A Cotton Mill Town Christmas

Chapter 1   ARMBRISTER WINS MAYOR RACE BY ONE VOTE, Bourne demands recount   read the November 12, 1969, edition of the one-page, front and back, Fries Wildcat Spirit Weekly newspaper. Many headlines have changed the course of history. For Fries, that headline certainly would. Forty years later, people would still talk about it. Suzie Young, the thirteen-year-old aspiring journalist, served as the chief writer, editor and publisher of the weekly gazette. She unabashedly advertised it as the two-page weekly newspaper which gives twice the local coverage of that Galax daily. The publication was usually printed each Friday night with distribution on Saturday morning. This schedule was perfect because it did not interfere with Suzie’s school work, and for three months out of each year, it allowed Suzie to report on the Fries Wildcats’ beloved football games. Like most southern towns, Fries lived and died according to the success of their football team. For the rest of the year, there was reporting of Y baseball and basketball, church fundraisers, and various club events. Suzie had an agreement with local attorney H. Douglas Turner, Esquire. She carried a key to his law office and had permission to come and go as she pleased. There she had the use of Turner’s new state-of-the-art IBM copy machine. In exchange for the use of the copier and paper, Suzie gave the attorney free advertisements and newspapers. Suzie was up late into the night running off the 250 copies. This was fifty more copies than was usually printed. She was sure there would be extra demand. She reported the final mayoral count of 255-254 constituted both a record for the most votes cast, and the closest vote, in a Fries mayoral election. What Suzie did not realize was the election was an indication of more than a race between two individuals. It was a clash between two ideologies, two classes, and even two denominations. This town in the heart of southwest Virginia was at a crossroads. There, standing in the middle of that intersection, would be young Suzie Young. Would she direct traffic or be run over?   Since the birth of the town sixty-seven years before, the Cotton Mill management always led the town. Sure, this was a monarchy, but as with parents rearing a young child, residents of a young town needed certain discipline and strong leadership in order to grow up to become suitable members of society. The current leadership wasn’t quite as autocratic as the first thirty-years under John Thorpe. They regulated everything from how the churches and parsonages should be built to what was appropriate conversation for the youth in the corner drugstore. A new generation had reached voting age though. A generation who was determined to change the world. While the older generation had gone off to fight previous wars to protect the ones they loved, the younger generation preferred to make love, not war, and would go to Canada to prevent having to fight. While the older generation was spending the summer cutting grass and stocking wood for the winter, the younger generation was rushing off to Woodstock to smoke grass Yes, the 60s revolution was about to arrive in the small hamlet of Fries. Suzie was not aware of the role she would be called on to build a bridge between the two sides of the canyon being carved. Jonathan Armbrister was the 50-year-old plant superintendent at the Fries Cotton Mill. It was a position which, in Fries, placed him somewhere between the United States President and God. He was a fair man, but he also had to carry out the demands of the stockholders of the Washington Group, a conglomerate of textile mills throughout the South. This was proving to be a true enigma. He had served as mayor for 12 years, as was expected of a man in his position. His platform was based on good, sound fiscal responsibility. Don’t spend it, if you don’t have it. Many citizens did not realize that Armbrister had single-handedly fought the powers to be for the last five years to keep the Mill open. He did this by delicately balancing the scales between the welfare of the employees and the demands of the company suits down in Winston-Salem. For the first quarter of the century, the mill had set wages high enough to attract workers to the innovative Washington Village, as Fries was originally called. Families flocked in from the tobacco fields of North Carolina and the coal mines of West Virginia. But now, firmly in the latter part of the century, newer industries were paying higher wages. Even the Galax furniture factories had better compensation. The younger workers were felt the wages weren’t sufficient when compared with the working conditions. Management was turning a deaf ear because they were fighting a battle with cheap textile imports coming in from Europe and Asia. Mr. Armbrister had been keeping wages just high enough to prevent unions from getting a toe-hold in the town, but to justify the wages and appease the company; the superintendent had to constantly demand higher production from the workers. Mr. Armbrister served as a deacon, and at times lay speaker, in the Fries Baptist Church. The other mayoral candidate, forty-year-old Herbie Bourne, toiled as a loom fixer in the mill. His family had lived in the area for over a hundred years. The Bournes had been Methodists since the late 1800s when the fiery evangelist, Reverend Robert Sheffey, had transformed the non-practicing Christians of the Appalachian Mountains into church-going, filled-with-the-Holy-Ghost Methodists. Bourne’s platform was simple:   Let’s ease the misery of working in a hot, noisy environment by improving the quality of life in the town.   For the last ten years, Herbie had mentored the youth of the town. As the head of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, he had tripled the membership by organizing camping trips and skating and bowling parties. He showed the youth church could be fun. Many of the teens he had brought into church through the MYF were now of voting age. One of his proposals was a new town park complete with a boat landing, picnic tables, and playground. He proposed the town should pay the $25 annual membership to the Thorpe YMCA of any child who could not afford to pay it. His problem was he had not found the funds for these items, and considering the Cotton Mill provided 90% of the tax base for the town, it might prove difficult to find the money if Bourne won the recount. But the people had voted. A little less than half voted for a better way of life, for a better tomorrow. They had never witnessed the pangs of hunger, and their only craving was to enjoy life to its fullest. One person more than half voted for the status quo, with hopes of just making it through today. These had known hunger when, as children or young adults, they had gone through the Great Depression.   “I can’t believe Herbie lost by one vote. He should have stomped Armbrister.” Spunkie Akers said as he read from the Fries Wildcat Spirit Weekly while he loitered at Charlie’s Barber Shop. Even on a Wednesday evening, the shop was standing room only. Customers actually getting a haircut relaxed in one of the five cracked, black leather barber-chairs. All the wooden straight-back chairs, lined up beneath the ten-foot-long mirror, were occupied. Old men rested, their chins on their chests, having been lulled to sleep by the snip, snip, snip of the scissors. An occasional snore would necessitate a poke in the ribs. Onlookers leaned against the walls. As usual, only about eight of the twenty or so occupants were paying customers. Two young boys sat on top of the brown Coca-Cola cooler, until they had to jump down so someone could remove a 6-ounce bottle from the long track. One was holding a bottle of pop, his pudgy, dirty fingers wrapped around the top. He had poured his pack of Planters peanuts into the bottle and was letting the salty foam erupt to the top of the bottle, ready to suck the froth off the top of the drink. Charlie looked over the ridge of his eyeglasses, which were in their usual resting place, halfway down his nose. “Tater-bug, you let that Coke run over, you’ll be mopping it up.” “Yes sir, Charlie, I’ll be careful with it,” the boy said, knowing Charlie’s bark was worse than his bite, but also knowing the barber was serious. “He would’ve straightened out this hick town, ’stead of never having anything to look forward to, outside that damn Mill.” Spunkie, as he was well known to do, was spouting off. He loved to hear himself talk, and didn’t mind if he was usually a minority of one in his views. “Well,” Charlie said, “those of us who lived in the coal fields of West Virginia, through the Depression, know sometimes a better quality of life means being able to put bread on the table.” Several older men nodded their heads and mumbled something in agreement, while some younger men ranted something about, “Maybe we’d be better off if they did close it down.” Spunkie wasn’t about to be put in his place by the antiquated notions of the older men. “Yeah, I wish they would close that damn hell hole down, then we’d have to find other jobs. The arsenal down in Radford pays four times the wages they do here, and you only work half as hard.” “Yeah, but when was the last time anyone got blown to smithereens in the Mill, like they do at the powder plant?” one of the old-timers retorted. “It’s better than going deaf from the noise of them looms, or dying from all the Bromo Seltzer everybody takes just to stand the work,” Akers ranted. “No wonder half the old men in this town are looney tics, that mill is enough to drive anybody crazy.” “And just how would you know, Spunkie? You’ve never worked a full day in your life,” said Rayford Adams. The frail built man of eighty bent over to spit the juice from his Red Man into the trash can. Spunkie jumped to his feet, his face turning as red as a Wildcat football jersey, his fist clinched. “You little…, if you weren’t half- dead already, I’d beat the s**t outta you! I may just do it anyway,” the bully screamed as he started across the room. The 6’1”, 210-pound Spunkie was a head taller and 70 pounds heavier than Rayford Adams. The old man swallowed his wad of tobacco as he watched the bull-dog raging toward him. Until then, Harve Edwards had kept his mouth shut, amused by all the bickering. Harve lived outside the town, so he didn’t have a dog in this hunt, that is, until his lifelong buddy, Rayford Adams, was threatened. Even though Harve was now 60, he was still one of the most massive men in Fries. At 6’3” and 230 pounds, he had a chest the size of a whiskey barrel, and arms the size of small trees. The thirty years he had spent slinging 100-pound sacks of grain down at the Fries Mercantile were very evident in the man’s physique. He stepped directly into the path of the livid Akers. “Son, I think you oughta reconsider that.”. Spunkie’s eyes flamed as he contemplated challenging Harve. After all, Harve was an old man now. Still, few men had ever dared challenge him, not even young hotheads like Spunkie. By this time, Charlie realized this thing had gone from a bickering to the verge of a brawl. He had heard all he cared to. Ten years earlier, some football players from Galax had shown up the day after the big game and had started something up with the Fries boys. The $125 mirror above the chairs got busted, and the cost came out of Charlie’s pocket. The barber wasn’t about to let that happen again. “Okay, that’s it, get out of here, all of you,” Charlie said, as he jerked the white cape off the startled customer in the chair, leaving one sideburn untouched with the shaving cream still on it. “I’m closing down this shop until you guys can get this bickering out of your system.” The old men jerked upright in their chairs. The two boys jumped from the Coke cooler. Everyone’s eyes widened and mouths dropped open. “I mean it, you ain’t bustin’ up my shop.” The barber grabbed his crutch and began waving the occupants toward the door. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I really am.” Harve said as he walked past the barber. As Edwards was walking through the exit, he turned back to the still irate Spunkie, “If you still want to have at it, I’ll be out back of the post office to oblige you.” He walked out the door, turned left and sauntered toward the end of the block. Spunkie glared at the departing broad shoulders of Harve. The older man now walked with a noticeable limp, one shoulder drooping lower than the other from being thrown from a horse. Spunkie watched. He took a deep breath, then turned and waved a dismissing hand at the departing Edwards as if to say he wasn’t worth his time. “Ah hell, I’d hit that old man one time, he’d kill over, and they’d throw my ass in jail. He walked down the street, got in his pickup, and sped out of the parking spot to the amazement of his friends, for they knew they had just seen Spunkie Akers walk away from a fight with a man twice his age.   After the last customer had departed, Charlie shuffled to the door. Shaking his head in disgust, he swung the sign around so CLOSED read to the outside. He lifted his good leg up to the footrest, and plopped down despairingly into the barber-chair. He stared out the window. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this town so angry at each other.” Horace, the second barber, said. “Think it’ll blow over it by Thanksgiving?” Charlie just shrugged.