Francis, Michelle A., Oral Interview: Waymon Cole, July 16, 1983 CE
Oral Interview
Waymon Cole
Seagrove, NC 16 July 1983
WC:
Waymon Cole
INT:
Interviewer, Michelle A. Francis
(Begin Side 1)
INT:
Let's see. Today is the 16th, July 16, 1983, and I'm talking to
Waymon Cole here at his pottery. We're sitting here drinking sodas and
eating break, aren't we? Pop tarts?
WC:
Yeah. I call 'em pop ups. It's uh, I don't know what the name of
it is. Buy 'em over at Winn Dixie or any other grocery store you want to
go to. (Laughter)
INT:
Makes a good snack, doesn't it?
WC:
Yeah. That's what I eat for breakfast every morning, and coffee,
and then I'm ready to go. I got, at one time I ate a big breakfast--eggs,
sausage and had to have a little jelly and stuff on my toast. But I got
too heavy and I quit.
INT:
Was it hard to quit?
WC:
Mm-mm!
INT:
No? Do you. . .
WC:
I can quit anything! Except talking.
INT:
Except talking?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
How 'bout turning?
WC:
Well, I could set down and, um, not throw no more pots, but I
wouldn't like it.
INT:
I wouldn't either!
WC:
But, I can't quit talking. Some times I'm told to shut up, but
it still don't stop me. (Laughter)
INT:
You won't have to worry about me telling you to shut up.
WC:
Right. (Laughter)
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
You were telling me last week you started turning when you
were, what, 14?
WC:
Yeah, I started making pots when I was 14 years old.
INT:
You just--how'd you come to do it?
WC:
Well, I, um, was raised in the thing and my dad was the one that
learnt me how and then I would wedge the clay for him and get on the wheel
and he'd show me what to do and how to do.
INT:
Mm-hum. And your dad was J.B. Cole wasn't he?
WC:
Right.
INT:
What did his initials stand for?
WC:
Jason BeWitt.
INT:
Jason BeWitt?
WC:
Mm-hum. I never, don't believe I ever heard the name BeWitt in
the sense in that.
INT:
I don't think I have either.
WC:
I don't know why they did that. Well, it's all right.
INT:
Who was your mom?
WC:
She was Rosity Emmaline Kagel.
INT:
Kagel. Was she from a potter family?
WC:
No, she was not from a pottery family and didn't care for it,
period.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Uh-uh! Didn't like it.
INT:
Not at all.
WC:
She didn't hate it, nothing like that. She liked to see it, but
to work in it or be in it, she didn't like it at all.
INT:
So she just kept house.
WC:
Right. She was a good old-fashioned cook. She weren't none of
that fancy stuff.
INT:
That's kind of the best food you can have just about.
Waymon Cole, 15 July 1983
WC:
Suited me the best. I can eat it any time.
INT:
Any time.
WC:
Right.
INT:
What kind of pottery did your dad make?
WC:
He made, oh, jugs and crocks and pitchers and churns.
INT:
Was it stoneware?
WC:
Pickle jars. Stoneware.
INT:
Salt glaze?
WC:
Salt glaze most of the time. He did do some in slip ware. That
was Albany slip.
INT:
Albany slip. I've heard of that. Seen it, too.
WC:
Only natural, anything naturally comes out of the ground
that'll make a glaze that I know anything about.
INT:
Mm-hum. Makes a pretty glaze.
WC:
Mm-hum. You can um, you can salt that, put in there. And it:
takes, the heat, when it is matured, it is about the same heat as the salt
glaze.
INT:
Is it?
WC:
Yeah. And you can salt that and it makes it pretty brown, a red
brown.
INT:
Mm-hum. You can salt the Albany slip?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Really?
WC:
It's beautiful!
INT:
Ooh. I don't think I've seen any of that.
WC:
Don't see none no more. My dad used to do it whenever he was
coming up. They would, you know, they'd have a real brown, dark brown, and
then that would be a reddish brown.
INT:
Well how did he, tell me how he did that. He would take the
pot.
WC:
Well, he'd just take the pot and have his slip made up and when
it got a certain. . .
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
You remember how he made it up?
WC:
. . .a certain stage in it, he'd just dip it in it and that's
all there was to it. It set there and dried then with the piece of pottery
and ready to go when the kiln went.
INT:
So he would dip it into the slip and when the slip dried, then
he would put it in the kiln. And was that a wood-firing kiln?
WC:
Yeah. Yeah, back then, he never did have no, uh, nothing else
but a wood-fired kiln. He died when he's in '43 and we couldn't, that was
when the war and everything was still goin' on and you couldn't buy
nothin' then. It was wood or nothin'. But it, that weren't too bad. You
didn't know nothin' about this other and it don't, didn't hurt you, so. .
.
INT:
You just did what you knew.
WC:
Some, some of the things that we got goin' now will look, look
very bad in I'd say, 50 years from now.
INT:
What do you mean?
WC:
What, it'll be such an improvement till our way of doin'
business would look stupid almost. (Laughter)
INT:
They'll be calling this the old-timey way.
WC:
Yeah. They'll say them old boys back there, didn't, they done it
the hard way, didn't they? (Laughter) I like it this way and I liked it
back there then. I didn't know nothin' and I run a kick wheel till I was
28 years old. It didn't hurt me. It messed up my hip but I didn't know it.
I done part of it in my growin' time and it messed up my hip some. But I
didn't, it didn't paralyze me or nothin' like that, but I still walk ugly
but I make pots. I can still make a pretty pot. (Laughter)
INT:
You sure can. So you, what, when you turned 28, that's when you
got your first electric wheel?
WC:
Yeah, I was 28 years old and they got electricity down here. It
might not have been on my birthday, but I was in my 28th year.
INT:
When was your birthday?
WC:
It's in September. 23rd
INT:
19. . .
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
1905 when I started this mess. No, when they started this mess.
INT:
When they started it. (Laughter)
WC:
Yeah, they started it.
INT:
Was it, did it take some getting used to?
WC:
No, it didn't take you very long to do that.
INT:
I bet it was a lot easier.
WC:
It's like walking and then somebody come along and let you ride.
It's just that much difference. (Laughter)
INT:
Did you keep the old kick wheel around?
WC:
Yeah, we got one, but I still got the one, I guess, that I made,
the metal parts of it. I ain't got the wood parts.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
Yeah I have, I got the wood part. We took that and put, put a
electric thing on it.
INT:
Really? Is it in here?
WC:
Yeah. It's that one down there.
INT:
The one you've been using?
WC:
In the corner.
INT:
In the corner? I'll have to take a look at that when I get up.
WC:
We might of done some little helpin' it up a little bit. You
know, refaced it, or whatever the word is.
INT:
Kind of altered it to suit the purpose.
WC:
Right. That's right. To make it uh, work with that.
INT:
Electric.
WC:
We got a wood-fired kiln out yonder now's been converted into
oil and it's almost as old as I am.
INT:
Was that one that your dad used?
WC:
Yeah. He used that thing for years and years and years. He's the
one built it.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Did he? I want to take a picture of it. I brought my camera.
He built it?
WC:
Yeah. And then we taken it and converted back into oil burning.
INT:
When did you do that?
WC:
Uh, probably in the early '50s.
INT:
That made things a lot easier, too, didn't it?
WC:
Oh yeah. Soon as the war was over we got started gettin' our
oil-fired things ready and then gettin' furniture, buyin' up furniture
that we use in here instead of sagger. That old sagger business was a
mess!
INT:
Mm--hum. What's a sagger?
WC:
It's just another container which you burn the pots in. It's
made out of about, they use about 20% sawdust in it so it'll make it
light. But that sawdust will burn out, but it don't leave holes in it, it
leaves pores, but not holes that anything, you could see through it or
anything like that.
INT:
When your. . . back to what your dad, doing the Albany slip.
When he would put that in the kiln, how long would he have to let it burn
before he added the salt?
WC:
Oh, that's before he used the salt? He'd have to get it up, it'd
take it about 8 hours, 9, it'd take a good 9 hours to get it up to about
22, 2300 degrees and then he'd put the salt to it and that was the end of
it then. The firin' quit.
INT:
They just quit altogether.
WC:
Quit. Yeah.
INT:
Did they block up the front of the kiln to keep some of the
heat in?
WC:
Well, yeah, they usually put a door up there that would not let
too much wind come through. Then they'd use, most of the time they'd use a
damper so that it wouldn't, you know, cool too fast and air crack the
pots.
INT:
Yeah, you ;couldn't want that.
WC:
Right. No, there wouldn't be much money in that.
INT:
How could he tell when it got up to 2300 degrees?
WC:
Well, we got cones. . .
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Did you have cones back then?
WC:
Yeah, we had cones. They've been cones for many, many, many
years. It weren't but only--after you've been in it for long many years
in, you could read the heat yourself. I've did it and didn't use no cones
and I wouldn't miss it very many points neither way.
INT:
Just experiments.
WC:
But, it, that's too strenuous. There's no use of doing yourself
that way when you got something that'll make it easier.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Make it easier and let it go. I'm a guy that's lazy and not too
lazy either, but I like to do things the easy way. If it works. . .
INT:
Well, you work hard. I wouldn't say you were lazy.
WC:
Well, I don't work too hard. It's, it looks hard. It is hard,
would be to somebody that didn't know how.
INT:
When you were 14 and learning how to turn, were you also
helping your dad to fire a kiln?
WC:
Oh yeah. I've fired kilns when I's 10 years old.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Yeah, it don't hurt you.
INT:
Would you help load it? What would you do?
WC:
Yeah. Right. I'd help load it, too. That was back then, they was
groundhog kilns and you'd get about three or four inside the kiln and
they'd just pass it to one another. And as the room began to run out, why
they'd send somebody out. I's always want to be the last one that went in.
You'd get to come out first. (Laughter)
INT:
Well, your sister turns.
WC:
Yeah. I don't know how old she was when she started. She was
about 10 or 11 years old. She was way down there.
INT:
Women didn't do much turning back then did they?
WC:
She's the first pot maker, woman pot maker that anybody ever
knowed of--it was in North Carolina. I don't know any other state now. I'm
not saying. . .
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
I saw some old newspaper articles about how, you know, she was
the only woman potter.
WC:
Yeah, it was a great life, but, I, the way I did it, like I said
a while ago, whenever I wedged clay for him, I would take and, uh, you
know, whenever he'd be a'firing the kiln or out doing something else with
him, I'd be a'doing my little practice then. But it weren't too hard for
me to learn. I loved it and it is a part of me and it weren't too hard to
learn. It is for a lot of people, but it wasn't for me.
INT:
It is something that sort of gets in you blood, isn't it?
WC:
Yeah, I believe it is. I believe that goes for music and any
kind of work, I think. I got people, got good, real close friends that
works in the textile mills and they, I never heard them say a good word
about it in my whole life. I wouldn't work there. I like to work where I'm
happy. If I don't make nothing on my board, it's better being happy than.
. .
INT:
Well, if you spend all your time doing it, you might as well
enjoy it.
WC:
Right. That's right. That's what I say. I liked it. I loved it
and I still do. I hope that I can, long as I'm alive that I can make pots
and do like old Waymon wants to do, not--when I get to where I can't do
that, I want the good Lord to take me on.
INT:
Me too.
WC:
I don't want to be around. I go over to see my friends in the
nurses' home and they're happy, but it's pitiful. Makes almost cry when I
leave. By the way, they're building a nice one over at, um, Crossroad
Baptist Church is building one, nurses' home. They'll go in it September
the first, the first patient. It won't be, you know, bed-fast people.
It'll be people that can, you know. . .
INT:
. . .get around and take care of themselves.
WC:
. . .get around and tend to theirselves. But they can have their
meals in their room if they want to. They'll have that privilege.
INT:
Well, it's nice that they have places like that, because some
people don't have any place to go.
WC:
It's a beautiful thing, too. The home is beautiful. It's just as
pretty as it can be.
