1 50 2 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/f099e09b459432a901e78277b4b4bc5b.pdf 6587e9c67687858b8dff9e6e706be022 PDF Text Text Interview with J. F. Parker Tape 467A, Side 1 . . . Trying to get a special election in the county to improve the schools in a certain county in a district, a certain precinct of the county, and I was looking after a little county store for my brother-in-law and while he was not busy I was trying to get people to promise to vote for day the bond. He came to the store and said to me one.'i when we'd been playing checkers and I'd beat him two or three times, he said, "How would you like to teach?" I said, "Teach what?" He said, "Teach school." I said, ''Why I've not ever finished high school." He said, ''Well" says "I believe you could teach." Well that gave me a boost. I had never worked at anything where it's anything more than just common labor and fact of the matter, I'd left home when I was a boy, about sixteen, and went to work for this man. My job was not only putting in work 10 hours a day but when I got in from my work in the sawmill or in the woods, I milked the cows after dark. A lot of times I felt for something, I says, "I think the cow's out there, I felt her but I didn't see her." So that was my job and that's working for 40 cents a day and I worked all slUTITler and he owed me sixty some dollars and he didn't pay me anything. He just fed me, and I went home on Saturday night, went back to work on Monday morning and he owed me $6S. When he started to pay me, to pay me up, he said, "You know, if you worked on for me a little longer I'll pay you SO cents a day." Well at 10 cents a day, I jumped at it. that. I worked on a lot longer at ~~~~~~~~~~~~~- But in the meanwhile I was looking out for this little county store and the superintendent tried to talk me into going to teach school. I'd been away from home .thru high school. high school. Well You had to go away from home to There was no high school in McDowell County and there was an academy in the adjoining county down here known as Round Hill Academy. �2 It was supported by the Baptist denomination and was quite a prominent high school at one time. and Wake Forest. It was rated well with such places as the university They'd accept those boys and girls who came out of that school. And I had gone down there a couple of years ... and that tickled me and I said, "Yes, I'll take that!" He said "Alright, if you'll come down to Marion we're going to have an examination for those who want to teach and ------- so I come down here and I stood the examination and didn't think it was very hard, and got along pretty good 1 thought. good in arithmatic. I was always As I was really a year or two ahead of my class in that, I was always interested in that and I want to say this about arithmatic and mathematics--I have never seen a good mathematiciam who was a blllil. I have never seen a good mathematician that was a deadbeat. And I ... Of course, you say I'm trying to make you think that I'm the real thing (Laughter) because I was good in that and I went on and did the best I could in that work. So I stood the examination and the last day of the examination I was preparing to go back home and he saw me out there and he says, "Julius, come in here." I went on in there and he says, "The man here wants to hire you to teach school." And I says, "I don't know if I passed the examination or not." And he patted me on the back and said, "Don;t you let that worry you." (Laughter) He was going to send me on to teach school! Whether I knew anything · or not! somewhere. in there. (Laughter) So now he sent me He sent me back up here in these mountains and there's no roads Two-thirds of the way up there you were in the creek, you're either on this side of the creek and on that side of the creek and most of the time you're in the creek, and I finally got up there. Well I didn't know where to go to get a boarding place and I didn't know where the man lived that hired me, so I over across the field where there was a pretty rough looking place over there and I though I'd try to find out if something was over there. I told them Iw-anted a place to board. �3 The girl said to me, says, ''Well the school teachers always board with us when they're up here." I looked the situation over and it looked pretty rough but I said, ''Well, do you suppose you could keep me?" Says, "Well I guess so. Mother'll be back in a little bit. She could tell you." She came in, happy also, and says, "Yes, just come on in here and stay with us, we'd be glad to have you.'' The room that I's to, for my room, was a side room out to the side of the house and they didn't have any floor in the place. that. They'd laid plank down on the ground then put the bed kindly up on Well, you know what? I wasn't afraid of those people up there although they were some of em not much. But I wasn't afraid of those people because I'll tell you what I was afraid of. They's snakes all over the place and I was afraid to get out of bed at night on the ground. step on a snake. I was afraid I'd So I tried to stay in bed in the morning until I could see where I was going, but I never did get snake bit. But I'll tell you, that was one of my problems. I went on to school Sunday morning, Sunday school. And when I got there I hadn't quite seen anything like that that was going on there. TI1e young men and the young women had cornered off over there and the schoolhouse where they'd have preaching is about half as big as this, just a little place, hold 25 or 30 people, and these young people had cornered off over there and they kept doing something that I didn't understand what in the world was taking place. I kept watching to see what it was and I'd see em move this way and move over that away and on back around and I kept wondering, ''What's taking place here?" And after awhile I saw that they had a snuffbox, a great big old snuffbox, you know. And what they was doing, they had a stick about that long, called a toothbrush, made out of gum, and passed around to this girl and she'd put that in there and put it in her mouth and pass it on to her boyfriend and he'd put his stick in there and pass it on around. And they . . . most thing that bluffed me, I had known that people dipped �4 snuff but I didn't know it was like that. Usually, you know people chew tobacco, chew, and use snuff, they have to have a place to dispose of something. And where do you suppose they put it? On the floor. bwh r bwh! (Laughter) And I thought to myself, "My God! Just . . . bwh! Am I going to have to teach school in this place?" Well I'd gone up there like I was going to set the world on fire and I couldn't run off. My brother had carried me up there, (he) said, ''You're a fool for staying up here, let's get out of here 'fore we get killed!" I said, "No". I was staying. So :Monday morning ent over there bright and early to clean up that schoolhouse and it I w tobacco, tobacco had dried. And when I'd sweep that, it'd just, /\ you know, dust came up in my face. Well everybody up there told me about a little character who had given so much trouble that the teacher just couldn't do anything with him. He was just a little devil and there was no way anyone else could make anything out of him. looking for Avery. So I found out his name was Avery Elliot. Everybody had been telling about how mean Avery was. He'd tie the school up and he'd run you off and all like that. watching for Avery and sure morning. bit. I kept enough ~ I kept he came in with the other children one I said, ''Hello Avery." He kinda looked up at me and grinned a little All teachers were enemies of his. Of general principle, there was no teacher that was any good in his way of seeing things. of his to start with, he'd expect it. And they were enemies So I was determined that I was not going to have a fight with him. I had been a boy myself and I knew some of these things myself, you know. So I determined I was going to have trouble and I begin to try to get on the good side of him, but he wouldn't make friends. Didn't want you about. So about the second or third day of school, a little boy or a little girl one came up to me where I was behind the table up there. They said, "Avery has got a snake in the schoolhouse." I said, "Got a snake!" They said, "Yes!" I got up and went back there and says, �"Avery, where's that snake?" · (Laughter) He says, "Down here." I said, ''What are you going to do with it?" He said, ''Well, I guess I'll keep it a few days and kill it." I said, "What kind of snake is it?" He said, "Ah, it's an old moccasin." I said "That's interesting, where does those moccasins live around here?" He said, "Ah, they're up and down the creek everywhere. You can catch em any time." to do with it?" I said, ''Well, uh, what we going I says, "I want in on this thing. I want to help you see what we can learn from that snake." And he began to get interested. finally said to me, he said, "Do you like snakes?" He I said, "'No, I don't like em but," I said, "I'd like to know about them!" So we finally got to where we could make the plan that we'd get a big bottle. We'd put that sn:.ake in it and put some water in the bottle with the snake. And before we put the stopper in there, we'd cut a notch on top of that up there so he could get breath in there, and he'd have the water, and then we planned what he was going to eat. Well the whole school were complete1y· dtm1.bfounded. were surprised beyond question that I didn't take him up beat him to death 'cause he had a snake that day. by They the nap of the neck and · · We put that snake up in the schoolhouse and he said,"The eat crawfish and they eat spring lizards." "Well could we'"'catch I says, a spring lizard?" He said, ''Yes sir, I can catch one." So he went down there and caught a spring lizard and we put that spring lizard in there with the snake and put him up here on exhibition. he was my friend. From that day on I saw him not long ago at a bank here in Marion. someone call my narne--the teller or someone had called my name. ' Heard And there was .. an old, old man came over there, all drooped and face wrinkled, and asked me, he says, "Is this Julius Parker?" know me, do you?" I said, "That's right." He says, ''You don't I said, I looked at him and I said, " No, I"m sorry, I don't." He said, "I 1·m Avery Elliot". (Laughter) But the thing about it was that that kind of a school interested those people up there. And I stayed with it, I suffered through it and I had ... �SB where the teachers had been going up - and I'm a bragging on myself just a little bit - the teachers who had been going up there, they a lot of times didn't teach the school out a all but they got disgusted and just pulled up and left, and said the number of attendance there were always gotten so few that the teachers just quit and went on. But the day I left up there, in that school I had more children than I knew what to do with. Wife: We had a picture once of those, didn't we. Oh, I wish I had that picture. It'd be interesting. But those people are . different motmtain people of what I'm talking to you about than other mountain people 'cause it's a difference right here in this county when you talk about the motmtain people. There's a distinction between . . . there's different groups in the cotmty. They were hardy people. A mountaineer, a real mountain- eer, has gone through so much hard times and everything that they are toughened. It takes a certain amount of failures in life to make a person what they should be. I remember another incident about . . . Wife: Excuse me honey, tell em about the incident, said one day somebody called and said the snake was eatin a lizard. Yes! (Laughter) That's right. The snake and the lizard lived there together ever so long, about 3 weeks, 4 weeks, or maybe a month, before the snake decided to have dinner. (Laughter) Some child came to me and says, '~4r. Parker, they's eatin the lizard!" Everybody gathered up to watch him eat the lizard. (Laughter) Wife: Go ahead now. We had a wonderful school. The little children came and before I knew anything about teaching at all in those days, I figured out this: in many instances from the simple fact that they're not interested in what they're teaching. Y6u must become involved in what you teach .before you can get the pupils interested. Interviewer: teachers are a failure Arn I right or wrong? That's real true. �6 Another instance where the mountain people here, they're not easy, they're not easy to change their mind, was a few years ago, many years ago, it was about 1908 or 1909 in Rowan County there's a Negro down there by the name of Nat Crumb that tried to assassinate the sheriff of the county. to do it. He was hired And he shot the sheriff of Rowan County and they found out who it was by some means, I don't know what means, but they got after him and tried to catch him. Well he kept dodging the officers. In those days you didn't have cars., you didn't have phones, you didn't have anything like that so you could keep strictly in behind a criminal and he worked himself on into McDowell County. But pretty well scattered, they were looking for him and there was a warrant for him of $1,000 reward for his capture, He came here near Marion and they spotted him and had a shootout with the officers here and he ran the officers instead of them catching him. He ran them and he went into the woods and they were afraid to go in after him and so he kept working his way on up towards .farther and farther westward he got up here to Old Fort. Well I don't know whether you know anything at all about Old Fort or not . Interviewer: Not very much, no. Well they're a pretty tough bunch up there. people. It's a mountain town. Have always been, those mountain It was a town before Marion was ever made a mountain town, before it was ever made a town. Wife: The Indians had a fort up there. Yes, that's right. at Old Fort. And, uh. . . That's the first block where we stopped the Indians there That is from this way. Now Daniel Boone, he went from Boone back across those mountains that way but Daniel Boone never did come up this way. But anyway, Old Fort was an old, old town that has a population of 600 people, 6 or 700 people. But if you want trouble, if you're ever looking for trouble, why . . . it's available. Wife: (Laughter) What was you saying when I interrupted you? �7 So this Negro, he didn't know what he was getting in to. He had gone up there into the mountains and those people around Old Fort . . . now there's a rather odd thing about those mountain people up there, they were opposed to the Civil War. They thought that there was a mistake when the South tried to succeed from the Union. stay in the Union. They were for the Union. And they were opposed to the people who were slave owners, all this section south and east of us here. the people was :in favor of freein A Negro. Wife: They wanted to Come in Frank. And so these mountain Thi s i s our son, our farmer's son. (Laughter) We got him out on the Son: Wife: They're recording. They're recording. Well, I better hush, hadn't I? (Laughter) They were in favor of freeing the Negro but they didn't like the Negroes. They didn't want em about em. the idea? They didn't want em up there. Can you get So they wanted to free them, they thought it was wrong to do it, but yet they didn't want them. They wanted them to Sa.y out of their way. Well that feeling grew up for many years after the Civil War and this Negro who had been a shootin up these officers along the way here, he run on to Old Fort and they found that he was in that connrrunity. him. Someone had seen But at that time the Southern railway had what was called a helper. It was an extra engine that was placed at Old Fort when the train came through here with a heavy load going west. They'd hook this helper on to the train and pull it across to Ridgecrest and they they'd unhook and bring the helper back to Old Fort and wait until another train would pull up. So the people there in Old Fort was armed with everything they had, pistols and shotguns. So they's two boys, one was 17 and one was 18. One of em was named Linville Idle - that was the younger one of the two, and the other one was named Walt Porter. I think they were cousins. He was 18, I think that's the way. �8 And they were there at the depot that night, was a sittin there at the depot with their guns" ":. Well .' the engineer who was at that time running this, I ·- mean the engineer who was n.mn.ing this helper out to Ridgecrest came back from one of his trips. He'd just pulled across, he said "Lim, I saw that nigger up here on the railroad." I saw him as I went up. They said, " You don't say?" He's on the railroad." Said, "Yes, I saw him! and says--those trains as they went across there pulling a heavy load, they couldn't run fast on those heavy grades up there, you know--and "he tried to swing a train up there," says, "I'm sure he's trying to get away from here." And said "If you boys are really spunk to do it, I believe you could go up there and catch that feller tonight. l'm going back and pull # 35 across in a few minutes and I Ill take you up there and drop you off." I~ n Said, "we'll slow down, I'll have an understanding with the other engineer on the other engine." They had an engineer on each one of those steam locomotives, you know, in those days, and said, "I'll drop you off up there." Well, they made it up how they were going to do· it and so when #35 came up, that was a passenger train, he's going to pull across. These boys got on the engine with Ed Winslow and sure enough, they got to about Round Knob, that's 4 or 5 miles above Old Fort, I'll show you a picture of that directly, they saw him. Still trying to make his way across there walking and kept hoping he could catch a train to get away from here. And so as they passed by they slowed down and those boys swung out. Well, the plan that these boys had for catching him--you know you didn't have flashlights in those days, you had a lantern you know what an old time lantern was-- they decided that they would put this coat over the lantern and hide on the side of the road. And when he came up they could hear him walking. And when he came up one little. boy ·would .pull the light on him and the other one'd pull the gun on him and they'd have him. Well when they came up there, the boy that had the light in this lantern under his coat had smothered the light out and he didn't have any light. But they made a noise �9 and he said, "OH!" Like that. And when they did that they begin :.. to shoot. Now they claim they told him to halt and he wouldn't halt and they shot him, but the truth of the matter was that they shot him. whether they shot caught him. And I don't know g: running or whether they shot him, uh, when, but they Hauled;\back to Old Fort, Now you take boys of that type, motIDtain boys like that, and you can't head them off. They're determined, that stock in them was just simply so ingraded into their lives that they didn't like a Negro and they wanted a thousand dollars and that was it. But I've had other means to find out - talking about motIDtain people and the other more, possibly those who have had better opportlIDities than these mountain people have - besides these occasions to know that they are of a different background and they are interesting people. In 1928 I was working then END OF TAPE I, SIDE I when this crowd came in here from West Virginia or somewhere to organize this help at the Marion Manufacturing Company. I fotIDd that they was a marked difference in the people who were reared in these motIDtains, had moved into that village there to work,and the people who had come in here from the South and the East. We had two groups of people there and they all worked together, but they didn't think alike. So when this strike was about to come off, they had an almost even split in the people for and against the union. The people from the motIDtains, they just thought to themselves that "this has been a blessing to us that we came here and had a job." The people we~e working for have paid us very well. cash at the end of each week and we~e making a · living..'