Jim Pearce at the hand-type cases
c. 1941

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This Week's Stories

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THE GOVERNOR

   It was a cold day in January when Boweaver first started on his job in the print shop. He was 12 years old.

   The work wasn't hard, but it was greasy and dirty.  And at the beginning, the pay wasn't all that good.  Even considering the state of the economy in Hertford County in 1940, a dollar and a half for 28 hours wasn't exactly a king's ransom.

   When the company's bookkeeper-paymaster ~ Lillian Earle Mizelle ~ learned Boweaver was going to be getting a dollar-fifty a week in a time of one per cent Social Security, she thought about trying to get it dropped to an even dollar.  But she finally relented and compromised with his Friday afternoon pay envelope.

   One Friday she would stuff it with one dollar and forty-eight cents in cash and the next Friday she'd give him one dollar and forty-nine cents, keeping him square with the USA and his old-age pension.

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   Work in the print shop quickly gave Boweaver a glimpse of the big time.

   The governor, Clyde R. Hoey, wanted to become a U.S. senator.

   He came to town in an ice-cream suit and with a flower in his lapel, and the newspaper publisher, being of some note in county politics, brought him right on into the back shop.

   In making the rounds, the governor ~ and senator-to-be ~ was introduced to Boweaver.

   The governor must have been looking to the future, because he stopped and talked to Boweaver, who was some years away from voting, longer than he did with everybody else in the place put together.

   "Young man," he said, "let me tell you a story.  When I was a little shaver, about your size, I was a printer's devil, too. 

   "I want to tell you, you are a pretty lucky fellow that this civic-minded newspaper man," he indicated the publisher, Boweaver's boss, "has decided to help you get a good grounding in life.

   "Believe me, right where you are is as good a place as any for you to start out on the road to being a governor of North Carolina or a United States senator.  Work hard, and good things will happen."

   What really impressed Boweaver was that before he left, the ice-cream-suit governor shook his hand, as black as it was with printing ink, oil, graphite and cleaning fluid.

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THE DOCTORS SAY I'M GETTING BETTER

The first hour on the print-shop job in 1940, the publisher, J. Mayon Parker, had taken Boweaver into his office for a talk, stressing that the boy was going to be a "printer's devil," but that he was there basically to "learn," and "work" was going to be secondary.

He cautioned Boweaver never to pick up a broom in the newspaper office – there were others around to do the sweeping.  And he laid out a course of "study" for the new "devil," with emphasis first on learning the location of the letters in the type cases and the location of the letters on the Linotype keyboard.

Thus elevated, Boweaver went to work with a will.  On the second day on the job, he met Rudolph Washington.

Rudolph was a 25-year-old colored man.  The sweeping task was his, along with just about every other odd job that came to hand.

He worked harder and made less money than any other man in the place, casting lead plates, running the hand-mailer, carrying pages to the press, changing ink rollers, and sweeping up.  That last task had to be accomplished after everybody else had gone for the day.

He also had a shoeshine stand, and after five days in the print shop, he'd set up his stand by the train tracks on No-Man's Land, off Main Street, and shine shoes all day Saturday and Sunday.

Boweaver had one after-hours chore, one that couldn't be done while the Linotypes were in use.  He stayed late to clean the steel spacers for the Linotype machines.  It wasn't a hard job, but it was tedious and like everything else around the print shop, it did tend to get your hands dirty.

These after-shift stay-overs brought him and Rudolph into closer contact, and they began to fall into discussions about print shops, shoeshine stands and life in general.

When there was no talking to be done, Rudolph would sing, but Boweaver thought he was being joshed when his friend claimed he could play a piano.  So Rudolph decided to prove that he could play.

They went to Robert L. Vann School, the colored school, late one Friday afternoon, and Boweaver followed Rudolph through a broken furnace-room window and up to the auditorium, where there were two pianos.

Boweaver was really impressed.  Rudolph played without reading music, but left no doubt that he was a musician.  Boweaver marveled at the irony of the musically talented brown man who shined shoes and swept floors for a living.

Then he learned that Rudolph had a real problem.

Tuberculosis.

Every month or so, Rudolph went to the doctor and a needle was put into his bad lung to drain out fluid.  When he came back from these doctor visits, he was weak and shaky, but he kept plugging away at the print shop and the shoeshine stand.

Finally he got so bad off he had to go to a sanitarium.

Boweaver sent him a card, with a little note to try to cheer his friend, and Rudolph replied with what for him must have been a long letter.  He had a neat, flowing style of writing.

The interesting thing about Rudolph's letter was the way he never used punctuation or paragraph.  Between each sentence or thought, he inserted the word "smile" with a circle around it, and it took some concentration for Boweaver to make out what he was saying:

"~smile~ you are my best friend ~smile~ one day soon I am coming home ~smile~ you and I will go to the school and play the piano and sing ~smile~ my wife wrote me that my mother died ~smile~ I hope nobody takes away my shoeshine stand ~smile~ I want to see you real bad ~smile~ the doctors say I'm getting better ~smile~ they won't tell me when I can come home ~smile~"

That was the only letter Boweaver ever got from Rudolph.

One day some weeks later, Rudolph's wife came by the print shop to tell Boweaver that Rudolph was dead.  He had been buried in a field at the sanitarium.

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This Week's Verse

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When it rained down sorrow, it rained all over me,
When it rained down sorrow, it rained all over me,
'Cause my body rattles, like a freight on that old SP.
I've got the TB, TB blues.

I've got that old TB, I can't eat a bite,
I've got that old TB, I can't eat a bite,
Got me worried so, I can't even sleep at night.
I've got the TB, TB blues.

I am fighting like a lion, looks like I'm goin' to lose,
I am fighting like a lion, looks like I'm goin' to lose,
'Cause there ain't nobody, ever beat those TB blues.
I've got the TB, TB blues.

Lord, that old graveyard is a lonesome place,
Lord, that old graveyard is a lonesome place,
They put you on your back, throw that mud down in your face.
I've got the TB, TB blues.

(Popular 1930s song, by Jimmie Rodgers)

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Last Week's Mail

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To The Poor Town News ~ Jim: Please change your links for my web site, "Sally's Family Place." ~ Sally Koestler.

Click here to tour Sally's Family Place (near Ahoskie)
There is a lot of Roanoke-Chowan history there
that you absolutely do not want to miss.

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