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Durham* N. C.
September 19* 1938
L. R.
JOHN ROGERS, FRODUCE TRUCKER
John Rogers had had seven hours sleep in the
past two nights. He would get about four more hours
when he got to Durham after midnight. Then he would
get up early to deliver his vegetables and fruits to
the Durham grocers. This done he would start the
hundred and sixty miles beck to Richmond where he
would arrive early in the afternoon* buy another load,
end get beck to Durham in time for four or five hours
sleep if everything went right.
When driving like this John Rogers sometimes
pulls to the side of the roe(' and lies flat on the warm
concrete under his truck, completely relaxed. Five
minutes of this and he can drive on as if be had slept.
He drinks coffee and Ooce-Coles to stay awake but
doesn't use or trust such aids es No-Doz. When he
started driving four years ego he weighed 165 pounds
and has since gained fifteen pounds. He hes never had
wreck.
John Rogers owns, or owns with his three brothers-
in-law, four trucks, three of them half -ton pickups
and one e ton -and -a -half job, ell Fords end all but one
thirty-five V-88. Every day but Seturdey end Sunday
he takes one of the pickups to Richmond. Doing this
five days a week makes him feel all wore down sometimes,
he admits, but it's a competitive business and the Durham
grocers know his stuff is fresh. The Richmond trips net
about fifteen or twenty dollars each. The big truck,
driven by one of his brothers -in, -law, runs to Norfolk
and nets more. The big truck recuires a helper, whom
they hire. It gets ten miles to the gallon, loaded or
unloaded; the lighter trucks get twice that unloaded
end about eighteen loaded. His first truck was a '26
T model and be has traded in for a succession of newer
models ever since. Fords, he thinks, are as good a$
you want for your money.
Two of the brothers-in-law stay in Durham and get
advance orders and deliver with one of the pickups.
Their market is Durham though they sometimes help
supply Duke University and the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. They are all younger than
John Rogers, who is thirty-three.
His load on a mid -September night consists of
tomatoes, roasting -ears, black-eyed peas, stringbeans,
and peaches. He also carries two dozen eggs for his
own home. Most of this stuff, he says, is raised
close around Richmond. The other truck gets vegetables
and fruits grown in the back country around Norfolk
and on the Eastern Sher* or even braught in on ships.
We follows the narkets and has hauled about everything
that grows.
Last winter he heeled fruit end vegetables from
Florida. This winter he is going to de it again, but
as e driver for a Darken fruit dealer instead of as
an independent. At least he thinks he will get the
lob *doh will pay him twunty.flve, maybe thirty dollars
end expenses. Be ears last winter was the toughest he
ever sow. We was paying on three trucks, his baby was
born end his wife wasn't working. The competition was
hod, too *soy truoking. He knows the Florida markets
end is a close buyer and be will be able to sere his
employer money on the stuff. ft will start about
Deoenber first and will store his own trucks. 14
rarely gees furtber into Florid* then Saaksonwille.
There he can get anything he waste.
John Rogers likes the uncertainty and (Alamos of
trucking but be to getting tired of it. The life of
e truekdriver, he mem is six years. He think* this
winter soy be his lest on the highway. He 0821 always
get something to do ensued Durham or he may go beak
end stay on the farm with his mother and father end
take oere of the pleas. Seeldes, he has an income
from hie house. and he will have a chsnoe to build
more.
Houses seem to be e passion with John Rogers.
Before he finished high school in Hillsboro he rEs
getting three dollars a week from a house he had built
almost entirely with his own hands with lumber he hed
cut on his father's farm and had bed sawed. He never
followed carpentry but studied it out, and it's not
herd, he says, to learn something you really like.
He built his first house in Durham during vacations
and spare time, and he did all the work except some
of the finishing. Now he can almost completely build
a house by himself. Altogether, he has built four
houses, three of which he still owns. He says he could
have gone to college but he figured that after four
years he would be just beginning while if he didn't
go he could have house or two built and be getting
three dollars a week rent from each. And he wes
restless and wanted to do things with his hands.
If another panic comes he says there's nothing
better than houses if they're clear and paid for.
The next house he plans to build is to be an a lot he
owns in the Negro section of Durham, near the North
Carolina College for Negroes. Nigger houses, he says,
are the best paying. He plans e three room house
which will have only electricity at first but there
will be a bathroom and eventually he will put in water.
