Alma Friday, Yvonnie Hill, and Alan Waffle Interview

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 (Audio begins at 00:04:18)

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GEORGE STONEY: Let me show you what I mean here, OK?

(pause)

GEORGE STONEY: Here's another shot.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: From - car's coming. OK?

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible). Give me 20 seconds (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

(pause)

(pause)

GEORGE STONEY: OK. I'm going to ask this fellow about [Lincolns?]. You think they would know?

JAMIE STONEY: They might. I think it's up on top of the hill.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. But let me, uh, (inaudible).

(break in audio)

F1: I understand, But we was looking over these yesterday, and (inaudible). OK. (inaudible), that's what she said. OK. (inaudible) -

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(pause)

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GEORGE STONEY: What does that white sign say?

JAMIE STONEY: An election thing.

GEORGE STONEY: What?

JAMIE STONEY: It's an election thing for somebody.

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, OK.

(pause)

GEORGE STONEY: [Good to know?], you've [missed?] (inaudible).

JAMIE STONEY: You got it.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. OK. Just give me a couple of cuts into that trailer park because it's where a lot of textile workers would be staying, probably.

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah, I'm on this [picket?] (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, sorry. Here's another truck, but that's too late. Yeah. (inaudible).

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, OK.

(pause)

GEORGE STONEY: Something fairly close that features those chairs sitting out there.

(pause)

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Think we can go.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible).

(break in audio)

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible) generic road shots and I'm going to get one of them going over that way.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

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[26:33]

GEORGE STONEY: You can get it from the other side, yeah, looking down.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible) little longer here (inaudible). Take a look. We're still rolling, though.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, I see.

JAMIE STONEY: OK, hang on. We've got enough. Can you see that?

GEORGE STONEY: Fine, yeah. Yeah. You can go in closer, too, can't you? Just for a cutoff?

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: So guns and ammo, and the building fill the frame, right?

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

JAMIE STONEY: Start out on the sign with the gun?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

JAMIE STONEY: Pull back to the full building -

GEORGE STONEY: Good. Uh-huh. Fine.

JAMIE STONEY: Now I'm pulling out to the road.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, good. OK.

JAMIE STONEY: I just want to get this truck.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Right. [We?] -

[29:18]

(close-up of framed photo of E.O. Friday)

JAMIE STONEY: - thirty seconds.

GEORGE STONEY: - since we're here we might get those two.

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah. (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: How about - look at this collection. Isn't that interesting?

JAMIE STONEY: Mm-hm.

GEORGE STONEY: How did you start making this collection?

ALMA FRIDAY: Oh, yeah. (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Yes.

FRIDAY: (inaudible) yard sale. (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: They are nice.

FRIDAY: But now, I go to the yard sale, I can't find any.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, there - somebody's -

FRIDAY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: - collecting them, sure. That's a big thing up where I live, yard sales. Out on Long Island, there's just people -

FRIDAY: - just [running them in the ground?]

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. My, my old - my daughter, my younger daughter just had a child about a year and a half ago, and she says you go to these stores and they want to charge you $30 for a baby suit. You go to a garage sale, you get them for $2.

FRIDAY: That's the truth!

GEORGE STONEY: And so that child is mostly clothed from the garage sale.

FRIDAY: You sure can get good bargains there at a yard sale. (inaudible) I was reading an article in the paper, said (inaudible) more parents going to yard 00:31:00sales to get school items for their children. Because they can get them so much cheaper.

GEORGE STONEY: Makes sense.

FFRIDAY: (inaudible) at the Goodwill (inaudible). My daughter was home last week and we went up to Goodwill. She got [this table?] for five dollars.

GEORGE STONEY: Very nice.

FRIDAY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Good. Sharp bargain.

FRIDAY: And that's where I got that lamp. Goodwill.

(break in audio)

GEORGE STONEY: People don't use them much anymore.

FRIDAY: Yeah, we got a (inaudible) ashtray, his daddy. In the living room. We kept a lot of (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: She hurt her knee, huh?

FRIDAY: (inaudible) every time it heals up.

