Document text
Workers Robert V. Williaas, Charlotte, IC C.
Subjects The Be Ike and Grandpa Payme
1243 Louise Avenue
Charlotte, N. C.
Dates December 81 1938
TES BILES
John Belk and Martha Payne were married December 22,
1915, in Charlotte, N. C. John was a tall lanky boy of
nineteen, but because he hadn't the money to buy clothes
he was wearing someone's east off knee breeches. A clerk
at the bureau refused to issue a license to "a kid ia 'hart
pants," so he had to go back to Paw Creek and borrow money
from an uncle to get some long pants so he could be married.
Already he had been in the mill four years. Mow, after
27 years of it, he is bitter at being ftaught$ by the will,
and that his children have been caught the same way. "asset
you got in it...." he says, then stops, wordless.
"My Dad, by rights, should* had sumpin. You see, him
and his two brothers was let' orphans when Grandpa Julius
Belk died back in 1869. Grandpa owned a nice big farm over
there in Union County near Monroe, where he'd lived and gotten
'long fine. But you know how it was 'long about that time
right after the War. Well, his brother, Big Alf, just stepped
in to finish raising the kids --and took the farm for doin' it.
The kids never got nothin'. Why, when my Dad married he didn't
get so much as one mule to start off with. He had to go out
and rent him a little farm and start off from scratch.
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"TO make it worse, my Ma had been married before and
she already had three children. My brother and two sisters
and ma come along pretty fast and so the folks had a houseful.
Things was awful hard. It might not'a been so hard if Dad'd
had anything to start with, but as it was he had feed, stock,
implements, rent, and everithing else to pay for and it was
mors'n he was able to make.
"Why, I can still remember them days back there. Speahly
the winters. 4e lived in a ole barn -like house and the snow
use-ta beat in through the cracks and make long riffly drif's
acrost the bare floor. One night I was careless enough to
leave my ole brass -toed brogans too near the wall and woke up
next mornin' to find 'em full -up with snow. Hard times? Why,
many a tims I've walked two miles to the gentral store and
swapped a dozen eggs and a penny for a nickel box of snuff!
"Dad, he struggled 'long for years tryin' to make a go
of it, and Ma wasn't any too well Satisfied. She wasn't used
to hard times. She was the daughter of Sam Baucom, a black-
smith over on Rocky River, and if you've ever been in them
parts you'll know that most ever'body that is anybody is name
either Baucom or Braswell. So Ma wasn't able to take hard
times like a lot of country woman could --and that's the main
reason Dad come over here to Charlotte in 1904 and started
us Balks off in the mill.
"Well, I was eight year old. Old enough to see that
things didn't get no better. Dad knowed he'd got in a bind.
Even if he'd wanted to try the farm agin he'd sold his all
and didn't have the money to start off with agin. Y'see, he
was caught. When I got to be fifteen Dad died and I had to
leave school in the sixth grade and start in toe, to help
keep us all going. That's when I got caught. I don't know
nothin' else now. Don't you see? There ain't anything else
can do. And here m' kids is a-startin'. Same old thing
all over agin. Yet they got to, to keep us all goin'. Onct
you get in it...." and than he stops,wordless.
There were eleven kids but three of them died. They
started coming three years after the marriage with Martha.
Both of them marvel at how easy those three years were.
''Bout all I can remember is that John wanted to go to
the war. Bound to fight, he was. But his old bad let' foot
kepi him out. Them doctors made him hop all over the room
on his right foot and he hop just fine, but come time to hop
on his let', he fell right down on his face. I sure was
glad."
That was Martha. She was glad John had to "stay put
and not bust up the only real home Me 'd ever had." Of her
early life, Martha says, "Where'd we live? Thy, we lived in
a waggin. A waggin a-movin' from one mill to another. we'd
not no moreln get good settled in Pae'let before we'd up and
move to Union. Get settled good there and, whoosh! --off to
Pacilet. And then back agin. we never did have nothin'.
"Out of six kids only two of us lived --my brother Luther
and 1114. I never will forgot my little brother Richard. He's
buried in Pastlet. Ma set him down on the floor one day
while she went in the back yard to look at a storm cloud
a-comint up, and he crawls over under the kitchen table and
gets a-holt of a pickle jar full 0 coal oil and drinks it.
