J. T. Scruggs

TRANSCRIPT %u2013 J.T. SCRUGGS
[Compiled November 15th, 2010]

Interviewee: J.T. SCRUGGS

Interviewer: Rob Stephens

Interview Date: August 7th, 2010

Location: Shelby, North Carolina

Length: Approximately 89 minutes

ROB STEPHENS: Could you start off by saying your name, birth date, and where we are right now?
J.T. SCRUGGS: Yeah, I%u2019m J.T. Scruggs. We%u2019re at the Destination Cleveland County office, and my birthday is 12/24/41. That%u2019s when I was born.
RS: I%u2019ll start off with the life history form. [Gathering personal information for the form] Were you born in Shelby?
JTS: I was born in Cleveland County, yeah. Not necessarily in Shelby proper.
RS: It was in the county?
JTS: It was in the county, Cleveland County. I think I was born at home.
RS: You%u2019re not sure, though?
JTS: I%u2019m pretty sure I was born at home.
RS: And do you have a spouse? What%u2019s her name?
JTS: JoNeil B. Scruggs.
RS: And do you have children?
JTS: Um-hmm, two boys. The oldest boy is named Chris.
RS: And what year was he born?
JTS: Oh, golly, you%u2019re going to push me now--%u201962.
RS: And--?
JTS: Craig. He was born in %u201967, I think. That%u2019s close.
RS: He probably won%u2019t check in on whether you knew his year or not. Did you go to high school in Cleveland County?
JTS: Boiling Springs, Boiling Springs High School.
RS: And what year?
JTS: 1960.
RS: Did you do other education after that?
JTS: A long time after that, I went to college.
RS: Okay.
JTS: Limestone.
RS: All one word?
JTS: Um-hmm, and it%u2019s in Gaffney, South Carolina. It%u2019s Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina.
RS: And what year?
JTS: 1970-- Oh, I graduated in 1981, excuse me. I started back in 1975.
RS: And occupational history, like what jobs you%u2019ve done?
JTS: Well, I worked, I guess, you%u2019d just say my whole career--I had done some work while I was in high school at a place in Gaffney, but I spent just under forty-four years with PPG Industries.
RS: You probably had a lot of titles.
JTS: Yeah, I had a lot of titles.
RS: Maybe your last one?
JTS: The last one, when I retired, I was plant manager. And I was plant manager for the last, gosh, [pause] number of years anyway.
RS: So I often start interviews like this asking people to tell me about their grandparents, so maybe you could start on your father%u2019s side or your mother%u2019s side, whichever one you prefer.
JTS: Well, I could start on my father%u2019s side first, but I can tell you that I never knew either one of my grandfathers, but I knew both of my grandmothers. My Grandmother Scruggs, she died when I was in the eighth grade in high school, but I remember--well, I remember most about her, she lived in Shelby the last number of years of her life, and her and Earl lived over there. We didn%u2019t have much transportation back when I was a kid. What I%u2019ve done, generally, was walk anywhere I went, or ride my bicycle. But I can remember we lived down in the country below Boiling Springs in a place called Number One Township. It was right on the South Carolina state line.
RS: It was called Number One?
JTS: Number One. In Cleveland County there was two townships that went by a number--Number One and Number Three. The rest of them were, like, Lattimore, Mooresboro, whatever, but there was two townships that went by the number. So I can remember my dad, since I can remember, my dad worked for Duke Power up at Cliffside Steam Plant. What I remember about my grandmother--the most I remember about my Grandmother Scruggs was--when Dad was off--he rotated. When he was off on his long break, a lot of times when I was little, we would get to Boiling Springs and then they run a bus from Boiling Springs to Shelby about three times a day or four times a day or something. Dad and I would catch the bus and come spend the weekend with Granny Scruggs. She lived in the mill village with the Lily Mill, where Earl worked prior to going into music. She was a fantastic cook, I remember that about her. Both my grandmothers were great cooks.
RS: And does that side of the family--? I%u2019ve heard a little bit about it, but I want to hear it from you too, from Maida and Elam Scruggs, but is that side of the family from Cleveland County way back?
JTS: Yeah, yeah. Granny Scruggs was a Ruppe prior to marrying my grandfather, and I don%u2019t know for a fact, but it%u2019s possible she might have been out of the edge of South Carolina. I know part of her family was down there, but I can%u2019t say for sure whether she grew up as a child in Cleveland County or not. My grandfather was from Cleveland County. His name was George Elam, and the house that he and my grandmother lived in when he died, and where the kids was born, where the five kids of my grandfather was born, it%u2019s still standing. In fact it%u2019s--well, there%u2019s not anybody in it right now--they%u2019re trying to sell it. It%u2019s been changed somewhat, and enlarged. It was a relatively small house before they added on to it. My grandfather passed away, and I%u2019ve never known exactly the deal, but my great-grandfather was still living at that time when he died. They built this house for my grandfather and grandmother to live in. Somehow, it never got deeded to them, and so when Grandfather died, for whatever the reason, and I can%u2019t tell you why, but for whatever the reason, my grandmother and the kids moved out and went to near Cliffside, North Carolina, which is about fifteen miles, maybe. Maybe not even that far, and they lived out on a farm in Cliffside, just outside of Cliffside, North Carolina. Then, when my great-grandfather passed away, they split all the property that he owned. He owned quite a bit of property, and my grandmother got property down near Broad River, and they moved back to a house down near Broad River on a small farm, and farmed there until everybody else was gone except Earl and Granny Scruggs. He went to work over at the Lily Mill then. He come out of the farm, off the farm and went to work at the Lily Mill, as he tells it, for forty cents an hour. They lived, I think, for just a short period of time in Boiling Springs, and then he bought a home in the mill village at Lily Mill, and they moved to Shelby. So that%u2019s how they got to Shelby; it%u2019s while he was working in the Lily Mill. Prior to that, they had never lived in Shelby.
RS: Okay. Your father, is it Junie?
JTS: My father is Junie.
RS: Okay.
JTS: Now, Dad was not still with them when they went to Cliffside. He%u2019d already got married. Dad was a good bit older than everybody else. He was the oldest. I think I%u2019m right that when they went to Cliffside, I think I%u2019m right, that he was already married. It%u2019s possible that he wasn%u2019t, but I%u2019m pretty sure he was already married when they went to Cliffside. They lived outside of Cliffside about two years before my great-grandfather died and they came back here.
RS: Okay. And I%u2019m sorry, I lost track a little bit, but your father, where did he live?
JTS: In Number One Township.
RS: Oh, Number One Township. So he stayed there?
JTS: Well, he moved there. When he married my mother--. Well, I was going to tell you one other thing about my grandmother. When Grandfather died, sometime after that, she remarried and had another child, so there%u2019s five children: three boys and two girls by my grandfather, and then, by her second marriage, she had another daughter, so they had a half-sister.
RS: That fills the hole for me, actually. I had been trying to figure out--.
JTS: She married a Jolley the second time, and in fact, he was a brother to the oldest girl%u2019s husband.
RS: Okay.
JTS: There was Eula Mae and Ruby, and then there was Dad, who was Junie, and Horace, and then Earl. And then the half-sister%u2019s name was Vinnie Mae.
RS: Okay.
JTS: And she still lives here in Shelby.
RS: Okay. And do you have any of the earliest memories of your grandmother, growing up, or--?
JTS: My grandmother on the Scruggs side?
RS: Yeah, the one that you visited on weekends.