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, yes. She gets the scabs off.

FRIDAY: Don't mess with it. Leave it on there. (inaudible) Now.

GEORGE STONEY: OK?

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible) 20 seconds.

GEORGE STONEY: Oh -

(break in audio)

GEORGE STONEY: Here's my sister, a picture I took of her and her husband, last Sunday.

FRIDAY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: But could you believe that her whole jaw had to be rebuilt? Isn't that amazing?

FRIDAY: Well I declare! It doesn't look like there's anything -

GEORGE STONEY: I know!

FRIDAY: And she had cancer (inaudible)?

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, and she - she still doesn't have any saliva glands, so she has to have a little bottle of artificial saliva when she eats.

FRIDAY: Well (inaudible). She sure looks good. How old is she?

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GEORGE STONEY: - built it, like that old brick way. And uh, just like this house is worth a lot more now than it was then

FRIDAY: I'm telling you.

GEORGE STONEY: He's going to get a picture of your lamps.

FRIDAY (inaudible) (laughter). Now what do you do (inaudible)?

GEORGE STONEY: You see, we're going to be - (inaudible) we're talking with him, you see, we can just put things that are around the house, you see -

FRIDAY: Mm-hm.

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GEORGE STONEY: Show me your doll, huh?

CHILD: Doll.

GEORGE STONEY: Huh? OK?

FRIDAY: You had your picture made with this one -

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, yeah.

FRIDAY: She plays with this one. She's got all kind of pretty baby dolls. She plays with this one more than (inaudible) (laughter).

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. There you go. OK.

FRIDAY: (inaudible) baby doll

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, she's got a lot of 'em. She's got her hair all fixed up. Her belly button's missing!

FRIDAY: I beg your pardon?

GEORGE STONEY: I was just saying, her belly button's missing!

FRIDAY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

FRIDAY: (inaudible) the sun not shining. It has been real hot.

GEORGE STONEY: Oh well it's, it's real humid out there.

FRIDAY: It sure is!

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, just -

FRIDAY: I thought we was going to get a (inaudible) rain last night (inaudible) sprinkle.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, Lincoln Academy, they've torn down the old building out there, eh?

FRIDAY: Mm-hm. Lincoln, it's - West Gastonia. And y'all went - ?

GEORGE STONEY: We went all the way out there. To the golf course.

FRIDAY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Ah. That's what it was, and we didn't stop there.

FRIDAY: Mm-hm. (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Ah. We must have driven right past him then. I'll be darned. Yeah.

FRIDAY: (inaudible) playing golf?

GEORGE STONEY: No, there was just a golf course out there. Mm-hm. Yeah. OK. (inaudible) fountain pen.

FRIDAY: (inaudible) girl?

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, she's looking up some other people right now.

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[38:00]

YVONNIE HILL: They'll wonder if we're casing the joint.

JAMIE STONEY: Let me know when you see them start to come from that corner.

HELFAND: OK. OK, they're turning the corner.

HILL: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: I agree. OK. That's fine. OK, we can just cut off and go in.

HILL: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Right there. That's right.

HILL: (inaudible) You didn't like much [hitting them?], did you?

GEORGE STONEY: No, it's fine.

HILL: I need to borrow somebody's arm.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

HILL: (inaudible) the curb. That's what I brought her for, because I didn't know whether y'all would want to do this or not.

JAMIE STONEY: How you doing today, Ms. Hill?

HILL: Fine, how you, James? I believe they call you Jamie though, don't they?

JAMIE STONEY: Well, I answer to just about anything.

HILL: Just so they call you three times a day. (laughter)

(inaudible) rear end view, huh?

GEORGE STONEY: OK. (inaudible) OK. Hello? Hello, we're looking for the director.

F1: The director? Mr. Waffle?

GEORGE STONEY: Yes.

F1: Just a minute.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

F1: Who may I say - ?

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, George Stoney. We can sit over here, I think.

HILL: (inaudible) [ribbon on it?]

GEORGE STONEY: (laughs) That's right. OK.

F2: Sit down.