.and doing And the group that came in here from other places seemed to think that the company were thieves and taking advantage of the poor working man and getting rich. And so there's a difference in that feeling there and it developed into a very serious affair. Do either one of you know anything �10. about the strike at the Marion Manufacturing Company in 1928? Have you ever heard of it? Well it was quite a serious matter. It went on for ... finally closed the mill down and crune to the place where the people who were opposed to the union decided that they were going to work. if they could work to go work, and let them work. And the company told them they'd opened the mill and turned the power on And this group that was for the tmion, they was just as detennined they were not a going to work. line to stop them from going anywhere. 1hey put up what's called a picket Well, you can see from this standpoint that this was becomong a dangerous situation and on a certain morning and on a certain night, they tried to rtm--they were rtmning 3 shifts then--and a certain night, the night before the strikers had gone into the mill and interfered with the people who were working and tore down a lot of their work and crune very near to having a shoot out there. But the next morning, the officers were there to assist the people who wanted to work to go into the mill and this crowd was, people who were striking, were just as detennined that they were not going into the mill. Well, that was it, the sheriff was there and he told em when they gathered up around there, gangs of them 150 to 2 or 300 people, says, "now stand back, these people are going to work and you got to open this up so they can work." About that time one of the strikers had what's called a picker stick. You know what that Is? A Picker Stick? 111.at's a stick that's on a loom to knock the shuttle that away and knock the shuttle this away. knocked the sherrif down and jlllllped on him. killed him. And he off and Well when he did that, someone Killed the man that was on the sherrif. And from that, both sides went to shootin and when the fight was over, I didn't see it, it was a little before I went down to go to work, they was seven on the grotmd dead there and I don't know how many got shot up. Some of em had a bullet through their hats and some of them had bullets in their legs and everything else. down there that morning and it was kind of a sad time. Well I got Said, ''Who was killed, John?" �ll Bill was killed too. And so they was one fellow there by the name of Bill Twigs. . He was a character, he was , from back here in the motmtains. was on the side against the llllion, and he was cut all to pieces. knew where Bill got thsoe cuts on his chest and arms. And he I never Some said Bill calimed he's in the First World War and had to fight hand-in-hand with the Germans and other people told me it's not so, said he'd been fightin back here. He'd manage to get all cut to pieces. But Bill was in it and he was the one they had accused of shootin with a pistol in his hand and this story wouldn't be complete llllless you tell something about Bill Twigs. He never knew what the word "no" was. It did not make any difference what you asked him to do or if he could do it, the only word he knew was "yes". My boss talked to me about it one day and he said ' to me, he said, : You know, if I should go to Bill and say, Bill, I've got to go to San Francisco on a leave and just as quick as possible, I'm going to drive through in my car and I want you to drive £or me, Bill. Now how quick can you be ready?" Bill would say, ""In fifteen minutes!" He always got anything done in fifteen minutes. (Laughter) Bill was there that day and he had a part in that shooting and when he was tried, was tried and such a mess, never did convict or pllllish anybody for that killing. know who was guilty and who wasn't guilty. I don't But Bill was a character and I want to tell you ]ust a little bit about him because he was a molllltaineer of special interest to me. Like I said a few minutes ago, he didn't know the word "no". He's back over here till ... back in ... I think it was in Avery Collllty where Bill was from and he went to a flllleral. and Bill's telling me about it. A little girl died over there He says, "You know I went to a flllleral and they brought her to the side of the grave, the casket, said everybody just stopped and stood there. Didn't know what to do. Couldn't seem to know how �12 to proceed." Says, "I didn't lmow what they's a waiting on." Finally someone turned around, said ."I don;t believe we ought to bury her without having a word of prayer." Looked around and nobody never prayed a prayer in their lives, don't suppose. If they ever did, nobody'd heard it. Finally said to Bill, "Bill won't you lead us in prayer?" Well Bill had I reckon connni tted every crime that you could think of. And so I said to Bill, ''Well Bill, what did you do?" He said, "I led the prayer." I said, ''What did you say?" Says, "I told the Lord Mary had been a good little girl and I wanted him to take care of her." And he said, "Before I got through, I said 'We'll be along before long, better take care of us too. Make preparations for us.' " (Laughter) So I said, "Well how did you feel?" Bill said, "I felt good." And I thought to myself, ''Well it's a fime thing because it's possibly the first time you ever prayed or ever will pray!" Son: (Laughter) Oh Lord! I don't lmow what he's told you but another interesting story at ... you can't stay for a while, you could stay for three days and he'd still be talking. The flu epidemic, when he was working for Marion Manufacturing Company, just about wiped out everything back in '18. Flu epidemic was in 18? Yes. Son: Okay, That was an interesting story about you and the black fellow whose name I've forgotten. Yes, well in 1918 and 1919, there was the most deaths that I every lmew from any cause. It was the flu epidemic. talk here, heard about this flu? times of my life. Have you ever heard people in your ----- Will I think that that was one of the trying I never went through a time like that because it caught the people completely by surprise. just began to get sick. And people began to die. Nobody had warning that it was coming. The plant had to shut down, Nobody able to bury the Everyone was sick. People �13 people. To get a doctor was impossible and they's just 2 of us left. I was paymaster at that time at the mill and where we had 6 or 8 or 10 that worked in the office there, they's all out sick. 1here was one black man by the name of Hal Carson that didn't get sick and I didn't. For what reason, I don't know what I went through it because I was with it everyday. there and say,"please call the doctor. get a doctor." 1hey'd come in Somebody's going to die if you don't I'd go to the phone and try to get him but the girl at the office would say, "1he doctor can't possibly come. He's got, I guess 50 people here wanting him and he just can't possibly come. Well the first year, 32 people died in a village where the population was about 500 and the second year, the same thing with 29 died and my friends, people that I knew and everything. I told, uh, talking the other day, that I think it was the most trying time that I ever was. We hauled coal, the colored man delivered coal to them, he dilivered wood to them becasue we was selling wood and coal too along to help. The store was there adjoining the office, nobody in the store. People would come by and just want flour and meat or something to eat and I'd just dish it out to 'em. 1hey never paid for it. I kept a little record of it and went on til this dreadful epidemic was passed and I sit down and began to try to find out who owed what. Never could do anything much about it. So we just forgot it, 'cause the company I expect, spent $10,000.00 just helping the people, just for everybody. Now, those are stories connected with the mountain people. people are different. about it. 1hey've got a great background. 1he mountain There's no question But when this thing about finding out about those people, the time is so fast passing that what you called "Oral History", I understand that's where you don't have any documents or records of it--just what people says about it. It's soon going to be a thing of the past because those people are not mountain people any mote, in a sense of the word in that they are just like �14 any other people. times. I know you're tired of this. Interviewer: Son: Their children are educated and so on and it's a changing Oh no ... Tell 'em about Epler (?) Dad. Who? Son: Tell 'em about Epler. Well let me first tell 'em about ... now really and truely, when you get enough of this, be frank and say that's enough. I'm not sure we'll ever get enough, to tell you the truth Mr. Parker. Interviewer: Just either one of you say, "Well that's okay, We got enough for today." Interviewer: We don't want you to get too tired. Well, but first, I want to go back Frank and tell about this. had~been The crime corrmitted of the mountain people which is completely a closed matter. There's no way in the world ... Now for instance, what I started to tell you was this. Not long. . . Well many years ago "tis now, I was sitting one day at a desk and I wasn't very busy and I picked up a paper, a Morganton paper. At that time, the editor was Mrs. Beatrice Cobb (?) and she was the editor and I knew her in a certain way. And it was interesting to me because she had brought this out on the paper and made kind of a headline out of it and I got to reading it. And it said, in that article, says, ''We have been trying to make a complete record of the people who have been hanged in Burke County." And it said one of the famous trials and hanging was the, what? Silvers ... the name of that ... Silvers woman ... Son: Frankie. Frankie Silvers. Have you ever heard of Frankie Silvers? The only woman who was ever hanged in North Carolina for a crime and she was here in Morganton. And Mrs. (Miss) Cobbs said, "In connection with that trial, says, �15 "we ran across another hanging which took place in Burke County by the name of a man by the name of Ralph Noblett." Says, "I have searched my records here far as I know, everywhere, and I can't find anybody who knows anything about who Ralph Noblett was, what the crime was or any of the details whatsoever." But when she said Ralph Noblett, a bell rang in my brain. a person who knew about it. It happened to hit Now this crime was cormnitted before McDowell County was made a county which was in 1843 and we were at that time a part of Burke County. And so the crime was cormnitted in this part of Burke County but they carried him to Morganton to try him and that's where the trial was. So when I was a boy, a small boy, I'd say not more than 10 or 11 years old, I remember this story. There was an old lady who then was almost as old as I am now who lived over on that side of us. She had a daughter who lived over on this side of us and she walked from her home over to see her daughter occasionally and we were friends. She always stopped at our house and had lunch. she was sitting under an apple tree. And one day I can almost see that apple tree now. It was a warm day and we were sitting there and she told about the murder that Ralph Noblett cormnitted when she was a girl and even before the year 1843 this crime was corrunitted but she was a young lady at that time, or girl, and for some reason she was stmm1oned to Burke County as a witness. story of Ralph Noblett. And she told the Now it seems that there was a difficulty came up between Ralph Noblett and a man by the name of John Davis over hogs getting into the Davis' cornfield and eating up his corn. And knowing those days, can you imagine it, if you raised a corn field, you had to fence your land to keep the stock who was running in the mountains. that? You know . . . did you ever hear of So that was back in those days, so the Noblett's claimed the reason was he didn't have any fence. If he'd built a fence, it'd kept the hogs out. And he claimed that they were just downright thieves and (would) tear down any fence to go in there. And the trouble came up so one afternoon this fellow - �16 they had became such enemies, had such dreadful hard feelings for one another that this fellow Ralph Noblett decided he ' d settle it with John Davis. And he went down there somewhere and found John Davis going from his house down by the mill to feed his hogs, to feed his own hogs . He killed him, just hit him with a club, and he just came down across him and killed him and threw his body in the mill pond. Well, they caught him over in Georgia and brought him back here and tried him and that ' s where the end of it was . In those days, and I asked Frank about that the other day, they didn ' t bury that fellow, Ralph Noblett's body, take it back to the graveyard where other people were buried. But they buried it off on a lonely hillside by himself and as I used to go to school as a boy, the trail where I went by the grave of Ralph Noblett, there was a rock at the head and a foot there that ' s still standing there when I was a boy. I never passed there without feeling lonely . It felt like something about to . . . kind of sacred ground or something, I don't know what. And I went back to see about it several years ago and see if I could find that grave and long trees was standing there, that big arolilld, you know. It'd grown up and not a shadow. Son: Dad, you asked me about that the other day, why he ~~~~~~~~..-: was buried there. I referred to that story Secret of Harvest Home, where's buried outside the cemetery. Biblical. And I got to thinking about that and that is Do you remember the money that Judas took to the priest to give them for the betrayal? Judas, the Iscari ot \vhen he betrayed Jesus? He took the money to the church or to the priest and tried to give it to em . They took that and bought what became Potter's field and buried him there and not in the other burial ground and that ' s where that thing . . . I told you I thought the idea came from Europe somewhere, they brought it over here. But when I started thinking about it, it came from the Bible. the reason they did that . That ' s They wouldn't bury him out in the cemetery because �17 he was a murderer just like Judas was. (Laughter) Well I had wondered if you had run across anything like that where it was a custom that criminals not be buried in there. Interviewer : right. Does that . . . I haven't heard anything like that. But I'm sure that's I haven't . . . Son : Did you see Secret of Harvest Home . . . on television? Interviewer: Son: Okay. I've read that book. You know the woman was buried outside the cemetery . . . I'm internipting here, I gotta go . . . Interviewer: Son: Oh, no. That's okay. I know what you're talking about though. I thought that might give you some insight as to why Ralph Noblett was buried over on that hill and not in the cemetery, because the mountain people, the traditions that they brought with them over here, they stick to them very closely still now. If you get back in the mountains, which if you probably done, you'd find em. Wife: Son: I figured he'd tell about Efler(?) Okay, I thought that was interesting because of the circumstances of the hanging . He is the one they hung at Cross Mill and rode his coffin up . . • okay I ' ve got some business to attend to. I hope I see you before I leave, but if I don't, take care of yourself . Well I could go on and on and on but I . . . Wife: Well you have to tell about Efler? (Laughter) He was hanged in Marion. Tell about what? Wife: Efler. He's the one Frank had you tell about when you got off on that . . . �18 Yes that's right. County . Now they's only one man that was ever hanged in McDowell They've been men sent from here to Raleigh since they've had the electric chair and the gas chamber. Wife : Maybe you've had that told before. Interviewer: No mam, I haven't heard that story. I sure haven't. But he was the man that moved from Yancey County across into McDowell County and here at Buck Creek. I dont' know whether you noticed Buck Creek as you came in this away . . . right down here before you got to Pleasant Garden. back here in these mountains. Runs right And on the head waters of Buck Creek there's a man moved over there and he, for some reason, I don't know why, killed his wife. And he was hanged here in Marion, the only person that was ever put to death here in the county. He was a mountaineer, of course, and they said the whole affair was almost unbelievable. That they gave him so much whiskey that morning before they took him out there to bury him. I knew people who was, when I was a boy, were at who ./\ this hanging and they told about it. And told about how drunk he was . He was so drunk he couldn't stand and possibly didn't know when the execution took place or anything. of that rope. But there was a boy who worked with me who had a piece His grandfather was one of the ones who helped do the executing. I think he cut the rope thru the trap that took his life. I wanted to show you. . . . pictures . . . which was very co:rrrrnon in . . . I can remember . . . there's a man plowing , plowing with his ox. this fellow is riding a donkey somewhere. I don't know that one. called Uncle Tom's Cabin, surely nothing could possibly It's ~~~~~~~~~~- But these was old pictures taken back when the railroad was cut thru these mountains. shovel. And here of course, And here's some of the old homes down here that the mountain people often lived in that. that. There's something here Now those railroads, that railroad was built with a pick and They had no steam shovels in those days and they just simply had _mules and ... END OF TAPE I SIDE 2 �19 Tape 467B, Side I That's an old, old picture. Interviewer: This is a hotel in Asheville. And that's the French Broad River. Is there a train there somewhere? Interviewer: There's a track right there. There's somewhere where there's a train pulling that mountain that I was telling you about awhile ago. Wife: Is it over here somewhere? Well, maybe it's on this. Turn on the light and you can see better. Now this road was a1t through western North Carolina. thru the Swannanoa Gap at Ridgecrest. And there's the geyser. Old Fort. There'·s where it went That was all done by pick and shovel. By the way, they've restored that geyser up here above I wish you had time to go up there and look at it. Interviewer: Well that's really pretty. There's a train on there. That might have been the one that you were thinking about. There's the little train that was pulling up that mountain. grade there on those mountains. That's very steep I know you're interested in . . . Wife : You didn't get thru with Efler, honey. Don't forget him. Let me see, there's something here that I thought about. Now, uh, you 're talking about education and after the Civil War, the North never helped the South anywhere. After the war, the South suffered. They lived someway they could and it's right interesting to me to notice now that we even help Japan, �20 Gennany, and all those countries get back on their feet, but after the Civil War arolll1d we scramble~d lived somehow or another but there's nobody on relief. We were poor but everybody else was poor and we didn't know it. we didn't know it. We had horses and cows and plenty to eat. removed off of the table ever meal more than we ate. not to have an ablll1dance of food. clothes. We were poor people but We had, my mother We didn't know what it was We didn't have many clothes, had one suit of But there's nobody begging. Nobody living off food stamps. is a letter that might be of interest to you. 1bat there 1bat letter was . . . now my son who is in Texas, he is a dean of a textile school at the University of Texas. my yolll1gest son. He's younger than Frank. And he wanted this letter, the original letter, so they made me a copy of that before he took it off. And you'll notice that person there that wrote that letter could write pretty well. writing. 