JTS: Yeah, that%u2019s pretty much my early memories of her, because what I remember about--from the time I could remember Granny Scruggs, they had already moved to Shelby.
RS: Okay.
JTS: And I didn%u2019t get to see her an awful lot, just when we could go over there on the weekends. Now, just before she died, the youngest girl, Ruby, was living in Boiling Springs, just behind the high school, and they brought her to their home, and that%u2019s where she died at, was there behind the school. I remember what she looked like, and remember going there, and I can remember a time or two her coming to our home and spending some time, but I don%u2019t remember as much about her as I do on my other side because I lived very close to my grandmother on Mother%u2019s side.
RS: Okay. Well, maybe you could talk about your--?
JTS: Well, on Mother%u2019s side, my grandfather there, died in November--no, he died in September before I was born in December of 1941, so I never saw either one of my grandfathers. Let me think here a minute: there was four girls--Mother had three sisters and two brothers, and my grandfather owned a sizeable amount of property. I%u2019ll say in the neighborhood of a thousand acres, probably, up what they called Duke Power Road back then. No, they called it Ridge Road back then, and now it%u2019s called Duke Power Road, because it%u2019s on the road that the steam plant is on. Then, when he passed away, it was split up among all the kids and my grandmother, so my grandmother got a farm--got a plot out of it, and everybody else got--. So they all got somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred plus a few acres of property. One of my aunts and her husband built the home, initially, that Dad and Mother lived in, and then when they split all the property up, they got a farm up the road, so they moved off and built another home, and Mother and Dad got that home. Of course, it changed a lot over the years, and it%u2019s still standing, but they lived there. That was about one mile from the homeplace where my grandmother lived. Of course, we grew up farming. Prior to my memory, Dad farmed some, but he never liked farming. He just did not like farming. He went to work for a construction company up in Virginia, and actually had spinal meningitis but survived it. When he got out of the hospital, he came back home, and they were beginning to build the Duke Power Steam Plant over near above where we lived. They call it the Cliffside plant, but it%u2019s just as close to where we live as it is to Cliffside. The plant basically sits right on the Cleveland County-Rutherford County line. Part of the plant pays county taxes to Rutherford County, and they pay part to Cleveland County. And, as a kid, they also had a mill hill up there.
RS: You called it a mill hill?
JTS: Yeah, they called theirs a village, Duke Power Village. It wasn%u2019t a mill hill; it was a village. And I had one aunt and uncle who lived there for a long time in the village. My uncle worked there and Dad worked there. Dad had gone to work there while it was under construction and then hired on once it started up. He worked there until he retired. I think he put in about forty years with Duke. It was either thirty-nine or forty, and when he retired he was a shift supervisor. Worked shifts the entire time he was there.
RS: You say he worked third shift?
JTS: No, he worked shifts--he rotated. So anyway, my uncle, then, was a big farmer. One of my uncles was a big farmer, the one that lived there in the area. He then rented our farm, but as far as Mother was concerned, it might as well have been ours because we hit the field every day just like we owned it. We worked for my uncle just like we owned it. He paid us; not much, but he paid us. It didn%u2019t matter whether he paid us or not; we%u2019d have been out there. So I grew up on the farm. Gosh, I plowed mules, and thought I%u2019d died and gone to heaven when I got to get on a tractor instead of having to plow the mule. I farmed until I got out of high school, and I actually built a home across the road from my mother and dad. I fooled around and got married when I was in high school. My wife and I got married in 1959, and my senior year in high school I worked the third shift and went to school, full class all day. So, that%u2019s my senior year in high school. Then Dad and I--I was working at PPG, rotating, and Dad and I built the home that we lived in then, from scratch. Dad laid the brick. He done everything. He was a licensed electrician, licensed plumber, and plus, he worked at Duke Power for a living, but he done a lot of things on the side. He worked all the time. He just absolutely worked all the time, but we built our home. It took us a little over a year to build it. But anyway, I was telling you when I was growing up on the farm, my grandmother most all the time fixed lunch for everybody.
RS: Okay, on the farm?
JTS: On the farm. And she was a good cotton picker. I was never good at picking cotton. I hated picking cotton. I didn%u2019t mind so much the hoeing; I didn%u2019t mind so much plowing the mules, but I hated picking cotton. I%u2019d done everything I could do to get out of it. I just didn%u2019t like it. But Grandmother, we%u2019d go there and eat, and then every Saturday night we gathered at my Grandmother Humphries%u2019. The whole crowd did, not just us. The entire family, everybody that lived over there. Mother had one brother that lived below Gaffney--didn%u2019t see a whole of him. He still had a farm up there, but he leased it out to people and had a home on it. He normally just leased it out to a family to come in and farm it and he%u2019d get part of the crop.
RS: Was that a sharecropping system?
JTS: A sharecropping system. They lived in the home and then just sharecropped. Yeah, I%u2019ll never forget the family that lived there for so many years. They had twenty-one children. It was a white family--they were Huskeys--great family. They were never all at home at the same time. Some of them obviously was grown and gone.
RS: Twenty-one?
JTS: They would get up in the morning and go out an pick a bale of cotton every day, and then back to bed, of course. There wasn%u2019t no TVs or anything. But my grandmother, I can see her now. She always wore a bonnet, had an apron tied around her, anywhere you saw her. I wouldn%u2019t put her in a category that said she was fat, as we call it, but she was overweight. She was overweight, and always just as jolly as she could be. I mean, just, she had a good time. She loved to have a good time, and we had a good time with her. My uncle lived in the home with her, lived in the house with her and his wife. He had two kids, a boy and a girl, and the girl was just a year younger than me. Her name was Sandra. We grew up together and we had a lot of good times. She didn%u2019t like picking cotton either, and we used to do all we could to get out of picking cotton. We never were able to get out of the field, but we never did do much good at picking cotton either. My grandmother died when she was eighty-four. My Grandmother Humphries died when she was eighty-four. Grandmother Scruggs, I think, was just under eighty when she died, but I%u2019m not positive.
RS: You say that side, your mother%u2019s side was Humphries?
JTS: Humphries, right. There%u2019s not any of them left now. Mother was the last one to die. My mother, she died on December 26th, and if she%u2019d have lived until February the 10th, she%u2019d have been ninety-six. She was always a stout person. When she was ninety-four year old, she could sit right down in the middle of that floor, cross her legs and jump up just like that. She fell and broke her hip when she was ninety-four, and after that she was never strong until then, but up until then--. And always had an incredible--Maida, who you interviewed, still has a super good memory and a good mind. My mother was the same way. She had a great mind. Dad died when he was eighty-four also.
RS: And so did you interact with the Huskeys much?
JTS: Yeah, because I grew up with the boys there. Yeah, gosh, I%u2019ve sat at that table. They lived in this fairly big house, but the kitchen itself must have been twenty-five foot long, and they had just a great big table that run right down the middle of it.
RS: I guess they had to.
JTS: They had to.
RS: [Laughter] JTS: And I%u2019ve eat there a many of times. Yeah, lots of times.
RS: Okay.
JTS: Like I said, I went to school with the boys--and the girls too, for that matter.
RS: Could you describe maybe--did you spend much time observing the mill town, or did you get a sense for any of, like, how it worked, what the type of community it was?
