No employees were hurt in a fire at one of the Hickory Springs furniture plants
One of the Hickory Springs furniture plants burned down after the gas main exploded by accident. No one was hurt because few people worked in that part of the building except the men Pete Underdown trained to run the coiler machine.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Sidney Leneer Pete Underdown, June 18, 2000. Interview I-0091. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KATHLEEN KEARNS:
-
I wanted to ask you about the fire in 1951 on Highland Avenue, what you
remember of it.
- PETE UNDERDOWN:
-
Well, the only thing I can tell you is second-hand information, because I
found myself at Ft.
[unclear]
, Oklahoma at that point, when the fire happened. I thought that
it was the next year. But the way I heard it, on account of our
tempering oven, we had a big main come into the building, and they were
down running the coilers, which you ran as much as you could. And they
had the second shift on, and there was a guy named Abee who ran it who I
talked with.
- KATHLEEN KEARNS:
-
Abee?
- PETE UNDERDOWN:
-
A-B-E-E. He was running the coilers down there that night, and he went to
work for me. He was Mr. Clyde Stein's-he was one of the
original foremen in this thing-he was his son-in-law. And ever
I fired this John, ever who it was, Mr. Stein took over the whole works
down there as foreman of it. All I had to do was set up the machines, or
teach somebody how to set them up. I wasn't closed-minded about it like
the people who had made their living at it. It had become necessary
because they were the only ones who knew what it was. I taught people
that was going to do it how to do it. And this Abee
was a pretty sharp guy. He was a well-digger before he came to work for
us, a well-driller, I should say. And he was quite an able worker, but
he was running the coilers that night, and I understand that something
happened to the gas main and it exploded or something and that's what
started the fire and burnt the building down before Hickory Fire
Department could put it out. I think we had a four-inch gas main coming
into the building, something like that, and it was right there that it
split or something, where it was big.
No one was injured. There wasn't enough people working really that there
was much danger to it.
- KATHLEEN KEARNS:
-
How many employees were there around that time? Not just who were working
on that second shift, but how many people worked in the plant?
- PETE UNDERDOWN:
-
There was about fifty-two or fifty-three all the time. Neil and Bob used
to work in there. They worked for me, the two best assemblers I ever had
in my life down there.
