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George Taylor's HeritageMy Employment at Malvern |
My Employment in and Around Malvern, Arkansas
(In the Years of our Lord 1947-1957)
By George Evans Taylor, Jr.
Preface: I was born (5-20-1931) and raised in Malvern and consider it to be my hometown. This article contains some memories of my work life there. The following listings are not in any particular order, as I do not recall the exact dates or the times of employment. But I can assure you that as written, the items are fact. Jobs were hard to find and the work was hard. People would accept any honest work, even if it only lasted a day or two. Many lessons learned, never to be forgotten!
Company Name/Location: The Aubrey Stacy Garage/On the Old Military Road about four miles north of Malvern. He was our neighbor. We lived down the road in the Cooper Community.
Job Title/Description: Mechanic�s Helper/Worked on all kinds of cars and did all kinds of work on them. Fords were our specialty, especially the Model As, Bs, and 1930s V-8s. The work was dirty. The garage floor was sand, we had a new floor after every rain! We used a unique way of heating the garage in cold weather. We had an old pot belly heater setting near an outside metal wall, it contained several old bricks (remember we were near The Brick Capital of the World). Aubrey cut a hole about one inch in diameter in the top of the heater. On the outside of the wall, up higher, he mounted a five gallon can. From the can he ran a piece of pipe through the wall and turned it down exactly over the hole, but about a foot higher, into the heater. We put used motor oil in the can and let it drip into the heater and onto the bricks. We started the fire with newspaper or rags and soon we had a very hot fire, the bricks would be cherry red! He had a valve in the pipe to control the dripping of the oil.
Other: Aubrey was a good man, a common sense mechanic and I learned much from him. He worked at the local textile mill on graveyard shift and worked in his garage with me during the day. My pay was $2.50 per day plus one meal eaten with the Stacy family. They had one son. Aubrey�s wife Beluah was a good cook. This was my first �public job� altho it was not steady work.
Company Name/Location: No company name, it was Aubrey Stacy�s dad�s logging operation. Mr. Stacy lived about five miles north of Malvern out the Old Military Road, cross the railroad track, turn west then about a mile to his house.
Job Title/Description: Pole Peeler/Used a �straightened-out hoe� as a tool to peel tall, slim pine trees to be made into power poles. I was paid one cent per foot of length to peel the poles! This was a part time job.
Other: The pine woods we worked in was several miles south of Malvern just off Hwy #9. The tall pine trees were cut down by others then another boy and I would cut off the limbs and peel the bark from the poles. There were no chain saws back then! The poles were dragged from where the tree fell to the log truck by Mr. Stacy�s huge horse. The horse then pulled/rolled the logs up two skid poles onto the truck. During transit to Malvern they were held in place with chains and binders. The poles were hauled by Mr. Stacy to a pole yard at the rail road tracks in Malvern; just west of Main Street. One time he let me drive his old International truck, loaded with poles, from the woods to the pole yard. Some of the poles were as long as seventy feet, they would drag behind the trailer. No harm was done to the roadway because it was gravel, not paved as it is now. The poles were always shipped to a factory in Texarkana to make them more round and to be treated for use as power and telephone poles. If anyone in the community needed help in the winter time to be pulled out of a ditch, push a car to get it started or be carried to town then Mr. Stacy was the man! I believe that old International truck, without fenders and other appearance items could go anywhere! Here is what he did in the winter time so the truck would start easily: when he got home in the truck each evening he would drain the motor oil into a bucket, carry it into the house and set it beside his wood burning stove that never cooled off. Ditto for the battery. Ditto for the truck�s radiator water. Yes water. No one I knew used antifreeze in those days. Next morning, or when the need arose, he would pour the warm oil an water back into the engine, install the battery, hit the starter and go!