HILL: "Do not touch the furniture." [I'll play piano for you?]

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

HILL: We about to get lost.

F1: Ah, Mr. Waffle's on the phone. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

HILL: Well, I knew one way and she knew another way -

GEORGE STONEY: He's upstairs? Which way will he come down?

F1: He'll come down the front steps, I suppose. Unless he comes down the elevator.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

F1: Whichever way he chooses.

JAMIE STONEY: Ooh. That is a nice piece of work.

HELFAND: Is uh, is she going to give them to him?

GEORGE STONEY: Now Mr., Mr. Waf -

(break in audio)

GEORGE STONEY: - museum. Diaries (inaudible).

F1: Whose?

GEORGE STONEY: Her diaries.

F1: Her own?

GEORGE STONEY: Yes, yes.

F1: Oh, how nice.

GEORGE STONEY: Here's - here he comes now. Nope, nope, false alarm. All of this furniture has come from local people.

F1: [Sure enough?]

GEORGE STONEY: Yes. Maybe you could explain to Mrs. Hill where all this stuff comes from.

F1: Ah, well -

HELFAND: Jamie, why don't you (inaudible)

F1: This is our (inaudible) piece that we're especially proud of.

HILL: What do you call it?

F1: Chest on chest. It's in two pieces. This one sits on top of the other. You see it has the two secret compartments? There's a compartment on this side exactly like that.

HILL: (inaudible)

F1: Well that's one reason we have it, it was too large for, ah, the homes. Mr. 00:43:00Vance and his children couldn't take it because it was too large for their homes.

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F1: This uh - [Vance made?] pieces. One of our oldest -

GEORGE STONEY: Here he comes.

(break in audio)

F1: If you'd like to look through that -

GEORGE STONEY: Hello! Alan.

ALAN WAFFLE: How are you?

GEORGE STONEY: Good to see you. Ms. Hill. Mrs. Hill.

WAFFLE: Hi, how are you?

GEORGE STONEY: Ah -

WAFFLE: We're filming? I didn't know we were fiming.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah. OK. You want me to stop then, and talk about - ?

WAFFLE: No that's OK, I just didn't know we were -

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, so, these are the diaries which she was telling me about, and I thought you'd be interested in seeing them.

HILL: They're in different, uh, books.

WAFFLE: You were very good about keeping these. I tried a diary once and I couldn't keep up with it.

HILL: I've got from thirty - well, really '33, but '33 was so - was all so personal, so I didn't bring it.

WAFFLE: Oh, OK, sure.

HILL: And I've got from '34 through '50. Every day. But they're in different books.

WAFFLE: Yes, ma'am.

HILL: Each book is marked. I just put them on last night, so you could tell.

WAFFLE: Well, this will make a nice documentation for Gaston County for about 20 years.

GEORGE STONEY: You list all the movies you saw -

WAFFLE: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: - saw, I believe.

HILL: Some of 'em. (laughter) I didn't list 'em all, but I - quite a few in there.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

HILL: And whether they were any good -

GEORGE STONEY: Yes, yeah.

HILL: - and how much I made every week is in the first one. I don't think -

WAFFLE: Whoops. (laughter) The truth -

HILL: Three dollars.

WAFFLE: - the truth comes through, yeah.

HILL: Three dollars and sixty cent a week, working six hours a day. That was before Roosevelt changed it in '34.

WAFFLE: Did - well, there it is, drawed $12.44 home at 10:00.

HILL: That was after Roosevelt came in. (laughs)

WAFFLE: That was the weekly wage?

HILL: Uh-huh. Paid off every Wednesday.

GEORGE STONEY: Maybe you could explain to her how -

WAFFLE: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: - how and why this is important.

