Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Lewis Gibbs
July 29, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 3 of 5
Clint Alley: Well do you remember when you got your first car?
Lewis Gibbs: Yes, siree. It was a 1938 Chevrolet, and that was 1942, I guess.
CA: Um hm. So it was pretty new, then?
LG: Yeah. It had knee action in it. I will never forget it. Are you familiar with that? Knee action?
CA: I’m not, no, sir.
LG: Didn’t have a front axle, it had knee action and the wheels would turn out. But I drove it till I traded it for a ’40 Chevrolet. It was black and had chrome down the sides, and whitewall tires, I was really a sport in the ’40 Chevrolet.
[laughter]
CA: Are you still a Chev-, Chevrolet man today?
LG: No, no, no. [laughter] I, ah, there wasn’t but two cars back then, just the Chevrolet and the Ford, and a few Plymouths and Dodges, but we owned, the family owned, a Plymouth one time. My father was a, was a mechanic. He was, his father was, owned a cotton gin, and they was raised up in this cotton gin, and they were all mechanics, all of his brothers. And we’d buy those old cars and fix them up. My brother and I had a, had a T-Model Skeeter, we called it. And it was a touring car cut down with a bed on the back of it, like a pickup. And I guess we wasn’t over twelve years old. Ten or twelve years old.
CA: Y’all drove that T-Model around at twelve years old?
LG: We drove that T-Model around, gasoline, I remember it well, was twenty-five cents a gallon, and, no, I’m telling that wrong. It was sixteen cents a gallon, and we’d take a quarter’s worth and ride just about all day. And then, we got rid of that one. I remember what my father give for it. Someone come through Barton, and it quit on them, and my father give three dollars for it. And, of course, he had it running twenty minutes after he bought it. And then, later on, we bought another one. It was a 1926 touring car, had been a, a black man had bought it new, and run it out through the fields. The way you checked the oil in a Model T, you had petcocks. If the oil was up to that petcock, it was safe. Well one of those petcocks had got open and drained the oil out of it and he’d burnt it up, ah, the front rod. And my father bought that and fixed that up for us. So we pretty well had automobiles and machinery by the time we was big enough to have it.
CA: Do you remember how old you were when you first got a driver’s license?
LG: I drove before they had driver’s licenses. The first year that they, Alabama started issuing driver’s licenses I got, I got a driver’s license.
CA: Okay. Well, what, what have you done for a living?
LG: I, in 1940, I was working at a sawmill, which is in the lumber industry. And we had a friend that was a business agent for the Operating Engineers, which was a union. And they had a dredge at Guntersville Dam and they had living quarters on this dredge. And they used a young man to, as a cabin boy to help clean up all the rooms and, and help the cook. My father and my brother came to the sawmill and got me and they offered me the job and I accepted. I went to Guntersville as a, as a cook-helper, really, is what it amounted to.
CA: Um-hm.
LG: Worked at that six or eight months and then there was a deckhand come open, which was apprentice engineer. A deckhand and a oiler and a fireman were all apprentices, and I got on the apprentice program and, and took a, a card in the union, and I’ve got that card in my pocket, 1940. And I worked there until that job was finished as a deckhand. And about, the war was beginning, the war industry was beginning, and the Hunts— they started Huntsville Arsenal. And I went to Huntsville Arsenal July the fifth or sixth, 1941, and worked as a oiler, which was a, still an apprentice. I worked at that for a year and a half or two years, and I went down to Gadsden, Alabama as a, as a helper. And I got promoted to the operator, operating the machinery. And I drifted around. I went to, from Gadsden I went to Louisville, Kentucky, and worked with Dravo Corporation, and I was still oiling and firing with Dravo. I went to Panama City and worked at a shipyard as a heavy equipment operator. And I spent this time in the service, and when I came back, the TVA was giving servicemen a special recognition, and they hired me, and I stayed with TVA thirty-five years. At the end of that thirty-five years, I was assistant superintendent at one of these steam plants, which, I’m, I’m proud of that record. My title was Yard Operations Supervisor. But that was, what it amounted to, it was assistant to the superintendent.
CA: Well, you must have worked pretty hard to get up to that level.
LG: Well, there’s a, a, a black friend of mine told me one time, said, “Mr. Gibbs, you must be a smart man,” said, “you’ve been with TVA a long time.” I said, “George, all I’ve done is try to be there when I was supposed to be, and do what I was supposed to do after I got there.” He said, “Hm, you dumb like a fox!”
[laughter]
LG: So that’s, that’s what I didn’t overexert myself, I just, just done what I said, just said.
CA: Just did what you had to do.
LG: And after, I, I stayed on construction with them, ah, seven or eight years. And then I helped build this Colbert Steam Plant; they had to use several heavy equipment operators to unload the coal and I applied for one of them and got it. Went from that to a dual-rated foreman, and I went from that to a full foreman, and from foreman to superintendent. Worked thirty-five years and retired and I’ve got a good retirement, good insurance, and good medical facilities and everything.
CA: Um-hm. Okay. Ah, how long have you been retired from there?
LG: Oh, I’ve been retired since 1942, I mean ’42, ’82.
CA: Nineteen eighty-two, okay.
LG: And I’ve enjoyed every day, and I’ve studied history and genealogy. And I’ve attended ILR, like I told you a while ago, for sixteen years.
CA: What does that stand for?
LG: Institution of Learning in Retirement.
