a living history interview with Gordon Farmer, class of 1943, conducted by Marilyn Summers on May the 13th, the year 2011. 

We are at his home in North Augusta, South Carolina, and the subject of the interview today, his life in general, his experiences at Georgia Tech. Mr. Farmer, you said I can call you Gordon. Sure, yes. It's a real privilege to be with you here today. I'm looking forward to hearing your story. You've got quite a story to tell, too. It's a pleasure for me to have you. 

Well, we're going to get right to the beginning of it. 

Tell me where you were born, what city or county, or where were you born? 

I was born in a little village called Stullerville, Georgia, down in Jefferson County, which is about 40 miles south of Augusta, Georgia. 

Okay, and when were you born? 

Well. What month and what year? 

Well, I was born January the 14th, 1921. 

Now, what were your mom and dad doing in Stullerville in 1921? 

My father was a farmer. 

So that was their home? 

Yeah, and my mother, actually, she was a housekeeper. And that's where they lived. That was their home. Yeah, we lived there, but the farm was not in Stullerville. It was a farming village, but his farm was about four miles away. 

He got up early every morning at about 7 o'clock, and he went and spent the day at his farm looking after his farming interest. And he had about 10 sharecroppers and several hundred acres of farm. And then he came home at night about 7 o'clock. Wow. every day. He put in long days. 

He carried his lunch with him then? 

No, he had one of the people in one of the main houses at the farm that prepared lunch for him every day, and he sat down and ate with them at 12 o'clock. 

So it was a regular routine, and you knew who your daddy was all the time then, huh? 

Yes. Tell me about your daddy. What was he like? 

Well, he was an unusual person. He wasn't. 

Most people in the area of Stullerville and down in Burke County, Georgia, which adjoins Jefferson County, Burke County is the cotton-growingest county in the state of Georgia. They raise more cotton than any other county, and Georgia's always been a big cotton-growing state. 

But my father did not raise cotton like that. He planted quite a bit of cotton, but he was highly diversified. He planted a lot of wheat, he planted a lot of corn, he planted oats and rye and beans. He was ahead of his time knowing about to do that. 

Well, he was by far, but then he raised a lot of cattle and hogs and cows, and we had a steak-bodied truck, and once a week our truck went to Augusta to the stock market selling either cows or hogs. and he would have a tremendous feel of corn instead of harvesting the corn or gathering the corn he turned the cows and the hogs in and let them harvest its farm see they got real fat and then he carried them to market and sold them he had money coming in year round he was a very very good farmer he knew what he was doing Do you remember his mother and father, your grandparents? 

Well, very slightly. His father died when I was three years old. Oh, you wouldn't remember him then. I remember him. You do? 

I sat on the back porch with him. 

I had a little corn grinding machine that we ground the corn and grain into small pieces to feed the chicken. And we had chickens and pigeons in his backyard. 

And I'd sit there with him, and I'd help him turn the thing, grind it in the corn, and we'd throw it out in the backyard. He'd call me Jim Gordon Crack Corn. That's a great memory to have, isn't it? 

Was he a farmer, too? 

Yes, he was, yeah. 

And he was rather successful because he ended up with three children, and he was able to give each one of them a couple of farms. Wow. I would guess he was very successful then. He was. He was born in 1843. 

So he lived through the war. He lived during the Civil War, and he was engaged in the Civil War. He was? 

He participated? 

Yeah. Ah. Do you know anything about his tour of duty in the war? 

Not much. You know, actually, I never did learn from him because I was too young. Yeah. Yeah, of course, that three years would be too young. 

But just from what my family told me that he was in the Civil War, and I have been, I'm a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans because of his participation. What was his name? 

Rhesa, R-H-E-S-A, Rhesa Farmer. That's an unusual name. He would probably be easy to look into and find out where he was and what he did. 

Well, I haven't done that. I probably could. 

How long do you think his family had been in Georgia? 

Well, they'd been there since around 1800, I know. 

But we had a problem with family history because Sherman came through Georgia, and my family lived in the edge of Burke County at that time, my ancestors. and Sherman burned the courthouse in Waynesburg, Georgia. 

So they had all the records. And we can't go any further back than about 1800. We go back to his father, whose name was Henry Farmer. 

So you've got quite a long line to check on there. Yeah, we go back to about 1800, but then beyond 1800, we think his father was named Isaac Farmer. 

But we cannot verify it. Tell me about your grandmother. Do you remember her? 

Yeah, I do. Not to a great extent. 

She lived longer than her grandfather? 

After my father died, she moved to Louisville, Georgia, to live with her sister. Oh, after your grandfather died? 

Yes, after my grandfather died. 

So she wasn't around very much then? 

No, not after that. And so I knew her because we visited her, but she taught piano. Oh, she did? 

Yeah, and she was a real good pianist. And she used to have... 

Well, you know quite a bit about her then. Yeah, well, I do. And she had pupils come and visit her at her sister's house. And they had a big old nice piano. And she taught piano at that. And I had an opportunity to get the piano probably about 50 years ago. 

But I didn't think much about it. And I didn't do it. 

But you remember it. It disappeared. 

What did you call her? 

What nickname did you have for her? 

Did you call her Grandmother? 

Well, we called her Grandma Matt. Grandma? 

Matt. Matt. Grandma Matt. And what did you call your grandfather? 

Well, I didn't call him anything. You don't remember that. I remember now. It's been so long ago. 

But you do remember what he called you, and that's fun. That's fun that you do remember that. Did you know I've got the coin grinding machine upstairs? 

You still have it. Still got it. Oh, my. What a wonderful thing that is. It is. I've thought about bringing it and putting it over here in the corner. It's a real conversation piece, I'm sure it really would be. 

Now, your daddy, you said, had two other siblings. Were they boys or girls? 

Your grandma and grandpa farmer had how many? 

You said three children. My father. Yeah. He had a brother and he had a sister. 

So he had a brother and a sister. Okay. 

So there was just the three of them and they were all into farming. Yeah. Okay. 

Now let's go to your mother's side of the family. 

Now, where did your mother's people come from? 

They came from the same area around Stullerville, Georgia, and Matthews, Georgia. And her father was a farmer. 

Okay, agriculture on both sides. Yep. Do you remember that grandfather? 

No, I don't. He died before I was born. 

So you got deprived. You didn't get to have grandpas then. Not too bad. 

How about grandma? 

Did she live? 

Your mother's mother? 

Yeah, I knew my grandmother because she lived with us some before she died. you know with my mother yeah and then her sister did too what did you call your grandmother well this one i don't remember that because i was only two or three years old when she died oh so you lost all your grandparents fairly early yeah one moved away and three of them died then yeah you were deprived you didn't have any grandparents you're right nobody spoil you rotten huh i just remember uh my grandmother and my mother's sister live with us and uh they used to look after me you You know, when I was about two or three years old, I remember I used to, they would wear long dresses, you know, and I used to pull on the dress to get their attention, and I got them to take a biscuit and punch a hole in it and fill it full of syrup. Oh, that's what you wanted. Yeah, so, I mean, they would keep me supplied, and I really loved syrup biscuit. You did. I bet that was kind of messy, wasn't it? 

Well, I don't know. They had to wash you off. That's wonderful that you can remember from being three years old. Yeah, I do. People say, you don't remember that. I tell them all about it, so they say, well, sure you do. Yeah, you do remember. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Did you have brothers and sisters? 

Oh, yeah. I was the fifth of six. My sister Betty that you saw was the last one. She was the baby girl. She was still living. 

But then I had a sister that died about four years ago that lived to be 94. Wow. 

So you guys have got good genes. Another sister that died about three or four years ago, she was 87. 

But then my oldest brother died in 1975, and he was 68. And then my next brother died in 1959, and he was 56. 

So my father died in 1960, 1938, and he was 60. My mother died in 1973, and she was 91. 

So it sounds like the women had the longer good G's, but you got good ones, too. You take after your mother's side of the family, maybe. 

Well, actually, my father, I can't figure out why he would have died, because he worked outside, you know, in the open air and everything. 

But, well, he chewed tobacco, and I think that he must have swallowed enough of that nicotine, you know, that affected his lungs because he died with lung cancer. Oh, he did. Oh, yeah. 

Well, that sounds like a pretty strong hint of that, doesn't it? 

Yeah, it was. Pretty strong. 

So you have, just you and Betty are left now. Yes. Yeah. 

So you have good memories of, considering how early they died, you have good grandmother and grandfather memories. At least you know something about them. Oh, I do, yeah. 

Now, you were living right in Stellarville. Yes. Was there a school there, a county school? 

Oh, yeah. 

Now, Stellarville was a real unusual community. It was the oldest community of anywhere just about it between Augusta and Lewisville, Georgia. You know, Lewisville, Georgia was the capital of Georgia about 1788. No, I didn't know that. It was. 

In fact, it was a capital right after Savannah, about the same time Augusta for a short time, in Louisville. In Louisville, actually, you may not have ever heard of the burn of the Yazoo fraud papers. 

Well, there was a fraud conducted by some of the officials of the state of Georgia because Georgia went all the way to the Mississippi River. At that time, it did? 

Wow. Yeah. 

And of course, the area of actually west of, we'll say the Chattahoochee River toward Mississippi was cleaned by Georgia, but there was primarily just Indians living there, you know. 

But then in some kind of a fraud deal, some of the officials sold part or deeded part or some of it to somebody else or some other deal. And, of course, it was a fraud. 

So they burned the papers to, you know. Cover up their tracks? 

No. 

Well, the officials actually, when they found out it was a fraud, they burned the papers to get rid of it so it wouldn't be uh ******* oh for heaven's sake they call it the yazoo fraud as yazoo indians i think is the name that sounds logical see so so that made georgia smaller than it might have been it might have been yeah at one time it covered alabama you know and mississippi all the way to the mississippi river for goodness sakes and stellaville was Stullerville was a small town, but the Baptist church, it only has one church in Stullerville. It's a Baptist church, and it was organized in 1817. See, so you can see it's a pretty old church. It goes back a long way. It goes back. 

Did they have their own school system? 

Yeah, Stullerville had, in fact, it had the only high school, just about between Helps of Georgia, right out here, and Lewisville, which was about a 75-mile area. 

So the kids had to come from home. Stullerville had a high school. 

I have got the commencement exercise paper where my mother participated in the commencement exercise of Stullerville High School in 1892. Isn't that neat? 

And my father, too. 

Isn't that neat? 

And I've got a book that says, Master Henry Farmer for Excellence in Mathematics, Stullerville, Georgia. Isn't that nice? 

You took after your daddy with the mathematics, didn't you? 

Right. All right, so you went to school in Stellaville when you were what? 

It had a schoolhouse. When I went, they had only a big auditorium, but it had only three big classrooms. And each classroom had three classes in it. 

The first classroom had first, second, and third grades. 

The second classroom had fourth, fifth, and sixth. And the last classroom had seventh, eighth, and ninth. 

So I went and I sat in, you know, each one of them because they had it divided into three rows of desks. 

And the fourth grade was on the right-hand side in the room, you know, and it was about 15 in the fourth grade. And we sat in those desks. And then next to you was the fifth grade. Yeah, just lined right up. And one teacher taught everybody, right? 

She taught that, you listen to them, teach the other two. You learned ahead of yourself then. Tell me, do you remember going into the first grade? 

Oh, yes. Did you like school? 

Were you glad to go? 

Well, yes. 

How did you get there? 

The first grade I had, I walked because we lived in Stullerville, and it was in walking distance. In fact, they turned out at lunch, and I went home for lunch. Oh, you did. And went back, actually, we went to school about 8 o'clock in the morning, and got it at 4.30 in the afternoon. 

So a long day of school. 

Now, you had older sisters and brothers who had gone before you. Oh, yes, all of them. 

So the teachers knew your family. All of them had gone to Stullerville just like I did. 

So they knew your family. They said, oh, here comes another one of the farmer boys. Yeah, that's right. Do you remember your teacher's name? 

Oh, yeah. 

The first one was Sally Motel. 

The first year I went to school, I had scarlet fever for three weeks. Oh, wow. You were really sick. And I was out. And then when I was going to regular class, my mother and my sister were teaching me or helping me. And Ms. Salimor Tab was my teacher. She told me to tell my mother that if she was going to teach me, I wouldn't need her. she wanted her to butt out of her territory that's funny that is really funny I've got a picture of me that's on the pickers that they showed on the pickers of me sitting in the classroom when I was in about the second or third grade it's in that one that they used were you a pretty good student Gordon well yeah I was a good student very good Ahead of yourself probably all the time, eager to learn, huh? 

Well, I was always, when I graduated from Wren's High School, you know, I went and... 

Well, let's still be talking about Stullaville. 

So you went through one, two, three, and then you moved to the next classroom when you were old enough to go to Wren's. I had a woman named Daisy Blanchard. You can remember her, too, huh? 

Yeah, and then I had Drane Watson. Wow. And Drane Watson left Stullaville and he went to Wren's to teach basketball and football at Wren's. 

Now, where was Wrens? 

Where was that located? 

Wrens was four miles from Stullerville. 

So you couldn't walk that far. No, we went on a school bus. 

So they did have a school bus, and Stullerville had its own bus as well. Yeah, it went around in the countryside and brought people into Stullerville. 

It had a certain area, but then Wrens was larger, you know, and Wrens actually was settled in 1905, so it was a lot newer place in Stullerville. But, see, Stullerville got bypassed by the railroads and the highway. And that would have made a big difference. 

At one time, it was a thriving community with a couple of big stores, you know, and cotton gin and everything. 

Yeah, and then after the roads went away, they couldn't do that anymore, huh? 

One highway, the number one highway went through Renz, which is about three miles from Stullerville. And then the railroad went two miles on the right of Stullerville through Matthews, Georgia. 

So that made them more important. 

And then the other railroad, Savannah and Atlanta, went two miles on the far side of Stullerville, west of Stullerville, and it bypassed Stullerville, so Stullerville basically dried up because these people could ship their commodities and cotton and stuff by railroad, and Stullerville didn't have a railroad. 

So was the Wrens school pretty big? 

Was that Wrens spelled like a bird, Wrens? 

W-R-E-N-S, Wrens. It was named for Wren family, but it was Wrens. And it was a fairly big, consolidated school. 

It went through first, you know, through no kindergarten, but first grade all the way through just 11th grade. We didn't have 12th grade. Right. 

So you went there for 9th, 10th, and 11th? 

After the 9th, I went 10th, 11th. Oh, just two years there, 10th and 11th. Just two years in rent. 

Now, you mentioned that the teacher you had had moved there to teach basketball. Yeah, a fellow named Drane Watson. Did you play basketball? 

Yeah, I played basketball. Actually, I started trying to play football, but I broke my left arm four times within one year. Oh, my goodness. Four times? 

Yeah. Were you clumsy or what happened? 

Not exactly. Actually, I didn't do it four times within one year. I broke it the first time when I was about five years old. A step ladder fell on it and broke it. And then, of course, they didn't have x-rays and things at that time. They put a cast on it, you know, and they'd feel it and adjust it to be, but it came out crooked. 

So after that, it was easier to break it, huh? 

It was weak, see, so it was easy to break. And I broke it playing football twice and baseball once. My goodness. I bet your mama didn't want you playing sports then. The doctor told me, he says, the most strenuous game you're going to be able to play is checkers. He was right? 

Yeah, he did. He says, if you break your arm one more time, it may not grow back. He says, I'm going to tell you. He says, you better be careful. Does it bother you now? 

No. 

All these years you manage? 

It's been a little weak, you know, and not quite as developed as Mariah on because I had it in a cast for practically a year, you know, because they'd leave it in a cast six or eight weeks. Yeah, that took away the muscle strength and everything. And then, well. 

Now, 10th and 11th grade, what did you do in high school besides break your arm when you were playing all these sports? 

Well, I played basketball. You did play. Yeah. How could you shoot a basket with an arm that was that sore? 

No, it was. You managed. I managed all right. I was a better defensive player in basketball than I was an offensive player. Yeah, because I remember, of course, it wasn't as high scoring as it is. 

Now, you know, you jump between every point. You go back to the center and then tip the ball again. And so it took longer. 

So you usually ended up scoring 35 or 40 points, and that's about the most anybody scored. In one game, I scored eight points, which was the most I ever did. Oh, well, that was good, though. You were a contributor. Did everybody in town come to the games? 

Well, in Rennes, they did. 

But Wrens didn't have near the basketball court that a lot of other places did. See, this was during the 30s in the WPA. You know, Roosevelt started these projects to help people with jobs and all. And a place like Sandersville, Georgia, was in the same district tournament that we were in. And they had had a big, beautiful basketball court built. Wrens' basketball court was in an abandoned school building. Oh, for goodness sakes. And it wasn't large enough, actually, and the ceiling was not high enough. You had to watch how you shoot the ball to keep it from hitting the ceiling. Oh, my. 

So it wasn't very accommodating for basketball. When you got into the high school, 10th and 11th grade, did you start dating girls then? 

Yeah. You started noticing girls and dating girls? 

Yeah. 

Well, they noticed me. They noticed you. I bet they did. 

What would you do for a date in some place like Estellaville or Rensville? 

What was there to do? 

Rens. 

Well, they had a little place out on the edge of town in Rens that had a jukebox in it. You know, we'd go out here, put money in the jukebox and dance. Dance. 

But then, well, we. 

What was there to do? 

Did they have functions at the school? 

Well, yes, sometimes they've had dances. Did they have a movie theater? 

Huh? 

Any movie theater? 

They had a movie theater in Renz. Oh, they did? 

Oh, okay. 

So it had all the big city things then. Yeah, they had a movie theater. 

So were you a big-time dater? 

No, I wouldn't think so. 

