JONES:

What do you remember about visiting on the farm? Did you like that?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, yes. I enjoyed it very much.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of crops did they grow? Did they have animals?

TESSIE DYER:

Cotton.

GEORGE DYER:

What else?

TESSIE DYER:

I remember I went there one time and it was a-blooming; it was red. I asked him when it opened up good would it still be red. He said, "Oh no." The first time I'd seen it, I didn't know that, but I enjoyed going to the farm very much.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your grandmother help him work the farm, or did she primarily stay in the house to work?

TESSIE DYER:

Not too much, she didn't.

GEORGE DYER:

I guess she had a full-time job looking after the cooking, and milking cows and things, like all them women.

LU ANN JONES:

So she did things like that, she tended cows and stuff. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

TESSIE DYER:

Did I have? I had two sisters and one brother—three girls and one boy.

LU ANN JONES:

Where were you in all that? Who came first?

TESSIE DYER:

I did.

LU ANN JONES:

You were the oldest then?

TESSIE DYER:

I'm the oldest.

LU ANN JONES:

Why did your parents decide to move to Charlotte?

TESSIE DYER:

We were living in Concord. My mother had several brothers

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here and a sister. They wanted us to move to Charlotte, and we moved to Charlotte when I was eleven years old.

LU ANN JONES:

Was it exciting to move from a smaller town like that?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, yes, because we moved on wagons then.

GEORGE DYER:

Think how long it took her to get here [laughter].

TESSIE DYER:

We had two wagons—I never will forget this—had four horses. They left about 4:00 in the morning, and they got to Charlotte 5:30 that night. It was the latter part of September, it was getting dark. They couldn't go back home, they had to spend the night, stay over till the next morning to start back.

LU ANN JONES:

Who was it that brought your family over? Were they your wagons, or were they relatives' wagons?

TESSIE DYER:

No, they were just friends that my father knew and had wagons. I had an uncle; it was about his first car. He came to Concord and got us and brought us to Charlotte. Oh, boy, we thought that was something.

LU ANN JONES:

So all those wagons, you just packed up everything that your family had?

TESSIE DYER:

You know how they pack now, that truck and all. They just packed and didn't hurt anything.

GEORGE DYER:

Not many people had much back then. A bed and a cook stove's about all they had. I know when my father got married, he said—it's funny to tell it the way modern things is now—"I had a horse, and I had a pig, started out getting married. My daddy give me a barrel of flour and some chickens. That's how we started housekeeping." Starting off, that's all the food they had start off with. Like you said, he raised that pig to be a big hog the next year, and they a-plenty of meat. He was a farmer, he was raised in the country. That's how he started out. He built a three room cabin. My great-grandfather was Civil War—he was a

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surveyor. He knew that money that was going to be killed—money wouldn't be no good. So he bought up a lot of land and give all of them a piece of land. My father had 150 acres of land. He had five brothers, two sisters. So when his parents died, they left him a lot of land. That's all they left him.

LU ANN JONES:

That was in Roanoke, Virginia?

GEORGE DYER:

No, that was in Franklin county, Virginia, where this happened. I wasn't born in Roanoke, Virginia; I was born in Franklin County.

TESSIE DYER:

He lived on a farm, but I didn't. I always lived in town. . . .

GEORGE DYER:

I was eleven years old too. We moved from out to Henry County, Virginia—that's Martinsville, Virginia. People talk about the good old days back then; them's was the hard old days. People really has it good now. Kids spend more money now. Just young teenagers now spend more money now than I made when I was fifteen, sixteen years old. I's work after school.

LU ANN JONES:

Why did your parents decide to move from the farm?

GEORGE DYER:

It was hard and people could make more in town. They could make a better living, unless you's a big rich farmer. Unless he had good equipment and everything, he couldn't make a good living. But we had a plenty of food to eat, but our clothes wasn't too much. We got by, but it wasn't like people ought to have.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your mother help your father on the farm?

GEORGE DYER:

She done just about everything, milk cows and look after all of us.

TESSIE DYER:

There was about eleven in your family wasn't it?

GEORGE DYER:

I was eleven in the family. We all had to work when we got big enough to work. We couldn't lay around and play off like something was wrong with us. He made us work. That's the way people was brought up

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years ago. They had no idle time to get into anything. You had off from Saturday afternoon on to Sunday. On Sunday you had to go to church. Get us all in a wagon and take us! Drive three miles there and three miles back.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of church did you belong to?

GEORGE DYER:

This here was Primitive Baptist. They usually were the "hardshell" Baptists.

LU ANN JONES:

What does that mean?

GEORGE DYER:

That religion, they believe it and don't believe in no other kind—"hardshell." They just believe in what's to be, what's going to happen to you, that's the way it supposed to be. God intended and that's the way it's going to be. I don't believe that way. I joined the Missionary Baptist Church when I was a grown man. I married my wife here, I converted to the Methodist Church. I don't believe in switching one church to another.

TESSIE DYER:

He says he is still Baptist, but he's joined the Methodists.

GEORGE DYER:

When you're raised up, I don't think that parents should think their kids are going follow what they are. Cause you got a mind to think what you want to be, whether you want to be a Baptist, or Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist or Catholic, that's the way it is now. People generally follow their parents' religion.

TESSIE DYER:

We had two sons. When we were married, he joined the Methodists because I was a Methodist, and both of my sons, they belonged to Methodist. One of them married a Presbyterian, and the other married a Catholic. So we're Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, and Presbyterian, all in my family. All of them's good. They worship the same God.

LU ANN JONES:

In that church, was there a lot of singing. Do you remember ever being frightened at a sermon?

GEORGE DYER:

Yeah, I was a little boy. They didn't get frightened, they got happy. They shouted. They'd sing and hug each other and all that stuff—men and women both, old people. When I was a boy, my brother would hold to me, he'd say, "George, what are they going to do? I'm scared." I said, "They ain't nothing to be scared of." They'd just get happy and shout. They was good people. That's what they knew. All they knew was hard work and go to church. They didn't have time for all this other, the wordly things like people does now, all this wordly stuff goes on.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of farm did you all have?

GEORGE DYER:

We had a pretty good farm, 125 acres of land. A lot of it was in timber. My daddy sold a lot of timber. He cut lumber in the wintertime when he couldn't farm. That's how he made some money, and then in the summer, he'd raise crops. He'd raised just about all the food we need.

