The Goodyear Eight

Southern Yarns and Fly Hooks

I have a friend, let’s call him Jeremy, who has three different kids by three different baby mammas. Jeremy has been in the slammer for the last few weeks in Etowah County Jail as he awaits his trial for three counts of domestic violence, discharging a weapon illegally, and fleeing from the police after jumping bond. Did I mention he wrecked his second truck this year in this car chase? He did. Jeremy could have used steady work to feed his many kids by many different mothers, but instead he started work in his father’s construction business. At some point Jeremy wanted to stretch out his wings and fly with a different employer. Ordinarily, or at least in past decades Jeremy would have been a perfect candidate to work on the line at Goodyear Tire Assembly. But Goodyear has closed because of the difficulty of dealing with the United Rubber Workers Union.

He never said, “Gee, sure wish I could work on a line somewhere.” But, he did not have to. It was clear he needed a steady stream of income to stand on his own two feet. As it was, he kept going back for more roofing jobs with his father holding the bag. Until one day he stopped going back to his father. He began working outside his father’s purview. First for another roofer, then for a plumber. Then one day after fighting his mother and father, he was picked up by the police. Once out and after a pop-over visit to my home my wife asked him: “What drugs are you on?” His answer— “ice” (said with a certain degree of shame).

My Great- Great- Grandfather, Otto, may have never seen the end result of Gadsden becoming a union town because he died a few years before Franklin Roosevelt demanded that Goodyear allow unions. If Goodyear would not allow unions, and did not end the violence in Gadsden’s very turbulent resistance to unions known as “the reign of terror,” then the corporation would not receive any government contracts during World War II. The Thirties had been about a five-year-period of mob violence and corporate spying on union activity before Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, interceded on behalf of workers.

The town of Gadsden peaked in the 1960s from a population standpoint, and then the Steel plant, otherwise known as Republic Steel closed roughly a century after its opening. My family closed our industrial factories in the 1960s in favor of an innovative strip mall because the union activity was so resented by my clan of Agricola family members. With the trend of runaway factories that came after the Clinton Administration’s North American Free Trade Agreement, Gadsden became another town caught in that American story of manufacturing firms picking up and moving elsewhere.

Yesterday, Jeremy’s father called me to update me. He said that “Jeremy shot through [his] window, and ran from the cops.” What was a three hundred dollar bond became a 70,000 dollar bond. I could have surmised all this, because I kept getting collect calls from a person called, “hey little buddy.” The only time I answered it he asked me to put 25 bucks on his commissary. I had seen 60 Days In, so I felt he could use some snacks, so I ponied up to help him. I was now 325 dollars in the hole for this plumber-construction worker, and I was tired of it. I was not Otto, after all. I was a school teacher, and this was barely a friend. I had not been able to understand the guy in at least two years his addiction had so removed him from reality. This fact made the quality of the friendship difficult to quantify.

In 1929, Otto took moonshine to Paul Litchfield with a band of seven other Gadsden businessmen, including W.P. Lay— the Alabama Power founder. “The Goodyear Eight” who travelled to Akron to lure Paul Litchfield to Gadsden came bearing the gift of shine during prohibition. This crew promised Litchfield that the Sand Mountain hill people would make terrific employees since they had agrarian roots and would be individualistic in character rather than tending towards collectivization. The corn whiskey may have been proof of their individualism.

Just five years later Akron organizers were sending down “agitators” to enlist union members at the newly constructed Gadsden plant. The Goodyear firm had a group of spies known as the Flying Squadron that vowed to beat up any union sympathizers. John House and Sherman Dalrymple were bloodied and beaten within an inch of their lives for organizing in Gadsden. Mayor Meighan even deputized about 250 ordinary citizens to keep the peace and rough up agitators.

Today, as I talked to Jeremy’s father he was hoping I would have advice for him. He did not want his son to rot in jail, but he was the one who called the law on him. The whole paradox crystallized for me when I said to him: “In some ways a father-son argument that may become rough is part of growing up.” I am unsure of the veracity of this statement, but I know I had wanted to punch my own father before, so at the very least it was true for me. Then the truth of this dispute hit me. Jeremy’s father explained, “My father died in a tragic accident at the steel plant when I was 12 years old.” He had never made it to that stage in the father-son relationship. The struggle to succeed one’s father was unfamiliar to Jeremy senior because an industrial accident had robbed him of that oedipal experience. All of Jeremy’s problems likely stemmed from this father of his who never had a role model to show him how a father should be. The superego was absent in the life of Jeremy Jr. Now with Goodyear gone he was forced to enter labor relationships that put him into conflict with his own father, and now Jeremy would sit in jail for at least a few more months until his trial.

As if sent from heaven, a sign appears after my own father and son and I travelled back from a quick trip to the farm in West Etowah. We had gone fishing for peace of mind. And though I cussed the thorns on the banks snagging my fly line, I guess in real ways I found it.

Then on the way into town a Goodyear blimp appeared. The whole town was baffled by its appearance, and it seemed everyone was taking pictures of it. My father and I chased it with our iPhones stabilized by the dash from Attalla to Country Club until we could read the letters to be sure it was what we thought it was. It read: “GOODYEAR.” But how, was the question? The plant in East Gadsden had been closed for years. What was this some Hindenburg style kamikaze sent by corporate headquarters to finish us all off? Nah, as it turned out it was just a leftover blimp from the Nascar festivities in Talladega. Moonshine makes the world go round, whether it be Nascar, or Goodyear tires. Stay away from meth though, kids. It taxes the decision making powers of the intellectually and emotionally impoverished, and I presume the intellectually gifted and stable alike. What was left in this town for my own son remained to be seen, but I do promise to be there for him throughout the bumpy road of our city’s future. The union reputation will always be here, and so will reminders of our past.