A side note: At the pole yard was a cross tie yard. Cross ties are the wood cross pieces that the railroad tracks are spiked to. These un-dried ties probably weighed 200 pounds each. A huge black man, a gentle giant, carried them from a stack on the ground up into a boxcar! He had a thick pad on his shoulder and would up-end the cross tie to his shoulder in one co-ordinated graceful swoop. He would walk up a large wooden plank to the box car. The plank rebounded with each step he took. He received five cents for each cross tie he loaded. I could not even lift one!
Company Name/Location: Van Veneer Company/In Malvern just north of the rail road tracks and just east of Main Street.
Job Title/Description: Lathe offbearer/I would catch veneer as it came from the huge lathe which turned large diameter, hot, wet, short logs into veneer as thin as 1/64th of an inch and as thick as 7/32nds of an inch. You could see your hand thru the 1/64th veneer while it was still wet. If the veneer had knots then it was broken at the knot and was accumulated against my legs until I had all of the weight I could handle. I moved back and the next of several offbearers stepped in to catch his load, all of this without anyone missing a piece! If the veneer was clear of knots then we walked it down the table (about 25� long) and precisely dropped it on top of the previous piece. At the same time it was broken near the lathe and the end handed to the next offbearer. In this work we would get wet from the steam and wet logs. Our pant legs would wear through from the veneer against them, our shoes would wear through in the toe area from the movement of the veneer. Our toes would bleed because of the shoe and sock holes. Our fingers would bleed because our gloves wore thru in a matter of hours. They cost us about an hour�s pay therefore we padded them with rags to make them last longer! The sour odor from the wet, hot wood was awful. We never took a break at any time. We sweated so much that we didn�t need to go to the rest room. When cutting large diameter logs that did not have knots we had to actually run back and forth down the veneer table.
Another Job: I later became a �hole breaker�, the guy that stood in a lower level space and broke the veneer at it�s holes/knots as it came out of the lathe. This was done with a flick of the wrist on the thin veneer but the thicker veneer required the use of a bat. The bat looked like a small baseball bat and we used it to hit the veneer near the knot as it came out of the lathe. Of course with the other hand we had to hold it up off of the table or the bat would just bounce off of the veneer! All this while it was moving! On large diameter logs the veneer came out very fast, the speed decreased as the log�s diameter decreased. The remaining wood core was hauled to the yard to dry, later they were used as fuel for the boiler. The boiler steam was used to heat the vat water that softened/conditioned the logs. The bark was removed from the logs with a straightened out hoe prior to being put in the lathe. Steam was also used to power the crosscut saw and the boom crane. The most important use of the steam was to blow the whistle to stop work! That whistle blew at the 7:00 AM starting time, at 12:00 noon for lunch, at 1:00 PM to start work again and at 4:00 PM to stop for the day. Without an hour for lunch we would not have been able to make the day, we usually ate then lay down on the veneer until the whistle blew to call us back to work! A large electric motor was used to power the lathe, it had a speed control consisting of a huge resistor bank and a large tap switch. Beside the table we worked on was an electric motor powered �hog�, a machine to chew up the scrap veneer etc from the lathe. If we overloaded it then it would bog down and we would run to put it in start mode so it would not stop. If it stopped with a load inside then we really had a job to clean it out. The material chewed by the hog was used as boiler fuel, nothing was wasted. Plywood was not made at this plant, veneer was sold then it was made into plywood by others. James Van Duesen was my boss, his folks owned the mill. I always felt that he was hard but fair to the employees. In retrospect, my work there was the hardest and fastest I have ever done, all for forty-five cents per hour!
Other: �Buster� was the name of the lathe operator. His assistant who loaded the logs into the lathe was Levi Wedsted. I had several friends that worked at the mill. Some were William Hobbs, George Reed and his dad, Clomer and Ovelee Wallace, Cecil Richardson, and Levi Wedsted. My dad (George Evans Taylor) worked there for a while on graveyard shift, he ran one of several veneer clipper machines. A clipper machine consisted of a horizontal table with an air operated vertical knife blade controlled with a foot pedal. It was used to size the short pieces of veneer after it was dried in the ovens. Several operators had cut off their own fingers using these machines.