TESSIE DYER:

Coffee was about the only thing you had to buy.

GEORGE DYER:

Coffee and sugar and stuff like that. Money was hard to get hold of like I was telling you. My mother sent me and my brother to the store with eggs. We'd get all that sugar and coffee.

LU ANN JONES:

You'd barter the eggs for the sugar and coffee?

GEORGE DYER:

Yeah. There wasn't no money back then. My daddy worked for the lumber company, he'd get paid off in chips. They had the amount of money on that chip, and you'd trade that for clothes and stuff like that in a clothing store—general store like they come to, they'd have everything. They called them commissaries back then. They had everything you wanted. Didn't see much money. I never will forget the first fifty cents I'd seen when I was eleven years old.

LU ANN JONES:

What did you all do when you moved to the city?

GEORGE DYER:

We moved to Martinsville, Virginia from Franklin County.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of work did they do?

GEORGE DYER:

There was furniture factories there—American Furniture Factory, one of the biggest in the country. A couple mills there, and a glass factory. They blowed this glass, that's how they made it. Different things, lumber companies there, all through Virginia.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your father work in a furniture factory?

GEORGE DYER:

No, he run a store. He sold the farm and he put up a store. He didn't need too much help, small store, but he liked it better than he did hard farming. He made pretty good.

LU ANN JONES:

How did you get to Charlotte?

GEORGE DYER:

That was after I got grown. That was after my family done died and passed on. I was looking around. I went around different places. I wanted to see some of the country.

LU ANN JONES:

Where did you go?

GEORGE DYER:

When I left Virginia to come here?

LU ANN JONES:

How old were you when you left Virginia?

GEORGE DYER:

I was around twenty-six.

LU ANN JONES:

How old were you when you went to work?

GEORGE DYER:

I was around sixteen. The first job I had, I worked in a soda shop. I met a lot of nice people, waiting on people, serving them lunches and drinks from the soda fountain. Met a lot of nice folks. I learned a lot from people. Lot of people come in there and get lunches from the rail office. That's the way it was. I believed I made sixteen dollars a week.

LU ANN JONES:

That doesn't sound too bad for back then.

GEORGE DYER:

I quit and job. I had a date that night on a Saturday night. He wouldn't let me off, so I went on anyway. He wanted me to work. I come in Monday morning, he said, "I can't use you." That's where I made

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my mistake. Well, we all make our mistakes. What I should have done is kept on in that business and learned it and saved my money and went in business for myself. Anybody can make their mistakes, but they can't see them when they get over them. Everybody, I don't care who it is. It's too late then. That's just like you say something. You done said it, it's too late.

LU ANN JONES:

You can't take it back.

GEORGE DYER:

You can take it back, but it won't do no good.

LU ANN JONES:

Then where did you go?

GEORGE DYER:

Different places. Went up Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tried it up there a while. Utica, New York, and all around.

LU ANN JONES:

Were you working in mills then?

GEORGE DYER:

Work in a mill in Utica, New York. I knew how to weave and all that stuff.

LU ANN JONES:

What was it like up there?

GEORGE DYER:

Utica, New York? It's cold up there. They don't have but two seasons - summer and winter. It's right close to the Canadian border.

LU ANN JONES:

Is that the first weaving that you had done?

GEORGE DYER:

No, I did weaving in Virginia, Danville, Virginia—Dan River Mills? I lived there a while until the home was broke up. I had two sisters that lived there. Their husbands was mill workers. I went down there and I got a job in the mill. It's just like anything else, don't take you long to learn.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you go in with them? Did they teach you how to weave?

GEORGE DYER:

They wasn't weavers. They worked in another department. One of them was the boss and one was an employment agent. They have an employment building there, and they hire people all the time. They work

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around 10,000 people. People going and coming all the time. If they hire you there and you don't know the job, they don't keep you. You have to know the job, they let you go. You can tell them you know so and so. You go in that department, and what you tell them you know, and if you don't know it, they'll let you go. I come on down here later on. I quit there and come down here. That's when I met my wife.

LU ANN JONES:

Why did you decide to leave Danville and go to New York?

GEORGE DYER:

My brother was a printer and another friend, they wanted to go on up there to find out if they could make bigger money. I made a little more money up there, but it cost more for a living.

LU ANN JONES:

How much were you making in Danville as compared to how much you were making in New York?

GEORGE DYER:

I was making around twenty-seven dollars a week. That was in '37. I got to New York, I made about thirty-eight. But the expenses of living was high. We had a nice place to stay. It was steam heat and nice big homes. The people that run the place was foreigners from England, and her husband was a music teacher. They had a whole room with library books on both sides. Anybody could study if they wanted to in their spare time. She run a nice place.

LU ANN JONES:

So then you got to Charlotte?

GEORGE DYER:

When she take you, you had to have recommendations. `Fraid of you or something. I showed her some papers, she said, "We'll take you in and try you." People didn't trust you. They don't trust you now too much. Nice place, they want nice people. That's the way it ought to be now. All these other people would be discarded out. Of course, that wouldn't be treating them right.

LU ANN JONES:

So did you come to Charlotte then from New York?

GEORGE DYER:

I come back through Roanoke, Virginia, tried to get a job there. New York, the reason I come back to Virginia, the mill had had a strike. I joined the union. Everybody had to join the union to hold a job.

LU ANN JONES:

Where was that, in New York?

GEORGE DYER:

Utica, New York. I come back there and couldn't get a job. Every job there was filled up. I wanted to get a job just most anything till I could do better. I knew I couldn't stay in New York. I had some money saved up, but I knew I couldn't stay up there long unless I got a job. So I looked for job up there; I couldn't get one anywhere else. Unemployment was just like everywhere else. You had to know the line of work; if you don't, they wouldn't hire you. So I come on back to Roanoke and stayed there a while. My brother and his wife, they wanted me to stay on, said I could get on the silk mill there. So I tried the silk mill, said they's filled up. The railroad, they had all the men they need. I couldn't get a job there, so I come on down to Charlotte. I got a job just `cause I asked for it over here.

LU ANN JONES:

What year was that that you got here?

GEORGE DYER:

That's 1940. We got married in '42. Been married ever since.

TESSIE DYER:

This lady, Miss Shue, she run a boarding house. That's how we got started a-going together.

LU ANN JONES:

Is this a house that you grew up in in Charlotte?

