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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 K-0511, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Although ostensibly about the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, this interview presents a history lesson on the gradual extinction of independent farming in eastern North Carolina. Larry Kelley shares the details of a lifetime of farming and other rural work. He sees himself as among the last members of a generation of old-school farmers who were pushed out of agriculture by factory farms and new techniques. But although farmers are being forced to abandon their farms, especially as Floyd exacerbated their financial difficulty, Larry maintains his faith in the strength of his rural community. This is a lengthy interview, and it is sometimes difficult to hear clearly because of interruptions and sound interference. The interview's highlights are focused on the Kelleys' experiences. Researchers interested in Larry's father's experiences as a farmer can look to the first fifteen pages of the transcript. Both Larry and Betty Kelley participated in the interview, but Larry does the majority of the talking.
Larry Kelley shares the details of a lifetime of farming and other rural work while discussing the hardships he and others faced in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I know this mill was obsolete but it's been a, you know, a part of the community's history for three generations.
Well, let me just say to start the tape that I'm Charlie Thompson and I'm here in the trailer that was bought for the flood by Larry Kelley and his wife, Betty Kelley. And it's December 9th 1999, almost three months following the Floyd flood. We're talking about the history of the community some, some about the mill, some maybe about the clean up and the businesses that Larry's involved in. So you were saying about the mill and so forth, that it was obsolete. But how was it fitting into community history?
Granddaddy came—his name was J. R. Kelley—he came out of World War I.
Now the year I don't know exactly. But the day he came home from World
War I they were having a land sale right where the mill and my house and
the stuff is now. And he had saved his money—he was in service in the
Navy for four years—and he lacked $600 having enough to pay for
I thought I'd take my camera with me.
Oh my goodness.
He had to borrow $600 to pay for the land.
Tell me his name again.
J. R.
J. R.
James Richard.
Okay.
And that was after World War I was over when he got out of service. So it had to be somewhere around 1918 or 1920, somewhere along there. But after—
Do you know why he decided to open a feed mill? Why he decided to not be a farmer?
He started out with a sawmill
This was on his own parents' land.
That was his land that he bought when he come home from service.
Okay.
His daddy—his name was Morris Kelley—lived a few miles on the Island Creek, and his daddy—
Island?
I-S-L-A-N-D, Island Creek.
Okay.
His daddy came from Ireland and settled in Moore's Creek out of 421. And then [in] a few years they moved up to Teachey, North Carolina.
Okay.
And from Teachey they moved up to Island Creek. You're familiar with Hanchey's Store up here?
Yes.
Down that road. That's where he was raised at. And when he went in the service and come back after four years in the Navy—the day of the sale is when he come home. He bought this land with his daddy's help, $600 from his daddy, and promised that everything that his daddy had—his daddy give him the $600—that he wouldn't inherit anything from his daddy's estate. That was the deal.
Six hundred dollars was probably a sizeable part of the estate at that point.
Can you imagine saving what money that you made for four years. I
believe he was making $18 a month, $20 a month, and he saved up all but
just a few cents once in a while. But he never
He hadn't been wounded or anything?
No.
But he was in direct combat, do you think?
He was on the carriers.
Okay.
And he was a steam—he worked with the steam engines. He was a fireman, I think, what they called it back then.
Right. Keeping the boilers going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. His hair turned white at a real early age, and he's
always said it was because of the heat from the boilers. [Laughter]
So he did it on share or
Yeah, uh-huh, for half. And when the Depression came—I've heard him tell
this story many, many, many times. He had to shut his sawmill down. He
was only charging something like $2 a thousand
You mean with a hand shovel.
With a hand shovel, yeah. And so he worked like that to get enough nickels and dimes to get something to eat. They grew everything they had except they had to buy sugar and stuff like that.
Meanwhile all this wood is still setting there?
Sat there and rotted. And at that time it was the prime timber of our country. The top grade materials that he couldn't sell.
Virgin timber.
Virgin timber. A lot of it cypress, red cypress, which is—doesn't rot very easy. It'll last a long, long time on a building, and termites won't eat it.
Still, it stayed long enough to rot.
And my daddy just grew into the business. He was the only child. They started making corn boxes, strawberry boxes after the Depression, and all that was handmade. I've still got the machine that made those strawberry or strawberry slats and the corn boxes that were nailed together with corn box nails. I've still got the machine that does that.
We've heard about the strawberry crop being one of the biggest income producers in the county for a while.
That's right.
And he was making the boxes.
He was making the boxes.
For the quart size or did it hold—
Quart. Then he made the carriers.
Okay. And they took those carriers into the field—
Right.
Filled with quart boxes and then they'd ship the whole thing off.
Right.
So you didn't get that back.
No, unh-uh.
So you had a constant job to do.
Right until the new system came in where they used wire boxes. And the
cost was something like—it was going to cost between fifty and a hundred
thousand dollars to get set up in that, and he couldn't see that it
would be worth it. So he had a steam room to steam the blocks, and he
used sweet gum, which was a real easy to find material. And they used a
steam room to steam it to make it soft so that they could veneer it.
I've still got the veneer machine that they put those blocks in. It
peeled it a sixteenth of an inch thick or something, real thin stuff.
And it had to be where you could bend it to make those corn—those
strawberry coats. People around in the neighborhood worked there during
the season, and at night. At that time people just didn't have a lot of
money and children, after school, would come and work
Now, how about your parents?
My dad was—run the sawmill.
When was he born?
Twenty-seven.
Granddaddy was twenty-seven years old when he got married. And he was born a few years after that. And he was born in 1896, so 1896 and twenty-seven—
It would be just 1924.
Okay.
Or '23.
So daddy would have been about seventy-five now. He's dead.
