The Brickyard
I grew up just down the street from a brickyard. It's claim to fame is that during World War II it had the largest heating floor in the United States and was therefore a target for Nazi bombers. Knowing what I do now about propaganda, I really doubt that this town of 500 people and its brickyard, located about 500 miles inland, were a target of Nazi bombers. However, the brickyard had a proud tradition, just like the steel mills along the rivers in Pittsburgh or the coal mines that stripped away large parts of Central Pennsylvania when I was a child.
Eventually, the mine changed hands. The steel mills shut down, the coal mines shut down. People stopped building with brick. Whatever the reason, the brickyard lost almost all its employees. Time was, when I was a kid, you'd ride your bike past the brickyard and there would be a 100 cars and trucks in the lot. Now, there are just a handful. The plant makes specialty "stuff", and I say stuff because I have no idea what it actually makes. Once upon a time, you couldn't walk on a sidewalk in our area without the word "SWANK" being underfoot. Or, the occasional "Swanky" that would slip in, just for kicks I guess.
So, as I looked at some videos that were recently forwarded to me I began to think about the brickyard. See, at first I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and thought, eh. Same old, same old. But, then I got to thinking about the brickyard. The brickyard had been purchased by a Japanese company that sent over a Japanese management team to run it. They cut a bunch of jobs, union jobs, which lead to a big strike. The union shot themselves in the foot there and the plant never recovered. But, I started thinking about all the old-timers I know who worked there. I started thinking that if I walked into the Tick-Tock on a Friday night and starting talking about the brickyard and those bastards that sold it out to overseas interests, well I imagine there might be a fair number of people who would chime in with agreement.
Because, the sad truth is, they've lived through the recovery in Pennsylvania that is just starting in North Carolina. It's been almost 30 years for Pennsylvania, and blue collar workers in Pennsylvania are still hurting. I got bounced to some site the other day that looked at growth statistics and saw that my little hometown had -10% growth in recent years. There are no jobs.
The whole region has turned into a service economy, where no one makes anything. The best jobs are at the Wal-Mart transfer facility and the private prison. Coal miners, steel mill workers, brick makers, plant workers. Those jobs are gone and they ain't never coming back. Same is true of the folks that are talked about in this video. While this isn't the beginning of the recession for rural North Carolina it won't end when Wall Street bounces back. North Carolina is going to need leaders and representatives that are FIGHTING for them.
Robin Hayes is NOT the man to fight for North Carolina's rural workers.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://bluenc.com/trackback/12085
- Robert P.'s blog
- Login or register to post comments
Please pass this video along
This is a change election, but folks need to remember what they are voting AGAINST with Robin Hayes.
"You could say, 'Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted?' Most of us have never heard of him before." John McCain, following Clinton's strikes on al Qaeda camps
My Dad worked at a foundry in Illinois
because when he was 16 and tired of picking cotton in northern Arkansas, and backed by his 8th grade education, his sister called from "up North" and said they were hiring! Why, her husband from Arkansas was making money like crazy (compared to Arkansas standards)!
My father, of course, kissed his Momma goodbye and being the 12th of 14 children, he was dear to her as one of the remaining of her babies. She kissed him goodbye between both of their tears, and off he went to seek his fortune.
Foundries are nasty places. Dirty as a mudhole and Hot as Hell in the Summer. Hot as hell in the winter. The people that worked there took salt pills to keep the fluids IN their bodies because of the incredible heat of the furnaces that melted the metal that would then be machined into wheels for 18 wheelers, etc.
My Dad's entire surviving family (minus Grandpa and Grandma) moved North during the next few years. Most went to work at the same company as my father.
The next generation, some of which were almost my fathers age due to his being 12 of 14, also went to work at that factory. Their children did, too.
Then the factory decided it was going to send jobs to another facility in South Carolina. My Dad retired after 30 years just after that. The company sent almost all of their jobs to SC and kept only a bare bones foundry and machining presence in Illinois.
See, they could pay people WAY less in SC than they did in Illinois. AND THE IMPORTANT PART....
The workers in South Carolina were NOT unionized as my fathers company were. They pay scale was half of what they were paying the workers in Illinois!
Long comment. Sorry.
Bottom line.
That company now has most of it's employee's in countries other than the United States of America these days.
You see, even the non-unionized South Carolina workers were simply not cost effective when you can move "south" and "east" and pay even less.
You see, not even the fact that Unions were not involved in the mix in South Carolina, that was not enough profit for the company. When they heard they could pay workers even less than half of what they were paying them in NON-UNIONIZED South Carolina, they were on it in a New World Order minute! Goodbye SC. Hello oversees!
The moral to this story.
Y'all know the moral to this story.
Larry Kissell knows too. Only too well.
Let's Be Sure to Make Sure Larry Kissell is elected in NC-08 in '08.
My Dad would be proud.
North Carolina. Turning the South Blue!
oh lord save me from myself
When I saw a post labeled "The Brickyard" my first thought was of the Indy Motor Speedway
“We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe.” ~ Barack Obama
I lived for 15 years in Pittsburgh
not too far from that brickyard. I was very young, married, teaching, and trying to get to know a new city that seemed very different from what I had known growing up.
One of my best friends turned out to be my then-husband's grandmother, who insisted I call her Grandmama. She told me about how things were in Western PA during the time she was raising her children, which would have been during the 40's and 50's. Her husband was a minister, so she didn't know that much about the mills at first, but she learned quickly.
She mentioned one day to a neighbor how difficult and frustrating it was to keep her children's clothes clean because everything was so sooty. The children would go out in the morning, and by lunch, she'd have to give them a bath and put clean clothes on them. She was working fingers to the bone. These were, she told me, the heydays of US Steel, and all the other industry around Pittsburgh. Some days, cars would need their headlights at noon in Downtown (pronounced "dahntahn".)
Her neighbor told her to not worry so much about the children's clothes, and to just make sure their hands and faces were clean before they ate. She said "When the sky is sooty and smoky, it means the mill is working. It means that there will be food on the table and the rent will be paid. The soot is a good thing."
All that has changed - Pittsburgh is one of the cleanest cities I've ever seen, now. The mills are all closed. The jobs gone - probably at about the same time that brickyard closed.
Dirt.
It wasn't until I was away from home for some time that I came to realize not every town was covered in black dust. Coal dust from the coal trucks that rumbled down the hill almost every minute of every day. Now, the town is very beaten down, but unmistakably clean. A bad sign, as you say.
"You could say, 'Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted?' Most of us have never heard of him before." John McCain, following Clinton's strikes on al Qaeda camps
It touches me when I hear Obama
talk about creating jobs by turning the old mills into 21st century windmill making mills and the tobacco farms growing crops to be used for bio fuels and old textile mills making solar panels to light a new progressive era.
Progressive Democrats of North Carolina
I will fight for NC workers
I can assure you that I will be one of the ones who fights for North Carolina's workers if I am elected to the US House of Representatives. I will work to bring more and better-paying jobs to the Sixth District by supporting tax incentives for small businesses and high-tech industries that set up shop in North Carolina. I support greater federal investment in job training programs, like the ones at our state's community colleges, to give people the skills they need for these 21st-century jobs. I also believe that we need to further increase the minimum wage so that it is a living wage. That way, working families will be able to make ends meet without receiving government assistance or taking a second job. While we cannot stop the manufacturing industries upon which we used to rely from relocating overseas, we can begin to invest in the development of new industries that will further both the economic and social and environmental progress of our state and our country.
Teresa Sue Bratton, M.D.
Candidate for US House of Representatives, 6th District
www.teresasuebratton.com