JTS: Oh, well, I know a little bit about the kind of community it was. It was very similar to the Duke village, but [pause] yeah, later on, actually, after I was married, I knew quite a few people that lived in the Dover Mill village, so I%u2019ve been in their homes and spent time with them and talked about it. You know, they rented those homes for something like five dollars a week. Basically, they could walk to work because they was all right around the plant. I never worked in a, quote, cotton mill. I%u2019ve been in them, but I never worked in one. Before I went to work for PPG, I worked at a place called Cherokee Finishing. What they were was a dyeing and printing facility. They brought fabric in that was produced somewhere else, and either dyed it or printed it. They dyed some yarn also.
RS: Maybe you could tell me about the Duke village then, if you knew a little more.
JTS: Well, it was very similar to the mill hills. The only reason I said I knew a little bit about it is when I was growing up, when Dad would go to work, when in summertime, if I didn%u2019t have to be in the field for any reason, I would go up to my aunt%u2019s and stay because I had some friends that lived beside of her--two guys. So, I%u2019d go up there, and we played in the village. In fact, before OSHA and everybody else got so involved with safety and everything, we used to play in the plant. It was wide open; you could go in there any time you wanted to. We played all over the steam plant. I never will forget, they had these graded floors, and you could go all the way up on top and look all the way down and see the bottom. Nobody ever bothered--we didn%u2019t bother nothing. We was smart enough to know we didn%u2019t fool with anything, but we played all over that village and in that mill and the coal yard and the river, of course. The river was the big thing when I grew up. That%u2019s the only place we had to go swimming, basically, was the river.
RS: Was there any pollution from that you knew of?
JTS: Now, as I look back, yeah, I can remember as I look back now, when Dad would come home from work, his car always had this black tint on it. I think it was soda ash, they called it, out of the coal. It would just be little black speckles everywhere. Whether any of it got in the lungs or not, I don%u2019t know.
RS: Do you know anything about recreation in the mill town? Were there, like, bars or anything like that, or did you have to go out?
JTS: Wasn%u2019t no bars.
RS: Was there, like, house bars? In similar types of communities I%u2019ve seen in other places there was, like, people would have little houses where they would give out--you know, they would sell beer or something like that.
JTS: There wasn%u2019t nothing like that. It wasn%u2019t legal here. Anybody that was doing that was hiding.
RS: Oh, yeah, that%u2019s--.
JTS: Oh, there was plenty of bootleggers. There were plenty of bootleggers, but it was not legal at all in Cleveland County. There wasn%u2019t anything like that. Now, the Dover Mill, they had a grocery store in their mill hill, which was not, as I understand, it was not owned by the Dovers. It was owned by a private individual and it was called the Ora Supermarket. The Dover mill was here and the Ora Mill was just right down the street, and it was called the Ora Supermarket. It was run by a private individual, and ran until [pause] maybe twelve or fifteen year ago. They just kept it open, and in fact, the people who ran it are still in business, but they got out, for the most part, the grocery part, and they%u2019re just primarily a meat market now, but not in the same place. It%u2019s in a different place. But everybody played sports. When I grew up, even in our township--. When I grew up, the county had, it%u2019s either thirteen or fourteen high schools within Cleveland County. It was all small schools and they had elementary schools. In most cases, they had the elementary school and high school together, but in my case, because we were over near the state line, we had an elementary school that went through seven grades in the community. So that%u2019s where I went to elementary school. You know, there would be two grades in the same room many times. So you can imagine what the education was like, but we went to school. Generally walked to school. When it was warm, I would walk barefoot. I never wore shoes if it was warm enough to go without shoes. But we had a really nice baseball field. Didn%u2019t have a lot of seating capacity--didn%u2019t have really any seats at that time, but people would just come and sit on the ground and all. But I remember when I grew up, baseball was the thing. There was no such thing as football, and very little basketball except in the high schools, there was basketball, but even when I grew up, our high schools didn%u2019t know what football--they didn%u2019t have football, just basketball and baseball. But baseball was huge. There used to be [pause]--they were not pro teams, but there were teams that traveled, and they always had one there in our community that traveled. It was made up of the men that worked, primarily. There would be a few young guys on it, but mostly it was guys that was anywhere from twenty-one to thirty-five year old. They didn%u2019t get paid for it, but they loved baseball, and they played baseball. Gosh, we used to spend a lot of time up there if we wasn%u2019t in the field, especially on Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoons, and they%u2019d play baseball.
RS: Did you play?
JTS: Yeah, I played some baseball. I was never as good as some people, but I played high school ball up until I got married and I didn%u2019t play after that. But they also had a lot of little league teams and a lot of pony league, they called it, which was eleven, twelve, and thirteen year-olds. Excuse me, twelve-year-old ended little league; it was thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen-year-olds, I believe it was, as pony league. I had an uncle, my uncle that lived in that area, he was a huge baseball fan. Gosh, he used to carry us all over the country on Saturday nights to watch baseball, but he also coached that pony league team for about five or six year. They had one of the best in the state over there because they had a couple of pitchers come along that was just really good. So, yeah, baseball was played everywhere. And even after baseball--it started petering out in the local communities--the churches all had softball teams, so they played softball. It started out as all fast-pitch. I can remember playing fast-pitch after I was married. We played in a league that was actually in a league from Gaffney, South Carolina. We used the school for our home field and we played fast-pitch. Then, I%u2019m going to say, in the late sixties, it started going to all slow-pitch softball, and fast-pitch went away. Fast-pitch is kind of on a comeback now. It almost went away for a long time. You know, particularly because it%u2019s gotten to be so big in the colleges.
RS: Yeah. Well, that blew up, it seemed, especially women%u2019s softball.
JTS: Yeah, right, and so, now it seems--well, you don%u2019t see a lot of men%u2019s fast-pitch; it%u2019s mostly women in the fast-pitch.
RS: You reminded me, and I wanted to just spend maybe just a little bit longer back a little bit. What was the role that church--was your family (33:17) church-goers?
JTS: I%u2019m sorry, say that again.
RS: Churchgoers, were they religious?
JTS: Yeah, my mother%u2019s particularly. I grew up as a Baptist. There was a Baptist church in the community. Yeah, every Sunday, we were at church, Sunday and Sunday night. My dad rotated and he was never much of a churchgoer. He was only off generally one Sunday night a month, maybe two when he was on the first shift. But one Sunday morning service was basically the only time he was off a month, so he just never was much into going to church. He%u2019d go once in a while, but he wasn%u2019t big religious like Mother was. Mother--yes, we went to church every Sunday.
RS: What do you think it meant to her to have that church as a routine?
JTS: Oh, I think because the way she was raised with my grandfather and my grandmother, I don%u2019t think she would have known what to do if she hadn%u2019t had to go to church on Sunday. But she just thought that was what you were supposed to do. I mean, that%u2019s just what she believed, and she was supposed to be there.
RS: Did you ever rebel from church?
JTS: No, I didn%u2019t. No, I%u2019ve always gone to church--still do. Still do. I guess that%u2019s something that she instilled in us. I actually go to a Methodist church now.
RS: Okay. Was there any sort of class differences between Methodists, Baptists, or especially the Pentecostal--?
JTS: There wasn%u2019t any but Baptists.
RS: Where you were?
JTS: You couldn%u2019t hardly find anything but Baptists anywhere around here in Cleveland County. You could find a few Methodists, but until I was grown, I never knew there was anything but a Baptist church.
RS: Like, the Pentecostals hadn%u2019t come yet?