Okay.
He'd been about seventy-five.
Seventy-five, okay, plus twenty-four is ninety-nine.
So he was born somewhere along there.
Okay.
But he worked—and granddaddy and he worked together
Did he go off—did he go to school over here at the Northeast School your dad?
He went to Wallace, didn't he?
He went to Wallace School, but I can't—. I know my granddaddy went to
the
Harry and them, they went to Wallace. I think your daddy went to Davis.
It was one of the Wallace schools. And then he graduated from Wallace
School and never went to college. Back in the forties they mostly run
the sawmill. And as far as the gristmill, at that time it was paying
out. But even while he run the sawmill
Now, where are all these things stored that you still have?
Down at the mill.
Some of them's inside—
Inside the mill.
Inside the old mill. I've got two mills down there; sawmill, too, and the veneer mill, which they used to make the corn boxes and strawberry sacks and stuff. It's not under a shelter. But it ought to have been. The storms have come and blowed them down, and I just didn't have anywhere to put it. I had a fire a few years back, so I had to move the shingle. It liked to burn it up. But I got it out, and I never put it under the shelter. Just got busy and never did. But I'm fifty-four years old and I know how to operate all of that. The only thing I've never operated was the veneer machine. I've never veneered anything. I've always wanted to. And I've had people from way off coming in wants to buy this stuff for a few dollars, you know. But I wouldn't sell it.
When did they start the sand business, Larry?
Started the sand business in the early fifties—late forties, after the war.
You were born what year?
I was born in '45.
Forty-five. About the time you were born they were starting this.
My granddaddy or my grandmother on my daddy's side had some brothers
that during the Depression had moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. They
couldn't find anything to do around here, and so they had moved to St.
Petersburg. And they went to
And this is your brother?
This was my dad.
Your dad.
My dad and granddad.
Okay. And what's your dad's name?
His name was J. W. Kelley.
J. W., James—
James Wilton.
Okay. Okay.
And this was late forties, early fifties about. So they started in the sand business together. They always worked together, dad and granddad.
Now we saw a sand business. You go on down 41 and take a right like you're going to Maple Hill.
They started when I quit.
Okay. That's not yours? Okay.
They started by building a binge that was high enough to back trucks
underneath. Made it out of wood; they built it out of oak and cypress
with hartford
It comes right out of the river, or does it come out of the ground?
No. We just—we started and dug a hole. Down on a hill back in the woods there's a swamp all the way around it. [There is] a river and the river swamp, and there's another swamp that comes in around it. And there's a big hill back there and he had cleaned—
And that's in the Northeast community?
That's right behind the mill.
Okay.
They started digging sand out of there, and it was white sand. And it devised the screens. They had turning screens with gasoline engines to turn the screen to pump the sand into. That would separate the coarse [sand] from the fine, and the rocks or the trash or any roots that were pumped in would be strained out of it. When it come out it was just like beach sand but it wasn't dead sand. It was good builders' sand, the best in this part of the country.
What is dead sand? You mean you can't use beach sand?
You go down to the beach and you walking on it and you hear it making a noise—
Squeak.
Squeak, squeak. That's dead sand. If you mix dead sand and cement there'll always—you can go over there and sweep it and you'll always have a dust. That's just because of the cement on the mortar mix. It's because of the sand. The sand's dead. See, people don't go down to the beach to use beach sand to mix concrete with.
Partly has to do with the salt in it, I guess?
Well, I can't answer that.
Okay.
I don't know, but I know it's so fine that it won't hold. But this was some of the best sand in this part of the country. And finally regulations and things put us out of business back in 1980.
But you had taken it over. It was your business.
Yeah. I'd taken it over. And back in the early seventies it would have been after we got married.
Y'all got married in the early seventies. BK/
Sixty-five.
Sixty-five, okay.
And so we worked together. Granddaddy was [in] retirement and was not
able to work. But he was around every day. He was—he was mighty special
to me. And dad started—he moved down to Florida and kind of retired down
there. He stayed here
This was before the chicken integrators moved in.
Yeah. This was in the later part of the sixties. We fed chickens, picked up eggs seven days a week and sold them for eight cents a dozen.
Where'd you sell them?
We had two markets: one in Beulahville and one in Burgaw.
You weren't a contract grower.
No. We were private.
You were private, but you had a contract with them to buy—
Nineteen fifty-eight daddy put up the first feed mill, and he moved the sawmill back, which was close to the road, Highway 41. It was even closer to the highway then. Sometime in the forties they changed the road that went by my house. And you know where Betsy lives?
Um-hmm.
Well, that house that sits back off the road, the main road went back to her house, and curved back out towards the fire department and went by my granddaddy's house. Then when the road changed in the forties and they paved the road—
This road, Highway 41, wasn't paved until the forties?
I can't tell you just when it was paved. But it was after the Depression, I think; it could've been the late forties.
Okay. But ever since you can remember it's been paved.
Ever since I can remember it's been paved. So it was paved before I was
born. But we sold eggs for eight cents a dozen—two dollars and forty
cents for a thirty dozen crate delivered to Berg Owen. Had to buy our
crates and flats back. I lost—after the first flock I lost a hundred and
some dollars and all my labor. And we had our own mill, so I could buy
everything as cheap as I could buy it. Along then all the corn that was
coming in was coming in being pulled by hand.
You built another mill?
My dad.
Your dad did.
My dad built another mill. But I was there and
And what was the mill called?
Kelley's Mill.
Okay.
J. W. Kelley Milling Company.
Okay. And you continued on with the sand business. Did you keep running the grain business, too?
My brother took the grain business after he had retired. He quit in, what year Betty?
Who, Dick?
Yeah.