INT:
I bet it is.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
It's gonna be nice for people. I've got a friend that I knowed
whenever I was a real young guy, him and his wife both, and they done and
signed up and paid their month's rent.
INT:
Goodness, they're looking forward to it, aren't they?
WC:
Right. They're getting up there and been retired and now they
want to live there. I like them. They're just as nice as they can be.
INT:
Well, I hope you can keep making pots for a long time.
WC:
I do too. I don't never want to quit making pots. But when I do,
I hope that's the day that I go. And I've said it and said it a lot of
times that I didn't want nobody to weep. Don't want them to cry about me
being dead.
INT:
You're not gonna be sad about it, are you?
WC:
No. (Laughter) I don't want to now, but if, like I said, if I
was in bad shape or anything, I don't want to live. I had a brother, he
had a, I don't know what was wrong with him. He couldn't, he was helpless
and speechless and everything. I guess he had a stroke or something. But,
it was a relief when I was, when they told me he had died. It was. And I
didn't want him dead. I liked him very much. But I didn't want him in that
mess.
INT:
No, I wouldn't want to be in that position either.
WC:
No, I don't want it.
INT:
Did you have a lot of brothers and sisters?
WC:
No, I had two brothers and two sisters.
INT:
Were any of them potters besides you and Nell?
WC:
Just me and Nell's all. They was one a mechanic and the other
one a sawmill man. Then my other sister, she was a farmer. She's still
living. She's in Bryan's Nursing Home, now.
INT:
Where's that?
WC:
Up at Asheboro.
INT:
Asheboro. Did, where did your dad learn from?
WC:
His dad. He's fourth generation; me and Nell's the fifth. Then
there's Virginia, she's the sixth. And Mitchell, he's the seventh. That's
Virginia's son.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
It's nice to see it passed on.
WC:
Yeah, I liked it.
INT:
Well, when your dad died; you said he died in '43?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Then you took over.
WC:
Yeah. Well, we had, me and Nell had been a running it for a
right good while before that. He, um, he weren't able to do it. He had a
bad heart and he couldn't do no working much and we did it. We didn't have
to, you know, convert ourselves into it right straight off.
INT:
Yeah. You already had been doing it.
WC:
We already had been working in it.
INT:
Yeah. Were you still doing just salt glazes?
WC:
No, we'd gone into art pottery then.
INT:
When did you start that?
WC:
At that time we was making lamp bases. That was in the war time.
We didn't make nothing but lamps all the time through World War II.
INT:
Why was that, do you think?
WC:
Well, we didn't have no, nobody didn't have no gasoline and we
had to sell it wholesale, all of it then. And this guy in Philadelphia,
the name of the company was Dayson Manufacturing People, and they, we
made lamps for them and made some art pottery, too. But mostly lamps. You
see, you couldn't buy no metal to make lamps out of, and you just make
anything into a lamp and it'd sell. They bought it right then. (Laughter)
And, they took them. We made the bases and they carried them to
Philadelphia and mounted them and sent them out everywhere, all over the
whole world.
INT:
So you were just wholesaling then.
WC:
Yeah, that's all. You never got to see nobody down here unless
the sheriff came to get you or something like that. That's all there was
to it.
INT:
What kind of glazes did you have then?
WC:
Well, we had, we done mostly, there's some, no, we didn't never
have no commercial glaze. It was just glazes that we, you know, rigged up
ourselves, were our own formulas.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
What colors were they?
WC:
Well, we had blue and gun metal, greens, reds. We had, I
thought, a pretty red. We called it a red. It was more of a, well it was a
orange-red. We did a lot with that. It would sell now if we could, but it
was a low-fired glaze and we don't go for it no more.
INT:
Did it have lots of lead in it?
WC:
Yeah, it had oxide, I mean lead oxide in it. But we just made
lamps and there weren't no danger in that.
INT:
No, that's right.
WC:
You weren't going to drink out of the lamp.
INT:
Hardly. Were all of your glazes low-fire back then?
WC:
No, we had some glazes then that would go up, oh around 2000.
INT:
What were the low-fire temperatures?
WC:
Oh, 1400.
INT:
1400. And you were doing this with a wood-burning kiln weren't
you?
WC:
Right, uh-huh.
INT:
I understand that the glazes that you get out of a wood-burning
kiln are really beautiful and a lot different.
WC:
They are. You get so much oxidizing in it, it's more beautifuler
than--well, I don't think it's any prettier than what we make now. But you
could get different effects than you can in the oil-fired kiln, or
electric kiln, either one.
INT:
Such as what? Tell me about some of those different effects.
WC:
Right. Well, what kind of different effects? It was just
entirely a different set up all the way. We can take them glazes now and
put them in, um, in our oil-fired kiln and it, they, well, it wouldn't be
even nothing. It's got to have a lot of oxide, oxidizing in it or it won't
work and wood, you know, it was about half that, I imagine.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
I've seen some beautiful things, but I, I like what we do now.
We can get any color we want to. I wish that I had money enough to buy,
um, smelting furnace for each color. I
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
could do a lot with that. But, if I had that much money, I guess I would
just quit and forget about it.
INT:
Retire? Oh, no, you just would make pots.
WC:
Just make pots. Well, I'd like to do these things, but, as you
go along, your time is limited and there's so much you can do less than
what you could when you was 25 to 40 years old, 60 years old--I'll say up
to 60 years. It's not been too much change in my way and my legs is the
only thing that slows me down right now. I got bad legs and I take it easy
on them. But I'm proud of them, too.
INT:
They've done you good, haven't they?
WC:
You ain't kidding. Yeah, they's the only two legs I've ever had!
(Laughter) But I like it and I still get a great kick out of 1iving and
making pots and meeting people and, uh, it's just wonderful.
INT:
I don't think I could ask for a better life than that-- to
enjoy what you're doing and to get to meet people.
WC:
Right. I love to meet people and learn their ways and then maybe
I can improve mine. (Laughter)
INT:
Oh, I don't know that you need improving.
WC:
Yeah, I could, I can be improved. (Laughter)
INT:
I don't know about that. Back when you were, when you and Nell
were making those lamp bases, how many kiln loads would you be doing a
week?
WC:
How many kilns? We had, uh, we would do one a day.
INT:
One a day. Whew!
WC:
One a day. We had a whole lot of wood fired kilns. Had a whole
lot of help.
INT:
Who was helping you?
WC:
And we shipped a train carload a week from Star, North Carolina.
We put it on a Norfolk and Southern rail train and it would leave this
evening and tomorrow morning it would go into, uh, or Thursday--if it was
this, if we put it on there on Monday, Monday evening, it would be in
Philadelphia Tuesday at 12 or sometime about that. It went to Norfolk and
they had boats, they run that car, they never touched it, they'd just run
the car on there and then they had a train hooked to it at the other end
that went to their siding, at wherever their shipping point was.
INT:
Uh-huh. That's a lot of lamp bases.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
It was, but we had lots of people working. They would come down
so often and change shapes maybe or add some on and we'd make the same
ones. They'd give us a list, oh, of no telling how many. It'd be up in the
thousands, that they'd give the order.
INT:
Mm-hum. That's a lot!
WC:
And, Nell made them and I made them and my brother-in- law, two
brothers-in-law made them, and, uh.
INT:
Phil?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Phil Graves?
WC:
And Bascome King.
INT:
Bascome King?
WC:
He was my other brother in law. He, he made pots, too. Yeah.
INT:
So you had, so four of you were turning.
WC:
Four then. Let's see, me and him--yeah, four. Turned out a lot
of lamp bases in a day. Got to somebody fire them.
INT:
What sizes were they?
WC:
What size?
INT:
Yeah, were they all sizes?
WC:
Well, I made some that would be anywhere around 18 inches down
to 8, 9, not less than 9 inches I don't think. Nell might of made some
that was smaller than that, but not too many. She could make lamps--she
can yet.
INT:
You're still making lamp bases.
WC:
Oh yeah. I make a lot of lamps.
INT:
There's some pretty ones in there.
WC:
They're getting more popular and more popular. Some lady come in
the other day and she wanted two blue lamps. And then before she got out,
there was people come in already and two, one was with her and they bought
eight lamps. Yeah. They's all blue, blue, blue. We have a lot of people
likes blue and we have a lot of people don't care anything at all about
it. I've seen people buy a full dinner set with blue.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
There's somebody in there today buying a lot.
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
They didn't have any blue. They had some of that white and some
of the sort of brown, the dark, darker color. It was pretty. Well, if you
were doing a kiln load a day, that's a lot.
WC:
Yeah boy, but we had, they had uh, labor was not nothing, you
know. You could hire anybody.
INT:
How'd you get paid back then. How were you paying your folks?
WC:
Not too much. They weren't, it weren't, I don't think this place
ever paid any less than $2.25 an hour. But I talked with some of those
boys that maybe would get a job here and they'd tell me what they'd been
a'working for at the saw mill. Ten cents an hour, 12 hours a day.
INT:
Oh my!
WC:
A dollar, one dollar. They didn't give them that 20 cents. It
make you almost cry to look at them.
INT:
You wonder how they got by.
WC:
How would you eat?
INT:
I know. I know.
WC:
Well, groceries weren't nothing back then either.
INT:
Did you have a garden back then?
WC:
Yeah, everybody had a garden.
INT:
So that helped.
WC:
Right. Well, I didn't, um, I drawed a little more money than
that. I never.
INT:
Well, you were the owner! You and Nell.
WC:
No, I didn't own it then.
INT:
Oh, that's right. Your dad was still alive, wasn't he?
WC:
My dad owned it. That was back you know, after he went on we did
it. Yeah, and then drawed a little bit more than I'd been a'drawing.
INT:
So the lamp bases--how many years did you do that for
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
that company?
WC:
Oh, I don't know. It was all through the war.
INT:
All through the war?
WC:
Yeah! You wouldn't ever see nobody. If you went anywhere you
went to town to get to see them.
INT:
How much were the lamps? Did you sell them wholesale?
WC:
Well, they was, they weren't too expensive. They'd run dollar
and a half to six dollars.
INT:
A piece.
WC:
Mm-hum.
INT:
That's not bad.
WC:
No! It weren't bad. But you'd get so tired of it. I liked to see
something beside the doggone lamp base. And it didn't, it was just--well,
that was the only you was gonna be and you didn't do nothing, only get up,
as the farmer went to plow, he'd go plow and that's all he had to do.
That's the way it was with us. We didn't have to do nothing but go make
lamps. If it's the same shape or another shape. (Laughter)
INT:
Well, after the war, did you start to wholesale to other
companies?
WC:
Oh yeah! It didn't take it long after the war, oh no,
(Begin Side 2)
WC:
. . .They stopped rationing gas, you see, and then people went
to traveling. We went to getting people to come in and buy, buy, buy. And
then we started to, uh, lamp bases being made out of everything after
that. Everybody, there was a big market for it. Plaster and all of that.
They would, uh, they went to making them. And then that slowed the lamp
business down. If we'd of kept on in it. Then we went back to making the
art pottery and cooking ware. Then we went into these people that was in
the lamp business, their business was a'falling off, too. There's other
competitors, so it wasn't too long till we, weren't dealing with them.
Then we'd send it to Miami, or anyplace in the world that there was people
we'd send.
INT:
Did you send it yourself?
WC:
Yeah, a lot of us did. We had a tractor trailer once.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
I didn't like it, but it was one, one way of making it. And I liked to make
it individual that way, but we had three places that we could send a
trailer load, we didn't have to have an order. Anytime we wanted to send a
trailer load, we just send it.
INT:
Where were they? What places were those?
WC:
That was one in Miami and one in Arizona and one in California.
INT:
California!
WC:
Yeah. We could send a tractor, I mean trailer load anytime that
we wanted to, to either one of them places.
INT:
What companies were they?
WC:
Well, this was um, . . .
INT:
Do you remember?
WC:
Big gift shop in, in Arizona. Can't even think of the name of it
anymore.
INT:
Was it in Tucson?
WC:
They had a beautiful, beautiful gift shop. I've never seen
nothing that pretty.
INT:
Really, so you took. . .