JTS: Oh no, there wasn%u2019t anything like that. Everything in our community was Baptist, and even the surrounding community, everywhere was all Baptist. Shelby and Gaffney had some Methodist churches. There could have been one or two out in the countryside but I never knew of them. It was all Baptist, and I never even dreamed of there being a Catholic church around here until I was grown. They built the first Catholic church here in Shelby, and the only one--maybe still the only one in Cleveland County. I%u2019m not sure there%u2019s more than one in Cleveland County. It%u2019s a fairly large church. But it was Baptist or you didn%u2019t go, and it was the old-time Baptist preachers too--believed in fire-and-brimstone--they got up and told you how bad you was every Sunday.
RS: Were there revivals that you attended?
JTS: Oh yeah, two a year.
RS: Two a year?
JTS: Had a spring revival and a fall revival.
RS: Were these tent revivals?
JTS: No, no, they were in the church. There were some tent revivals around, but I never went to one. I always went to the--. We had a spring--and they always had a visiting pastor and I can remember Mother and them would generally feed him one night out of the week. They%u2019d go around to different places and eat.
RS: Were you aware of much Klan activity when you were growing up, as far as Cleveland County?
JTS: After I got up in high school I knew there was some Klan activity around, but I never saw it, never was involved or got close to it anywhere. I%u2019m sure I probably was around some people that were Klan members but I never knew it. It was a fairly secret organization. You had to almost be in it to know anything about it, unless you was one of the people being attacked possibly, which, unfortunately, there was a lot of that went on, I guess. I never actually saw it. I never saw that take place.
RS: Did you hear about some of the cross burnings?
JTS: Yeah, I heard about it after I was--but we heard about it more after we got televisions, and we%u2019d hear a lot about it down in Alabama and Georgia and the lower part of South Carolina. It was going on around here, but we just didn%u2019t hear much about it. Later, found out it was going on quite a bit in this area.
RS: I think North Carolina had the highest when it re-emerged later in the sixties and seventies, it was big here.
JTS: Yeah, it turned into--well, it turned into just a mess and a nightmare, really, which is pretty sad.
RS: Desegregation didn%u2019t happen while you were in high school? It was a little bit after you--?
JTS: No, no. I told you I graduated from Boiling Springs and I was in the last graduating class before they brought all the schools together. Even then, they didn%u2019t have the new schools built, so what they%u2019d done, they took that thirteen or fourteen high schools and made about four high schools because that%u2019s all they could accommodate. They moved the elementary schools out into the other schools for elementary. They started just after that; they started desegregation and bringing black kids in, and then went to full segregation when they opened the new high schools, which was--?
RS: Full integration?
JTS: I mean full integration. We%u2019ve only got two county--well, now there%u2019s four schools in the county system, but initially there was two. The city of Shelby still had a school; Kings Mountain still had a school, so there was four total schools even then, but only two county schools. But anyway, that%u2019s when full integration took place is when they opened the two new county schools. I never went to school with any black kids, but it wouldn%u2019t have bothered me because growing up on the farm, I didn%u2019t know the difference because we worked together all the time. We worked for my uncle, but he had black tenants all over the place. Shoot, we worked together. I%u2019ve sat at black tables when I was little, many times, and eat lunch or eat at night and that kind of thing. There was a black family that lived right in my uncle and grandmother%u2019s yard. Gosh, when Sandra and I were growing up, we stayed in their house all the time because they had a bunch of kids, so we never knew the difference. We knew that other people thought there was a big difference but we didn%u2019t know why, necessarily, when I was growing up.
RS: Who do you mean, other people?
JTS: Well, I mean we knew that they had black schools; we knew there was black churches; we knew they had a separate week for the blacks for the fair, for the county fair. They%u2019d have the white fair this week, and the next week it would be the black fair. We knew all that, but like I said, we grew up with them. We didn%u2019t know why they done it that way but we just knew they did. Our mothers--in fact, parents was always saying, %u201CJust be careful. You%u2019re not going to marry one of those black people, now.%u201D We heard did hear that kind of stuff. After I got into high school, then of course I didn%u2019t have quite as much interaction with them other than working on the farm and seeing them out in the fields. Then, as I got into high school, then my uncle started using me in different ways on the farm with the tractors and things, so I wasn%u2019t as close to them out in the fields as I had been, but we didn%u2019t know the difference. Gosh, I had some really good friends that were black people, really good friends that I grew up with.
RS: This is my last question about this era. This is 21st century, so I want to take us up--the effect of the boll weevil, I guess, around the early fifties, when--?
JTS: I think it was actually maybe 1949. It was %u201948 or %u201949.
RS: So you were still--?
JTS: I%u2019m still on the farm, oh yeah. It was awful. Gosh, it just ruined the farms. It put them out of business. When we first found out about boll weevils and I became conscious of them, we were having to spray insecticides for them, trying to kill them. I had one uncle that married one of my mother%u2019s sisters that--they farmed that farm that she had got, and he always farmed--up until just before he died, he farmed it with mules. He didn%u2019t want no tractors on his land. He said tractors would pack it down; he didn%u2019t want that on his land, so he farmed with mules. I can remember, he used to go out and pick up the squares off the ground. When the boll weevils would hit them, they would just fall off on the ground, and the squares was going to make--we called them squares, but that was preceeding of the boll for the cotton. You get blooms and then you get squares, and then out of that square comes a boll. He%u2019d go out and pick them up because, in his mind, if he%u2019d go out there and pick them up, they couldn%u2019t spray it. He%u2019d kill them. See, he%u2019d take them and throw them into his stove at home in the fire and burn it, burn those things up. And then we sprayed--gosh, and we had no clue about wearing masks and that kind of stuff back then. I can remember riding a mule sprayer. We didn%u2019t spray if the wind was blowing. If it was good and calm, and you turn right back around and just go right back, it would just be settled there all over it, right back into it. You could smell it. You knew it wasn%u2019t right, but you didn%u2019t know any better. He always sprayed. I sprayed for him a lot of times at night with his mule spray, and we always sprayed at night with tractors too. You could just go a lot faster with a tractor, and you could kind of run off and leave it. But the boll weevils just--it just about put the small farmers out of business. They just killed them. I mean, you had families that were making a living off of twenty-five or thirty acres of crops, and when the boll weevil came, their crops went from--back then, a good crop would be a bale of cotton to the acre. When they went from that to a half a bale, a quarter of a bale, they couldn%u2019t pay their fertilizer bills. The small farmer, they borrowed money and bought their fertilizer and then paid off in the fall when they harvested their crop. Well, they had raised a little grain, but normally they raised it just to feed their livestock, for the most part, and a little corn, but this wasn%u2019t good corn country either. They finally just went out and cotton went away. I don%u2019t know if anybody has told you in any of the interviews or not, but at one time, Cleveland County and another county out east, which might have been Robeson County, I%u2019m not sure, but they were always in competition with who%u2019d raised the most cotton. At one time, Cleveland County had over eighty thousand acres of cotton, and ginned about eighty-three, eighty-four thousand bales of cotton a year. There was something like thirty-five or thirty-six, thirty-seven cotton gins. Today, in Cleveland County, there%u2019s probably thirty-five hundred to forty-five hundred acres of cotton, and there%u2019s two cotton gins in the county. It went lower than that; it%u2019s actually been on a little bit of a comeback, but it%u2019s guys like Max Hamrick over in Boiling Springs that raises--he%u2019s got one of the cotton gins--but he raises over a thousand acres of cotton. He farms about--he rents most of the property, but he farms about between two thousand and twenty-five hundred acres. About a thousand or so of that will be in cotton every year; he rotates it. So, the boll weevil was very detrimental to Cleveland County, and not only Cleveland County, but--. It came out of the south and moved up out of the south. Gosh, back in the thirties, I think, in the Deep South, they were getting hit hard with the boll weevil. Then they finally figured out how to get rid of it and it%u2019s not a problem any more. There is no boll weevil any more, so people don%u2019t even put out the pesticides for it, the insecticides for it any more. Cotton has really changed now. In a good year, if they don%u2019t raise two bales of cotton to the acre, they don%u2019t feel like they%u2019ve done anything. That%u2019s just how the%u2026
RS: %u2026It%u2019s changed?
