Back in the early to mid 1950’s, there were myriad cotton mills in North Carolina, especially in the Rockingham area.  The prototype of these was the old Great Fall Mill that was destroyed by General Sherman’s troops just prior to the end of the US Civil War.  This was only a few days before General Joseph Johnston surrendered the southern portion of the Confederate Army to General Sherman at Durham Station, N. C. on April 17, 1865.  I can imagine how this must have “endeared” some of the local residents to General Sherman, especially that close to the end of the war.  By the way, most of General Johnson’s troops were from Georgia and South Carolina or points west as they had stayed in front of General Sherman’s Army all the way from Savannah, but were outnumbered at least two to one.  Most of the North Carolina men were in Virginia with General Lee, who had surrendered to General Grant about a week before General Johnson surrendered.  This Mill was later rebuilt, but was abandoned by the time I came on the scene.

 

From where I lived on Sand Hill Road (now Caroline Street), you could go down the hill, cross the bridge over Falling Creek, turn left at the railroad station, and continue down the tracks across the trestle, and then you had a bird’s eye view of the old Mill.  At that time Falling Creek had been dammed to form a pond.  The dam could have been used to provide power to the Mill, but it was no longer being used that way.  This was about a quarter mile from my house, maybe a little more.  I imagine that since General Sherman’s troops were coming from South Carolina (on their way to Raleigh and the Battle at Bentonville, N. C. which occurred on March 19-21, 1865), they must have passed directly in front of where our house was later built, went down the same hill I did, walked down the same railroad tracks I did, and then they did their mischief. Actually we were lucky they didn’t burn the towns in NorthCarolina like they did in South Carolina, especially Columbia. They had a particular vendetta against South Carolina because it was Fort Sumter in April 1861 that started the shooting War. 

 

The problem with working in the mills around Rockingham in the 1950’s is that they didn’t pay much more than minimum wage.  Usually both spouses had to work just to provide the basics.  The basics did not include an automobile.  That is, most mill workers were dependent on the bus to provide transportation to and from their work.  That’s where the Suburban Bus Company comes into the picture.  They covered at least the areas of East Rockingham and Pee Dee.  Being that you saw many of these blue trim on white buses, their routes must have been more extensive than what I mention above.  I particularly knew one nice gentleman who rode the bus from the Pee Dee area to the Safee Mill in East Rockingham and return.  I think the fare was 10 cents one way, but you could buy weekly passes, et cetera to make it even cheaper than that.  These buses were similar to schools buses except for the color.  Just like the school buses, they were manufactured by the Thomas Bus Company in High Point.  That is, they were

Fords, Chevrolets, Internationals, GMC’s and maybe a few Dodges. They were not the luxurious Becks used by Carolina Trailways & Greyhound.  I used to wonder if they were salvaged from old school buses, but if anything, it was more likely the other way around as these were fairly nice buses if you weren’t traveling more than a couple miles.

 

It was after school one day, and I was riding with my father going north on Hamer Hill Road about a mile beyond all the Pee Dee Churches at the beginning of the road, near the area called Bunker Hill.  My father had been unable to see one of his customers on his cracker route that day, and he was going back to service that account if possible; this store was about a third of the way to Ellerbe, but before the intersection with highway 220.  We were following one of the Suburban Buses.  My father was a safe, defensive driver, and that day was no exception.  He was going about thirty-five miles per hour, and so was the bus until my father turned his head.  If I were in that situation, the only way I would turn my head away from traffic would be to notice a beautiful young lady.  My father was not that sort of man; he was strictly a family man. Besides, there was no beautiful young lady that day, nor was there anybody else for that matter.  Anyhow while he had his head turned, the bus had stopped.

 

Now here is the situation.  We were traveling about thirty-five miles per hour.  If I did my arithmetic correctly, that’s about fifty-one feet per second.  The rule back then for following another vehicle in traffic was to have at least one car length for every ten miles per hour you are traveling. Assuming our car was twenty-two feet long, we should have been following seventy-seven feet back behind the bus.  All cars were full size back then; there were no compacts.  If we did nothing to lower our speed, we would have had about one and one half seconds until impact.  When I noticed my father wasn’t slowing down, I alerted him.  According to the National Traffic Safety Board, it takes forty-six feet for a car to decelerate from thirty-five mph to a complete stop, that is, with a good set of brakes and a dry road.  That left us thirty-one feet of reaction time, which is a tiny bit more the half a second.   Evidently, my father only took half a second since when it was all over, you would have been hard pressed to slip a dime between the front bumper on our car and back bumper on the bus.  This fits into the category of “close calls”.  Just imagine the damage you could do by rear-ending a bus that is loading passengers.

 

Anyhow, we made it to that store which was the object of the trip.  In fact, I think he got a nice order of crackers from the storeowner.  Often today, when we go to the beach from Greensboro, I spend five to ten minutes driving around Rockingham.  Sometimes I cut off highway 220 about half way from Ellerbe so as to come into town on Hamer Road.  It’s a little tricky, but it can be done.  That store is no longer there, or it may have been converted into a house.  But I know exactly the spot where this bus incident occurred.

 

There was junk food back then just as we have today.  There’s much more variety today.  In our family back then, we had practically no junk food, mainly because we couldn’t afford it. I was lucky if I got one cola drink in a month.  It was rare that I got any junk food when I went on these trips with my Father.  I practically received no more than if I had not traveled with him (maybe that’s why my siblings didn’t care to travel with him).  For lunch we usually had sardines & soda crackers, or Vienna sausages and soda crackers.  Of course we used “Krispy Crackers” since that was the Sunshine brand he sold.  Now for this valuable service I had performed in preventing my father from having a serious accident, you would thank that would be worth more than a “Thank You”, but it wasn’t.  I didn’t even get an extra cola.  I never told my mother about this incident; I wonder if my father did.