No, I wasn't really because, well, when I graduated from high school, I mean, yeah, I went to Georgia Tech. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in a minute. I want to know, did you have a car? 

No, I did not. 

Okay, well, it would be pretty hard to go on a date without a car then. 

Well, my family had a car. 

So they let you use it? 

Yeah, but the bad part of it is, see, my older brother was dating, and he used the car. There you go. 

So I wasn't. You lost out on that one. I lost out on that to a great extent, see, because he came first, you know, and all. Yeah, so that kind of trimmed your sails a little bit. Oh, it did, yeah. Was your family affected by the Depression? 

Well, yes, like everybody. 

But the thing about it, not near as much as some people. 

My father, as I told you, raised a lot of hogs and cows, and he raised a lot of wheat and oats and rye and all that. They had a big flour mill in Rens, which was four miles from home. 

So he would take wheat to the flour mill, and they would grind it, you know, and make what we call self-rising flour. Right. 24-pound pride of wren self-rising flour. That was the name of it. 

So your mom always had plenty of food for you. 

So we had plenty of food, and he killed about 12 big hogs every year. Wow. 

At my job at home, we had a pasture of about five acres at our home, you know, that was given to us by my grandfather, you know, years ago. And we kept cows and hogs in the pasture. And my job when I was growing up, when I was old enough, was to feed the hogs and the cows. And we usually had about 12 big hogs and raised for, you know, for butchering. And the deal was my father gave me one of them for mine, you know. Sort of like the 4F projects. Yeah, so he gave me one. 

So then he says, well, this fall we're going to kill the ones that the family needs, but yours, we're going to sell it, and you'll have your own money. Oh, he was very generous with you then. 

So you learned the value of that then. Yeah. 

So then when we sold my hog, I got about $35. He says, now you're going to buy your winter clothes. Your father was a practical man. He was, yeah. He was a practical man. He was unusual. Yeah. 

When you think back to that time, Gordon, did you think about going to college? 

I mean, was that something everybody in your family did? 

Because I got my family to get me some books about Georgia Tech, you know what I mean? 

How did you hear about Georgia Tech? 

Well, there's only one other person that had gone to Georgia Tech before. The year before I went, a fellow named Elliot Barrow from Matthews went to Georgia Tech. And when he went, I knew about it. I just knew Georgia Tech was an engineering school. And I always liked, you know, things connected with mechanics and engineering. You were good with your hands. Yeah, well, I made model airplanes. And I was the only person in that whole area that made model airplanes. 

It's unusual because there was a big pasture a couple of miles from home, and I used to go there and carry my model airplane, and I had a big one, and fly it. 

But it was free flight. Oh, you're not talking the little tiny kind. You're talking the kind you could take out and fly around? 

No, I couldn't. I couldn't fly in it. 

No, I don't mean in it, but I mean, did it have a little motor in it? 

It had about a 7-foot wingspray and had a motor. Oh, it had a motor in it. 

It's unusual because this family that lived in the house where the big pasture was, their children saw me flying the airplane out of their pasture. 

And years later, one of them says, you're the only person that had an airplane that flew all over the place. He thought, you know, he remembered me as having an airplane that I flew in. Oh, yeah. It was out there doing its own thing, though. Yeah, but this airplane was big enough. 

If you saw it out there, it was a pretty good size. Yeah, it was a seven-foot wingspan. That was pretty ambitious. Where did you get the materials to make it? 

I came to Augusta and bought it. 

There was a hobby shop in Augusta that sold the components to put together, the balsa wood and stuff to make an airplane and the engines. And I had a couple of airplane engines. That's pretty neat that you were doing that. Yeah, I was. Had your older four brothers and sisters, any of them, gone to college? 

Oh, yes. 

My older brother, Pierce, left home to go to college after high school, and he went to Emory University at Oxford. Okay. And he stayed till Christmas. 

Christmas, he got his trunk and packed it and put it on the train and came home and said he wasn't going back. That was it. He left and came to Augusta and got a job working in Augusta. Okay. And so that took care of that. 

But older sister, actually, she started out, she went to University of Georgia, and she stayed about a year, and then she came home and got married. 

Okay, so she didn't finish either. 

So she didn't finish then, but later she did. She went to Georgia Southern. Oh, okay. And she ended up with a degree from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. Oh, so she did get an education. 

She did, and then my next sister went to Georgia Southern, and she ended up with a degree, and she taught school. Okay. She taught school. 

So everybody in your family was at least aware of colleges. 

Well, they were aware, but my second brother did not go to college. He was helping my father on the farm, and when my father died, he took over the farm. 

And then my youngest sister, when she graduated from high school, actually my brother that took over the farm wasn't doing too well. He never was the farmer that my father was. And he was courting. 

So actually I think my family didn't feel like they had enough money to send Betty to college. 

So she didn't go. She went to Atlanta and stayed with her sister. And got a job. Got a job, and she kept it just about all her life. Yeah. She had a good job, though, with the state. She did. She did. 

Now, when you said you wanted to go to college, were they going to help you pay for it? 

Well, yeah. My mother paid the tuition. It was semester. You know, it wasn't quarter. Yeah. It was four and a half months, and the semester was $178. It was pretty cheap. I remember that. And my mother paid that, but then shortly after I got to Atlanta, I went co-op. Because that was the idea, you could go to school and pay your way. Yeah, well, that didn't work out too well. What happened with the co-op? 

Well, I started, and of course... First of all, tell me, what year was it when you came in? 1939. 

Okay, 1939. 

But that's when I went. 

Well, I jumped the gun a little bit. 

But when I graduated from high school in Rennes, they did not teach chemistry or physics or advanced math or any of that. 

Okay, so you weren't. I couldn't get in Georgia Tech. No. 

So I had to get the basics that I didn't have. 

So I came to Augusta, and I boarded in Augusta in 1938, the year of 38, and went to Richmond Academy. That was a high school. Yeah. 

But it had the 12th year, didn't it? 

Well, I'm not sure about it then, but then I went to Richmond Academy just to get the courses that I needed. And I took the chemistry and physics. And then I also went to Augusta Junior College, which was in the same building. Yeah, they were all together, right. And I took a couple of courses at Augusta Junior College. 

Okay, so you were prepping yourself to go to Georgia Tech. Yeah, but see, I had never seen a slide rule, I'll be frank with you. 

You had never seen it? 

Because when I got to Georgia Tech, I couldn't operate a slide rule, and everybody else could. Ah. And everything, the exams they gave you, you know, depended on you using a slide rule. How fast you could use your slide rule, yeah. I did pretty good on exams. 

How did you do in physics and chemistry? 

Did you catch on to those all right? 

Well, in chemistry, when I finally ended up, I took freshman chemistry when I was a junior. Oh, did you? 

And I made a B. Oh, well, you did really good then. 

How was that experience for you to come to Augusta and go to school? 

You didn't mind doing that? 

You knew you had to do that, huh? 

Well, I had to do that. 

So, I mean, I boarded with this woman that had about 25 children in her home. My word. How big was her home? 

It was a great big home, you know. Twenty-five of you? 

Yeah. Wow. 

Well, not me, but children. A little kid. I'm talking about kids, little ones, you know. Oh, my word. Kindergarten stuff. See, their families worked at the Bonaire Hotel. Oh, you mean she had a daycare center like that? 

Oh, okay. 

But she took care of them during the winter because they came to Augusta and worked in the hotel. And they worked in hotels in upstate New York, like Saratoga Springs, in the summer. In the summer. They worked in the hotels in Augusta, which were fabulous, you know, for tourists. Yeah, they would come back and forth. Wow. 

See, so, I mean, she looked after them, plus she had two football players that played football for Richmond Academy because they could play for Richmond Academy until they were 20, but they came out of Kentucky and Tennessee and New York, which they couldn't play until they were 19. Oh, I see. 

So they came down here to play longer. They came down here and kind of prepped, and they were sent by colleges. I had two roommates in my big room with me. One of them was from Kentucky and the other one was from Tennessee. 

And one of them was scheduled to go to the University of Kentucky and the other one to the University of Tennessee. I'll be darned. And they were my roommates. Yeah. Was Richmond Academy, it was a public school. Oh, yeah. 

So did you have to pay to go? 

Military style. Yeah. No, I didn't have to pay to go. 

So all you had to do was register and they were happy to have you. I lived here, yeah. and went. 

Well, that was a good, how did you figure out to do that? 

Well, it was the only way that I know of to do. 

Well, that was very clever to figure out a way to do that. Yeah, well, it worked out okay. And then all the time you were thinking you were going to apply for Georgia Tech. 

Well, I had pretty much already applied, you know. And they said get these prerequisites. Then I went to Georgia Tech as a co-op. 

So you actually came there in in the fall of 1939 as a co-op yeah and you get there and they're supposed to go to school one semester and then go to work one semester so what'd you do first go to school or go to work i went to school all right so you got one one semester of school in what'd you think of it were you ready no it's hard when i got there like i said i did not know how to operate a slide rule So I wasn't really prepared. 

The first semester I went co-op, I took five courses, which was about 22. Wow. That's a lot. And I passed two, conditioned one, and flunked two for the co-op. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. 

So they told me I had two alternatives, or three. 

You can either go to night school and make up your grades and pull up your grades and pass these courses and get back in day school, or either you can go to Auburn or you can go to Clemson. That's what they told you. And that was true. They had people to do that. 

So the one I conditioned that nobody passed that course. 

Really? 

Somebody flipped the whole? 

What class was it? 

It was a graphic design course that was a... Like mechanical engineering course? 

Yeah, mechanics. Mechanics. 

Well, they gave us the final, and nobody could figure out what the final was about. I knew about as much about it as anybody when we had a critique. They said, well, we'll give you the course, we'll give you the final again, and you can take it. 

So, anyway, I made up my mind right then, though, that I didn't think I'd pass co -op. That if I was going to get out of Georgia Tech, I would have to go regular. And you'd have to study. You'd have to spend a lot of time doing that. And in that time, I applied. I went to see Dean Scowls, who was the dean. 

Yeah, what did he say to you about it? 

Well, they say he was the one that had a hearing aid, And he fluctuated the hearing aid as to whether he wanted to hear it or not. He could turn it off. He had a little thing in the front where he could turn it right off. You know, as to whether he wanted to hear what you were saying. 

But anyway, he told me that if I wanted to, that I could come back to Tech in day school. He did. He said he'd give you a waiver then. 

So you got the fourth choice. 

So then I went home during the fall of 39. It must have been around the 1st of December and didn't go back to Tech. until maybe about the 1st of February. I stayed a couple of months at home, but six weeks. And that's when Germany was fighting Poland. And I remember because... 

You were seeing it in the newspapers and hearing about it? 

Well, the radio was broadcasting that unusual deal. In Danzig, Poland, the Poles played the Warsaw Concerto continuously. And as long as the radio station was on the air, they knew that Poland had not capitulated. Oh, that was great. And it played at 24 hours a day. Wow. And then when it went off, everybody knew it was the end of Poland. Yeah. And I sat at home and I listened to a song concerto. Over and over, huh? 

Yeah, at that time, which I remember. 

Did you realize then that you were going to end up being in the war? 

Did you know then? 

No, actually, we wasn't in the war at that time. No, we weren't. I know we weren't, but some people start thinking it might happen, though. 

Well, that's true, but I didn't think much about that. You didn't think much about happening to you. 

Well, so anyway. 

Why did you stay home that six weeks? 

Do you know why? 

Why? 

I stayed home because I had to wait until the semester started. Oh, okay. See? 

All right. 

So a co-op was three and a half months, and a regular was four and a half months. Oh, I think. Oh, it was three months. I got you. I got you. 

So you had to fill in that time, so you just took time off. I just took it home. And then you went back. Then I went back. How did you get back and forth? 

Did you go on the train? 

I rode the bus. You rode a bus. Yeah, I rode the Greyhound bus. 

But then there was a friend of mine that went to Georgia Tech to a year ahead of me. And his family carried him. They gave you a ride? 

They carried me, too, sometimes. 

But most of the time I rode the bus. 

But I didn't come home. Went away and stayed. Yeah, you just wouldn't have stayed. 

Now, when you got back up to Tech, I didn't ask you this for the first time you went to Tech. Did you have a roommate? 

Oh, yes. Do you remember who it was? 

Yeah, a fellow named Gene Lowen from Birmingham. 

Did they tell you when you got there, look to your left and look to your right? 

Well, see, I got there as a sophomore. They classified me as a sophomore. Oh, they did. They classified me as a sophomore. See? 

So you didn't have to wear a rat hat? 

No, I never did. They put you in as a transfer student then? 

Yeah. Yeah, you were a transfer student. All right, so you didn't have to go through all the rat rules and all that kind of stuff. No, I didn't. 

So I missed all that. You did. You did. 

But when you got there, you said it was February when you went back? 

Yeah. All right, so you get back there then. 

Did you get the same roommate or you would have a different roommate? 

No, I got a different roommate. Who was it your second time in it? 

Were you at the Brown Dormitory this time? 

This was Brown. Yeah. A fellow named Bates Cooper. And do you know? 

He was from Augusta, but I didn't know him. You didn't know him. Did it work out okay? 

He was okay, but he was kind of a cantankerous character. Sometimes roommates don't work out so good. He was kind of a bookworm, too. 

In fact, in English literature, the doctor, you know, head of the department, told me because I was real good in English literature, And he told me that he was given two A's, and my roommate was getting one, and I was getting one. Only two he was given. And it ended up that he gave me. like a B-plus or A -minus, and gave him an A. I never did find out why. You didn't find out why, huh? 

No, I didn't. Who was it? 

Do you remember the professor? 

Was it Folk? 

Folk. Dr. Folk. Yeah, Dr. Folk. He was a nice man. Yeah, he was. He was a real nice man. He was good. You had a really good English department, then. 

Well, I came out of an English department at Rins High School. 

People that knew it said it was probably as good an English department as any high school in the United States. 

So that you were well prepared. Erskine Caldwell that wrote Tobacco Road. Right. His mother and father both taught me in high school in Wrens. Wow. Dr. Caldwell taught me history and civics. Ms. Caldwell taught me English literature and what else, something else. 

So you were well prepared. I was. In fact. 

Well, see, that was unusual because most of the guys at Georgia Tech were not very good at that. Yeah, I know it, but see, let me tell you about Ms. Caldwell. She was a stern person, you know, no, she didn't smile and everything. 

But she would assign you to learn one of the psalms of the Bible, you know, and come back the next day or end the next day or two and recite the psalm. 

We ended up, I ended up learning Del Pincoroso, Milton, L'ALARA, Henslow, Melancholy, and Cerebus, and Blackest Midnight Born, and Stygian Cave, Full On, Most Hard Shapes, and Sights in the Holy. You still know it? 

Still know it, yeah. My word, my word. 

When you got to Georgia Tech, did you feel like that you had good teachers, that your professors were good? 

Oh, yes. Yes, some of them better than others. 

Who do you remember? 

Well, one professor I had was taught fluid flow, you know, and he had a throat problem. He smoked a pipe full of cotton with mentholatum in it. For heaven's sakes. Cool his throat all the time, so he didn't talk. He wrote on the board, everything. And you could ask him. He might answer you, but a very long conversation. Huh, I wonder who that was. Do you remember his name? 

I can't remember it right this minute. I think I would remember it if you called it, but I can't remember it. I never heard that story before. 

Well, some of the professors you had around that time that I don't know if you had them or not. D. M. Smith was teaching calculus. Oh, sure. Yeah. I had him. Yeah. He was a funny guy. Yeah, he was. He was supposedly one of the few people that understood the relativity. 

So they said, you know, he was very smart. He was good. You know, one of the fun things about him was that nobody knew it. 

But we found out he was in Vaudeville when he was young. He was. That's why he had that great sense of humor. 

Well, he told us about, you know, trying to help the football players. Oh, yeah, he was always trying to coach the football players. Yeah, and he had given them the deal that was going to be on the test, really. He was telling them exactly what the answers were, and they still didn't do it right. You know, what happened is they put the wrong answer. You know, they had the answers, but they didn't put them to the right problem. He told us about that. He said, yeah. He was funny. He was. Did you ever take the shop classes? 

Oh, yeah. 

So did you get to know? 

I took woodworking. You knew Uncle Heine then? 

I took machine shop with Dr. Heine. Yeah, I did. Uncle Heine was in wood shop. 

Well, I took wood shop and I took machine shop. Uncle Billy did the machine shop. Do you remember Uncle Billy? 

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody called him uncle. They didn't call him. 

Well, yeah. And one of our programs in machine shop was to make a motor, electric motor. Right. 

And I made an electric motor, supposed to be a half a horsepower, and it tested about three-fourths of a horsepower. 

In fact, I brought that home with me, and I had it down at Augusta Concrete Block Company, and I was shopping, and we were using it until somebody stole it. Oh, too bad. 

But then in woodworking, you know, we used to make one of the things we made was a little book stand, you know, where you put books in it, you know, wood ends to it, a base. Do you still have yours? 

No, I don't know what happened to that. It was nice. They did some beautiful stuff, you know. When Tech first opened, they sold all the things that the kids made. 

Well, I had an unusual situation with my roommate at Tech, a fellow named George McClaney. 

He was from Rome, Georgia, but his family lived and moved to Atlanta because his father got hurt, and they had to give up their business. 

And his uncle in North Carolina had a big lumber mill in Lumberton, North Carolina, Elizabethtown, North Carolina. 

So George McClaney and his first cousin, right after World War II, bought the lumber mill from their uncle, and they were operating it. And George was the manager of the financial, you know, manager. His first cousin was the production manager that ran the mill, and they had a buyout clause. His first cousin got killed in an automobile rack. 

So he left George with nobody to operate the mill. 

So they gave it back evidently to his uncle and worked it out some way. I'm not sure what. 