WC:
He had, when it was made, he had big beams and they was beaded,
like old lumber, hundred years back, more than that, and it was beaded,
that's what it was made out of.
INT:
Oh my. I bet it was beautiful.
WC:
And big, thick lumber, then. Well, it weren't too expensive
then, but now, if you was to buy one of them beams, you'd go to the bank
to get some loan to get it.
INT:
That's right. Well, it's hard to find this kind of lumber,
right here. This costs now.
WC:
Yeah, you can't do that hardly now no more. But that was some
kind of pine that he had. It was a beautiful gift shop, but I forgot the
name of it.
INT:
Do you remember what town?
WC:
Then we had--Tucson was that one, but I forgot the name of that
other place in California. And then we had one in Miami. That was, it was
Greeks.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Did you go with the truck loads sometimes?
WC:
Yeah, sometimes I would, just to get away. I liked it. I could,
I drove, too. I liked to drive. I was a truck driver, too. I had to do it
for this place and there, too. I didn't hurt me. I can 'do anything, back
then, that I wanted to. I could still, but I don't want to do it
(Laughter).
INT:
There's no reason why you should, is there?
WC:
No. That there old hard work, I don't like that no more. I like
to do it, but I want to do it with a machine or something like that.
(Laughter)
INT:
And take your time at it, too. Not have to rush.
WC:
Yeah, I don't want to be rushed in nothing no more. Well, it
don't pay when you're young. You don't do a good job at nothing then if
you're pushing yourself.
INT:
That's true.
WC:
I got a friend. They pushed him--he's a young friend-through
high school. He got through. But they wanted him to make the top grade
every time. Top grade. That's not right. It's not, I don't care who you
are. No.
INT:
That puts too much pressure on a kid.
WC:
Now he's a'gonna go to college and they're gonna push him again.
He wants to be a doctor, but I bid against, but, he says he's gonna be it.
He'll never make.
INT:
He'll end up with ulcers or something.
WC:
He'll blow up somewhere down the line.
INT:
That's sad.
WC:
And his mother thinks that he ought to be top A-1, above
everybody and I don't think so. I like my child to come along. I raised a
boy by a different marriage. And, uh, I never did push him. I told him one
day, everybody said, "Are you gonna let him be a truck driver?" That's
what he wanted when he was that big, and, heck, what did I want to do?
Ruin his life. He ain't got but one.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Let him live it like he wants to. If it's bootlegger, it's all
right with me. (Laughter)
INT:
Did you all ever make any, any jugs?
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
Any bootleg jugs? Yeah!
INT:
Did ya?
WC:
What, for bootleggers?
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
Good gracious? That's what we made back whenever my dad was
making pots and I was a'growing up.
INT:
Back in the '20s?
WC:
Yeah. They made liquor jugs. I helped him make liquor jugs for
weeks and months at a time.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Yeah. Bootleggers'd come get them. Anybody else that wanted, had
the money and wanted them, it didn't make no difference.
INT:
How much would they hold?
WC:
Oh, 2- to 5-gallons most of the time. 'Bout 5-gallon's big as
they wanted them. Lot of 2-gallon, lot of gallon size, too. They liked the
gallon size jugs.
INT:
Did they ever, did your dad ever make any ring jugs?
WC:
Yeah, yeah.
INT:
To carry around, you know. . .
WC:
Yeah, on your arm.
INT:
On your arm. And somebody said, told me you also, they also
used to put them over the hames on a mule.
WC:
Yeah. That was what it was that really started that. You know,
when they rode, they didn't, you couldn't get off and get a drink of
water, you didn't have it like it is, you know, now. You'd be at another
station in a few minutes. But, they'd ride a horse and maybe they'd be two
or three hours out there and no water. They'd have that and they usually
wanted it unglazed so it'd sweat a little outside and keep it cooler.
INT:
Really, so they weren't glazed, a lot of them?
WC:
No, lots of them they didn't. Not the ones that was gonna ride,
they weren't. If they's gonna put whiskey in them, they would glaze them.
INT:
Ah-huh. I didn't know that. The only ones I'd ever
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
seen were glazed.
WC:
Yeah. But, that was the start of the whole thing. Then they
usually, you know, the fruit jars, they made them, they started that off
to can fruit in and then they soon went to the bootlegging and that hurt
the jug business and so, (laughter).
INT:
Sort of had to go with the trend of things, didn't you. Just
like today.
WC:
Well, it still does that.
INT:
Well, like you were saying just a few minutes ago that lamps
have gotten real popular again, haven't they.
WC:
Yeah. And it went there for years and years and I couldn't
a'sold a lamp.
INT:
What else is selling?
WC:
But they can buy metal lamps, any kind of metal that you ever
heard tell of, they can buy it now. But they don't like that. "I want me
one made out of, down at Cole's or some other pot place."
INT:
Well, there's something nice about, something special about a
pot.
WC:
Right. I don't think I've ever seen over two or three people in
my, I'd say less than that, that didn't like pottery. And I've seen one
man, one time, he didn't. He was so sour I don't think he liked anything.
INT:
Poor thing.
WC:
But, that, I'm not criticizing him. But he didn't, he didn't
like pots, I know that much. He wouldn't even mess around with them.
INT:
When you were a little boy, did you all used to play games
around the pottery?
WC:
Sure, that was, uh, I played games all of my life, when I growed
up and even after I got growed I played a lot of ball with the boys around
the yard, or where ever we'd get enough together to play. Yeah, we had a
lot of games and we had ball, we had, they called it "Round Town" then.
INT:
Uh-huh, how'd you play that?
WC:
It was 'bout the same thing as baseball far as I could ever see.
But I didn't reckon our forefathers ever knowed anything about a baseball,
and they just called it "Round Town."
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Used it with a bat, get a ball and bat?
WC:
Yeah, the same thing, the same rules and everything as
baseball.
INT:
They called it "Round Town"?
WC:
Yep. Whenever I grew up I would have to make your own balls,
then, you didn't have nothing. Usually you'd get a bicycle inner tube or
something or other and cut it real fine and then twist that thing tight in
there. Make a ball, oh, about the size of a golf ball and then you could,
uh, the only thing you had, you'd have to go and get an old sock that was
wore out about, and then unravel it and you'd wind that on there and make
you a ball.
INT:
And then would you put anything on the outside?
WC:
No--sew it.
INT:
Sew it together.
WC:
Just sew it, and keep sewing it and keep sewing it and keep
sewing it. It hurt if you got hit with it!
INT:
I bet!
WC:
But, uh, you was pretty particular about letting anybody throw
it at you. Anyway, but you could knock that thing. It would really go
places. But we didn't, now, they knock it over the fence and maybe the
umpire gives them another ball. We knocked our 'un out there, everybody
had to go out there and hunt the ball. (Laughter)
INT:
Had to halt the game, didn't you, to find the ball.
WC:
That, it was all over. Everybody got off the bases and anywhere
else they was at, and went to help to hunt the ball. Then there's a
hollering a'going again when they found the ball, and we were all back at
it. And, there's many, many, many games that they played when I come up. I
don't know whether they do it now or not, but it was a lot of it would be
"Drop the Handkerchief" or "Tag", you know how they form a ring. They
might do it yet, I don't know.
INT:
Yeah. I remember doing it when I was a little girl.
WC:
Yeah, but I don't believe that I, I don't think they do it
anymore.
INT:
They probably don't.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
We got five little girls lives not far from us and the oldest
one is 11 years old. But they don't play games like that.
INT:
No, they play dolls and video games.
WC:
Yeah, and it's just entirely a different set up.
INT:
Did you ever make any toys out of clay?
WC:
No, I never did. But I made my own toys. I never had a bought
toy in my lifetime. But, the toys that I played with, most of the boys
would have give their right arm for it. Me and my brother'd go out there
and get, saw down a big gum tree, and then saw us a wheel off of it and
then bore a hole in the center of the thing. And we made wooden wheel
wagons and all that stuff. And we had a pretty steep hill and we'd make it
crooked then you know go around like that a'going down. Everybody wanted
to come play with us!
INT:
I bet they did! It's a wonder you, didn't break an arm or
something going down there.
WC:
Yeah, my brother run a'straddle or something one time and
there's a nail we didn't clinch it good and it got him right about there
and it went about, oh I guess about four inches. Cut it deep. Well, there
weren't nobody to sew you up back then. You took a rag and stuck in the
hole and it'll quit bleeding in a while. And it wouldn't get, there's a
place almost as wide as my fingernail, thumbnail, and it never would get
black. He was a mechanic, and he'd be as black as black with grease and
stuff, and then that never would get black. It didn't have no pores in it,
you see.
INT:
It was scar tissue, wasn't it?
WC:
Yeah, yeah, it took it. That was the only scar that anybody left
out of this world with from our wooden wheeled wagons.
INT:
Well, I guess you were pretty lucky if that's the only one.
WC:
Yeah, we'd take and didn't have nothing but a hand saw and
nails. We'd take and saw them out and then notch that down and take a
knife and trim it to make the axle. Sometimes we'd hit a tree and bust it
off, and then we'd have to stop and make us the axle. (Laughter) But that
weren't much trouble. That was fun, too, doing that.
INT:
Did you have chores?
WC:
Yeah. I had, uh, my biggest chore was get in the wood, stove
wood and fire wood. Didn't care about them very much.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
And then we had, uh, raised our own meat. We had hogs, we'd have anywhere,
maybe dozen hogs, and they went on then, they put the pens a way, way,
where the hogs was way, way away from the house. I done the feeding
mostly. And I would, they'd usually get me started about 4:00 and it'd be
dark by the time we'd get back.
INT:
Bet you were hungry, too.
WC:
No, I weren't too hungry. I got out, I took my time, and I maybe
had to make two trips, but I done a lot of rock throwing and investigating
the grass, and every bug and anything I could run down. (Laughter) It was
a wonderful life.
INT:
I bet it was.
WC:
And I would maybe go 25 or 30 feet and have to set down and rest
or I claimed I was resting my arms, and I was playing all the time. It
was, I think about that a lot. Lot of people would give anything if they
could live a year or two just like that now growing up. I got friends, all
they know how to do is look at TV and in the house. They got a yard that's
maybe 150 foot wide, 250 deep, and you better not get on the neighbor's
yard. She'll be hollering at you or he will, one.
INT:
That seems like it's no way to live, is it?
WC:
It is no way for me. We live close to Asheboro, now. Well we
live up here in this old house part time, but we live up close to
Asheboro, but I like to, but we're in the country there. glad I didn't
get no more. I might have been a durn fool. It does hurt people, when you
overdo it. But, I got enough that I know as much as, I, my English is bad.
I got a good friend. He's high educated. He is a high educated dude.
(Begin Tape 2, Side 2)
WC:
He, he uses everything. He was the highest English, and he's
high every kind of education, but he's not, he don't even, like I said,
he's just, he can do it. He knows it. And if you want to know anything, he
can tell you, in that. And he told me, uh, I told me one time, me and him
was setting and talking and I said, "Well." He didn't, hadn't known me
very long, and he said, "You know, Waymon, a lot of people knows you." And
he said, "You ought of spread a real good example for people like that,
that they put all kinds of confidence in you." I said, "Well, I don't do
nothing bad." I said, "It's just like it is. I don't have too good a
English and you've done found that out. No use in my trying to tell you."
INT:
But you don't have trouble saying what you want to say!
Waymon Cole, 15 July 1983
INT:
Any of them interested in pottery?
WC:
No, some of 'em is, but, they can get disinterested right quick
when it comes, you know, doing something.
INT:
Doing something else, yeah.
WC:
Right. Got a little girl, she comes down here and one of the men
works here and it's his little girl. She was really gonna learn how to
make pots. She come four, five times and now she don't never touch it. She
was down here one day, two days this week, or one day anyhow, and didn't
muddy her hands at all.
INT:
You've got to stick with it, don't you?
WC:
Right.
INT:
When you're learning it.
WC:
You have anything, if you do any good at it.
INT:
Mm-hum. Where do you get your clay?