Company Name/Location: A construction company at National Lead Company/Near Magnet Cove, Arkansas.
Job Title/Description: Laborer on construction work./I worked digging foundation ditches, helped pour concrete, drive form stakes, hauled water, carried lumber and plywood, etc and anything else the boss needed done!
Other: The work was cold, hard, muddy and dirty. Overhead the iron workers were adding new red steel and all around the riveting crew was throwing red hot rivets through the air, they were being caught by men with a funnel-shaped tool. The man would reach into the tool with his tongs, retrieve the hot rivet, insert it through a hole in two pieces of steel. He would then buck it with a special tool while a man used a pneumatic hammer on the other end to pound/round the rivet head while it was hot. All of this while doing a balanceing act standing on small pieces of building steel! As the rivet cooled off it would decrease in length, this is what tightened the two pieces of steel together! Red steel is no longer riveted but is bolted. Only time will tell which is best.
Company Name/Location: A construction company at Alcoa/Near Bauxite, Arkansas
Job Title/Description: Laborer/Carpenter�s Helper/Construction work. I worked here during the time the powerhouse was being built. I dug foundation ditches, poured concrete, etc. Then I was promoted to carpenter�s helper which was a better job. I worked in/on the powerhouse itself. Each morning we climbed the stairs and did not come down until the end of the work day. As each floor�s red steel was placed the carpenters and I would form up for the concrete floors to be poured. This meant that there was always work going on overhead and we had to be very careful. Manytimes I walked a 4� wide piece of steel with a load of lumber on my shoulder and nothing to hold to or catch me if I fell. God protected me, there is no reason in the world I would do that now! Overhead the iron workers were working and the riveting crew was doing it�s job. We did not wear hard hats. It was cold and windy as we worked higher with each floor. We used a freight elevator attached to the side of the building framework to haul up materials from the ground. Once as I began to unload the elevator, by untying the lumber which was standing on it�s end, a gust of wind blew some 2X4s out into the open space. Some fell and stuck in the ground very near the man who had loaded them into the elevator! A near miss I have never forgotten! On each floor we would build a small lean-to from form plywood to give us a little protection from the elements. We used a salamander, a type of heater used on construction jobs, to try to keep us warm. They would not furnish us with the needed diesel fuel so we used form oil. Form oil was used to paint onto the plywood forms and lumber so the concrete would not adhere to it. I followed the construction of this building to it�s upper-most floor.
Other: My dad worked on this job site for a short period of time. Years later my brother-in-laws William E. (Bill) Hobbs and Roy Huckelby worked in the building as millwrights for Alcoa.
Company Name/Location: A pipe line construction company/Work was done south of town.
Job Title/Description: Laborer/Another laborer and myself coated the large metal natural gas pipe with hot tar. We would hold a heavy canvas under the pipe, one of us on each side. Another man would pour hot, liquid tar on top of the pipe. The tar would run down each side of the pipe and onto the canvas while we were pulling the canvas back and forth horizontally and somewhat up and down. The result was that the entire metal surface of the pipe was covered with tar to keep it from rusting. The tar coverage was tested with a �jeep�, an electrical device with a high voltage output not unlike an electric fence charger. Each side of the device had a high voltage output swivel connection and was connected to a long metal spring that encircled the pipe. The bottom of the device had four wheels which set on the pipe. It was turned on and pulled along the top of the pipe with a string. The attached spring around the pipe rolled down the pipe. As it traveled down the pipe a man listened for jumping sparks, if they were heard then that meant there was a spot not covered with tar. We re-covered those spots to protect the pipe. This was a hot, dirty job with the strong smell of tar. We felt the effects of the tar on our exposed skin, it �blistered� our faces and ruined our clothes!
