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New Way Dry Cleaning and
Laundry
(Georgia)
Tom's note:
This life history was missing the first page with the title and author
information. The following information was deleted from the top of
the second page: March 10, 1939, Mr. and Mrs. L. S. Whitehead (White),
New Way Dry Cleaning and Laundry. This story was also
extensively edited, and the handwriting was very light on the copy and
difficult to make out, thus there are many more questionable
transcriptions than most of the other life histories.
…tickets he addressed [incoming?] desk,
and I will check them. I can do that and talk too." The girl did as she
was instructed. "Now, go on," she told the girl, if you want to see the
baby, because others will want to go [?] and you can take their places."
She was wearing a red crepe dress, blue checked sport coat blocked in red,
tan hose and black suede slippers. She is of medium weight and height, and
has black hair and brown eyes.
"Now, what is it you want me to tell you? Oh, I don't mind that, I have
always thought I would write my own life history and send it to the True
Story Magazine. I was born right here in Clarke County, on a farm, and
have worked all my life. I have done field work such as carrying water
many a day, as well as doing other necessary things. I have even picked
cotton.
"I went to school first at Princeton, and after I finished grammar school
there I came to Athens high school one year. Then I quit school and went
to work. My folks didn't like it one bit. However, one of my brothers was
in college and another in high school, so I felt like it was too much of
an effort for my parents to send me any longer.
"My father gave up farm work and moved to town. My first job was at a dime
store. I worked in that store as a clerk about two years, then they made
me floor lady. After being on this job six months, I quit to take a
vacation. They paid me $1 a day as clerk and $10 a week when they promoted
me to the floorlady job. My first money was spent on clothes and I sent
money each week to my brother in college. I would buy clothes if I didn't
have anything else. My husband says that is all I do anyway spend
everything I make on them. I didn't have to pay board, [?] and I could do
as I pleased with my money.
"My second job was as saleslady at a local department Store. I started in
for $8 a week and was making $12 when I quit to get married. I thought I
couldn't keep house and work too. I worked until 5 o'clock Christmas Even
and was married at 9 o'clock that same night.
"The way I met my husband was like this. I had a date one night with a boy
I didn't like. We were double dating with another couple. They were
telling me about Stephens Bryant. I expresses a desire to meet him. Than
they dared me to write him, I took the dare, and did it. Stephens and the
boy I was with worked at the same place. Mother heard us and told me later
I had better not do such a thing. It was too late because I had all ready
written the note. If she had told me that before I had, [???] would have
been called off. I told him in my note how much I knew about him and said
I would like to meet him - Signed, Betty. That was on Monday after the
dare was made on Sunday night. I really met him the last Sunday in June of
that year. There were four girls in the car and all of us were introduced
to him as Betty. After sizing us up he knew I was the one who wrote that
note.
"He wanted a date and I gave him one for the following Saturday night. He
made me so mad that night I could have murdered him. We were going to the
show, I was sure he was going to put his coat on, but he didn't. I thought
there was no excuse for not wearing it. We dated regularly from then on
until we married. In fact every night he could get off. He worked on the
night shift at the bakery and never knew when he could get away. He made
real good money working at the mixing machine. At the time we married he
had a nice little bank account, and a good car.
"We lived on here in Athens for four months. Then his boss sent him to
Milledgeville to take charge of a bakery there. During the eighteen months
we lived there our first child was born, and we got just what we wanted, a
black-headed girl. That summer I canned 250 cans of fruit. I did all my
own house work, and carried lunch to my husband every day. One day I put
the baby in her carriage, and sat the lunch on the foot of it and started
out. I had on a new pair of shoes and when I started down the six steps
[???] of our house, my feet slipped. I let the carriage go and it went
flying down the steps and bumped into a tree. I was scared out of my wits
for fear the baby would killed, but instead the food was knocked out on
the ground. Baby's safety strap had held. We soon grew tired of that
place, as we had very little social life and no relatives living there, so
my husband gave up his job and came back [??]."
Mrs. Bryant stopped talking [?] to answer one of the phones. In fact, it
seemed to me that one or the other of them rang constantly. There are two
in the office and at times both are ringing. The machinery never stopped
running even at lunch time.
She began again; "After we came back here my husband went into the
restaurant business and made good. While he was operating this cafe I
helped him with it. One day a woman came in and tried to get Stephens to
have a date with one of her grown daughters. It made me mad enough to
fight. I didn't let her know it and took it like a good sport, because she
was a good customer.