But then George got a job actually selling lumber samples or either pieces to make furniture with all those furniture mills in North Carolina. 

He'd go around, you know, and they would sell the right size to make the post or make the back or whatever they were making, and he was doing all right. 

He saw this man who went to North Carolina State, and he had studied wood shop at North Carolina State, and he was making a variety of objects that he made them at North Carolina State and brought them home. People saw them and asked them to make them one. make them one. 

So he did and he was making several different kinds. George McClaney gave him his card and says if you need some financing I'll be glad to go in with you. 

So the man called him up and he and his father called George McClaney my friend and said we're going to take you up on your deal. We got an old man that's financing but he wants to get out of it. 

So George went in with them and they expanded that thing until they were covering the whole United States just about it with wood products of every kind you can think of and he did real well. He ended up setting, I think, his part of the company $6 million. That was pretty good. Yeah, yeah. He's still living. I called him up the other day and talked to him. Did you? 

I bet he was glad to hear from you then. Were you guys living in Brown or had you moved over to Techwood by then? 

We were in Techwood. You moved over. Yeah. 

Okay, well let's go back to school now we were talking about the fact you knew some of the professors you know d.m smith and did you know glenn rainey oh yes dr rainey yeah yeah and i i had one uh wait i'll tell you his name he was a mechanics professor it was an unusual situation because it was the final and it was drawing you know in combination and i was sitting up there you know with all the stuff in front of me and uh he came by and says well how you doing and i says well i'm a little confused i said i figured there's two ways to do this problem and he said well what i said okay i could do it this way oh yeah i could do it that way he says well why don't you try number two that was great i walked i made a hundred yeah that was kind of nice huh so you found the professors to be pretty supportive oh yeah yeah interested in you yeah all right so you got through After that, after your rough start, shall we say, you got through the first year of it. And by this time, it's 1940. Yeah. And you came back. Did you go home for the summer or go to school year round? 

In 1940, I came home. You did come home. Yeah. 

To work at home somewhere, get a job that summer? 

I worked at the, I was the night manager of the Atlantic Ice and Coal Company, this big plant here in Augusta. Oh. I was like 19 years old. And there you were. I had a responsible job, you know. 

But you made a little money then to help you get back into school. I made $2 a day and worked seven days a week, $14 a week from 6 to 6. Wow. Went to work at 6 and got off at 6 in the morning. My gosh. My sister lived here. 

So you could live with her. And I went and lived with her and saved my money, you know, to have money to go back to Georgia Tech. Yeah, so you could get back into school. 

So you went back to school in the fall then of 1940. Yeah. And you were doing better. Doing better, yeah. Yeah, doing much better in your classes. And then it rolled around into the fall, and you got into your junior year by this time. Yes. You were always like just a little half a year difference. Yeah, I was just kind of what I'd call confused class -wise. And did you like the mechanical engineering? 

Yeah, I liked it, what I did. 

What you did, yeah. 

You know, I studied, we studied unusual things because, like I said, mechanical engineering is probably the best engineering course from an overall standpoint that you can take. Because, see, I took electrical and wound electric motors and built an electric motor. 

And then I took fluid flow, which is, you know, transporting a fluid through pipelines and all that stuff, which is not a simple course. And then I took civil engineering. We surveyed all over the campus. 

So you were getting a broad engineering background. Good background. I studied internal combustion engines. All of which were really the kind of things you were most interested in. Engines, steam, and thermodynamics. You did all the studying, and your grades got better. Did you have any social life? 

Did you date anybody? 

Not a great deal. No? 

Because really... 

Did you go to movies? 

Did you do anything? 

Well, every Saturday night, we went to the Fox Theater. Oh, you did? 

Midnight show at 12 o'clock, you know. And it was full of, you know, tech people. And they had that man playing that big old Morgan. Yeah, you like that word. Camel and Rick and all kind of good songs. See, so it was really a good deal. 

So you're telling me that a lot of the kids went for the midnight show? 

Yeah. That was one. I didn't know that. Oh, they did, yeah. It was one of the big things to do. And then. Did you go to the football games? 

Oh, yeah, I went to the football games. I was in charge of the color guard. You were? 

Yeah. 

Well, how'd you get that job? 

Well, they said I looked good in the uniform. Because you were in the ROTC program, right? 

Yeah, yeah. We didn't talk about that yet either. 

When you went in, you could have chosen Army or Navy, and you chose Army? 

Well, let me tell you that, because I had already been drilling down at Richmond Academy. That's right. It was a military school. Because it was a military school. When I went to Atlanta, they asked me what department of the ROTC did I work. They paid you $6 a month, $8 a month, I'm sorry. I think it gave you a uniform that helped you. 

So I needed the money. 

So anyway, I told them it didn't make a great deal of difference to me which department I was in because I wanted to be in the Air Corps and I wanted to fly. In the long run, you would go fly. 

So it was United States Army Air Corps, which is the Department of the Army. Yes, absolutely. It wasn't separated. 

So this man, who was head of the infantry department, says, well, I'll put you in my infantry, and when you graduate from Tech, I will transfer you to the Air Corps. I said, that's fine. The day I graduated from Tech, he was a prisoner of war in Bataan. 

Didn't do you much good then, did he? 

When I told them I was supposed to be in the Air Corps, they said, that's just TS. 

If you know what that means. Yeah, I know what it means. 

I was going to say it didn't do you much good So they said you're going to Fort Benning Let's not go to the Army yet Let's go back to ROTC So because you look good in your uniform They asked you to lead the color guard on the field Yeah so I would drill the color guard You know I mean The flags Yeah I know exactly That's quite an honor They were very patriotic They always had that The band was always on the field You had a military band and you had the regular band we had the glee club and we had a lot of things going on but mostly you went to the movies and I tell you what though the St. 

Mark's Methodist Church had an outstanding youth program so did you go over there? 

I went about 6 o'clock on Sunday night and they must have had 200 girls come to church so they could meet you and it was quite an experience. A lot of guys met their wives at St. Mark's. They did. In fact, I had I knew there was a girl named Sarah Bevers and she was one of the few in high school. She was about 18, I guess. And she had an automobile. Oh, my. 

So you dated her? 

Well, yeah. And then Jean was one of her best friends that married Bobby Shelton. Yeah. Her, too. See? 

You double dated? 

Double dated with her once or twice. And the girls had the cars. That was pretty nice, huh? 

Well, there were very few. And then there was another girl, Dickie and Mickey DuBall. Okay. Two girls, sisters. And you met them at St. Mark's, too? 

Yeah. One of them came to St. Mark's. 

The other one didn't come much, but she had an automobile. Her father was head of Fulton Federal Savings and Loan Association. Oh, well, that was pretty prestigious. He had a real nice job and had a beautiful home out there in Atlanta. 

Where would the girls take you if you went with them in the car? 

Where could you go? 

Well, they just came to church in the car. We didn't go. You didn't take them on a date somewhere? 

No. 

I just wondered, where would you go to eat if you went on a date? 

Well, we didn't do much going on eating on a date. You didn't have any money, right? 

The Vosti. Oh, yeah, the Pilgrims. Do you remember Pilgrims? 

Oh, sure, yeah. Pilgrims, the T-Bone King. Yeah. Yeah. You do remember that? 

We ate that quite a bit. You could get an excellent steak, you know, full meal for 35 cents. Just imagine that. Yeah. And that would include a salad and a baked potato probably. Right, yeah. Yeah. Everything you needed. Yeah. 

So there were plenty of places like that that you could go to for dates if you had the money. 

But money was the big deal, right? 

Well, it was with me. 

But I, well, I haven't gotten to that yet, but I became the dry cleaning and the laundry agent in Techwood Dormitory. Oh, that's a good job to get. I've heard stories about that. I made about $20 a week. More money than you made being the night watchman, right? 

Well, yeah. Or at the coal company. Yeah. 

So, I mean, at that time, my mother paid $178, you know. For the tuition. For the tuition. The rest of it, I took care of myself. What a guy. You were self-independent. Yeah, I was. 

So it turned out real good. It did. Yeah. Gordon, the first summer you were at Augusta in the coal company working. 

The second summer, what did you do? 

The second summer, as well as I remember right now, I worked, which would have been summer of 41, I worked for the government measuring cotton land for farmers. 

You know, they would allot farmers so much cotton land, trying to keep from overproducing cotton to protect the price. 

So they would tell, they made an allotment, and the farmers would plant what they thought was their allotment. 

But quite often, they overplanted. Oh, okay. 

So the government sent somebody out to measure? 

I went out, and I had a helper, and I measured the cotton land that they planted. and found out how much they over-planted. And then I would tell them they would have to plow this up. 

Really? 

So even if they had crop going, they had to plow it up? 

Yeah, they plowed it up, see, and got rid of it. And then the government subsidized the cotton. That's how that all got started. Yeah, that's part of it. They started subsidies years and years ago during the Roosevelt's administration. 

Now, this would have happened, what part? 

Were you in South Georgia? 

No, I was around, well, I lived around Jefferson County. Right, around the whole place. 

Okay, good. 

All right, so you did that, and then in the fall you came back to school, and that's when you moved into the Techwood dorm was in the fall. Yeah. And there you got yourself the job we were just talking about. Yeah. The laundry distribution. Mr. George Griffin, I think, gave me the job. Did he? 

Tell me about George. You got to know him? 

Well, not very well, but I didn't know him. 

He was a real nice person because once he learned something about you, I won't tell you what he said about certain people living in the dormitory because he asked me how I got along with them. And I told him, fine. 

But I said, well, the thing about it, you know, they could be better. He says, well, if you don't like them, you just let me know. I'll move them all out. Really? 

So when you wanted a job, you'd go see him. That's what the kids did was go ask him for work. 

Well, I'm not sure exactly. 

But anyway, I had a friend that had the job, and I think I learned from him that I maybe could get it. 

And what did that consist of exactly? 

What were your responsibilities? 

Well, I went around to the different rooms and picked up dry cleaning, you know, that they wanted to send out. And I carried it down to the room down in the basement where it was stored. And then I also, they came and brought their laundry, you know, and gave it to me, and I kept it. And then the dry cleaning company would come by and pick it up, and they'd carry it out, you know. 

So the kids had to bring you their laundry, but you picked up their dry cleaning. Dry cleaning, and I carried it. 

So would they have a bag that they'd hang out their door or something? 

I mean, how would you pick it up? 

How would you know who had something? 

Yes. 

So somebody would just put it out if they wanted it picked up. And then the cleaning company would deliver it all to you, and you'd have to deliver it to them. They put it in the storage room downstairs where there was a headquarters where I went at night. And they had certain nights that I went down and stayed maybe a couple hours. And they came by and picked up the laundry. Oh, so you just manned it. They came to you for it. 

But then I delivered the dry cleaning back to the different rooms. Okay. And they paid me, there's always cash, you know, and everything. 

So they had to pay you for the dry cleaning. They paid me for dry cleaning and did laundry. And then you ended up getting a profit on the whole thing. Oh, yeah. I made about $20 a week. That was pretty good money. It was. It was not bad at all, real good. I mean, that's $80 a month. That's a lot of good money there. It was. Yeah. 

So, I mean, that's all I needed to go to school. Yeah, you had enough to pay all your other expenses. You know, books and actually food and so forth. 

So you didn't have to ask your mama for any more than that? 

A little bit of spending money. How was your mama making out back at home? 

Well, fair. My brother, like I said, wasn't as good a farmer. 

So, I mean, when my father died, he had gotten through the Depression, and he had $3,000 or $4,000 in the bank, which was a good bit of money, you know, when he died in 1938. 

But then my brother was courting and all. And it kind of didn't do so well. And he grabbed me. 

So it made you feel good not to have to take extra money from your mama if you could help it, right? 

Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, of course, your life was going on. 

And then that December, on December the 7th, you know, as Roosevelt said, the day that we'll live in infamy. Where were you when you heard the news? 

I was sitting at a table in Techwood Domitory. We had, it was a suite of rooms. We had three rooms. A central room is kind of a study room, we called it. 

And then off to that, we had two bedrooms, and I had a roommate in the bedroom, and then across the hall, I had another couple of roommates. Who was your roommate then? 

A fellow named Julian Gilman from Richmond, Virginia. 

So you were sitting at the table studying. 

I was sitting at the table studying and had a radio, and it came on about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, you know, or 2 o'clock. 

And you heard the broadcast, and did you know what that meant? 

Did you realize how that was going to affect your life? 

No, I really didn't at that time, you know. You still didn't know it meant you were going to be. 

Well, they didn't tell you all the details, you know, and all that anyway. It was pretty scary. It was. Did you even know where Pearl Harbor was? 

Well, I knew Pearl Harbor. Because I heard a lot of people didn't even know where it was. 

Well, I knew Pearl Harbor and Hawaii and those places not very well, but I heard it. It changed everything for everybody in the country. It did. There's no doubt about that. It changed everything. 

School finished up, but Georgia Tech stepped up everything, didn't they? 

They changed to a quarter system. They changed to year -round school. Yeah. And the Navy ROTC expanded into the Naval program, the V-12 program. Yeah. The Army into the ASTP program. There was a V-5 program. There was all kind of stuff. And all of a sudden, everybody was in uniform. Right, yeah. 

Now, you had already been in the ROTC for the first two years you'd been at Georgia Tech. Did you plan on going in for the rest of the way? 

Well, I intended to stay in there. 

Well, I told you, the man told me he would transfer me to the Air Corps. Right, so you were staying in all four years. I was staying in there to graduate and get transferred to the Air Corps. Yeah, but you would get your commission if you stayed all four years. 

Well, yeah, but see, they changed all that because you used to have to go to summer camp. Yeah. In an ROTC program, but they cut all that out. 

So they didn't give you a commission out of college. They made you go to OCF. You have to go to OCF. Offs the Kennedy School. 

But you couldn't even get into that if you didn't have the third and fourth years of ROTC. Not likely, but there's a possibility you could. 

How were you doing in your studies by then? 

Were you doing pretty good? 

Well, let's just say this. I went from flunking, as I told you, to making the dean's list. Isn't that wonderful? 

It is, yeah. When I graduated as a senior, I was making, you know, 90 or above. Wow, that's amazing. 

So you really caught on and got going. Yeah, I learned how to study. That's the big deal, learning how to study. Yeah, it was. In fact, well, I'll have to, by going into airco and all, I'll tell you. Let's talk about what was going on at the school at that time. 

Now, everybody was caught up in what was going on. 

There was an accelerated class program because the government, the military needed engineers and they needed educated people. 

So a lot of people quit school to go in and enlist. 

Well, I had a roommate that did, a suite mate did. He enlisted. And he enlisted in Air Corps. I saw articles in the technique saying, don't quit school, men. They need you to be engineers. and yet a lot of kids did do that, didn't they? 

Well, my roommate, Julian Gilman, I was telling you about, he wasn't in the ROTC program, but he stayed at Tech, and when he graduated from Tech, they gave him a commission and sent him to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, you know, in the engineering department. Yeah, lots of them did that. Lots of them. There was a dean then called Dean Ajax. 

Well, I knew him very well. 

Remember Dean Ajax? 

He was trying to get everybody to sign up for the ASTP program because he thought they'd stay in school. And those kids that signed up were drafted almost immediately. Within two months, they were all gone because we were going. Once the war got going, it really got going. 

Well, I had a roommate named Joe, what? 

I can't think of his last name right now. 

But he joined the Air Corps, and he became a pilot. And that's what you wanted to do. 

Yeah, he was flying an airplane out of Massachusetts on a night mission with some paratroopers in it or something, and they ran into a mountain, and everybody got killed. Wow, that's terrible. Yeah, it was. 

So you were hearing all kinds of stories like that, but you were hanging in there to finish up your schooling. Sure, yeah. Yeah, okay. The rest of the schooling went well. You were studying well. 

You were determined you were going to get your degree, and you knew you were going to go in the military then, didn't you? 

You knew you were going to go. 

And your idea was that when the degree was handed to you, you were going to go in the Army Air Corps and learn to be a pilot. 

That was what you always wanted to do, right? 

So when you actually graduated from Tech, you got out. It was February, did you tell me? 

February the 9th. Around February the 1st, the 2nd. Of 1943. 

And you were automatically in the Air Force? 

I mean, in the Army Air Corps or the Army? 

Or what were you in? 

What was the condition? 

Well, like I told you, when I told them I was supposed to go to R-Mail, they said it was too bad. 

So they said, you go into Fort Benning and you're going into infantry school to be a second lieutenant in the infantry. 

So that's what happened to you? 

So our whole class was sent to Fort Benning. And I went to Fort Benning. 

Were they on an accelerated program for your basic training and all that? 

Because you hadn't been away. You hadn't been to any of the summer camps or anything, had you? 

No, I hadn't. All right, so you had to go through boot camp. 

Well, yeah, I went through OCS as a corporal, you know. Oh, you did. Yeah, and then actually for what they call, what, 16-week window? 

Yeah. 

So I went through Fort Benning. 

But I was ill-prepared for Fort Benning. You know, I had never put up a tent in my life. We had no training. I missed summer camp. You know how to march. I won the Boy Scout. Yeah. 

So then, but I was, it's amazing, I was the tallest one in the platoon that I operated in at Fort Benning. Really? 

You were the tallest one? 

So yeah, and I looked like the largest one there. 

So everything that came that was hard to do, you know, they'd say, okay, give Farmer the Browning Automatic Rifle. and it's a heavy I've forgotten maybe 16 pounds but you put it on your shoulder you know and it feels like it's going to crush through your bones and I wasn't used to that but I did and then they'd also say well give him the machine gun tripod you know that's that steel when you hold your hands and carry it on your back with a full field pack so you were doing all the grunt work I was selected just about every time for what you'd call the worst deal, either the hardest thing to do in the platoon training, to be a second lieutenant. They were trying to make you real strong, I guess. 

