Full Text of the Excerpt

SAM FINLEY:

And Sinclair Lewis was right on the picket line with us.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you meet and talk to him?

SAM FINLEY:

Yes, he was right in the crowd. That was when he was writing. . . He wrote one or two books about this strike. You can't get a hold of them no more; I don't know what happened to them.

VESTA FINLEY:

Don't they have one in the library?

SAM FINLEY:

I don't know.

VESTA FINLEY:

Yes, somebody told me they had one; who was it was here said they had a book that they got at the library? They're bound to have one up there.

SAM FINLEY:

I went to the bookstore and asked the man about it. Oh, he said there was some book written about it. He wouldn't talk to me about it; he wasn't interested.

VESTA FINLEY:

Somebody around here told me they got one at the library to read.

SAM FINLEY:

There was a boy, a young man that came by here about two years ago. Going to school, and he was going to write about this Marion strike. I talked to him out there a good little while. And he wanted to find out who lived here And I told him I was here. He asked me some questions, like you're doing. He said: "I went down here to the office, to talk to the personnel man. I went down there and wanted to see some of the records that happened that year when there was the strike. And the personnel man told me that they had a boiler explosion and water damaged all the records and they were ruined." [laughter, Vesta Finley] I told him I said: "Now he didn't want you to see the records." "Oh," he said, "I'm going to find out what I want to know if I have to go to Raleigh." And when I came in, "Tell me what Sparkey said," she said. "How did he think so quick?" I said: "He didn't have to think; all he done is open his mouth." [laughter, Vesta Finley and MF]

VESTA FINLEY:

And then even at that told Sparkey. [laughter]

SAM FINLEY:

I told you that; I don't care. And he told me the ending: "Well, that man come here wanting to know Sam Copeland and Adam Hunt, and some of the mill men that's been dead for years, wanting to see some that were here." I said, "And you sent him to my house." He said, "No I didn't." I said: "You did; and I loaded him up." [laughter, Vesta Finley and MF]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you think they do have the records?

SAM FINLEY:

Yes, they've got records, but nobody can see it.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I just wondered if you thought they really did.

SAM FINLEY:

Yes. But there's never been no boiler explosion and no records destroyed. He was just quick on the trigger.

VESTA FINLEY:

He just told him that because he didn't want to. . . .