TESSIE DYER:

No, there's none but three families lived in this house. This house and the one back of me, and one down here and one right back of me, they wasn't built when the other houses were built. This was a playground. We're the third family that's ever lived in this house.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you live near here when you were growing up?

TESSIE DYER:

I lived out on the next street. North Myers Street.

LU ANN JONES:

You were eleven when you came to Charlotte?

TESSIE DYER:

Un-huh. When I moved to Charlotte, I was eleven years old. I cried because I had to leave Concord. That was my home town. We've been in this house, I'll say forty-eight years—maybe longer than that. This was my father and mother's house. After we were married, we just stayed on with them.

GEORGE DYER:

You wanted me to. [laughter]

TESSIE DYER:

The mill company down here sold these houses. My husband and I bought this one, and my father and mother stayed with me. They died in 1963. My father died the first day of November, and my mother died the fifteenth of November. The shock of my father's death caused my mother's death. My father was eighty-three and my mother was eighty-one when they passed away.

LU ANN JONES:

They came here and they went to work in the mill.

TESSIE DYER:

They worked in the mill down here.

LU ANN JONES:

Who took care of you and your brothers and sisters while. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

While mother worked? My grand-mother.

LU ANN JONES:

She was here too?

TESSIE DYER:

She came too. Then we lived out on the next street.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your parents work the same hours? Did they go to the mill together?

TESSIE DYER:

My mother worked in the spinning room and my father was overseer in the card room.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you visit them in the mill?

TESSIE DYER:

That's how I learned to spin. I'd go and help my mother, afternoon when I'd get home from school sometime. When I went to work, I worked in the spinning room, I don't know how many years. My father asked them to transfer me to the draw-in department. So I stayed there until I retired.

LU ANN JONES:

Did it seem like fun to go into the mills when you were a child?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, yes.

LU ANN JONES:

Can you describe what the mill looked like?

TESSIE DYER:

I just didn't know what to think about it when I first went in, especially the card room, it made so much noise. Then I worked in the draw-in room. That's where you have beams, they draw those threads in to make cloth.

LU ANN JONES:

How old were you when you went to work full time?

TESSIE DYER:

I was eighteen.

LU ANN JONES:

Had you finished high school then?

TESSIE DYER:

No.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you want to finish high school, or was it time to go to work?

TESSIE DYER:

When I did start to work, I didn't want to stop.

LU ANN JONES:

Can you remember your first day at work?

TESSIE DYER:

I worked with my mother a lot. Then they just put me sparehand in the spinning room. My mother, she retired from there. Her health got bad. So I didn't like the spinning room then. I went to work then in the draw-in room. I just thought I couldn't do that. My brother-in-law was foreman down there then. The first day I worked, I was just so depressed about the job. I didn't think I could do it. I could tell you what I did, but you still wouldn't understand. I built harness then for the draw-in hands. I didn't draw-in. The first day I worked on this new job after they changed jobs—they always making something better for the employees—I told my brother-in-law, I went up there and sit in the office, I said, "Fred, I can't run this job." He said, "You learnt the other job, and I know you can learn this one. You just go on back. You're doing okay." That kind of picked me up a little bit. So I did better the next day. It just kept on till I worked there a long, long time.

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I really did enjoy my job working in the draw-in room.

LU ANN JONES:

What year was it that you went to work?

TESSIE DYER:

I couldn't tell you to save my life.

LU ANN JONES:

When were you born?

TESSIE DYER:

September 29, 1908.

LU ANN JONES:

So that was about 1926 that you went to the mill if you were eighteen.

TESSIE DYER:

Something like that.

LU ANN JONES:

Were there a lot of other young women in the mills then?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you have fun in the mills, tell jokes?

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah, when we'd catch up we did.

GEORGE DYER:

They worked ten hours a day back then. Worked up till Saturday at noon at 12:00.

LU ANN JONES:

What would you all do to have fun once you were caught up?

TESSIE DYER:

We'd stand around and talk to one another.

GEORGE DYER:

Talk about your boyfriends [laughter].

LU ANN JONES:

What else did you talk about?

TESSIE DYER:

Just first one thing then the other. It's been so long, I can't recall back.

LU ANN JONES:

Is the place where you worked, was it hot, was it dusty?

TESSIE DYER:

It was kind of dusty. The spinning room was; you'd get cotton on you. [cough]

GEORGE DYER:

That trouble now, that's what's giving you all that trouble—bronchial trouble.

TESSIE DYER:

I remember one Saturday before I was married, my sister and I, we went to town. They wore black, gaberdine coats then.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

TESSIE DYER:

They had those street cars out here—wasn't buses, they was street cars. We went up here to the corner to catch the bus. . . .

GEORGE DYER:

You mean the street car.

TESSIE DYER:

Yes, street car. All those people from the Johnston mill there—I said, "No wonder a lot of people were called lint heads." Because they didn't care how they looked—they got on the bus. When I got to town, I was just about covered in cotton, and my sister was too, and we still laugh about that.

GEORGE DYER:

You mean it got off the people to you?

TESSIE DYER:

The wind was blowing and it blowed that lint on us, on those gaberdine coats. We liked not to ever got those coats clean.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you try to clean them off once you got off the car before you went around town?

TESSIE DYER:

Un-huh. It was in March. I never will forget that. I know we went to church the next day, we still had some on us. We just couldn't get it off, it was hard to get off.

LU ANN JONES:

What was people's response of people they called the lint heads? What did that make you feel like, or make people feel like?

TESSIE DYER:

I worked with a woman in the mill and she was kind of grouchy. She went fixed up all the time—she looked real nice. She said that that was why so many people in the mill was called lint heads because they didn't try to fix up. They'd just say, "I'm working in the mill, I don't care how I look." She wasn't like that.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you try to be like that too?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember—I guess this would have been pretty soon after you went into the mill in the late 20's and early 30's—there

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were stretch outs and speed ups in the mill? Do you remember that when work was speeded up?

GEORGE DYER:

You know, Tessie, more work you had to do.

TESSIE DYER:

I never did because I worked in the draw-in room and the spinning room. I didn't run no kind of machine—well, I did when I was in the draw-in room.

GEORGE DYER:

You were speaking about on piece work—pick lots. I wove and I ran a loom for a while. I wove, and you got paid for the pick. They give you so much for pick—that's your cloth.

TESSIE DYER:

I got paid by the day on both jobs.

