Mr. Quattlebaum and Annie Griggs Interview

MR. QUATTLEBAUM: One, two three.

JAMIE STONEY: Rolling

GEORGE STONEY: Good soil for them.

MR. QUATTLEBAUM: Oh I've been working on this soil ever since I've been here.

GEORGE STONEY: What do you put in it?

QUATTLEBAUM: Leaf mole, saw dust, hay--

GEORGE STONEY: Do you keep mulch? Put your garbage in it, that kind of thing?

QUATTLEBAUM: No I don't put

GEORGE STONEY: You don't make a humus pile or anything?

QUATTLEBAUM: It don't have no garbage or anything like that but it does have well I guess in a way that'd be, because sawdust and hay and old leaves and pine straw.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, we'll start you working on the trellis roses there. Then 00:01:00move to your white one then move to this big one in the middle. Ok go to the white one now.

QUATTLEBAUM: Ouch! ooh, grabbed me. This is a yellow one, this is not a white one. I wasn't gonna do anything to it. Here we go there needs some cutting to be done right here. Mmm! This is my white rose, it ain't got no roses on it. I ain't figured out why yet either. Ooh boy, this one don't need no cutting. 00:02:00Doesn't have to be cut though. These fixing to start blooming again.

[Silence]

JAMIE STONEY: You get good tomatoes out of your garden?

QUATTLEBAUM: I hope so. I usually do. They're really not ready yet. I like to see. I got some down here fixing to get ready. There. I don't know if I should pull them buggers or not. I don't think I will. I'll just take em to her. 00:04:00I'll have my truck back the next day or two. This ones fixing to go rotten on the vine though. Look at that thing. Uh oh.

JAMIE STONEY: A little friend inside chomping away?

QUATTLEBAUM: Yeah. Let me get this one right here. That right there-

JAMIE STONEY: Oh yeah, something decided to have lunch.

QUATTLEBAUM: Mmm hmm. I'll be …put a bunch of these dang things stuck on the window too. I hate that. Well, I'll see what I can do with that. So you gonna see Angela again tonight?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, well we won't see her tonight. We will see her tomorrow.

QUATTLEBAUM: Well uhm you know what to do with these when you get them in the sun?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

QUATTLEBAUM: Well tell her to …well she knows what to do. [Sniffs and laughs] I love smelling them things. Let's go out in the yard and pick the dinner off the vine, how bout that? Hey hey hey hey hey. See all them blooms on them things 00:06:00yet? All them little yellow things there're the blooms. That aught to be enough. You lay these up in the sun where the sun can get to them they'll turn just as pretty and red! Make fine sandwiches. Let me get a sack for them. Should be a sack in the house somewhere.

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, could you tell us how and when you got into the mills and what you did.

ANNIE GRIGGS: Well when I got into the mill I learned how to spin. That's what I don't and that was my job. And I went to work in Poulan, Georgia then I was fourteen years old. And made ten cents and hour, worked eight hours a day.

GEORGE STONEY: When was that?

GRIGGS: Oh I was fourteen, I am eighty-four you might as well say now, I don't remember what year it was in. Then we left there. Papa moved to Fairfax, Alabama. I went to school there. Then he left there and went to Thomaston and I went to work in the mill, cuz I wouldn't go back to school no more. And then we moved from Thomaston to Manchester and I worked there sixteen hours, twelve 00:08:00hours a night on the night line.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us what it was like working in the mills.

GRIGGS: Oh, I liked it. I really did. It was hard work, but you had a lot of fun, too.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us about the fun?

GRIGGS: About what?

GEORGE STONEY: The fun.

GRIGGS: What we made? Well like then I was in Manchester, I made pretty good, I made bout fifteen dollars a week. That was good you know, back then.

GEORGE STONEY: You mentioned that you had a lot of fun. Tell us about the fun.

GRIGGS: Well when you got your job caught up, you could talk and do what you wanted to do, have fun then, enjoyed it. We always pretty well had good bosses to work for. So made it pretty good.

