I was saddened to hear about the death of a former Rockingham resident.  On August 14, 2005, Mr. James Tremon passed away.  The Tremon family was a vital part of the Rockingham community back in the '60s and '70s.  The Tremon girls, Terry (RHS '68) and Jan (RHS ‘71), were very active in extra-curricular school and church activities as well as being smart students in school.  Mrs. Tremon made it a point to know all her children's friends as well as she knew her own friends.  The family was totally involved in the Rockingham First United Methodist Church.  Mr. Tremon was an elder, or deacon, or whatever Methodists entitle such leaders.  However, the majority of Richmond County residents remembered Mr. Tremon as the big boss man down at the mill.  It was in this role that I first met and remembered Mr. Tremon.  However, I had an encounter of a closer kind that not many people experienced.  It is with fond memories that I pass this interaction along. 

     When I was a teenager growing up in Rockingham, only two major money-making career paths existed for young men.  At least, Richmond County society led one to draw this conclusion.  A young guy could get on a long waiting list and eventually be hired by the Seaboard Coastline Railroad.  His other option was to work for J.P. Stevens Company on second shift with many overtime hours, never miss work, and hope his supervisor either was fired or died to create a management opening.  The door to a railroad career did not open often and when it did, it did not stay open long.  Only a few successful applicants went through this door before it quickly closed again.  I was too impatient and couldn’t afford to wait. At that time in history, the United States was in a conflict with a small country in Southeast Asia called Vietnam.  This situation created a job opportunity I did not want.  However, it was a job that awaited every red-blooded American male.  It seemed that the only requirement of this job was to be a male eighteen years of age.  At eighteen, your name was dropped into a lottery called the military draft.  One needed not to apply to win because Uncle Sam wants you!  A trained killer, I had no desire to be.  In fact, violence is not in my vocabulary.  This same logic is the reason I sat with the girls in the stands on a cold Friday night instead of getting bulldozed over by a two hundred and fifteen pound fullback on the field.  Face it; I was a lover, not a fighter.  In addition, I only weighed one hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet when I graduated from Rockingham High.  The escape loophole to avoid an immediate military career was to go to college.  I was fortunate enough to be able to use this loophole.  

     College was always in my plans.  Vietnam was never the reason I went to college but it was definitely a motivator to study hard and stay in school.  As long as a young man maintained good college grades, he was exempted from the military draft.  Furthermore, college offered a shortcut to the other money making job, a big boss man down at the mill.  With a double motivation, I sent an application to NC State.  The School of Textiles at State offered one of the best, if not one the best, textile educations in the world.  Fortunately, after many anxious trips to the mailbox, I finally received my letter of acceptance from the School of Textiles.  With my life mapped out for the next four years, I kicked back to enjoy my senior year of high school.

     My dad Cecil (RHS '41) was as excited as I was about the college opportunity.  In Pop’s younger days, Leonard (RHS ‘29), one of his older brothers, had offered to pay for Dad’s college education at no cost to Pop.  Uncle Leonard’s only stipulation was Daddy must go to NC State and major in architecture.  Uncle Leonard later became one of the more successful homebuilders in Richmond County.  He had the foresight to buy an old farm, cut roads through the fields, set up residential plots along these roads, and construct homes.  The field of homes was his field of dreams. Build it and they will come!  That subdivision still is a source of pride and tax-base for the city of Rockingham and its residents.  Yes, Forest Hills became Rockingham's first subdivision because of my Uncle Leonard's vision.  My dad decided he did not need a college education; after all, he was a fireman for the Seaboard.  He was young, healthy, and strong as a bull.  Shoveling coal into the belly of a locomotive was child's play compared to the fifteen-hour days on the farm.  Still, he did go to NC State when the railroad laid him overnight in Raleigh.  He tried to see as many football games as possible back when the Pack played on campus at old Riddick Stadium.  However, Pop saw only a limited number.  History throughout the ages truly repeats itself.  The United States had a conflict that started in Japan and spread all over Europe and the U.S.A. needed Daddy's help to straighten out Hitler and his Army.  This conflict was known as World War II.  Fortunately, Daddy survived and came back home from that war.  He rolled his military time over into a federal government job.  The U. S. Post Office issued my dad another uniform; Pop became a city letter carrier.

