Working in a factory, you know, Cooper employees were noted to work hard but played hard. Now, not bragging, but I was a pretty good beer drinker back in them days!

Then as I got married and the boys were growing up I had a beer tap in the basement and frosty mugs. Back in them days the fireman in summertime, if he was flushing hydrants, you know you’d be sitting out in the alley and lights flashing and he’d come to the back door and he’d say, “Don’t you have a problem somewhere?” and I say, “Yeah, it’s down in the basement.” (Laughter) Telephone guy did too…I had them all stop.

Telephone guy says, “Did you call in that your phone wasn’t working?” This was a local guy, you know, I knew him, but you couldn’t do that today. But, I quit drinking about eight years ago. I’ve got in the refrigerator if anybody comes around but it don’t tempt me.

Ah…I seen that I didn’t think I could handle it as well as I did in the past. Plus, one of my boys joined the Sherriff’s Department and so that throwed a little light on it.

I didn’t want to have to worry about any lights flashing behind me, which I don’t now.

One of my kids is in the Sheriff’s Department. The Sheriff cut back and naturally he was the young one and one of the first ones to go.

Now I have – we have a set of identical twins. One runs the day shift out in Lowe’s Distribution Center, the other one runs a department at Cooper Tire.

I have a granddaughter and her husband’s engineers and Cooper Tire. My grandson runs a shift in carrying at Cooper Tire.

For a long time my grandson, thought he could walk out of there and get a job, but it wasn’t that easy. So, he was looking for a long time, you know, he said he wasn’t going to a factory until he couldn’t find a job.

One day I looked at him and I says, “Are you ready to go to work?”

He said, “Grandpa I’m ready to go to work.”

So I made a phone call and the gentleman I talked to, he said, “His last name is alright! Does he want to work?”

I said, “You asked me a tough question,” I said, “I think he’s ready.”

So they put him in the lab testing rubber and this type of thing to start out with and then the supervisor job came up for bid and he bid on it and he’s done real well. It is twelve-hour shifts, but he’s young.