It was a cold day in January when Boweaver first started on his job in the print shop.
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 one-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 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.
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.
~~~
Hertford County Herald
print shop c. 1941
Jim Pearce at the hand-type cases
~~~~~~~~~
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