GEORGE DYER:

In other words, you didn't get that certain percentage, they wouldn't keep you. The rest of them could get it, you could too. So you had to run your own job, of course you do that anyway. But you got paid for the pick. The way it was when I first started, you got paid with the cut—a big roll of cloth on the loom. That was back years ago; that's when you got paid so much for cut. They made yard cloth. This cloth over here Highland Park where I worked, #3 mill, that was dress goods—men's, women's cloth both—dress goods. They made some nice material over here.

LU ANN JONES:

Was it colored cloth?

GEORGE DYER:

It was different colors—dress goods. It wasn't dark, it was mixed goods. They made all kinds—dress goods for women and men. Shirt goods, women's dresses, things like that, apron goods. They made a lot of blue chambris, men's shirts. You know about that, they think that's nice now, blue chambris shirts. Put them pockets on double and put that decoration on, and overall goods the same way. I could have made a lot of money years ago, if I'd a bought some looms, me and a boy I knew. We was going to get us a few looms and buy the yarn and make this here overall goods. But we found out we couldn't sell it to big companies. Nobody else wouldn't buy

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our cloth from us.

LU ANN JONES:

Would some people do that, get their own looms and set up in their back yards?

GEORGE DYER:

They'd start out in small business, small weave shed. They'd buy the yarn already . . . and they wove it into cloth. They got these designs to make all this stuff look nice, these blue chambris shirts and overalls. I knew a German guy in Roanoke, Virginia; he did that in Lynchburg, Virginia. He become fairly rich. He first started up just a poor boy. He was raised up; his family was just working class people. He knew about how to fix these looms, and he started buying a little weave shed hisself. He ordered the yarn and then he made it into cloth.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you know any people in Charlotte who did that, who would have their own looms in their back yards or at home?

GEORGE DYER:

I haven't.

TESSIE DYER:

I knew one. Mr. Beaver that lived up here on Thirty-Sixth Street. He had a loom down in the basement of his house. I went up there one time to see him make cloth.

LU ANN JONES:

You say you would help him out some time?

TESSIE DYER:

No, I couldn't help because I didn't know nothing about weaving.

GEORGE DYER:

Ain't nothing to it, it's simple.

TESSIE DYER:

I know when I used to go through the weave room every morning, those things knocking like that. Oh, I just . . . my ears almost—made so much noise.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you ever get hurt on the job or did you ever see people get hurt on the job in accidents or anything?

TESSIE DYER:

Yes, there was several accidents.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of accidents?

TESSIE DYER:

They'd get scratches or hurts, have to go to the doctor, bruises.

LU ANN JONES:

Was there a doctor there?

TESSIE DYER:

No, there was a doctor though. It was a mill doctor, they called him.

LU ANN JONES:

Would he also come to your home?

TESSIE DYER:

No, you always had to take the patient to him.

LU ANN JONES:

Was there a nurse or anybody else there at the. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

Um-um.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you eat lunch at the mill?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you have a lunch room or anyplace to eat?

TESSIE DYER:

No, we just usually eat at our table. They had a wagon that come around—hot sandwiches and things. They'd come around twice a day.

GEORGE DYER:

In the last years, but the first years, people didn't have nothing like that. They had to carry a lunch in a bag—eat a cold lunch.

TESSIE DYER:

I remember when I first went to work, it happened to be a holiday, and my mother in the spinning room. Every morning, if I wasn't in school, I'd help mother, daddy'd bring me some kind of a cold drink. Then this man, that had this, he'd get and buy crates of all kind of soda pops—Coca-Cola—he'd bring them to the mill in a bucket. I never will forget that.

LU ANN JONES:

Was he called the dope-boy?

TESSIE DYER:

He lived right in front of the mill. He'd bring those cold drinks to the mill in a bucket. He'd unfasten them and hand them to you.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember who that was?

TESSIE DYER:

Who was that man lived in front of the mill down there had all those girls?

GEORGE DYER:

I don't remember now. All I noticed was just you at that time. Before I met you, I noticed a lot of them.

TESSIE DYER:

Mr. Davis. That was a long time ago.

GEORGE DYER:

I really had my fun-my brothers and boyfriends.

LU ANN JONES:

What do you mean?

GEORGE DYER:

Back in Roanoke, Virginia, it was a nice day, and you'd go down the street on Saturday, get off from work. I worked a bake shop there four years. We'd get off from work—I worked long hours in a bake shop—we'd meet our boyfriends down the street, and girlfriends. If one of them didn't have a party at her house, the other one would. Everybody's there, and they'd have a big supper and everything good, their mother would. We had the best kind of time. Played post-office and all kind of games. I reckon you know about that. That's just like, all the people had to do back then, go to movies. They had the silent movies back then. What they'd say was flashed on the screen, you just read all of it. My brother and I and a girlfriend went—we was grown—there was a man sitting in front of us, and it must have been his daughter. They just read out! [laughter] You read to yourself, nobody wouldn't hear you, but they read out. The usher would come down, tap them on the shoulder different places. They had a time stopping a lot of them; they never did cut it all out. You couldn't enjoy the movie. They showed some good movies back in the silent movies. That's before the "talkies" come out.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember any of them?

GEORGE DYER:

Mack Sennett comedy, they called it the "bathing beauties." They had Fatty Arbuckle. All those good old westerns they had back then. I admired them very much. Eddie Polo, he was the real hero of one of ours—my brothers and sisters and other friends of mine. Ruth Roland, she was really good. They run a continued picture. Show them at the last of it get in trouble, you'd go back and see how they got out it in a tight spot. Pearl White, them good old movie actors and actress. I remember

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Page 19

a lot of them—William S. Hart. William S. Hart, he was the gunfighter. He was a real tall built guy. Different ones back in the old times.

TESSIE DYER:

A lot of our movies is dead now, the old stars.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you go to movies here when you were a child in Charlotte?

GEORGE DYER:

We looked forward to them movies and them parties on Saturday night; I did back in Virginia. On Christmas, we'd take off a week going to parties.

LU ANN JONES:

The whole week. . . .