"He sold the restaurant at a profit and then we decided to farm. We rented
a house and four acres of land way out on Prince Avenue. It was a large
house so mother and dad moved in with us. Each of us had our own garden
about an acre in all and farmed on the other three. We made real good and
our rent cost us very little. During the time we lived there, my husband
worked at the post office.
When the lease expired in December, Stephens went to Atlanta to find work.
Lee Baking company had just opened their plant and my husband was the
first man that company hired to work in their plant. I followed about a
month later. We rented a small three-room apartment, but had so much
company to drop in on us we had to get a larger place. While we were
living in one section of the city I was scared to death. I knew somebody
was snooping around the house at night but was never able to find out who
it was. Whether white or black. I got my brother-in-law and his wife to
come and stay with me. One night he went to the kitchen and saw the man
looking in at the window. My brother-in-law didn't let on he saw him, but
went out of the kitchen, crept around the house to catch him. Just as he
grabbed his coat the man pulled away from him and ran. We came to the
conclusion it was only a 'peeping-tom.' We moved from that section, that
was the only scare I ever experienced in Atlanta. We lived in Atlanta two
and a half years. I came back before my husband did in order to be with my
mother when our little boy was born. When the baby was two weeks old
Stephens gave up that $65 a week job and came back here to live. While we
were living in Atlanta my husband's mother died. There was a brother and
[??] left at home. Her death was a great blow for us, for she was a fine
woman and I loved her almost as much as I did my own. It took Stephens a
long time to get over his great grief.
"One thing that made him quit his
Atlanta job was that the plant changed managers and a man from out west
was sent to Atlanta to take charge. He had a friend he wanted to work in,
Stephens didn't like him so decided to quit before there was any trouble.
He packed up his bag and baggage and moved back here with my mother, who
was than living about six miles from town.
"Stephens first experience with a laundry was in 1930. While we were
living with my mother in the country he got a job with a laundry here in
town. That called for buying a truck. However, we kept our own car and
have never been without one more than three months of our married life. He
worked strictly on commission basis and canvassed all the small towns out
of this city. While he called on people soliciting business and picking up
laundry and dry cleaning he had a boy to do the driving for him. He
averaged making $75 a week on that job. In June of 1931 we moved back to
town so we could be near his work. He continued his work at this laundry
about a year, than decided if he could make that much for the other fellow
he could do even better for himself.
"He went in partnership with another man and rented a building a couple of
blocks up the street from where we are now. As soon as the machinery was
installed we opened up for business. The first week, we took in exactly
$218, and before the month was out our collections amounted between four
and five hundred dollars a week. My task was checking the dry cleaning in
and out. I saw to it that every one of the garments were clean and
inspected before I entered them on the books. I have worked many a night
until one and two o'clock before I went home and was back on the job next
morning at eight o'clock. That was the first time I had ever been inside a
dry cleaning plant. Our partner, his wife, my husband and I, and one Negro
were all that worked in the plant. in the beginning.
"A short time after we opened up for business we found ourselves in a
terrible condition. We had spent all our cash and were $11,000 in debt. In
order to cut expenses we moved in the house with Stephens folks. We paid
them the small amount of $10.00 a month for rent. We had our own cow,
chicken, and garden.
"Our business grew and grew until we had to get a larger place, then we
bought this building with our own personal money. When we started in the
dry cleaning business we didn't have but one truck. At the time we moved
into this plant we had six trucks, three in town and three in the country,
and we had fifteen employees inside the plant.
"Just about the time we moved our plant and got started my husband was
taken sick with a terrible kidney trouble. I was not working when he was
taken ill. We were not able to hire a nurse, and I couldn't come to the
plant in his place, for I couldn't leave him more than fifteen minutes at
a time. The children even upset him and their noise made him so nervous I
had to send them to his sisters' to stay. He was sick a month before he
was able to come back to work.
"We were getting lots of dry cleaning from a North Georgia town so we
decided to open a plant in that place. There were two other plants in that
town besides ours. They got together and paid us to get out of business
there. It was a paying proposition. We accepted it. Now we have our
business all under one roof with twenty people working for us."
Mrs. Bryant answered the telephone. After the conversation was over, she
told a man who was standing near. "Do you remember yesterday when Mr.
Palmer called and asked about a bill fold that had been left in his
pocket? I told the girl who inspects the clothes to check and see if it
was in his clothes. She told me it was not. Well, it has been dry cleaned
and delivered without being removed from his pocket."
The man made no reply to that but said, "Make a note of this. I found
$8.50 in a man's pocket this morning."