Well, they put you through everything you see, just about these hard deals, these obstacle courses, and all that kind of stuff. You were doing everything with a full pack. Oh, yeah. After four months, what happened? 

Then you got your second lieutenant. 

Well, let me tell you what. 

Back at Tech, before I graduated, the new man that came in as head of the infantry department was a fellow named Colonel O'Neill, and he was an old Army man that had been in the Army all his life. 

He was used to people from the WPA or the CCC, which was back in the 30s, see? 

So when he got to Georgia Tech and he ran into these smart boys, you know, he was impressed. 

You know, and so I made $100 on everything that I ever took in the ROTC program, you know, I mean, the book work. 

And so he says, if any of you men ever get out of here and run into me, you know, away from Georgia Tech, if I can help you, you let me know. Okay. 

See? 

So did you run into them? 

At Fort, when I got out of Fort Benning, I was assigned to the 9th Battalion at Fort McClellan, Alabama. and I was attached to it along with 14 second lieutenants that were waiting to be transferred out where we were needed. 

So we were just attached to there. And the battalion commander was a major who had graduated from Georgia Tech. Really? 

Yeah. 

So he looks down his list of second lieutenants and saw that I graduated from Georgia Tech. 

He called me to his office and says, He says, Lieutenant, I need a platoon leader in my C Company, 3rd Platoon. 

Would you like to stay here with me and help me train troops? 

Well, now, if you check back about that time, things were going terrible in Monte Cassino, Italy, you know, where they were trying to capture Monte Cassino, and people, Americans, were getting killed like they were going out of style. Left and right, yeah. It was terrible. See, so that didn't appeal to me. 

So, I mean, and I was green as I could be, you know, I mean, from a combat standpoint. 

So you said, sure. I didn't think I'd make a very good second lieutenant. 

But anyway, I told him yes. 

So I stayed there and actually helped train one or two cycles of incoming troops, you know. and then one night I went to the officers' club and who had been transferred to the officers' club as second-in-command at Fort McClellan except Colonel Nell from Georgia Tech. Wow, so there he is. 

I had talked to them and put in my application to be transferred to the Air Corps and they said, it'll never get out of the orderly room. He says, don't worry about it, you aren't going to ever get in the Air Corps. 

So I saw Colonel Nell and I says, Colonel, I want to remind you what you told us at Georgia Tech. He says, Farmer, I remember you. 

So I said, you said if you could help us. 

I said, I'd like to be in the Air Corps because I've always, and I was supposed to be transferred to the Air Corps, and it didn't happen. 

So he says, I'll see what I can do for you. 

About a couple of days later, the commanding general of Fort McClellan called me up and said, Lieutenant, I understand you need to talk to me. And I said, yes. He said, well, come over to my quarters tomorrow night at 8 o'clock and see me. 

So I went, and I told him a story. He says, I know how you feel. He says, I've got a son that's flying a B-17 right now in Italy. 

But I've been in the infantry all my life, and I love it. 

But if you want to be in the Air Corps, see what I can do for you. And then it wasn't very long before I got transferred to the Air Corps. Isn't that something? 

It is. 

So even in the military, it all depended on who you knew, huh? 

Yeah, it sure does. 

So when you were transferred to the Air Corps, where did you go? 

Well, they sent me immediately to Nashville, Tennessee for what they call classification. 

So they give you tests to see what you're classified for. 

I was classified as, you know, for pilot, navigator, or bombardier, any of them, see? 

So you passed all the tests really well. 

So I passed all the tests. 

And then I was sent to Fort McClellan, no, Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama for pre-flight training, they call it. You know, well, it's the book work. To understand how it all works. 

Right, yeah, and study weather and airplane engines and airplanes, you know, and the dynamics of airplanes and so forth. 

And all the studying was on an accelerated basis, too, wasn't it? 

Well, yeah, and so I went there, and, of course, I did real well because what they taught, I had already been having a lot of it at Georgia Tech. They had a big, nice Allison liquid -cooled engine that we studied. I knew more about it than the instructor. I'm sure you did. And they asked me, these friends of mine, you know, Ryan, we had about 35 or 40 in the class. 

I sat on the top row in one of these big elevated classes, and a young man from Purdue sat on the bottom row. I told these people, I said, I know the answers to all this stuff. I'm not going to give you the answer. I'm going to make it available if you get it. Okay. 

So they had these desks, you know, with a big panel where you work here, and they'd give you a test. And so I sat there, and I filled out the man next to me. All he had to do was look over there and just get the answer. He was cheating. 

So they gave me credit for passing the upper half of that class. 

And the man from Purdue was passing the lower half, see? 

You guys were the kingpin, huh? 

I was the populous son of a gun, see? 

A lot of it was a metric system, and I had had a lot of stuff connected with the metric system, too. You understood that pretty good. 

So I understood that. 

But they told me, they said, you know more about these courses than the instructor. 

How in the world did you learn this stuff? 

I said, well, I just took internal combustion engines at Georgia Tech, see? 

So we started all this stuff. 

What was the next move then, once you passed all that? 

Then, after I got out of there, I was sent to Orangeburg, South Carolina, to Hawthorne School of Aeronautics, a primary training school in the Air Corps. Okay. And I got there. It was a civilian training school, see, and I was a second lieutenant. 

So I was sent there as a second lieutenant. 

And there was two or three second lieutenants like me, you know, that had come from other organizations that got transferred to their corps. 

So my instructor was a civilian, and I did rather well, but I ended up having vertigo. Really? 

Yeah, I had sinus trouble real bad. Oh. 

And I'd wake up at night with the room spinning around, you know, and terrible, and it'd make you sick of the stomach. 

So doing... You couldn't be a pilot then. 

Well, I had a problem, you know, and trying to do maneuvers and everything like that, it didn't suit me at all. 

So anyway, I got to a primary okay, and I was sent to Shaw Air Force Base at Sumter, South Carolina, to the basic training. And that's a more advanced airplane. And I got there, and they didn't have enough instructors to go around. And they didn't especially like second lieutenants. See, everybody else just about it was a cadet. Oh. You know, and my instructor was a second lieutenant of the ones I had. And they didn't especially care for me. And, of course, see, they were kind of loose with their language. You know, they call you a son of a *****. Don't you know there ain't any better than doing that? 

I said, let me tell you one thing. I just came out of the infantry, and we don't put up with that. And I said, I'm not going to call you a son of a *****. Don't you call me a son of a *****. 

So you made the rule, huh? 

See, so they didn't like that. 

So I became kind of a victim, you might call it. 

So I wasn't given an instructor. Every flight that I made scheduled was a different instructor. He didn't know anything about what I had learned otherwise. so I wasn't doing very well so I decided then other problems with vertigo and so forth I went to the squadron commander and told him I don't think I'll ever make it I said night flying is coming up and I haven't even learned day flying yet and I said I don't want to get myself killed in this basic trainer and he said well I see your point he said well it's unusual for you to come in and resign I said well he says what do you want to do I says I don't know he says well let me look at your classification he came up and says well you can either be a navigator or bombardier what do you want to do I says I don't want to go back to the infantry so he says I'll send you to navigation school I said fine let's do that so then I went to navigation school and I never had any problems from then on because see I wasn't I wasn't doing maneuvers and I wasn't doing any of that kind of stuff. 

So you didn't have all the disease. 

So I ended up, you know, taking navigation training at San Marcos Army Air Base in Texas. Okay. And did all right there. And by this time, it's what, 1942 somewhere? 

Yeah. Pretty far along because you had gotten out of, no, no, it's 1943. It was early, yeah, it was later, over 43 or getting to early 44. 

So when did you get assigned to a crew? 

Well, then from San Marcos Army Air Base, when I graduated navigation school, they sent me to Avon Park, Florida. 

Well, you were going all over the country, weren't you? 

And I was assigned in Avon Park, Florida. I was assigned to a B-17 crew, you know. Oh, 8th Air Force B-17 crew as a navigator. 

And I stayed with them and trained for several weeks, you know, flying and learning the B-17, you know, and so forth. 

Now, you didn't get sick in the B-17? 

No, I didn't. 

Well, it was straight flying. Yeah. I never did have a – I had a little problem at night from time to time, but most of it. I went to the hospital, you know, and they checked me. They couldn't find anything wrong with me, but they weren't familiar with why I was having it. They said, maybe you drank too much coffee, or maybe this or that, and none of that worked. See, so I still... had my problem. 

But flying straight, you know, and so forth, didn't bother me. 

So you got assigned to this. What was the name of your plane? 

Did you all have a name for your plane? 

Not then. We just had a training plane. Okay. 

So when did you get your first assignment to go into battle? 

Well, from A1 Park, Florida. Then we came through Savannah, which is the staging area, they call it. And we were assigned a brand new B-17 to fly to England. 

And we stayed in Savannah several, two or three weeks, and then we left Savannah with the new B-17 to fly to Grenier Field, Connecticut. And that was another stop on the way. That was your first test flight, yeah. 

Yeah, and then we left Grenier Field, Connecticut, and flew to Goose Bay Labrador, which is up in the county you know right away so that's the second leg from goose bay labrador we were supposed to fly across the north atlantic to england what do you mean you were supposed to you didn't well yeah oh you did the weather was so bad in like early november of 1944 you know until i we stayed in goose bay labrador around three weeks wow we couldn't get out the weather was so bad until you couldn't fly and the snow was 10 feet deep oh they had big passageways cut between the barracks and the officers club here you are a southern boy in all that snow and oh but worse than that they had barracks and uh they had oil heaters in them and all it was It was 20 degrees below zero. Oh, my. And it was. You're freezing. It was. The oil heater gave out at 5 o'clock in the morning. Oh, wow. And then that barracks got cold, grid, goodness of life. 

And you got up and put on your clothes and made it to the officer's club just as fast as you could get, you know, to go get breakfast. Talk about cold, huh? 

And then we stayed in the officer's club all day. They had slot machines and poker tables and all that stuff going on. Just passing the time. Yeah, just passing the time. 

But it's kind of unusual because the airplanes were out on the parapet, you know, parked, waiting to go whenever the weather got right. 

But some days we thought we could fly, or they'd tell us, and we'd go out there. 

The airplane had these great big canvas covers over the wings, you know, to keep the ice from building up on the wings. 

And I was the only one tall enough to reach up there and unlock the locking device to turn the cannabis loose. See, so we'd go out there in the morning, and it was about 20 degrees below zero. Wow. And we'd reach up there, you know, your nose would freeze. Wow. And your eyes, eyelids, you know, you had eyelashes with frozen. You know, and everything else like that. It was cold, red goodness. 

But I was the only one. 

We'd lock it, clean off the airplane, get the ice off of it, and then wait to see if we were going to fly. And then we didn't fly, so we'd put the thing back on it. 

So day after day, week after week, huh? 

We did that several weeks, two or three weeks. And then finally you got locked there. Finally, they decided to go. And headed for England. Let me tell you, you're going to hear a story when you listen to this. We left at night, you know, and it was foggy and sleeting and rainy, and we left anyway. 

Normally, you know, you've got celestial navigation where you can navigate by the stars or either have some landmarks or something. The only thing I was given was the probable winds, you know, out over the North Atlantic. 

And, well, to tell you one time, we left Goose Bay to fly to two nuggly arctic fjord, Greenland, an air base there. And we got there, and it was so fogged in until you couldn't even see it. You couldn't do it. You had to fly up this long fjord to the air base sitting at the end of the waterway. 

So we got there, and you couldn't see anything. There wasn't any chance of landing, so we had to turn around it and go back to Goose Bay. I think it was about 800 miles. Wow. 

So then when we went across the North Atlantic, we left at night, like I said, and I was navigating as best I could, and I couldn't see nothing to navigate by whatsoever. 

I sat there and read the compass and the airspeed indicator, you know, and the temperature and the different instruments that I had and kept a log. 

About 500 miles off the coast of England, they called and said the weather is so bad in British Isles until there's not an air base that you can possibly land. Everything is closed in. 

They said the only air base that you can possibly land is at Stonaway, Scotland, which is an island off the north coast of Scotland in the North Sea. Good heavens. 

And the pilot turned to me and says, well, can you give me the coordinates of Stonaway, Scotland? 

I said, I don't have any idea, but I'll find it. I got out my maps, and I found Stonaway, Scotland. 

So he says, can you give me a heading for Stonaway? 

So I gave him a heading for Stonaway, Scotland, based on what I knew at that time, just keeping unidentified information. 

See? 

And he says, well, can you tell me about what time we'll estimate a time of arrival? 

I remember I said 4.02 p.m., see, all night, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Wow. 

So he says, so we flew on and on and on. You couldn't see the sky. You couldn't see land. Oh, that must have been scary. We didn't see anything flying through clouds, you know, just continuously. 

Out over the North Atlantic, though, we would have the ice building up on the wings, you know, with sleet. And I'd look out there, and you'd see the wings form. You know, if it forms too bad, you lose lift, and the airplane falls. 

See, so anyway, every now and then, he would flex what they call the boot on the front of the wing was a hard rubber boot that would flex out and break the ice off. And you'd see the ice particles flying off of it. 

So anyway, that went on all night, about around five minutes to four, a little before 4 o 'clock in the afternoon. I says, you better lay down through these clouds and let's find out where we are. Looking for a landmark, huh? 

Yeah. We lay down through the clouds. We were over the air base. You were right there where you needed to be? 

Over the air base. Isn't that great? 

It is, isn't it? 

Yeah. Unprecedented. After that, those characters, they got out and kissed the ground. I bet they did. Because, see, they had been asleep all night and they didn't have any idea, you know. You were the one sweating it out. The gunners and everybody else except the co-pilot and me and the pilot and the radio operator. Yeah, let's go through it. Anyway. Safe landing there. After that, they decided I knew what I was doing. 

Well, I guess you did know what you were doing. 

So then what happened? 

Did you get assigned at a base in England? 

Yeah, then we left there after a day or two and flew down and left that airplane at one of the staging areas, they call it. 

And then we were assigned to the 490th Bomb Group, you know, which is one of the ******* groups in England at that time, which was halfway between Dorwich and Ipswich, 95 miles north of London. 

And then you took assignments as they came in? 

We went there, you know, and we were assigned to the 848th Squadron, you know, in the 8th Air Force, in the B-17. And we started flying with that. And then after several missions, they decided we had a real good crew. 

So we were selected to be a lead crew, you know, first. Tell me how this worked. You were living in barracks at the air base. Yes. 

And then every so many, they rotated the crews, right? 

Every so many hours, every day, every other day. How often would you come up for a mission? 

Sometimes every day. Every day? 

Yeah, according to... And so what, the captain would get, the pilot would get the mission statement, and then you... No, they would come around. Actually, our crew, or the officers of the crew, lived in a barracks all together. 

And they would come, a man would come around, according to what time they wanted you to fly and how far you were going, and they'd come around and shine a flashlight in your face and you're in bed and say, Lieutenant Farmer, you're flying today. 

So get up. You know, says, you better hit the deck. The truck will pick you up in 30 minutes. 

So you get up as fast as you can. 

So you have time to get your clothes on and get ready, and a truck comes by and carries you to the mess hall. And the first thing you do is carry you to the mess hall. 

Well, I had a deal that I didn't smoke, you know. And so, but I got like a carton of cigarettes a week. It was an allotment at the PX. 

So I went to the PX and I bought everything that they would let you have, like chewing gum and candy and everything, see? 

And then the English found out about it. They found out that I had cigarettes and I didn't smoke. 

So they would come by and bring me fresh butter. They traded, so you were buttering. Fresh beer and eggs. Yeah. Fresh eggs. 

So you gave them cigarettes, they gave you food? 

Yeah. And I took my two eggs to the mess hall with me and got in line with everybody else. 

When I got up to where I was being served, I hand my eggs to a cook and told them to go bring them back over medium. And they would cook your eggs to order. They cooked my eggs to order and brought it out, and everybody else was having a fit. They said, you know, you S. O. B., how in the world do you rate this? 

How do you negotiate that? 

I said, well, yeah, how in the world do you rate this? 

But anyway, that's what I did. 

Well, that was a smart move. You didn't need to be right. Back in the base, they brought that excellent bread that they cooked in an outside oven. I'll be darned. You know, and that fresh butter. Yeah, so you were living large there. 

I had a little heater, and I'd spread a lot of that butter on a big, thick piece of bread and put it on the heater, and they'd toast it. See? 

And I'd just eat. 

It was delicious by itself, see? 

So once you got an assignment like that, then, your crew was together all the time. You ate together, slept together and everything. No, the crew, not the gunners, the radio operator, the officers were in that crew together. 

Okay, that's right. Everybody in that barracks were officers from some crew. Right, and you got to know each other really well. We got to know some of the other officers. 

So you'd work together. Yeah. 

All right, so did you ever get your own plane that you named, and that's what you went on? 

No, we did not, because when we got there, there were a lot of crews leaving, and new crews coming in, and they had airplanes, and we didn't ever get assigned an airplane. 

So you flew whatever was there? 

They assigned us a plane, but it wasn't ours especially, but it was a plane to do the job you needed that day. 

When we became, as soon as we'd been there a short time, we were selected to be a lead crew, which is the first, that's the crew that's got the commanding officer flying with you, see, a colonel, a general. And he sits in the co-pilot seat. Okay. 

And what would be your assignments? 

What was your mission? 

Well, wherever they wanted you to go that day. 

But it was to bomb, right? 

Oh, yeah. You were going to drop bombs. Oh, yeah, sure. You hadn't told us yet. It was air bases. It was railroad stations. And most of them were where? 

Germany? 

Yeah, Germany. Some, once or twice, France, you know, close to Germany. And your job was to be the navigator and get you there and get you back. Yeah. 

