The Economics of Nostalgia

In mid-August of 1974 I walked into Joanna Elementary School and introduced myself as the new reading teacher. The principal, Frazier Sanders, was a short, balding man in a crumpled short-sleeved white shirt and dark, thin tie. “I been expecting you, Mr. Hemphill.” He smiled and extended a friendly hand. “Here, I brought you a little something from my garden.” He handed me a brown paper bag full of green beans and tomatoes.

We toured the brick schoolhouse built in 1927. The wooden floors creaked as our steps echoed down the hallway. My classroom was large and mostly bare except for tall windows and iron radiators along the outside wall. On winter mornings for the next four years, the first thing I did was turn off radiators and open windows to let the heat escape.

Back in the office, Mr. Sanders introduced me to his secretary. “If you need anything, just ask Cheryl. She’s the one who runs this place.” I soon learned that Sanders spoke the truth and was never embarrassed by it.

I spent a good four years teaching in that school in a small South Carolina cotton mill village. Though I was a young man with a beard from the foothills of North Carolina, I was always welcomed. I was naïve, but had learned from two previous years of teaching that respecting the community was necessary to success. Sometime in the first month of the school year a father came into my classroom

Typical cotton mill village street *

after school and handed me a paddle, about a foot and a half long, made of sturdy wood with holes bored in the blade. On one side was printed “The Board of Education”. “I made this for you,” he said. “Don’t call my wife again about Wesley ‘til you’ve used this.” A month later, I reluctantly pulled the paddle out of my desk drawer and used it on Wesley. I never paddled him again and never had to call his parents – a dent in my educational philosophy, but a small battle won.

Joanna Elementary was an old school in an old school place. Modern times had changed the community, but old culture held fast. The school stood among artifacts of the past. Windows in the library revealed the remains of a swimming pool, its cracked and decaying concrete filled with debris. The playground was an old ball field where a semi-pro baseball team once played. Towers of broken lights no longer illuminated the field. Honeysuckle vines obscured the fading advertisements on the outfield fence.

On the backside of a low brick wall separating the teacher’s parking lot from a pine forest, rusted metal vats lay half buried in the sandy ground. I asked Mr. Sanders about those vats. He chuckled. “Oh, you are looking at the hog parlor.”

“The hog parlor?”

“It’s where folks in the mill village brought their hogs for slaughter. Those pipes through the brick wall carried hot water from the school’s boiler to the vats.”

Joanna was planned and built by the cotton mill owner – a rich man from up North. The school stood on the western end of a long quadrangle.  Small, wood framed homes lined streets along two sides of the quad. On the eastern end was the schoolrry – a two-story brick building that once provided apartments for the young female teachers. In addition to the factory, school and homes, the owner also built a small hospital and movie theater.

I was no stranger to cotton mill villages. In the early 1900s, Minnie Justice, my mother’s mother came to the Clinchfield cotton mill from her home across the mountains in Haywood County. She got a room in a boarding house and a job in the mill where she met Taylor Messer who had also come across the mountains looking for work. They got married and eventually bought a small frame house on the end of a dirt road at the top of the mill hill.  I was their first grandson and Grandma Minnie was my first baby sitter.

My grandparents were typical of the people of the mill village.  They had come there from desperately poor circumstances. Their frame house, with no running water and heated by a coal grate in a shallow fireplace, was a major improvement in life’s circumstances. Neither had an education past grade school, though Grandma won the spelling bee when she was in the 4^th grade. They never owned a car. Grandpa Messer died when I was eight years old. On Saturday afternoons, I rode my bike across town, cut the grass around Grandma’s house and watched Gun Smoke with her.  On Sunday mornings, Mom and Dad picked us up and took us to church.