GEORGE DYER:

Just about, three or four days and nights. That's right, people back then, they didn't stop one day. They'll have plenty good food. You go to that girl's home that night, and they'd invite you next night somewhere else. Maybe we'd meet different people, different youngsters, boys and girls. I knew a boy one night, took a girl over to a party, and he met another girl there he liked better than this one. He'd been going with her a good while. Her brother was there a-sitting. "I tell you one thing, you better see my sister back home tonight." People didn't make much money back then, but they had a good time. It was a hard way, but people enjoyed life back then, I think; I did. I think the youngsters now is having a good time, but I don't think they enjoy it like we did, back when I was a youngster. We appreciated what we had and what we see and all, but people now, they have so much, they don't appreciate it. That's true, it really is true. Christmas now comes about every week for kids. Back then, when I was a kid, you didn't see all them goodies much about Christmas. Of course, my mother always made cookies. We had plenty apples back in the country. My daddy had all kind of apple orchards and all kind of fruits. She'd make those good cookies out of molasses and ginger and butter. You talk about cookies, I ain't never eat nothing like them.

LU ANN JONES:

Makes me hungry now.

GEORGE DYER:

They were the best cookies. My brother what's living now, two of them, we get together sometime, we talk about them cookies.

LU ANN JONES:

Sounds like a good topic of conversation.

GEORGE DYER:

They was good. They was great big cookies. Big as a almost a quart bottom for a bucket, quart cup. Sometimes, she'd put a raisin in the middle, put plenty butter in them; mother had plenty butter and milk, country. Didn't have to be saving no milk or butter, you just had plenty of it.

LU ANN JONES:

When you first moved to Charlotte, I guess that would have been in the mid 20's when you got here. What did the mill village look like? Did people have gardens and animals?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, me, yeah. They had gardens, they had chickens, I had cows, pigs. . . .

LU ANN JONES:

Did you all have that?

TESSIE DYER:

We had cow one time, I remember in Concord when I was little. Then we had some pigs too because I remember when daddy killed one, it was a great big old thing. Heared it holler when they killed it.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you have animals once you lived here, or did you have a garden?

TESSIE DYER:

Have animals, un-uh, no.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you raise a garden, though?

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah, I used to help my father out here have a garden. That's the reason he don't understand me now, why I don't help him. I do sometime, little things.

GEORGE DYER:

I like gardens.

TESSIE DYER:

I know daddy, he always had lot of cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers,

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Page 21

things like that. Corn is one thing we never did try to raise out here.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your mother can out here?

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah, my mother canned a lot of stuff, and I can a lot of stuff too now. I canned sixty-four pints of green beans last summer besides the tomatoes I canned, and red beets, canned a lot of those.

LU ANN JONES:

You've got a can of green beans for every week of the year then.

TESSIE DYER:

Yes, I had sixty-four pints.

LU ANN JONES:

When you were growing up, were your parents strict with you and your brothers and sisters, did they. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

They always wanted us to keep nice company.

LU ANN JONES:

So what did that mean?

TESSIE DYER:

It meant that that, it's anybody that they knew that wasn't nice, they didn't want us to have anything to do with them.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember being spanked?

TESSIE DYER:

My father spanked me one time. Me and my brother was fighting over a belt. It was his belt, but I wanted it, and we were fighting over it. He kind of patted me one time. That's the only licking my father ever gave me.

LU ANN JONES:

Did your mother ever. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

But my mother spanked me a lot of times.

LU ANN JONES:

What kinds of things would she spank you for?

TESSIE DYER:

She spanked me a lot because my brother and cousin used to fight a lot, and I'd try to help them out. They'd always turn on me though.

LU ANN JONES:

I sympathize with that having grown up with brothers.

TESSIE DYER:

You have any brothers?

LU ANN JONES:

I have two brothers. I used to get caught up in their fights too.

TESSIE DYER:

These were my brother and my cousin, and I'd get caught in with them.

LU ANN JONES:

What kinds of things were you expected to do around home to help out—chores, jobs around home before you went to. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

I always loved housework. I love to cook; I love to cook now when I'm able. I'm a pretty good cook, ain't I, when I'm not sick.

GEORGE DYER:

Have them all in here, tastes right smart. I have to do all the cleaning up the dishes and pans.

LU ANN JONES:

That's only fair, isn't it?

GEORGE DYER:

I'll tell you, I'd rather do the cooking anytime than to do all that, I'd rather had. I just hate to wash dishes. If I'm going to clean up the dishes, I want everything cleaned out of the plates—I want it clean. I don't want nothing put in the sink, I wash the glasses first, and the silverware next, and then I want the glasses. Don't mix none of that stuff. Some people pile the sink full, and you can't wash them like that. Just wash a few at a time. I always wash the glasses first, and I want all the plates cleaned out good. That-a-way, your sink won't stop up, give you no trouble much. Of course, sometimes it'll stop, it ain't got the right fall to them. Plumbers, a lot of them puts them in, they don't get the right fall to a drain line. It ain't like it ought to be, some of them. All plumbers ain't like that, but that's true. One gave you a lot of trouble all the time when you be careful with it, it's bound to be that's the trouble, ain't got the right fall to it—where it won't drain off. There's a lot to learn about everything you do.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you used to help out with the housework when both of you were working?

GEORGE DYER:

Here at home, since I been married?

LU ANN JONES:

Right.

GEORGE DYER:

Yeah, some. I always kept the boys shoes shined and going to school. I kept them busy; I'd teach them every night to get their lessons

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Page 23

I'd see if they get their spelling good and also read. I'd want them to read two or three times. If they missed a word, I'd let them go back over it. That-a-ways, they learnt more that way; they good grades.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you cook then too?

GEORGE DYER:

No, her mother did the cooking when we was working, when they was coming up. When we left here, we knowed they was in good hands, knowed they'd be looked after.

TESSIE DYER:

I didn't have to worry about my children because I knew they'd be taken care of.

LU ANN JONES:

Who took care of them?

TESSIE DYER:

My mother would.

GEORGE DYER:

One of them went up here to Plaza School. He'd go over here to the bus line and see if he got on the bus safe till he got big enough to take care of hisself. He looked after both of them, they got big enough to look after theirself. She'd put the clothes out for them—her mother—to put on next morning and went to school. She'd always have them clean shirts and everything, underwear, socks. I helped her out a lot. I'd come from the store and order the groceries; the man'd deliver them back then. They had a good grocery store up here, had everything you wanted, good meats and all kinds of good vegetables and everything. Sometimes I'd come by and get them and take them. If I didn't, I'd disappoint them, and I'd take them with me. And a little stand up there sold good hot dogs and hamburgers. Of course we going to have supper, but they'd still want something up there; it's fixed different. We'd go in there and get them one, what they wanted. I enjoyed that, and I enjoyed shopping on Christmas. We'd go and shop a month before Christmas, get things ready for them and put it away. Lay it away. Back then, I could have paid cash, but we see something we want, we just had it laid back. I never will forget

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the first bicycle I bought the oldest son. It was a good one; I got it at Western Auto. It was a good one. The second boy used it too. It was made out of good stuff. That bicycle was good. A few years later, we bought them a bicycle apiece. The older one, we give the boy up the street here, and he used it for a long time. Didn't cost but ten or twelve dollars. Money was worth something back then. People really worked hard back then, but money was worth something. Money ain't no good now.

