Interview (2007) with Cramer McDaniel (CM), son of Mattie, nephew of Minnie. Thanks to Seunghee Cha for transcribing the taped interview. Edited by Joe Manning (JM).

JM: I’ve got information that shows that your mother was born June 12^th, 1898, in Gastonia. Does that sound about right?

CM: She was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina.

JM: I’ve got the 1930 census, and you are 8 years old and living on South King Street.

CM: That’s right.

JM: And it looks like about two doors down is your Aunt Minnie, and her mother Mary Carpenter.

CM: They lived in another neighborhood until my grandfather died, and then they moved in with us. That was about 1921, which was the year I was born.

JM: What kind of a house was it?

CM: Oh, it was just a mill house, you know. Back then, the Loray Mill owned all these houses. Then Firestone bought them in ’35. And then they started selling the houses around ’47 or ’48.

JM: So you must have been living near the mill?

CM: We weren’t too far from it. I lived about five blocks from it.

JM: Did you ever work at the mill?

CM: Yes, I did. I retired from there. I went to work there when it was Firestone.
 

JM: How old were you when you started working there?
 

CM: I was sixteen, I believe.

JM: And what were you doing there?

CM: When I first went in there, I was cleaning. Then I started overhauling frames, and then I started doing mechanic work on the machines. After the war, I came back and then went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in ’48 to ’49 and was in refrigeration and air conditioning. Me and a guy opened a place, but there wasn’t much air conditioning business then, and we didn’t do too good. And so we started doing electrical work and refrigeration for a company. But I finally went back to Firestone, and I did air conditioning, refrigeration and electrical work for them.

JM: You would have been about seven years old when they had that the 1929 strike at Loray Mill. Do you remember anything about that?

CM: Oh yes, I do.

JM: What was it like at the time? That was a pretty rough time, wasn’t it?
 

CM: Well, I was just a kid and I went to grammar school, and the school was about a block from the mill. And they brought the National Guard in there. I remember that.
 

JM: Do you remember your family striking?

CM: No, I don’t remember. But I don’t think my family struck.

JM: Your mother was working there at the time?

CM: Yeah, and my father, too.

JM: What kind of work did your mother do?

CM: She did all kinds of work. She was in the yarn department. I don’t know what all she did.

JM: Did she ever talk about it much when she got older?

CM: Well, she was still working there when I went to work there.

JM: In her obituary, it said that your Aunt Minnie worked there her whole life.

CM: Yeah, I guess that’s the only job that she ever had.

JM: And she never got married?

CM: No, she never did get married.

JM: Do you remember your Aunt Minnie as being a happy person?

CM: Oh yes, she was happy. And she was just like a mother to me. I had Minnie and her mother living with us, so it was like I had three mothers.

JM: Do you think your mother was happy in her job?

CM: Oh yes, she was happy, because she had six children. You had to assume she had to have a happy family, you know?

JM: So she was working, and your father was working, and still had all those children. How did she manage?

CM: I don’t know. Back then, you didn’t make any money much, you know? But we made it, we made it good. We had a good family. We were a good Christian family. The Lord looked after us.

JM: Did you do most of your playing outside right around the mill?

CM: Not around the mill, but around our neighborhood, about five blocks away. Back then we didn’t have any money to buy toys or nothing like that. We made our own toys.

JM: Did everybody you knew around that neighborhood work at the mill?

CM: Oh yes, everybody in the neighborhood, ‘cause the mill owned the houses. And the rent, by the way, was real cheap.

JM: Did they have a company store?

CM: No, not then. At one time, I think they did.

JM: According to the records I have, Minnie was born October 7, 1896, and July, died July 1973.

CM: Yes, she died when we were taking a vacation. We had to turn around and come back.

JM: And she was still living with your mother then?

CM: Oh, yeah.

JM: I understand that the mill is now being turned into condominiums.

CM: Well, it’s not done. I don’t know what they’re going to do about it. It looks bad right now. They say it’s going to be a historical place, you know. I still live in one of those houses.

JM: So you live in a mill house?

CM: It was at one time. I’ve remodeled it.

JM: So, Minnie lived a long time, she lived in the same place with your mother, and she worked at the same place all those years. That’s kind of interesting that she did the same thing all of her life.

CM: Well, it was a little different for me. I had a job where I did a little bit of everything. And I was in the Navy in World War Two, and I even worked on the railroad a little while. I made five dollars a day.

JM: When did you retire from Firestone?

CM: I retired December 1982.

JM: Did they give you a fairly decent retirement?

CM: Well, it’s better than nothing, you know. They’ve got a union in there now, and they’ve got better benefits than they did when I was working there.

JM: And they’re located in a different place now, right?

CM: Yeah. They built a new plant in King’s Mountain, right off Interstate 85.

JM: What are some of the good things you remember about your mother?

CM: Oh, she was a good Christian woman and she provided for all of us children. I don’t ever remember her going to bed without get on her knees to pray. She preached it to all of her children.

JM: And your father?

CM: The same.

JM: And Minnie?

CM: Minnie, too. Yeah, she was a good Christian. All of them were Christians, a Christian family. You didn’t hear nothing out of the way in our family. No cursing or nothing like that. The Lord provided for us and we thanked Him for it.

JM: Did you know that the man who took the photograph was working for the National Child Labor Committee? They were a group that was trying to get more laws passed to prohibit companies from taking advantage of children. So when people look at the picture of your mother and your Aunt Minnie, do you, do you think there’s any reason to feel sorry for them?

CM: Well, I don’t know. They always seemed to be happy people. They were Christians, you know.

JM: Do you think that they enjoyed it, or did they just put up with it?

CM: Well, you have to put up with that when you don’t have anything else. That’s all they knew back then, you know. This whole world has come a long way since then. They didn’t even have a car then. I guess I was the first one in my family to have a car.

JM: How many children did you have?

CM: Two.

JM: Did they go to college?

CM: Yeah, they both graduated.

JM: And what do they do for a living?

CM: Well, my daughter is a retired schoolteacher, and my son is a certified public accountant. And my daughter’s three children all graduated from college. One of them is a physical therapist at Duke University, another is going to graduate school, and another is in computers. My son has two children. His daughter is at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and his son is at Appalachian State. That’s where my daughter went to school to be a teacher. She has a master’s degree in special education. We’ve come a long ways.

JM: What did your family think of the photograph?

CM: Well, they all were really amazed at it. My other brother and his daughters, I told them about it, and they all got it up on their computers. I tell you, I was thankful you called me and sent me that.