I share this bit of personal history because I believe there is an economic lesson in it. There was a time when corporations lifted masses of people out of poverty. I know that it was not a totally benign and altruistic process. I know the abuses of the company stores. I know the violent resistance to labor unions. I know the first generation of workers was uneducated and marginally literate. But most of the second generation graduated from high school and the third generation, my generation, had access to colleges and trade schools. Those wealthy people who built the cotton mill villages created, at least in part, the circumstances that helped build an educated and versatile middle class.

In the 21^st century, there is little evidence that corporate America is willing to sustain the middle class. Commerce and industry have always existed to generate profits for owners and shareholders. But now, they seem only about profit; the welfare of workers be damned. Good jobs with benefits are hard to find. Wal-Mart is the standard for both shopping and employment. A globalized economy may work for some skilled and mobile people; but for the masses, it is a brutal and inhumane thing. It is hard to imagine how anything other than local industry and business, with a commitment to a good wages and benefits, can restore the middle class.

 * By Bill Fitzpatrick (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Voices in Our Heads

When my father passed away on the morning of November 18, 1997 he was a few weeks past his 69^th birthday. A campus security guard interrupted my class and told me I needed to call my brother. When Joe broke the news to me, my immediate response was to curse and throw a book across the room. I hope anger is a reasonable first response to death.

Sixteen years later I can recall that day with a calmer sadness. There are worse fates in life than a too-early exit. My father’s life had its ups and down, but on balance it was a rich, good life that most of us would gladly accept. From this side of the 21^st century, his story is worth remembering, a story of recognizing responsibility and opportunity, grabbing them both and making the most of life. For his generation, his story is familiar. For my children’s generation, it is a story known mostly through oral history. My generation is a shaky bridge linking those two generations.

John Max (the senior) was born in the depth of the Great Depression in a log house in Montford Cove on a dirt road about 15 miles from the closest town.  The house, built prior to the Civil War by his great grandfather, had neither running water nor electricity.  He came of age after WW II, left high school without a degree and went to work at Suttle’s gas station and tire store on South Main Street in Marion. He married my mother in September of 1949 while learning the craft of retreading tires. I was born in 1950 and faintly remember our rented garage apartment across the road for the tire store. It had an in-door bathroom.  Dad had a new Mercury car. It was the economic boom that followed WW II.

Mr. Suttles must have seen something in my father. He sold him a small piece of land in the woods on the hill behind his house. Dad borrowed $5000 from the bank, had timber cut from his grandfather’s farm and built a new house in the woods on that hill above Virginia Ave. 

In 1954, at 27 years-old, Dad and Harold Simmons borrowed $1500 each from Harold’s father and opened their own tire retreading shop on the other side of town. There must have been no hard feelings on the part of Mr. Suttles.  He sold Dad a couple of retreading molds, a car jack and some tools.

The tire business was an immediate money-maker. After operating for a year or two in a rented tin building, Dad and Harold bought a lot adjacent to the tin building and built a bigger, cement block building. They plowed some of their profits back into the building, adding willy-nilly rooms, sheds and carports. They worked from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., six days a week.  They gave credit freely and

collected a few dollars a week from customers who had to replace worn-out retreads every six months. My father grew up without money, but had an instinctive sense of how to both save and spend. He squirreled away money in savings accounts while buying nice cars, dapper suits for Sundays and continually up-grading everything at home and at work.

Dad brought his younger brother, Carroll, into the business and in 1963 they borrowed $34,000 and bought out Harold Simmons – not a bad return for Harold on his $1500 investment. At the time of that business transaction I was 13 years old and very attentive to money. Dad insisted on it.

Though he was never lecturer about anything much other than money, it was easy to infer other values from how he spent the little bit of non-working time: Church every Sunday and sometimes on Wednesday, service to the Church as an usher and a deacon, Lion’s Club once a month and, in the late afternoons, grooming our small lawn and flower beds. For a boy who grew up in sparse circumstance, he had a clear vision of the life he wanted. He had many friends from business, church and civic activities, but was dedicated to his family.  He and my uncles upgraded my grandfather’s house – installed plumbing, built a bathroom on the back porch and made sure there was fuel for heating the home in the winter.