LU ANN JONES:

I know what you mean.

GEORGE DYER:

What I mean, you got to have a lot of money to get what you got to have. I know people living better financially. They got all kind of appliances in their home, like in the kitchen and push button service. I think sometimes they got too much. That's the reason it's costing so much money to live—that electric bill. Every time you use an appliance, I don't care what it is, even an electric clock is costing. They say, "Well ain't but a little bit," but all that little bit cost runs up. I'll tell you what people needs—I hope it don't come on nobody—but people, I think, some of them have it too easy. They don't know the value of money. They don't know the value of a dollar—I didn't till I got older. I didn't know the value of a dollar, what it meant. Money's valuable; of course, money's not everything, but you've got to have money to get what you want. I think the smartest people in this country is the ones that come up the hardest way—that's the truth. The ones that had everything give them and all that, they don't amount to very much. There's some do. They take that money what their parents had left them and make millions and unknown and help other people, but a lot of them don't. They throw it away, big time too. They call it now living it up.

LU ANN JONES:

You were talking about how you really liked housework, so did you miss housework when you went into the mill to work, or had you rather have stayed home?

TESSIE DYER:

No, I liked to work, I liked the money, but I liked housework too.

GEORGE DYER:

You wanted them nice clothes, didn't you?

LU ANN JONES:

Did you keep the money that you made, or did you give part of it to your family?

TESSIE DYER:

No, I gave part of it to my family. I remember one time I worked three days, I believe. Back then you didn't make much, and I drew eight dollars.

GEORGE DYER:

How much did you make?

LU ANN JONES:

You made how much?

TESSIE DYER:

Eight dollars.

LU ANN JONES:

For three days.

TESSIE DYER:

I felt that was something. No, that was just for three days. So I gave it to my daddy. The next Saturday—at times they'd have to lay us off for weeks at a time—I know I was worried, I thinks, "Well, I won't have no money this Saturday." So my daddy, he kept that check from me and gave it to me the next Saturday. I had a good daddy.

GEORGE DYER:

I bet you was glad.

TESSIE DYER:

I was; I had a good daddy. It's not anything that I could say to make my father and mother any better parents than they were to me.

LU ANN JONES:

What about them made them such good parents?

TESSIE DYER:

They was just so good in every way, wasn't they George?

GEORGE DYER:

Yeah, they was good.

TESSIE DYER:

They sure was.

GEORGE DYER:

They was firm, but they was good. Firmness means a lot of things, discipline. Children now, the way I look at it, a lot of them disciplined and a lot of them ain't. That's the reason so many of them getting in trouble, children. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

My father, he loved people. He was on the gate job down here

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to the mill. In fact, he worked on up till just about three weeks before he died. He loved people. He had to open the gate when trucks'd go in and out. When anybody come wanted a job, he'd have to get someone out of the office. He mixed good with . . . he loved people.

LU ANN JONES:

What did you do with your money that you had to spend? Did you buy. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

I saved up money one time till I had seventeen dollars. This is the truth. I went to town, and I bought me a dress, and a coat, and a pair of shoes, and I believe I bought me a hat. My next door neighbor up here, at that time, she went with me. She was wanting to go get her some things, wanted me to go. I told mother, I said, "Well, I believe I'll take my money and go buy me something," and oh, I thought I was dressed up. I never will forget it, it was black and white checked coat. It was pretty, it was made pretty, and I just loved that coat.

LU ANN JONES:

Where would you go shopping?

TESSIE DYER:

We had to go all the way to town then. We'd have to ride the street cars; there wasn't no bus a-running out here then, it was street car. We'd go there. I can recall back when my children was little, they both like to go to a movie. We used to work till 3:00 on Saturday evening, and we'd come home and we'd get ready and get them ready. We'd go to town and have supper and then go to a movie, usually a cowboy picture—western, that's what they liked. I really did enjoy that, I won't never forget it because they enjoyed it too. I'd always tell them that morning that we'd go to town see a movie that night, and we would.

LU ANN JONES:

What other kinds of things did you do to have fun like when you were a teenager? Were there parties here in the village?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh yeah, there used to be parties around. We'd go to parties

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and spin-the-bottle, like that. They used to have a band here in North Charlotte—a musical band.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

LU ANN JONES:

You were going to tell me something about the band.

TESSIE DYER:

This band—I forget how many it was in it—but it was real good; everybody enjoyed it.

LU ANN JONES:

What kind of music did they play?

TESSIE DYER:

It wasn't string music, it was just horns and different instruments. I remember this particular night, they had a club [of] girls here—cooking club. We'd meet every Tuesday night or every Thursday night, so we'd used to meet on Thursday night. We was asked to cook them a supper, so we did. They had one that they were going to ask to eat supper with the band boys that night. I never will forget that. They called my name out, and I just almost fell in the floor! They had me placed sixth at the end of the table; the table, it was long as from here down the hall, I'll say—you know how long those tables are like that—with the boys on each side. I was the only girl—I really did feel honored. I just wasn't dreaming of asking me to be, but it really got away with me. I enjoyed it.

LU ANN JONES:

That cooking club, did you meet every week?

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah, we'd meet every week.

LU ANN JONES:

Were most of the people in that, were they young women and women who worked in the mill?

TESSIE DYER:

Un-huh. I know we went to Washington one time on a trip. Then we went to Baltimore and somewhere else—I forget where we went on that trip.

LU ANN JONES:

Who was the organizer of it?

TESSIE DYER:

It was Miss Eves.

LU ANN JONES:

Who was she?

TESSIE DYER:

I forget her first name, but she was a Eves. She's out here

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I guess, for four or five year or longer than that.

GEORGE DYER:

She was the sponsor?

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah.

GEORGE DYER:

She sponsored the. . . .

LU ANN JONES:

Was that her job?