GEORGE STONEY: Now when did that change?

GRIGGS: We left Manchester in [19]23. And moved to Columbus. So I been working in Columbus, you might say, ever since.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember when the NRA came in?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Can you tell us about it?

GRIGGS: I don't know too much about it cuz I didn't try to keep up with it. I heard Jim talk about it, but I just didn't care for it.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you remember when the hours got cut to eight hours?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah. When Roosevelt went in.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about that.

GRIGGS: Well, we thought we had it made then, we didn't have to work but eight hours a day: Go to work and get home early. We enjoyed that. Sure did.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you have to work any harder?

GRIGGS: No, no we didn't have no more jobs than we did but they raised wages you know. We made $2.40 a day, I did, then. Course my husband doffed down there, he made a little bit more than I did.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you describe what the conditions in the mill were?

GRIGGS: Oh they was pretty good. It was hot you know we didn't have no air conditioning or nothing, but we didn't need it, we weren't used to it. Had 00:10:00never had it so you didn't miss that, you know. Raise the windows and go ahead.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember any strikes?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah. They had one at the Eagle in Phenix.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about that.

GRIGGS: Well, a lot of people lost their jobs on account of it. So they was pretty rough for a while. but we went back to work after so long a time we got laid off for it but we went back to work.

GEORGE STONEY: Were you, did you join the union?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell me about that.

GRIGGS: Yeah we joined it--

GEORGE STONEY: I'm sorry, say we joined the union.

GRIGGS: Yeah we joined it

GEORGE STONEY: Just start off saying. "We joined the union."

GRIGGS: We joined the union.

GEORGE STONEY: And?

GRIGGS: Yeah we joined the union and they didn't do what they promised you know, so we was left out in the cold. They left so we didn't have nothing to fight with. So they ended it up that. So that's the last one they ever had, I guess.

GEORGE STONEY: Now that's exactly what we want to get… you say the union 00:11:00left, you joined the union, the union left…tell the whole story.

GRIGGS: Yeah, they left town, I don't know where they went to, but they pulled out, yeah, they left. They was gonna do great wonders but they didn't do anything.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever know anything about any other union?

GRIGGS: No, this is the only one I know anything about.

GEORGE STONEY: Now I understand that women took a big hand in the picketing and so forth.

GRIGGS: Oh yeah they did! I was one of them, too.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us about that?

GRIGGS: Yeah we walked the picket line and we had a lot of fun doing that too. My brother'd walked it, and he'd get tired of walking the picket line and he'd go inside to be on work. And he's pulling it both ways.

GEORGE STONEY: Would you tell me what the women did?

GRIGGS: They just walked. They didn't fight or nothing, they just walked. We all lost our job on account of it, too.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember any songs you sang?

GRIGGS: No, I don't. They sang some, but I don't remember them. It was a lot of fun to go down there, everybody was down there you know, I enjoyed it.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember the troops being here?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about that.

GRIGGS: Well they was down there and there was a lot of trouble to start with, but they finally got em quieted down; they had more trouble at the Bibb than they did anywhere else. So I stayed away from that, I didn't have no business up there.

GEORGE STONEY: But you actually, you saw the troops?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Describe them.

GRIGGS: Well they was in uniforms, just ordinary people, just in uniforms, they didn't bother nobody unless they got bothered. They seen that people didn't go in the mill and work. Some of em would go up there and slip in anyway. Yep

GEORGE STONEY: Did they have bayonets on the guns?

GRIGGS: Yeah. There was one, they had a shooting up there, one man shot, he was 00:13:00working up there. But they didn't hurt nobody.

GEORGE STONEY: I was talking the other day with Mr. Tidwell, do you remember him?

GRIGGS: No I don't, no.

GEORGE STONEY: Well he was in the strike at the Eagle in Phenix, and he was telling me about the, that they had people deputized to guard the mills. Do you know anything about that?