WAFFLE: Well, sure. Well, we're - we, um, are trying to gather the whole picture of Gaston County as a social/economic history, and particularly in terms of the textile history. And this helps us fill in a great number of gaps, um, by way of facts and documentation, but also with a personal touch, that it 00:46:00wasn't just workers were paid. In this case, it was an actual live woman in Gaston County who was paid $12.44 for X hours of hard labor, that she enjoyed a certain day in her life, that such-and-such was, was good to see or good to eat. It was, you know, hot as blazes on a certain day in summer. (laughter)

HILL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

WAFFLE: That sort of, sort of fills in and gives us a personal touch. What we try to do with museums, exhibits, is to personalize it, so it's not just a nameless, faceless something that existed, because, um, the mill owners, the mill workers, the people who buy the fabrics and the yarns all have personalities, so we try to incorporate that into the, the activities and the exhibits themselves.

HILL: Well, (clears throat) they won't be open to the public?

WAFFLE: Um, no, not on a, not on a regular basis. We, we would do would be to draw from - for, for, like, a, a, um, a headline, or a caption line, to, to illustration in the museum exhibit, um, if... Usually the - it would say, like, 00:47:00a worker's typical day, and then, you know, a highlight from a diary, that sort of thing.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, could you -

HILL: Several (inaudible) -

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, where is the place that you're gonna have the mill owners, uh - the, the, the mill, uh, managers' office?

WAFFLE: Back - well, it's more than just a mill managers' office.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

WAFFLE: The whole exhibit covers -

GEORGE STONEY: Could -

WAFFLE: - more than just that.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, that's on this floor, isn't it?

WAFFLE: It's - yeah, it's in the next, the next wing.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, could you show - would you be willing to show her that?

WAFFLE: Sure. We've got a model of how the exhibit's gonna be -

GEORGE STONEY: OK, fine, let's go back there then.

WAFFLE: - if you'd rather see... OK.

ARCHER: Aren't those great?

HILL: You want to put them back in a bag?

WAFFLE: Yeah. Yeah, that probably would be good. Let me get my staff in for this.

HILL: Them tapes can be pulled off of the outside if you want to.

WAFFLE: OK, sure.

HILL: You want to read about the furniture, Ruth? (break in audio) In the living room.

M: You want to come (inaudible)?

GEORGE STONEY: Yes, all right.

HILL: Let me get started and I'm all right.

GEORGE STONEY: All right. (laughs)

HILL: About as good as my sisters on that, knowing what to do when. Which way'd he go?

GEORGE STONEY: We go back this way.

ARCHER: Hi, how are you?

HILL: Fine, how are you?

ARCHER: Good. Hey.

GEORGE STONEY: Hi.

HILL: Oh, I got some older stuff at home. It's older than some of this.

WAFFLE: OK, I can get a chair for you. Easier for you... Yeah, the exhibit is more than just the mill owners' office.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh.

WAFFLE: I think somebody's given you some bad information on that. Um, this is a door we just came in, right here, behind us. So what our plans are is to have an introductory section with a video showing workers coming in out of the mill, and as you come in, punch in a timecard, just like you would've punched a timecard when you went to work, so you're now on our clock to see a museum exhibit, (laughter) and come in and get introductory panels here that will talk about, um, the, the power of the river, and the s- the reasons why it's here, because of the geography at first, um, trying to, to make use of the, the water 00:50:00power at the different shoals on the Catawba and the South Fork. And initially the, uh, textile industry was at home. So we have, um, an exhibit right now called "Homemade Handmade" that will be incorporated into this right here, um, in this exhibit area. There would be the homemade, um, loom, and you could talk about farmwives doing it at home, where they'd have to card and spin and weave to create the coverlets and the clothing that the, the children would wear. And then we move into the textile, development of the textile industry through here with, um, some of the initial pioneer men who used their moneys that they made off of mercantile to invest in the, in the, the textile plants, the very early textile plants, and then we get into the industry itself in this 00:51:00space in here with, um, panels and, uh, artifact exhibits with spinning and weaving and what all it meant in terms of the process, and the financing of it, 'cause our focus on the exhibit is not that it was the product of a lot of hard work from just workers, or that it was something that a wealthy man did; it was something that we all did. So the Gaston County textile industry is the product of everybody, um, workers as well as mill owners. If the man didn't have the money to build the mill then they wouldn't have had the job, and if they didn't have the job on the line then he wouldn't have made any money, uh, so it works hand in glove. And moving from the industry, we go into here to talk about the mill village, um, that was developed as part of the economic package. You have to have, um, the village because there was barren land, no homes for people to move into, so we'll talk about the village and what it meant architecturally to our built environment, and then move over into this 00:52:00section as we leave and talk about what the mill village meant in terms of our social environment with the baseball teams and the softball teams and the mill bands and all that, that, that's developed through the years. And then, um, you, you leave, and it's the mill, um, workers, again, on video leaving the mill at the end -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - of the day, and you punch your card and leave.