About eighteen, eighteen, twenty years ago. So it's '99.
He quit about seventy, late seventies when things began to change when
this corporate farming came in. The chickens were already
Nash Johnson and—
The earliest one was Ramsey
Ramsey.
And after—
They started milling their own feed, and so that took a lot of your business, I guess.
Everybody for as long as I can remember up until this period of time, late seventies, everybody had hogs, cows, a few horses, but mainly hogs and cows and chickens and turkeys. And then the chicken people put in and so we lost the chicken feed business, but we still had the dairies in this area. We served several dairies: Penderlee and that area and then back out the other side of Wallace. Then finally the dairies went out. When they had a buy out the dairies closed down, and I don't know—
Was this in the eighties?
Late seventies.
Late seventies.
And so after the dairies closed up, the chicken business stopped. I sold
hogs when I was—we were in the feed mill business and we were married
and I sold hogs for nine cents a pound. And I decided at that time—that
was early seventies, late sixties, early seventies—that if I was going
to have to give away what I was working for I was going to give it to
somebody I knew. So I killed hogs two or three times that winter. I
killed most of the hogs that I had that were ready to go to market, and
sold the meat at
You only did that one time?
No, we did that—well, I done it right on for years. I killed hogs every year. In fact, we killed hogs up until two years ago. So I've got everything it takes to kill hogs. And I've got a cousin that worked for the Department of Agriculture under Jim Graham. He was over the stations. His name was Pat Kelley. Do you know Pat?
No, I don't.
He's retired now isn't he, Larry?
Pat? Yeah. He's retired now. I saw Pat at a funeral. An aunt died, and I
preached her funeral. After the funeral I was talking to him and he said
he did want to be in another hog killing like we used to do. And I said,
"You would come down here and send somebody and shut us down." And he
said, "No. I want to see it done and be in it
That's the way y'all did it for all those head of hogs? You were doing it out back, and outside and all that?
We started—I'd start every morning about four o'clock, put water in it a few days before. And it was built out of tin and cypress, had wood sides to it and the bottom was tin. Built and dug a pit and set it down over—the sides were tapered, and we had strips across the bottom to support the weight of the hog. We put a smokestack in the back of it and we fed it from the front. And it would draw like a chimney. Along then when we were killing hogs it was cold. It'd be down in the teens and everything froze up. And we'd start hog killings in the morning about four o'clock. And then everything thawed out. We killed just what we could working at the time.
How many?
No more than two or three. We
Now as you say, the Department of Agriculture would say you have to
Well, you can still do it. I don't think there's any law against killing hogs at home.
For your own consumption.
Because back in the sixties I'd kill hogs at home and save the meat, which probably then was illegal. But when you're perished to death, you've got no money. You have to do whatever you have to do. Well, a top hog weighs two hundred pounds and it'll cost you eighteen dollars. And a ham—if a ham weighs twenty-five pounds, at a dollar and a quarter one ham would be—.
Uh-huh. That's the way to go.
We've seen some tough times. I remember my granddaddy talking about his times, but we've seen some tough times on the farm. And farmers can't keep on moving. They can't keep going after the dollar.
But now so many of them are producing hogs. They're contracted.
Yeah.
How much a pound are they getting?
Most of the time they're getting feed conversions plus so much a head. So the feed conversion is real good—they'll get more plus they'll make so much a head. It can vary. I don't know what they make. But just imagine this now. The hogs belong to the feed company. The medication belongs to the feed company. The—everything that goes with the hog belongs to the feed company except the labor and the house and the land, but when that hog dies that hog belongs to the farmer.
How so? Doesn't get paid for it, in other words.
He doesn't get paid for it and he has to dispose of it. And now they have to incinerate them. I think that's the most unfair thing that ever happened. I mean, responsibility stops whenever the hog—or the animal dies, then it belongs to the man who had to work through the hot and cold and everything to dispose of it. And there's no protection for him.
Right. Well, it's important to talk about that. I don't know how much you feel comfortable talking about it, if it's a problem. But so many people think hog industry is one entity that is polluting the rivers. And that's all they know about it. But as you're describing it, there are these farmers who are struggling out there who have hard times and who really can't survive without a contract. But then that's unfair, too. They're caught in the middle. Is that what you're saying?
Our son-in-law does this. Bobby does it for a living.
Our son-in-law
But you used to raise hogs. I mean, how is it different. I mean, it was a pleasurable thing? You wanted to do it?
My hogs were raised—we grew them out on dirt.
Did that pollute anything?
Sure it did. You could smell it, but you didn't have the smell that you have now. And we used sand hills and places that were back off the road and away from people's houses.
In the woods.
Yeah. But you didn't have the smell that you've got now. You didn't have the concentration or the numbers. See, Duplin County is growing more pork than any other county around—Duplin and Sampson County, this area. Along with that production comes pollution. And the by-products—
And they have hogs at a more confined area, more per square foot, right? How many hogs approximately does one grow or have now?
Oh they can have anywhere from a thousand to several thousand. And then at least two to three bunches a year. Then you've got your pig factories. The pigs are raised in one place and then they're shipped to another place that grows them up to bigger pig size, and then they're sent to the grow out houses. So it's three different stages of the operations now. Everything's under—in a house—under controlled climate. See that—we had that situation to decide whether—just like in the old days when granddaddy and daddy quit making corn boxes. I'll tell you just exactly what happened. They farmed, too. And they made the corn boxes and strawberry cups and sold them to the farmers. In turn when they carried their crops to market, the buyer told them, says, "If you use my baskets and my boxes and my cups, I'll buy your strawberries and your corn. But if you don't, I'm not going to buy your crop." So the man that bought the produce on the produce markets in Wallace and Fason started buying boxes from them, too. You know, you're factoring bringing into here making a profit on them selling them to the farmer. And then buying their produce back. And the hogs—either he had to change over to the new style box or quit. So—I've still got some corn boxes.