TESSIE DYER:

That was her job, but she got paid for it. The mill down here had something to do with it, see.

GEORGE DYER:

That was nice that they helped you all. I didn't know that.

TESSIE DYER:

She was out here a long time.

LU ANN JONES:

Were there other activities that she organized?

TESSIE DYER:

No, it was just cooking club. [interruption]

LU ANN JONES:

What would you do at the cooking club?

TESSIE DYER:

We'd cook. They'd show us how to cook, teach us to cook.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you like Miss Eves?

TESSIE DYER:

Oh, yes, she was wonderful.

LU ANN JONES:

How old was she compared to how old. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

She was about forty-two then. I guess she's an old lady now, if she's a-living.

GEORGE DYER:

She must be a hundred by that time. Years ago when she was a young girl, forty-two, Tessie . . . make her around at least a hundred.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember when your mother was pregnant with your brothers and sisters? Can you remember your mother being pregnant?

TESSIE DYER:

I can with two of her children.

LU ANN JONES:

What was her attitude toward being pregnant? Was she happy, was she sad?

TESSIE DYER:

She's happy.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she seem happier then?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she take that opportunity to tell you where babies came

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from or anything like that?

TESSIE DYER:

Not right then, but she did later.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she have her children at home?

TESSIE DYER:

Yes.

LU ANN JONES:

What happened when it was time for her to have her children?

TESSIE DYER:

I can remember that very well. I'd take my brother and I went to my uncle's house. It's on Monday evening. My other sister, she was so small, she stayed at home. My father came after us the next day and told us that we had a little sister.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you know that she was going to be giving birth before you left?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Is that what usually happened, the children were sent away while the. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she have a mid-wife or did she have a doctor?

TESSIE DYER:

No, she had a doctor. Doctor with all four of her children. It was the same doctor—a Dr. King.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she ever have any problems during her pregnancy?

TESSIE DYER:

Not as I know of, she didn't.

LU ANN JONES:

Did she keep on working while. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

No, she didn't work unknown At that time, we lived in Concord.

LU ANN JONES:

A lot of children went to work when they were about fourteen years old?

TESSIE DYER:

They might now, but they didn't then, you had to be. . . .

GEORGE DYER:

Back then they did, they don't now. Yeah, they went to work fourteen years old back then. They had to weigh so much and be so tall;

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I forget how it was now. I remember talking to some boys. They had to weigh over eighty pounds and had to be close to five foot tall—had to have examination. I remember I didn't go to work that young—had no public works. I done a lot of work help my daddy out at the store and different things.

TESSIE DYER:

I used to hear mother and daddy talk about cheap wages, what they'd make.

LU ANN JONES:

Were they happy with the wages, were they upset with the wages?

TESSIE DYER:

They wasn't upset with them because everywhere else, didn't make anymore wages than that.

GEORGE DYER:

I wanted more. I didn't think I earned enough because they making too big a profit off of us. I figured all of them made too much profit until the union come in. Now the union organizer helped the people in people's work.

LU ANN JONES:

Where did the union organize?

GEORGE DYER:

It organized up north first before it come south. The northern states the ones organized. It started in the big cities; that's where it organized. Brotherhood Railways was the first to organize, I think—you can look that up. I'm not for sure. That's one of the oldest organizations in this country—the Brotherhood Railways.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you like being in the union when you were working in New York?

GEORGE DYER:

It was all right—they took out so much out of my check. They protect you and give you more money and see that you treated better and had better conditions. The union's all right if they don't carry it too far, you know what I mean. You can go too far of anything. You got to think about the man that owns the corporation, too, you know. He's got to make a profit so he can pay you. If you press him too much, if you put the pressure on the employer, they'll get fretted with it and they won't

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cooperate. Some of them close down, some of them won't, it's according to what kind of business they got; they don't like that. The way I look at it, nobody wants nobody to tell them how to run their business, I don't think. Course, the unions helped the working class people all over the country. It made better conditions in the plants; it made better conditions for the people. It got them medical attention. You were speaking about the nurse aid a while ago, that's what started the nurse aid. The unions done a lot of good. Lot of people retired now drawing good pensions on account of the unions—drawing social security and also a pension and fringe benefits, they call it. Wasn't no such thing years ago as a fringe benefit. A lot of people draws that now.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember, I think it was in the 30's there was a strike here?

TESSIE DYER:

A strike here? Yeah, I walked in the mill a couple strikes.

LU ANN JONES:

What was it like when the strike was on?

TESSIE DYER:

They'd holler at you and call you "scabby" and things like that.

GEORGE DYER:

What's that word mean?

TESSIE DYER:

I don't know; that's what they'd call you though.

LU ANN JONES:

So what did you think about the people who were striking?

TESSIE DYER:

Well, I'll tell you what I said to one one day.

LU ANN JONES:

What did you say?

TESSIE DYER:

I was going to work and my father had to go early that morning, and my mother, of course, wasn't going. I went with my neighbor next door and her second hand that worked in the weave room, he went with us. This boy hollered out, says, "Hey, Tessie, scabby, scabby." I said, "If I was you, I'd go home and hide my face. I sure would." He never did holler at me no more.

LU ANN JONES:

Was it dangerous to cross the picket lines?

TESSIE DYER:

No, not really because a lot of times when they thought they was going to have any trouble, the law came out. They never did have no trouble down here, not as I know of, but I was in two strikes that I know of.

LU ANN JONES:

Do you remember what years those were?

TESSIE DYER:

No, honey, I don't.

LU ANN JONES:

Why did you decide to cross the picket line?

TESSIE DYER:

I was supposed to go to work, and I was going.

GEORGE DYER:

She's going to work.

TESSIE DYER:

I was going to work, see, and he wasn't going. He just called me that.

GEORGE DYER:

That's the reason he called you scab.

TESSIE DYER:

I said, "If I were you, I'd go home and hide my face. He didn't call me that anymore.

GEORGE DYER:

Did anybody get into fights?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-um. It was Oliver Stover.

GEORGE DYER:

They did in Virginia. They had to call in the National Guard.

TESSIE DYER:

They did at other places here in Charlotte, but not as I know of, they didn't have any trouble down here because the law would always come out, protect them.

LU ANN JONES:

Was there a lot of talk about the strike and organizing in the mill before the strike actually came.

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

What would people talk about?