     Dad spent the first five years of his mail career delivering mail to East Rockingham.  The majority of his patrons lived in the mill villages owned by their employers, Aleo Manufacturing and J.P. Stevens Company.  The birth of the mill village came on the scene when textile entrepreneurs in the early eighteenth century moved to the South from the northeastern regions of our new nation.  It was very advantageous for these companies to be close to their raw material source, the cotton fields.  The South had thousands of available sites with water sources to develop hydroelectricity to run the huge textile facilities.  These enticements were certainly drawing cards for Yankee industrialists but the real drawing power was the Southern workforce.  No other job in America at that time in history demanded more hours, more intense labor, and more planning with as many risks as the task of the farmer.  In fact, this statement is still true today.  Even with the ace cards of management skills and the most modern technology, the joker in the deck often measures the success of the farmer.  We have all lost a big pot in a poker hand when the joker was wild.  The wild joker for the farmer was, is, and will always be the weather.  A surprise, overnight freeze, a hailstorm, a prolonged drought, and even flooding caused by an extended period of rain can bankrupt the cash crops of the farmer.  Only God can control the weather.  The plight of the farmer can be summarized in the long standing joke:

Farmer Smith:  What would you do if you answered all of Regis' questions correctly and won a million dollars?
Teacher Jones: I would become a world traveler and never return to a noisy classroom again.  I would become one of the rich and famous!  What would you do?
Farmer Smith: I would continue to farm until I ran out of money.

     The southern male found that a 2nd shift (4PM-12 Midnight) or a 3rd shift (12 Midnight-8AM) job was an excellent income source to feed his farming addiction.  The textile job provided him with the money and daylight hours to farm.  In addition, the textile companies found yet another way to draw the farmer to the urban setting.

     The early textile barons brainstormed the ingenious idea of buying land around their plants, cutting roads, and building homes.  In turn, they rented these homes at a reduced rate to their employees.  To tighten this bond on employer dependency, the textile giants built an outlet that supplied families with their basic needs.  The outlet is known in America history as "the company store.”   Any family needs from clothing to groceries were available merchandise for employees and their clan. Most textile "company stores" merely ran a "tab."  These charge accounts were debited from the employee’s paycheck on payday.

     Just as people today spend more than they make, I am sure the same situations occurred during this period of history.  In fact, this scenario fed the popularity of Tennessee Ernie Ford, a country music star of the '50s and '60s.  He recorded a song, Sixteen Tons, which rose to number one on the country music charts.  Even though the song was based on the lifestyle of a West Virginia coalminer, it epitomized the Southern textile worker's financial stability with one line, "I owe my soul to the company store."  Never before in America had the mill owners had such a deterrent to employee turnover.  Furthermore, this policy was practically legalized slavery.  "You can't quit!  You are living in my house, eating my food, wearing my clothes, and spending my money!"  Yes, ingenious is insufficient to describe this employment control.  Generally speaking, husband and wife both worked in the mill.  Furthermore, just as soon as the kids were old enough, they quit school and went to work in the same mill, married a "mill village" neighbor, and moved into a "mill village" house, of course.  Yes, this employment stability control was "pure tee" ingenious to the infinite degree and beyond.

     With workers’ rights and the threat of labor unions, textiles became more employee-friendly.  As the "mill village" houses aged, the textile landlords incurred soaring maintenance expenses.  These same landlords realized their employees were also searching for the American Dream - to own their home.  With a genuine concern for their own employees and their own pocketbooks, these textile barons offered their workers the opportunity to buy the homes they had rented for so long.  Many families took advantage.  Almost instantly, the appearance of the neighborhood turned upscale as "new" home owners invested money and hard work into home improvements.  Many of these homes still proudly stand in East Rockingham today.

     As I have previously noted, Daddy carried mail to the "mill villages" of East Rockingham for years.  He loved these blue-collared Americans and they loved him.  Even now, Pop can still point to many of the homes in Safie "mill village" and name the occupants during the time period he delivered their mail.  In 1956, the U.S. Post Office decided to move Pop from the "village" to "town" as he was transferred from the East Rockingham Post Office to the Rockingham Post Office.