WC:
Our clay comes from about 20 miles south of Raleigh, between
Smithfield and Newton Grove.
INT:
Weren't you telling me you've been getting clay out of there. .
.
WC:
We've been a'getting clay there for more than 40 years. It, uh,
is sand and farming land all around it, but, I don't, it's a good clay.
It's the best throwing clay I ever worked. It works real good and fires
out good and makes a good pot.
INT:
Do you have to add anything to it?
WC:
Nothing. Only water. We just grind it in the water and that's
all we add.
INT:
How'd you come to find that pit?
WC:
Well, I had a great uncle.
INT:
What was his name?
WC:
I don't know. I don't know how many years ago it's been. It's
been more than a hundred years now. Yet, he done a lot of messing around.
He liked to sell pots. He wagoned a whole lot, or they called it that
then.
INT:
Called it wagon?
WC:
Wagoning. Yeah, you know, they'd get their wagon, fill
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
it full of pots and take off east. That's what he done. He got down there
at Four Oaks and he got to talking to them people and stayed down there,
you know, several weeks. And, he would, he found this clay down there, and
that's how come he started. And he put up a little pottery place there,
but it didn't last long. He was a guy that didn't want to stay in one town
too long. He wanted to be moving on.
INT:
That was at Four Oaks?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Well, if he was your great uncle, that must have been some time
in the 1800s?
WC:
I don't know what the dates were.
INT:
What was his name?
WC:
It'd been in the 1800s.
INT:
What was his name?
WC:
Henry Hancock.
INT:
Henry Hancock?
WC:
Henry Hancock.
INT:
Well, how do you know when you find, if you're out in a field,
looking for some clay or something, how do you know?
WC:
Well, if you're, like you're interested in clay, you can tell it
just quick as you see it.
INT:
Can you?
WC:
Yeah. But you don't know how it's gonna work until you test it
out. You got to go through that. Looking at it, it may look good and not
work good.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
We, uh, we've had a lot of clays and I had an uncle, he made
pots and, uh. . .
INT:
What was his name?
WC:
His name was, uh, let's see, I have to, I got too many and it's
been so long. Hm.
INT:
Maybe it'll come to you.
WC:
I'll think of it in a minute. Anyway, he, um, he
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
would, he was the one looking, he was looking for clay and looking for
clay. And he dreamt, in the night he dreamed about this clay, and, uh, he
got up the next morning, never said nothing to nobody. He went where he
dreamt it was at and he dug down there and he found the best salt glaze
clay that I've ever seen or ever heard tell of.
INT:
Really?
WC:
It was, he lived out from Mitchfield.
INT:
I know where that is.
WC:
Mitchfield was where it was at.
INT:
They still getting clay out of it?
WC:
No. Made a mess there. Somebody bought it and they got tired of
it and didn't want to keep the land no more and they sold it to the Pamona
Tile people in Greensboro. And they didn't need that clay a bit more than
they needed a hole in their head. It wasn't a tile clay.
INT:
Mm-um.
WC:
But they used it and had to put a lot of other junk with it and
it's all been used up.
INT:
Well, that's too bad.
WC:
It sure was. It should'a been kept, you know, for people to have
made salt glaze pottery out of. Frank Cole was that man's name. Frank Cole
was my uncle that dreamt that. He, uh, he made pots. He made a lot of pots
from it, too.
INT:
Coles, there were a lot of Coles, weren't there?
WC:
Yeah. Yeah, well all of my brothers, I guess, was pot makers.
They was, that's when my uncle died, uh, my granddaddy died in the eastern
part of the state. He would go down there and they'd ship it to him. He
had a team and he'd haul it out down there and sell it. But I don't know
what little town close to it was where he died at. But he was dead about
two months before they even knew he was dead.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Yeah. You know, no telephone, no nothing then.
INT:
Yeah, I guess so.
WC:
And, they sent that man and told him to come get the mule and
the wagon. He'd have to pay for the burial and the feed that he fed the
mule and the horse, or mule, or
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
whatever he had. And they went and got 'em and brought 'em home and paid
off. Don't guess it was too much then. And, I don't know, the people that
knowed about where he was buried at is done dead and gone now and
nobody'll never know where his grave was no more.
INT:
It was unmarked, wasn't it?
WC:
No, it was unmarked.
INT:
Well. When did you start making the glazes you have now?
WC:
Well, back whenever me and Nell was a'taking it, we bought our
glazes from a company in New Brighton,, Pennsylvania and we'd buy our
frets and stuff like that, and they would make it and I guess they could
still make it and make it as cheap as we do. But, we bought it from them
and then they got to be big and selling more and we didn't get much bigger
and we didn't buy big amounts, and they couldn't afford to wash out their
mills to do ours. I told Nell, "We'd just as well to buy us one and do it
ourselves." And that's when we started to doing it. That was back in the
'50s, late, early '50s.
INT:
Well, is that when you started having your sales shop?
WC:
Yeah. We had it a'going then right much, at that time.
INT:
In the early '50s?
WC:
Oh yeah. That was after the lamp. Then we had, uh, a big display
before the war, you know. Even, we sold a lot of pottery then, before the
war. I know we went through that depression, but, you know. To tell the
truth about it, I never did realize that there ever was a depression. I
seen a lot of people that was in it, and we were 1ived in it, but we
didn't. Our business was real good. I couldn't say that it was anything.
INT:
Really? Well, you were making what kind of pots then?
WC:
Well, we was making anything. Cooking ware, pie plates, dinner
plates, sugar and creamers, anything that anybody wanted made we'd make
it. Didn't make no difference what it was. And then we made a lot of
garden pottery.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
Back at that time, I didn't get to work at nothing less than
25-60 pounds of clay at a time.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Yeah! But it weren't bad.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Sixty pounds though, that's. . .
WC:
Yeah, it weren't bad for me.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Naw.
INT:
You must be really strong.
WC:
Yeah, I was, I'm not bragging or anything. I'm still a strong
man, to be as old as I am. There're a lot of people even can't even get
up, hardly at that age. But I can, I'm still strong.
INT:
I can tell, because you're still throwing those, turning those
big Rebecca pitchers and lamp bases.
WC:
Yeah, and I do a 20-pound jug every day, or a vase or something
like that.
INT:
Well, what did you make out of 60 pounds back then?
WC:
Sixty pounds? Made big large urns. They were, I'll show you in
the book down there, there were lots of them that we made.
INT:
Okay. I'd like to see that.
WC:
That's what we sent--we had trucks then a'going, my dad did. We
did a lot, had a wonderful business in Asheville. There's a fella, three
mountaineers, they bought, we'd send pots up there about every week. And,
they bought a lot of it. They wholesaled it. They'd go to the shows and
things like that. And, a fella, Brown, Brown Hardware people, they was
wealthy. But, through that depression, there's some that's hit, and hit
hard, too. Broke 'em. This Brown' man and another fella come down here and
they's gonna start the, they called it the Sunset Mountain Pottery Shop.
They wanted to do it. And he come down and he said, "Now I'm gonna ask you
this and if you want to do it it's all right and if you don't it's all
right with me. It won't make me mad nor I won't think hard of you." He
done that and they, uh, he said, "Now you send it up there and I'll give
you a note every time you send it." Trailer truck load, and just as soon
as we get some money a'coming in, then we'll start taking up these notes.
And they did!
INT:
Did they?
WC:
Yeah! And they paid every penny of it back. And he got to be
big, too. We sold a tremendous lot of pottery to them people.
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
INT:
Well, you must have. . .
WC:
They'd go to shows in Chicago and places like that and they got
big, too. And we sold for years and years and years to them.
INT:
Well, were you selling mostly art pottery to them?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Vases and. . .
WC:
Yeah. We would, um, sometimes, most of the time we'd stamp their
name on it--what was going to them.
INT:
Really? And it was called. . .
WC:
Sunset Mountain Pottery.
INT:
Sunset Mountain Pottery. But actually you were making it.
WC:
Yeah, we made it here in the old flatland. (Laughter)
INT:
You all never have stamped your pottery, have you? Coles?
Except for recently?
WC:
No. Yeah, my dad used to, when he first started. I seen a piece
that his post office was Steeds when that was stamped.
INT:
Really?
WC:
Yeah. We've had, uh, one, two, . . .
INT:
How did he have it stamped?
WC:
. . .three, four. We've had four post offices since I lived
here and there were, I mean four addresses, and never moved.
INT:
Never moved.
WC:
I've had three where I live at in Asheboro, there Route 4, I
went back from Route 7. Two weeks ago, yeah, from July first, it was, they
put me back on Route 4. They started with me on 4 and then they went to 7
and now I'm back on 4 again. I don't know what'll happen.
INT:
What did your dad stamp his pottery? Did he sign it Cole's? J.
B. Cole's?
WC:
J.B. Cole's.
INT:
Steeds. Did he have Steeds on the bottom?
Waymon Cole, 16 July 1983
WC:
Yeah. Steeds on it. Yeah. This guy bought one piece up at
Greensboro, that was stamped. And he had a keen eye and he could see it,
and they hadn't saw it. And he went in the antique shop there and he seen
that piece of pottery and bought it. I believe it cost him 20, 25
dollars.
INT:
Oh, my! He got a bargain, didn't he?
WC:
Shoot! Boy. He didn't seen that and he didn't do nothing on it.
INT:
Well, I wouldn't either if I saw it.
WC:
When he paid 'em for it, he said, "Did you know this is
stamped?"
INT:
Oh, did he tell them then?
WC:
Yeah, I believe I'd a went on outs
INT:
I would have, too. I'd be afraid that they'd take it back!
WC:
I wouldn't want to hurt nobody's feelings, would you?
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Well, they couldn't take it back.
INT:
No.
WC:
It's just like if he'd a went in there and said, "I'm gonna take
this piece of pottery."
INT:
Don't you know that ruined their whole day, though.
WC:
(Laughter) I bet it did. I'll bet you anything they didn't nod
none that day!
INT:
Oh my.
WC:
Yeah, I made his dad one of them big jugs, and put my name on
it. He wanted it. I bet he come down here 40 times to see if I had that
made. I said, "I've got it made, I'll get it to you." I said, "I ain't got
the color, and I ain't running them right now, but we'll get it." One day
he come, I told them when we got it out, "You tell that man to come get
that jug. I'm afraid something will happen to it."
INT:
(Laughter) You wouldn't have wanted to go through it all
again, would you, with him?
(End Tape)
Oral Interview
Waymon Cole
Seagrove, NC 6 August 1983
WC:
Waymon Cole
INT:
Interviewer, Michelle A. Francis
(Begin Tape 1, Side 1)
INT:
One of the things I wanted to ask you was about that old house
up there. Is that where your daddy lived?
WC:
Yeah. That was where I was borned and raised at.
INT:
Did your daddy build that house?
WC:
Yeah. He, they lived in an old log house just a' opposite from
there, oh, 100 feet in, 'bout another 100, just a bit away from it.
INT:
Is it still there?
WC:
And they built half of it, 'bout half of that house was, he
built that and then they built to the other end of it, and that's where he
raised all of his young 'uns and where we lived, uh, till all, everybody
got married and left and we've all grown. And then he built this part
coming out here, kind of in a T, to it, and he needed that like, they
needed that like I need a hole in the head. And that's the way it is with
'em. But they lived there for years and years and years in that, too, with
the dog. They had a. . .
INT:
When they built that part it must have made it a really big
house.
WC:
It is a tremendous big house. Good gracious. You can put junk in
that thing! It's got it in it, but you can put lots more. (Laughter) It
was that old ceiled, I think the thinnest ceiling lumber I ever seen. I
don't believe, it might be, I guess they split a plank, a inch plank, and
made, uh, but it's less than a half a inch.
INT:
Goodness.
WC:
But it's got beads on it. Back then, everybody thought they had
to have a little bead on that thing all the way down. But it's thin and
it was cheap, but they, uh, they thought that was all right. I can't throw
a cat out through it and, it was, it's hard house to heat.