When Ma gets back to the house he's awmost strangled to 4eath.
Then he did die. They say it wasn't the stranglint that kilt
hint though. It was the coal oil pizened his mouth. You see,
he was a-teethint and it pizened his gums.
"I can remember another one that's buried at Union. His
name was William. I wasn't very old then but I can remember
that it was just a child's disease that kilt him. He had the
hives."
"Well, Pa, he's settled now," she says with finality.
Pa --H. C. Payne--ie settled. At 66 he is too old to
work in the mills and lives with Martha and son-in-law John.
"I don't mind beins settled so much, now I'm a-gettint
old," he says., 41 always was kinda shiftless, but you get
too old even to be shiftless and triflint. I hetp all I can
around the house. I don't mind so much.
"No reason I should be so shiftless, but I always has
been, somehow. I was one of nine young' tins and they all done
well but me. Lived on a farm over in Alamence County. Pretty
good farm, Ns farms go, if you like a farm. I don't.
"I always was devilish. Mischeevious. Speshly in school.
I'd get blamed for everithing got done. Least it seemed so to
me. I didn't care, though. I remember a schoolteacher we
use-ta have. Her name was Miss Laura Wilson. I never will
forget Miss Laura.
*Ne use-ta have a wood-choppin' detail ever' day to go
out and chop up enough wood for the day in the schoolroom stove.
Well, she use-ta see that I was on it ever' day. One day a kid
name. Luther Brown and me was a-cominl in and Luther up and
chunked a green walnut at me and knocked out a window -light.
*Miss Laura, she run up and yanked me into the room by the
ear and said, ing broke out that window, Henry Payne!' I was
so excited I yelled at her, 'You're a Vert'
"'You tellin' me I told a lie?' she hollers back. And I
kind of come to and knowed what I'd said. To the schoolteacher!
"You are a-l'ar,' I says to her, scared and trying to
grin cute. 'L'ar-ra. Laura. Laura Wilson.' Well, she hadta
laugh."
Here old man henry goes into wheezing whoops at the recol-
lection of his wit. The whole family laughs. It is one of
their favorite stories.
In 1888 he ran away from home and joined the Navy. "They
never tried to make a sailor outa ma," he said. 'I was in the
kitchen a-peelin' p'tatoes the whole four years. One hitch was
enough for me! But then --and if this don't beat all --didn't
I go down to South Carolina and marry me a girl name Lily
Kitchens! Her old man was a train engineer and he never wanted
us to, but we done it. Her people kind of figgered I was a
rounder, I guess. They wasn't far wrong, neither.*
"Aw, Pa ain't so awful as he makes out," Martha put in.
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"1 never will forget when we lived out from Pac'let at a place
called Possum Holler. A family livin' right close t' us caught
the black -tongue fever. Natchly ever'body was scairt to death
of it and nobody wouldn't go near the house. One afternoon Pa
was out in the backyard a-choppin' wood and all of a sudden out
from acrost the field we could hear this woman a-screamin'. Pa
didn't do a thing but stick his axe in the choppin' block and
tell Ma that fever or no fever he was a-goin down there and
he'p them sick people. And he went!
"When he got down there he found two of the kids in one
bed already dead. Pa said it was a turri4e sight. Two more
of the kids and the old man was piled up in another bed with
their faces a-turnin' black and their tongues *vole outa their
heads and jus* as black as yor* hat. They was a-chokin' to
death and they wasn't much Pa and the woman could do for 'em.
The woman couldn't do much but scream noway.
"That night both the kids and the old man died. Pa went
up to the Pac'let health officer next day and tole his 'bout
the five dead ones down at that house, and, you know, nobody
but Pa and the health officer and a doctor from a nearby town
would go into that house and get them pore things out and bury
'em. And I want you to know Pa never caught a thing! But of
course he didn't know he wasn't gonna when he went there."
Martha is glad that her father lives with them now. "He's
so crazy 'bout the littlest one I don't hafta 'tend him none,"
she says.
It was in 1918 that the first child arrived. John had
wanted a boy and was intensely disappointed that it was a girl.
They called her Ruby, and John says now he wouldn't swap har
for ten boys. The next year a boy was born and called Harold.