     Daddy first met Mr. Tremon when he stepped onto Mr.Tremon's front porch to drop the mail into his mailbox.  Both men seemed to bond from their initial meeting.  Pop and Mr. Tremon exchanged stories about their kids.  Daddy recapped the adventures of his three boys as Mr. Tremon spoke of life with his two girls.  Pop said both girls inherited their father's smile.  Terry just beamed when she smiled and possessed a personality that sizzled like hushpuppies cooking at a V.F.W. fish fry.  Her wholesome, All-American girl, good looks could only be matched by her sparkling personality.  She was just fun to be around.

     In the summer of 1965, at the beginning of my senior year in high school, I made the decision that I wanted to be “the big boss man down at the mill” one day in the future.  The short cut to my goal meant obtaining a college education.  The quick route was an expensive route for a guy with two small brothers and a mailman for a father.

     I worked for Mr. Bob Crouch on Saturdays at his neighborhood grocery store in what later evolved into Tanner's Food Center off of Highway 1 North as you exit Rockingham.  I earned five dollars and all the Mountain Dews I could drink along with a home-cooked lunch by Mrs. Katie (Bob's wife).  Mrs. Katie was a teacher at L.J. Bell, the city grammar school. 

     My Saturday workday started with Pop dropping me off in front of Mr. Crouch's store at 7:30 AM.  At 8:00 AM, Mr. Crouch opened up and I went to work.  My first task was to go into his back room and sort all the empty glass soda bottles that he had accumulated from the previous Monday through Friday sales.  The route salesmen all picked up and delivered on Monday mornings.  Once I completed my bottle job, I started my second task, cleaning eggs.  The routine never changed.  Mr. Crouch had his own laying hens.  Everyone stopped by to purchase fresh, brown eggs from Mr. Crouch.  Nasty is the only way to describe Mr. Crouch's eggs.  Never did I clean less than sixteen dozen eggs each Saturday.  The only cleaning method I used was to scrub hard with a steel wool pad.  Dried eggs and chicken manure would erase and disappear only if rubbed hard enough.  I do not know if it has ever been scientifically proven but Mr. Crouch believed that soapy water would penetrate the pores of the shell and ruin the taste of the eggs.  Besides I really think he knew that a dry cleanee (the egg) would be less likely to be dropped by the cleaner (me) than a wet, soapy cleanee.

     Unlike the self-service supermarkets of today, customers would either drop off their grocery-need lists or order from the front counter while Mr. Crouch and I pulled the items off the shelves located behind the counter.  Once all the groceries were gathered, I would call each item out ("one five pound bag of sugar, one ten pound bag of flour, two cans of corn, six oranges, four cans of sardines...") as Mr. Crouch rang up each item on the cash register.  Mr. Crouch had memorized item prices.  Today’s bar-coding of grocery items did not exit in the early ‘60s.  I then boxed or bagged the groceries, carried them to the customer’s car, and pumped three dollars of gas into his auto before he left.  In the meantime, I hastily filled the dropped-off grocery lists from earlier customers.  Around 4 PM, I loaded the boxes of customer groceries stored in the back room and filled the bed of Mr. Crouch's blue 1951 Chevy pick-up.  Mr. Crouch would then leave to deliver to his patrons.  Initially, when I started to work for Mr. Crouch, the summer between the eighth and ninth grades, he would wait until Mrs. Katie came to help before he left to deliver the groceries in the bed of his truck.  However, by the time I became a senior, Mr. Crouch left me alone to run the store while he delivered groceries.  Along with the additional trust and responsibility came pay raises.  I began my grocery career at three dollars per day, one day per week.  By the time I graduated from high school, I was pulling in five dollars per day, one day per week.  The pay increase calculated to fifty cents annually or less than one penny per week during my grocery career.  Actually, I was making more than it would seem on the surface.  Mr. Crouch was paying me "under the table.”  Hence, I did not have to worry about tax deductions.  In addition, once I had become a senior, on a hot summer day, I had built my daily capacity up to eight ten ounces bottles of Mountain Dew by the time Mr. Crouch closed at 6:30 PM.  Life in the neighborhood grocery business was good.  However, as good as the pay was, five dollars per week would not buy me much when I moved to Raleigh.  I needed another job.

