So I was out of a job at that time. Things was pretty hard to find a job.
And they said they was going to need some toppers at the Ridgeview
[Hosiery at Newton], but they wouldn't pay you to learn. So I went and
learned on my own. It took close to three months to learn it before I
got a penny out of it. Then whenever they needed one I was ready, and I
got the job. At that time I was making a total of $17.50 a week, and
that sounds like peanuts now. But I traded cars and got married and
bought what furniture I could get by for two rooms and was paying cash
for my groceries and rent. Of course, my rent wasn't but about four
dollars a month. And you could eat pretty good on three to four dollars
a week, because the price of coffee was fifteen cents a pound; a
twenty-five-pound bag of flour was thirty-five cents; and gas was
running around nineteen or twenty cents. And I did buy it one time for
nine cents a gallon. But I worked up there it must have been six or
seven years. And I come out one evening, and there was a union man
standing at the gate handing out papers. Well, I stopped and lit a
cigarette, and he give me one of his papers, and the superintendent was
in the office looking out the window to see who talked to him. And I
never stood there two minutes, I know, but the next day they had my time
made out. And that was a pretty good thing, I guess, but I couldn't get
him to give me a reason why. Because I knowed I could get back pay if I
could get him to give me a reason why. So I just took off east and went
to Burlington—that was the hosiery center of the South—and found me a
place where they was just opening up a mill and putting in new
machinery. And I got a job there, and they'd pay me a day's wages if I was coming home for the weekend to see if I could
bring any more back with me. So I'd stop up at the mill, and I got one
or two to go, and then the superintendent told the watchman not to let
me in. So I just stopped at the gate, and he'd say, "I can't let you
in." I'd say, "Well, I don't need but two or three this time. I'll catch
them when they come out." And every weekend they paid me a day's wages,
let me come home on Friday and paid me for that day plus give me ten
dollars to buy gas. So I took right close to forty hands away from him
by him treating me like he did. Then I went on over there and worked
till Uncle Sam called for me.
I never had paid any income tax, because you used to didn't have such a
thing. When they called, I had done got my notice to go when I had my
tax filed, as I was going to have to pay a little. And the man said
they'd fixed it up for me. Said, "The hell, you don't want to have to
pay nothing. You're going off to service." And he fixed it I didn't have
to pay nothing. So I went on and lived through it; about four of us out
of 250 came back. So I come back, and I thought I was ready to go back
to work. I called, and they told me to come on in. And I went, and I
worked two nights on the second shift. Then my buddies from Florida
called me and said they'd like for me to come down there for a week or
so. So I just called over to the mill and told them that I wasn't ready
to start back yet. I said, "I promised myself a ninety-day furlough if I
lived to get home, and I'm going to take some of it." They said, "Okay.
When you get ready to come back, come on." So I went on and run around
for three or four weeks and went on back and went to work. I got out of
the Army at Fort Bragg and caught a ride from there to Graham, North
Carolina, stopped and bought me a motorcycle and rode it on home. And
then after I rode it a while, I thought, "Well, they're a little bit
dangerous," so I sold it and bought me an airplane.
So I flew it a while, then traded it and got me a little better one.
I've had five of my own and belonged to several flying clubs. And I come
up here dating her by plane. So after we got married,
then… So that shows you I've been married more than once.