JTS: Well, that%u2019s how it%u2019s changed, and progress, and how they%u2019ve improved the cotton itself over the years.
RS: Could you tell me about PPG and what it was like working there, or some of your experiences there?
JTS: Well, yeah, I could probably spend a month talking about PPG. I went to work for PPG in 1961. Like I said, I got married before I got out of school, and I was working down at this place in Gaffney. PPG had started up in 1959. They came in %u201958 and built the plant, started production in %u201959. I remember our graduating class, it was a big deal, they had a big open house, and I remember going on a tour. They actually ran a train out of Shelby, hauled people out there to go through the plant. But PPG came in and started up in %u201959 and then sometime in %u201860, and I think it was late %u201860, a company by the name of Fiber Industries came to the county. They made polyester fabrics, polyester yarns that went somewhere else to make the fabric. Fairly similar processes, but different too, to fiberglass. PPG, this plant was fiberglass. In 1961, my brother and I--I was still working at Cherokee Finishing, but curtailing, I wasn%u2019t getting but about three days a week, and he was out of work. He came by one Friday morning and said, %u201CCome on, let%u2019s go to Fiber and PPG and put in our application.%u201D I said, %u201CNaw, I like what I%u2019m doing.%u201D He said, %u201CNaw, come on,%u201D so we went to Fiber first, and then PPG, we had to go to the unemployment office. That%u2019s where they were putting their applications in at, and we put in our application. The very next Friday, both of us were at PPG for interviews. The high-paying job up there was winding glass. They used to call it pulling glass, but fiberglass was gravity-fed. But anyway, it was winding glass, and it was a tough job. It was a tough job, but it was the best paying job. Top pay was up to about a dollar-and-a-half an hour. My brother got interviewed first, after we took all the tests, and he come out just smiling and said, %u201CI%u2019m going to wind glass. A dollar-and-a-half an hour.%u201D I went in, and the guy sitting there, I never will forget his name--the personnel guy%u2019s name was Lee Waters, and he looked at me and he said, %u201CYou can%u2019t wind glass. I can tell you right now, you wouldn%u2019t last a week.%u201D I thought he%u2019s not going to give me a job. He said, %u201CBut I%u2019ve got this job that I think you%u2019ll like. It won%u2019t pay as much, but it%u2019s in quality control.%u201D I didn%u2019t have a clue what quality control was. I didn%u2019t know what he was talking about. So they carried me out and I talked to this guy that was a department head in quality control, and he said, %u201CAll right,%u201D so I went to work for a dollar-and-a-quarter an hour. At that time, where I was working, I had worked myself up to the dye-room person, and I was making a dollar-and-sixty-cents an hour. But, like I said, I wasn%u2019t getting but three days a week, and they were talking about selling that place down there anyway. So, I talked to my wife about it and I said, %u201CI%u2019m going to take that job,%u201D so that%u2019s what I done. I started out making a dollar-and-a-quarter an hour, and I worked shifts in quality control as what they called a floor technician. I wasn%u2019t in a lab; I was out on the floor. The lab was home base, but I didn%u2019t spend any time in the lab. That was in the fall of 1961. I went to work October 1st. Roger Maris was in the big deal trying to hit over sixty home runs. I never will forget when I went up there for the interview they had that plastered all up and down the halls, his progress and everything, him and Mickey Mantle both. Anyway, I went to work, and it was late %u201962, they offered me a non-exempt salary job in quality control, which was still a shift technician, but it was in charge of the lab on that shift and the technicians. My salary was $320 a month, plus overtime, and it don%u2019t sound like nothing today, but that was--I thought I was getting there. I never will forget, I told my wife right after that, I said, %u201CIf I ever get to $400 a month, we%u2019ll have it made.%u201D Of course, the cost of living was going up quicker, and it took me--I tell you what, I got $20 a month raises the first three years I was on that non-exempt job. In 1965, my boss called me. Actually, I was off the shift. I was working in a day job, still as a non-exempt salary person, and I was doing--this was before the age of computers--we done everything by hand. I was doing spec sheets, typing spec sheets and doing statistical evaluations, taking a bunch of numbers and plugging them into a calculator. That%u2019s what I was doing, and I had been doing that about seven or eight months, and my boss called me in one day and he said, %u201CI%u2019ve got this job I want to talk to you about. I don%u2019t know much about it. I can tell you it%u2019s not fiberglass. It%u2019s with chemicals, but you won%u2019t have to move. You can stay here. I can%u2019t tell you anything else. You%u2019re going to be traveling. I don%u2019t know where, but what I can tell you is, if you want the job, you%u2019ll get a $100 a month raise,%u201D and I said, %u201CI%u2019ll take it.%u201D Had no clue what I was going to be doing, but $100, I mean, I%u2019m just going up twenty-five percent, and I did. I done that for eight-and-a-half years, and it amounted to going out with high-strength chemicals and diluting them at the customers%u2019 plants. I wasn%u2019t driving a truck or anything; I was driving my car and flying. We had a trucking company that hauled the chemicals. We owned the trailers because they had to be special--it was hydrogen peroxide, and it was real high strengths. If you didn%u2019t handle it properly it would start fires and that kind of thing. I traveled heavily; I had ten states assigned to me, and I traveled heavily for five year and it was just getting to me. I mean, I was gone, I was averaging four nights a week away from home, and never in the same spot but one night. I walked in one day and told my boss--the boss there--the real boss was in Pittsburgh, but I reported to a guy there in Shelby--it was kind of a pass-through. His name was Gene Patterson, and I said, %u201CGene, something%u2019s got to change. Either I%u2019m going to get a helper or I%u2019m going to have to quit.%u201D And our competition was all using what they called a dedicated driver that was trained to do what I was doing. I was going out and meeting the trucks and doing that, and they had trained drivers doing it. And he said, %u201CWhat do we need to do?%u201D and I said, %u201CWell, we just need to get somebody down here.%u201D So there was three guys that came from Pittsburgh: my boss and two other people. I told them and they said, %u201CWell, we don%u2019t want you to quit. We%u2019ve been thinking about this. We%u2019ll go back and we%u2019ll give you the decision within a week. We%u2019ll either hire you a person%u201D--and the other thing was I told them I had to have a car. I was wearing my car out, and they wasn%u2019t--they was paying me mileage, but it wasn%u2019t great. They said, %u201CWe%u2019ll either hire a person and get you transportation or we%u2019ll go to the dedicated driver,%u201D and we went to the dedicated driver system, which was the best deal we ever done. So, I worked another three-and-a-half years, still in technical services. I wasn%u2019t going out unless this trained driver we had, unless he was out for some reason, just going out and inspecting new equipment, inspecting tanks and going inside tanks and that kind of stuff. I done that for another three-and-a-half year, and in the meantime, when I started doing that, I wasn%u2019t gone all the time and I had an office, still in quality control, and the superintendent of quality control asked me when I wasn%u2019t real busy, would I consider helping them get set up and get started with computers? This was all process-type computers, and he really wasn%u2019t wanting me to fool with the computer at all. It still was all data-entry--you plugged cards, okay? All he wanted me to do was to determine what knowledge would we like to have, that we%u2019d like to be monitoring with the computer? So, that%u2019s what I started doing, and I came up with a whole bunch of programs. Anyway, I got back very familiar with a lot of people in the plant, and a lot of management people, and in 1973, then they offered me an engineer%u2019s job. I still hadn%u2019t ever been to college
RS: Now about--?