Other: This is the pipe line that crosses the Ridge Road at the pumping station. This was built on the property of the Holt family, the Holts previously were our neighbors when they lived at Raybern. Henry Holt was near my age, we visited some there at their house near the pumping station.
Company Name/Location: A.B. Cook Company/Hwy 67 south of Malvern past the railroad tracks at �dead man�s curve� then on the north side of the highway. The company was a large manufacturer of hardwood flooring and was at this location for many years.
Job Title/Description: I was a knot cutter/As lumber with knots came down my table I would use a swinging pendulum saw to remove the knot. This was a fast, dangerous job without any safety devices. I would get into a rhythm of swinging the saw with my right hand and with my left I would move the lumber. One time I got my hands out of synchronization and cut a finger. It was saved but other people were not so fortunate. Mr. Shorty Grissom, a preacher, was the machinist who kept the flooring machine running to specification.
Another job I had there was in the glue room. This is where we took scrap lumber, glued it together and the pieces were then sent to Little Rock and made into church pew ends. The glue was mixed with a huge �egg beater� type machine after all ingredients were poured into it. The glue was put on the scrap lumber by running it over a roller that was in a reservoir of glue and was turned with an electric motor. The pieces were placed together and clamped under high force on a chain conveyor that moved thru an oven. As the conveyor moved dried pieces were removed and wet ones were put in their place. After a day of using this glue I could stand my pants in the corner, there was no way to remove the glue from them!
Other: My father-in-law, Walter Scott Tillery, worked at this mill for about forty years. His last years were as an oilier. He had lost a finger in other work there. He walked to work each day from his home at 210 Edwards Street.
Company Name/Location: Sturgis Lumber Company/ Hwy 67 south of Malvern at the railroad tracks at �dead man�s curve� on the south side of the highway on the Ridge Road. This was a hardwood flooring mill.
Job Title/Description: Laborer/Did all sorts of work such as stacking pallets, picking up scrap pieces of lumber, unloading/loading trucks, etc.
Other: This company did not stay in business very long.
Company Name/Location: Earl Wallace Garage/In North Malvern on the Hot Spring Highway on the �inside� of the 90 degree turn.
Job Title/Description: Mechanic/I did all types of mechanic work. I worked on percentage commission therefore I had to be aggressive for work or I didn�t get a payday! It was hard, dirty work, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, but I enjoyed it most of the time.
Other: The garage was a part of Earl�s service station where he sold gas, oil, tires and did grease jobs. Earl was a pretty good mechanic and gave me advice, so I learned a lot while in his employ.
Company Name/Location: Radio, TV, Appliance Shop/In the back yard of our house at 905 Lowden Street in North Malvern.
Job Title/Description: Radio, TV, and Appliance Repairman/I repaired about anything anyone brought to me. Also I made house calls to repair TV sets.
Other: I never did this work full time, it was done when not working at my other jobs. I also delivered and installed new TV sets and antennas for Jones Furniture. Owner Fay Jones was a distant cousin of mine. The store was located on West Page Avenue (Hwy 67) across the street from 555 Taxi and Wrecker Service.
Company Name/Location: Freelance Mechanic/Mobile
Job Title/Description: Mechanic/I did auto repairs on site or at a loaned shop. Mr. Ray Hobbs, a longtime friend of the family, allowed me to use his shop, at no charge, when I needed to do some indoor work.
Other: I did work for a used car lot, Hardage and Owens, that was located on Pine Bluff Street about a block from Main Street. I also did some mechanic work for Mr. Hobbs. His shop and wrecking yard were at his home about a mile from Rockport. He was very good to me and I learned a lot from him. He only had one arm but could do things with it that I could not do with two!
Company Name/Location: Hardwood Flooring Mill/On the Hot Spring Highway east of Butterfield about a half mile.