Which actually, you know, we've taken off from England, and I didn't see the ground from the time we took off until we got back. 

So you had to do it all by? 

The pilot didn't have any idea where he was. Did you know that? 

I mean, they don't realize it. Yeah, it's up to you. You had to make the calculations. 

But the navigator is the one that tells them where to go and when to turn and when to turn around and when to come back. 

So you guys were very successful with your missions. Yeah, we were. 

So they thought we had an excellent crew. 

So they made us a lead crew. And I flew as a lead crew. 

How many months did you spend doing that lifestyle? 

How many missions did you do? 

Well, actually, we went to the flight line 16 times, ready to fly, and the weather was so bad we couldn't take off. Wow. During the winter of 1944. That's when the Battle of the Bulge was taken off. 

If you're familiar with that, you know, and that's when the air corps couldn't fly and help the ground troops because the weather was so bad. 

So bad. 

And finally, when the weather cleared up and let the air corps fly, They annihilated the Germans, you know, but the Germans was about to defeat them in the Battle of the Bulge, you know, when they had the fighting around the town of Belgium. Yeah. You know. 

So you flew all together? 

You flew how many missions? 

I flew 17 missions. 17. Yeah, and then I flew about three missions, what we call food missions. 

If you ever heard about the time that the Germans flooded the dikes, you know, opened the dikes and flooded the lands in Holland, and they ruined all the food and everything. 

So people didn't have anything to eat. The Dutch didn't have anything to eat. 

So we flew over Holland after the war, right after that, with a load of food, and we flew right over the treetops. And we had drop areas, they call it, the people. 

We'd see them on the ground, and we'd push all these boxes out, you know, and they'd fall down that farm. Yeah, and then they could distribute their food. 

I flew one what they call a weather mission, where you go out over Europe and check on the weather to report back, you know, to headquarters as to the weather, what the condition is. One weather mission. 

So every time you would go out on a flight, you'd get points. 

And the time you spent there, you got points for how long you were going to stay, right? 

Isn't that how that works? 

Well, no, it's mission, completed mission. Completed missions. Yeah. Did anybody ever shoot at you all? 

Oh, yeah, we got shot up bad. 

Did you? 

The last mission I flew over the edge of Berlin, we had the two right engines shot out of our B-17. Wow, wow. 

So you had some really scary experiences. 

Over the area of Prague, Czechoslovakia, we got hit by Me 262 jet German engines that we'd never seen German planes. Wow. And there were four of them. We were there, and we had a cloud cover at 27,000 feet over us and an undercover at 25,000 feet. And we were flying in the corridor at 26,000 feet. You look up, you couldn't see, you know, anything except clouds. You look down, you saw just clouds. And we thought that we should have some ******, you know, 351 escorts. And that's what we were looking for. And we were on what they call the bomb run, you know, going to the target. And the target was supposed to be, we didn't bomb it unless it was visible. It was an oil installation, see. And it says you take a secondary target if you can't see it. 

Well, we were down run, they call it, on the bomb run from the initial point where you turn. And the bombardier takes over the airplane, and he flies the airplane with the bombsite. Oh. Which is, you know, at Norton Bombsite, which was highly secret. 

And it was a fantastic estimate if you knew how to operate it exactly, because it would put the ******* right on the target. 

So you're talking about Loren, right? 

The Loren, is that what you said, L-O-R-A-N? 

Norton. Oh, Norton. Norton Bombsite. N-O-R-T-O-N. Yeah, Norton Bombside. I want to make sure I understand. It was a highly secret instrument. And we were on the bomb run, and you couldn't see the target, see? 

And we were looking for ******. Our co-pilot flew in the tail of our airplane in the place of the tail gun. And he reported on the formation behind us to the command pilot sitting in his seat. 

If there's anybody straggling or not pulling, keeping close formation, he would report it by seeing them. He'd call the command pilot and tell them. 

The command pilot would call that airplane and tell them to pull in or close it in or something that you aren't, you know. That's how everybody was keeping in touch. That's how you kept in touch, see. 

Well, anyway, the co-pilot looked out there, and he says there's four P-51s with wing tanks just dropped down out of clouds out here about 600 yards on our tail. And he said, oh my god, they're firing at us. There were four ME-262s. What he thought were wing tanks were those jet engines. Wow. We never had seen them before. 

The first one threw, shot down our right wingman. Wow. 

The second one got the left wingman. 

The third one ran into the right wingman. 

Evidently, that pilot had been shot up probably killed he ran into the right wingman and they blew up the fourth one went down under the formation and pulled up at 11 o'clock and i saw him go up in the clouds so i mean our command pilot i called him and i said jake his name was jake dry i knew him he was in the same barracks that we were i said jake what target you want to take we can't see the target he couldn't talk Oh, he'd been shot. Huh? 

He'd been shot. No, he was in shock. Oh, he was in shock. That's what he saw. Oh, I thought he'd been shot. Oh, my, oh, my. 

So there we were, you know, barreling down through there, you know, a whole formation. 

And I says, Jake, what do you want to bomb? 

And finally he got his collective senses together, and he said, well, where are we? 

I says, now we're close to Munich. He says, well, can we bomb Munich? 

I said, yes. He said, okay, let's drop out bombs on munich. And that's what you did. 

So that's what we did. See, so that was quite an experience. 

So that was really a close call for you. That was a really close call. 

So when you got back after that 16th mission or 17th? 

What was it? 17th was the last one. The last one. Then why? 

What happened then? 

Your team was transferred somewhere else? 

No. 

I was telling you, we were over the edge of Berlin and we had the two right engines and shot out our B -17 with anti-aircraft fire. And, you know, you can what they call feather the engine. You turn the propeller straight into the wind, and then it doesn't try to turn. Right. 

And you haven't got any power on it, so it'll lock itself down, you know, and won't form what you'd call drag on the airplane. The right propeller number four, they couldn't feather it. It ran away. And it was normally, it had turned 2,200 RPMs, it was cruising speed of a B-17. It was turning 5,500 RPMs, turned with the wind, going through the air. My goodness. 

So what happened then? 

So then we were trying to, the airplane got to shaking real bad from vibration because the thing was so bad. And in such bad condition from that. You know, and the whole right side of the airplane had no power. 

But then before we left the airbase that morning, we were walking out the door. 

The briefing officer says, Between here and your target is the most forward airbase in Europe that we captured from the Germans at 12 o'clock last night. He says, I'll give you the coordinates. 

If you need them, you might could use them. 

So I took down the coordinates of that airbase. 

Well, it was on our route. 

So I looked up the coordinates, and I gave the pilots the coordinates of that air base. 

So we threw everything in the airplane out to try to make it stay up. All the guns and everything in there. Wow, pretty exciting, huh? 

Yeah. 

And then everybody in the airplane except me and the pilot went back in the radio room and cried, waiting for the airplane if something happened to it, so they could jump. And they were all back there. and I was there navigating. 

I look out on the right and see that, well, the feathered engine and the one on the outside running away. And it was just vibrating the airplane. It looked like the airplane might fall apart. 

So finally, but he couldn't take any evasive action with the airplane because it didn't have enough power. He was trying to keep the thing in the air. 

So then finally the propeller melted the shaft. and went up over the top of the plane through the air, and that quieted the things down. It melted all the cowling, you know, the big aluminum cowling out over the engine. All of that melted off. It actually melted the cooling fins on the engine. It ran red hot from that propeller, you know, turning. And so then we threw everything out of the airplane, but we lost altitude. 

When we got hit, we were at 26,000 feet. 

When we got over that air base, we were less than 1,000. Wow. 

We were just kind of gliding, you know, and keeping in there and running out of airspace when we landed at that air base. It was a miracle, really. We got there, yes. Yeah, it was a miracle. 

And then we spent the night there, but then they took us to what they call the staging area in Brussels, which had been captured from the Germans. several a while before that. 

And then they were blowing up the ammunition dump at the air base when we got there, the German, you know. And we ate in the German mess hall. It had all these German, you know, signs on it, you know, don't eat too much and all this stuff. 

But then we went to Brussels and we stayed two or three days in Brussels until we got a transport then that carried us to Paris. And we went to Paris, and from Paris, we got on a plane and flew back to the air base. By the time I got back to the air base, it had been about a week or more. And we got hit, I think it was the 20th of April, and like May the 7th, you know, it was VE Day. 

So timing was everything for this. 

So the time we got back, they were pretty well phasing out flying, and they had several missions. And we lost airplanes, too. 

Well, did they talk about what was going to go on in Japan and the South Pacific? 

Well, yeah, actually, after that, I was supposed to come back to the United States and be trained on a B-29 and go to the South Pacific. But, see, that was in May. And we were at our air base, and they didn't send us home until the 15th of July. 

So I was two months in England, so it was basically nothing to do. 

So what we did is we'd go down to the flight line and tell them that we wanted to get a V-17 and get in some flight time. And they'd let us have an airplane. 

And so that crew was doing that? 

Our crew flew all over Europe looking at the devastation, you know, in France and Germany and Holland and everywhere. And it was real interesting. 

You know, flew to Cologne Cathedral and looked at all the devastation around the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, except the cathedral was sitting up there with a few holes in the roof, but the rest of it looked real good. You know, and those bad places they talk about, like Archen, Germany, it was completely destroyed. We went to see that. 

Well, you were like tourists then, huh? 

Yeah, we were. You were just tourists. We were having a good time. Touring around. Yeah. Then what happened? 

Did they say? 

And did you have enough? 

I came home the 15th of July. 

Because you had enough points to come home? 

Well, I mean, there wasn't anything else in Europe for me to do. Okay. 

So they sent you guys home. 

So then we flew back in a B-17, a war-weary B-17, though. It wasn't in very good condition. And they gave us 13 other airmen to bring home. You know, people that would stick to the air base. 

And with their barracks bags and their loot that they were bringing home, you know, that they'd collected, the airplane was basically just about overloaded by the time you filled it with fuel to make it from England to the United States. We flew to Reykjavik, Iceland, and spent the night. And the airport at Reykjavik, the main runway, runs right straight down to the ocean. And we got in the airplane loaded to leave Reykjavik, you know, to come to Goose Bay, Labrador. And then it didn't look like the airplane was going to get off the ground. Too heavy. It was too heavy. It would bounce, and it would get up to the full feet, and then it would settle back down again. That was scary. It was. And I was looking out there, seeing that ocean coming up. A little bit too soon. And so I said, **** of a load. to get through combat in England and turn around and get killed in Reykjavik, Iceland, trying to get home. Oh, my. 

Well, it bounced one time, and the pilot started retracting the landing gear. Oh, wow. And when he did, the thing kept up. And we just skimmed right along the top of the ocean that we got. 

But then I found out that the instruments on the airplane were bad. You know, they hadn't been checked in quite a while. The compass was off and everything else. 

But it didn't take me long. to find out that I wasn't on the right route, you know, to get to Goose Bay. 

So I made the corrections, and we made it fine. 

Well, that was great. When you got back home, where were you assigned? 

Well, I wasn't assigned anywhere. I had a month's leave. I got home right after the 15th of July. And the 5th of August, they dropped a bomb on Japan. Otherwise, you'd have been training to go back. Yeah, I would have been training. I needed to go to Florida to be trained to go to Japan, or either the South Pacific. 

But then they notified me that I could get out. Your timing was good. You had enough points and there was no more war there. Yeah, well. Yeah, I've heard many times that saved a lot. They tried to get me to stay in the Air Corps. I was the first lieutenant. They said, well, make you a major because we need you to train navigators, you know, from now on. And what did you say? 

I told them I'd already had enough, you know. More than enough. Yeah, I said, I don't want to change my luck. 

Yeah, it was going pretty good so far, you better not push it, huh? 

I said, I didn't want to push my luck. I got home, people said, well, you're going to get you an airplane and fly? 

I said, **** no. You got that out of your system, huh? 

Yeah. You got that out of your system. 

So anyway. 

So you ended up back in Stellaville. 

Yeah, I came to Stullerville, and I had three months leave, see, so from the time of August, September, I didn't get out of the air cord until about the middle of December. I was getting paid, see, which was real good. And what were you doing? 

Well, then I'll tell you about the block plan. 

Well, what happened is, when you came home, what did you do that three months? 

You just rested up? 

I just rested. Yeah, and saved your money. And took it easy, you know, and had a good time. 

What were you thinking about? 

What business were you going to go into? 

What were you going to do for work? 

Well, that was not any time. Before I left Georgia Tech, I had been offered two or three jobs. 

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company says, well, I couldn't take a job with them because I was going to the Army, and I had one or two other offers. 

So they said, well, when you get back from the Army, if you check with us, you know, we might could give you a job. 

So anyway, then I had a friend who was a personnel manager of the Scott Paper Company. 

And he called me up and says, would you like me to give you a job working with our company? 

He says, I'll send you down to Brunswick, Georgia, to our big paper mill, and you can work there. And I says, yeah, I'm interested. He says, well, we're going to have interviews in Augusta. He says, come, you know, and I'll see you, and I can give you a job. 

So in the meantime, my sister-in -law, who was secretary to the mayor in Augusta, married to my older brother, who was an alcoholic. Oh, your brother was. Yeah, and he had been working at Warner Robins Air Force Base in a government job. It had phased out, so he didn't have a job. 

So she comes out there visiting. She and my brother visiting my mother, you know, on Sunday, spend the day. She asked me why I didn't come to Augusta and go into concrete block business. 

She says people coming in the mayor's office say all these soldiers coming home and everybody are going to need a home and they're going to need a, you know, business and all that. There's going to be a boom. There was going to be a building boom. Yeah. 

So she says, you could make them and let Pierce sell them. That was my brother. Yeah. See, so he'd been living in Augusta all his life. I mean, for years. Yeah. 

So he knew everybody. 

So I thought about it. 

So then I decided maybe that'd be a good deal. 

So I decided to go into concrete block business. And then I thought about it. How do you go into a business? 

You didn't buy the business. You started it. Started it from scratch. 

A facility where you could make, did you make the bricks? 

Did we make them? 

The blocks, did you make the cement blocks? 

Sure. 

Okay, so what did you know about doing that? 

Huh? 

How did you know about doing that? 

I found out about it. That's what I want to know. 

So you did some research? 

Well, the first thing I did, my brother and I, after we decided it would be a good idea, he finally got a job operating a filling station. that it was a corner where they needed a filling station real bad. 

And this company that, well, the war was over, but you couldn't get batteries, you couldn't get tires, you know, and that kind of stuff. 

But this man, who was a distributor of oil and gasoline, he wanted that corner real bad. 

So my brother had a partner that owned the corner. 

So they decided, and the man says, I'll give you all the batteries you need and all the tires you need. and you can have a sale. 

So they did. 

They went in business and put it in the paper because they were flooded with people coming, you know, and immediate success with the film station. 

So Pierce was already doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Your brother was doing that. He was putting this gas station on the corner. Yeah. 

Okay, so that was going on one hand. 

Well, you were thinking and figuring out how you were going to build your own company. 

Well, yeah. All right. 

So then he and I went and looked at other block plants. There was one operating in Greenwood, South Carolina. Oh, so you took a field trip then. 

So then we went and looked at other block plants all the way to Atlanta, you know, and different places that had block plants operating. That was a good thing to do. 

My roommate at Georgia Tech, you know, had an uncle who owned Camel Coal Company in Atlanta, and it was kind of like Lowe's or Home Depot. Yeah. 

They had, but they primarily sold coal and fuel oil and all kind of building supplies, and he had a block plan. 

So you went and looked at his block plan. 

So I went and talked to him and told him I was interested, and I said, I've got $5,000 I saved during World War II. And I said, I want to go into the block business. 

He says, there's no chance of you making it because he says, you know, $5,000 won't start buying inventory or paying for inventory because you're going to have to have a big inventory to take care of your customers. All right, so that's where we're going to stop for a minute. Okay. And figure out what you did. All right. 

So, Gordon, we're going to pick up our story now. We know you did your homework. You went out looking at block plans. Yeah. And you've done a lot of research on block plans. And here's this man telling you you haven't got enough capital to get one started. That's true. What did you do? 

Yeah, well, we decided not to pay any attention to him. That was the first thing. And I thought I could make it, you know, anyway. 

Anyway, so we investigated what type of block plant we could make and maybe make it and get involved in it. 

Well, the first thing, after World War II, the block plant manufacturers that made the machinery had been doing defense work. And there were two, three large ones in the United States. One was a Gold Corp Corporation up in Adrian, Michigan. Another one was a Stearns Corporation in Adrian. And then there was a Besser Company in Michigan. And then there was one called Columbia Machine Company on the West Coast. 

But none of them had any equipment available because they had just started back making block machinery. And it was all spoken for. 

So I couldn't get a mixer. 

So I decided to build my own mixer. And I went to a local wrecking yard and found a big high -pressure boiler, steam boiler. And I bought it, and we cut it off a little above halfway horizontally. 

And I put big pillar-block bearings on each end of it and a shaft through it and welded the paddles inside, similar to what they call a motor mixer. And I found a second-hand motor in Atlanta. And I had a man here in the industrial supply business that took an interest in helping me. 

And he helped me find the pullers and sprockets and drives to make the mixer turn at the speed I wanted it. I wanted the mixer to turn 20 RPMs, but my motor was 1,800 RPM electric motor. 

So I built the drivetrain, too. The day, Usher would put me in jail because it was all exposed. 

But after I built it and mounted it in the floor, I built a frame over it out of wood and used it to charge the mixer. He used the frame as a wooden base. 

Now, what property did you put it on? 

Well, we put it to start with my brother's wife owned about 35 acres. just north of Augusta, and we went, and I built a building on it to start with to put it there, but when I got the building built, then where we are today became available. 

There was a concrete brick plant there, and it got into litigation, and it closed the brick plant out, so my brother and I went and rented that property from the man that was in charge. Did you know the Mary family? 