INT:
I bet it is.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Yeah, you see with that no more than that, there's no heat can
stay down there.
INT:
Mm-mum. You got a wood heater in it?
WC:
No, we got oil now. But we will, we was raised with a fire
place. Well, in fact, some of my life, they cooked on the fire place. They
didn't have no wood stove.
INT:
Did they?
WC:
And then they got a wood stove.
INT:
I guess your mama felt like she was really coming up in the
world!
WC:
She was really one of them high class ones, really. But she knew
where to push that pot and it'd set there and just peck away on that stove
and just throw in a little wood and it'd just barely boil and that's what
she wanted to make good food.
INT:
Especially make good soup; simmer a pot of soup.
INT:
Yeah. She cooked good. She weren't no fancy biscuit maker.
They's big but they was good and you didn't have to reach many times. That
was all. (Laughter) But it was cornbread, she liked to make cornbread.
That was good. But she liked to have a pie every day. She cooked a pie
every day.
INT:
That was good.
WC:
Yep. She liked, she was really crazy about pies. Course I like
it, but I weren't, you know, crazy over it bad. I can take a piece of corn
bread and old cow butter and put on there and I've got it made. Nobody's
got it better.
INT:
Yeah. Add a little molasses or honey to it.
WC:
Yeah, anything!
INT:
Mm-hum!
WC:
Oh, molasses, that might be [unintelligible]. But I like to put
that milk in a bowl, I mean corn bread in a bowl, and pour some milk over
it and get me a spoon and. .
INT:
That's good, too, isn't it?
WC:
Yes, it was good! (Laughter) A lot of people might
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
snarl up their nose, but they ain't never tasted it. That would be it,
wouldn't it?
INT:
That would be it. It sure would.
WC:
Yeah. I got a little boy friend, well, he's a grown man now, but
he was a little boy then. He'd come to our house and stay some. I'm bad
about taking a piece of loaf bread and if I got a glass of milk, and I
bend that thing and just dunk it and stick it down in there and eat it
like that. He went home and told him mama, said, "That's the way he eats.
I never seen nobody do that, did you?" She said, "No, I haven't." And she
said, 'bout a week, it weren't a week, he was doing it every day. The same
thing.
INT:
Really?
WC:
He said, "You know, it's good!" He said, "That old man's not
crazy." (Laughter) I really like it and I like, uh, salads and stuff like
that.
INT:
Me, too. Especially this time of year.
WC:
Yeah. And then in the wintertime, we had, we growed, uh, had
fields then, didn't have pastures then, but we have them now on this
place. But I go over to, I'd go over to somebody's farm and get some
"creasy greens." Or watercress, either one.
INT:
I've heard of watercress, but I've never had it before.
WC:
You never have? You sure have missed it. You weren't raised in
the country.
INT:
Mm-mum.
WC:
Well, they've got it in town. It's nice to make, you know, salad
with. You put some, I'll see a, used to see a lady in Asheboro when I go
in of, maybe on the weekends, Saturday evenings or something about it, I'd
see her buying that stuff. I asked her one time did she like it. She said,
"Yes I do, in salads." And she bought that and, you know, put it on her
list.
INT:
Well, I'll have to look for it in the grocery store and try me
some.
WC:
You can't do it, only in the spring.
INT:
The spring?
WC:
That's the only time.
INT:
We have a farmers' market.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Oh yeah, I bet you, oh yeah, I know, yeah, that farmers' market,
they'd have it. It's, uh, you do it just like you do turnip salad, or
mustard, or something like that. You can use it raw or boil it. I like to
take a piece of old side meat and put it in pot and boil it and make it
like that. My wife likes to fry it in grease. It don't, it ain't, I'm, I'm
a little further back in, in the old timey business and she. . .
INT:
That's a little greasy for me.
WC:
But I really love it like that.
INT:
I think I'll have to try some.
WC:
And I like good cabbage, but a lot of people don't know how to
cook it.
INT:
Well, I don't know how you like your cabbage, but I don't like
mine real mushy.
WC:
That just ruins it, don't it?
INT:
I like it just steamed just a little bit, a little water.
WC:
Have you got a microwave?
INT:
No.
WC:
See, if you ever get one, try it in that. That's the best
cabbage there is.
INT:
Really!
WC:
Yeah! You don't use but about two spoonfuls in a bowl that
big--of water.
INT:
And it cooks it good?
WC:
Yeah. Your book will tell you how many minutes. It ain't but
about, I don't believe it's but four minutes.
INT:
I'll have to try that, if I ever get a microwave.
WC:
Yeah, it sure is good. And they're the best to cook bacon or
anything like that. Have you ever eaten any that's been baked in there?
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
That's good. It's dry.
INT:
Mm-hum. I don't like it when it's all mushy.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
No, I don't want it and I don't like it soaked in grease,
either.
INT:
It's good. Will you have to set these cups on stilts, too?
WC:
Stilts. Every one. Everything goes on stilts, I don't care how
small or how large. Well, if it's too large, we use, uh, little bats to
put them on, you know. Little boards of about a inch and a half, you know,
might be not round, but, however it grows, about a inch or inch and a
half. Put about three under a great big vase, then you can smooth it off
with emery powder, and it's just fine.
INT:
One of the things that when I was listening to our tape from
the other week, you were talking about the saggers.
WC:
Saggers?
INT:
Saggers. And I didn't understand, I don't think I understand
what they were.
WC:
Well, they was containers that we put the pottery in. We fired
it in a wood kiln and it was a down draft and those ashes would go up and
then come down in there and that would ruin the pots. And then, if you
fired with coal, like we never did fire with coal, but I have a friend
that did. He would take that and then he'd, around that he'd put his pot
in the sagger, pack it as tight as he could, you know, how much ever he
could get in it I should have said. But, he put that in there and then
he'd have a little bit of a wadding, something 'bout like my finger, of
clay that he run out of his brick in the yard on the pug mill, I should
have said that--pug mill, and then he put that right around there and set
that down on it and that almost made it air tight and that sulfur wouldn't
mess up. And the glaze, it was better for the wood-fired kilns, too. It
wouldn't get none of that stuff in it.
INT:
Well, the sagger then, was made out of what?
WC:
It was made out of clay.
INT:
It was made out of clay. Was it just like bisque?
WC:
Yeah. Only it was about, we used, mostly it was made out of
fire, brick-fired clay. And we'd use about 25% sawdust mixed in it and
that would make it lighter and then porous so it would heat through.
INT:
And you would just stick a pot down into the sagger.
WC:
Yeah. We'd put it down there. It was just like a straight up
pot. I think most of 'em was about 8 inches in height. And then we had
some that they would make caps for
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
'em, you know. And they'd turn that over them and then put another one on
top of that and go to the top of the kiln, just like that.
INT:
I see. Did you have to put anything in, pack anything around
the pot?
WC:
No.
INT:
And usually you just had like one pot in a sagger.
WC:
No, we'd have as many little pots in there as we could get
around it. If it was, you know, where you could put more than one, I've
seen it just one barely would go in, you know.
INT:
Was this just with salt glaze?
WC:
No, it was any there, any art glaze, or anything that we had.
INT:
Did you use it with salt glaze?
WC; No. You wouldn't want to use it with salt glaze.
INT:
No, 'cause you want that smoke and things, don't you?
WC:
Yeah, you want--that you can fire in an open fire, you know, and
the wood ash is not there. It's too hot! It burns up everything in there.
There's no ash to it.
INT:
What would happen if you had a piece of glazed pottery in
there, without, and it wasn't in a sagger?
WC:
It would get that ashes on top of it and it would spoil it then.
It would be different, you know.
INT:
Would it turn it dark?
WC:
Messy. I'll put it like that.
INT:
Okay. It would ruin the glaze.
WC:
Yeah. It wouldn't be pretty and smooth like you would to have it
in a sagger. And I've took Albany slip and get me something like a crock
or something like that, and dipped that piece in Albany slip and put it
in a salt glaze kiln. But I'd put it under that pot and then pile those
little white vents up so it'd almost be air tight under it. And it would
come out, it would come out just about like a mirror. You could see
yourself in it. It was so black, till it would, you could just about shave
by it.
INT:
Really.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
You'd put on your lipstick or anything like that! (Laughter)
Right. Never seen nothing like it. Oh, there's a million things back there
that can be done with it, but nobody has time no more and they don't go
back that far. They say, "Well, it's too expensive. You can't sell it for
that." It ain't that. I like to make it. And if I don't make no big amount
of it, no production, it's pretty. And most of the people appreciate it
and pay, pay enough that you can get by with it.
INT:
I would pay more for something like that.
WC:
Sure I would!. I don't care. It would just bend over backwards
to get it.
INT:
Mm-hum. I would, too! When you gonna do one? (Laughter)
WC:
Well, like I said, they don't give me no time no more.
INT:
No, they sure don't
WC:
I work in here and then I fire the kiln, then I go down and make
pots, and then if anything breaks down maybe it'll take me a whole half a
day or day and a half to fix it. And, his time's took up before I get
there. But I learn to do something good, where everybody ought to. I wish
the presidents would do it, and the congressmen and the senators and the
sheriff man. Is to take my time and do it right and you don't have to do
it the second time.
INT:
That's right. And it's nothing, you know, it can't be that
important that you can't wait to get it done.
WC:
It, it's no, no use to say it. I don't care how nervous they
get, it's no use of it. It's just absolutely no use.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Yeah, we had it, we had our country running that way, but you
don't do it. I had a operation in Boston in '65 and my wife come up there.
She's, she's the nervous type, too. But, she's not that nervous as they
was. But they come up there and them men, they never did speak nice to
each other. They'd snap you and then, "Get in there," or "Get out of
there." Something like that all the time. It was never nice. She asked me
when she come up that first time, "What's the matter with people up here?"
And I said, "Aw, you're in the North." And, that, they're just different
types than we are in the South. In the South, you know, it's got that
name. But I like just to stumble along and pass the time of day. It's not
nothing, I'm not gonna live no longer and it ain't gonna kill--it'll make
me live happier while I'm a'living.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT:
That's right. That's right. There's no sense in hurrying about
it. Not at all.
WC:
No. And then when the end comes, why, you've had a good life.
You 1ived it, you loved it, and, um, I, I just like it, I like that kind
of doing better than anything.
INT:
I have to agree with you. I think it's best.
WC:
It, uh, like you said, there's nothing that important but what
it can wait.
INT:
That's right. Sure.
WC:
I like to make pots. And when we have them down here and they're
a lot, we have those people come by, and every one we love them, every one
of them, but they're a nervous type and they want it that minute or that
second and why cain't I and why don't you have it tomorrow. Well, our kiln
ain't gonna be done for tomorrow, and will be, maybe Friday, Saturday,
Monday or Tuesday. And if you come back then, and get it.
INT:
They don't realize, too, that it takes almost a month from the,
from start to finish.
WC:
Right. It'll take a whole month to get one through up here. But
there's some a'coming along all the time. But, it takes a whole month. I,
if there's somebody, or I always made it that way, if he's gonna work on
my car or gonna do something for me, and he told me he would do it, uh,
Monday or a month from now, all right. That suits me fine. We'll depend on
this. And then maybe he takes on 'bout half a dozen more jobs and then
come and try to mess mine up to get through quick, I don't like that! No I
don't. I just ain't in for it.
INT:
That's right. And I'd rather somebody tell me they can't do it.
. .
WC:
Just don't fool with me, just you get on out of the way and let
me alone. I'll blow through it and I won't be mad and I love them just the
same.
INT:
. . .than string you along. Yeah. I know. I know.
WC:
I like it like that.
INT:
Well, back when you all were making lamps you had people
saying, "Do it fast, do it fast."
WC:
Oh yeah. They wanted 50, or 50 dozen maybe or 500 in, and we
want them in, uh, by the 15th. And it was maybe the 5th then. (Laughter)
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT:
Those were electric lamps, weren't they?
WC:
Yeah. All of them was. We just made the base of them was all we
did. They put the, done the electric work.