JTS: 1973, and I took it. In 1975, after the recession that we%u2019d gone through there, in 1975, they offered me a job in manufacturing as an assistant department head, but the vice-president said the only way I%u2019d get that job and keep it was if I showed some effort towards going to college. Now, he told me that at the end of August. I went to work in that job September 1st, and enrolled in college that next week at night school at Gardner-Webb. But Gardner-Webb then didn%u2019t have a night program, so I wound up--had about nine hours of political science--that%u2019s all they was giving at night. Then I decided I%u2019d go one semester- I was going to go to day classes. That%u2019s probably the hardest semester I%u2019ve ever had because I took nine hours of classes and still tried to run my job, and I was just running back and forth from work to school. I said, %u201CThis ain%u2019t going to work,%u201D and I found out about the program down at Limestone. They had a really good night business program, so I transferred and went down there and graduated in 1981.
RS: Do you think that was helpful to your skills as a manager, a business person?
JTS: Well, I think it taught me some things, but it didn%u2019t teach me near what real life taught me. But what it did do for me was, there was just so many jobs that you wasn%u2019t going to get a shot at if you didn%u2019t have that degree, and I was very lucky to get the one I did--actually the two, the engineer%u2019s job that really required a college education also. But back in those days, if you had been with a company and proven yourself, they were more willing to take a chance than they would be today. Today, if you don%u2019t have that degree, you don%u2019t even get your foot in the door; you just don%u2019t do it. We had two or three other guys that done fairly well that went to school after they got jobs or went to school after they was at work. And of course, today, with PPG, you couldn%u2019t get those jobs with a business degree either; it had to be an engineering degree. Anyway, yes, it was very worthwhile. It was a tough five-and-a-half years, six years, because I went to school at night. My schedule was--I went three nights a week: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, from six o%u2019clock to ten o%u2019clock. My schedule was get up at four-thirty, study, go to work at six-thirty, get off at five, get in my little Volkswagen and drive to Gaffney, South Carolina. About halfway down, I crossed the road where I turned to go back up to my house; my wife met me there; there was a little country store--with my dinner. I ate in my Volkswagen while she sat there, and then I%u2019d lickety-split to Gaffney and got there by six o%u2019clock and went to class. I come back in, went straight to bed, got up at four-thirty and studied and went to work. That%u2019s the way I got through school. The only thing I did, I took summers off; I wouldn%u2019t go to summer school. I had to have a break somewhere, so I took summers off. Anyway, when I graduated from college, within two months, they offered me a department head%u2019s job. I got that job, and then about ten months after that, they offered me a big department, and I done that for a number of years, and then I went over to the hot end in the forming side, which I hadn%u2019t had much experience over there. I was department head over there for [pause] not quite a year, and they offered me the production superintendent, which was assistant plant manager, basically, but I had responsibility for the entire plant from the manufacturing side. That would have been the end of %u201993, and I done that until the end of %u201994. They were going to build a new facility down in Chester, South Carolina, and they had asked me if I%u2019d go down there and go through the construction process, be the on-site person for the construction and then stay on and run that plant as plant manager--small plant, not a big plant. I said, %u201CYes, I%u2019d love to,%u201D and so that was my first plant manager%u2019s job. Then, in 1998--I was down there a little over three year, I guess, and they were having some problems up here with different things, and they asked me if I%u2019d come back up on just a temporary basis: stay on down there, but come up here and do some work on a temporary basis. That turned into being a plant manager after a few months.
RS: When you say %u201Cthey,%u201D are you talking about the--?
JTS: Talking about management--talking about upper management.
RS: Okay. Were they still in Pittsburgh?
JTS: Oh, yeah, still are. Yeah, in Pittsburgh. After I was plant manager, my boss was in Pittsburgh. So I came back up here in %u201998, not real happy about it because I had a little plant down there; it didn%u2019t have any problems. This plant was huge and had lots and lots of problems. It had a union knocking on the door; they were scared they were going to lose it. I spent the first--well, that temporary period and then the first two months after I was announced as plant manager, just trying to meet with people and figure out--and we did win the election.
RS: Which union was it?
JTS: The last one was the Teamsters. Before that, we%u2019d always been bothered by a glass-blower%u2019s union. We%u2019d had several elections prior to that in the past, but that one was the Teamsters. Then, in 2001, I was offered a job to go run Europe from a manufacturing standpoint, and I really wanted to go. I wanted it bad because it was going to be a good opportunity. My thought was I%u2019ll go take that and then I%u2019ll be ready to retire, and I%u2019ve saved this money because back then you got a lot of fringes by going over there in the way they paid you. But my mother, at that time, was ninety-four, and my brother had passed away and I was the only one living. I told them, %u201CI%u2019m sorry, I can%u2019t do it. I%u2019ve got to take care of my mother.%u201D She was still at home at that time. Well, my boss said, %u201CWhy don%u2019t you go home and think about it?%u201D He said, %u201CJust tell me, what will you do over there?%u201D We had two facilities over there, but they had one in the Netherlands that was in a lot of trouble. They was having a lot of problems. So I went home, and didn%u2019t sleep at all that night, talked to my wife, and I come back in and he walked in my office at nine o%u2019clock the next morning and said, %u201COkay, what did you decide?%u201D I said, %u201CWell, I won%u2019t move. I%u2019ll tell you what I%u2019ll do: I%u2019ll take responsibility for the plant in the Netherlands, and just promise you I%u2019ll spend at least fifty percent of my time over there.%u201D I was thinking for six months, with what I thought he was talking about on the temporary basis. He had told me if I went over there and took Europe, it would be a minimum of two year, but they%u2019d like for you to stay five because they invested a lot to get you over there. So I took, in addition to the Shelby facility, which had 1,876 people at that time; I took on the Netherlands, which had about 850 to 875 people, but of course the big problem over there was it wasn%u2019t owned by the government, but it was government unions, basically. It was really a tough facility. So anyway, I wound up with that thing for two year almost. In eighteen months I made fourteen trips over there, so I got a lot of frequent flyer points. Then we named somebody else over there to run that plant, and I came back home. In 2004, then, I was just burned out; I was ready to retire. I had a different boss then, but I told my boss, %u201CI%u2019m retiring,%u201D and I sent him a note and he said, %u201COkay.%u201D They come down and talked to me about it and asked me who I thought ought to be the replacement. I gave them my idea and they did take that person; he was over in Lexington at that time. Then he came back down and said, %u201CWhen you get Tim trained, would you consider staying on at least one year and help us rearrange and reorganize the plants in a different way like we had the Chester plant set up?%u201D and I said, %u201CYeah, I%u2019ll do that. At least I won%u2019t be getting all them stupid telephone calls at night,%u201D so I did, and started on that, I think it was December of %u201903, and in January of %u201904, my boss come down one day and he said, %u201CHey, I%u2019m going to China and Taiwan. How about going with me? We%u2019re just going to make a little circle over there,%u201D and I said, %u201CAll right.%u201D I%u2019d never been to China or anywhere and I wanted to go, so we took eight days. We done fourteen landings and takeoffs in eight days. We visited every place you could think of in China. I didn%u2019t know it at the time, but they was looking to try to find a place to produce over there, trying to find somebody to go into cahoots with, a joint venture with. We had some facilities in Taiwan already, so we visited them and then we went to a bunch of different places in China. We got back home and they had already talked to another guy that had helped negotiate some other facilities, and they asked me would I help him negotiate this facility in China? We had decided on one that wanted to talk to us. So, that last year that I was going to stay at home and work on them other facilities, I made five trips to China [pause] my last year I worked. So I retired at the end of February in %u201905, and in May, they called me and asked me if I%u2019d consider doing a project for them in Tennessee. They was building a new facility for a customer, actually. I said, %u201CYeah, that would be all right.%u201D So I went back and worked another year.