The next year, 1920, the third child came, another boy, named
Earl. During Martha's confinement with that one little Harold
caught a cold that turned into pneumonia and caused his death
soon after Earl's birth.
In 1922 William was born. They called him Billy. He died
at eight months, and Martha says it was because something went
wrong with his teething and his gums were poisoned. Another
boy was born in 1924. He is called by his initials, R. D.
By 1926 the Balks had been married eleven years and, as
John puts it, had gotten into a rut. He had been more fortu-
nate than most of the workers because of his mechanical ability.
Whenever there were shut -downs John was retained at least
part-time to overhaul the machines and keep them in repair.
Once his salary got up to $18 a week, but for the most part it
ranged from $12.50 to $15.
Martha had always had her babies at home but that year
another one was coming and some one told her of ‘a room in the
Mercy General Hospital furnished by the Kiwanis Club for people
who could pay very little or nothing at all. So the sixth con-
finement was the first in which either tiartha or the child
received adequate professional care. The baby was a girl and
they called her Dorothy.
Martha was so delighted with the whole affair that when
her time approached in 1930 she engaged the room again. John
borrowed $25 from "the man in the mill office" for the event
and he and Martha "studied over what to call it" and agreed
on a name for either a boy or a girl.
The hospital called him away from his machine at the mill
and told him "it" was twin boys.
"I just turned 'round and went back to the mill office
and the man says, 'Why, John, you just borrowed $25 and now you
want fifteen morel' I just says 'Twins,. So the man says,
'My 3od, here, take this twenty-five.*
They were at a loss as to what to name this 'other one.*
The doctor, hearing the discussion, said, "Why not Amos and
Andy?" Martha and John were delighted with the suggestion
and that is what the boys were named.
Some one at the hospital, unknown to Martha and John,
wrote the team of radio comedians who had inspired the doctor
and told them about their namesakes. It was the proudest day
in the lives of the Belks when each of the twins received a
silver baby -spoon, engraved with his name, from the original
Amos and Andy. Since then on every birthday and at Christmas
the twins receive a gift from the radio pair, accompanied each
time by a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
Today, at eight years, the boys look healthy. Amos is in
the second grade at school and Andy is in the first. Andy is
not backward, but he could not be promoted to the second grade
because his eyes are bad.
"It's a shame,* Martha says, "We ain't got no money to
take him to a eye doctor and get him fixed so 'a he could read
and write like other kids. I get awful worried about it but
they ain't a thing we can do. I got him some cheap glasses
but I think they're too strong. Sometimes when he wears 'am
a while he says they make his eyes run like he was cryins.m
When the twins were nearly two another girl was born.
Martha went again to the hospital. This time she called the
child Mary Ann, for one of the nurses who was very pretty. In
1933 another girl, Violet, was born, but two weeks after they
came home from the hospital the baby died of whooping cough.
The Kiwanis room was an old story to Martha by this time.
In 1934 her eleventh was born. Even at birth he had a mane
of yellow curls, so they called him Gone Raymond, after a
wavy-haired blonde movie actor. But now, at four years, he
has discarded his movie name for one he hears daily on a local
hillbilly broadcast. Ask him who he is and he'll answer,
'I 'in a Hot Shot Elmer and a Jews -harp John." Everyone who
knows him calls him Hotshot. He is a beautiful child and the
pet of the neighborhood, particularly of Grandpa Payne.
Looking backward, john and Martha think of 1930 as the
toughest year of all. Following the birth of the twins Martha
was in bed twenty-one weeks. John tried to keep working and
let the children care for her as well as they could —there was
no money for hired help --but she grew steadily worse and re-
quired constant attention and JohnOlas forced to stay away from
work "seven long weeks." During that time the only family
income was the few dollars Ruby could bring in for doing odd
jobs at the mill --at the age of twelve.
At last there was no food in the house, no money for
Martha's medicine, no milk for the infant twins. In despera-
tion John went to the Associated Charities and asked for food.
When the interviewer found that a member of the family had
occasional work--twelve-year-old Ruby --he was refused assistance.
His four mile walk back, empty-handed, to his sick wife and his
hungry family, and with his pride humbled for nothing, was the
bitterest hour he ever knew.