Turning to me she began again. "Our plant is run by steam and electricity.
The ironing in the laundry is done by eleven Negroes."
At this time a large Negro woman in a blue uniform brought a shirt to the
office with the bottom part torn from the yoke. "Why, Lucindy, what did
you do that for?" Without a word the woman spread the shirt on the corner
of he desk, covered her face with her hands, and walked away.
"All the ironing is done by steam preasure and they are touched up by
hand. That is what the Negro women do. We have one woman who does nothing
else but fold, inspect and sew buttons on shirts. Oh, we have to buy
buttons by the wholesale. People will even send whole suits of clothes as
well as other garments to us without a button on them. We replace [??]
free of charge.
When [?????] they are searched and all articles found [?] saved for the
customers. They are brushed and pre-spotted, then they are cleaned and
taken to the second floor for inspection and spotted again, before they
are pressed. We have a man who does nothing else but inspect and spot the
dry cleaning.
"We can clean fifty suits at one time in the same tub, what is sometimes
called the wheel. After they are taken from the wheel they are put in an
extractor. This takes out all the surplus solvent. This machine makes
18,000 revolutions a minute. After that they are put in a tumbler, [?]
which hot air [?]. They are tumbled until the solvent odor is out of the
garments. After this they are taken to the second floor, inspected again,
and steamed pressed. Then they are inspected by two girls to see if all
spots are removed and pressed correctly before checking out. When they are
checked they are placed on their respective route-men's line. We also do
repair work at a small charge. If there is no material used we do not
charge for repairs.
"The laundry is handled practically the same way. Each driver has his own
laundry vat, and every family has its own mark. The smaller pieces are put
in a net with the mark on it.
"When we first moved to this building [?] was just a one-story plant but
it was growing rapidly. [?] our partner started drinking. Finally when he
was on one of his drinking sprees, one night somebody backed a truck up to
the back door, broke in and took off every garment we had in the plant.
They were dry cleaned and hanging on the respective drivers' lines. The
clothes stolen amounted to over $3,000. My husband and the police searched
everywhere for a trace of the clothes. They only found three of the
garments. They were in a pawn shop in Atlanta. When the search was ended
we paid our partner his part of the business and ran him off.
"Taking the plant in charge ourselves, we worked hard day and night to
build up our business and paid every one of our customers for their losses
because of the robbery in a years time.
"We agreed to let a friend of ours come into business with us as a
partner. [?] business out grew the ground floor. Then we added the second
story. We surely have had to work hard for what success we have attained,
and it has taken cooperation on the part of each of us to build up our
business. We do have a nice volume of business and take in between eight
and nine hundred dollars a week. Our pay roll runs around $300 a week.
"Since we have added the second-story the business has increased to the
extent it has enabled us to buy a hundred acre farm with a good house and
out buildings on it. There is a nice pasture and good farming land. We
rent the house we live in here in town. However, our partner owns his home
here. His wife works in the plant every day. Of their three sons, one is
married.
"We are members of the Methodist church, I was brought up to go to church
and Sundayschool, and still enjoy attending our church here.
"Last year we decided to speculate and go into another business. We tried
selling fish and poultry. We found out we couldn't handle two businesses
successfully. After three months we gave that up finding we had sunk
$15,000 in that enterprise with no hopes of getting it back. We
contributed that failure to our entering the business in an off season.
"Our business has afforded us the pleasure of some nice trips in the last
few years. We went to Florida, Detroit, Charleston and Savannah. We take
lots of trips on Sundays and always take our children with us. I'm not the
kind to want to leave them at home while we are running around. We do
enjoy the privilege of a family car.
"Going back to our dry cleaning and laundry, we decided our pick-up
business in the country didn't bring in sufficient revenue so we have
called some of our drivers in. Now, we have four trucks working in town
and it surely keeps us busy keeping up with them and their work when they
come in from gathering laundry and dry cleaning. We are very proud of our
business and hope it will continue to grow."
"Veona," called Mr. Bryant, "hurry and deposit this money before the bank
closes." He came in the office with a handful of checks.
"Now, if we have finished with the story, come on and I'll give you a
lift." she said. [??????] in the Studebaker to get beside her. "Oh, what a
nice car!" I said.
"This don't belong to us," she explained with evident amusement. "Ours is
a Packard, it's in the garage being overhauled to take a trip in Sunday. I
do hope it won't rain.
We reached the post office. "This is where I get out," I told her. As I
closed the [?] door, she changed gears first and was [?] on her way to the
bank.
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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