     In this world, sometimes it is not what one knows but whom one knows that can produce desired results.  Such contacts paid off for me.  While delivering mail, Daddy happened to catch Mr. Tremon when he was home for lunch.  Pop tuned him into my acceptance letter to State and my career path goals.  Mr. Tremon was ecstatic!  He was looking for some high school kid to work weekends and I could have the job if I wanted it.  I reported to work the following Sunday morning.  With an air hose, I blew all the accumulated lint off the roving frames and spinning frames in the Martha Baum Plant of J.P. Stevens in Rockingham.  At a dollar and forty cents per hour (1965 minimum wage in North Carolina), I could make more in a day than I could at Crouch's Grocery in two months.  Now, I was making big money!

     Upon high school graduation, my moneymaking endeavors received another boost.  Mr. Tremon invited me down to meet Mr. George Browder, General Manager of both the Martha Baum Plant in Rockingham and Hannah Pickett Plant in East Rockingham.  Mr. Browder offered me a forty hour plus work week for the summers only while I was in college.  I would be working as a quality technician in the quality control laboratory of the Martha Baum Plant.  My work schedule would be eight to four, six days per week.  Hello real world!

     I reported to work the Monday morning after I graduated from high school.  Mr. Neil Graham was the Lab Manager and my boss man.  I later discovered that Mr. Graham was actually a distant cousin through my mother's side of the family.  Mr. Graham introduced me to Bo (Ralph) Collins (RHS ‘62) and Alex Williams (RHS ‘60).  Both went to work for J.P. right out of high school.  I knew Tommy Collins (RHS ‘69), Bo's little brother, well. Tommy was an adopted member of the Foxport Gang of which I was an original member.  Bo had a '64 white Ford Galaxie fastback that was one of the fastest cars in Richmond County.  I could make no quick connect to Alex but soon found him to be one of the smartest employees at J.P.  Jimmy Dorsett worked solo in the lab on 2nd shift from 4:00 PM until Midnight while Don Parnell ran 3rd shift lab from Midnight until 8:00AM by himself.  Both of these characters graduated from Rohanen High in East Rockingham.  My connections with Jimmy and Don were deeply rooted from a long time ago.  Remember my dad's first mail route was the "mill villages" of East Rockingham.  Daddy delivered mail to both Jimmy and Don while they were still kids.  Jimmy's brother owned Dorsett's Printing, a successful print shop in Rockingham.  Don's claim to fame was Ron, an identical twin brother and vice-versa for Ron.  The Dorsett brothers and the Parnell twins were outstanding high school athletes. 

     My bond with Mr. Tremon tightened as the summer rolled along.  I was so excited about my summer job and very grateful to Mr. Tremon for the opportunity.  I gained a true insight to the textile world that lay in front of me.  To show my appreciation, I went out of my way to speak to Mr. Tremon every time I stepped into his department and always asked about his family, especially Terry. 

     Terry was by far the friendliest girl in high school whom I knew so little about.  The more I thought about her, the more my curiosity was tapped and charmed.   I had never asked Terry for a date.  Perhaps it was because she was a rising junior and I was a soon-to-be college guy or perhaps, I feared rejection.  While at work taking the elevator down alone from the spinning room to the quality control laboratory, I realized that in less than ninety days, I would be a college student in Raleigh.  If I were ever going to make a connection with this Southern Peach, now was the time.  When I got home from work, I called Terry. 

     Just as my dad before me, I stepped onto the Tremon front porch in the summer of 1966.  However, unlike my dad, my mission was not a delivery but a pick-up.  Terry had said yes and I was there to pick her up for our first date.  I rang the doorbell as Jan, Terry's little sister, answered the door. "Hi!  My name is Bob.  I'm here to see Terry,” I announced.  Jan could not deny that she was Terry's sister.  Jan and Terry both had inherited their dad's smile. 

     "Terry, your boyfriend's here!" giggled Jan as she ran away dripping with shy, little girl innocence.  That introduction did have a nice ring to it.  Mrs. Tremon came to the door and invited me inside.  Shirley Tremon was the perfect match for Mr.Tremon.  Her warm personality fit like an old bedroom slipper.  She had the persona of a grade mother, Girl Scout leader, Sunday school teacher, your mom's best friend, and your favorite aunt all rolled into one.  She made me feel as though I had been through her front door as many times as I had been through my own.  I do believe God has the perfect mate for all His children.  Shirley Tremon was created for James Tremon and James was created for Shirley.  Their union was a marriage made in Heaven.