1bey never went to school a day in their life. after the Civil War and that was my alll1t. 1874. 1bat was 105 years ago. 1bat's It's very good 1bere's no schools And that letter was written on March 5, And if you could read it, it's quite interesting. You see, she . . . now this is one . . . she wrote on both sides of her, that . . . and see here's where it starts. And that's the second sheet over there. Read it out if you can. Interviewer: Okay. 1be state of Tennessee, Cooke County, March 5, 1874. Dear Mother and Father. I write you a few lines to let you know that I am well and hope these lines may find you and all well. it is a girl. I have another child, Her name is Tennessee . . . (maybe Ester, maybe). months old the twelvth of this month. She is seven Pap, I (Oh she's seven months old this month). No periods, no cormnas, or anything. (Laughter) Interviewer: Pap, I want to know what is the reason you and mother don't write to me. It looks like you have forgot me. all but I can't come at this time to see you. would come and see me. I would like to see you But I would be glad if you (She has a very good handwriting, she really does.) �21 I want you to write to me and tell me who is dead and who is married since I left there . I want to know what has become of Noah Southers' girl and if they are married. duce. Bacon 12~¢ Give them my respects . a pound. Flour 4¢ per pound. I will give you the price of pro- Corn 60¢ per bushel . Wheat $1 . 25 per bushel . I hear that the Bald Mountain shakes three times a day . I want to know if it's so . James is putting out a big crop on the Whitter (looks like) Luttens ' plantation two miles from Parrotsville. So I will close at this time by asking you to write to me and direct your letter to Parrotsville ML Bearhill Cooke County , East Tennessee . Now by the way, do you know who John Parrish is? Interviewer: The writer, the man who writes for the Asheville Citizen sometimes . You know who John Parrish is. Interviewer: Uhm, Uhm. Well now read this right here. Interviewer : Okay. . . there were widely published reports of volcanic disturbances about Bald and Stone Mountains in 1874. These are the highest peaks in the ridge of mountains a few miles east of the Blue Ridge between the gathering points of the head waters of the Catawba and Broad Rivers . Clingman's reports, articles, and addresses describe many phenomenon occurring in western North Carolina. Now that was not too· long ago in the Asheville paper . And this is referred to in this letter . Interviewer : That's what she's talking about, isn't it? Volcanic . . . Rather coincident, i sn't it? �22 Interviewer: I never heard of that before. anywhere in these mountains. I never heard of volcanoes What about that. Sort of like earthquakes and disturbances that way, wasn't it? Ulun, uhm. Interviewer: Well that's really interesting. It's rather interesting. Interviewer: It certainly is. She has a fine handwriting. I can't read aloud as well as I should be. But she couldn't spell anything, you know. She really does. (Laughter) She couldn't spell anything. But the poor thing did well to be able to write and in those days they just didn't have any books or anything else. Interviewer: Well at least she had it spelled where you could figure out what she was talking about. That's right. And that's what the English language is for.· out what's going on. Wife: (Laughter) To find Well, I don't know of anything else . . Are you not going to finish about Efler? Efler, wasn't that his name? Well, they, that's all they was to that, that I remember. Wife: He rode on his coffin to the gallows. Oh, let me see . . . that's something . . . the reason I have kept that, that was the uh, called Custard's Last Rally. You know what that was, when Custard and his forces were completely destroyed in South Dakota, I reckon it was. Dakotas. And I knew him personally. he was not a fake either. . .one of the The only man that survived that fight and Because he had papers to show from Washington that he �23 belonged to Custard's a11JlY at this time. And he had been dispatched with an Indian guide to go back to General Reno's office. back to Reno's forces and ask for help. slaughter. Not his office, but And he was away at this And I knew Mr. Knight, Dan Knight, and I worked with his som. I knew two of his sons well. One of them was a graduate of Duke University or Trinity College at that time, and his other son worked with me and I knew Mr. Knight well. And that's the reason I kept that, is because of the fact that, it's just because I did know the man that wis in that. you've seen that possibly. Interviewer: The only surviving .man ... (Shuffling papers) No, I don't believe I have. Now you know who Frankie Silvers was. Interviewer: Uhm, yeah I've heard of her. Well, have you ever seen that poem? Interviewer: I don't believe I've seen the poem, no. Well, you want to read it too. Both of them copies are the same. That's what she's supposed to have composed before she was hanged. Interviewer: Oli, I see. And she's the only woman to ever be hanged in North Carolina? Yeah, Uhm, that's right. Interviewer: It was pretty gruesome business wasn't it? It really was. Wife: Would you like a cup of coffee and a piece of pumpkin pie? Interviewer: Water'll be fine. Thank-you mam. �24 I don't know, goodness knows, that I was possibly the poorest prepared person that ever tried to teach in the world. demands than I could possibly fill. They had no vacation. But for some unknown reason I had more They was one year that I taught a solid year. When they found that I was not busy they asked me to come to that school and take up in the st.mlJller time when they's supposed to be farming if Now I don't say this boastingly because it's just as much a mystery to me as it is to you, why that was. But it's so. And so I went on and I was asked to be principal of the school here at Pleasant Garden. Now that was only when they had three teachers down there then and then they had a school that was considered better at a town called ville. I don't suppose you ever heard of it, it was a little place back in the Southern part of the county here. It was a gold mining region and they had some stores there, two or three stores. Two or three places that sold whiskey and so on. And so I was asked to come there and I stayed there three years and finished up my, what I had tried to do as a teacher there. And I folllld that some of the brightest students that I'd ever run into were right there in that school. That the truth of the matter is that they knew as much as I did and I had to study ever night to keep them fooled. (Laughter) I stayed up to midnight studying my lessons. And I kept them fooled til the last day I was there. had me cornered time after time. (Laughter) And you have no But I made it thru. ~ <lea how they (Laughter) I fooled them to the very end. Now I was talking to a young man, and I've had people visiting me here of all kinds of people, the poorest needy, like myself, and some of the richest, some of the high salary people, some rich people. I had a man to visit me from New Jersey not long ago who is a multimillionaire and he came to see me. still alive and he came up here to see me and talk to me. He heard that I was And I have talked to all groups of people of every strata of education of people down here, and I have always got something out of talking to those people just as well as to the person up here that was well educated. I had a young man who is the yollllgest official �25 that the Carolina Power and Light Company has ever employed to visit with me here not long ago and he and I were talking about what education means. where do we go to from here. Where have we come to, And I have made up my mind it's something like this. That you find very few high school students, now I don't know, I went to college just a little bit but not enough for it to do me much good, and I don't know how it is now. been 65, 70 years since I was in college. That's And that was Old Trinity College which is now Duke Univer· sity. In talking to this young man who is an official of the Carolina Power and light Co. he told me some things that he had observed and the very things that I am conscious of it. That education today is made up of so many graduates out of colleges and universities who know something about everything. You can't start to touch one of them but what they know something about it and talk to you intelligently about it. But when you pin down on some of them, "just what do you know about this particular thing," you soon have them cornered and they know a little about everything and not a great deal about anything. (Laughter) A young lawyer here was talking to me not long ago and he said his mother, now he was a graduate, he'd taken his degree at the University of North Carolina before he entered the law school, and he had, I don't know, 2 years or 3 years , whatever it is, you know, I don't know. I believe it's two years. after they finish their 'regular education. I believe they finished in two years .. And he said his mother was talking to him one day and she says, "Bob" says, "you amuse me". Says,"You know a littlebit about everything and you don' t know much about anything.'.' ''Y6u can't read, you can't write, and your spelling's awful." (Laughter) And he said he got to studying about it and looking at his writing and he said, "I couldn't read it, part of it. says, "I'd write it and forget what I wrote and couldn''.t read it." And like an old man back over here in the mountains, \ he's looking after a mans pasture over there, taking care of his cows. in town. He's a doctor. The man lived here Bought him a farm back there and had cattle on that farm over there and he wrote, ·this doctor wrote him a letter and told him what he wanted him to do with the cattle over there. And the man got it, the old farmer over there, got �26 the letter and he couldn't make out anything. to him. So he didn't know what to do. (Laughter) It was a lot of cooking bark Said he decided to come to Marion and take it to the doctor and say to the doctor, "Doctor, I just got your letter, I appreciate it, but I couldn't read it," and said after he carried on the conversation a little bit, after the doctor had quit thinking about him a telling him, he got the letter and so on, says, "Here's a letter I want you to read to me." Said he pulled the same letter out of his pocket and handed it and said the doctor looked at it a little bit and turned it up this way and he said, "What son of a bitch wrote this?" read his own writing. (Laughter) (Laughter) So that's the way Bob was. He couldn't So I was talking to this, going back to my story again, I was talking to this young official of Carolina Power and Light Company. He's a high paid man. I think his salary is about $45,000 and he has taken his degree out of college and his postgraduate. And I don't know how much maybe his father met. And he was talking to me about the same thing that we are about education today. And he said, "I'd like to see some of your books. Do you happen to have some of your old books there that you are talking about so much?" And I says, "Yes, I've got some. They're almost torn up." see em." Says, "How old are they?" Says, "I'd like to I says, "75 or 80 years old." He says, "Hunt em up, I'ct like to see em." Now I'm going in here and get some of those old books just to show you what we was talking about. Now I declare I got completely off this mountain story. Interviewer: Wife: That's perfectly alright. Maybe I didn't get enough ginger ale in that, did I? Interviewer: Wife: Oh that's okay. Oh it's good, it's fine. I picked up the bottle and poured some in it and didn't taste it. I don't know what you believe in religion churches. a Catholic (Laughter), you may be a Protestant. You may be a Jew, you may be And the same thing with you Judy. �27 Let me call you Judy will you? Interviewer: Oh certainly, certainly. And you just call me Jeff. Uh, but there's one thing about the churches that have been the most change taken place of anything in my life and I can't yet understand what is taking place. Interviewer: Now do you attend church? The Presbyterian Church, yes sir. Do you attend church? Interviewer #2: Episcopal. Well now I don't know about the Episcopals so much, but I'll take the churches that I do know about. Now you're the Presbyterian? Okay. where I was reared they had a Presbyterian church. Now in my coTTUTlunity Not right close to where I lived but they had what's called a United Methodist Church now and a Baptist Church in that corrnnunity. Well the services in those days and the doctrine in those days, it was preached to the people by, we assumed, a qualified and dedicated preacher, was so different from what they preach today that there's just as much difference as they is, I think, to believing Mohammedan and Jesus Christ, almost that same difference. Now in the church where I was reared they had, if you, before you joined the church you was supposed to show to that church that you had a change of life. That you were what they called a conversion, i:::' which means turning up and going the wrong(??)way, that everybody was born in sin and they had a certain amount of responsibility to God to change this way before you were accepted as a qualified member to join the church. Alright, now in my church the way they did, they formed what they thought was a conversion and I've heard people good and bad claim that they really had a change in life at a particular moment. That you were one way one way and suddenly that you became a Christian and felt in your life that that was so. Well they had what was �28 called a alter and as the preacher preached and gave the invitation to those who'd accept Christ to come forth and bow for prayer and kneel for prayer. Well, that's the kind of a church that it was and I didn't know, I thought, now I don't think your church ever practiced that. I don't really know the doctrine of your church. But I have friends who belong to the Episcopal Church and I know that we don't talk what and I find out anything about that. And after they were converted, they call a conversion, a change in their life. what they called a heart- felt religion, that you felt the change in your life, that you were a changed man. 'Then you were eligible to be admitted to the church but not before. would get up and preach about hell. He'd preach about heaven. really there was a hell, and I thought there was really a devil. was a heaven, I thought it was a good place to go. 'The preacher And I thought I thought there So I remember one night I went to one of these big, what they call a revival, and the preacher got up and preached the sermon and the sermon was like this. he didn't. He knew all about it. He made hell hot, don't you think And it was a tent meeting out in the country with such a great big tent out there. All the different denominations came in and took part in this and he made that thing real hot. a lot that night. here. And I studied about that And here's a little story . . . now please, let me make a request If you get enough-· of my talk, I want you to say this is it, that'll do for this time. END OF TAPE 467B, SIDE I Tape 467B, Side 2: and they thought he was going to die. and looked after them. didn't have hospitals. . . the In t hose days peop 1e went into community "" 'They didn't have nurses, didn't have doctors to come in, care of And they went in there to take I\ a sick man and said his friend was over there that night and they said that uh. . . the man, the sick man �29 got quiet, quleted down, and that man that was sitting there by his bed went to sleep! And said he had a dream and said this man, this was his dream ... he dreamed that his ... while he was there that his friend died. And when he died that he'd been a very sinful man and said when the man died said there's a devil come into the door. But he said before this devil came in the door, says a little creature about that high with horns and a tail and all that you know. And he ~aid that before this devil came in the room, the man died and said he saw the spirit of this man come out of the body and said the spirit begin to look all around, here and there, and everywhere, as looking for a place to hide. And said finally it ran out, the spirit ran out the door and they watched it, went across the road and off down like that, in the woods somewhere. And said all at once the devil came in and said the devil came in, told what the devil looked like, said he came up to his bed, looked at the man, the man was dead. Said the devil began to look for the spirit of this man, said he went and looked under the bed, and went and looked behind the door, and he went- - - - - - - And so after a while, the devil went out the door like a hound ... a bloodhound. He seemed to have a instinct or smelling to know where that spirit went. Said he followed him off over that hill there, and he said you know when that devil got down there, siad I had gone to the door and looked out and watching that and he said the spitit of that man screamed. everywhere. He says that you could hear him all over And he says, "All at once I woke up." Says "I got so excited in my dream',' says, " "I woke " and said "when I woke", said "the man was dead." Now he said that creature says, now if that part of the story did, if he actually died, the rest of this story's true. And he had me scared to death. (laughter) go to the mou01er's bed in a hurry. (Laughter) night, I went over to Oh! I thought better He had me scared. So that and I lived about half a mile beyond where my friends lived and I went with them along, and I kept riding because they were older men and hadn't paid no attention to it, of course. didn't want them But I was taking it very seriously, and I �30 to lmow I was scared. But I haa made up my mind along ago that the distance from this house to our house has never made as quick- by a hoyse or anything else. (Laughter) I lost no time (Laughter) because I didn't lmow where he might jl.nTip out you lmow, on me, yes sir. (Laughter) Now they said preaching is that, you lmow in those days, and they had what you called people 1vould shout They get up and say, "Glory to God!" Thank the Lord that the sometimes. blessings that you see If that thing like I have seen in that old ----- church back then should take place now in the First church in Boone, they'd call out the riot squad, every officer in town, the sheriff, and everybody else. Say there's a riot taking place. What is the truth? Interviewer: It's hard to say. Interviewer: I said that's hard to say. Hm? Some of the churches up in the motmtains way up in the mountains, way back, are still, still like that. They are? Do you have any snake handlers? Interviewer: There aren't any snake handlers right there around in Boone, I don't