TESSIE DYER:

About striking and all. I remember one time, there's a crowd come along out here—then we didn't have a little tool house out here and it wasn't wired in like it is now—this girl, she kept hollering, "Scabby, scabby." Nobody didn't go out or nothing around here; everybody stayed

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NA3 page

in at night. She says, "Where they's smoke, they's bound to be fire, and I know somebody's at home around here." Everybody around here would just stay in the house.

LU ANN JONES:

Was she part of the union?

TESSIE DYER:

She was the union, yeah.

LU ANN JONES:

How did the organizers contact people in the mills to talk to them about the union?

TESSIE DYER:

On the outside.

LU ANN JONES:

Outside the gate?

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum, outside the gate.

LU ANN JONES:

So what would happen when an organizer came in, could you tell that the management people at the mill would get upset? How would they respond?

TESSIE DYER:

Not too much because they wouldn't let them come on the inside.

LU ANN JONES:

Could you tell, did they do anything to improve things in the mill when they knew that the union was being formed or trying to be formed? Did things change at all?

TESSIE DYER:

No, they just wanted to get in there. They just couldn't get in there, you see.

LU ANN JONES:

What did your supervisors, did they tell people not to join the union or anything like that?

TESSIE DYER:

No, they wasn't supposed to say anything to us.

GEORGE DYER:

That's against the law. You can't do that, that's one of your rights people has. Our Constitution give them that rights.

TESSIE DYER:

I know one time they said they was going to strike. I don't know if that was after you and I were married or not.

GEORGE DYER:

No, I wasn't

TESSIE DYER:

They all stopped the machines off, but everybody just stayed

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in there that didn't want to go out.

LU ANN JONES:

So you just shut the machines. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

Closed it down. Them that was going out, they just stopped.

GEORGE DYER:

What did people do, stay?

TESSIE DYER:

We stayed in there.

GEORGE DYER:

I mean didn't work or what?

TESSIE DYER:

No, we just stayed in there and went back to work the next morning.

GEORGE DYER:

Well where did you sleep?

TESSIE DYER:

I mean, they come out, George, at the right time. They come. . . .

GEORGE DYER:

I see, certain hours, changing hours.

TESSIE DYER:

Yeah.

GEORGE DYER:

I thought you meant you stayed in there all the time.

LU ANN JONES:

Instead of striking, they just shut down the machines.

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Did things start back up?

TESSIE DYER:

Didn't everybody come out though.

LU ANN JONES:

Did things start back up the next day

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

Can you remember any other times when there were spontaneous shut downs? Why did people do that? Do you know what had caused them to do that?

TESSIE DYER:

It was the union men and all had them to do that.

GEORGE DYER:

Want to get them organized?

LU ANN JONES:

Did anybody help you walk through the picket line, were there police?

TESSIE DYER:

One time when they was on strike, my mother was working and my father, but this last time that I was speaking about, I went with my next door neighbor. She was in the weave room, and I was in the spinning

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room. She got her boss man and we walked with him.

LU ANN JONES:

Were there enough people working in the mills to keep the mills going during the strike?

TESSIE DYER:

Yes.

LU ANN JONES:

What happend to those people who struck? Did they get their jobs back?

TESSIE DYER:

Some of them did and some of them didn't.

LU ANN JONES:

Who didn't get their jobs back? Were the leaders the ones who wouldn't get their jobs back?

TESSIE DYER:

No, they was all asked to come back if they wanted to. Some of them would, some of them wouldn't. I guess they's afraid they'd be fired if they did come back.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you get upset when there were times where you were laid off? Didn't you worry about your job?

TESSIE DYER:

No, I knew that when things got better and started up, I'd go back to work. I do know one time I was laid off. I was supposed to work, and this other girl came in after I did, and he kept her and laid me off. So, the spinning room boss was a good friend of my father. He went to him and told him, says, "You better get that girl back in this mill. That's Mrs. Helms' daughter. She's never worked nowhere, only here." He sent out to me to come back to work.

GEORGE DYER:

Why did he lay you off and keep her?

TESSIE DYER:

I don't know, but he just did.

GEORGE DYER:

He favored her better than he did you. It's always been politics.

TESSIE DYER:

It was Everett Young's sister.

LU ANN JONES:

Is that right? Were there supervisors who showed favorites in the mill?

TESSIE DYER:

No, not too much, I don't think they did. I know my brother-in-law didn't. I worked for him.

LU ANN JONES:

So he didn't treat you any differently?

TESSIE DYER:

No, he didn't treat me any better than he did anybody else. He sure didn't.

LU ANN JONES:

What would happen if you had wanted to change jobs. Suppose you wanted to go to another part of the mill. How would you have gone about doing that?

TESSIE DYER:

Well, I wanted to go to the draw-in room, and I was in the spinning room. My father talked to the spinning room boss, and he got me on down there—got me on in the draw-in room, so I was just transferred down there. I didn't like the spinning room, all that lint. I didn't like it.

GEORGE DYER:

Dust too. There's a lot up where them spinning things. Them quills runs on a spindle; them bobbins runs on a spindle. They run through slats and steel things that makes that roping. That yarn is put on that frame and it runs and makes that there yarn on that bobbin. Then that there goes from the spinning room to the card room. Then it's made into yarn and they send it to the slasher. Then it goes to the slasher, puts on beams, and that's where the cloth comes in at. That's where you start weaving. Run it on big beams, then it goes on smaller beams, and put them on looms and runs, run to make cloth. They have a patent chain and a patent egg chain; it makes all them designs fixed on that loom. They call it a Crumpton loom. A Draper loom weaves a plain cloth, stripes going each way. It's plain filling, just like that shirt you got on there. That warp's got them stripes in it. That's the way that was, but that's white filling going backward and forward, that shuttle going through that warp. From each end is power pushes that shuttle from box to box of the

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loom. It's called a stick. It's got power thows that shuttle through there. It opens up, throws it through there. That was a white filling, but that striped warp, that's different colors in that warp. The yarn was dyed before it was wove, put on them beams. The yarn was dyed.

LU ANN JONES:

How did your job change over the years?

TESSIE DYER:

They got better equipment—got different machinery that would improve.

LU ANN JONES:

How did you learn how to use that? Did they come in and train you? Did they train you to use the new machinery, or were you just expected to. . . .

TESSIE DYER:

Um-hum.

LU ANN JONES:

How long would it take you to learn how to use it?

TESSIE DYER:

Not too long. I know when I went in the draw-in room, we used to