     The time I spent with Terry was just as wonderful as I thought it would be.  I paid for everything with my J.P. Stevens money and returned home that night with money in my pocket.  Before I left the Skyline Terrace neighborhood that night, I made confirmed plans to return again!  Life just could not get any better; "zippity-do-da, what a wonderful day!"

     The following Monday morning, Mr. Graham called me to his office for a work performance review.  He was amazed how quickly I had learned so much in such little time.  In fact, I had caught on so quickly that he decided to step up his plans for me.  "Bob, we will start evaluation tests on some new projects that cannot be completed between eight and four o'clock.  Jimmy has too much shift responsibility to complete these tests," Mr. Graham said.  "We will start these tests tomorrow.  After you leave today at four, I want you back here tomorrow at four.  You will be my 2nd shift quality control technician.  If you find a machine producing poor quality yarn, you stop production immediately.  No machine operator, spinning frame fixer, or supervisor is allowed to put that equipment back into production again until he can manufacture quality yarn determined by you, and you alone, through retesting yarn samples produced after spinning frame adjustments.  You will be working 2nd shift for the remainder of the summer.  Jimmy is to devote his full attention to testing requirements for our on-going projects.  He will not be able to assist you in the day-to-day quality control functions.  Do you understand?”

     "Yes sir," I replied.  Now that I look back in time, it was a big assignment and a huge vote of confidence in my abilities.  However, socially, J.P. Stevens and Neil Graham had turned my world upside down.

     I called Terry that evening and cancelled our date "due to circumstances beyond my control."  We talked about a rain check later on that summer but neither of us could find any coinciding open dates, not even a Sunday.  Until I fell in love with my wife Sally, I never considered dating a girl on Sunday afternoons.  I had no Sundays for girls because Sunday afternoons were reserved for time with the Foxport Gang, the boys I grew up with.  Members of the Gang were Fulton Haigler (RHS '64), Jack Cooper (RHS ’66), my brother Ken (RHS ‘68), Fulton's brother Sam (RHS '69), Junior English (RHS ‘72), and me (RHS ‘66).  I was now within a sixty-day window of moving to Raleigh.  We were a tight unit.  Why we even took our oral vaccination for polio together.

     The first oral vaccination for polio was a modern medical break- through.  As I recall, it was the first vaccination that was given with a pill; prior, the dreaded "needle", a childhood terror, was the standard method used.  Polio was a devastating, crippling disease that left one wearing heavy leg braces and reduced mobility to crutches, at best, and a wheelchair, at worst.  Today, polio is almost extinct but it was a curse from Hell in the '50s and '60s.  For this reason, our parents approved the Sunday afternoon outing for the Foxport Gang to load up the in the "Gray Ghost" to visit the county health department sponsored clinic at Hoffman High School for the wonder pill.  A silver, four-door 1964 Plymouth Valiant, nicknamed “The Gray Ghost” was our brand new second family car.  I had just turned sixteen.  Most of my travels in Richmond County had been on my bicycle or in the back seat of our family car.  I was not sure where Hoffman High was located but I was certain where Hoffman was.  Fulton, the first of our gang to earn a driver's license, assured me he could give accurate directions to our destination.  With that encouragement, we packed into the "Gray Ghost" and headed up Highway 1 North.

     As we were rolling along at sixty miles per hour enjoying each other's company, Fulton suddenly shouted, "Turn here!"  Being the inexperienced driver that I was, I hit the brakes and turned hard to the right.  In a power slide matched only by Winding Wayne Andrews and Wild Bill Bostick on Saturday nights at the Rockingham Speedway, a now nonexistent three-eighths mile dirt track, the "Gray Ghost" carried us for the ride of our lives.  I used both shoulders of the road before I aligned that car in the right lane.  Thank goodness, a urinalysis test was not required as we pulled up to Hoffman High three minutes later.  No “Gray Ghost” passenger did have any available urine in reserve. 

     After my reassignment to 2nd shift, I spent the summer of 1966 sleeping until noon, eating lunch, reading the Journal, the local paper, playing with Zeke, my bulldog, taking a shower, and returning to work at 4 PM.  At midnight, I left work, drove home, slipped into bed, and repeated the cycle the next day.  Occasionally on the way home, I wondered how and with whom Terry spent her evenings.  What a fun summer I was having or rather, not having. 