They didn't get floated away, sugar?
Well, we hung them in top of the pack house that were made back fifty, fifty, sixty years ago. I saved them. When the building blew down in Fran I took those boxes and moved them to another place. To just show grandchildren a little bit of the history of how we worked.
And how is that like—you said that was an example like the hog business.
Well, the hog business—we had to make a decision whether to go into the contract growers or continue on working with individuals that had their own few animals on the farm. And so I knew that we either had to get bigger or close down. And my brother was running the feed mill and he couldn't make a go of it. So at that time my daddy still had ownership of it, and he leased it to someone else that was close kin to the Murphys. He made cow feed for Murphys and stuff like that. But their production was in hog feed. And you use a much rougher roughage in the feed for cows than you do for hogs. And so he stayed on for about eighteen years and closed up last year.
And why did he decide to close up last year?
There was no—there was no business.
No cattle feed to speak of.
No cattle feed.
Because there were no cattle.
Well, Murphy, see, has got cattle on all their hog farms to eat the grass where they spray this stuff out of the lagoon, the manure. They spray it on pastures and put cows on it to eat the grass.
So most all Murphy contract growers have cattle, or the cattle belongs to Murphy, too?
Most of the time the cattle belongs to Murphy, too.
Oh, okay. And Murphy is from right here. He's from this county. Did he start growing hogs like you did?
Yeah. In fact we made feed for him.
A few at a time.
We made feed for Wendell and his daddy, Holmes Murphy, when they first started—before they ever put up their mill. They put up their mill over here at Register's. And I heard Wendell tell this story many times. He started with $10,000. His daddy had to sign for him to borrow $10,000, and he put up a feed mill. And they started feeding cattle, and they went broke. And he went back, and rearranged and started back again. And I'm sure he'd tell you they've been broke at least two or three times and have managed to come back.
What changed? What made him so successful? He went broke three times.
Well they went into corporate—this big, big contract growers. And one of the big feed companies, I'm sure were backing—
He started using the poultry model. Is that where he got it, you think, from the turkey growing system?
I don't know, but I think Wendell was the main one who came to poultry—I
mean the hog houses and stuff. And the designs have changed over the
last twenty years. He took hogs and they were growing hogs on ground.
And they went to the confinement to keep the hogs from running away on
the ground and fighting the
So these houses they have now are air-conditioned, heated?
Well, they're vented either by fans and your pig—their houses are
climate controlled
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
You began talking about the feed mill. You said something about it being from a past era. But you kept running it anyway. That it was obsolete, I think you used that word. At some point you began to realize that agriculture was marching on to a different tune. And you were still in the old feed mill and old business, or at least your brother was.
Well, he—they decided that they didn't want to have to put up the money to go into this new style hog producing. We've done—I've done some of it before he quit. I had some—I had two people that were contract growing pigs for me. I furnished the sows and all the stuff.
For your slaughter business, your meat selling business.
I quit the meat.
Okay. This is after that.
I killed just for myself. Later on—I don't remember what year it was—hogs fell down in about '70. Anyhow, I lost sixty, seventy thousand dollars in just one year's time. In the fall I had gone to PCA in Kenansville, Production Credit, and borrowed enough money to buy grain to feed my hogs for another year. And hog prices were down so until I didn't have enough to sell on the futures' market.
And I was—the cash that was coming in was not enough. The profit was gone and I was losing $40, $50, $60 a head on every hog I sold, so I decided—after I had already got the financing—to quit. And I started selling it, and in 1979, '80 I quit the sand business. I went in and rebuilt everything—
You quit the hog business what year?
Along the same time.
Okay. Sand and hogs—
It was during—it was during what they called the recession. When Reagan
come in—when Reagan come in I was ready to see Reagan. But I didn't know
that Reagan was going to cost me everything that I had worked for. The
farm prices and everything fell, and he was cutting the fat. He cut our
livelihood completely out. And I'm not saying that Reagan was not a good
president. I still agreed with him on a lot of things, but as I look
back, he cost me everything that I had worked for as far as economical
things that helped us in this part of the country. And when you lose
that kind of money and keep right on pumping money into it—I have
learned since that if you've got enough money and can survive, and the
people that are backing you will back you long enough, you can come out
and make money. My philosophy was, when I was in the boat and I was in
the ocean, and I couldn't see land and the water was coming in the
bottom of it and I couldn't bail it out fast enough, the ultimate thing
that was going to happen to me was I was going to perish. I was going to
die. And so I quit my business. And the sand business, we had three
different government regulators that came in and told us what to do and
how to do it, and didn't supply any money. They spent my profit for me.
And at that time house building had stopped completely; there was no new
So the river had supplied plenty of sand. It wasn't a problem of finding the sand. It was still there in that swamp?
Well, on our land we had sand left but it was getting on down. But we couldn't pump out of the river; you couldn't go to the river.
That was one of the regulations.
You had to stay away from the river.
So that old barge that was made at one point—
That old barge was replaced in the seventies, I believe, with a steel
barge that was three foot deep, quarter inch or three eighths metal. The
steel came out of a jail they tore down in Greenville. It was solid
sheets of steel, great big sheets that they cut out of a prison, a
county jail. Anyhow, we got it, got it built. A man down at Snead's
Ferry built it, and we hauled it back here and put it in the water. We
put a
And that was one of the citations?
I told them I said, "Do whatever you have to do." So I shut it down.
Eighty thousand dollars in citations. We furnished a reconstruction
program every year. [Sliding door opens and closes.]