INT:
Did you ever have trouble getting people to pay you? When you
were doing wholesale, a lot of wholesale work?
WC:
No. We never did get beat too many times. I wouldn't say a dozen
times. That would take you throughout our life, a dozen times.
INT:
Yeah. That's a pretty good record.
WC:
I got, I had a man, I didn't, my dad had done business with him
and me and Nell was working, you know, then. He come and he wanted, oh
it's 1000 and 2 dollars worth of stuff. And he give us a check and it
bounced. And I knew I didn't have no way of collecting it then. Well, it
weren't nothing to do. I didn't, didn't move my head on it. You just, if
you lost you lost and if you get it you get it. And, he, uh, he was gonna,
he wanted some more stuff and he come back and he wanted that and I was
pretty sharp with him. I said, "Well, I got a bad check on you." "Oh, I'll
make that good right now." That man, he just paid me off right then, and
made it good. "Well, now, I'll let you know when this is ready." I never
did tell him I was gonna do it.
INT:
Mm-hum. That was good.
WC:
I used the word "ready".
INT:
"Ready". You didn't want to get burned twice.
WC:
It never got ready! (Laughter) But I got out, saved my skin.
INT:
Oh me!
WC:
Yeah. He was gonna assure me. It was gonna be a bigger amount
than what he had given. And I knowed I was getting beat then.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
Yeah. We dealt with people, you know, like that. And it was, it
was, wonderful. There're lots of nice good people now, but there a lot of
people that is not, they want to get by like that. I don't think they want
to beat you, they just like to get by and not do it.
INT:
Mm-hum. You have to be more careful, I think.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Right.
INT:
About things like that now.
WC:
You sure do. Well, it was pretty tricky back through our days,
too, if you didn't, like I said, watch what you's doing. I like to, I, we
paid cash for everything we did. Soon as the invoice comes, we give it, or
if we, uh, send our trucks to pick it up, maybe a whole bunch of stuff at
one place, we just send a check. We call them and tell them to give us the
amount and they'll send the check with the driver and everybody's happy
that way. And they know whenever they ship it and we get the invoice, the
check goes right back right then.
INT:
That's the best way to do it.
WC:
It don't, no bookkeeping, I ain't got nothing against credit.
It's good.
INT:
Well, I guess sometimes you have to buy big things on credit.
WC:
Well, we don't do it. We won't buy it if we ain't got the money
to back it.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
That's just my good way of living.
INT:
I guess it is, especially in this credit card age.
WC:
Yeah, I got people that I know of, I got a friend that he
bought, I believe it was two or three new cars for three or four years
right in a bunch, every year. He said it paid. I asked him for who. I knew
it paid the dealer.
INT:
Paying the bank, all that interest.
WC:
Yeah, and the bank. And he said, "Well, I get, get the cheaper
rate of interest." Yeah, but his interest is the same.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Makes no difference what it is.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
Well, I tell you the way it is with me. If I owe anybody
anything, I don't want them to worry one second about it. I'll do it, if
there's any worrying to be done.
INT:
Mm-hum. I don't like to owe money either.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
I ain't going to. I'm not going to. I'll do without. It don't
hurt me, it don't hurt me to do without.
INT:
It bothers me.
WC:
No, I won't go down the road being bitter against you or nobody
else because they got it. It's all right with me. I didn't get it, I ain't
got it. And I'll get whatever I can. That makes me happy.
INT:
Mm-hum. That's a good way to be.
WC:
Yet a lot of people is bitter about, they think maybe somebody
has got, you know, he's done saved up his money and done pretty good and
got up there where he's not, not lean no more and they're bitter at him. I
ain't. Happy you did it. I'd had sense enough, I maybe'd been up there.
(Laughter) I don't know whether I've told you this before or not, but I
will tell you again. I met a professor about a month ago. Nice guy to talk
to. He's about ready to retire. Me and him was talking, just got talking,
you know. Bringing on, the subject got on something like what we said, and
he said that whenever he leaves college, he was a teacher, he taught. He
said, "Well I finished college and I went and I learned right straight
that it was gonna take me more time to make my money than it was to spend
it." (Laughter)
INT:
Isn't that the truth!
WC:
He said, "I learned to enjoy making it and I learned to enjoy
spending it." He said it didn't, I didn't get, he said, "I got just as
much enjoyment out of making it as I did spending it." Said, "I didn't
even know what I was gonna get, but I could go and buy whatever I thought
I wanted and needed, and could afford."
INT:
Well, you knew what he was talking about, didn't you?
WC:
He did. He had, he had sense in him. It weren't no, no nothing
about it. No back talk, no messing about it. It was the real thing.
INT:
Well, that's sort of what we talked, you and I talked about.
About how if you're gonna be working all the time, you need to be doing
something you enjoy.
WC:
Right. If you don't, you're just plum unwise.
INT:
Miserable.
WC:
Unwise for not doing what you like. For every time the clock
ticks, we're getting closer on our way out. But, I don't worry. It don't
worry me. I love to live it, and then when it comes time to go, I want to
go happily, too.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT : Mm-hum.
WC:
That's right. I don't want to die sad and mad, I want, if it,
when it comes time for me to die, I hope I go to sleep and that's it.
INT:
Yep. Me, too.
WC:
And, no use of whenever anyone dies, you hate to give up your
loved ones. I hate, I've seen people who grieve and make theirselves plum
sick over it and, that's, that's wrong. I think that the Bible says to, to
mourn as they come in and rejoice as they go out! We do it the opposite of
that! (Laughter)
INT:
Oh me. We do don't we?
WC:
I think that's the old devil working in us then, don't you?
INT:
Yeah. Do you think your dad enjoyed pottery as much as you?
WC:
Oh yeah. He enjoyed pots. He loved 'em. He really did. He liked
to make pots. He was a good pot thrower, too. He could do it, he weren't
as good, uh, getting down to half a pound and such as that. He had a
terrible big hand and, he, uh, he did larger pieces, he was good at it. He
could take and, he was a strong man, too. He had a strong body. And he had
a bad heart and it clicked out with him. But, his body was good, and he
died, what you'd almost call a young person now, at 74 years old. He'd
just become 74 years old.
INT:
Had he?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
That was in 1943, didn't you tell me?
WC:
Right.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
He died, uh, the 16th, no the 23rd and his birthday was the
2nd.
INT:
Mm-hum. Did he like to tell stories about people he knew?
WC:
Oh, he liked to tell them. He liked to tell, oh, about wagons,
you know, back, that's what we call, there's no cars then.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
And he didn't know how to drive a car. He, he always had good
trucks but he never could drive them. But anyway, he'd tell about being
back in the East, then, you know. He'd go down South or East, and it was
scary and a mess in there then, in his days. They weren't nothing on just
a wagon road, and there was just swamp everywhere you went. You couldn't,
they couldn't drain them. They had no bulldozers. They couldn't get out
there. It'd grow back as fast they'd cut it down.
INT:
That's right.
WC:
And they was bears and lots of things back then.
INT:
Snakes, too, I bet.
WC:
Lot of game of any kind. Back in his day and the first part of
my days, I didn't know no bears or nothing, but the game was, it was
plentiful. Anything that you wanted to go out and hunt. I wasn't no
hunter. He liked the wild rabbits good. I had a pretty good dog and it
would run of a morning. I'd let it run till, you know, 'bout all it wanted
and then I'd get out there and shoot him a rabbit and eat them when the
seasons was for it.
INT:
For it. Yeah.
WC:
And he liked that.
INT:
Would your dad be gone a long time? Take the wagon out?
WC:
Yeah. Yeah, but it weren't in my days. It would be before,
before my days.
INT:
Before you were born?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Did you know your granddad?
WC:
No, didn't never know neither one of my granddaddies. They died
before I [unintelligible]. . .
INT:
You were telling me your granddad Cole died down East
somewhere.
WC:
He died in, somewhere in, I don't know.
INT:
Was it New Hanover County? Do you remember what county?
WC:
I don't, don't remember what county it was. If you're
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
up passing Seagrove Pottery, you ask Dorothy what county it was where he
died. She'll know.
(Tape stops, then starts)
INT:
What caused this pot to turn dark, so dark?
WC:
Uh, 'cause it didn't get quite, quite as hot there. It was sort
of smothered when I piled them on each other.
INT:
That's gonna make some bird a nice home!
WC:
It sure is. There was a guy here one day this week. He was from
San Antone (sic), Texas. I was making little bird houses that day. He
said, "I bought one of them from you and I'm taking it back to Texas." I
said, "What kind of birds do you have down there?" He said, "We have
little wrens like you do here. That's why I bought a wren house."
INT:
I've got one and it's a little bit taller. I like that one.
WC:
A bigger door for them.
INT:
Yeah, a bluebird will probably go in that one.
WC:
Yeah. Well, it, uh, that was made, the one you got is for a
bluebird. About that size. But we ain't got too many bluebirds no more.
(Begin Tape 1, Side 2)
INT:
When you all did a salt glaze, you never stacked the pots, did
you?
WC:
No, you can't stack the. . .
INT:
It's not tall enough is it?
WC:
Yeah. But, it won't, uh, it will have 'em stick where the the
other one sets against it, or on top of it, or however you want to put it.
It will stick.
INT:
It will stick together. I was reading somewhere where, like out
in Missouri where they were making pots.
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
In the 1880s and 1890s and they were making salt glaze in huge
kilns that were, had two fire boxes, and they were glazing on the inside
and the outside, but not on the bottoms and not on the rims. And then they
would stack 'em and fire 'em that way. They never did that around here,
though did they?
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Yep.
INT:
They did?
WC:
Yeah. That was that slipware.
INT:
Albany slip?
WC:
Yep. They'd rub that off and it didn't, it was enough on there
that it wasn't, you know, rough like that pot there, but it weren't no
glaze on it neither. It was just a stain, I guess is what made it. And,
that's the way they did their pickle jars and all of the jugs.
INT:
So your dad did that, too, then?
WC:
Yeah. Right. Used to years and years before my time, and, well,
I've seen it in my time, but I weren't, I mean, I weren't old, big enough
to pot. But, I've seen it being done. And, you know them jugs in there,
oh, brown and white bottom or white topped and brown bottomed, whichever
way it was, you know. They had a square place like that?
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
You know, a jug and then they'd go right in. This here has
always been rough here. That's what that was, they stacked it.
INT:
That's where they stacked it. Oh!
WC:
Yeah. That's what that was for. Big people think they made it
for, you know, to make 'em pretty. Well, it didn't hurt the looks of 'em
none. But, it was, uh, that's what that was. It was done that way so they
could stack 'em in the kiln. Now, them real old timey, I mean real old
ones, they make some, but they're not like them old ones. They, they're
expensive. There's no [unintelligible] you could try to buy one. And, I
put this, part of this road that comes by the house up here. It used to
come nearer the door than it does now, and I had it like this, pushed up.
But they, there when it went on and went over to a station, a railroad
station, had a post office and two or three stores there, just country
stores.
INT:
What community?
WC:
It was Asbury. Asbury was the first post office in my life, and
then they went to Steeds, and then they went to Ether, and then they went
back, I'm in, in Seagrove now here, down here.
INT:
Mm-hum.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Well, in fact where I live at I've had three different routes,
twice, I mean three times since I've been living there. I've been living
there 'bout ten years.
INT:
They can't make up their minds, can they?
WC:
Well, they bust up the route, and then when we get more people,
more populated, then they have to put on another one and that creates
another route. I don't like it. But there ain't nothing I can do about it.
Only change my number on everything I got and let it go. (Laughter) But,
talk about that Asbury, that was, there was, when they were out of this
real young boy, there weren't no time I don't, hardly no time, that you
could look out of our house but what there's a wagon or buggy or
something a'going along. They hauled a lot of lumber and ties and stuff
like that. Or go over there to pick up their freight. And, it would be,
you'd see somebody going along that road all the time. I'd get out there
and I'd be a'standing there like I was, oh, I wouldn't be nothing at all.