My father dedicated himself to improving the quality of life for himself and for his family. Though he never finished high school, he was determined that he would be able to pay for some kind of post-high school education for both his sons. Making good grades in school came easily to me, so I was destined for college. When my younger brother showed a passion and talent for flying airplanes, Dad paid his way to flight school. Our duty was clearly established by my father’s story: finish high school, get a post-secondary education and become independent.

I often think about my father’s influence on my life. I remember his wisdom regarding money and feel some frustration with my inability to duplicate it.  But by far, the best thing he gave to me was the opportunity to make my own decisions and live the life I wanted, which has been different for his blue-collar life. (Related anecdote: Although Dad owned the business, he always wore the same work uniforms as his employees. He once said some people wanted him to wear a coat and tie to work. He said he wasn’t that kind of boss, so he wore work clothes and did the dirty work along-side his employees.)

As Dad grew older, his temperament changed in ways that allowed qualities to surface that I had not seen in my childhood. When racial integration arrived and women’s liberation became fashionable, Dad showed more tolerance and respect than others in his circle of friends and family. As my brother and I pursued vocations other than business, he never expressed anything other than acceptance and pride in our decisions. If he was frustrated with us, he never showed it. He was a patient and tactful man, always comfortable around all kinds of people. He rarely pontificated about the way things were supposed to be. In the end, the lessons he left me were simple and demonstrated more through actions than words: work hard to be the person you want to be, take care of yourself and the people you love.

If he had lived a longer life, this Thursday, October 24^th, would be his 85^th birthday. As I struggle to end this remembrance, I don’t think he would be pleased with too much sentimentalism, theology, pride, sadness or regret. He knew that he was only partly in control of the life he lived. His run of good-money-making only lasted about 20 years. The economy changed faster than he could adapt.  He began to understand that we move imperfectly through life. If change occurred or mistakes were made, he eventually arrived at acceptance and forgiveness.  If he were looking over my shoulder, I think he would suggest that I not worry about things I cannot change or wish for things I cannot have. Sometimes the voices in our head are not totally our own.

Me in You

In 1989 I stood by the kitchen window and watched Max swatting a tetherball anchored off a limb of an oak tree.  He was six years old. I was 39. Three years earlier he nearly died from a prolonged seizure caused by viral meningitis.  Five days after coming out of a drug-induced coma, we were facing a question-mark of a child. Only time would tell, the doctors said. It took me years to accept that I had lost one child, but gained another. After watching my son intently stroking that tetherball in rhythmical loops, I sat down and wrote this poem:

In the shadows of the evening, I see 

your little body swaying with the rhythm

of the tethered ball;

little hands gripping the plastic bat,

little eyes following the flight

of the orange ball:

            a sun on a string

                        orbiting the oak tree

                                    that centers the moment.

Your lively eyes track the ball

and you smile because you have found

the rhythm and know you are in control.

I stand and watch through the kitchen window

           and see me in you.

That is startling, because I have begun to live 

with you as the disabled child

who never answers questions,

who never says hello or good-bye,

who only sings the little songs

that mark the simple routines of the day.

“This is the way we wash our hands,

wash our hands, wash our hands.”

I have taught myself that you are you:

unique,

            imperfect,

                        weak,

                                    and not a part of me.

But, in the swing of your bat as it guides

the rhythm of the ball,

as the ball spins in circles around you

and you laugh and stroke it again,

sending it arching higher toward

the evening sun, for a moment,

once again, I see me in you.

As I read this almost 25 years later, I realize how important that moment was for me.  It marked a shift in my journey through life with my son, a small step away from the distance I had put between us, perhaps a distance born of fear of the unknown, and a movement toward his joy becoming a part of my joy. It was a moment of my discovery that imperfection and weakness exist only in the eyes of the beholder. 