HILL: That punching a card didn't come in till way after my time. (laughter)

WAFFLE: No, I know that, but, but we're covering - we're trying to cover a whole lot of territory -

HILL: Yeah.

WAFFLE: - in not a whole lot of space, so... But that's - that way - it's easy enough for people to do that, and then they have a souvenir that they can take away from the museum's exhibit -

GEORGE STONEY: Oh, that's neat idea.

WAFFLE: - without having to -

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

WAFFLE: - to pay for anything.

HILL: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: When did you s- uh, when did you start punching the clock?

HILL: I don't remember ever punching a clock.

WAFFLE: What, did y'all just write in your card, or...?

HILL: We didn't write in anything. Boss just took it, took our name down, and wrote up a timesheet -

WAFFLE: Oh, OK, so he had -

HILL: - every day.

WAFFLE: - he had, like, a little, um -

ARCHER: He had [a manager?] -

WAFFLE: - tab book or something like that -

HILL: Yeah.

WAFFLE: - that had everybody's...

HILL: Put down everybody and how many hours they worked, or how much, uh - the, 00:53:00the supervisor of your department put down how many boxes you spooled, um, and then they'd go on into the office in they - there in the mill, and they'd finalize it and send it to the office uptown you got your money from. It was all done -

GEORGE STONEY: Well, one of the reasons that -

HILL: - piece of pale- paper and a pencil.

GEORGE STONEY: - we're so interested in this is that, uh, we've been to some ex- exhibits -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - like the one over at Kannapolis, for example, which is almost entirely from the standpoint of, of the Cannon family -

WAFFLE: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: - and very little about the, the people who worked. And so when I (laughs) found - when she told me about her diary - you should see it.

WAFFLE: Yeah, yeah, sure.

GEORGE STONEY: You, (laughs) you should see her face on videotape. "Do you think they really want...?"

HILL: I was goin' to - I would've destroyed 'em next week.

WAFFLE: Well, that's what he said. I was, I was glad that, that Mr. Stoney was able to convince you to, to share 'em with us, 'cause Gaston County is made up of a, a whole composite of people, you know, wealthy people and middle income people and poor people, and it becomes a story of everybody.

HILL: Well, we were among the poor people back then.

WAFFLE: Well, yeah, and I know - but in some cases people came down from the mountains to do this, because -

HILL: Right.

WAFFLE: - this was more than they had at the mills.

HILL: That's what we did.

WAFFLE: So, um, a lot of that'll end up being worked into the body of the copy that goes along, you know, with the exhibit storyline, um, that it -

GEORGE STONEY: You know where she ended up.

WAFFLE: At the Eagle, you said?

GEORGE STONEY: No, but, uh, the -

WAFFLE: At the - w-...

GEORGE STONEY: She went to college.

WAFFLE: Oh, OK.

HELFAND: What - Mrs. Hill, what happened to you?

HILL: Well, I went into - I took correspondent courses at home, and, uh, bettered myself and got a bookkeeping job, and then I joined the Merchant Association as a secretary, and then I went into the Chamber of Commerce as secretary, executive secretary. And then, uh, I got a little bit tired of that, and so I went into business for myself, and then my brother and I. And, uh, I retired from that. We owned the fuel oil company.

GEORGE STONEY: But, I mean, that - (laughs) talk about the range, just...

WAFFLE: Yeah, quite a range of, of, of tasks, to go from... Well, what did you do in the mill? Were you spinning frame, or...?