*You nor nobody," he says, "won't ever know how I felt
about them people at that place when they tole me I couldn't
get anything to eat Just because my little girl had been tryin',
and was still tryin', to save me, her Dad, from havinl to go
down there and beg. Right now I hate 'ea. I hate to set down
here and talk about it. I start to gettin° mad and feelin°
like I did that day. If it hadn't been for the Super down at
the mill I don't know what we'd done. He dug down in his pocket
four weeks and sent us groceries. He was a fine man. I sure
did hate to see him leave the mill last year."
Grandma Payne died in 1932 and soon afterwards Grandpa
was "laid off" at the mill because of his age. There was
nothing for him to do but go to teartha's. Today he receives
$6 a month Old Age Assistance and he gives it to Martha to help
feed the ten people in the family. She needs it.
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"Since Ruby went and got married 'bout a month ago,"
she said, *we been havin' it pretty tough. John don't make
but $15 a week and so Earl, our oldest boy, 's gone to work
to aorta he'p out, but he ain't gettini it reg'lar. Jus' one
or two days a week, only 'bout enough to keep him in clothes
and give us a couple dollars now and then.
"So outs that fifteen and Pa's six a month we hafta pay
house rent, that's a dollar and fifteen cents a week, feed
ten people, pay Insurance, clothe all of us, and try to pay
our honest debts, and I'll tell you, you can't do it. Why,
right now, cold as it is, there's them kids and not a one of
'em's got a stitch* underwear. Course they don't wear it in
summer. But fowl Most of 'em's a-needin' shoes and sweaters
and coats and things.
"It use-ta be we could count on 'bout $5 a week from
Ruby, but now her and Herbert Newell --he's a young furniture
repair man and her husband now --why, they're a-keepins house
over at his mother's.
NOne thing that does he'p out a heap is the stuff I
raised out in the garden patch behind the house las' summer.
I canned up a lot and it sure is a he'p. Pa, he spends a
lot of time out there in the garden in the summer, and I 'low
our patch was the nicest one in this row o' houses.
"I wieht he could borry some more carpenter's tools so's
he could fix up the cracks in that back room and 'round them
doors and windows all around. Why, that back room where him
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and the boys sleeps is just like bein, outdoors. Pa and Earl
sleeps in one bed and Amos 'n' Andy and R. D. in the other'n.
"In the next room we ain't got nothin' but one bed and
that's where Vary Ann and Dorothy and Hotshot sleeps. John
and ma sleeps in this front room. It's been mighty cold these
last nights and it takes a plenty o' cover. We ain't got
enough. They ain't any heaters in this house, jus' these fire-
places.
"There's two rooms on that short side the house. That'n
off the front porch 's the one Ruby use-ta have. It's the only
one looks like anything. It'a got in it the bedroom suit she
bought 'fore she got oarried and she jus' ain't moved it yet.
She was gin' to get her a rug but she never did. we ain't got
a rug in this whole house and it's mighty hard to keep these
ole wo'-out floors clean with so many kids trompin' in and out.
"We did have some pretty furniture onct but times got
hard and we hadta let 'em take it back. Now anybody can see
we ain't got a thing whatsoever. Except the radio. It's
awmost paid for. I couldn't do without that. Let me miss a
day outa 4yrt and karge or Big Sister or Jan Harding's Wife
and I get right sick.
"I need a stove pretty bad. That olo oil stove is wo'-out
and it sure is hard to stay in the house and cook on it when
the windows have to be down. It stinks so bad. But leastways
we got a satin' table we can all set down to at the same time.
Pa made it for me las' summer.
'That icebox there was give to us by a man lives right
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behind us. He's all time comin' over here Sundays to get
John to cut his hair, and so one Sunday he brought three o'
the kids over and tole john if he would out hair for all of
'am he'd give him that icebox.
"There's always somebody comm' by on Sunday mornins.
Nobody 'round here goes to church. The twins and Mary Ann
goes, but I think they know some kids that goes regular to the
Church of God and that's howcome they goes. John and me do
sometimes, not very often. I never was a hand to take much
part in religion. Guess I oughta.
"Las' sunday when that man come to get his flair cut he
give us a 'larm clock. John don't never char go ao money for
cuttiu'. He jug' tells the boys to buy him a bottle o' beer
ouct in a while. Not that John's a drinkin' man, no sirree.