Yeah, so, in my mind that's a clean industry to have. You're just harvesting sand that's washed down by the river.
We had a lake. I was not
It wasn't at the river even, but it was—
It was just on a pond, and we were just making a plumb digger by pumping the sand out and hauling.
It was just down in the ground, and as you dug it out the water was filling back.
Yeah.
Well that's so—
Sad.
It is. It is sad, because here was a business that was running. And now we have, in comparison, these hog businesses that are polluting the river, doing lots of damage. We've been hearing story after story of hog manure going into houses and getting all over their clothing and every book they have, and so forth. And that isn't regulated out of business at all. I mean, it's something that continues.
And liability is going back on the producer and not on the—on the grower, not the company. The farmer, the farm person who has inherited or worked a public job and bought him a piece of land big enough to start a hog operation that's struggled, that's paid taxes. And when he put in that hog operation his taxes just went to thousands of dollars a year in property tax.
It goes to buildings, or—
The buildings, because of the amount of borrowed money that went into circulation. He's had to pay so much property tax.
So it's really nothing he owns. It's something that's setting there that the bank owns.
That's right. That's exactly right. And then if he doesn't make his payments—. A lot of the folks they say now they would have never done it.
And now how do they get out?
They've got to work it out to pay for their houses. And when they get them paid for they'll be obsolete and they'll have to be disposed of, or let it rot down or whatever, or build new ones—tear them down and build new ones. And they're already cutting out a lot of the growers.
They're—why are they doing that?
Obsolete.
Oh.
We cut a piece of timber over in the Beulahville area, and the houses were some of the first ones that were built for hogs back there. They're paid for. Stood a chance then to make a good living. And a hog house is something you can't grow anything else in but hogs. You can't convert it into anything else. A chicken house or a turkey house you can use to store a tractor, equipment, farm equipment.
But a hog house not. So you got into the timber business, and you mentioned removing debris. You also mentioned that—you said something about being a preacher. These are things that I haven't heard you talk about at all.
In 1980 things got mighty tough. And I always felt like that I had the strength to endure anything. I was not afraid of anybody or anything. And oftentimes in years past my wife would ask me, "How are you going to do what you're starting out to do?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to start." My granddaddy used to tell me in my younger days—he was eighty-four when he died—he told me, says, "I can't tell you what to do, but—he says, I'll help you." And he helped me. I had a place at the beach in 1979, '80, and things got bad. I sold it, paid off what I had that I could pay off.
Did you have to pay those citations or did you just sell the business to pay for them?
I didn't sell the business. I just stopped operations and told them I just wasn't going to pay it.
Okay.
And daddy still had title to the land. The bond was in his name, so they
just backed off. They broke me and then the times broke me, Reagan's
time broke me. And so I quit. I sold out the hogs. In the meantime, we
had trucks that were hauling produce to Florida and freight back south.
[Noise as before—air conditioner—subject extremely difficult to
hear.]
I'm forty-three now. I remember the gas lines.
Well, I shut the truck—I shut the trucks down. I owed some of them
What bible school?
Heritage Bible College in Dillon, North Carolina.
And they're what denomination?
PFWB, Penecostal Freewill Baptist.
Okay.
The same as our home church.
Are you the pastor of the church here?
No. I've been out for two or three years. I haven't gone to the church. This is our daughter-in-law, Carol.
Hi Carol. I'm Charlie Thompson.
This is Charlie, and this is our youngest grandson. He was born right after the flood.
The night you made it out.
That's one of the reasons we had to get somewhere to live.
Right.
And FEMA was promising us but they never would do anything.
Now, tell me a little bit about the timber business and the debris removal, and then I want to hear about the flood.
Well, after all these years I had the sawmill. Daddy was building some
houses down in Florida in his retirement. He was gone a lot. In fact, I
cut the lumber and hauled the lumber, sheet rock and materials down to
Florida when he built his first houses in a way out about place; he
bought land cheap. But he furnished the timber, dressed it. Got a
planer, got all, everything it takes to fix the wood. And all the years
in the meantime I was still running the sawmill. So I learned from my
granddaddy how to run the sawmill and all these other things, and we
just kept running the mill. And after I went to college I pastored a
real small church. The
Where was that?
Down in Willard. [Baby crying]
That's an accomplishment. So you're now—are you still in the sawmill business?
I've still got the sawmill. It hasn't been run since
Since
[Baby crying.] [Baby crying. Subject cannot be heard. Noise of air conditioning
continues to obscure subject as well.]
And you've been working on the debris removal? Is that what you're doing
with most of [Baby crying.]
I left mental health in the eighties. I went to Clinton and worked for
Turlington Lumber Company. I never saw a band saw in my life. [Telephone rings.]
Turlington?
Turlington
Oh Clinton, okay.
And I stayed there a year, and come back to Wallace
There's a landfill between Clinton and Roseboro.
It's a private or
Where much of the debris is going. Well, you want to talk some about your experience with FEMA? You live down there on Highway 41. That's about where we are now. That's where your house is, right?
FEMA promised they were going to help us. After several weeks they sent
us a check for $337 and
When was that they told you they'd get you one?
Well this was—
You contacted their 800 number?
Oh, oh yeah. They called me two or three times a week on my mobile. That's before we got a telephone, anyway.
Before you had electricity, wasn't it?
No, we had current here. See, down in that area we—some places don't have current now. Where my daughter lives—you know where you turn up here at the crossroads and went that way?
Yes.
Before you get out to the highway, she lives up there. And that's where we were staying after the storm. We stayed there with all our family together.
You and your wife—Betty and your daughter and her children and husband. Anybody else?