GRIGGS: No I didn't know anything about that, no I sure didn't. They probably had more than I knowed about.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember any literature or pamphlets or anything like that?

GRIGGS: Yeah, but I don't remember what they read, I'd read em but they didn't mean nothing to me, I'd throw them away.

JUDITH HELFAND: You said that the union made all these promises…can you describe how the union came to town and presented their ideas to you?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

HELFAND: Use the word union so people know what you're talking about.

GRIGGS: The union, they was gonna give us big wages, get that for us and things like that and they didn't do anything.

HELFAND: How did they come to town?

GRIGGS: I really don't know, I don't know how they came to town. They had a union hall down here on first avenue, you know. And we'd go to the meetings down there. They made people think they were gonna get a lot. But it didn't work that way.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember the Labor Day parades?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about it.

GRIGGS: Well there's a lot of fun them Labor Day parades was, We'd go out we'd go down there sometimes or we'd go to the Uchee Creek and have a picnic. It was fun, there wasn't nothing else to do.

GEORGE STONEY: How did you feed yourself during the strike?

GRIGGS: Well we didn't eat very much, and finally had to go on welfare, they give us a little bit but it wasn't much they'd give us. My husband went to work for WPA and so I didn't have no job until I finally went back to work, I went to work at the Bibb. And then I went back to the Eagle. I think they forgot about it.

GEORGE STONEY: How many children did you have at that time?

GRIGGS: I had three.

GEORGE STONEY: I often wonder how you people did when you were working in the mill, what you did about your children.

GRIGGS: Well, me and my husband worked different shifts. He would work, when we worked all day, we had somebody kept them, you know. Some of our people. But when we went to work on the eight hours a day, I worked one shift and he worked the other and that's the way we raised them. We weren't able to hire no babysitters.

GEORGE STONEY: Where did you live?

GRIGGS: Oh I lived all over Columbus. I lived down Boogerville, and I lived 00:16:00North Highland, I lived in Jordan City, all around here.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever live in mill housing, mill-owner housing?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah, this was a mill house.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about buying it.

GRIGGS: They sold 'em to the workers over there. Nicely, they sold em to us real cheap: I paid $3500 for mine. Paid $29.50 for a month until I got it paid for. They were pretty nice about it. That was a Jordan people they had it then, you know we got a good, they treated us right.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about the bosses and the supervisors.

GRIGGS: Over at the Jordan? Oh yeah they were real nice. Mr. O'Neill was. Mr. King was our superintendent; they just didn't make them no better than he was. And Robert Carsell was my overseer on third shift and he was real nice. Got along with all of them.

GEORGE STONEY: Now the third shift was…

GRIGGS: From eleven to seven.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you go through your day and tell me, if you worked from eleven to seven…

GRIGGS: Worked through the day? Well it was just continued working, you know. Work from 11-7, cleaned up the job left it straight. That was all they required of us.

GEORGE STONEY: And then?

GRIGGS: And then that was about it

GEORGE STONEY: But tell about the rest of your day.

GRIGGS: Well, I'd come home, went to bed. Then I'd sleep till about 2:00 and get up and cook supper. And then I'd get ready to go to work that night. I most always worked at night. I worked when they run twelve hours a night. When I was just fourteen, fifteen years old.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you think that that ever hurt you?

GRIGGS: No it didn't hurt me… I think I…look and feel as well as I do! And I worked doubles, too. Worked a lot of them.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell me about the rest of your family in the mills.

GRIGGS: Oh didn't none of my children work in the mills. But my daughter, my youngest daughter, she's went to work since the thirties. But the rest of them didn't work in the mill. They got them a better job. She taking after her momma, she went to the cotton mill. But she makes a good living.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us about your education.

GRIGGS: That's, it well, I went to second grade. Didn't have time to go to school, I had to work. That's right, that the highest school I went.