(Laughter) He'd come along and he'd a'been comfortable and he'd be
setting up there about half asleep. And I'd swing on that (unintelligible]
and ride down and fool around in the bushes or in the branch or somewhere
and it wouldn't be but a little bit I'd get a ride back to the house.
Nobody knew whether you was along. (Laughter) They didn't care neither.
INT:
You had fun as a kid, didn't you?
WC:
Yeah. I grew up like I am now. I feel different, I feel the same
things. My wife says I never growed up. I don't want to.
INT:
No, I don't think you should. Don't think you should.
WC:
But anyway, they would go over there, them people would, at
Christmas time. It would be, they'd go over there to that station and you
could order liquor then and the liquor stores around here weren't no
good. You could order from Richmond. That was the big place to buy
government liquor. And you'd see 'em pass and, uh, maybe one or two 5-
gallon jugs setting in there full of liquor. For their Christmas. Yeah. I
had a uncle, he loved that stuff. He really did. You'd see him passing
along. [Unintelligible] He didn't, if he got drunk he didn't bother
nobody.
INT:
Just went off by himself, huh?
WC:
Yeah. He'd just get drunk. Act crazy and that's all until he got
sober and went back to work. He was working night and day whenever he got
sober. Didn't want to do anything when he was on a drunk. That messes up
the deal, don't it?
INT:
It does.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Well, if you want to take a drink, it's all right with me. I got
nothing [unintelligible].
INT:
Well, I'm not of a drinker myself.
WC:
And uh, if you want to take a beer, it's all right. I don't mind
taking one, a beer, but I'd use it as a beverage you eat. And I 1ike it
that way. It's not, and then if you come in real tired and eat you a
sandwich and drink you a can of beer, it will relax you.
INT:
Yep. Help you unwind.
WC:
I don't want to get in there and get "high" and hollaring and
throwin' my wife out and all the young un's and knockin' the mirrors off
of the. . . (Laughter)
INT:
Heavens, no.
WC:
That's great. But, then they'll shoot at each other. Man, I
don't care for that.
INT:
I know.
WC:
That's the way it was back in them times. My daddy, he liked
that. He, he liked the alcohol, but he wasn't any bad man or nothing like
that. He never meant to.
INT:
Did he like to drink moonshine?
WC:
Yeah! That stuff, I cain't take that.
INT:
That's pretty strong stuff.
WC:
That there! I, uh, if I was gonna drink anything, well, I
wouldn't drink, to start with, nothing heavy. Like I say, I take a social
drink, but it would be, you know, some mild whiskey. Now, I tell you what
is pretty nice. I had a black person work with me one time and she, we was
talking about this, and there was one of them, oh, there was three or four
of them working for me, and I had a cold like nobody's business. And she
said, "Why don't you take a drink, maybe that'll help." Well, I done
any--took a little of anything, then, you know. So I had some applejack.
That was nice. I liked that. I taken a snort of that and wasn't no big
amount, maybe that deep in a cup, and a paper cup, no big mug like that.
Anyway, I come by and she said, "That sure, that wine sure does smell
good." And I said, "You want some?" She said, "Yeah!" I poured her out
some in a mug. She was gettin' to where she was talkin' pretty loud.
(Laughter) Her old man worked here. He said, "Kelly, do you know what
you've been drinkin'?" Her name was Kelly. "Wine." "Wine, Hell, that's a
hundred proof!" (Laughter) I thought I'd die! "Golly, I never did drink
none before.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
You got me a'drinking!" I said, "I never done that, you asked me to let you
have a little drink. I never asked you nothin'." Whew! Well, it's
wonderful, to you know, go along through life.
(Tape stops, then starts)
INT:
You were telling me that, you know, your dad made salt glaze,
Albany slip.
WC:
Mm-hum.
INT:
Did he ever make a glaze that was sort of a, a yellow or gold
color?
WC:
Yeah. If you add sulfur to Albany slip, it, uh,.
INT:
Comes out sort of golden?
WC:
Yeah. Almost a, a rust color. I've seen 'em come out and they'd
be just as pretty as, I'd call, it was the nearest to rust of anything I
could think.
INT:
Where did he get his Albany slip?
WC:
He ordered it from some place in Albany, New York. These guys,
if it was, if it was sent, it'd have to come to a station, you know,
where, like Seagrove or Star, where they had a agent. They didn't have one
in Asbury.
INT:
They just had a station?
WC:
That, uh, conductor or the guy that is the manager of the train
behind. He would, uh, he knew all of them old boys like that. He'd bring
it and let 'em put it off the back. It'd save three or four miles
driving.
INT:
Yeah! In a horse and wagon, that added up.
WC:
Yeah. You didn't go up there in 15 minutes and back, it took
about half a day. He was nice, they was nice people. People was nice to
each other then.
INT:
Looks like there's still a little spot there you missed on the
side, outside.
WC:
This one?
INT:
Come up, come around a little more. Right. . .
WC:
Oh!
INT:
Yeah. You got it.
WC:
This was, the, um, I had some cousins, they're a
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
hundred years old when they died, and they would, um, back then, you'd have
to, uh, get on at a flag station. These, them old, uh, that old, uh,
conductor, he told them that "Anytime you all want to town (that's go up
to Asbury), just get out there and flag us down. We'll stop at the house."
They'd stop there (unintelligible].
INT:
Well, that's a nice thing to do, wasn't it?
WC:
It was, yeah: And they'd get on a ride to Asbury and he'd stop
and put 'em off at the same place. He didn't care. But you wouldn't get
that now. They'd cut you out. Bus people, I don't know, they wouldn't even
stop out on the road now, would they?
INT:
I know. Uh-uh. Sure wouldn't. Who built your first electric
wheel?
WC:
We built 'em all ourselves.
INT:
Did ya?
WC:
Yep.
INT:
Did you have anything to go by?
WC:
Naw. Just what you thought you needed. No, we didn't have no
instructions. The first electric wheel I ever got I had to have two belts
on it, and I had to step down through it. That's all I had. I couldn't get
nothing else. Then we got to where we could buy those spit
[unintelligible], and we could run 'em, uh, from almost zero up to 350.
That's what we use now.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
We've had them years and years. I don't know you could even buy
them now or not. You can buy a motor, fed from a switch, but I like, it
cuts down the power when you're doing that.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
I had a man one time, he was a friend, he, uh, was a good guy.
He could make anything he wanted with wood, or iron, or anything. He's
goin' to make a wheel. He come down there one time and said he had one
that old Waymon couldn't stop. He brought it in there and they set it
down, three or four of them tried it, and said, "George you'll never spin
that one." And I throwed about a 20-pounder on there and I choked that
thing down. First thing, he-got so disgusted, he just went out. He never
said nothin'. He left.
INT:
(Laughter) Showed him, didn't ya?
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
I wasn't trying to show him nothing. I just wanted to show him
that I could stop. [Unintelligible] I weighed about 140-50 pounds then. No
less than that. He, uh, weren't for me. He was about a 225'er. He liked to
pick at me. And I liked to pick at him. I like to pick at anybody that can
take it. If you can't take and you're gonna get mad, to heck with you.
Forget it.
INT:
That's right. They can go home.
WC:
They can go home and not even bother me. Anyway, this old guy,
he was always kind of standing around back there, he worked here, and
maybe we'd be just standing at the door or somewhere or another, and I
could always tell about what he had on his mind by just looking at him.
And, he was standing there, decided he didn't want to let me in, wouldn't
be a'working or nothing like that. He decided he didn't want to let me in.
[Unintelligible] Pretty hard which one was gonna go in.
INT:
That's right. And he's the bigger one.
WC:
And he was big. But I was strong and active. If you got that, I
was 1imp as a dishrag and, whew, he gets out of wind, and I'd handle him
good. (Laughter) But I see him once in a while now. "Well, had some fun,
didn't we?" "Oh, yeah." "Think you can handle me now?" He said, "I don't
think either one's got it."
INT:
You could both hold the door open for each other, couldn't you?
I never will forget it. It was fun, all right. [Unintelligible].
INT:
Yeah, that's right.
WC:
But it was the growing up and the getting old.
INT:
Aren't you gonna do these?
WC:
No, I'm gonna set 'em somewhere else.
(Tape stops, then starts)
INT:
I understand, I talked, one of the first people I talked to
when I was starting this job, was Harwood Graves. And I understand that
he's just one of those kind of people can make just about anything.
WC:
He was the guy that made that wheel that I was talking about!
INT:
Well, that's why I asked you about that. 'Cause I knew that Mr.
Graves had made wheels, and I didn't know if he'd made yours or not.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
He made that one.
INT:
Did he?
WC:
The one that I spun with it and he couldn't take. (Laughter)
INT:
He's a pretty smart man, isn't he?
WC:
He's an extra smart man. He's got cancer.
INT:
I know.
WC:
It messes him up. I hate to see it. And he, he can just about do
anything he wants to.
INT:
He made a lot of pottery himself, didn't he?
WC:
Well, he, uh, he did it with a mold, a press, and pressed it,
you know. He made logs and all kinds of things. He could a'been a'doing
good, but he didn't. He was a guy that, he likes it that way, but he likes
to do something a little bit different after a bit.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
That's the only thing that I ever found that Harwood was, he
liked to build something better and bigger than anybody, but then, "Forget
it and throw it away, I don't care for it."
INT:
Yeah. Did he make something that, I'm trying to think now what
it was. It's something that you built, you built the pot around it and
then it collapsed and you pulled it out through the top. What am I
thinking of?
WC:
That's him.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
He built a mold that was made out of slab.
INT:
Yeah.
WC:
And, we had 'em here for years and years, but, shoot, I didn't
want 'em. Put 'em away. And it got, had, didn't have room, they built that
thing, it was as high as my head.
INT:
It was for a big pot, wasn't it?
WC:
It was a pot. I've seen 'em build pots, they had to tear the
door out to fire one.
INT:
You're kidding!
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
Yeah, to get it in the door.
INT:
To get it in?
WC:
In the door. And, it was terrible. But he liked it. And my daddy
didn't back him up, and that's the way it goes.
INT:
Who did he, who was it for?
WC:
Who'd, who'd he make it for?
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
He made it for my daddy.
INT:
I mean, did your daddy sell it to somebody in particular, or
was it just. . .
WC:
Oh, we sold one or two of them. They weren't nothing nobody
couldn't have them. It would take four good men to carry it. You wouldn't
want a pot sittin' around like that!
INT:
I wonder if any of them survived.
WC:
I doubt it. There's some went to Miami. I don't know whether
they did. I doubt it. You know the new generation come in and they kicked
that out. "I want something made out of brass or something." Not knowing
they had somethin' who much more of. . . But he is good.
INT:
Did he make anything else that you all use around the pottery?
WC:
Well, he was all the time working on the wheel. He worked, he
made that wheel where, um, where Virginia works on now. He'd come by and
leave models that [unintelligible]. I had a, out there [unintelligible]
broke a little of the bowls on it. Had to paste and cut the thing out to
get it out, been in there so many years. He, uh, hadn't been out of the
hospital for a good year, with a heart ailment then. And he, I told that
boy to go over there and just ask him. Now I told him that we don't want
him to do it, we just want him. He found out we had something pretty
important, and he didn't want to tell nobody how it was. "I just go, I
want to go over there, I'll show you." He didn't do nothing but just bent
down, crawl up and went up into the filter, where the filter press was.
Said, "Okay, I got to go back home. "Went back home, came back over there
and it weren't but a few minutes he drilled it out and fixed it, and
walked on out.
INT:
He's handy that way, isn't he.
WC:
Yeah, but he just wanted to do it. I was glad that he, that I,
I didn't fuss at him.
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT:
No.
WC:
But if he'd just a'showed them what to have done, they would
have done it. And he didn't want to do it.
INT:
Well, I can understand that.
WC:
Yeah. I do too. If you, uh, whatever your job you do, you don't
want somebody else [unintelligible].
INT:
That's right.
