PART V
Rural Hall, N.C.
Thurs., Jan. 7, 1926
When we left Camp Robert Lee Tuesday morning, the family all turned out to see us off. They surely were good to us and seemed sorry to have us go.
Now we are under a roof again, visiting Bill Smith and his peach of a wife, Ethel, whom we had not met before. Both urged us to stay on and on. Although they had only recently moved into this large old house, they are now expecting to move out again. They call it "just camping out," but to us it is luxury.
Wednesday evening we all went to the movies in Winston-Salem and Thursday Bill sought information at the Chamber of Commerce, while I bought two shelter halves for 75¢ each, a doll, a baby's sack, some candy and toys for the children at the Robert Lees'.
Although North Carolina, with surfaced roads and many up?and?down towns, appears far more prosperous than the parts of Virginia we saw, Winston?Salem is an unattractive, messy tobacco town, with small, disorderly shops. At sales counters, I was pushed around just as rudely as in a lower New York bargain basement. However, the Reynolds Tobacco Co., makers of Camels and Prince Albert tobacco, and the leading industry, is putting on a campaign to renovate the town.
Friday, mild and balmy, Bill Smith took us in his Studebaker to High Point, a splendid city about thirty miles from here, laid out on modern lines, with fine public buildings and one hundred and forty factories, mostly for furniture, segregated in one section of the city.
Bill Smith is quite a chicken fancier and has some very fine birds. My Bill calls him "the Squire" and it certainly fits him for, although he is manager of the toy wagon department of the furniture factory across the way, he has the air of the country squire and the master of all he surveys. Tonight we are to have [a] couple of the farm's own pullets for dinner.
The Smiths think the factory where Bill works is on the rocks because of competition with the better located factories in High Point, so they are looking around for the next jump. My Bill and Ethel have great arguments on economics, she having keenly observed the trends about her and formed a number of interesting opinions.