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This is a play about life in a rural, American town. It is the product of over fifty hours of interviews and countless conversations with members of the community. Their words are solely their own. None of their dialogue is invented or fictionalized. SCENE II: THE MANUFACTURERS RUS MCGIBNEY The quality of life? Gosh. The quality of life for everybody has changed. You can ask someone who had a job in one of the local factories and you know like say, Cooper's. Cooper's is no longer in Knox County. So yeah, way of life is different based on the individual. You know-all in all-we have a pretty good way of life here. LOUDSPEAKER Rus McGibney owns the local coffee shop. RUS MCGIBNEY Well you can-this is a microcosm. This encapsulates everything that is going on in the United States. You can just expand and see what all small towns are going through. Just make it a generalized statement. Every small town is struggling with the same things. LOUDSPEAKER And those things are? Well-? FORMER BIG BEAR EMPLOYEE In my dad's time you stayed loyal to a company. I mean at least in this area you did. You didn't travel around as much. I mean you stayed because they were loyal to you, also, not just you loyal to them. They were loyal to you. And they took care of you and everything. LOUDSPEAKER Thom Collier, a local politician. THOM COLLIER You know-when I was growing up and early on you had basically three or four plants. And you worked for one of those three and if you got job there-if you landed a job there, boy, you were set for life. You could go there, you could work for a lifetime, retire and be happy. But today that's not that way. And it's not just-again-it's not just Mount Vernon this is a societal issue that we deal with. The average person stays with an employer somewhere between three and seven years. LOUDSPEAKER The issue is jobs. They're just not quite what they used to be. THOM COLLIER It's the mobile society in which we work where people really aren't committed for a lifetime of work to a particular employer. And those aren't necessarily bad things. They're just different. LOUDSPEAKER Mr. Collier represents Mount Vernon and the outlying areas in the Ohio State House of Representatives. He was born and raised in Mount Vernon. DUDE CONWAY Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the funny part of it, ah, his mother and dad, ah, strong Democrats and whole family were all strong Democrats. And well he realized in this county and this area if he wanted to get anyplace, ah, it's about six to one, you know, in Republicans. So, ah, Thom was smart enough to - (Pause.) So, ah, Thom was smart enough to-yeah, I've known that family for a long time. LOUDSPEAKER Dude Conway, a former city councilman and union leader-among other things. DUDE CONWAY Well, that's one of-naturally jobs are, are moving out of the country, you know. It's a, and it's just like Rolls Royce today. When you're based in England, ah, they're just gonna move around any damn place they want to. LOUDSPEAKER Cooper Industries, the only large manufacturer in town was recently acquired by Rolls Royce. It's no longer locally owned or managed. There were also a few others- DUDE CONWAY Potemkin Roller Bearing, which a big company. And, ah, then when the fathers and my, my buddies and stuff lost their jobs there when they moved it out, moved it on into Columbus. And then came along the, was a huge company for many years was one of the great, one of the great companies was Pittsburg Plate Glass Company. And my God, they, ah, hired thousands of employees, you know. And then, they lost that. And then-and then it was, ah, we had what they called the, the cellophane factory- GEORGE BREITHAUPT A company called Shelmar which eventually became Continental Can eventually became American Can and now is an empty- (Laughs.) -lot. DUDE CONWAY Then we lost that. I mean it just progressed. (Beat.) And, ah, and, and actually we had a branch of, ah, Cooper Industries. But they moved out of the country just for tax reasons. And that's enters in, into the picture-you know that. LOUDSPEAKER Taxes, huh? DUDE CONWAY And all those people-through the Chamber of Commerce and people like that, we concentrated on bringing industry in. We started the industrial park. Bought land so they could, these companies come in. And they cooperated with the City of Mount Vernon. Then the City of Mount Vernon cooperated very-give 'em tax abatement. JIM GIBSON People in town don't grumble in a big way. They'll