Norman wanted to keep working, but was forced to retire
Norman remembers a congenial work environment. She wanted to keep working, but was forced to retire.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Icy Norman, April 6 and 30, 1979. Interview H-0036. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
Everybody seemed to get along and everybody seemed like they enjoyed
working with one another. Just like I said, everybody up there in the
room I worked in felt like just one family. We just laugh and joke.
We'd say anything. We didn't think nothing about
what we said to one another, because nobody paid no mind.
We'd all work together and tried to pull together. I think
that's the main thing on the job. Especially where
it's a group of people. If they all work together.
- MARY MURPHY:
-
Was there a lot of competition? Did they always have that production
board up?
- ICY NORMAN:
-
No, they stopped that. When they went to running the high speeds. They
had a clock on there would tell you how many yards a warper hand would
run a day. It would clock it off like your automobile, how your
automobile will tell you how many miles you got on your car. Something
similar to that. Its warp mill is running and that clock is a clocking
all the time. At the end of the day, the warper hands, they had a sheet
to do them all with. They put down how many yards they run each day, the
days of the month, and all. We didn't have to keep
production. I creeled anywhere from seventeen to eighteen hundred cones
a day. Long towards the last them cones went to weighing anywhere from
eight to ten pounds a cone. It was kind of heavy.
But I enjoyed it. I really did love my job. I hated that I had to quit.
I just begged and I done every way in the world to get them to let me
work on. So now they let you work as long as you want to, so they
say.
- MARY MURPHY:
-
That's the law.
- ICY NORMAN:
-
But I did, just let me work one more year. Just let me work from now
until next April. Then I'll have all my debts paid off.
They says, "I wish I could. I hate to see you leave so bad.
We'll never replace you."
So I went back up there in a month or two. Roy says, "Icy,
please go over there and creel that mill up for me. You know I
ain't run one yard all day long."
I says, "Roy, you know better."
He says, "I ain't."