The Frontier of Knowledge

From the summit of Mt. Ida our little town lies below us like a child’s play village. Main and Court streets intersect at the bank and courthouse. Clay points out the ball field behind our Junior High School. I see myself among a gaggle of friends walking down the steep, concrete steps of the old school, then parading toward Main where we turn right at the bank and invade Roses Five and Dime. It is a coke float afternoon.

Main Street of Marion and Mt. Ida

The soda fountain is a civilized place of clean counters and bright lights. Clay and I have abandoned civilization and summited the wilderness at the south end of Main.  We look down on what we left behind.  Across the low hills, the steeples and smokestacks of our town, Hawksbill, Table Rock and Short-off Mountain form the eastern escarpment the wild Blue Ridge. To the northwest loom the deep purple peaks of the Black Mountains. As twelve-year-old boys of five-foot stature, we stand on high ground and survey the wilderness of our imagination. We are pioneers born two centuries too late.

Black Mountains

Hawksbill

 In the third grade I read a child’s biography of Meriwether Lewis of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition. He was an American hero who broke open the frontier of the national imagination. I wanted to be him, to lead men across an unknown continent.

In the dwindling light Clay and I leave the summit and turn down the southwest slope away from town. We come to an opening in the forest with a view of the landscape on the backside of the mountain – no play village, more forest and a few open fields. “Hey, this is like the frontier,” I say. “I’ll bet no one has been here before.”

“Huh?” Clay looks puzzled.

“We’re the first to walk on this side of the mountain.”

Clay points off to our right.  “I think I see a house down there, and a road.”

My eyes cannot avoid the rooftop and a ribbon of asphalt curving over a hill. Disappointment. “Well, that’s way over there.  We’re probably the first to walk this side of the mountain.”

We walk a few minutes further and come to a large mound of sawdust and a pile of scrap timber – the remnants of a sawmill. Clay looks at me and grins.

“Well, WE’ve never been HERE before,” I say. This is our personal frontier.

We walk back toward the top of Mt. Ida and find a level piece of ground, pitch our pup tent and rake a fire circle. Before darkness settles over the mountain we build a campfire. We unfold the tinfoil our Mom’s had wrapped around frozen patties of ground beef. We slice potatoes, carrots and onion and lay them on the ground beef, refold the foil and place them in the embers at the edge of the fire. The foil packages sizzle in the fire until we guess the meat and veggies are ready to eat. It is an imperfect process, but adequate for 12-year-old pioneers who like their food greasy and accept its burnt and raw variations. We are adventurers capable of cooking our own food on our own fire. We were unafraid of the darkness, until the firewood is gone.

It is a mostly sleepless night. Trees creak and moan in a moonless breeze.  Critters scurry through the dark leaves. We whisper about foxes, bears and snakes. Periodically, we search the forest with our flashlights, but shadows hide the sounds. Late in the night the moon rises. Leaves rustle again only a few feet from my ears. A breeze, or something, moves through the tops of the pines.  Then stillness and silence . . . and then, from the tree canopy above our tent: “Whoo-whoo-a-whooooo”. Nothing moves, not the wind, not the trees, not the shadows or the leaves. Clay and I lie quietly on the hard ground and finally . . . sleep.

The next afternoon we return to our little town, weary and hungry and full of tales to tell of our expedition into the wilderness.

I remember this as if it were yesterday: two boys pushing out the boundaries of the known.

Even in Meriwether Lewis’ time the continent was only unknown to some. The history that children read tells a portion of the continental story. In this case, our history acknowledges the help of Sacagawea but we miss the irony of a young woman carrying her infant and guiding the frontiersmen through the supposed unknown – she so young and tender, they so strong and durable. Trailblazers are born of partial knowledge and help from those who know. Trailblazers fill the informational gap in what the ignorant do not know. Their courage ushers in new knowledge. 

Within each mind there is a frontier. Curiosity, skepticism and courage precede learning.