GEORGE STONEY: So where did you get your education?

GRIGGS: Poulan, Georgia, what little I got.

GEORGE STONEY: But I mean since then?

GRIGGS: Well I just picked it up myself. I learned to read and write, my own self. We moved about so much, a shame I done got too old to go, so I wouldn't 00:19:00go at all. So I went to work.

GEORGE STONEY: Did that ever hurt you in terms of the job?

GRIGGS: No, no but I understand it does now. They require it. But all my kids got a good education, we seen to that. But kids back then they had to work, they didn't have time, the parents had to have us to work. We didn't keep our money, either.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about the diet, what did you eat?

GRIGGS: We ate dried peas and butterbeans and rice and such as that, couldn't afford much more. Maybe buy some meats on the weekends.

GEORGE STONEY: What about gardens?

GRIGGS: Yeah we always had a garden. We fixed us a garden. I helped a lot. I 00:20:00don't do nothing like that now though.

GEORGE STONEY: Did your family… was your father a farmer?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: You might talk about that.

GRIGGS: Yeah we farmed for, well I was ten years old when we left the farm. Course the boys was older than I was and they went to work. So as soon as I got fourteen, I went to work, too. When you got old enough, you went to work in the mill.

GEORGE STONEY: Now we've heard from a lot of people a phrase called lint-heads.

GRIGGS: Yeah, yeah. That's what they used to call em, yup.

GEORGE STONEY: Call what?

GRIGGS: Lint-heads! You come out with so much— I always comb my head though before I come out the mill. But you got plenty of lint in them, alright.

GEORGE STONEY: Some people feel bad about that. How do you feel?

GRIGGS: It don't make me feel bad, it was honest. I like what's honest, it's alright.

GEORGE STONEY: I'm sorry, Jaime says he missed something. Could you explain why they were called lintheads and the fact that you weren't bothered by it.

GRIGGS: By what?

GEORGE STONEY: Just explain—we have to do this again. Why they were called lintheads?

GRIGGS: Well I think because people would go out the mill with lint all in their hair I think that's what got them started doing that, yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: And how did you feel about it?

GRIGGS: It didn't bother me. Cuz I combed mine before I left, anyway! I might have stayed out past stopping time, but I combed my head. But you know some people just don't care.

GEORGE STONEY: Some people seem to feel like they kind of resent other people looking down on them.

GRIGGS: It didn't bother me cuz it felt honest and I felt good about it. I had a job. It was better than farming. Yeah a lot of people tried to look down on people that way. But I didn't, I liked the mill. I'd be at work now if 00:22:00they'd hire me! I worked a long time after I retired they couldn't take insurance out on my but I worked. I told them I didn't need that anyway, I had some. Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Why do you think you're so strong?

GRIGGS: Well I reckon because I had plenty of beans and peas to eat and I always had to work, and didn't have time to get weak. I tell you my daddy learned us to work, we had to work. Everybody worked in my house. When we four we hit the field and when we got fourteen years old we went to work. But I reckon had so many kids back then everybody had to work. They was eight of us.

GEORGE STONEY: When was the last time you went into the mill?

GRIGGS: Mmm, I don't think I've been over there in the mill since '69; I retired. I pass by there every once in a while, but I don't go in there.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about the difference between the mill when you first started working there and when you left?

GRIGGS: Oh yes, the machinery was a lot better and newer and all. You know the old machinery was pretty bad. It was so worn out. And they had modern frames and everything then when I quit; it was a lot better.

GEORGE STONEY: And what about the noise and dust?

GRIGGS: Well the noise didn't bother me. The dust got bad sometimes, the cotton, the lint, but the dust didn't bother me cuz I worked in the spinning room. It had a lot of lit, but it didn't bother me, I kept it out of my face anyway.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever wear a mask?

GRIGGS: No. They wear them now in some of the mills, I know. No, we didn't 00:24:00wear em, I don't think they thought of anything such as that.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever see a film called Norma Rae?