think. But there's some over in, towards Johnson City. some over that way. There's But I don't believe there are any, I haven't heard of any right there around in Watauga Cotmty .anywhere. There may be some but if they handle them, they don't, it's not real widely known I don't think. Well I have gone to churches when you leave a church you felt like it was good for you to be there. It's just,you had a betterfeeling,y0 u•·s just glad to be there and have a part in it. and dead. (Laughter) worse shape. And I've gone other times and it was so formal and dry You was sorry that you went. (Laughter) Interviewer: Uh, uh. You felt like you was in Now, you've been down to Beaufort. �32 Well, here's a direct example. You can size it up, put an interpretation on anything I say about this, but I know this will be so . The people in those days in the country church where I was, they believed in helping the needy. If you had sickness in your home, they'd go there and help in .case of sickness . If you had a death, they'd help you bury the dead . you planted your crops and yo~ If you were a farmer and couldn't cultivate it because of sickness in your family, they went in and cultivated that land for you . Set a day, the church would say "a certain day we're going to go over here to John's house and we're going to work out his crops." Now said, "every one of you come and bring your mules and your plows and get over there and you people with a hoe" . .. I don't know whether you've seen much of that hoeing going on now. But in those days, the hoeing, taking all the weeds out of the corn and so on, was just as important as the plowing or the cultivating part . They don't even plow now, they do it with spraying to kill the weeds out, you know . But then they did. Now here's an example of how seriously they took that. Now that was part of their religion. They not only claimed ,., , ..., to be what the Bible teaches them to do, but they put it into practice. When the Union Tanning Company came to Old Fort, they came there to Old Fort because of the fact that they'd get tan bark, what's called tan bark out of these mountains. It's an extract. (wood ground up and make an ooze for tanning leather hides. And a lot of those farmers quit the farm and went to Old Fort and got a job in that. Well they'd worked not five days a wecl) they worked six days a week from ten o'clock in the morning to six in the afternoon. Saturday and all. But they were off on Sunday . Well now here's an example where this church put their religion to practice. One Sunday morning they were in church and they said, "Well, how's John over here getting." "Oh, he stays in bad shape, been sick now for two or three weeks, and his crops going to grow up in weeds and nobody's done anything about it." And says, what do you know about it? And they said, "Well, I tell you what we'll do. Next week certain times we'll go over there and work out that man's corn crop for him." And on that day, they went over there and cultivated that soil. Maybe twenty �33 five men and plows and so on go in there, and one day they cleaned that whole man's crop out. And then on Sunday, the next Sunday, there's this crowd of men there at church and said, ''Well," said, " we were not able to get off our work to help," says, "what should we do, do about it?" One man said, "I'll tell you what we're going to do." Says, "We're going home, we fellows that didn't get to help last week, get a quick dinner, put on your overalls, Sunday afternoon, we go down there and finish that crop." Not only did they work 5, 6 days a week . . . now I don't know whether you call that breaking the saddle or not (Laughter). Does that answer your question? Interviewer: Oh, yeah. There was a man by the name George Truitt. heard of him. th e days. George W. Truitt. You know, orators. knew how to talk. I don't suppose either one of you He was an orator. There's just a few orators I'll tell you Appalachia used to have one that But that's before your day and your day. Did you ever hear of I.G. Greer? Interviewer: Uh, huh, yeah. You know who I'm talking about? Interviewer: Yeah. He knew how to talk. everyone else. He could quote you as such, he could quote better than And you'd listen to him ; he's boy, wasn't he? Interviewer: smart. And he was a mountain Over there right around Boone. Yeah, yeah, he was over there from somewhere. So I heard Dr. George Truitt preaching one night and he told this. Now he believed in what you called a heartfelt religion, not a dry formal religion that is more or less made~£ education and culture, and no emotion. There's a lot of people that �34 don't want to go to any church where there's any emotion at all. They want it to be just as same as if you go to a lecture, and anything else. A dry, fonnal affair There's other people that does not appeal to them, that they feel like when you go there, that I don't know, it's just sort of good music, and so on, and it's just awesome, just does something for you. ---------. And we call that sometimes, we call it emotion. So Dr. George Truitt who · served at one church in Dallas, Texas for 40 years, he went there as a young man, and he'd never held the pastorage of any church but hhis one church. He was there at the First church in Dallas, Texas and I heard him tell this. Wife: He came to Ridgecrest. He came to Ridgecrest , yes. Wife: He'd come up every stumner for a week. And he said that he was at a church and preached. \ ... ··, • And he said that some •I woman got up in the audience and said, "Glory to God!" (Claps hands) And begin to what they say shout. "Cause I was telling you about awhile ago when you were here, now if anything like that happened, they'd call out the riot squad. (Laughter) And he had, Dr. Truitt had a brother-in-law who was a medical doctor. And when this medical doctor who was at service saw this woman there, he felt like that woman was physically upset over something that she needed attention. got up and went back to where she was at. and said, "John, leave .her alone'.' And so he And said Dr. Truitt, said he called him So people changed. I heard a woman, heard of a woman, she didn't tell me this, belonged to the church where I belonged to. She said absolutely, "!don't want any of that emotion when I go to church." Says, "they can get up and preach a straight sermon or something or other." Says, "Appeals to my eye. Me, intellectually," religion stuff about me." says, "I don't want any of that heartfelt So there's a feeling in the world today between the two peoplP., the two classes of neonle yon take your choice. Pay your money. �35 take what you want. we The church that I belong to received about (Chuckles) three letters a year, four letters a year, reminding us to be sure to give the tenth. That was the Lord's. But I have never heard of anything that they did in return for the people who was giVing this money. But they always have somebody way over yonder in Africa, or Europe, or Asia, somewhere else, needs help. And they're trying to help those poor souls over there. say this recently. But I heard a man certain He said 11 if I were in trouble today ,11 says ' r belong to ~church, but if I were in trouble today," he says, " to whom do you think I would go? " 11 I says, well, I know who I 'd go to .' ' And he said ," I ' ll tell you who I 'd go to , I'd go to my banker first. ' (Laughter) And he said," I think I'd get some help there / he says, 11 if I didn't I'd go to my doctor ,'' says, ''he's a good friend of mine," says, he'll help me . 11 And he says, if I didn't get all I needed there, he says, then I 'd go to, my;' sanebody else. where does your church come in? 11 I says, " I thought they were to help the poor I and the sick, and the needy. ' He says, "Oh . (Laughter) Now that's the feeling. 'i) Says mark it off, says they don't. How much better are you off if you belong to a church, than if you were not a church member? mind? And I said, 11 well Is there anything in your If there's no reason for it, only to support somebody that you don't know where the money ever gets to them or not. There's a big question mark in my mind. And I began to think differently. What do you think about it? Interviewer: Well, I feel like there's a lot of churches where there's not very much spirit left in them. these days. And I don't know what to do. Well, I am glad that you're a young man and all and I think it's nice that you have that feeling. Wife: I think it's corrnnendable. One of our church members said that our preacher didn't know the scripture enough to preach from it and the people in the .audience didn't know enough to know whether he was preaching from it or not. (Laughter) Didn't know the scri~ture either. �36 Now there's a lot of people that believe the Bible so thoroughly that they can't figure out whether it can possibly be one pronoun or one adjective used for what's absolutely true, it's directly from God. Well I was talking to one of those, now I believe the Bible reasonably well, but the Bible has been taken from scrolls through the hands of people who have translated from those scrolls into what we call the Bible. Now I don't know any Greek. Do you either one of you study Greek? Did you ever study Greek? Well I am told that the word that was placed in the scripture there, that said that when the thief on the cross said to Jesus, "Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," if you've read the scripture, you've read that possibly. paradise today." And he says to him, "Behold thou shalt be with me in Now I'm told by a Greek scholar that that word where it was translated there, into paradise, the very identical same Greek word as translated in other places in the Bible was the word death. So here you are. 1bat's what people think, paradise is a certain place that Jesus is talking about, special place that you, we will be there together in paradise. 1be other thing said that it didn't mean a thing more than what Jesus said back to him. going to die. (Laughter) Same Greek word. that, one in particular, I pin down on him. Today we're both And I've asked Greek students about I said I want you to look word up for me and tell me for sure what it means. that And he went off and says well I have to look up my, and I never could get anything more out of him, I don't know where · he got stalled, didn't know what he was talking about, just didn't want to talk. Now I'll tell you another instance if you're a Bible student and read the Bible, where there's a difference that's questionable. In Matthew, in the gospel of Matthew, it said when Peter denied Christ, that there's a girl come to Peter, says, "You're one of His followers." And he said, "No, no I'm not." And then Matthew goes on to say that later on another woman said to him "Surely thou art one of His followers because you speak of as Galileans speak," had kind of a different accent on the way, and he denied it again. And then a third time a man �37 said to him, "I know you are one of . . . " and he denied him a third time. Well, now what does, what does ~ays Luke, Gospel of Luke say about it? The Luke this, Luke says, "And a girl," a damsel I believe it says, said to Peter that "you are a follower of Jesus Christ." And he said, "I'm not, I'm not a follower of His." And then Luke says, a man said to him, "You are." He denied it again. Then another man said to him, "Thou art," Now there's two, there's two just point out little things like that that you have to allow things like that. One gospel said that there's two women and a man. two men and a wol'Tlan. The other one says there's Now when you say that the whole Bible is ever word true, that I don't say that the trouble is with the Bible originally, but it's gone through so many hands and the translations, been translated and translated. The fact of the matter is when the King James, now if I'm wrong about this, you correct me, you've possibl s t udied this, when King James had the Bible translated <yes the from the Greek from th); New Testament is in Greek I believe and Old Bible's in Hebrew. When they had that . . . when they's appointed some monks, King James appointed some monks and there's one he~ kinda head monk who was seemed to be the thing that ran things and they picked up all these different scrolls and decided then and there which were the scrolls that should go in the Bible, and they classified them and ever since then everybody says this is the Bible, it's all true. I don't believe, just be honest about it, I don't believe the book of Job and the book of Jonah, swallowing the whale. Wife: You know that story. Jonah didn't swallow the whale, the whale swallowed Jonah. (Laughter). I don't think that was ever intended to be put in the Bible. exactly like the book Pilgrim's Progress. Don't know whether you ever heard of the Pilgrim's Progress? The Pilgrim's ..ProgTess is the story as simply fiction. I think that It was never intended being there. I think it was of~ Christian's life the book of Job, was a work of fiction. It's a good book, it teaches us a lot of good things to live by, and all like that, but to say it was a direct work from God �38 be nrinted like that. Now for instance in that book of Job, now please stop me if you get tired of this stuff. Interviewers: No. Wife: You've talked enough for all day. Interviewer: Go ahead. (Lau12:hter) In the book of Job, it said . I think it's in the chapter, second chapter of Job, it said that t.he nevil accompanied by somebody came before God in passing and it said, the devil said to God. he said, the devil said, "if vou turn your back on people and are not a friend to them," says, "none of em will serve you. What people serve God for is the good they get out of it, financially and things like that." And God said to the devil, "Have you considered my servant Job?" And the devil said. "If you turn your back on Job or turn him over to me and let me deal with him, you' 11 find he' 11 turn his back on you too." And said the Lord permitted him to be turned over to the devil. Now can you imagine, can you imagine that God/ the Creator of the heavens and the Earth and everything to the stars would have a little enough care for a creature to turn him over to the devil? Just to prove to the man, you can't prove anvthing to the devil, turn him over to him and let him ... vou know the boils he went through, sores, how his property was taken from him1 sons killed and all that. Can you imagine our creator and a man who has created the heavens and the Earth, things like eternal that is just so unreasonable that I just simply can't accept it. God he is, we're in bad shape. (Laughter) END OF TAPE If that's the kind of � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Parker, J. F. Location The location of the interview. McDowell County, NC Number of pages 38 pages Date digitized 9/23/2014 File size 25.8MB Checksum alphanumeric code 7f2651391849c681b3916ffa79f9c215 Scanned by Tony Grady Equipment Epson Expression 10000 XL Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape467_JFParker_transcript_M Title A name given to the resource Interview with J.F. Parker Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parker, J.F. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--Marion County Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--McDowell County Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--Rowan County Marion County (N.C.)--Social life and customs McDowell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs Rowan County (N.C.)--Social life and customs Parker, J. F. Description An account of the resource J.F. Parker talks about his experience as a teacher with the mountain people living in Old Fort. Although he had never finished high school, he got a job as a teacher. He said: "He was going to send me on to teach school whether I knew anything or not." He talks about the hardships living up there, how school attendance was often very low and the kids brought snakes to the schoolhouse. He says the mountain people were a different breed of folk and they understood that "it takes a certain amount of failure in life to make a person what they should be." They were hardened, but strong and firm. Civil War Custard's Last Rally Custard's Last Stand Episcopal Church flu epidemic Frankie Silvers hangings J.F. Parker Marion County N.C. Marion Manufacturing Company McDowell County N.C. Morganton mountain people Old Fort Presbyterian Church railroad Ralph Noblett Rowan County schoolhouse Sunday School teaching https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/61b8ac98d1bdb562a48623aec5d27a7e.pdf ffd35fd69fb38b80c4fa9af45d98ddd6 PDF Text Text This is an ·Appalachian Oral History Project interview with M r. Perry Hicks of M arion, North Carolina who is a retired mill worker. He was interviewed by Sam Howie on December Jl, 1975. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. Some of the first things we need to know are thi ng s like where you we re born. Well, I was born in Haywood County in the extreme western part of North Carolina, right inside of North Carolina. Our closest neighbors we r e in Tennessee •••• back in the extreme western part, near Pigeon River. Pigeon Rive r? I was raised on a company's land. My father paid $25 a y e ar, standing rent, on the mountain f a rm. And he raised hogs, c a ttle and livestock and he farmed. He raised wheat, corn, oats, rye, irish potatoes. The land produced rye and oats in abundance, and irish potatoes and cabbage and vegetables. But the corn made about 15 bushels an acre, about 6 to 8 bushels of wheat per acre, and about 20 bushels of rye, and about 20 or 25 bushels of oats. And , I was raise d there and we had a three-month school. We went to school through July, August and September, at an old sawmill shanty. And my daddy left there when I was ab out 12 years oad and went farther back in Haywood County to a big double-band sawmill. He went there for the e x press reason to send me and my brother to a six-mon th school. We was up to a pretty good size. About the only thing I learned wa s how to hobo a railroad engin e in old log[ ing trains. It 'd leav e there in the morning ab out the time my daddy went to work. I 'd get on it and go to the mountains and come back in just ab o ut dinnertime and go to the house and eat my dinner. I went back, I went back to the mountains •• I did most of the ti me. The thing that got me out of heart about g oing to school was that most of the students were stupid or dumb or something o r d i dn't care about learni ng and the tead.her appointed me to try to help them learn. nd I went from seat to seat for a week or two and I wasn't making any progr e ss. They weren't learning, and the teacher would get on me ••• so I got out of heart and quit . ' Then my daddy bought a farm in Madison County, moved back there, and stayed til I reckon it was 1920. But in the meantime I met my wife and me and her was married. I was 17 years old, she wa s 16. That 's been 59 years ago . What year we~e y ou born in? I was born in 1899 and we decided to come to t h e cotton belt ••• here to M arion and we come up there and I went to work in the mill. What year wa s that? That was 1919 that I went to work in the cotton mill. Which mill was that? Was1 that in ••• That was Clinchfield. Clin chfield? It's Clinchfield. The one that you came by. The bi e one? And the mill run 12 hours a day. Of cours e , the day I worked was 10 hours , but the wheels and machinery they would stop at 12 hou rs. I went to work in the card room for a dollar for 10 hours, got a dollar a day. I paid 45 cents per week for house rent, for a three-room house. W as it a mill village then, that you lived in? Yeah. Clinchfield mill villa g e? �2. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Yeah, Cli n chfield village. Did you have to live in the mill village to work in the mill? No, you didn't have to but it was cheaper. They furnished the house. It took 700 hands to run the two mills at that time. We was up there, I don't remember how many years, several years though. There was a man who come in here organized a union. What years? Two cotton mills. Was that in 1929? I guess it was. Yeah , it wa s. And oh, he got the East Marion mill pretty well organi zed . The mill I was working in, they never did go so str ong for the union. All of the bus i nesses in M arion was bitterly opposed to it. To the union? Yeah , to the union. And, of course, by me being nonunion, I was let in the inside of wha t was going to happen. I was sworn to secrecy not to tell anybody what I knowed about what was go i ng to happen. But I knowed the union wasn ' t gping to win and I knowed the unio~··· ah, the company was not going to accept it, the people wasn t going to accept it. The town and the businesses wasn't going to accept it. They were se ar ching all the time for something that they could try the union organizer for, in the law. Take a warrant for him ahd try him. Do you remember his name? Hoffman . And he went right on and closed the mill I was working at for three weeks a nd they got ready to start it up and they told us all where to get to, t o come in on a certa i n Mo nday morning . And we went there, and I was the first person to get ther e th t morning , me and my brother-in-law. We went up on a bank and the union neve~ did see us. But when they began to gather in, to go to work, the union people they was on the picket line, they had the spies and they all came in there. And the union got to singing hymns and inviting people t o come to the ••• to be saved, t hat is come in and join the union. And th9 superintendent, Henderson, he c a me in and when he went to open the gate, why some of them caught his coattails and drug him backwards. So he said ev e rybody go home. o we all went home and in another week they notified us to gather up one day again a t 12 o'clock at the company office. That was the superintendent's office? Yeah, so that day we all come and there was number one, number two mill and we wa s going to try to start up number two mill. It was the b iggest mill. nd of course the union was evtErywhere. It was closed. h nd we got the ••• finally got the soldiers in there. 'l bey pushed t h em back. nd we got inside t h e lock. W ell, we had enough help to start the smaller mill. o they took us all ov e r to the smaller mill and we started up at 12 o'clock that day. Then after that, it was all over with. They cut the hours down at the mi l l. Of course all along they'd be.gun rais i ng the wag es. And I had got up to piecework and I made 18 dollars and 75 cents a we ek , five days and a half on piece work. ow many hours a d ay? W ell, I worked 12 hours a day b e cau s e every hour I worked was more money to me. They started t h e machi n e ry at 6 o 'clock in the morning, but I was always on hand to start my ·ob. Then me and somebody would work together, and he wo uld take my job am. his �J. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. Q. A. too while I was of f to l u nch. And I'd come back and watch h is job and mine too and he would g o to luhch. So we never let our machinery stop. I was running frames in the card room, and it went on that way and after that was all over with, all blowed away, they went to putting one, couldn't have one man, put t ing two men on a ••• putting one man on the job two men had been running. And it just kept getting worse and worse. Was that after the strike in 1929? Yeah. ~hat was after that? Yeah. nd then they ••• thing s got so bad through the Depression and they cut us down to half a day at a time. I went of a morning and worked u ntil twelve and so mebody would come in and run my job in the afternoon. But I had a wife and at that time five children and I couldn 1 t feed anyone on it. So I quit and went into farming, and went to farming. Do you remember what year that was? In the early JO's? Yeah. The early JO's. And them people that was left up there, they didn't have no way to get out. But I had connections with that person who had some property. I was always pretty bad to talk and get acquainted and find about people, make friends with people. So I had connecti ons with a rich man who owned all this land from here, I mean right where this house is, and he rented me his farm a nd farmed it for five years. At that time, the cotton mills picked up again ••• still stretched out. e called it the stretch out. I went back to work to get my old job and I worked about five years. And I b ought a farm, southe ast of this county ri ght down near the Burke P ounty, Rutherford County line. W ent down ther e and stayed for six years. W a t community wa s that? h That's the Dysartsvill e Community. And after I sold out that place down the re, my motive t h en was to work out Social Security. Th en you cou ldn't carry Social Security if y u we ren't working for the company , but they chang6d theJaw after a while. nd in the meantime, by work i ng in the cotton mill I took what they call emphy sema, brownlung we called it. I was afraid to go back in t h e cotton mills on account of that so I went to Drexel Furnitu r e Company and went to work for them. Wher e is that? I t's up here in M arion. nd I worked there for 15 years. So I worked in t he cot t on mills for 15 years, I farmed for 15 years, and I worked for Drexel Furniture Company 15 years. I made 4 5 years u ntil I r e tir ed. Th e fir s t of this year will be 14 years after I retired. And as far a s the mountains is c oncerned, where I wa s rais ed, people wore out their land. ot to where it wou ldn't produce. One other thing tha t I didn't mention that i t g re w good was tobacco back in them mountains. Wa s there a good market for it? Yeah. Pe ople ma d e pret t y good money a t it. A lot of people, they didn't when I was a ch i ld, but af ter I got up about grown, people g ot into tobacco, raising tobacco and mad e more and more after I left. W been in this county about, a b out 5~ , ~ea!!B . fhat's e wh en we left Ma dison County. I was r ai sed inMAi~~ & · County , and my wife was raised in M adison County. ~ hat's mountain counties �4. Q. Q. A. Q. A. Q. Q. A. Q. A. and my daddy bought a farm in Madison County . Tha t 's how come we were living in Madison County when me and her wa s marr ied. And her father owned a farm a nd it was wore out when he g ot it, and he ain't ever d one muc h to build it up. And after me and her c om e here,her who le family come too, in about a yeBl'and lived here. Did they come to work in the mills? Yeah . The y c me to work in the mi l ls. I t was he a ven to them, to work in the mills and draw a payday, however small. But to have payday every week and they had about thr e e or four chi ldren old enough to work i n the mill . How old did you have to be before you could go to work in the mill? W ell, back when I was a child, they put c hildren in the mill that was e i ght years old. Eight years old? igh t years old. What did they have them doing? They were work i ng in t h e spinning r o om, spinning, swe eping the floor. I knowed a man, he 1 s been dead about two or three year· s. He told me he went in t he mill when he was eight y e a rs old, worke d there until he retired. He was an overseer for a bout lS or 20 years. But when my wife's p eople came here y ou h a d to be 14, a ch i ld h a d to be 14 years old. You had to prove your a ge. That wo u ld have been during the 2o•: s? Yeah . And then they got it up ••• Yeah, then I think they fina l ly got it up after I left there to where you had to be 16 before they let t hem work in the mills. But when I first come to the cotton mill with my brothers and sisters working i n there a nd have little children, brothers and sisters, and the y'd take them in there six, eight and ten years old and help to run. Anybody going · n the cotton mill worked. ~ here wasn't nothing to it. Did they pay, was th ere a pa y di ff erence for young ••• Yeah , you had to start off with the smallest wage and after you got to where you cou ld run piece work, of course,you g ot a raise. Paid better . 'pinners h a d to h a ve p iece work, we was in piece work and carders had to h ave piece work. hen they had day labor too. Hut the day labor never did work but ten hours. They let them off, they went to work at seven , let them off an hour lunch, and they quit at six that evening. iece workers, naturally, they would go mor e hours a nd then of course I was y oung, pretty ambitious a nd with family to support and I liked to get two hours more because I made more. But they f :!. nally-I'm gett i ng a ll this mixed up-they f l nal ly got a case against the union or ganizer. 'l' oo k h im to court. Tried him and he got a fine. • urned him loose, he r went on down t h e coun t ry somewhere , I for g et where he went to, went to organiz i ng down ther ~ and they got a case against him and they came to Mari on to l nvesti r at e wha t went on ab out him around here. And I don 't know exactly wha t the y ever did do with him. But he t old them he organized Kingsp ort, Tennes s ee, that he was over there or ganiz i ng, working on a union, to raise a union . ell, so me of the strikers here, to be sure, they went over th e re to check on him . They said that when they got there, the re was the roughest looking man they ever saw with two .45 pistols walk ing arou nd the gate , keeping the gate . Said they asked him had the mill ever been uni onized and said he went to cus sing , said no, it hadn't be e n organi 7.ed. ' hey run all the unions off. well, they �5. Q. A. Q• .8. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. run the most of them off here. hey was defeated. (inaudib le) ••• frie nds that hadn't jo i ned to beg for them and get them (inaudible) ••• But naturally, I have, all of my l i fe, been opposed to t he uni o ns. I think, now this is just my opinion, I may be 100 percent wrong, but I believe the unions is the thing that caused us to have the most troubles (i naudible) •• I think they are what is causing 1.us to have high prices now. Because when they organize where they have to pay u~i o n wages, they have to p a y s o much to pr0duce the stuff then they must let prices rise to come out on it. hen the poor class of people, people on ocial Security l i ke me a n d my wife, we h a ve to pinch pennies, to g et by. Buy only stuff t ha t's necessary. Of course, back in the Depressi on, during the JO's and late 20's, there were people who wer e out of work and strugg led to fesi their famili es . nd a 24-pound of flour about 65 cents, five pounds of su gar 25 cents, a pound of coffee 15, all suc h as that. In the Depression when th er e wa sn't so much union ••• ow, the people that have to pay the union wages, to g e t t h eir stuff produced have to have a big price on it to come out. And I guess the uni ons have done s orr.e good but I th ink it's done more dama ge than any k i. nd of good, taki ng all around. And I 've alwa ys been opposed to it and I guess I always will be. I 've had some people, some v e ry close friends belong. I n f a ct, some of my close relatives lost their jobs up her e on ac c ount of uni on. ~ hey hired so me back but some had to le ave. That's about all now,unless you want to ask questions. You can ask questions about anythi n g you want to. I ' l l do my b est to answer them. You we re sayi ng awhile ag o that one of the reasons you all c ame to M arion was because the farming wasn't all that good. Now, did you, your father owned the farm in M adison County but you said something about the soil th ere had been leached out, wouldn't grow very well. Could you have had part of that f arm yourself? No; there wasn't enough of it. There was just fifty acres. How many brothers did you have? I just had one • Just one brother? Only one of us could have l i ved on half of it. I t j ust wouldn ' t produce? No . It took the whole farm of fifty acres because it had been cleared up , mostly cleared up and worn out before my father bought it. M wife and father and mother, they had eight y c hildren when the y left there. He owned fifty acres, and his land was wore out. Most of it washed away up there in the mountains. It was steep cou ntry? Yeah . It was pretty straight up there • Is there any way to estimate what, say, it was possible to e a rn off of a farm of tha t size then? Well, you t ake a farm of tha t size, my f a ther was selling livestock and didn't mak e any grain to sell on that small place. Now, he did where I was raised, where he had so much land. But about, I 'd say about six hundred dollars a year was about wha t he got out of his livestock he had for sale. Of course, the �6. Q. living , he had his l i ving made there, he made it there. Didn't hav e to buy gr oceries or anything like that. About all the money he got was clea r to stick in his pocket, clear. 'Cause he made all his seed and in summertime he had pasture to run on. As far as having any money and investing it, why wit h out he too k a notion to buy so methi ng, he didn't have any at all. It was all cle a r. When I was a child on the farm, I was raised on, company land. I seen him in t h e fall of the year when lie'd sold his livestock, and wha t stuff he raised on his farm for sale, I ' ve known him sticking that money i n his pocket and going out over the country want i ng so mebody to loan it to. He didn't need it, didn't want it, didn't want to carry it. He got about six percent intere s t on it and he felt safer of course when he wasn't ca rryi n g it i n his p ocket. He just didn't want to carr y it arou nd. Go out and hunt somebod y to loan it to, and sometimes it was hard to do ••• Wasn't as much use for money then as ther e is or was later on, was there? A. No. Q. There wasn't mu ch you had to buy • The only person who would borrow it was somebody who wanted to add nore livestock. And of course, in them days, livestock all run outside, in the mountains, fenced up your fields. ~ ow in the mountain s it was ready to be put on the market in the fall. It got fat and was ready for t h e market . He just brought it off the r a nge and put it right on the market. An:i a year or two year-old ••• .Al,. End of tape #1, side 1 Beginning of side 2 Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Your father owned tha t farm free and clear? Yeah , the last p lace. I n fact, that ' s the only p lace he ever owned. In M adison County? Yeah . He finally sold it out and came her e to Mari on too. So your family and your wife's family came to M arion? Yeah. Did they come for the expressed purpose of working in the mills? W orki ng in the cot t on mills. So you all pretty much figured it was, that staying on the farm of that size was not going to bring you suf f icient income to raise a family. Wel l , that wasn't my father's c oncern. He wasn't worrying about the income he made, he made as much money as he cared about. He wanted to get rid of the harder work. Working l n the cotton mill was not as hard work as running one of them mount ain farms. Of course, me and my brother wa s married. Just him and my mother we re living on the farm. He ca me here to work in the mill. Him and my mother both worked. M mother didn 't work too much y but she worked some. He sold out. He give ~35 0 for the place he owned. The feller except ed the timber but he had in the trade to saw him house timber. And he built a house out of great big boards, built a barn, cleared some land, built some fence. Kept it I don't know for how many years and he sold it for $2200. Aft er he comehere , a ft e r we all come here, he divided �Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Q. A. that $2200 with me and my brother, give me $1100 and give my brother $1100 . Of course, you take the mountain people who learn to do what they do themselves and lea rn how to do wi thout. And he saved money all the time,he laid money back all the time. Not much, but some that after a year or so it began to count up. He got enough money saved that he bought that place right across the road there where that house stood. He stared there for 12 or 15 years, I guess. When he retired,he got $ 22 a month and mother drawed off ofhim and she got half as much. 'he got $ 11. Both together got like $33 . Well , they laid away some of that every month, some of that $33 because they made everything we e a t r ight over there . This wasn't built up out in here as it is. It's farm country. There was one build i ng right out here, that house, and one out here on top of the hill. That 's all there was, just there at the top of the hill up yonder plumb down to Ne bo. Uns e ttled. How did you learn that the mil ls we re here? Well , I had friends tha t had left there and c orre here and worked. They came back home. vid they leave for the same reasons? Yeah , for the reasons coming to the co tton mill to work. When they came back home andyou learned from them, they were just visiting? Yes. I n fact, when me and my wife moved here there was a young man that we knowed had been h e re and worked and he came back with us. In 1918, when that awful flu ep:t.demic come in here. W was e here at c1·nchfield, and we had one ch i ld less than a year old who had flu. ('Wife speaks) No, we all had the flu and it looked ••• (Hicks r e sumes) No, it looked like it was going to be so long b e fore I could even get back to work, well, I had a little home ••• so we went back there and stayed a year and then come back. (wife speaks) Then we c ome back to the cotton mills . That would have been in the early 20 1 s? (wife) Yeah , the la st time we come back. And you came back th a t time to stay? Yeah. 1e been here ever since. I n this country, but not whe r e we'r e living. Here in McDowell County. The people who we re working in the mills during the early 20 1 s after you all came back, came h e re the second time, were they from McDowell County? No . M ost of the people in M cDowell County wouldn't work in ••• might few people from McDowell County that would work in the cot ton mills at all. Only a few people? Mighty few. It was a disgrace for people in this county t o work in a cot t on mill . I t was made up of mountain people. (wife speaks) That 's all it was •• ( inau d ible) (Hicks resumes) M adison, Haywood , Mitchell, Yancey, Avery , Watauga countie s. ost of the people that wo~ked here was from Haywood County where I come f rom. M ost of the people i n Clinchfield? Yeah . Some people would get maybe in debt back at home. Th ey had a home, but they'd get in debt and couldn't ••• an:l they'd come here, their whole f amily, go to work until they paid that debt. �8. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Q. A. When they paid t h is debt, they'd take off back home. Is it your fe e ling that the people that came here from the other counties to work in the mills came for the reasons you've said. That is, it was either impossible or hard to make a good living on the farm? Yeah . And the reason they came here was because they might find work a little easier and there was some more money? Yeah. In the end of the year, you co 1ld make more money up here in a cotton mill than you would out on the farm. But people lived hard. The houses were cheap. The house we l ived in, y ou co ld set in the house and see daylight almo yt anywhere you looked. W s that the mill house? a That was the mill h ous e . They'd have people ••• they finally at last sold them to the hands . Most all the houses repaired (inaudible) nd what did you pay for rent? 45 cents a week for a three-room house. nd wh en you first started in the mills, y ou were making somewhere near $10 a week? Yeah, around that. When people in, say, ~ adison County were looking around for something to do other than stay on the farm, wha t else could they have done, say, besides stay there or come to the mi l ls? Wa s there a lot of timbering back then? No , not then. When people began to c ome to the mills,the timber business was ove r with. Peop le had log , ed out all. the timber. What was the name of the comp any that owned all the farm where you were born? W as it a lumber company? No, it was just a big land company. Uptogo (?) I believe was the name of the company a nd then the Boise Hardwood Lumb e r Company finally bought the whole mountain. Boise? Yeah, Boise Hardwood Lumber Company . nd they built a narrowguage railroad up in them mountains and set their band mill at Hartford , Tennessee. ell, they were working on that when I left. Of course, I could have went to work for them but it was a little too rough, for me. I went down there and helped t h em clean off the ri ght of way for the railroad up Pigeon River. That was after me and my wife got married . And of course one thing that bluffed me out on it, everythin g in the whole country c ame in ther e to work. On that railroad? Yeah . Cutting timber and logg ing . Drunkards, murderers, everything else . I t wasn't no fit place I felt like to raise a family. And , I help ed clean off the right of way on Pigeon tliver. I-40 goes down through there. (wife speaks ) Where he was raised, now it's a game pres e rve. vhat' s the name of it? (Hi cks resumes) Yeah , in orth Carolina and part in Tennessee . Have y ou ever be en down I - 40? Yes sir. I know a fellow who lives out at t h e foot of l t. J;'.isgah. He 's out on the Pigeon River . Clark's his name (inaudible). 1 �A. Q. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A • Q. A • Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. rr you went down I - 40, do you kn ow that W alters (?) dam, that dammed up P igeon River? uns the water through the moun ta _ns and comes out at 1v'a terville? 'r o a powerhouse? I know wher e the river's down below I - 40 there. But I don't remember it . Well , I don't guess you've ever noticed ••• (wife speaks) Did you see the powerhouse when you ••• ? (Hicks resu mes) W ell, back up t h is way there's a sign up there tm.t says the Harmon Den , on a post . I remember t hat . Well , right there, just a lit t le piece up that creek was wher e I was barned an d raised . That is up and down country , isn ' t it? Yeah . Good bit steeper t h an around here? I've t o ok peop le down through there and told them I helped clear off that right of way . The~ say I don ' t see how you stood up on that hill . And I could n t now of course , but I could then , when I was a young man . hey say people had one leg shorter than the other so they could stand on the ~ide of a hill . (pause) You said that when you came here you d i dn t h a ve to live in the mill village? No . You didn ' t ha re to but it was cheaper . And ther e weren ' t too many houses for rent other than in the mill village . or course , the cotton mill company wanted you to live in their houses . But you didn;t have to? No, you didn t have to • Did y ou have - to at East arion? No , you didn't exactly have to but they were the same way . They wanted them to live in them . (wife sp ea ks) They h ad bet t er houses at East 1arion . They did? (Hicks) ~eah . When you start e d out you were working ten hours a day, ri v e and one - h a lf days a week . Did that chang e much during the 20 1 s? At some point i n there you went to a 12- h our day . Ye ah . It changed a lot , now . or course, think t he.y start up n ow and run maybe ten hours and the day labor works eight . But , when I was runni ng frames on piece work , in the number two mill , it's the biggest mill, the one next to th e highway, there were 23 frame hands in th u t card room to maJ.re roping to make thread for yarn spinning . And they put in new machinery, bi gge r machinery , and the last time I was talk i ng to people that lived and was work i ng there , they got three hands doing what us 23 done . · 'hat is a stretch out isn't it? Yeah, that's a s t retch out . Did you start out working as ai. carder? Yeah , I went to runni~cards . What s being a carder? What does that mean? Well; that's where the raw c otton comes and you start it into roping, about the size ofyour finger . It first comes to the lap room . They make it into big round laps , runs through two machi nes im there . nd they take a lot of the waste out of it . And they make big laps and br i ng it in there and hang it on the backs or card s . And when the laps run out we laid it down on a roller , stuck the end of it i n there and it would conB through . �10. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Q. Q. • Q. A. Q. • Q. And we carded it and took a lot more waste out of it. and made that roping . Then we took that roping in cans to the drawing f r ames . Them drawing frames, they run it through two mach i nes there, front d r awing and bac k d.J:rawing. Then it went from there to what they called slubbers, gre a t bi g heavy work. That was the first piece work I ever did, running slubb ers. Then it went to the intermediates. Tha t wa s the job I run the most . nd they took the slubb e rs ••• (inaudible). Then we run it through them interme d iat e s a nd it cut it down to about fourth of tha t size. But we had to run two spools of cotton togethe r. That is , t~ of the same size. Then it went from there to tre spe eders. nd th ey had to run two together there . And tha t cut it down to a smaller thread . nd a stouter thread. fhen it went from th e re t o th e spinning room and the y respun it on spinning reels. l n the spinning room. Then it went from the spinning room into t h e weav e shop . Did y ou ever work in weaving? Yeah , I worked in weaving one ti e. First time I ev e r come her e I worked in the weave roo m. Did Clinchfield do any finishing then? Or print ing? No, they d i dn't do any fin ishing. Just white cloth • Did East ari on? Yeah . They finished cloth ov e r there. (wife sp e aks) They do now. I don't know whether the y used to ••• (Hicks resumes) They didn 't the n , when I was working in the mill, but the y do now. They make rayon and use man - made f i b e r over there. Let me ask you a question about the mills . Was it possible to move up in a job? Like to be a boss or foreman or something? W s that pr etty easy or were there so many people that it w s a hard to do? No, it wasn' t hard to do . It was easy to bu i ld up to it. I built up to that and wo uldn't take the job . Because I didn't feel like I could put up with the agg ravating help . I was pretty high -tempered . I knowed ~ e andthem was go i ng to have trouble, becau se t hey failed to do wha t they were suppos ed to do. ow when the bosses got on them, they'd argue back and they just wouldn't fire anybod y . About the only way they'd fire anybody was on account of bad char ct e r. I f he t u rned ou t to hav~ a bad character, why they ' d f ire him right on the spot. But doing bad work, they wouldn't necessarily fire ••• They wouldn't fire you for that. They'd c o me around and raise sand with y ou, but they wouldn't fire you for it. We re there plenty of jobs? W as there lots of people tryi n g to get in the mills then or was the re just a few jobs open? No. There was plenty of jobs. And a lot of peop le co me and there was h a rdly a n ybody come tha t didn't g e t a job. They was always ne eding help. 'l 'hat was du r ing the 20 1 s ? Yeah, because tha t was wh en t h e people wa s coming out of the mou ntains and off of the fa r ms and they s oon got dissatis f ied and went back home . Did a lot o f that happen? Lot of t h em come in, they 'd work a nd then they went back home? Yeah , they'd go back home and usually after they went back home and stayed a year, year and a half, two years , t hey'd come back. And pr ob ably stay the rest of th e ir lives th a t time. �11. Q. A. Q. • Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A • Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Why did they go back to the farms i n the first place? W ell, because they'd got dissatisfied . Dissatisfied with the mills . (wife speaks) Some of them would come to work out money to buy more land with, or improve their land some . Oh , the y 'd come and get more money to buy a bigger farm? (Hicks resumes) Yeah . But them that did that, usually when they went back home, they stayed . But the ones that did come because they kinda got tired of farm ng , in fact young people, children, th ey all had to leav e the home to get a job. Why wa.s that? W ell , there weren't a ny jobs there , only just the farm • And -the farm would only support • .• That was the only sup p ort t here was, and the young peop le didn't much like it . They wanted payday coming in . You stayed i n Cl i nchfield pretty much duri n g the 20 1 s . Or did you ever work East Marion? Or one of the other mills? Yeah , I went ov e r th e re one time and worked with them awhile . t East Marion? Yeah , after I went out on the farm . I got some lei~ure and didn't h a ve nothing to do and I went back up to Clinchfield and they just didn ' t have nothing for me . They told me to go over to ~ st Marion and tell them that they sent me over there . And I went ov e r there a nd told the overseer that I 'd been sent over there to work about three weeks . He said, well I can't do nothing but put y ou to work here . Come in in the morning and work . So , I worked there thre e weeks . I I That would h a ve been during the 30 s, wouldn t it? No, that was in the early 40's . That was after I'd moved and bought that farm . Ioved out on that farm . It was after c rops was laid by and everything was over . 1 But up to that time that you all left during the early 30 s , you stayed in Clinchfield? Yep. I was in Clinchfield . At the time y ou left Cli n chfield , how many hours a week wer e you working? I was wo rking 55 . 55 . Do you remember wha t you were bringing home in pay then? Do you rememb e r what y ou were being paid? Yeah . I was makin~ $18 . ?S (inaudible) . But inthe early 30 s they we re c ut ting back hours and ••• Yeah . (wife speaks) ••• ri ght after the war , the First W orld War • We re the wages during the 20 1 s pretty much steadily going up? No, they didn't go up fast . ow , I might AO a I little politicking . I I don t know what your politics are . But that s all right . I like you just as g o od to be one as the other . nd , right after World War One , let's see , who was elected? arren G. Harding . · ell , after the election was ov e r with , they c ome around and cut me down to 85 cents . After the electi on, I was cut down fran a doll a r . Why was that? Just because t hey could . And I don 1 t knov if poll tics had any thing to do with it or not. But I always blamed Warren · G. Harding for it . Because he was president when I got cut . Were the bosses trying to tell you how to vote? W ell , up here at Clinchfield , they wanted you to vote straight De mocrati c tick e t . And if you wasn ' t a Democrat , you didn ' t fare too g ood . �12. Q. A. Q. A. • • Q. Ji But you could get a job if you we re ••• ? Oh y eah. You could get a job and stay, but they giv e you the c old shoulder if you wasn't a Democrat. Do you know if that wa s the same thing at East ari on? Yeah, t h e same thin g at East 1ari on. They wanted you to be a Democrat~ Yeah. But now at Drexel Furniture Factory I worked at, you h a d to be a Republican to get any favor up there. They wanted you to vobe a straight Republican ticket and all my overseers was Republican. They led me pretty high . Wh en Nixon wa s running against ~enne dy, they come around, several of them, and t old me that they'd done found out that ixon was going to be elected so I 'd better turn ove r and vote for him. I told t h em he wo uldn't be elect ed, thi;t I d i dn't think so, that he wruld. o I had it I back in my favor. Of course, I didn t rub it in on any of them, after Kennedy was elected,you know , and Nixon got beat. But I never could understand how Nixon ever could get elected. Then after this Water ate mess, he got elected like all therest of them do because he had plenty of money or the people that h a d I the money was backing him ••• (inaudible). But it wasn t too long a f ter that that I got on piece work. ow when you went in there running c ards like I started running cards, they'd tell you that if there was anything you'd rather do besides the job you had, when you got a few minute s off your job, go and work a t it. nd help the hand that was running it. And as quick as y ou got to where they thou ght you could run that job, pretty well, why they 'd giv e it to you . Give you this same kind of job. The turnover in the work was awful fast ••• (inaudible). Do you know why t hat wa s? That t h ere was so much turnover? W ell, one thing was, they began that stretch-out system. Of course, it wasn't too bad at that time, but it started in that direction and the people that come from 0 outh Caroli n a up here, just droves of them. I n fact, all our overseers was fro m ~outh Carolina. (inaudible) And they'd co me here and they didn't like North Carol ina. They didn't like the temperature and they d idn't like the people, didn't like the mills, didn't li~e nothing about it. Well , they wou ldn't stay long before they'd go back to South Carolina. And they might co me back aga i n. 3ome of them did. Of course, some come and stayed. ow all the ove rse e rs up there was fr om South Carolina. And I said awhile a g o where I was off e red an overseer's place, you had first to start off, they c alled it a fixer. You had to keep the machinery repaired. They held you res p on sible for the work, the machinery. And some people would get c areless and make bad work and when they got on them ab out it, they'd swear that the machine wasn't working right. So then they'd g et the fixer up and they'd give him a bawling out. And when the fixer got on to the help, for the work, why they (inaudible) to tell him what they thought of him. A~d they didn't hesitate to speak with him. I heard them talk to the fixers and that was why I was glad li wasn't a fixer after I heard what they said. Then you went from there to what you called a second hand. He was over the fixers. nd he had a boss carder over him, and a lot of them went on to be the boss carder, the boss weaver, and the boss spinner. After the old ones all died out. End Tape #1 Begin Tap e #2, side 1 �13 . Q. A • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • You were saying that the fellow you bought thi s land here from was telling you that the bus i nessmen i n larion didn ' t want the Clinc hfield mills to come in here? No, they didn ' t want it to c ome . The people here knowed that their people wasn ' t going to work at it . And then they regretted the people t hat it brought in . ( i naudible) too many bad peop le . But they fell in love with them old mountain people , when the y come here . They found them to be truthful and honest . Whi c h they didn ' t exp e ct them to be . rrl they liked them . Got along wi th the m and r e s pect e d them . You were s aying that a lot of people who might hav e been av ailable in McDowell County to work i n the mills didn ' t . You ever find out why? No . W ell , they just , it was a disgrace . They consid ered it a disgr a ce , to work in the c otton mills . That was the people who were , say , farmi n g here in McDowell Coun t y? Yep . They lived around here , they was born and raised here , and they lived hard . They lived a whole l o t harder than they would if they ' d have worked in the mills . But they just c ouldn ' t take a bossman . They didn ' t want no boss i ng . So they eked out a li v ing out in the soil . And a f e w of them , a l o t of them , work ed on the side and made a little blockade liquor . Most of them ended up inthe chain gang before it was over with . They'd just rather live off of what the y could make out o n the farm . You farme d ••• You we r e on a farm in adison County and a farm in this ar e a . Woul d farming have b e en any eas i er or more profitable here? Oh y e s . It was more profitable he r e , of course . I f a rmed with a man that had an extra good farm . t had been well took c a re of and handed down thr ough his grandfather . nd he finally (i n audible) . He was a M urphy . And his grandfather at one time had owned 100 Negro slaves . And he built bri c k houses and burnt the bri c k on the place where he built the hou se s for the colo red people . • hey finally come on down to Condre y (?) , t h e g randson and gr a nddaughter . There were two granddaughters and one grandson a ndth em three got all his property . Was tha t this property , here , or · n Dysartsville? No , it was this here . I don ' t know , it was about fi v e or six hundred acres , all told . Arrl he had a riv e r farm but the Duke Power Company bought his river l a nd and put water up on it . nd he heired a lot of wealth from his mo t he r. (wife speaks) She was a M urphy and married a Condrey . (Hi c ks r e sumes) Arrl he had plenty of mcn ey and he was a hard man to get any of it out of . He stuc k to it . I n the 20 1 s and JO's , when you were in the mills , were there any black people work"ng i n the mills? Nothing only the scrub b ers . The y h ired a colored man to scrub and (inau d ible) • Then it must h a ve been co pany policy not to h i re bla c k people ? Yeah . Jell , them mounta i n people - wh e r e we re you raised at , in the mounta i ns or down in the cou ntry? Down farther east . ell , I can g iv e you a little informati on about that . ow , them W mountain people was awful op p os ed to the colored people . hey didn ' t allow them in the mountains . If one went back th e re , they killed him . And the peo ple that was work i ng in the mills would have left if they ' d ever put a colored pe rson in there �J.4. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q.. A. Q. running a nything other than scrubbing. Scrub b ing the floors (inaudible). Now they're using some of them now, but they couldn't back then b e cause t h e people wou ldn't bear for it. Up to the time when, you left the mills, there were no black people work ing ••• No black people in th e re. Only the scrubbers. During the 20 1 s and before you left the mills, how were mill workers, people tha t worked in the mills like yourself, how were they treated around town? When you went to town to do some shopping or something? Wel l , they was high ly respected by the bus · nesses in town because the bus i nesses in town knowed that Wu S where their mo ney was comi n g from. And they knowed they was go i ng to get ev e ryt h ing that the mill peo p le got ahold of. So where busin es smen might h a ve opposed the mills coming in, they were happy once the mill workers were here spending their money? When they was getting the money. nd the peo p le that was opposed to it ever be i ng put here was happy about it once it got here. Another thing. You were say ing ear lier that at some point some of your bosses, i mmediate bos s es, were from South Carolina. Yeah . W ell, the main overseer was. Was that true most of the time during the 20 1 s and early JO's? Why was that? Did they ••• ? Well , they ••• North Carol i na peop le didn't know the cotton mills. And you know that ' outh Carolina was full of cotton mills and everybody worked the cotton mills down there. (wife speaks) They didn't raise no cotton in orth Carolina much . (Hicks resumes) And they knowed the mills . And sev e ral of them ••• my overseer and a lot of the other overse e rs, the main overse e r, when they found out that the mills was going to come here to arion , they took correspo ndence co u rses in textiles. So they come prepared to •• educati on for work and all . ~nd they really could handle the cot on mill machinery . l'hey really coul d. I mean in running the mac h i nery. aking rope and thread and stuff like that. It seemed to be na tural, b e c a use they had be en raised with it. Do you know where Clinchfield and East ar i on got most of the raw cotton they proces s ed? Well , they got it out of the main market . The c otton market. (inaudible) that bought and sold to these companies ••• (w ife speaks) It come from South Carolina mostly ••• (Hic k s resumes) W ell , most of it did (inaudible) Anywhere t hey raised cotton. Now , a t the time of the Depression , big cotton farmers come ·here to try to sell t h eir cotton direct to the companies. Did t hat work? No. Th e company wouldn't b u y it. They to l d t h em to sell it to these companies and they'd rebuy it from thEm. Shipped up here by the carlo a d, one carload after another . Why wouldn't they buy it direct? Well , they had a standing contra ct with these bi g companies and naturally the peo p le that have the mo ney get th i ngs dore the way they wanted done. The big cotton-buying co mpanies that bought the cotton and then s old it to, say, Clinchfield . Do you know wher e they wer e ? ere they in Balti more? Or New York? W �A. Q. A • Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. W ell , they was way off somewhere . I don't k now for sure where the y was at, but t h ey s e nt men i n at the fall of th e year , you know, t o bid on the ~o tton for ginning . There never was but one cotton gin in North Carolina that I know of . It wa s down near crest City . It's gone out of business , I thin k , now . It was a small unit. Let me ask you another que s ti on about that strike in 1929 . About how many peo p le in C1inchfield were part of the union or supported the strike? I ' d say about , there was about one f::l:fth :,at Cli nchfield . Of course there wa s more than tha t at East M ari on . And there was about 70 0 p e ople at work in Clinchfield? Then , in 1929? Yes . At Cl "nchf ield, at the mill . And I don ' t know how many worked at East ari on . It was a smaller mill than either one of these up here . But there wa s about half of the people at East arion that claimed for it . Finally got two or three kil l ed over there . Why was it that the workers at East arion supporte d it more than at Cl i nchfield? I don ' t know ••• I never have be e n able to understand that . It r eally was a bett e r place to work t b an Clinchfield. t was? Yeah , it was . Was it better in t e rms of the mo ney you made or •.• ? o, it wa s not the money but the work : ng conditions was bett e r . You said earlier that the mill village at East Hari on had better houses? (wife speaks) Yeah. (Hicks speaks) W l l , East t arion had better e homes for the people to live in . (wife r esumes) ••• loo ked nicer on the outside . I never have been in one of them . before . Did you all know many of the peop le tha t worked at East Mar ·o n? Yeah . I knowed a lot of the m. I knowed some of them well , one of the old men that got killed was from Clinchfield . Do you remember his name? Yes . He was a Vickers . I knew him well . Sam Vi c kers? Yeah . (wife speaks) He co . e from D ~ sartsville to the cotton mills . (H ick s resumes) He got into the union . And some of them w&s so stubborn that they wo uldn't have went back if the company had told them to . But the most of them they wou ldn't let come back . M ost of them th a t joined the uni on? Yeah . nd they come around , I lived up here at Clinchfield at that time, and they co me around one morning with a bi g old mega phone horn , around in a car . I was just getting ready to go to work . They was hollering that everybody at East ar i on had been run off . Ev e rybody at East M arin has been run off . Tha t 's all they said . W ell , the people h ere from Cl i nchfield , well , that joined the uni o n and was sticking to it , t h e y just took off ar:rl went over there . But when they got there , why people was bunched up into two bunches, union here and the non- uni o n up here • And there was so me people, somehow, I don't k now how they d one it , some of them had got in the mill . nd they was up in the card room , up in the spinning room top floor , and they got a rifle in the re . And the union f i nally at last went to sho oting guns (inaudible) �16. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. And there wa s three peop le killed. One wa s old man J ona s. e was from East lar ion. Old Sam Vickers and I forget the other fel l er's name . (wife) He was a g ood old man, Vickers was. (Hic k s res u mes) Yes , he was. He just got into that union. e liv ed,he had a home, he had a farm in Dysartsville. And he had left it to come up here, but he was raised in hutherford County . ~ nd he c ome up here and went to work. Had a great big bunch of girls. (inaudible) Who wa s it ••• how was t h e union organized at Clinchfield? LJid they get a couple of t h e workers to go a round and talk to each person abou t joining? Yeah . They first went to h olding a meeting about halfway b etween Clinchfield and East r i on. nd a few of the Cli n chfield peop le went out there and they liked what the o ld man promised them. Promtsed t h em shorter hou rs and higher wages. If one of them d i dn t like the boss, they'd run him off. So forth and so on. They was going to appoin t common workers to be the hea4 man. nd there was one old man, he was a Baker, and he didn t know a thing l n the world about a card room. He could run, i fi the picker r oom making them first laps. But that was about all he k nowed. But they t o ld him if he joined t h e union, they'd make him a boss carder. ' o before the mill closed down, he come around to the card room there and he off e red me a second hand job if I 'd come work for him when he got t hy place. I told him, oh yeah, yeah. Of course, I knowed he wasn t going to get placed . And so he g ot run off thinking that I -wou ld have been his boss man if he had gotten the job they offered him. nd he couldn ' t have run the (inaudible) , much less the card room. And the peop le got to talking it up, the ones that, had joined. Of course, they was I awful secretive about it. rhey didn t want many people to know at Clinchfield. And ••• They were afraid of losin g their jobs? Yeah. They was afraid of losing their j obs. Out they'd t a lk it a lit t le and the strikers got gathering up at night after we went back to work and they'd sh oot dynamite all night. 1 ight around the mill villag e. Hard for a ma n to sleep. I can tell y ou one pretty goo~ tale about that. I don't knew whether we ought to go into that or not. But there wa s a fel le r when them strikers, he had a little old dog ab out the size of that one and they'd t rained it to t h row st i cks and it would go and get them. Bring them back. That feller decided to get even with them. e got him some dynamite and he loaded up a stick one night and throwed it down toward the ra i lro a d. ell, that little dog seen him throw it and he went and got it and brought it back. Got it back into his yard before it exploded. I asked him , I said if, ever find any of your dog . And he said no I never did find a p iece of it. Blowed it all away, (wife spea k s) inaudible . I was read i ng in the newspaper in 1arion , had stories abou t the strike and there was one thing I wa s reading about . Said they had caravans d u ring the strike when both the mills were closed down, ca ravans of farmers that we r e br:k:ging food i n for the strikers. Do you know who organized them, or why? Yeah. A lot of them did. The strikers organized it, but, they got it started . But they made the farm e rs think they was winning, go ng to win, and it would be up to them to buy the farm e rs' food wh en ev e rything was over. lild a lot of people ••• �17. Q. A. Q. A. that wa s the day of th e horse and wagon and a lot of farmers would bri ng a wagon-load of food in to the strikers and park somewhere and they'd come and get it . Then the union went to order i ng when they got out of any thing to eat. The strikers all had a good garden. Everybody at Clinchf ield had a good garden . And the strikers, the union man told them t o divide their gardens with peo p le that didn't have any. W ell, they'd come in the r e, they'd pick tomatoes, they'd p ick potatoes , they p i ck a row of corn, and in a day or two's time the y could clean his garden out. nd they went to Hoffman , the head man , and told him that they had to have something to eat. lild he ordered a carload of flour. It come, and people told me that had a right to know , they said it was from great .big rolli n g mills where they'd sweep up of a tjight the flour that had sifted out on the floor. They put it in bags and he ordered it. The people that seen it, I never did see it , they said it was just as black as tar. People got to eating that and the y all got sick. But the farmers in the outlying areas were willing to do that because they ••• Yeah , t hey thought ••• the uni on had them thinking that the y were just going to take over. And they was going to help most of them people buy their products when it was all over with. rnd they'd bring it in just to give out to them. You were saying earlier that some peo ple at the Clinchfield mills had sort of taken you i nto their confidence and were telling you how everything was going to work. Was that y our supervisors? Yeah . No, not my supervisors. Me and him was very close together and he kept me i nformed all the time what wa s going to happen . I know the union c.ome to me, sent a special group , come to my h ouse right late one evening. tl nd they told me that they was giving me, since they liked me , they was giving me my last c hance to join t he union . And i f I didn't, I was going to have to leav e . Going to r u n me off if I didn't join the union. And I knowed then that th ey was the ones that was goi n g to lea ve, and I was going to stay. Th e way they come about it, they kind of tole me now since y ou are a special friend of ours, we're giving you a special c hance to join the uni on. You c an get in without p aying any dues or anythi ng for so long . And I said, well, I pretended gnorant i n it. Of course, I co u ldn't say nothing else. I asked them, I said well, what am I promised1 They said s h orter hours and higher wages. I said, well, when do I go to work? I 'm ready to g o to wor k for shorter h ours and higher wages. I pretended that I thought theunion was going to pay it, you know . They said, n o, we're just going to make the company do this . I said, well, if you ' re go ing to make the company do that, I can do just as good a job at that as you can. ~ o just count me out. I won't fool with it . nd the loyal help up there , the y made it so hard on the strikers after we all got back to work, after the mills was running, they mad e it so hard on the strikers that they j ust pulled up and left as fast a s t hey cou ld get away . The company used so me tri cks too . They went down here somewhere about outh Caro lina and the y got the roug hest old man and the sweari ge st o ld man and the most profane old man I ever saw and �18. Q.1 ., A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. he loaded up some household g oods i n a stati o n wagon. i nd the union didn't think nothing. He come right on throughthe strikers. And went to the office. They t ook back ovec there and showed him an e mpty house and he put that stuff in that hou s e. 'l hey locked the door. W ell, the uni on found out . Uow I was working at the time up in the card room. I didn't do much work. I stayed at the window to watch them mostly. I seen everything that happened. They'd done had the soldiers up here in town, but hadn't brung them down. They went over there, and t here was an old man, a good old man, agood friend of mine. ound the door locked, they didn't k now wha t to do. He said it wou ldn't do to let that old man move in there. So that old man that I 'd put so much faith in, he took a stick and he broke the lock off tre back door of that house. Was it the h ouse he was living in? The house t his old man had put his stuff in . He just , he put it in the re a nd he left. nd they carried that stuff out there and throwed it across the hi ghway. I n front of the mill. And the company sent a wagon team out there to get it. W ell, when they got out there, when they got to doing that, two big old mules, and they got them mules by the bridles and everyone had a club. And they got to beating them m ules ove r the head and most everywhere. (wife speaks) The un i on people. (Hicks resumes) And they wouldn't let t h em come back. So that's when the soldiers, they brou ght the soldiers in. nd they said, the union said, the so l diers was here to see that the rest of us left. That was what they said. Well , the soldiers corre down here and they, with fix ed bayonets, a n d they went to putting half of them this way and half of them the other way. One old man- I could se e h im fro m where I wa s at-he stood his ground. He wa sn't going to run, a nd o ne of the soldiers give him a good poke in the backside with that bayonet and I mean tha t old man could outrun a mule af t er that. He just left there . fini then the soldiers stayed up there for about a week. (wife) Se ems to me they stayed lo n ger than that. Why was it the company went and got that feller from ~outh Carolina and brou ght him her e with his furniture? It was after we had went back to work. And then after trey p ut his household goods back, they brought some more. Then he cane he r e and they worked him ab out a month. I was glad when he left . He was ••• (wife speaks) but he said why did they, why d d they have h im t o come? (Hicks resumes) Well , they had him to come for j ust exactly what happ ened. They knowed that the strikers would tear his stuff up. Oh . '.!.'hey wanted to get the strikers to do sore thing, to provoke them? Yeah . ~ o the soldiers would come. Yeah . And tre soldiEr s, they'd told them t h e y wouldn't c ome down here, trey was already up here in the courthouse. But they wouldn't let t h em come without there was some violence erupted somewhere. And they went and got that old ••• and he was the feller that got it started. Was the r e anythi n g el s e you co u ld rem ember abo ut whether or not the company had a plan to deal with the union? Did the y tell you other things that they might have thought about doi n g? Well , t h e¥ just aimed to be · t them. That was all there was to it. They d i dn t aim to run under a union . nd the Cli nchfield company �19 . Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A Q. A. Q. A. Q. Q. • Q. • Q. A. did know that they h ad enough lo yal help to start up. ~hey knowed it wouldn't be no trou ble to g e t e n ou g h . nd they just d idn't aim to run under a uni on. And that old man, bri nging him in, he was the feller t ha t tur ned the tide. He brought the soldiers, he help ed brin g the soldiers, arrl tm soldiers could break t h e pickets at the gate? Yeah. W ere there a n y other k i nds of tr i cks l i ke that th a t either side used, that you could recall? W ell, not very much , I don't reck on. Now, t he company, after they g ot back to work, the union members that was still in com pany hou s es, they notif ied them to g et out. nd some of them left and the most of them didn't. nd they went a nd put their stuff out i n the street. Or on the side of tbe street. t he c ompany a nd the law did. Evicted them? Just piled it up on the si d e of the street. W ell, the uni on people they s ome h ow found some kind o f house a nd some of them went back home. The y was all fr om the mountains. nd some of them went bac k home and some of t h em found a house. I had one of my mother's brothers got into t h e union and one of my daddy's brothers g ot i nto it. nd my daddy's brother lived way down h ere a t ebo. And he was go ing back a nd forth to work. And they fired him. And my mother's b r other, they got him a house over the r e s omewhe re. And he went there and lived until he could find a place t o mo v e. He went ou t on the f a rm. ' tay ed th ere as l ong as he lived. I s the re a nything that made the people that join ed the union any dif f erent fro m t h o s e that didn't? I mean, were they like fr om a diff e r e nt a r ea? Or did t h ey have anything in common? ell, they was all fro m th~. mounta i ns. But the ones tha t I k now e d W from t h e mountains a nd back i n where we co ne from was co n sidered to be boss y and ov e rbearing. That was the way . the y l o oked on t h em back there at home. W ere they the ones that joined the union? Yeah. They was t h e ones that join ed the union. And th ey was people that had had their way where they'd lived. ~ ecause people was afraid of them. Sort of bossy and mean? They were bossy and overb e a r i ng. 1 W ere t h ey y ounger tha n tm people that didn t join the union? Wa s there any age difference? No, they were mostly middle-age peop le that joined. Mostly families, that had a man at the head of t he family. nd of course the b osses had always made t h em mad. h ey'd come around arrl bawl them ou t about somethi ng. W ere t h e y g ood work ers? Or were they poorer workers t han t h o s e that didn't join the uni o n? W ell, they just d o n e wha:; they had to do. uot by with anything the y cou ld. he ones tha t I knowed. Did any of your close friends join t h e uni on? Yeah • We re you all still clos e friends t h en? Yeah. I never did hold that against t h em, because some of them I talked to, I t old t h e m I said now I don't believe in t h e u nion. I don't want t h e uni ons. rlut you do ••• n d of Tape # 2, s i de 1 Be gin Tape #2, side 2 �. . 20. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. l'i.. Q. • Q. A. • A. Q. A. After they broke the strike and broke the union, were most of those people that was in Clinchfield that were in the uni on, they eventually g ot them o u t of the mill? They run them out one way or the other? · Yeah. Some of than t ore up their houses before they left (inaudible). How did the company ••• did they just fire them or make it rough on them? They just fired them. Right off. ost of them. Fired most of them~ Yeah. Vo you k now where they went? W ell, they scattered about everywhere. ~ome of them went out through the coun try around through M cDowell County and some went back to Madison , Haywood , Mitchell County, very Cou nty, Y111 cey, back in there where they care from. 