     One midnight as I was leaving the Martha Baum parking lot, I saw flashing red lights pulling out of the city fire department.  Finally, I was going to have some Saturday nightlife excitement as I tailed in behind the city fire truck.  I followed the truck at neck breaking speeds up to forty-five miles per hour as we sped through city streets.  I even ran the red lights, too.  After all, it was after midnight and no one was out on the streets including the cops.  Suddenly, the brake lights glowed!  Why were the firemen stopping?  Where was the fire?  I could see no flames!  Alas, the firemen jumped off the truck and began unwinding hose!  Maybe I was watching a drill.  Just as a carload of high school friends pulled into the driveway, the firemen kicked in the front door of a local business.  We were at the Cannon Towel Gift Shop.  Have you ever seen a stack of cotton/polyester towels on fire?  The towels produced no flames but generated a ton of smoke.  Initially, I was looking for a towering inferno; my boring summer was becoming duller by the minute.

     I turned my attention to my school buddies.  These guys were going home to Cordova after spending the evening at the Coachman and Four Club, the "in" night club of the '60s located in McColl, South Carolina, grooving to a "double shot" of The Swinging Medallions.  The only classmate face I remember that night was Nicky Pence (RHS '66).  Nicky was a "wild and crazy guy."  The stunt he pulled that night was unforgettable. 

     "No water, no water, I've got no water!" shouted a fireman as he exited the front entrance of the towel shop with the nozzle of the fire hose in hand.

     "Drop that!" another fireman yelled.  All eyes turned to Nicky.  My classmate was running around with a bent and doubled hose in the grip of his big paws.  As impossible as that feat seemed, Nicky was strong enough to do it.  He played defensive end for the Rockets, our high school football team.  Nicky threw the hose down as his buddies howled with laughter.  Nicky's prank did not lead to the towel shop burning down or any other disastrous results.  The damages were minimal.  A display table and its contents were about the only losses.  I am sure a run through the wash cycle probably would erase any smoke damages.  Most of the towels sold in this shop were "irregulars” anyway.  The bottom line statement probably revealed the replacement charge for axed-in doors was more costly than the display replacement expenses.

     As I rolled down Highway 1 on my way home, I realized how quickly my dull summer was passing.  I had not seen Nicky and the Cordova crew since graduation night.  I wondered if I would ever see them again.  My good memory is an asset that has always served me well.  Yet, the mystery question rolling in my mind that night never surfaced until my drive home alone in the quietness of my car.  While waiting for the right moment between grins and giggles, I had forgotten to ask the Cordova boys, "Was Terry Tremon at the Coachman?”  Once again, I thought what a fun summer I was not having from 4PM until midnight at J.P. Stevens.

     The summer of 1966 passed too quickly and I left what was then the happiest four years of my life as a Rocket and headed north up Highway 1 to join the Wolfpack.  College girls gone wild replaced the sweet, hometown honeys.  The next four years in Raleigh were fantastic and then became the happiest four years of my young life.  Ironically, Terry followed my trail to Raleigh and enrolled as a freshman at Meredith College, an all-girls school.  Like a bunch of Wolfpack males, I made many weekend trips to Meredith.  On a couple of occasions, I met Terry in passing as she and her date crossed paths with me and my date.  We remained friends but our relationship was like the burning Cannon towels.  It smoked but never flamed.  The cold waters of 2nd shift and college life in the big city drown the smoking remnants of a flame that never fully ignited. 

     When I go through those Pearly Gates, I am positive I will find James Tremon living in a Methodist mansion on a street of gold.  Likewise, I am certain his big smile and down home personality will be even more radiant than it was during his days of citizenship in Rockingham, my hometown.  As I sit on my Baptist balcony, I may finally ask him about his participation in my work schedule during the summer of '66.  We will share a good laugh about the truth and/or share a good laugh about the rumor.  Whatever the truth might be, I will understand.  After all, I am the father of three beautiful and vivacious girls, popular on the date scene.  Until then, I only have memories of Mr. Tremon and how the Tremon family touched my life.  Our loss is Heaven's gain.  Thanks, Mr. Tremon for the precious memories of growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina - a small textile town in the South in the '50s & '60s.