WC:
But, he went to work. He worked here for a long time doing them
logs. He didn't like it, but he could sell every one he made. Working for
hisself. General Electric leading the man. And he was good friends of one
of the men working there. "Yeah, doubt him but you can't beat him." He can
do anything that he wants to do. He is a brother-in-law to my sister.
INT:
Phil Graves is his brother, right?
WC:
She asked him if he wanted to go and talk to him. He said,
"Yeah, I believe I would." He went up there and they put him on the job. I
guess [unintelligible].
INT:
Really. He stayed with them a long time, didn't he?
WC:
Oh, yeah. He retired from there. He said he'd build whatever
they want. They'd tell him it don't make no difference how long it takes
or how much expense, we want it perfect. So he'd built it where it was
foolproof, nothing, it was just perfect. And then they'd come by and when
he got done he'd show them and tell them how it was. And they'd come by
and say, "Now I want you to cut maybe, cain't we cut a dime off of
something here and a penny or two over there?" And then when he got done
cutting it off, it looked just like the rest of their stuff, not worth a
day.
INT:
That'd be frustrating, wouldn't it?
WC:
It is! It is.
INT:
To spend all your time trying to do a good job and then have
them make you un-do it.
WC:
Yeah, but they'd come along and start running production of that
same thing. But it was, you know, cut down so weak till it weren't
nothing.
INT:
Yeah. I hear Phil Graves was good for tellin' a story.
WC:
Yeah.
Waymon Cole, 5 August 1983
INT:
Usually on himself.
WC:
Yeah. He was like some people I used to know. I believe they
ever one, they are, every one, no one, one brother, one boy living yet.
They was one, two, four, five of them. And they liked to tell
[unintelligible] things, and everything mean they could think of on their
family. Not to tell it on somebody else, but them. (Laughter) I guess
they's scared of somebody's fist.
INT:
That's right. Don't want to start any kind of a feud.
WC:
Yeah. They know'd who to talk with. And they, um, they would all
come telling some big old lie. I do, I thought it was just lies. I guess
they made out like it was true, but I thought it was lies. I had a friend,
he was all the time, he would tell you a lie. And he would, this guy come
along one day he wanted to know, "Tell me a lie." I ain't got time. I'm
going down the road. So-and-so just had a big stroke or died just a minute
ago and I got to get on down there." And that old feller's eyes bugged out
and here he went and got where he's goin' with this big lie. He asked for
it.
INT:
Oh, no. I bet it was all over-the community in ten minutes.
WC:
Yeah. It spread like fire. That would make you want to jump up
and down, wouldn't it.
INT:
It would. I surely would.
WC:
You ask for it and them believe it. (Laughter) Got it and then
believe it.
(End Tape 1)
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
(Begin Tape 2, Side 1)
INT:
This was from Southern Living?
WC:
Southern Living. She wanted to give me a full page advertising.
"I'll give you a full page. There's just one catch, though. I'm not gonna
tell you the catch till last." I said, "Okay." That was bad there. She
promised and hoped to died, that little girl who lived close to us says,
"Stick a pin in your eye." That would be rough, wouldn't it. (Laughter) I
told her, "All right, let's here your side of it." She said it was an
umbrella stand. She wanted to put it in there. And, tell all about us and
our business and everything. But, you've got to promise. Yeah. I had to do
them every one, I mean it'd have to be in red, and promise to ship this
week and got down there and I'll do it and won't have to pick it up till
one--wanted them every one with red and ship anywhere wherever people
ordered them.
INT:
That was the catch?
WC:
That was the catch!
INT:
Oh my!
WC:
I told her I couldn't do that.
INT:
No!
WC:
God knows. I'd be behind.
INT:
You'd never get anything done.
WC:
No, I'd never. That would be a . . .
INT:
You have enough of a time now keeping up with people wanting
that color.
WC:
Yeah, but, it was, she felt that, she said, "You is about the
independentest man I ever talked to." I said, "No, now lady, I
[unintelligible]. I couldn't do it. She said, "I understand."
INT:
Did she give you an ad anyway?
WC:
No. She didn't give me no ad. She would if I'd a'paid.
INT:
Yeah, that would have cost something, too in Southern Living.
Don't you know.
WC:
Yeah! They, that thing is a wonderful book, I think, don't you?
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
INT:
I do, too. Well, they've done some articles on pottery, haven't
they?
WC:
Oh yeah. They do a lots. They done one on us for the State, and
we were in it. It was nice.
INT:
One of the things, the terms you used last time we talked was
"frits."
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
What's that?
WC:
That's the flux for our glaze. We use it in every glaze we got.
We got two kinds of flux. One for whitey- white, or cream, they call it
whitey-white, but I call it that antique white.
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
We have a flux for that. And then we have a flux for any other
glaze we got, it's for this. It works in everything except the, the,
antique white. But we take that stuff, it's made out of feldspar, flint,
and zinc and either borax or we use it, uh, lightning and feldspar flint
and lithium and boric acid. And that's uh, we put it all together, yeah,
and smelt it.
INT:
All together. That's a lot.
WC:
And we smelt it. They's so much, there's a formula of it. And
then that there will um, we can put that in our glazes and it's
transparent. And then whatever you want in it, and it works.
INT:
It works.
WC:
But if we put that in there raw, the borax would crystallize and
it wouldn't, you couldn't, it just won't work. And the boric acid and the
lithium is the same way. It won't work. You got to melt it and get it into
a glass form.
INT:
Have it all together. I see.
WC:
It's 1ike I said many a time. That man up in the sky, He give it
to us and give us knowledge how to do it, but you got to do it by the
sweat of your brow, you're not gonna get a free ride.
INT:
Mm-hum. Lot of people trying, though.
WC:
Everybody wants a free ride. And that includes myself, I don't
mind having a free ride. But I don't get it. You
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
can't do it. If you get anything that's worth anything, you got to dig for
it.
INT:
Yeah. That's the truth.
WC:
You may think you can. You may try it. But, it won't
do.
INT:
No, you're right.
WC:
You got to get in there and work it out. There's not--a lot of
people say, "Well, money is the root of all evil." There's not such a word
as that. There's words, but that's not right. It's the lust for it. You
can have as much money as you want to if you don't lust for it, you're not
condemned, it don't make no difference how much you got. When you lust
for something, it's something that, uh, you uh, you shouldn't or you have
or you're going to. (Laughter)
INT:
You can count on that.
WC:
Like the whistler. (Laughter) Don't care what it is, how it is,
that's it. I like to wish for anything. That's not lusting for it. But,
it's uh,
INT:
I guess if you're lusting for it, you're wanting it too bad.
WC:
Right. And you shouldn't.
INT:
You know, a lot of the potteries are having to change their
glazes right now.
WC:
Having to?
INT:
Working on new glazes to get the lead out.
WC:
Oh yeah. Well, that ain't no trouble to do. (Laughter)
INT:
But you all aren't changing?
WC:
No, no.
INT:
You burn yours though, at a high temperature, don't you.
Doesn't that get a lot of the lead out?
WC:
Yeah.
INT:
Burn it out?
WC:
You can, yeah, I can make a glaze if you'll harness it, it's
harmless as anything. I think the prettiest glass, and it's harmless,
pretty, but they still let 'em make it, but
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
the one time they cut 'em out and wouldn't let 'em make it. But, that is a
lead glass. Prettiest glaze, prettiest glass that there is.
INT:
Really?
WC:
And it's harmless. They couldn't--this here is. Where that got
in there now, you couldn't, I wouldn't of recommended a pure lead glaze.
INT:
Oh no, of course not.
WC:
They all got a percentage in their drinking water and everything
else, we got a percentage of lead in it. But, if it's below 7/1 millionths
I believe it is, it's safe.
INT:
It's safe. Do you test your own?
WC:
Or so said the, uh, the Food and Drug people.
INT:
Do they come around and test your glazes every now and again?
WC:
Oh yeah! We still have to.
INT:
Really? How often do they come?
WC:
Oh, one time back when the big scare was, they'd come about
every other month.
INT:
When was that?
WC:
That was been in, uh, it was in '70s. Tell you what started it.
Mexico sent up here and they sent pots up here and they used pure red
lead, and that was the glaze. They didn't use no ingredients with it at
all. And, uh, they went and the Food and Drug people checked everybody.
And we had a glaze that was a'runnin' a little high lead in it, but we
didn't put it in there. And, it's coming from Spain or something we's
using. But we didn't do nothing but cut that out, quit. Didn't even mess
with it. But, anyway, they take, in Mexico, there's some little girl got
poisoned in lemonade, or that Koolaid, one. And the doctors thought that's
what it was. And they wouldn't let 'em send no more up here.
INT:
So they started checking you guys over.
WC:
Yeah. I can take and make me one, make a glaze out of pure red,
put it in that, and you can put Koolaid in it, but it won't, it won't
poison you and it won't show no, they can't get no, uh, no,. . .
INT:
. . .lead content out of it?
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
WC:
. . .lead contents out of it at all. You just take and put
vinegar or sody (sic) water and it kills every bit of it, don't know
nothing. (Laughter)
INT:
Really!
WC:
You can take it and, pure lead and it wouldn't never do a
thing.
INT:
Is that what does it? Huh!
WC:
That is something, ain't it?
INT:
Yeah, it is.
WC:
But you can do it. Well, I believe, uh, Ty Cobb, I don't know
whether he's the head knocker or [unintelligible]. He's from Raleigh. He
was the one. He said, he told me all about that, you can do it that way.
But he was on the Food and Drug side. And I'm glad they're there.
INT:
I am, too.
WC:
'Cause I like to live. (Laughter)
INT:
Mm-hum. They've done a lot of good things. I know they cause
some headaches for people, but. . .
WC:
Well, they a, a few things that they go I think, too far. But
that, I'm not condemning them for it.
INT:
I guess it's better they go that way than the other way.
WC:
Yeah. Well, you take a lot of things that they, uh, they went
in, you know, and they thought they's gonna get the Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
And everybody, God knows, they spent billions of dollars there just
a'doin' it.
INT:
Mm-hum. It's still on the shelf, isn't it?
WC:
It's still there. I like it once in a while, don't you?
(Laughter)
INT:
Mm-hum.
WC:
Well, and then I think it, another thing that I didn't, that I
don't think is right. They do it, and I'm glad they did that. That is our
friend Nader with the automobiles and all of that stuff, and they come
down there and condemned our wiring, we'd had it 75 years. That guy walked
in and condemned every bit of it and fined me $500. Walked around here
with his thumbs in his galluses and give you a year, I
Waymon Cole, 6 August 1983
believe it was a year to rewire it and everything. So we got in there and
rewired it and it's just the same thing. Hain't one thing different. Only
we'd have to put in little old clamps at every light socket and stuff like
that. And, I never seen nothing like it. He condemned the mills, all of
them. That mill over yonder, look and you see we had to enclose it.
INT:
Yeah. For safety reasons?
WC:
And, big mills down yonder where nobody can get to it, you'd
have to climb over and jump in it. And we had to enclose that wheels is
the same way. Just, uh, just out of the question. You know, in reason I'm
with it.
INT:
Well, in a big factory.
WC:
And then, "Well, no sir, you don't run that 'un there another
minute. It's condemned now. Somebody get's hurt and I'll go against you a
hundred percent." And we had that emory wheel and we went and bought a
brand new one that had all them shields and everything on it, and the boy
couldn't get to the thing. We didn't do nothing but just raise it up. And
he come along, "Look at you're doin' there." "How in the hell am I gonna
get to it?" (Laughter) He hushed.
INT:
Did he?
WC:
Where it doesn't fool with him, not a bit. Working, he wasn't
fancying the work nohow.
INT:
I know. Sounds like it.
WC:
He might have been the one that got hurt.
INT:
He might have.
WC:
I wouldn't have put too much above that guy, there. He's as big
as I was, I weren't gonna tell him nothing. Yeah, it's wonderful to have
it. But, I'm for it a hundred percent. I don't believe in nothing that
would be harmful to the workers and anybody, or for people like our
customers.
INT:
No, I know you wouldn't.
WC:
But, we use that, ours is all frits and stuff like that. We use
nothing that's go