He's as good a man 'bout drinkint and his money as I'd ever
want. why, on Thursdays when he goes to work in the evenin't
he gets his money and I send Dorothy, our twelve -year -old,
over there after it, and he sends every penny of it home
by
her.
"He works on the second shift and runs the tyins machine.
If you ain't ever been around a mill you prob'ly don't know
much 'bout the tyin' machine, but John says it's one the
hardest in the mill to work and you sure gotta know how it's
done to run it. He's good on machinery. That 1927 model
Pony -act (Pontiac) out there in the front yard runs just as
good as you'd want, he keeps it in such good shape. We use
it mostly for haulin' groceries and coal, 'count of the gas,
but John and the fellows goes huntins in it the right time
o' year.*
Martha's clothes are sagging and shapeless, but so is
gartha. She weighs 215 pounds and wears no corset. She
settles in a chair and looks as if she means to be there per-
manently, but every few minutes she pulls herself up to settle
a dispute.
"I'm always havin' to slap somebody's pats, ahe said.
141 try to go easy on Dorothy, our oldest girl. She's kinds
puny. The nurse over at the school come here last week to
talk to me about her. She's underweight and they think maybe
she'd oughts be in the Sunshine School. They give 'em a lotta
milk and rest there. I'd be glad, if they can get her in.
But you take Mary Ann. To look at her you'd think she
was sickly, but even if she is six year old and don't weigh
but 36 pounds, she ain't been sick a day in her life. Jus' as
rowdy as any boy in the house. You prob'ly noticed we got a
quarentine on the front porch. Amos and Hotshot has the
whoopin' cough, but they're gettin"long all right. I'm
lettin' the others go on to school. I don't think they could
give it to any the other kids if they ain't got it therself.
There's a lotta sickness 'round here. Between 'tendin'
to my own and he'ppin' out the neighbors with theirs, seem like
it don't leave much time for anything else. That woman down
the street had the too-bercalosis. Ever'body else was scairt
to go 'round her, but I figgered if Pa didn't ketch the
black -tongue fever that time I wouldn't ketch this. They
wasn't anytody to look out for her whilst her husband was at
the mill so I been goin' there. She died 'bout three weeks
ago. It sure was pitiful. She was the purtiest woman I Wiley.
I ever seen. Coal -black hair and coal -black eyes. You know,
she stayed in bed so long they had to cut her hair off, and it
jus' curled up on the ends and sorta covered 'round her face.
She had a face jus$ like a baby's. I sure hated to see her die.
"You know, it's gettin' so ever' time old Doc Gelland
gets a call 'round here and they ain't nobody to help out,
he'll say, 'Go gat Ole Fat.' That's what he calls 114. But I
don't ;Line."
She doesn't mind. She chuckled as if it were some other
woman the doctor called Old Fat.
One thing Martha longs for is a bathroom.
"Lord, how I wisht the Company'd put one in," she said.
'It sure is trouble draggin' in a warsh tub tryin' to get all
them kids and ourselfs clean."
'Nell, they done well givini us them brick outhouses
las' year, to a way o' thinkin', old man Payne answered.
'Them dem boyed turn the whole row o' wooden ones over ever'
Hallowe'en. The Company sure fixed that with them brick ones.
He cackled at the Company's cleverness. He was plainly
pleased at no longer having the annual job of setting up the
wooden one, and seemed unconcerned over the trouble of taking
a bath.
Once in a while Martha works in the mill a day or two
ie
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at a time when an operator is out because of sickness or
trouble. she does it to be obliging, but John hetes even
that.
"Mill?" he •cild. "Look at 3randpa Payne. He's had
46 years of it, and now look at him. He never did make
enough to live o when Ae was workin', and when he jets a
little old, what do they do? Throw him out.
'Here I aa ever aince 1911 in one. That have I sot?
"Adnd you, tolaorrow all they got to do is say thl word
and I'd hafta et outa this house o' theirn. have been
preachint this to my kids, and I have been tryin' to keep
'am out, but it looks like Earl is goin' to be bullheaded
and eiet in it just' like I and my Daddy did. And when you
onct get in it