Job Title/Description: Rip saw off bearer/My dad and I worked together on this job, he would feed the kiln dried oak boards into the saw and I would retrieve the many pieces and stack them for future use. This job was outside under a shed. It was somewhat dangerous in that we wore no eye protection or protection from the replaceable carbide saw teeth slinging out of the saw blade. They sometimes came out like a bullet and hit the metal of the shed! Another job was as hole puncher, it was very fast work. As the various lengths and grades of flooring fell onto the table conveyor I had to read the lengths from the table�s numbers and also read the grader�s crayon marks and color to decide which pigeon-hole to put the piece in. All in seconds! In this job I handled every piece of flooring that was made in the mill! Fast! Fast!
Other: During my time of employment here I was able to purchase enough off-spec dried oak lumber to build our little house on the Old Military Road near the Butterfield Road intersection. It still stands today, those oak boards dare not bend! Some paydays we would race to Malvern, each person trying to get to the bank first because sometimes there was not enough money to cash all of the worker�s checks. This plant was in operation only a few years.
Company Name/Location: International Shoe Company�s Textile Mill/In North Malvern on the Hot Spring Highway just beyond the 90 degree turn west then a quarter mile; mill was on the north side of the road. Now a Tech College. My boss was Mr. Charles Honald.
Job Title/Description: I was a �blow-down� man/I used compressed air to blow lint from the ceiling and from the looms in the weave room. This was for fire prevention as well as keeping the threads in the looms free. After blowing the lint I had to sweep it and bag it for further use.
Another job was being the cloth man. I would push my cloth buggy down the aisles, remove the cloth rolls from the looms without shutting them down, and carry the cloth to the cloth room. This was sometimes heavy work as the cloth rolls were large at times. Also the duck (canvas) rolls were always heavy.
Another job was as the folder operator in the cloth room. I would remove the rolls from the cloth buggy, place them in the machine and it would be folded into nice stacks of cloth!
Other: I had many friends that worked at the textile mill. Also my dad, George Evans (Slick) Taylor worked there in the card room for many years. For a few years my wife, Betty Sue (Tillery), worked in the weave room with me. She �filled batteries�, this consisted of inserting quills of thread into a rotating device on the loom which pushed them into the shuttle. The shuttle was thrown by vertical maple arms, back and forth, through the long threads to make cloth. My sister, Dorothy Aline Hobbs worked in the spinning room for a few years. Also another sister, Pauline Guyse worked there for a short period of time. My cousin�s (Beluah Taylor) husband, Webster Cotton, worked in the weave room for many years as a �loom fixer�. He was a good fixer and had many friends there. These were the last jobs wife Betty and I had in Malvern, we left many friends and family to start a new life in Alabama. I was earning all of $1.45 per hour when I quit this job.
A further note: In September 1957 wife Betty Sue (Tillery) and I moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and I went to work for Ford Motor Company. About two weeks after we moved there I received a letter from the Malvern Post Office asking me to report to work there. I had previously taken and passed the required tests for a job with them. We elected to stay in Alabama as the job offered started me as a �substitute�. Ford Motor Company gave me a chance to complete my education therefore I have never regretted my decision, but that is another story! I retired from Ford in 1983, as Plant Engineering Supervisor, when the plant shut down. Without missing a day�s work I went to work for Champion Paper Company as a Maintenance Engineer. I retired from Champion in 1989 as Electrical Superintendent. Since then I have been employed, part time, at the old Ford Motor Company Plant as Site Engineer doing environmental clean-up work.
I am thankful to God for the help and Hope He has given me all these years, and continues to do so! It has been a good life. We are born with intelligence, daily receive knowledge, and with the help of God through life's experiences, achieve wisdom. We are born, we live, and we die. What makes a difference is if God is in our living. Gen:3:19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. My friend, think about it!
Written on 1-20-2002 by:
George Evans Taylor, Jr.
209 Lakeshore Drive
Muscle Shoals, Alabama 35661-1029