Oh, yeah, very well. Because they were in the brick business, too. Yeah, I know all of them real well, yeah. They were tech people. Yeah, well, they were our competitors, too, because they went in the block business. Oh, I thought they were just bricks. No, they bought a block plant. Oh, they did. 

But it never did turn out too well. In fact, I bought it from them. Yeah. All right. 

So, you moved from then your mother, your sister-in-law's property over to where you rented. 

Well, we are now. Yeah. 

But we had very limited space but over a period of years we have bought there were several houses close to our property and in 1960 they widened the highway above our property and they took in some of these houses and after they the government bought up the lots then we leased the land from the government and incorporated it in the block plan you could expand that way and then we bought several of the houses and tore them down and incorporated it in the block plant. And in the rear of our block plant was a sand pit where they had the prettiest sand. You ever saw that they were mining. 

Well, it ran out, so it was 11 acres of land there, and we bought that, incorporated it. 

So how big is the block plant now? 

How many acres have you got? 

Well, on that side of the highway, it's about 12 or 13, 14 acres. And across the highway, we've got about 25 acres. 

So you've got plenty of room. 

Now, back to when you started it, how long did it take you to build the machinery to get the block plant going? 

Well, let's see, I came to Augusta the 16th of January, you know, in 1946, and we made the first block in April 16th, 1946. Wow, so it didn't take you very long to build your mixer and all that stuff. And then who was working with, just you and Pierce? 

Yeah, to start with. He'd sell, and I'd... 

So he'd go find people that wanted to buy blocks, and you ran the plant and made the blocks. Yeah, well, people saw us, and they needed concrete blocks. Mary Brothers, that you just mentioned a minute ago, made what they call kind of a speed tile. 

But they closed it out about the same time as we started making blocks. And we started making a block that wasn't as large as the block today. In fact, we made the block by hand. You did? 

That had forms? 

Yeah. There's a man in Atlanta that had been at Georgia Tech during World War II doing consulting work. He and his father had a machine shop out at Chamblee, and he had a patent on block molds. 

And I went to see him, and after he found out I went to Georgia Tech, He had three pages of orders for most, typewritten pages. Just like that. going to move you up to number three. How about that? 

And in about two weeks, I got the molds that I needed to make block. Isn't that something? 

But they were made originally by hand then. Yeah. And then I had these ****** that I hired to, we call them shake blocks. I made a special table. 

It was heavy wood and put a steel plate on it that was about an inch thick bolted down to the table for him to shake the block on or either to bump the block to cause the mold to settle material to settle in the mold you're saying shaking or bump okay got it and then that would get the air bubbles and everything out then i had seen people doing that so the block came out five by eight by twelve five inches high standard eight inch wide wall and 12 inches long and it was it weighed 20 pounds and the brick masons loved it to start with it would it would go grade A so far as specs is concerned and so it's a strong little block and nice -looking and these people loved it to start with and we're talking about blocks at the foundations for building center blocks different kinds of blocks garages and fences and foundations and foundations And, of course, we were going into a building boom. Yeah. And so, anyway. 

How long did it take you to build up to where it was making money? 

Well, actually, I hired these ****** at Babcock and Wilcox. A lot of them had worked there, and they made a lot of handmade special brick at Babcock and Wilcox. 

So these ****** kind of knew what I was talking about. Yeah. 

So I hired five to shake rock, and they didn't have any way to get to Hamburg where the plant is. It was exactly a mile in the Carolina from the river, and they didn't have any cause. In 1946, the wage an hour was $0.40 an hour, and they worked at $16 a week. I started paying helpers $0.65 an hour. See? 

So you get better folks. 

So I had them right quick, interested in a job. 

But then I paid the shakers by the block on a piecework basis. Oh, see, that's a good incentive. Yeah, and then they started out, they'd shake 200 or 300 blocks in a day. 

But they didn't realize what they could do. 

So I had to go to town every morning and pick them up and bring them to work. and I'd get about seven of them that needed a way to work and I'd pick them up in front of this black liquor store in the black section of Augusta and I'd bring them over and then I'd carry them back in the afternoon. 

And they'd get back over to that liquor store and says, I sure do wish I had me a drink to wash this cement dust out of my throat. 

So one day I knew they could make more block than they were making. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. 

If you'll make 1,600 block tomorrow, I'll buy you a fifth, you know, when we get back, and then you can wash the dust out of your throat. 

So that day during the day, they made about 1,650 blocks, right, averaging about 400 each. 

So they were beginning to see what they could really do, see. 

So we went through with that. Then they got to really trying to see. They got up to a point to where they made $800 or $900 a day. Wow. I paid them a cent and a half a block. You see, $800 and a cent and a half is $12. Five from 12 is $60 a week. 

On top of their wage? 

And people were making $16 working for Babcock and Wilcox and Mary Brothers, not any more than $20. 

So they fought over a job. 

So you were kind of like the Henry Ford of the block company. Just about it. 

Well, I made them for $0.07 and put them on the job for $0.12. See, so I made a nickel a block. On every block. Every afternoon, I carried my money home and put it in a trunk. Cash money. Did you really? 

Yeah, I really did. You didn't trust the banks? 

Well. Not to start with? 

No, not specially. We didn't need to, but anyway. 

So that's the story there. 

But I had these block machinery salesmen come by to see me, and they said, how in the world do you get these ****** to work like this? 

I never have seen such working people in my life. And I said, well, they've got a real incentive, you know. 

But I had them come to see me, and they said, let me serve an apprentice. I'll do anything that you've got, you know, until you'll find me one of these jobs to shake block. How many employees did you have? 

I had about 12 or 14 at that time. At the peak of the time? 

Yeah, because I had people to hold the block. 

So did you ever get the real machinery? 

Did you ever go buy block, make a machinery? 

Yeah. Then later on, well, I had this man come down here from Charlotte. He was going to build a naval armory over on Central Avenue in Augusta. And he came to see me and said, well, let me see your concrete block. I need some. And I said, well, I don't have any regular style concrete block, but I got this one that we sell. He looked at it and said, I never saw such a thing. He said, you know, that's a pretty old block. I could use that if I wanted to in my naval armory. 

So I think of well. 

So he bought them and built a naval army, a big old nice building out of them. See, one of the first buildings we had like that. 

Well, how long did you operate on the material that you made? 

Yeah. 

A four-block building? 

We had a hard time trying to phase it out because people would add on to a building that already had it in it. And they wanted it. And they wanted some more. Yeah. Or they liked the block. Brick masons loved it because they could lay about 800 a day if they really... Put their mind to it. Put their mind to it with a helper. And they got 10 cents a block. That's $80 a day. Rick Mason's wage an hour was $3.50 an hour. See, so you can see what he could make laying my block. 

They would, finally, a company across town went into the block business too, but they made a big, heavy block that weighed about 40-plus pounds, and nobody would lay it. See, so they said that's back breaking. 

Well, when did you get them? 

So then about 1950, we bought a machine. That's what I was asking. And it went into business, but it was a small machine, and it wouldn't make but about $3,000 a day. And it wasn't that nice a machine or block. Oh, so that... 

But then our competitors that were making that big block, they changed things, and they bought a machine that made a real nice block from the Besser Company. And then we went on, and then in 1956, we got an SBA loan, small business loan. 

And we bought a new block machine that made the big block, and we put in side tracks, you know, and we put in big cement bins to hold the cement. 

So you had a big expansion. 

So in 1956, we did. 

And then I made up my mind to make a block better than our competitors, who made an excellent block, a real pretty one. And they had most of the business of selling contractors, you know, and big jobs. 

But I sold all the little ones. And I sold them over the phone myself. 

So what happened to Pierce? 

How long did he stay with you? 

Well, he stayed as an alcoholic from 1946 to 51, five years. You know, and I didn't ever know how we stood because he kept a checkbook in his pocket. 

And I never did know how much we had in the bank because he'd go in a liquor store and write a check, you know, for $20 to buy a fifth. And then, see, he'd get involved and half loaded, you know, and setting up everybody in the ballroom. 

So you finally let him go then? 

No, I didn't do that. I didn't have any choice. He was a partner. See, so anyway, he, but then we hired about 1960, later, around 56, 57, we hired a salesman. 

It was our competitor, came to see me, and I thought he was trying to find out what we were doing about our company. 

I suspected him, but I found out quite quick that he was real unhappy because they'd kind of passed him over, you know. 

So I gave him a job, and he was an excellent salesman. 

So he went out, and that helped us. 

But Pierce would call on people at times. Would he stay with the company for a long time then? 

Oh, yeah. He stayed until he retired in 1975. Oh, my goodness. 

So he was with you for all those years? 

Well, he died in 1975, but he retired in 1972. 

But he turned his interest over to his son. And I had him, and he was a problem too. Oh, dear. because neither one of them were that interested in the block business they were just it was a salary you know and a good living and had good perks you didn't have the passion for it you did no they didn't have that so uh anyway eventually up about 1980 85 i bought out the family interest you know oh you did so now it's just you that has it so i bought it and And then I've expanded it quite a bit since that time. I guess you have. 

All right, now we've got to talk about when did you start collecting things and what was the first thing that got your interest? 

Because you are the ultimate collector. Five years old. Five years old, you found. 85 years ago. You found something you wanted to collect. 

Well, my father was a farmer, you know, and he had these sharecroppers. And the little town we lived in, you know, was real old. 

So people would come to me with big pennies, big cents, you know, big coppers. And they'd come to me with three cent pieces, which was unusual, a half dime. And you started collecting unusual coins. Yeah, coins and Indian arrowheads. There were Indian campsites everywhere all around the little town where we lived. 

In high school, these people knew that I collected Indian arrowheads, and my friends would want me to take them out to the campsite and let's go look for Indian arrowheads. 

And so you did that? 

You were good at finding them? 

I took my friends, and we'd go to these campsites that I knew about, and we'd just find arrowheads and pottery pieces and tommy hawks and axes. Wow, all kinds of stuff there for the picking. And I had a real nice collection of Indian artifacts when I went to World War II. And I left them at my mother's home. When I was gone, I guess they figured I wasn't coming back. 

So her grandchildren visited, you know, during the summer. And they pretty well divided up all my good arrowheads. 

Oh, really? 

When I got back after World War II, I had a trunk full of pieces of arrowheads and pieces of pottery. 

But all the real nice stuff was gone. 

So, I mean, I never did go back collecting that after that. 

But that was the idea that got you started, collecting the coins, collecting in the arrowheads. In the arrowheads, yeah. 

Okay, so when you got back from World War II, did you get back in the collecting business? 

Well, pretty soon, yes. And what was your first thing to collect? 

Well, I've been collecting coins for a long time. 

Okay, so you kept up with that. 

I started seriously collecting gold about 1955, and I ended up, I've got a complete set of Dahlonega gold. I don't know whether you know about it or not. It takes about 65 pieces to have one of every one that they made. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah. Yeah, you were able to do that. 

Well, there's not very many of those around. I bet not. The last coin I bought, I paid $32,000 for it. Wow. 

So you can get an idea of what they're worth. Yeah, just a bit bare. It's really not the most expensive one, but I was lucky to have been able to find the others earlier. Because it filled your collection. At a less price than that. You collect time clocks, all kinds of time pieces. They're everywhere. I collect chronometers. That's a real rare chronometer right there. That's a table model. And there's only ever been about three or four of those made. 

But see, most of them look like the ones back up here. you know you collect anything that catches your eye in a way but well i always like mechanical things see right i collect Skiles because the scale is a beautiful mechanical nice Skiles and i got some wonderful Skiles and uh they're down in the country store building and you also collect cars yeah cars not many people collect cars and collect other things too but how many how many How many cars have you got? 

I've got about ten nice ones. You know, I've got two beautiful Cadillacs. I've got two beautiful Packards. I've got one Lincoln Continental four -door convertible, you know, like John Kennedy got killed in. And I've got a 1947 Jaguar. 

It's a full classic automobile designed before World War II, but only built, it didn't build, but 178 like the one I've got. it's a beautiful car and I got another Jaguar it's a 52 model it's considered one of the pretty small automobiles that were made and I've got the so you got a little collection of cars I had a 1968 Mustang completely restored now as you started to accumulate these things after you built the block plant okay where were you gonna put everything well that made you build what you call the country store right? 

Well yes plus well I got warehouse buildings, big warehouse buildings built at the block plant that we built just for our use if we needed to store stuff in them. One of them we used today to store a glass block. 

We are distributors for Owens conning glass block that they use in houses and bathrooms you know to put it up. 

And you got is that where you keep your cars in one of those warehouses? 

I've got several cars in that building. Then I've got another real nice building next to the shop with my cars in it. It's just got cars in it. 

But I collect automobile memorabilia like signs. I've got a big 10 foot high enamel packet sign that everybody wants. Yeah, I'm sure they do. 

And then I've sold a lot of signs advertising gulf oil and texaco and pure oil you know and all the things you collect that you buy are in mint condition too aren't they not all together not all together i bought stuff that was in pretty bad shape but it was extremely rare okay and then what do you do have it put into good shape no most of that i haven't done too much restoring signs or things of that nature i I restored automobiles. In fact, I got one right now across town being restored. And you restore clocks. And clocks, yeah. Yeah, you told me that. And I buy clocks. Most of these have been restored. Some of them have been restored. I had restored. You also collect paintings. Oh, yeah. You have interesting paintings. I've got the paintings. I've got some other nice ones in the living room there, you know, from Scotland. I bought them from antique dealers. One of the things that I want you to talk to us about is how you decided to build the country store. Why did you build that? 

Well, our middle brother liked antiques. And it comes up that he had cancer. And the doctor says he only has about three years to live. 

So we decided I liked antiques, and my older brother did too. See? 

And he collected guns and one or two other items. 

But I was collecting just about everything. And so we decided to build a country store building and put our brother in business, you know. Oh, so there was a reason for it. 

So we built the country store. 

But we just like to work with old timbers and things, and we bought this big flour mill. 

It was in Augusta and being torn down, so we bought the interior woodwork and everything out of it and the beams and everything. to get what we wanted and we used all that to build this country store building and then they were tearing down the georgia railroad's main office in augusta and moving to atlanta so i went over there and they were taking the big shelving it was along the wall and throwing it out of the upstairs windows down on the ground and it's just tearing it up so they told me they'd give it to me if i wanted if i'd move it so i went over there with help and took took it down and I let it down out of the windows with ropes, put it on my truck. Saved all that. 

So we put those shelves in the country store building. It's real old. It fits right in. Yeah, yeah. And then we made beautiful old doors and stuff. 

So you did all this very specially, and that the idea was to have your brother have a place that he could run it as an antique shop. Yeah, and he stayed there for a couple of years, and he died. And then my older brother decided he'd like to do that. 

So he takes over, and he goes down there, and he runs the country store for about three years himself, up until he had a heart attack in 1972. 

Where is the country store? 

Is it at the block plant? 

It's just on the back side of the block plant. You go completely through the operation. 

But the thing is, is nobody can get there, can they? 

The general public? 

You can go through the block plant. There's two ways to get through it. You can come from town on a back road that comes into it. Is it open as a store now? 

No, it isn't. It's closed. The only time it gets open is when I open it. 

If you go over there and look at stuff in it. 

Well, I call up my mechanic down there and tell him to go over there and open it up, you know, to turn off the security system. Let somebody take a look at it. 

So let people look. Yeah. 

But it isn't up where people can come just visitors or tourists or something. They're just out of a class sky. They can't come and visit. because it isn't open. You have a lot of your treasures there. They call me quite often, and I go and open it up and visit with them just to show them, you know. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Besides the country store and all the warehouses, you also got your Charleston house. 

Well, that's down here. It is, indeed. 

Well, it's full of antiques, too. It's got, you know, several antique miniature steam engines that are real works of art. 

You know, they aren't toys, But they were made by a master mechanic, and I got a beautiful 1932 model Peco airplane down there with a five-cylinder gasoline working engine in it, you know, radial engine in it. 

So the house that's here is full of all kinds of treasures, too, then? 

Down there it is, and I got a beautiful motorcycle that's been restored. It's probably the finest one in the world, supposedly. 

But that is a complete Charleston house that nobody ever lives in, though. No, nobody. It wasn't made to live in. I just made it. It's about 10 years old. It's only 10 years old. I just made it to put my antiques in. Nice place. 

But Martha Clare told me that it's just got everything but the best in it. 

Well, it has. 

Well, I made it. It's probably the best insulated house or built house anybody ever saw. And it's got a slate roof on it because I used to buy these buildings that were taken down. If it had a slate roof, I'd go buy the slate roof off of the building and save the slate. 

So I put a slate roof on it. 

And then when my son made an addition onto his big home he lives in, I gave him enough slate to cover the addition. And I still got a lot of slate. 

So you've got supplies of building materials. 

So that's one of your hobbies, too, Internet, collecting building materials. This house is built out of a lot of old timbers. 

If you went upstairs and looked, it's got rafters, they call it. You know, originally they were 14 by about 5 inches wide, which is an oddball size. 

But then Cobbner sliced them halfway. They're about 7 by 5. And they were so hard until he couldn't drive nails in them. I'll be darned. Long leaf pine. 

So he told me when he was building the house to go buy him a barrel of bolts. 

So that he could. He bolted the house together? 

The house is bolted together. Wow, that'll hold up under the hurricane. 

Well, I'd hate to see what it would do to it, but, you know, sometimes I would like to see what it would do. I bet it would stand up. You can't imagine. And Scott, the old man who was a building inspector for North Augusta came by here. He looked at it and says, my God, I never saw such a house in my life. He says, you could drive a caterpillar tract over it and it wouldn't fall in. He says, I believe you could heat that house with a match because it puts so much insulation. 