Our son, his wife and their two children. My daughter, her husband was sleeping in a chair, sitting up. And he was—had hogs and stuff. And current come back on Friday afternoon. We got up Friday morning the water was up at the edge of the yard where it got to in 1962, so I knew we were going to have to move out. And I had a generator running. I had got up early that morning and took a shower and shaved and everything. And I saw motion in front of the house and saw trying to get people out.
Saw the truck going back toward—?
Yeah. And that was on up in the day after we had—my son-in-law went and
got his big truck and came back. I had—a freezer was setting—we had two
freezers [Baby crying.]
Raised in your garden?
Yeah, and a lot of things that we could live on if we could just keep.
So we carried it to her house in the truck and plugged in the generator
enough to keep it going. And the current come on at the house that
afternoon. So all we had to do then was plug in everything to his and
cut the generator off. We had fuel tanks that we used in the woods, and
I had just bought two more five hundred gallon tanks on trailers. I had
fueled up one of them with gas and another with diesel, so we had fuel
to run the generators. And—but we didn't need the generator after the
current come on. And we got the telephone back in a few days. We hung
around there and they were going to help us. And the people talked real,
real nice, real compassionate. I have no problem with any individual in
any of the flood management. We loaded my pick-up on a
And then the feed mill, too?
It was something [Competing conversation with others in room. Difficult to
extrapolate conversation between interviewer and subject.] [Baby screaming.]
Right. There are a lot of old people in the community. All of your people in the generation before you have passed on.
All my people are gone. I've got a brother and a sister, and they're gone. And they were on the hill. But all my kin people are gone.
And now you're going to tear down the mill.
Now we've got to. It took me awhile to decide, but I think there's nothing to do but tear it down.
Because of the water damage?
Wind and water and the past two hurricanes have took its toll on it. If
there was a business—the business was going on during Fran and Bertha.
There was a barbershop in it. We put a logging and trucking office in
the milling part of it after the mill shut down. I was running it out of
our house. And just me and Betty, we had plenty
This is your history. This is your grandfather's place. Do you have to pay to tear it down?
Well, we're probably going to have to pay to get it put on the ground,
but there's another situation. I've been trying to find somebody that
maybe could use some of the stuff, that would just pay me to get it out
or come get it out. There's two hundred and twenty-five horse electric
motors, two Hammermills. One of the starters that starts those
engines—those electric motors—used cost $2,500. And there's starters.
There's breaker boxes. There are main boxes as big as that wall. I mean,
just panel after panel of electrical boxes that somebody could use.
Looks like it would be worth it to them to just come get it. And rain
bins. But I'm not going to be able to find anybody that's interested in
doing it. So I don't know anything to do but to salvage and just tear it
down
As far as you know you're going to foot the bill for that.
Well, I think I'm going to have to. I don't know of anything that'll help me.
How about with your house? Are they paying any of that tearing out or removal of the debris?
FEMA give me $4,089 to be spent for structure.
On your house?
On the house.
But nothing for the mill.
No, and they said I should apply for a SBA loan. I did. I stayed at the accountant's office for several days and prepared all the stuff. And the inspector come, looked at it and measured everything. And they called me from Atlanta, Georgia last week. They wanted all the financial information on the logging company and the trucking company. I said, "What has this got to do with me getting a loan to tear this down and build a building back?" And they said, "Well, we've got to have it." And I said, "Well forget me." They had to have every financial statement, and that would have cost me several hundred dollars at the accountant's office. I figured the best thing to do is forget it. And I told them anything that they had of mine, any paperwork, to send it to me. They said the only way I could get it was if I sent them a letter requesting it.
So they've now got all this information.
In the computer that it won't get out.
Right.
And I mean, a low interest loan. I can go to the bank and get all—I can get what I need. And see the man, he knows me. When I see him at a gathering or on the street he speaks to me. If he's got a problem he can call me. I'm not afraid he's going to threaten me. He's not afraid to loan me some money. So I decided the best thing to do is leave the SBA alone. And the buyout, I've heard there's been people three years back that sold their stuff and have not got paid for it yet. I hate to spend a lot of money back on my house and that place, but I think I will. My insurance company give me just a little bit for roof damage. I put it in the bank.
Roof damage because that was wind damage.
Yeah.
But with the water damage you didn't have insurance. So many people didn't. So—well, I've got a lot of questions. The—can you talk any about the River Landing [development owned by Wendell Murphy]. You said you logged down there.
We logged back when they first started building. And I told them, I said, "This place floods." And they said, "No. We checked the records. It doesn't flood, never been flooded." And I said, "I know it has." In fact, while we were in there logging—and I think that was one of the reasons they didn't let us finish was the fact that we told them it had flooded and didn't want to hear it.
They didn't want to hear it. But while you were logging it flooded.
It flooded. And the roads that we were using to go to our decks when we
were logging at—a couple of times, and this was just a few weeks
Well as a preacher, as a community member, as a former farmer and logger and all this, you have a perspective that maybe no one else we've interviewed has, all these things put together. Do you think this was an act of God that this flood—you know, how people call it that. Do you believe that's the way it works, or how do you interpret this whole question?
I believe it was God's will that he allowed this to happen. I don't think it was by chance. God is nature, but God is more than nature. I believe that God controls the elements. And according to the Bible he brings floods and the storms. Now, I don't believe it's because of judgment. But yet, I can't say.
Well, how about all the hog manure and all that. Now that's—is that related to God's will?