GRIGGS: No, no.

GEORGE STONEY: It's just a film about somebody who works in a cotton mill, I just wondered what you thought of it.

GRIGGS: Yeah, no no. I never did heard about that, no. You hear a lot of jokes about a mill if you pay any attention to em.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us some.

GRIGGS: I done forgot em all, it's been so long since I've heard one. They used to tell jokes and tales all get together, but there isn't anyone around here but me.

GEORGE STONEY: So explain why you miss the mill.

GRIGGS: Well, I miss going to work cause after you work so long you're not satisfied, not happy at all. So when I first retired, I stayed out four weeks then went back to work. Went over there and went back to work and then I worked on till the last of the year. Till they shut down over there, and I accepted a first shift then I told them that I just I'd already withdrawn my money and I 00:25:00wouldn't try to work then because a lot of them needed it worse then I did. When I retired I got me a job I went to work at the nursing home, I was a volunteer out there three years. and I worked on Sunday down here at the Iron Works you know they had a job first to do show people around, I enjoyed that. I didn't be still, I didn't sit down when I retired, I'd have went crazy. My husband said he wasn't gonna look for a job that didn't pay nothing I told him it was just a pleasure I didn't have to sit at home.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, Judy do you have any ideas.

HELFAND: Did you buy your food in the mill store? Was there a mill store connected to your mill?

GRIGGS: No, no the Bibb mill has a store you know but it don't have it up there, mill store, not in the mill. No I didn't want none of the material 00:26:00after I worked with no how.

HELFAND: I meant your food.

GRIGGS: Oh yeah they had machines you know in there … sandwiches and things you could get if you wanted to. But I didn't eat em because I didn't like to get them out of them machines.

HELFAND: You talked about having a good time on line. Was there ever a time when you had so much work to do that it wasn't any fun?

GRIGGS: Oh yeah! There's plenty of times like that there was.

HELFAND: Tell me about that.

GRIGGS: Sometimes our job would get to run so bad we couldn't run it. And me and my friend worked right side by side we'd run the whole alley by ourselves, you know, her part and my part. So we couldn't get em straight we stopped em all off and got em straightened out. So we got em straightened out and go back and work some more. Yeah it'd get pretty bad over there sometimes but I always know where the belt, where that stopping thing was. That's what we do too. 00:27:00Robert might come along and give us a hard look, but it didn't matter.

HELFAND: What about the, I've heard people talk about the stretch out. Can you tell me about that?

GRIGGS: Yeah that's where they raise wages you know and they'd give us more frames to run. For the same money.

HELFAND: How did that affect you?

GRIGGS: Well, I run more frames and less money, same I's getting you know. Cause either work or go somewhere else and they'd do the same thing. I worked at my last twenty years over here at the Jordan.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us about that? That seems to be a particularly different mill from others.

GRIGGS: Yeah it was different. A lot different, the spinning and all, the machinery. It was a lot different. But it was run better. I enjoyed working on it better. And there were newer frames than what they did have over at the Eagle 00:28:00in Phenix and Swift, too.

GEORGE STONEY: Now back to the '34. Mr. Tidwell was telling us about the deputies coming out there and taking guns away from the fellas in the mills. Do you remember anything about that?

GRIGGS: No I don't. I never did hearing nothing about nobody having guns in the mills. That's something new to me. Now they might have in other parts; I worked in the spinning room. Everybody got along in the spinning room, we never did hear of no disturbance like that.

GEORGE STONEY: Now the spinning, as a spinner, you got paid more than anybody else, didn't you?

GRIGGS: Oh no no, we didn't get paid, the weave shop paid more than the spinning did. But I didn't like the weave shop, that's too much noise, I like the spinning room. My parents worked in the weave shop, all my people excepting me. There's eight children and all seven of them worked in the weave shop, excepting me.

JAMIE STONEY: Reload.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok (inaudible)