That wall right there behind that is 8 by 8 by 16, lightweight, fire-rated block, filled full of zonalite insulation. Wow. And then that wall is the same, and the next one's the same, and the next one's the same. Firewalls all the way up through the house. Wow. 

So this is a well... The wall out here is 13 and a half inches thick. 

So it's a little fortress in a way, huh? 

Well, it basically is. Yeah, it's like a fortress. It's the best built house like that I ever saw. 

Now, one of the things that I have to ask you about, and I know you want to tell me, is how you met Martha Clare. 

Well, I had a friend named Scotty Allen that went to Georgia Tech, studied electrical engineering, and he worked for the power company. And he didn't have an automobile. 

But then he had a nice apartment over in Augusta, and he had a friend, and his friend got married, and he didn't have anybody. 

So I was living in North Augusta. 

So I went over there and joined him in the apartment. 

So he and I had the apartment together. 

But he didn't have an automobile. 

And during the Masters Tournament, about 1948, these people from down in Allendale, South Carolina, came to visit the woman that owned the house where we had the apartment. And she was a young girl. And so my friend Scotty dates her while she's there. And then it was my automobile, though, and so we double dated. 

So she says, well, why don't you bring Scotty down to Allendale to see me, and I'll get you a date. 

So she did, and I dated two or three girls that she got down there, and I wasn't interested in any of them until finally she got me a date with Martha Clare. 

So we hit it off pretty good. And that's how you met her. That's how I met her. It was a blind date. It was, yeah, sure. Yeah, where'd you take her? 

Huh? 

Where did you guys go on your first date? 

Well, I don't know. 

There was a lot of people back from World War II then down there, and they had one or two kind of juke joints that all this young crowd went to. Yeah, yeah. And we went there, you know, and they had jukeboxes and they'd dance, you know. 

Well, you make it sound like you didn't do that. You did it too. You were dancing. 

Well, yeah, I drank a little bit too, you know. Yeah, yeah. And entertained Martha Clare. And how long did it take you to court her? 

We got married in a year. Oh, you were a pretty fast worker then. Yeah. You got right busy. 

Well, Sheila, it was $65 from here, so I had to go. That's a long ways. It is. You know, I went to see her about three times a week. My goodness. Sometimes slept on the way back. While you were driving? 

Yeah. What was the name of the town? 

Brunson, South Carolina. It was named for her family. Yeah. Yeah. Her grandparents were Brunsons. Her mother was a Brunson. 

It was cheaper for you to marry her than be driving back and forth all that much, huh? 

So you talked her into marrying you and coming up here in 1949? 

Nine. You got married in 1949? 

Yeah. 

So, and? 

Been here ever since. Been here, not here. You moved somewhere else for a while. You built this house in what, 1965, did you tell me? 64. Actually, it started in November 63 and moved in it in August of 65. 

Okay, I thought that's what you said. Because there's a lot of building in this house. You know, I mean, really. took quite a while. Martha Clare and you were married and then you started your family. 

When? 

When did you tell me about your family? 

Rebecca was born in two years later after we were married. 

Okay, Rebecca's the oldest and what does, did Rebecca go off to college somewhere? 

Oh yeah, she went to Hollins in, in Florida? 

Charlotte, North Carolina. 

It was a nice girls school and she went to a couple years or about a year and but she was I wanted to take art and the only course that had it was really the kind of art she needed was at the University of Georgia so her professors there recommended she go to Georgia so she went to the University of Georgia and graduated there and my son Jim went to Georgia Tech and my daughter Melissa the youngest one went to Clemson okay let's Let's go back to Rebecca. 

So did Rebecca have a career? 

Is she an artist? 

Oh, yeah. After she got out of college, she went to work for who to start with? 

Coca-Cola? 

Okay. As a designer, you know, and that kind of stuff. 

Okay, so she had a career. And then she left Coca -Cola and went to work for, well, not right then, but she worked for somebody. 

But anyway, she worked for Xerox, and then she worked for Xerox for 26 years. Wow, long time to remember. And she became, well, she became in charge of National Sales for Xerox, which was an outstanding job. Right, right. And who did she marry? 

She married, well, she married twice. She married a fellow named Jack Robinson to start with, and that didn't last but a short time. And she divorced him, and she married a husband now named Gary Bernson. He's a Jewish fellow, but you wouldn't know he's Jewish. And what about, does she have any children? 

Oh, yeah, she's got one. A son is a junior at Auburn right now named Matthew. 

Okay, and then your next child was Jim. Melissa. No, Jim. 

Well, let's go back to Rebecca, honey. 

Well, she is. 

Well, you asked me, did she have a career? 

She left Xerox, and she was offered a job with ADP. automatic data processing and she went to work for them and she had an excellent job. 

She was the vice president of national sales for the big companies and she got disillusioned with them about a year ago and she resigned but she stayed on their payroll until the 1st of May right now but she wasn't working. 

That was just her severance of pay and then right now she's She's negotiating, but she's had one or two offers, but most of them want her to leave Atlanta. She's been offered a fabulous job in Rochester, New York, but she doesn't want to move to Rochester. She's not going to move. She doesn't know what she's going to do. No, yeah, well, it's okay not to do anything. 

Did you do a good enough job with that, Martha Clark? 

AET went after her because they needed some females in the house. Oh, yeah. She wanted their company. Yeah. They offered her a vice presidency. 

Well, it's hard to turn down a big job, but, you know, it's hard to leave home, too, be away from family and all. 

Now, tell me about James. 

Well, Jim, he went to Georgia Tech, like I say. And did he study mechanical engineering? 

He studied mechanical engineering like I did. He worked at Victoria Station in Atlanta. With the restaurant. With the restaurant. And I told him he could work if he'd keep up his grades. And he worked there. And, well, he had a motorcycle and he was riding. And he wasn't supposed to ride it around Atlanta, but one night he did. 

And this man ran through a stoplight and hit him and knocked him completely through the roadway and into a filling station and broke up his left leg and tore it up. And he liked to have lost his leg. 

But then, so he came home and stayed six, eight weeks and lost one semester at Georgia Tech. And then after he got, he went back, and then he graduated. And then the next thing he did, he bought him a motorcycle. Oh, no. Oh, no. He wanted to prove himself. 

So he toured the United States for about three weeks by himself on a motorcycle. All the way up in British Columbia and everything like that. And came back. 

And then I told him that I would give him a job at the Gusto Concrete Block Company based on what a mechanical engineer at that time made graduating from tech. I said, let's find out what the average salary is, and I'll pay you that to come to work for us. You stay a year or two. 

If you like it, I'll make arrangements for you to have the company. 

If you don't like it, we'll sell it, and I'll give you some of the money. 

So that's what we agreed on. 

Well, he called you up and asked you if he could come interview. 

Well, yeah, I guess so. And interview you for a job. 

Well, that was good. And it's good to have it stay in the family. 

Now, is Jim married? 

Oh, yeah. He's got four children. 

Well, who is he married to? 

He's married to, now he's married to a girl named Laura Sizemore. Okay. Sizemore, I'm sorry. Okay. And they have four children? 

Yeah, the oldest was 13 and the youngest was six. 

What are their names? 

Well, the oldest one is Hannah, the second one is James Gordon, the third, and the fourth one is named Spencer, and the third was Spencer, and the fourth one's a little girl named Gabriella. 

Well, congratulations, you did that real good. Good for you, good for you. And then we have Melissa Clare. Oh, yes. And Melissa Clare went to school where? 

She went to Clemson. She went to Clemson. What was her interest in school? 

Well, she studied business. She studied business, okay. 

And did she have a career? 

Well, she got out, and she was kind of amazing because I never thought, but what she did, she was rather successful at it. 

You know, she had a job one time working for a computer company in Atlanta, and this man came in there. 

They had an assignment of so many to sell, you know, and this man came in there from Mexico and bought 13 computers from her. Oh, my goodness. That was a bonsai, huh? 

She didn't work very long. She got married. And who did she marry? 

She married a fellow named Paul Zimmerman that went to Clemson. And he's a vice president of Borough Corporation, who is the largest brick manufacturer in the world. Oh, so he's into bricks, too, then, huh? 

Yeah. It's ceramic brick. Oh. Do they have children? 

Oh, yeah, they've got two. And what are their names? 

The oldest one is Miles, boy, and the youngest one is Mary Clare, a girl. 

Well, congratulations. You got through all of those names. You did a good job with that. Okay. And the children range in age from college down to little? 

From about 22 down to 6. How about that? 

Isn't that something? 

You got a whole big line. And they're all characters. 

Well, I can't imagine how that could have happened. How could they be characters? 

Tell me this. Do you ever get them all together in one place at one time? 

Oh, sure. They come to see us. They've been here. All at one time? 

Yeah, occasionally. 

So you must have some really spirited family get -togethers. 

Well, they do, yeah. I'll tell you, those two boys of gyms, they'll fight all over the house. You know what I mean? 

Push each other down and throw pillows out of them. 

Well, you know, you did that with your brothers, too, I'll betcha. No, I didn't. They were all older than I was. 

So, I mean, I didn't have anybody. I had my playmates next door that we'd go over there. He was the youngest child that's ever been done. Isn't that something? 

And it's very successful. He's got stereo now. That's wonderful. 

Do you think you're going to have any more Georgia Tech people in that crowd? 

No, I think the done is done. Oh, come on, Gordon. She asked you if you're going to have any more Georgia Tech people in that class. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. You misunderstood me. Hannah, Jim's oldest daughter, says she wants to go to Georgia Tech and show the architecture. 

Well, then you can dress her in white and gold, huh, and put her on the campus. Jim goes and takes all four children on the football game. Oh, that's wonderful. His wife wouldn't know the name, though. 

But she's not Catholic. She's a Methodist. I mean, she's Episcopalian with him now. Yeah. 

Well, it's nice that the children are going to get a good exposure to Georgia Tech. Yeah, it is. They love Georgia Tech, too. 

Well, that's great. They're coming along real good. Let me tell you this one. Downstairs, we have two jukeboxes. Oh, you have jukeboxes. Okay. One is the old Wurlitzer with the bubbles. Uh-huh. And Gold, of course, has Georgia Tech on that. Oh, you're playing our songs on your... It's got three Georgia Tech songs. Are you familiar with them? 

One you've probably never heard of. One is Ramblin'' Rack. 

The second was up with the white and gold, down with the red and black. Georgia Tech is out for a victory. Are you familiar with that? 

I have heard that before. And then there's another Georgia Tech song that you very seldom ever heard of. Which one is it? 

There's three on one record. And I'm not sure exactly what the third one is. 

But the oldest child of Jim's used to come. As soon as they came, they knew which button to push to get that record. They'd put that thing, and they'd dance all over the floor. The Ramblin'' Wreck. Yeah, so you've made good fans out of all of them. 

And then the other jukebox down there, the first record on there, is Elvis Presley's American Trilogy. Oh, okay. 

So they've got good taste in music on those boxes, huh? 

Well, you collect just about everything, and it's been a real pleasure talking to you about it. 

You became a celebrity last year, maybe last year, the year before last, was it, when the American Pickers came? 

Last year. About May, they came about May. Just about a year ago, huh? 

Yeah. And they called you up and asked you because they heard you had some collections. 

Well, a woman from Canada called me to start with and says, she called the Aiken County Museum and asked, was there anybody in this territory that was an avid collector that they could interview? 

And they told me. 

The woman from Canada calls me up and says, I understand you have quite a collection, and we wondered if you would let us come and interview you. She didn't say anything about the pickers. Oh, she didn't. Then the next person called me up was from the Pickers. He said, we understood that you would let us come. We're from the Pickers, and we want to come see you. 

Had you ever heard of the Pickers before? 

Yeah, I had heard of them, but I didn't know whether I wanted them to come or not. I said, let me think about it. 

So I said, you'll have to call me back. 

So about a week later, she calls me back, and I says, I've decided, yes, you can come on. 

So they came. 

And, of course, when they came, you know, in the old man's store building, they said, great goodness, people said, I don't believe this. You know, this is the holy grail of picking. They're used to going and digging in barns and garages and attics. They said, Gordon's Gold Mine. I never have seen such good stuff in all my life. And said, you know more about it than anybody we've ever seen. Isn't that something? 

Well, you do. You know the prices. You know the values. You know everything about it. Yeah, I know where it came from. 

Now, one of the things they said was it was Gordon's gold mine. They didn't know that Gordon was a gold miner, though, did they? 

No, not at that time. No. Tell us that story. How did you get into gold mining? 

Well, I've always been interested. Like I said, I collected Dahlonega gold and gold coins of other type besides Dahlonega gold. 

Years ago, after I found out that Dahlonega gold was real rare and it was available, in 1958 we started the Augusta Coin Club, and I was one of the charter members. And people knew if they had a Dahlonega Charlotte piece, they'd bring it and I'd buy it. 

So they used to bring them to the coin club, and I'd buy it. 

So I got to buy up Dahlonega and Charlotte and New Orleans gold, all southern states gold, and all branchments of the Philadelphia Mint. 

So you got pretty knowledgeable about that. 

So then, yes, so then you could buy books, you know, the blue book, they call it, which is the dealer buying book, and the red book, which is the dealer selling book. 

But then there's coin world. 

Well, honey, she wants to know how you got into the gold mining. How did you get into gold mining? 

Because that's different than being a collector. 

Well, I went up to Dahlonega on the weekend, you know, to just try my hand at gold mining, you know, panning gold. 

And one weekend I went up there, and on the way, the Atlanta station says, if you want to have some fun, why don't you go to Dahlonega over the weekend and try your hand at panning gold. 

So I told my sister I was visiting, so she says, Okay, I'll fix you and my husband and son a lunch, and y'all go to Dahlonega. 

So we did, and I went up there, and I saw men sitting out in front of the old filling station, and I stopped and asked them where I could pan gold. They said you ought to go see Mr. Bill Trammell down here at Orera, which is about three miles out of Dahlonega. It says he's got a little gold mine, and he's got some pans. he'll let you pan for a dollar. 

So we went to see him, and I stuck it off with the old man real good, right quick, and he showed me some of the gold he had, and he showed me about panning. And then, well, he showed me a good bit of gold. I said, well, we don't get this kind of gold panning and getting a little color like we're doing. You got a lot. 

He says, well, if you come back to see me, I'll introduce you to my little mine, and we'll get some good oil out of it, and I'll show you we get some good gold. I said, fine. 

So I started going back. see him. 

I started back to see him, and I went to see him, and I'd carry him a couple of fists of liquor, you know, and he was glad to see me. 

So, I mean, he would save me some real good oil, and I would pan that out. 

But after that, then I found out about these out-of-print books put out by the state geologists of Georgia. 

The first one was in 1896, where they went around. 

He and his associate went to every known gold mine in the state of Georgia and checked them out to see if there was still any gold left there and if it was worthwhile to try to mine. 

And then in 1906, the old man had died, but his associate was still living, so he went and did the same thing. 

They came up with a gold mine up here halfway way between Lincolnton and Washington, Georgia, that was called the Seminole Gold and Copper Bind, and it was operated as both, and they said it was unusual because in it you could find chunks of pure copper. It weighed as much as 60 pounds in the ground, but it had a smeltering plant for smeltering copper. 

But it wasn't open, it wasn't a working mine, was it? 

Not then. Years ago it was, the pre-Civil War times. 

Okay, but then how did you come about it? 

So then I found out. 

So one morning, this character, I went to work, and the people there says, this fellow was in here a few minutes ago, and he had a little bottle of gold. And said he understood you'd buy it. He said he's gone to eat breakfast and said he'd be back. 

Well, about an hour he came back with a bottle of gold. And he said, you want to buy it? 

And I said, yeah, I'm interested in it. 

So he says, I'll tell you where I got it. 

So he gets it out of the Seminole of Gold and Copper Mine. See, this old mine, he'd been up there panting and fumbling around. 

Who did it belong to? 

Who did the mine belong to? 

Huh? 

Who did the mine belong to? 

Mine belonged to Brunswick Paper Company, who owned the surface rights and the pulpwood and the trees. The mineral rights belonged to a man named Hanvey, who lived in Florida, who had the mineral rights. 

Okay, but he wasn't mining it. Nobody was. Except for this guy that came by to see you. The guy that came by to see you had some in his possession. 

Well, he asked them to let him pan, but then they told him he could, but that was a mistake because instead of panning, he goes up there and builds a machine to get in the creek bed and suck up the creek bed with a Volkswagen engine on it and a placer mining device on it that he floated in the water, and he got a lot of gold. He did. And then he kept coming to see me about every Friday, bringing me some gold. 

Well, they got mad with him, you know, because he wasn't supposed to do that. 

Well, he was stealing it. Anyway, he asked me, he says, well, let's go in the, let's go. I went with him panning one morning. 

It was February, and it was cold, and I went up there, and I got me a wetsuit and put on it and got out in the creek, and we panned, and when I saw it, it turned out real pretty. I had panned in Dahlonega and North Carolina and Cripple Creek, Colorado, and all kind of places. 

But this was different than anything I'd seen. 

So then he says, let's go into business, you know, and I'll operate the mine. 

So I decided to do that. 

So we built the machinery at Augusta Concrete Block Company to do a plasso. 

But we had to get the mineral rights. 

So I went to see the surface rights from a man in McCormick, South Carolina. And he told me that they wouldn't allow me to go in there. 

But I had already gotten the mineral rights from a man in Florida. And the mineral rights takes precedent over everything in my head. Oh, so. 

See, so I says, I don't want to get in litigation with you, but I'd be willing to pay for the surface rights. 

And so finally he told me like $10,000 in my company would let me have the surface rights for a couple, two or three years. 

So he didn't think I'd do that. 

So I told him to drop the contract and I'd give him a check, which I did. Oh, my goodness. 