Well, I think the—the protection of animals in this area is nothing but individuals and greed. They've used the things that have been provided for us to make a dollar. And nothing's wrong with making money. It takes money to live, but when things get so concentrated and gets—and you get over producing for the environment, then you have problems. And now the flood itself has been—1908 the flood was not as high as it is now, but yet it was higher than it was in any other time in history that I know of. In 1962 a lot of people's homes were destroyed, some of the same people, same families, haven't forgot it—were hurt, damaged. And they've come back through it and gone back through it again. But I think that their whole system has been altered to the point that that's the reason this flood came. The water came from the heavens. The storms were created because of God's plan and device of making this world. But I believe when I-40 was put in—and this is just my thinking—but I-40 was put in that comes from the mountains all the way to the coast. The rain came so much and in such a big area that I-40 acted as a funnel to channel the water down in this low part of the state in a hurry. Had that water been held off by timber, forest, by ditches that went their circulation through the woods and different areas, you know, before it ever got to the river—
And swamps.
Yeah, and swamps. It created tide. But when you do away with the hedging or the elements that changes the flow of the water, when you alter that and you create a direct channel you speed up the process of the water moving off. So therefore, you've got a heavy flood. And I understand there were some lakes that the dams were opened, and I think that was wrong.
Now, what lakes are there on this river?
I don't—I can't tell you. Now this river only starts up here at Halsey.
Okay.
The northeast Cape Fear River starts at Halsey.
Right. So there's not any big lakes. But this is—your theory about the interstate is one that fits with history really well, because after the 1962—is that right?—'62 flood—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
And our children, if you've got a half an ounce of them, they were
going. Now he's drinking
He's going to grow. So we're talking about God's plan and also man's greed. You were saying something about that. It's hard to know where to stop these things. But some of these things that the River Landing, that we're hearing so much about—and hog farms that made River Landing possible and so forth—are just wreaking havoc on the community it seems.
Does other people feel—?
Oh yeah. I mean, it's pretty much the consensus that things have gone too far.
Well, if you pass the front of River Landing—now I haven't been in there since they built the houses—
We haven't been able to get in at this point.
I understand there's half million dollar homes in there; hundred, two
hundred thousand dollar lots. And I was told that they sold lots for
$70,000 when water [Air conditioning comes on again obscuring voice of subject.]
Uh-huh. There are people who are from Duplin County in there and also a lot of people from other places.
I understand that the folks in the FEMA paid them the limit.
Oh, you've heard that. That's interesting. I haven't. What is the limit?
Twelve or thirteen thousand dollars, I believe, is what they told us, and it could go on up to more than that.
Right. So do you get any sense about where the people were around—like the law enforcement and some of those people, officials of the county? Were they in—were they in River Landing at all? They weren't in Northeast according to most people.
I don't know. I know that River Landing were the people that FEMA were [going] to more than they were here. And I don't really have no problem with that. They were just as hurt as we were.
They were just as hurt as you were. But the media that—those who were filming any damage by the flood couldn't get in there according to what we've heard. Was there any other area that we haven't touched on that you had hoped to talk about, that you'd planned on when you heard of us coming?
No. I really didn't know what you were wanting. I kind of—what I felt is
kind of like I saw
Yeah. Okay. Well, let me ask you one other question about the future of
the community and the future of economics. You've been involved in so
many different businesses and business ventures trying to make a living
as a local person in the small
I think—I think the
Do you think it'll ever go back to people wanting to buy hams from somebody on a small farm? No?
No. It's just like our churches. Most of our rural country churches—and
there the ones I've pastored—family country churches. Now I'm not
All this is right around the interstate.
It's coming out this way. Eventually it will come on out in this
community. I don't think you'll ever see Northeast community dry up and
go away unless we have floods after floods after floods. The people have
invested here. They have raised their families. They buried their
parents and grandparents, forefathers. And I think they'll, you know,
continue on. My children—I've got two boys and one daughter. My oldest
son married a girl a half a mile of where we lived. My daughter, which
is next,
Come on it.
The church people died out.
Well, how has the church here in this community helped keep people together?
Well, it doesn't have a pastor.
Okay. That's why we haven't heard about him or her.
They're good people. But everybody doesn't go to church. The church in
this area, which has got a beautiful sanctuary—it's got every comfort
the church could offer a church family, but people are taking less
concern in the community with the church. Why? There's more things to
occupy their free time to give them what they need to live in this
world, and the church is left out. And it doesn't matter what
denomination or what doctrine. Most people will reach a age in their
time when they'll reach out to a church and reach out to God in some
way. Some do it when they're young
Where was he buried?
Riverview.
Riverview is in the community?
Well it's in Pender County, edge of Pender County down 117
So what is the secret to a close knit community? If you had to give a recipe for building a good community, what would it include?
Well, an opportunity to work, a place to minister and—and most people
want the opportunity to help somebody. If they don't have an opportunity
to help somebody they begin to become selfish. The Ladies Auxiliary
started out with the ladies from three churches came together and form
an auxiliary. It was Wesley Methodist Church, a Baptist church and a
Holiness church. And the ladies worked together. As a result of that
they began to have a supper on Saturday night. They started out
Now just one way to tie all that in. You raised hogs. Where were the hogs raised for that first barbecue? Where do they get the barbecue now?
The hogs were—
For the supper house.
Years ago, I don't know. I imagine they were dressed at somebody's house.
Somebody raised them in Northeast.
And then back across that little road there where the fire department
is, where the V is and the fire department's right here? Off back there
they had a place
Does the corncob give it a good flavor?
Good flavor and quick fire.
Uh-huh.
I mean, it's quick and really hot. And at that time we had the corn
mill, there was plenty of corncobs for free. All he had to do was—. He
bagged them up and kept them dry. And he could—if his fire died he'd put
a few corncobs on there and he had a hot fire
Bought from where?
So you still can—you can still find a few people who raised hogs—you can buy it from a smaller producer/grower? Or are those Murphy Farms hogs?