RS: Have they called you this year yet?
JTS: No. Well, they haven%u2019t called anybody much, things have been down so bad. But I did turn down--it wasn%u2019t an official offer--it was sort of an offer to go back and do some work in China for them a couple of year ago, and I said, %u201CNo, I%u2019ve had enough China. I don%u2019t want to go back.%u201D I%u2019ve since had an offer from two competitors to do some work out of the country, and I turned them down. I just didn%u2019t want to do it. So that%u2019s pretty much my history at PPG.
RS: That was great.
JTS: It was a great company. They were very good with the people. They treated people well, and the difference when I went to work for PPG, I was looking for a place to retire. That%u2019s what everybody was back then. Unless you just didn%u2019t like it, or you got in some kind of trouble or something, the company treated you like they wanted you to retire there. It%u2019s not the case any more. People go to work now, and they don%u2019t feel like they%u2019ve done anything if they don%u2019t change careers three or four times, or five or six times. Generally, they improve their self every time they do, so I%u2019m not saying it%u2019s wrong; I%u2019m just saying that%u2019s the difference in what it was when I went to work.
RS: Could you compare the plant, briefly, in the Netherlands and Shelby as far as the influence of the unions there versus--?
JTS: Oh, yeah, they pretty much had guaranteed lifetime jobs. You couldn%u2019t terminate anybody. We had an individual beat up our plant doctor, and we terminated him; we sent him home. Anybody you terminated, you had to go to court to make it official. They made us take him back. We had a supervisor that was caught stealing while I was over there--red-handed--throwing the stuff over the fence, and we terminated him and they made us take him back. They didn%u2019t make us put him back as a supervisor, but they made them take him back. And if you did terminate somebody, if you were successful in terminating, you had to pay them for the next two year, until they could supposedly find something else. The reason for all that was, if they didn%u2019t have a job and income, the government kept them up. It was very difficult to get them to agree to terminate somebody.
RS: Was there incentives for the company to be there? Was it a productive plant?
JTS: Well, [pause] yes, it was a fairly productive plant, and when the business and the economy was good, we made a lot of money there. We didn%u2019t make money when the economy was bad because we couldn%u2019t lay people off, and when you had to shut furnaces down, we had a lot of people not doing anything. The government did finally start seeing that they was going to have to do something, or nobody was going to be there. They eventually allowed us to start hiring temporary employees, and you could keep them temporary for two year. If after two year, you hadn%u2019t done something with them, either laid them off, terminated them, then you had to make them permanent employees at the end of two year. So that helped us get through those turns, because when you had a downturn, you could send the temporary people home and then start over that new two-year period when they come back. That was beginning to help. When I left over there, we had over about two hundred-and-fifty temporary employees. So that did help, but that was the big difference. Very smart people; they was smart. I%u2019m telling you, I learned a lot in Holland. I saw some things that%u2019s done over there--if you ever get a chance to go to Holland, go. About seventy percent of that country is below sea level, and they%u2019ve just developed all kind of property out of the ocean. You can run four-land highways right through the middle of the ocean--twenty-seven miles across water--and salt water on this side and fresh water on this side, because they%u2019re always pumping water out of the country. They pump out of that side so long, and get so much rain until eventually, that side is not salty; it becomes fresh water. I mean, that%u2019s the truth. This side%u2019s fresh water; this side%u2019s salt water.
RS: I can%u2019t imagine--.
JTS: Just on each side of the highway.
RS: That%u2019s incredible.
JTS: It is. I mean, they%u2019re smart people over there, very smart people. I enjoyed my time. I actually loved Holland. That was a great place. I don%u2019t want to live there permanently, but it was a great place to visit, and good food. I enjoyed Holland.
RS: Two more questions, because I know they%u2019ve been sticklers on how much time we give them. Usually, I do much longer than an hour-and-a-half interviews. I mean, that depends on how long the people have or what they want to do, but if you could maybe say what%u2019s the best thing that%u2019s changed in the past fifty years in Shelby, and what%u2019s the worst thing? What%u2019s the worst thing that you%u2019ve seen change?
JTS: Well, I think by far the worst thing I%u2019ve seen is the oncoming of drugs, and it%u2019s a big thing. When I was coming up, I didn%u2019t know what drugs were. I didn%u2019t even know aspirins was drugs. A Coke, to me, was a Coca-Cola. So I think that%u2019s come on. Most people, particularly your age, would disagree with me today, that I think we have quit disciplining our kids to the point that they don%u2019t generally, unless--and I%u2019m not saying it%u2019s a hundred percent--but they don%u2019t really have respect for a lot of people and their parents. That%u2019s not a hundred percent, so don%u2019t misunderstand me; I%u2019m not saying everybody is that way, and I know a lot of young parents that would sorely disagree with me. They think that a paddle is just, it%u2019s just wrong.
RS: I got my fair share when I was growing up.
JTS: I%u2019m telling you right now, I knew when I went to school, and I had my share of them, but I knew when I got a whipping at school, I was going to get one when I got home. I mean, it was just going to happen, and I never could understand why it got home so quick before I got there, but it did, and there wasn%u2019t no telephone [laughter] and it still got there. I mean, it was just a fact, and you just really learn to respect people. To me, that%u2019s changed--the drugs--. I think, in industry, there%u2019s been--the economies and things have changed so much. It%u2019s probably what%u2019s changed everything is that we became a worldwide market. That%u2019s what%u2019s really hurt industries. They%u2019ve since--they%u2019re not as people-oriented as they were at one time. They%u2019re bottom-line oriented now. It%u2019s bottom line, period, and that%u2019s a big change. But now, the things that%u2019s changed over the last fifty years that%u2019s good is there%u2019s opportunities now to get out and do things that there didn%u2019t used to be. Like I said, when I was growing up, I never owned a car until I had been married over a year. We drove my father-in-law%u2019s car, who was legitimately blind, and my wife%u2019s mother didn%u2019t drive, so my wife was the youngest child and so she carried them everywhere they went. When we was building our home, we lived with them for a year, and when we moved out, we bought that car because they couldn%u2019t drive it. The first car I ever owned was a %u201952 Chevrolet. But before that, before I was married, anywhere I went, I walked or hitch-hiked. I remember right before I got married, Dad had a pickup truck and a car, and my brother had come home out of the service. He was eight year older than me; he%u2019d come home out of the Air Force, and my brother and I alternated every other weekend getting to use the car. My brother had an old %u201949 Chevrolet he had gotten when he was in the Air Force, so the weekend he got Dad%u2019s car I had to drive his old %u201949 Chevrolet, but it carried me somewhere. I wasn%u2019t having to ride a bicycle to go see my girlfriends. But you know, today, there%u2019s just so many opportunities. To me, anybody who wants to succeed today--if he don%u2019t, it%u2019s his own fault, because he can. I mean, there%u2019s just so much potential out there, and with the state schools, the state colleges--I%u2019m not saying they%u2019re cheap, but compared to the private schools, that%u2019s a real deal. So, I just think that what%u2019s changed is that there%u2019s just so many opportunities for people today. I enjoy volunteering, with what we%u2019re doing here, and I work with a lot of other non-profits. DCC is turning into a full-time job, now that we%u2019re getting close to opening everything. But once we get them open, I%u2019m hoping that%u2019s going to slow down some. I%u2019ll go back to retirement more. My wife is going to leave me if I don%u2019t.