So you bought the rights both for the mineral and for the surface. Yeah. And then you brought your machine in? 

Then we brought the machine in. 

And the deal I had was my operator, that fellow, was going to operate the mine, and I was going to pay him a nice salary and pay his son to help him and his son's friend to a young boy about 20 years old, and they were going to operate it. See, so my man, he was real good. He was a working son of a gun. 

I had to buy a great big excavator, you know, that would pick up about a yard of material at the time to take off the overburden to get down to the gold-bearing ore. I bought each one of them a house trailer to live in. Wow. All this stuff. You invested a lot of money in that then. I got about $150,000 in it, see. And then how much gold did you get out? 

Well, he started immediately stealing the gold. Oh, no. 

The first week we operated two days, I got about 15 ounces. And gold at that time was about $300 an ounce. 

So it was $4,500 worth. I said, this looks real good. About the second week, I got seven or eight ounces. And then it drops down to four or five ounces. Oh. See? 

He was still getting the same amount, but he wasn't giving it to you. 

Well, he was getting more than he did that first week. because he was operating a full week. How did you catch him? 

Well, the thing about it, in mining gold, you can't tell. I wasn't sure whether he was getting a lot of gold or not because if you don't have a lot of gold. 

But it seemed funny that it kept going down. 

The way gold is, you may hit a streak, and it's just a pocket full of nuggets, and then you may go a week and don't get anything on it all. See, so I was confused as to what the status was. 

So then a woman comes down here from Lankerton, Georgia, to a friend of mine who has a gold shop over in Augusta with 15 ounces of gold for sale. And she said she wanted to sell it. Her father had sent it down here and asked her to take it down and sell it for him. And so his name was Fitzgerald. My name's Farmer. The mining permit is F&E Mining Company. It could be Farmer or Fitzgerald. She said her father had an interest in a gold mine. 

So you start putting two and two together. 

Well, the man over there at the shop puts on the phone to me, and I question her. She tells me about going and visiting my gold mine. 

And her father owns an interest in the gold mine, and he's got three people up there working with him in it, which was my help. Oh, my goodness. 

So you really did catch him red -handed then. 

I called him red-handed, and then, well, things were getting bad anyway because I was getting disenchanted with it, you know, and I wasn't getting out of it like I was supposed to. I told him, we'll mine it, and I get all the gold every week. 

I'll give you a nice salary, pay all the expenses, everything, and then when I get my money back, you know, credit and gold every week, I'll give you the gold mine. You can have it, and I'm not trying to make any money. I'm trying to get some gold and have some fun. You just wanted to have fun and break even. Yeah, and that's what. 

But that didn't turn out. 

So really, after that, a man comes down here from Michigan that had a machine that he thought would get more gold than we were getting. 

So pause that. 

And I came home one night, about 8 o'clock on Friday night, and the man had called up my house and told Martha Clare. He was from Michigan, and he understood I would sell the gold mine for $45,000. That's how much it still owed me. And he says, I'm going to buy it. He says, I've been up there working with Carl. 

Well, Carl had been there working with him to go. 

So anyway, enticing him. 

So the man says, I'm going to buy the gold mine. 

So I said, fine. And then he calls me and says, I've gotten things lined up. I'm going to hire a call to do further prospecting in the area, but he's not going to run the mine. 

But I've got a man that I'm putting in there to operate the mine. I said, fine. He says, I'm coming. I'm going to bring you a certified check for $45,000. I said, fine. 

So he calls me and tells me he's coming on Thursday with the money and his lawyer and a contract. I says, well, tomorrow I'm going to Europe on vacation for three weeks, and I won't be here. 

So after tomorrow, he said, well, I'll be here. 

Well, tomorrow I didn't hear from him. It didn't come. 

So finally I reached him in Michigan about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and he said, well, it didn't turn out. My lawyer couldn't go and get the contract drawn up, you know, and do the necessary work. 

I said, well, why didn't you call him and tell you he wasn't coming? 

Well, he said, well, you go to Europe and have a good time. As soon as you come back, I'll be ready. I said, well, it's the only thing I could do. I said, fine. When I got back from Europe, I didn't hear from him. And then about two days later, I called him up. He says, let me tell you something, Mr. Farmer. He says, we are taking the gold mine, and you aren't going to get a nickel. We aren't going to pay you anything for it. He says, we have been to Florida, and we have bought the mineral rights from old man Hanvey. I thought you already had those. 

Well, my mineral rights didn't run out. 

But I had talked to Mr. Hanvey. He says, we'll operate on a handshake. He says, you're the only person that I've ever done business with that's been fair to me. I send him 10% of the value of the gold every two weeks that we got out of it. 

See, Carl goes down there and tells him that I haven't been giving him anything like the gold that I should have because I run the mine, and I know how much we got, and I know how much Mr. Farmer's making. 

So, in other words, they just tricked you. They finagled you. Yeah, they tricked you. 

So the man says, we aren't paying you a nickel. We're taking over the gold mine. I says, wait just one minute. I says, I suspected something the way this thing's been running. 

So I've been to the state of Georgia, and I own the permit to operate gold in that gold mine. 

And I says, I've talked to my friends at the state of Georgia, and they said, tell you, if you put your butt in this gold mine without the permit, they're going to put you in jail in Lincolnton. 

So I says, I'll visit you in jail. you were holding the trump card I had the trump card because they said we will monitor the gold mine with the road patrol the county sheriff and the Lincolnton police so did they take their story that man never contacted anybody he had already hired a manager see Everybody just, they were con men. He was a con man. He was, and my man was too, see? 

Yeah, yeah. 

So, I mean, then my man, he couldn't operate it because I had the permit, and I wouldn't let him. 

So it shut right down then, huh? 

Finally, he comes to me and says, I found somebody that will finance me during the summer. 

He says, if I'll bring you gold every week to pay off the money that sold you, would you let me operate it? 

Well, I didn't have any choice because I didn't have anybody else, so I said yes. 

So then he started bringing me. 

So then for the next three or four months, he gave me $25,000 worth of gold. I got it down to where it owed me $18,000. And one day he comes in there and tells me about November. He'd found a buy-off for the mines and wondered how much I'd take cash money. And I told him $12,500 cash, you can have it. 

So about a week later, he brings me $12,500. cash and i turned it over to him and that was the end of your gold mining career and my gold mining career and all you got to show for it now is a lot of gold but yeah oh you got your gold right there with you yeah there it is that's that's actual let me feel how heavy that is oh it is heavy it's very heavy yeah well and you had fun except for being except for being And I kept all the gold. Then I got mine out of it. Look at that. I had 50 of those gold medallions made. Wow. Isn't that pretty? 

It's got stone mountain. You see that on one side? 

That's beautiful. And the other side is my family coat of arms. You know, I had that designed. The coin of Gordon Farmer, huh? 

Yeah. Yes. I had 50 of those pure gold made. One ounce. That's worth actually just the gold content today is worth about $1,500. 

But it's actually worth, well, I don't know, I wouldn't take less than $3,000 for one because it's a, and then I had about $35,000 worth of gold made up in ingots, you know, and, well, here's. Is that what you're going to show me? 

Yeah. No, that's, that's a little nugget. It's unusual because about. this is the way the gold comes out of the creek well that in that mixed together yeah I separated it out yeah and then I had a lot of fun but here's a little this is a two and a half ounce ingot that's worth about four thousand dollars oh yeah I had it's definitely glittery I had 35 ounces of those made you know made up in the ingots how much did you end up losing in the gold mine all together? 

Nothing or anything? 

Well, in a way, about $6,000. 

Well, my goodness, you had more fun. 

But see, the catch to it, the catch to it is I credited the gold at $300 an ounce, and I still got the gold at $1,500 an ounce. See, so I'm $1,200 an ounce on 400 ounces of gold. I had. And four of them twelve. That's $480,000. 

So you didn't really lose on this whole boondoggle at all. You didn't lose a thing. Well. You didn't lose a thing. And you sure did learn some things, didn't you? 

Well, yeah. 

Gordon, we would be remiss if we were talking to you about your whole life story and not talk about your community volunteer work. Yes. And all your involvement in the community. 

So I'd like to talk to you about the things that you've done that were really major to you. For instance, your service with the Aiken County Historical Commission. The Aiken County Historical Society Commission. 

How did you get started with that? 

Well, they came to me, the people in the commission, and asking for concrete block and my help in restoring an old stagecoach inn. 

It was down in the bomb plant, and they wanted to move it, and they wanted to establish it closer to Aiken on the highway. 

So I agreed to give them the concrete block for the foundation work and help them move it and establish it, and we did. And after that, they decided I would be a good one to be on the commission. 

So those people connected with the commission, but you had to be recommended by a politician. 

So my nephew, Wayne Farmer, was a representative. 

So he asked me, he says, how about me putting you on the Aiken County Historical Commission? 

And I said, fine, I'd like to be. 

So they put me on there with the people that were there, and they immediately elected me chairman of the commission. 

So you got to be the chairman of it. Yeah, chairman right quick, see. 

But then it comes up in 1970 that Aiken, South Carolina is 300 years old, the 300th anniversary and they wanted to celebrate the 300th anniversary and they asked each county in the state to put on some kind of a program that would be really worthwhile for people to see attend and uh then because i was chairman and one of the items that we decided was that there was a county jail behind the main courthouse in aiken county and we decided to ask them to give us the jail and we would make a museum out of it so they did they awarded us the museum and we took over and went and cut the cells out of the old uh county jail and fixed it all up inside and established the museum and we got people to award artifacts to go in it and we got it started that was one of the projects we had it's known today as the aiken county museum yes And then another thing that we decided to do would be to my friend, who was a civil engineer in Augusta, knew about the Hamburg and the railroad station. 

So he says, Gordon, we can get that declared a national civil engineering landmark if you would let us. 

And if you'll restore the railroad station and put it in nice condition, I will get the board of directors of the National Civil Engineering Society of the United States to come to Hamburg, and we will make the area a national civil engineering landmark and your railroad station a national civil engineering landmark. 

So I said, fine, let's do it. 

So then I restored the railroad station and got it in real nice condition and all. 

And then we had a celebration there in Hamburg in July 1970, and we had 8,000 people down there from all Aiken County come. They came in period dress. 

The South Carolina Railroad brought up their replica of the Best Friend Railroad engine and its cars, which was the first one in the United States. They put it out, and they hauled passengers up and down the thing, you know, just for celebration. 

They brought their train of tomorrow, which was a big computerized outfit with computers in the cars telling you about railroads of the future. They had that there. 

Then they brought the 750 steam engine with cars to have an excursion from Hamburg to Savannah and back, you know, celebrating Hamburg. 

So that was a lot of fun. 

So it was, and we had a lot of fun there, and that was a good deal. 

And then we had a woman in Aiken who worked for the Aiken Standard newspaper, and she said that she would write a drama concerning DeSoto's visit in 1540, through this area going north looking for gold. And the record says that he came to Silver Bluff, which is right down the river here below Augusta. And they call it Silver Bluff because the walls look silver. They're just loaded with oyster shells, you know. And it was a big area where the Indians lived and got fresh oysters out of the river. And they had all these shells and everything. 

So DeSoto comes up and he meets an Indian princess and he got her to accompany his crowd going north to help keep the Indians, you know, to make contact with the Indians and keep peace with the Indians. 

So we put that drum on for about three days over in Aiken with the Aiken players. Oh, you had a big time with all of that. At the end, the state says we had the best celebration of any county in the state of South Carolina. 

Isn't that wonderful? 

Because I was chairman of the commission, and that's the way the jail got started. 

Now, you also got involved with Augusta. Oh, yeah. 

Well, I helped Augusta with several things, so they asked me to be on the board of directors of the Augusta Museum. 

So their museum was already established there? 

It was already established. 

So I came on board, and then they elected me treasurer. 

So then I had to check all the bills and everything like that and pay the payroll. You enjoy working with those kinds of things, didn't you? 

I did, and so forth. It made you more knowledgeable than you already are about all this stuff. And then I gave that museum an 1870 cotton gin. Oh, wow. And I gave them a 1928 Mack fire engine. It's a real pretty thing. It's restored in a beautiful fire engine, and I've given them other artifacts. Right now, they've got one of my jukeboxes on loan full of James Brown's records. Oh, boy, I bet they love that. Because they've got a James Brown exhibit, you know, in the museum. And it's supposed to come back to me, and they've had it about three years. 

But I gave them all kind of things to exhibit in 2000, you know, that were from 1900 to 2000. Items that had come on, like television sets and telephones. To show the advance of technology. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. I had a whole... You had prototypes of everything. I had a lot of that stuff, so I put it over there on loan to them. They must be real happy to have you on their board. 

Well, they are. 

Well, I'm not on it now. Yeah, I've gotten off of it. You're retired off of that now, but you're good service. You were chairman of the building committee. I was chairman of the building committee to build the building, and you're building this there. And they did a good job with that. Yeah, it's real nice. You were also active with the Lions Club. 

Well, yeah, I was president of the Lions Club in North Augusta, and at that time we put on a horse show every year. Wow. 

Because we had one man that was really interested in horses and very capable, And we had outstanding horse shows for three or four years. And one of the years when I was president, we had the horse show. 

But then, like she said, I've been on the building committee of Grace Methodist Church in North Augusta since 1950. Wow. When the bomb plant came here, we had to rebuild the church or expand it. 

And I was on the building committee, and I had responsible jobs in charge of certain portions of it, including the last building we built in the last several years. 

It's a tremendous kind of a recreation hall, either a drama building, this outstanding, big, pretty building. I was chairman of the building committee to build that. 

Well, it's wonderful. You've certainly done a lot of community service. Yeah. You put your mark on it. Everybody knows Gordon Farmer, right? 

Well, pretty much so. Pretty much? 

The collector. The collector. Yeah, he is the collector. American Pickers made you nationally known. 

Well, they did. You've always been known in Augusta. You can't imagine the people, you know. That have come. That have come. Since then, yeah. Because I've had them from San Diego, Chicago, Milwaukee. A man from Milwaukee has been here three times. I understand you're starting to sell things, too. You're what? 

You're selling things now. Oh, I am. Yeah. They came to buy. Yeah. In fact, I've sold four automobiles. 

But you used to say you weren't going to sell anything, but now you're selling things. 

Well, I'm interested in selling because I've come to the conclusion, you know, that it's just there. And my family is not interested in all of it. There's a lot of it. 

I haven't let hardly anybody come in this house yet, see, because I've got two or three of the finest chronometers in the world. In fact, that's the rarest son of a gun right there, you know. and I got two clocks out there made in the last probably 25 years but made by one of the outstanding clockmakers in the world today. 

So what you're saying is that somebody would want to buy those things if they knew you had them, huh? 

So we just keep it a secret for now. 

Well, they aren't for sale, really. I'm hoping I can kind of divide them up with my family because I've got more than one to go around. You've got enough stuff to go around with the big family, you do indeed. Plus some, but then I haven't tried to sell it. In fact, it just hasn't been for sale. I've had people that ask me. I had four or five chronometers that I sold. I've had a man in Tennessee that has taken them. And I had a lot of, he took about 70 items of mine, watches or clocks. 

So this American Pickers is giving you a nice audience, a nice sales audience. 

Well, I had this before they came on. There's one more thing I want you to tell me. The story about the time you pulled the prank when you were in the military. It was kind of your swan song from the United States Army Air Corps. They told you you couldn't fly under a bridge. 

Yeah, well, during the summer there of 1944, when the war was over, and we didn't leave England for about two months. It must have been 1945. 45, I'm sorry. We didn't leave England for about two months, you know. 

And I said we could go down to the flight line and tell them that we would like to have an airplane and go flying. Because, see, we got flight pay. 

If you didn't fly four hours a month, you didn't get flight pay. See, so we always wanted to be sure we got our flight pay, which was a good bit of money. And so they let us have a B-17, and we'd gas it up and just take off and go wherever we wanted to. 

But they finally stopped it. 

But then they told us, they said, well, they've got that big Firth of Forth Bridge in Edinburgh, Scotland. It's the Forth, Estuary, and they call it the Firth of Forth Bridge. 

And it dates from about 1850, which was way before the Brooklyn Bridge and everything like that, see, and it's still there, and a nice bridge. 

So they said, if you go and fly under that bridge, and we catch you as court marshal you, So don't fly under that bridge. It's just off-limits. 

So we decided to go fly under the bridge. 

So we flew under the bridge and everything. And nobody caught you? 

Nobody caught us. In fact, we didn't go bragging about it. I guess we might have told some of our friends. 

Well, it's okay now. It was 60 years ago or more. 

So you took a big B-17 under that bridge. Yeah. That was pretty scary. Yeah. 

Well, and then we were there about 15 years ago. and there's a big pub at the end of the bridge. I told the woman operating the pub that I flew under this bridge during World War II. What did she say? 

She said, I don't believe that. I said, well, I've got a nice painting of it. She said, would you please send me a copy because I want to put it under the wall. 

So did you? 

So I didn't. I told her I would, but I never did. And I'm kind of sorry that I didn't because I lost the address to start with. 

See? so they all saw the bridge yeah and it doesn't look like somebody could have flown under it well you go downstairs and look at my picture it's a beautiful painting big nice one yeah but you made that paint you had the painting made yeah yeah see it's got it's got our airplane with the logo on it this hour airplane with the red tail yeah you know but you made that up that's not that's not like a photograph oh yeah well what i did though is i had postcards of the bridge ah and that's what you did and then i had pictures of our airplanes and you had them so i got this artist friend of mine was real good to paint it that's your story and you stick to it and i'm going to believe it okay okay good well that's true mr gordon farmer thank you so much for giving us your time today it's been a pleasure meeting you and hearing your wonderful story fine thank you thank you i've enjoyed it too good i'm glad to hear that.