Probably. Barbecue-size hogs are usually cull hogs.
You can buy cull hogs from the farmer himself, or you go to the company directly? How do you buy it?
These cuts was like Caroll's [hog/turkey integrator] and all these big
outfits will cull their hogs out of their farm, hogs that are not
ruined. Not necessarily sick but just slow growers, not fat, not
prolific but just culls. And instead of throwing them in the salvage bin
they sell them to these small slaughterhouses that in turn sells them to
the
But there's no small farmer making a living supplying these little houses, these little slaughterhouses. There's one down there Interstate 40, right as you go into Wallace on the right there.
Well that's—
They sell hams.
They sell hams. They sell whole pigs. But they get theirs from a slaughter pen. Now, they're fixing to put in a new slaughterhouse in Warsaw, and they'll deal with barbecue sized hogs. They'll deal with hogs from Carols and markets and stuff like that.
Well why don't we stop here, and then we'll go maybe if you have a few minutes to go to the feed mill. What we have really been wanting to do—I'll turn the tape off.
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
Has missed out on that process. See my boys—Ricky's thirty-five, Morris is twenty-seven. They knew how to kill hogs. Ricky—Morris not necessarily—but Ricky knows how to dress a deer, dress a turkey, do anything it takes. And they're not—they're just ordinary people. But they always—they wanted to know and I spent the time and we've been through the process so that they'd know. If times come where people have to go back to the farm and raise their own food there'll be a lot of hungry people, because they won't know what to do. I mean, farm people won't even know what to do.
Farm people won't?
Farm people won't know how to dress a turkey. They've growed turkeys all their life.
Because—
They've never done it.
They just grow them and somebody else comes to get them in a truck.
Right. And when you start in another generation of children that are raised on those farms that knows anything about anything except taking care of that animal, feeding him and they load him on a truck and you never see him again. And they've missed out on the whole operation of livelihood, what it takes to live.
You started two, three or four different businesses, and you watched you grandfather build them from scratch and invent the machines. Are all the people who can do that gone now? Are we now a generation who can't do for ourselves?
Well, I think with the logging, I knew that logging had been a part of our life—or my life and my daddy's life, my granddaddy's life. Back whenever. I left out one of the biggest part of our history was tobacco sticks. You know what I'm talking about?
I do.
We for years cut tobacco sticks. Well, I can cut tobacco sticks on the
sawmill on the carriage, or I've got a stick mill that I can cut it in
boards and run the boards through the stick mill and cut tobacco sticks.
And I've cut them up to just a few years ago for the poultry industry.
They were using tobacco sticks to put down for the—for the laying hens
to walk on. Those laying hens were so heavy you couldn't put them on
concrete. They put then on wood. Now they've gone to plastic because
wood has got [Telephone rings.]
Then that stopped. People don't use tobacco sticks anymore. Is Northeast going to stop being able to do for themselves?
Betsy [Easter] asked me a question last night that I didn't know how to answer. She asked me, said, "Is it right for us to have to—is it right for us to ask for help?" And I think that is determined by the individual. Most people will not ask for help. And I don't think it's because of too much pride. I think it's because they've always tried to work out their own problems and deal with their own handicaps and troubles as they've come. But yet in this community in times past people have always helped one another. For instance, when my brother-in-law died back, he died and was sent down here to be buried—the storm before Floyd. What was it?
Dennis.
Dennis. Dennis come through and turned around and come back, raining every day. He was buried between the two times. Well the community brought food to the house. And this is—this is people from this area, and he was from Hampstead area. But Betty and her family were from this area, not necessarily affiliated with the church, but just community. Born in it and they moved off years ago. But come back to die, I mean, to be buried. The family was at our house. The day of the funeral there was so much food that you could not believe the amount of food and it all just great.
It wasn't store bought food?
No. No. I'm talking about country ham, butter beans, field peas, fried chicken, cakes, pies, desserts of every kind. And they brought food for three days. And the last day at the funeral everybody was—there was a lot of people there. Family that lived in Fayetteville, Wilmington and everywhere out of town people. And I just told them, "Come back to the house." And a lot of them did. The house was full. And when everybody had all they could eat there was more food than a farmer could eat. Now people couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it; they said, "I've never seen anything like it." And I've never seen anything like it.
How'd they learn to do that?
Individuals who cared enough to see to it and put legs to their
ministry. And that generation has gone from one generation to another.
I've seen at least two generations of people that
Do they do anything like that when somebody dies down at River Landing?
He probably couldn't get in there.
It must be a lonely place to live down there.
I've never thought about that. But I know a lot of people that lives there. You know, a lot of people, professional people, that make good livings, and that's the way they choose to live. But people don't visit like they used to except funerals and weddings and junk like that. The church used to be the center of all the social gatherings, even when I was younger. Now it's not. But I think the Ladies Auxiliary has helped a lot. I can name you a lot of them, but I'm afraid I'd leave somebody out.
He's probably talked to some of them: Mrs. Matt, Kathleen and Jenny
Well, let me tell you this. When I started at Heritage Bible College I
had just gone through a financial crisis and had no money to pay
tuition. I didn't even know if I was going to get to go to work. I had
teenage children. Betty was working part—time at the A & P. It
closed up. She was making probably fifty, sixty dollars a week. I had
people that owed me money to come pay me. I had a bunch of cypress
lumber that I had cut out at the mill that people that were going to
James Sprunt Community College at night taking a shop course. Their
instructor didn't know me from Adam and didn't know me until years
later, but somebody had come by and bought a few cypress boards rough.
They wanted rough lumber to process it and finish it and make it into
tables or what—nots
Okay. We all ready to go down to the mill?
Before you go you need to call Morris. He's been—
END OF INTERVIEW