RS: So, in twenty years from now, what do you think is best-case scenario and worst-case scenario for Shelby? You know, best-case scenario, what will Shelby be like if something doesn%u2019t happen like you think it should?
JTS: I think best-case scenario will be is that our commissioners, and I%u2019ll say county versus just Shelby, but county,
J. T. SCRUGGS: Cleveland County will continue to draw in new industries. We just announced one, and there%u2019s several more out there potential that they%u2019re looking at working with. So the best case scenario will be that we get enough new industries in that our unemployment will again go back down to the four and five percent range like it used to be and people all have good jobs. We will have been successful in generating an area, of building an area that people like to live in and their kids graduate from school and they%u2019ll come back here and work in those new industries and stay at home. They%u2019ll want to come back here. Today, that%u2019s not generally the case. We don%u2019t have anything. We don%u2019t have theaters; we don%u2019t have anything for them to go to. Well, we%u2019ve got a theater now, but hopefully, we%u2019ll get a lot of new industry, people will get their jobs back, and we will have an area that people will want to live in. When they will go off and graduated from school and come back here and either work in the school systems or they%u2019ll work in some of these new industries that I%u2019m hoping we%u2019re going to get.
RS: So I can kind of figure what worst-case scenario would be, but--.
JTS: Worst-case scenario is that they fail. And that we fail as citizens to do what we should do to continue to improve the quality of life in Cleveland County, and that our leaders are not successful in creating new jobs through bringing in new industries. And there%u2019s obviously those bad scenarios that somebody from over yonder decides to come over here and blow us up or something, but I%u2019m just saying hopefully those things are just out%u2014I%u2019m talking about real life.
RS: I know we kind of didn%u2019t go there when we were back in that time growing up. If you had to say something about Earl Scruggs as far as if you were talking to someone from China who has never heard about Earl Scruggs%u2014if you had to tell them, to really know who Earl Scruggs is and what he%u2019s about, what would you tell them?
JTS: Well, I can tell you, Earl Scruggs%u2014because I do know a little bit about him%u2014he%u2019s certainly a fine banjo picker; he%u2019s a fine musician. He has been a big innovator over his career, innovator in the fact that he didn%u2019t just stay bluegrass; he ventured out into other areas of music with the banjo, so he has been an innovator with the banjo. But I promise you that if Earl Scruggs walked in that door today and sat down and you talked to him, you%u2019d swear he still lived in Flint Hill, North Carolina. He did not lose his upbringing. He is still very humble; he%u2019s very pleasant, very easy to talk to. He still believes that you do what your parents tell you to do, and that you work hard. So he really hasn%u2019t changed that much other than%u2014I know he%u2019s been on television and he%u2019s done all kind of things. He%u2019s traveled all over the world, but he did not lose his upbringing; he really did not lose it.
RS: Two more quick questions. Who was somebody outside of your family, growing up, that had a%u2014sometimes it%u2019s a hit-or-miss question, but someone outside of your family, growing up, that had the biggest impact on you?
JTS: There%u2019s a lot of people. But, growing up, and in school, I had three teachers that had an impact on me, I think. One of them was Dan Moore, who I only had through about my sophomore year in high school and then he took a new job in Shelby. Another person was Ruby Sarratt at Boiling Springs High School, but probably by far the most influential teacher and person on my life was a guy by the name of Brooks Piercy, who was the agricultural teacher. He just treated you in a way that you wanted to go do things and do things differently and do more things. He just kind of inspired you to do that. He would never tell you to go do something; he just encouraged you to always work hard and do the things%u2014you%u2019d just want to do different things for him in life. He was just a heck of a guy; he just died a little over a year ago now. He was in his nineties, and still had a great mind and was still influencing people. People still went to him a lot for advice, and I was one of them.
RS: That%u2019s pretty special. Then, we ask this at the end, anyway, is there something I left out or I should have asked that you think people in the Earl Scruggs Museum would want to know or hear that I didn%u2019t really ask about?
JTS: No, I don%u2019t know of anything. I mean, you%u2019ve heard the story of how we got started, with Brownie and everybody.
RS: Do you want to tell that story real quick?
JTS: Well, we got started, initially, by the fact that I was still working and a guy by the name of Jim Allen called me here in town. He said he%u2019d had this idea: he thought we ought to do something for two people who had done well from our county, and that was Don Gibson and Earl Scruggs. He asked me would I help him? I said, %u201CWell, maybe,%u201D so we met and talked about it and I said, %u201CYeah, Okay.%u201D At the initial time, we were talking about having one venue with both names on it, okay, which would have been the museum. That didn%u2019t work out; we couldn%u2019t get the two families completely together, and it just didn%u2019t work out. And Jim, for whatever reason, got sort of uninterested in it and bowed out, and about that time%u2014we had a small group working on it, that group Brownie was a part of. At about the same time, Brownie was talking with the county manager and said, %u201CWhat can we do to kind of revive things?%u201D He suggested that we get this guy from North Carolina State to come up and hold a session. We got about forty in the county%u2014and the county paid for that guy to come, but we got about forty residents, just all over the county, to agree to give up three days of their life and come in and spend three days with this guy. But, one day at a time, over, actually, a three-month period%u2014done one day a month, and out of that, we formed Destination Cleveland County. Then we took over a year, as we had high recommendations out from people in Raleigh and other places, that we not even try to do anything until we%u2019d done our research and made sure we knew what we were doing. So we took over a year. We had bus trips where we filled up buses with citizens and we%u2019d go somewhere like Newberry, South Carolina, or we went to Bristol, Tennessee and different places and spent a day just seeing what other people had done in theaters and museums and all kinds of things. Then, out of that, we decided we wanted to go forward with these two projects, and we started a capital campaign to try to raise somewhere between nine-and-a-half and ten million dollars. Little did we know-- we announced our campaign and the bottom fell out of the economy, but we%u2019ve still stayed after it. We%u2019ve raised, right now, just under seven million dollars. I still need about two more million, and if we get lucky with a couple of grants and some other things, we hope to make it. Our plan now, we%u2019ve opened the theater last year in 2009, and in 2011, December 2011, if everything goes as planned, we%u2019ll open the Earl Scruggs Center. That%u2019s just a quick synopsis of how we got started.
RS: I think that%u2019s good for people to hear.
JTS: Yeah, it sounds easy. But it hasn%u2019t been easy. [Laughter] Has not been easy; I promise you.
RS: I don%u2019t imagine it was.
JTS: It%u2019s been fairly time-consuming.
RS: I think it will pay off for sure.
JTS: I hope so. I hope so.
RS: Well, thank you so much for your time.
JTS: Well, you%u2019re quite welcome.
END OF INTERVIEW
Mike Hamrick, August 26th, 2010