IN 1943, THE NATIONAL CARBON COMPANY started construction of a new facility near Morganton, N.C. in Burke County. This facility would be used to produce CARBON for use in the WW2 war effort. Among other things, carbon is used in various types of storage batteries, plus probably many other uses.
The contractor who was constructing this facility came into Watauga County early 1943 and interviewed several truck owners who would each arrange to transport several dozen laborers to the BURKE county construction site each day work on the building operation. The pay scale was 40 CENTS per hour, the rate for common labor.
Each truck owner was responsible for locating enough laborers in their respective communities who would agree to be transported each day from Watauga County to the plant site in Burke County.
We must remember the nation had been plunged into a worldwide depression in 1929 and jobs were very scarce thru-out the country. Therefore, the 40 CENTS per hour provided enough income to rural families to help in supporting their families.
My brother-in-law Ralph Church, who had a large truck signed up as one of the truck owners who would pick up workmen each day and transport them to the work site. Other truck owners who signed on were Howard Simpson of Phillips Branch and Ferris Bumgarner of Mabel. Ralph Critcher of Mabel drove the Bumgarner vehicle. In addition to picking up the load of workers early each morning and proceeding on to the Morganton job site, each vehicle owner would use their trucks to haul various building materials where needed around the job site.
I decided to work that summer, during the four months school vacation, instead of helping in our farm operation at Sugar Grove. I stayed with my sister Laura and her husband Ralph at Vilas during that summer.Their farm at Vilas was about 6 miles from our family farm on the Watauga River.
Each morning, six days a week, we would leave their house about 5 AM and go thru several communities picking up men along the route. We would first go thru Valle Crucis and proceed up the Valley Mountain to Matney where we would pick up several workmen before daybreak. We would backtrack down the Valley Mountain and proceed thru Valle Crucis and on to Shulls Mills and Foscoe picking up several men along the way.The roads were gravel from Valle Crucis thru Shulls Mills and Foscoe, to Blowing Rock. At that point, we would proceed on the paved highway down the Blue Ridge Mountain and go thru Lenoir and on to the plant site at Morganton. The distance from Ralph and Laura's house at Vilas thru the communities, picking up workman along the route, was about 65 miles one way.( 130 miles each day). We would usually arrive at the job site about 7:30 A M.
I carried brick to some of the brick masons who were building several masonary kilns for the purpose of baking the carbon. Other workmen helped carpenters, concrete workers, electrical, plumbing and a variety of other general common labor jobs around the construction site. Since this was during World War 2, this was an emergency building operation.
About July, the contractor gave a 10 cents per hour raise to all of us doing common labor jobs, which put our wage at 50 cents per hour. I thought I had really HIT THE BIG TIME.
Early September, I stopped working there in order to take the 11th and final grade at Cove Creek High School. The truck owners continued to transport workmen to the job site in Burke County a few more months until the construction was completed.
North Carolina went to the 12 grade system shortly after I graduated in 1944.
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