Now, there's a well nearby.
The house he lives in is one he built. It has
five rooms. They have two beds but when his brother
we married and came there to spend the first night
there was only one bed, and John Roberts and his wife
spent the night on a cot. Their own honeymoon had
been to Asheville on twenty-six dollars.
He married five years ago. His wife was from
Durham. She works and on Sunday plays the organ at
their church, Methodist. She took music for nine
years and they have a piano. His daughter is eight
months old. A men, says John Rogers, hasn't known
anything until he hte e child. They plan to have her
go to college and he has begun to set aside something
each week in an account for her. They tried to sell
him an endowment policy which would have paid her
two thousand dollars when she becomes eighteen but he
said to hell with that. That way he couldn't touch
the money before she res eighteen and he may rant to
take it out and build her some houses before then.
Though he likes the house where he lives he feels
that the farm up in the northeast corner of Orange
County, adjoining Durham, is really home. He Was
born there and home, he says, is the place where you
spend your childhood. But he would hate to leave the
house he hes built and lives in. He doesn't like to
think of other people moving into it. He would almost
want to go off and, like the fellow says, leave it
empty with e fence around it. But it would rent pretty
good since houses are hard to get in Durham.
On the farm his father, who is 61, and his mother
and e couple of younger brothers live. The boys are
getting reedy to leave end the old folks will be alone.
His father always talks of building a house and moving
to Durham, but John Rogers is sure thpt he will never
be satisfied anywhere except on the farm. He may go
and live there with the old folks until they die. He
doesn't know whether he would want to stay after that.
His father had 367 acres
he used to say he had
365, en acre for each day in the year. He sold over
hundred acres to the husband of one of the daughters.
He settled the place about the time John was born, but
he wee from just a mile and a half away end the neighbor-
hood is full of relatives. John Rogers doesn't have
any trace of his people very far back but they have
been there a long while. He has English, Scotch,Irish,
and some French blood. The Roberts are Baptists and
Democrats. The section is about two-thirds Democrat
and a third Republican.
There were ten children, six boys End four girls.
One girl died. They were born, twin boys, then John,
then t girl end a boy, girl end t boy, girl End a boy,
and a girl. One of the twins is menager of an ice
plant in en eastern North Caroline town. He rre the
one rho spent the night et the house. One of the girls
teaches school in Selisbury. She went to the -Nomens'
College of the University of Xorth Caroline tt Greens-
boro end graduated at Duke. She Was always mnert in
school, he says, while he bed a herd time getting by.
She always mede between 90 End 100 at Duke. The
youngest girl is entering Greensboro this year.
His father never bed to hire anybody because there
were always plenty of younguns on the place. Now he
occasionally takes on a helper but he doesn't do much
farming. John gogere figures that his father is worth
about t11,000.00 cash. He made his money on the farm
during tad after the war. The fFrm is pretty good
lame and there is *tending timber on the place.
His mother was in the hospital a year or so ego
for removal of a gel] stone and an operation for female
trouble that was from his birth. It cost $800.00. She
always said she bed more trouble bringing him into the
world than any of the others. And be loved his mammy
he loved his daddy, too but he wee his mammy's
youngun. He always stayed close to her.
John Rogers thinks Franklin Roosevelt is the best
Democrat of all. He doesn't think Hoover was so bed;
he had a Democratic Congress and just gave up. Be always
held it against Wilson for getting us into war after
promising to stay out.
John Rogers believes in Christ because, he says,
ae the saying goes, Christ raised such a stink. However,
he wonders if the Bible is written as God meant it to
be. He hates to believe thet anybody thinks more of
God than he does but he just believes there are lots
of things in the Bible God didn't mean to be there.
When you think about it, he says, man is little, mighty
little. We don't know where we came from or where God
came from.
John Rogers is not a drinking'man. He doesn't
fool around with women or know anything about those
kind of things. He doesn't cuss or at least he didn't
until he stetted driving, but you have to cuss some
of the people who are on the road, he says. He doesn't
follow foreign doings much but he says about the Germans
that God scattered the Jews and men is going to scatter
them.
On Sundaye and on his days off John Rogers doesn't
go riding but works around his house.