'ome of them stayed around McDowell County as long as they 1 ived. 1:y uncle ••• both my uncles did. Of course, my daddy's brother, he owned a home h e re at Nebo. nd worked in the mills I don't know how many years. A lot l onger than we had. He ha.d a great big bunch of g irls and they all worked (wife) They still live around here. (Hicks . resumes) They give him what they got for their work. It was the change that come in their ticket. Say they drawed a ticket for $10.50. He give them the 50 cents. He took the $10. That's the way most of the parents did. ~nd he saved up enough money to buy him a home. He had it when he died. A lot of tte parents, they just let the children pay so much board. Was there a lot of women that worked in the mills? Ye ah. There was more women than there was men. M ore women than men . Did they do pretty much the same jobs that the men did? Yeah . About the same thing. LJid they get paid about the same? Paid the same. All except n ow the rough end of the card room where I was. L ike the carders, and drawers and intermediates. '.l'hey was run by men. But the f i ner spinners, the speeders, that made the f ner yarn, they was all most run by women. Did they also work i n weaving? Yeah. Abcut as many women as there was men in t h e weaving. What about ••• what d id the women do? uid they join the union in about equal num bers, or were there fewer women? No. Th ere wasn't hardly any joined • The union was mostly men1 Yeah . Was that true at East larion too? No . I thi nk it was a loy of women joined over there. I tell you ••• That thing's off now ain t it? You got it cut off now ain't you? No. It 1 s still on. You want me to stop it? No. I don't care anybody knowing what I got, was fixi ng to say. Th e re was one of our next-door neighbors up there at Cl inchfield. And he joined the union and he had a little ch ld take sick. A little girl, and he sent after me one evening to come out there as quick as I could. And I got out there and him and his wife left the r o om with a little child, and asked me to go in there and stay with it. And ~ went in there and it died in five minutes after I got t here. W ell, he had a sister that lived at East arion. Her �21. Q. A. husband belong ed to the union ove r there and they hadn't never went bac·k to work. And everybody that belong ed to theunion seemed to think that if you didn't belong to it y ou ought to be afraid of it. fraid of physical dama g e. He asked me, he said Perry are you afraid to go to Ea.st M ari on? I said no sir, I ain't afraid to go to East M ari on. He said you go over there, told me what house his sist e r lived in and tell my sister to come over here 1 that baby's dead. So I went to the house and pecked on the door 1 and she come to the door and I told her my business. hat her brother's baby had died, s ent for her. She said, well, I'll have to se e my husband. He's down there on the picket line. That was before East Mari en had ever started up. Said, I 1 11 h a ve to go down there,and se e him. Sa id I guess you're afraid to go down there, ain t you? I said no, I a i n't afraid to go nowhere. I said get in the car and I'll go down there. I went down there an:i she hunted her husband. evera.l of them c an e, eight or ten foot of my car with t h eir clubs. And they was looki ng at me awful mean, but they never said nothing. And she talked to her husband and then she come back and got in the car and I too k her back over ther e to her brother's. And when I was a young man up there at Clinchfield, I was a man that everybody looked to for everything. I had to hunt the doctor for all the people. I had to dig graves for everybody, and I had to hunt preachers t o preach at funerals, and I had to, well, they just looked on me as a fre e riding horse. 0 o one n i ght, so me feller pecked on the door and I went to the doo r and he said Perry, my wife's having a baby m d I can 1 t get none of my uni on men to go a fter t h e doctor. aid, will you go? I said sure, I 'll go. ~ o I put on my clothes and went out there and got in the car. I had an old T- model Ford. He said, now are you afraid to go to the head man? He lived over there between the r e and Clinchfield. Said, are you afraid t o go to his house? I said not a bit in the world. owe went to his house andhe pecked on the door and his wife come to the door and said he was over at union headquarters on ~ orehead idge. That wa s a Negro secti on. He c ome back and said that man's over at the union headquarters and I guess you're afraid to go over there, ain't y ou? I said no, I a i n't a bit afraid. Said a re you su r e~ I said I 'm v e ry sure. So he g ot i n the car and we went over there to that union headquarters. That whole hilltop was covered up witq people. ind he went in the old bu i lding there. I t had be en an old store buildi ng. Found t h at man. And they had to get an order fr om the u ni on bef ore they could get a doctor. He went in there and got t hat order and brou ght it back and we went up to tov n to an old doctor. He's b e en dead a good many years, and he wa s an old country doctor. Name wa s Jonas. And we went to his house and call ed him out. He promis ed to come. But I went through them any time I took a noti on to. Part of the time I was mad e n ough to bitten through nails and part of the time I was a mused, I was tickled at them. ~hen you would go through the picket lines ? I went through the picket l i nes. Another thing I ' l l tell · you. They had t he roads blo c k ed. W ouldn't l e t anybody in. W ell, my �22. Q. A. Q. A. Q. brother come down through there and me and my wife and family was over at my daddy's on the other side of the mill • .And my brother asked me, s a id have the y se rched your car yet? I said no. He said, well, they will before you get home. He said t h ey searched my car, and we both had an old t ouring car with a cloth top. And of course, that finished making me mad. I didn't have too much farther to go . I told him, y ou get right behind me and I 'll show you how to go throu gh them. And my wife's brother had t ook two old F ord c a r horns and tore them up and put them together. Put it on my car and it made the awfulest racket you ever hea rd. So he got right behind me and I started. I had a 1 926 T-model Ford . And we crossed the railroad switch that goes down to Clinchfield. W ell, that crowd was all up there, men and women playing (inaudible) , hav l ng a bi g time. nd the farther I went, the mad d er I got. So I blowed that old horn and it went l i ke a railroad whistle. .And they all turned one another loose and just reached around and picked up them clubs. They h a d them setting aga i nst the bank and the y watched the road. And tha t's one time tha t o l d car run good. Just seemed like it wanted to run g ood. I poured the gas to it, and it was the wnong thi ng to do. And I went through tha t crowd. They just spread li k e water. I got to the foot of the hill and told my wife, said I 'm g o i ng to stop and go back the re. I might have hit somebody. I 'm sorry that I done that. She commenced to beg me to go on, s a id y ou'll just g et in a fight. Just go on, go on. So I went on home. I said, you reckon I hit anybody? He said, I don't know, but he said they was three and four double deep on the side just as I come through . Bu t he said that ro d was ope n, but they was all piled up on the side. (wife speak s) They j ust jumped out of the way. You brushed one man . (Hicks res umes) A few d a ys after tha t, I was off , going back. The y stopp ed a man , wouldn't let him g o in. I pu l led right up against him. So they told him he'd have to back out, and go back. Wouldn 't let h i m go in at all. And he started backing into me and I just blowed that old horn and held my ground. Some of them come back there and looked. Said, let him through , let him t h rough. I t's this craz·y man back here . He' 11 kill a bunch of us if we don 1 t let him t h rough. So they let him through, go on, but they followed h i m ove r there. F irst place he could t u rn around , t h ey made him turn around and go back (wife spea k s) They was afraid they was brirgtng i n new hands to the mills, that was wha t ••• Oh . New worke rs to repla ce the strikers? (Hi cks resumes) Yeah. ~ hat was what they was trying to sto p . ew hands coming in. (wife speak s) But they never did try to s top us no more . Why we lived on cotton mill hill a nd we had to go out sometime. (Hick s resumes) ow when the soldiers come, they sea rched my ca r every time I took it out. (inaudible) Even raised the back seat and raised t h e tr unk lid. Looked u nder the hood and ev r y t hing . Wha t we re t h ey looki ng for? They wa s looking for weap ons. Dynamite? Ye a h . And pistols and ev erythi n g . F irst morning I went in the mill after t h e soldiers come, the y stopped me abou t seve ral hundr ed yards from the mill a nd wanted to search me. An d I needed a poc ke t k nifle on my job, to cut roping. nd he searched me and found my p ocket knife . He said, now I 1 11 have to take that • I �23 . Q. A. . Q. • Q. said well , I don 't know h ow I'm going to do withou t my pocket knife . I said , no way I can get it in there? He s a id you might put it in y our shoe . So I just reached down and stuck it in my shoe . '.L ook it in there . But I left it in there . I wouldn ' t brin g it back out . They was afraid sorr:ebody would take a weapon i n there . (wife speaks) An d they ' d g e t to fighting (Hicks res um es) They sent us word o ne eveni ng from East Marion thEt the y was comi ng over there a nd going to run ev e rybody out of the place . Who was going to do that? That was the union at East arion . And they brought us the word . W ell, there wa s p lent y of broom handles in there . mi we had to make , call t h e m brush sticks . Take a bro om handle and whittle it off and cut notches in it, and make a brush out of that waste (inaudible) . To clean up under the machine ry with . And everybody went to work , some cut the brush off the handle . Some found a bro om handle . And the feller that had the little dog that carr ied the dynamite ba ck to the house , he bro u ght him in there •• g ot h i m a railroad tap off a joi n t on the railroad . He had it n there m.d he whittled down his broom handle and put that tap on the end of the broom handle . I watched him fix it . nd we wa s go n g to meet th em out at the h e ad of the stairs . I told h i m, I sai d when we go ou t there a n d me e t them people , I'm going ri ght behind y ou . He said why? I said , well , there won ' t be nobody left for me to hit after he gets through with that nut. nd they had the picket line all around our mill . 'l'he railroad switch was down t h rough there. W ell, a lot of them mean bo y s wou ld g e t nuts , a nd the re was always plenty of old wore out nuts off of the machi nery . They could get a poc k etful . They slip 1 up ther e and they'd throw them up at the windows . hey hurt several people that wa y . But that felle r brought h i m a nut off the railroa d . (wife speaks ) W s he aimi ng to throw it at s omebody? (Hicks resumes) Yeah~ And they'd pick up the nut wh en it c ome a nd they' d go to the off ice and report it . nd they c ru ld look at the nut and tell where it come from . W h a d an of f ice e in o ur own depar tment. One old mean boy n the r e , good old boy but devilish . And he went so mewhere and took a wrenc h and he took him a ••• got h i m a nut off ••• Come back in there a nd told me , said you come over here nd watch what I ' m going to do. And I went over there and of cou r s e he h i d there i n the window a nd they couldn't see . He throwed that old big railroa d nu t out there . He d idn't hit anybody, but come ri ght clo s e to . They run a nd rabb e d it up and look ed at it and we co uld see them . nd he said I 1 m wo nd e r i ng if they k now wha t wi ndow that cane out of. He got it off the railro a d . Let me try to get the time stra i ght in my mi nd . You c a me to the mills firs t in 191 9 ? I guess it wa s 1 1 8 • 1 91 8 . And t h en you a ll lived in the mi ll villag e? And then you went b a c k to M adison County? S ta;yed a year and then you come back? Mov ed back i nto the mill vil l age , and t h en so metime during the 20 1 s, y ou mo ved h er e ? �24 . A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. • • • Q. Q. No . Not here . Dysartsville? I first went out on a farm over across the hill, here adjoining Lake James . I rented it from an old feller . That wa s old man Condrey . When wa s that? What year were you out there? Now that was in the 20 1 s . (wife speaks) No, that was in the 30's . (Hicks resumes) Was it? (wife) Yeah, because Lois was a little baby . Shew as born in 1930 and we moved between then and 1932 . (Hicks) ow, about the time she was a year old. (wife) It was ab out inaudible) when we moved out on the farm . ~ o , did you all then live in the mill villag e all thew ay during the 20 1 s up to the 30's? Up to th e 30's when we went out there . No , I bought a little farm down here at Nebo and we quit the mill and went out ·and stayed about a year . And ••• (wife sp e aks)But you worle d 'in the mill. (Hicks resumes) But I worked in the mi l l . went back and forth . And then you finally left the mills in about 31 or 32? To go ••• Yeah . We staye d ou t five years . And t h en you come back to Drexel? nd then I went back to Clinchfield . nd I worked several years t he n and then I bought that farm in Dysartsville . (wife) Th~ was in 1939 . (Hicks r e sumes) I t was in the early 40's . It was just abou t the time that W orld War One was breaking out . They got three of our oldest boys. In W orld W ar umber Two . How many children did you all h ave? Ha d six. Six living and two dead . Got four boys and two girls . You said earlier that you had brown lung . When did you discover that you h ad that? Well, I don't know that was what it was . I knowed it was something bad wrong . Th e last wor k I done in the cotton mills . That would have been in 1939? Yeah . About 1939 . And I got a l lergic to everything . Hay fever • Breathin§ got bad. hen I went out on the farm and stayed six years . old the farm . That was wh en I was talk i ng a b out wanting to work out ::,ocial Security . To have something to depend on when I retired . nd you had to have worked for a company at that time to carry it ..," And I decided to go back • •• instead of g o i ng to the cott m mills. They done everything they could to get me to come back th re . And I went to Drexel Furniture ~ompany . W ent to work out on the yard . Handling lumber . And my emphysema g ot worse, and worse. I got to where I wasn't able to run the job . Somebody said (inaudible) well satisfied with my work . When did you 1 k now you h a d b r own lung ? W ell, it ain t b e en too many years ago that I knowed for sure that's what it was (wife speaks) We l l, the doctor told y ou that was emphysema . He n ever did tell you it was brown lung . (Hicks resumes) No. lhey cal l it brown lung now . And , W3ll I wrote t o a doctor that wrote this in the Asheville ~itizen . l old him h ow I had work ed . And he wrote me back a letter and told me I had emphysema . But the doctors around Mari o n here they ne~er cou ld discov e r. (wife spea ks) They called it athsma . Just athsma? �A. And after I went to wor k up there in the lumber yard, I told my overseer that it was getting too hard for me. I'd have to give it up. He as k ed me what I wanted to do and I told him I thought I wanted to nightwatch. I'd worked with him a year and a half. So they had no trouble getting a nightwatchman job. They was having trouble keeping nightwatchmen. I t was an awful big old p lant and it was awful spooky . And ther e wa s a lot of people ( inaudible). So they put me right on. I nightwatched for two years there. .rind in the time I was there, we built this lit t le old house h ere. Our oldest son's wife while he wa s i n the Army, bought two a c res a nd a half of land here. nd he said he'd give •.• both of them said they'd g ive e n ough l a nd to build us a house on. W ell, I didn't much like the idea of that, but I went ahead and built this little old house. Cheap lit t le old house. nd we been here about 30 years. nd I nightwatched two years and a half and our children all go t away from home. There was nobody to stay with my wife. She was afraid to stay by herself at night. I went and told my bossman that I want ed on the days hift, something. I didn't k now nothing ab out the furniture factory, that is the inside of it. Well, he went and got me a job in the machin e room. Rough (inaudible) where all the lumber all started. But it was worse than the cot t on mill. F or dust. There wa s dust ev e rywhere. The ve ry worst thing that I cou ld have done. But I stuck it out there until I was , got old enoug h to retire. They cut the a ge down fro m 65 to 62. And on the l''ourth of July, I was 62 in April. Been 63 the next year. W ell, I went to the Social Security man here i n a rion and signed up to retire. He fir s t told me, said you can't retire. Yet. Said it;s all right to sign up, but y ou can't retire. I said,~11, didn t you know they'd cut the a g e down to 62? He said no, I didn't know it. W ell, I said, I been watching th a t closer than you h av e. So he signed me up and I went back on M onday morning after the ~ ourt h of J u ly, went right up to my boss and tol d him, I said I'm just work i n g a ten day notice and I'm quitting. He said what's themat t er? I s aid I' m r e tiring. So he come around about an hour or two and he said, P e rry y ou can't draw a thing this year. You've done made o ver $ 1200, and that's all you're a llowed to make. Wi th them. He said you c a n't draw a cent until next year. He said l e t's throw that notice away. I said, well, just throw it a way. He said, well, I never did turn it in nohow. So I worked the rest of that year and retired. I like to never made it. I had, tl!mt dust gi v e me hay fever and agitated this collapsed lung. And so at the end of the year, when they c ome out for Christmas, he come around to me and said now P erry you're just go i ng to make $ 1200 next year, ain't you? I said I ain't going to make nothing next year. W hen I go out of here a t Christmas, I 'm not comi ng back. Oh, he said, co me back and work out $ 1200. I said no, I'm done. He s a id,~11, come back and wor k unt i l yo ur birthday . I said no, I 'm done. 'o I ~ome out the Christmas vacation and although I was supposed to go back and work a few days between vacatio n and the first of the year. But I took pneumonia fe v er. I saw a doctor and wasn't able to go back. But quick as I was able to go, I went and signed out for release and got what was coming to me. nd they beg ed me there yet to come back and visit, but I ain't n e ver g oing back. End of Tape #2, sid e 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Howie, Sam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Hicks, Perry Interview Date 12/31/1975 Location The location of the interview. Marion, NC Number of pages 25 pages Date digitized 9/19/2014 File size 24.4MB Checksum alphanumeric code b6affd7cf20c7fcf3df5c2f7a0b30fa4 Scanned by Tony Grady Equipment Epson Expression 10000 XL Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape338_PerryHicks_transcript_M Title A name given to the resource Interview with Perry Hicks [Feburary 9, 1976] Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howie, Sam Hicks, Perry Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region, Southern--Social life and customs--20th century Appalachian Region, Southern--Social life and customs--19th century Hicks, Perry Description An account of the resource Perry Hicks talks about working in a cotton mill in western North Carolina in the early twentieth century. He was born in 1899 and began working at a young age because he dropped out of the six-month school he was attending. He explains the influence the unions had: "naturally, I have, all my life, been opposed to the unions." He says that the unions caused inflation, so the poor people didn't come out ahead anyway. He eventually left the cotton mill because he couldn't support his family. Boise Hardwood Lumber Company Burke County N.C. Clinchfield Clinchfield company cotton mill Drexel Furniture Company Duke Power Company Dyartsville East Marion Mill farming flu epidemic Great Depression Haywood County N.C. Madison County N.C. Marion mill house mill work Perry Hicks Pigeon River protests railroad Rutherfod County sawmill segregation voting World War I