HILL: Uh, I s- I'd do anything. They just called me anytime for anything. I, 00:55:00I spooled, wound, and spun some. I didn't like to spin, and I got out of that every time I could, but I spooled mostly.

WAFFLE: Did you ever doff?

HILL: No, my husband - (laughter) my husband was a doffer.

WAFFLE: That's very hard work, very hard work to do.

HILL: Yeah, back then, men most would be the doffers.

WAFFLE: Yeah, that's true.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, we're interested in -

HILL: But I could do anything.

GEORGE STONEY: - some of the other things that you might be... For example, here is a, is a letter which Judy found in the archives in Washington, uh, dated 1934. And we have done an - we've done an interview with the fella who wrote that -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - Bruce Graham. He's a black fella. We discovered that - who he was when we talked to other people at, uh, the Eagle -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - who recognized his name, and he lives out in the country -

WAFFLE: Hmm, OK.

GEORGE STONEY: - has his own farm and so forth. So we've done that. Now, what place would documents like this have at your museum?

WAFFLE: Again, it fills in the gaps -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - um, and gives us all the, the details. You hear of stories -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - but then this is sort of documentation proof -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - that, you know, such-and-such occurred -

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh.

WAFFLE: - such-and-such existed.

GEORGE STONEY: See, so that the material that we're recording now, in addition to being in our film -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - will go into an archive so that you can call that up -

WAFFLE: Sure.

GEORGE STONEY: - from all the stuff that we've been recording in Gaston County for - here, again, is a... This is a, is a petition signed by 108 people from the County, uh, about in, uh, November 1933. They were protesting, uh, the, the manufacturers', uh, enforcement of the, the Blue Eagle rules.

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: And we have found a lot of these people - for example, we found the, uh, Ernest Moore -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - and his father was, uh, was head of the union here, and what we're hoping to do is to get those big shift pictures -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - and then circle everybody who signed this, you see, so that, uh, they will be recognized, just to fill out the history. So that's, that's what we're trying to do, as well. Now, we have, uh, from the archives, we have a lot of this stuff from Gaston County, and, again -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - that will be made available.

WAFFLE: That's gonna be good. Well, this also saves us a lot of, um, research time and expenses that we don't -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - we don't have.

GEORGE STONEY: How long has the museum been going?

WAFFLE: We've been in existence, um, since 1976.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: Opened as a bicentennial project, um, in a one-room, second-floor space across the street. (laughter) And through the years, um, with good support from the community, we've developed into, um, staff of 11 and lots of computers and elevators and space -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - so there's, you know, been good growth to talk about Gaston County's story. And little by little, working towards getting a, a textile exhibit in place, because it's the, um, 00:58:00almost the raison d'être for Gaston County.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: Um, the mills and the development of Gaston County as a, um, political entity are coincident, both in the, the middle 1840s.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: Um, the first mill and the courthouse opened the same year -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - 1848, so it's - we're intertwined, sort of spun together like threads over at your mill, (laughter) uh, type of thing -

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

WAFFLE: - [so it looks?] (inaudible).

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, we d- for example, we did an interview with Joe Lineberger -

WAFFLE: Mm-hmm.

GEORGE STONEY: - and we have his memories of, of thi-this time, as well.

WAFFLE: Well, it's good to get a, a cross-reference, and that's sort of the same focus that we're doing with the museum, that we're treating the upper elements of the mill, as well as the lower elements, whatever you want to rephrase it - however you want to phrase it - that it's our product, whether it's, you know, good, bad, or indifferent in terms of social/economic history is a result of everybody and not just, you know, one person's perspective.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: There's no particular right, no particular wrong. Um, and in this case, um, I guess it's all particular right, whether it's, you know, good, 00:59:00bad -

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.

WAFFLE: - um, in producing Gaston County today.

GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm. One of the things that's interested me is the k-kind of selective memory that we found here, uh, in terms of Loray Mill, for example.

WAFFLE: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Everybody knows the sheriff got killed. (laughs) Everybody knows about the other murder, almost nothing else.

WAFFLE: Yeah, well, that's -

GEORGE STONEY: But that's what th-