say, "Well, okay, we're gonna give these people no tax or minimal taxes for eight or ten years or whatever." And most people say, "Oh, it's okay." And they'll be employing people and if they get established. DUDE CONWAY And that helped them, you know. It kinda hurt the schools for a while because some of that tax money was taken away. But then we made a deal and, and contracted it while it wouldn't hurt the schools. But it, ah, deteriorated. We lost companies. Which we're doing today. We're doing today. CLAUDE CLAYBORNE Yes, but I don't know. I can't really decide why there hadn't been growth in Mount Vernon like a factory in Mount Vernon. I don't know who exactly who's supposed to go and try to recruit those pieces, you know. I suppose it's city council or the mayor but just doesn't seem like it's happened. LOUDSPEAKER Claude Clayborne, manager of the Kroger supermarket in town. CLAUDE CLAYBORNE So over the years a lot of the plants have closed down and it's really affected the economy around here. So that's the biggest shift. ANDY FULLER Yeah, there's-I mean-there's been-'cause the majority of the people work at factories-or construction-or within the city. I can remember being about ten or twelve just hearing about places shutting down and-um-about the last fifteen to twenty years it's starting to lose a lot of jobs and-you know-companies are moving out and- LOUDSPEAKER Andy Fuller is a roofer. ANDY FULLER I don't know if they're moving out of, of the country like to Mexico or somewhere where it's cheaper labor or overseas somewhere. Or if they just went belly up. Just because of bad-um-management. I'm not real sure there. LOUDSPEAKER But there are jobs. Are there not? ANDY FULLER Not really worth it to me. You know, you can get into some of these factories and you'll start at like ten bucks an hour but a lot of them you top out at fifteen bucks an hour. And who wants to make fifteen bucks an hour the rest of their lives? LOUDSPEAKER Ah. Well, I see. ANDY FULLER I don't. I-I need to be making that much now-at least. You know, I'm not married, I don't have kids. People around here who are in there-you know-living off of under thirty thousand a year salary with you know kids and a wife it's just something that I don't want to be stressed financially with that and a lot of the better factories there like Rolls Royce just shut down. They're union. By the end of the year their production is done in Mount Vernon here. ROD BUCHANAN I think the larger problem is Rolls Royce that seems to be having a lot of problems financially. And they just laid off an entire section of their workers. When these kinds of things happen we lose people because they have to move elsewhere and get jobs. We've lost some significant families because of that. LOUDSPEAKER Rod Buchanan, pastor of the Mulberry Street Methodist Church. ROD BUCHANAN See when it used to be Cooper-Bessemer it was one of those places where you started working at Cooper when you got out of high school. And the idea was, you worked there your whole life and you retired from there and you drew your pension check from Cooper- JIM GIBSON In the 1830s, the Cooper brothers started the Cooper Company which later became Cooper-Bessemer and is now Rolls Royce, still operating. But when it started it was a very mom-and-pop organization with the foundry. And they made small things. And within twenty years they were making locomotives and farm steam engines and so forth. And so that was our first big industry. ROD BUCHANAN -and you retired from there and you drew your pension check from Cooper. Well, that didn't happen. And then they sold out to Rolls Royce. Nevertheless there are serious questions about whether Rolls will be able to continue or whether they will go out of business. And it does pay fairly well. So you'll have some significant jobs that are gonna be lost if that happens. DUDE CONWAY The corporate world today is rougher than hell. It's, ah, it, it's hurt our working people. JIM GIBSON But it's just a situation where we are now living in a time when it's more of a global economy and the old line, "If somebody had told me twenty-five years ago" that General Motors was teetering- (Laughs.) You would say, "No, and if that's the case then the United States must be teetering." Because those are the backbone of the country. ANDY FULLER So. [Jobs are] kind of scarce around here. You know, and, it's not like there's a G.M. plant or something here where you can-where you're making almost thirty bucks an hour and you have the good benefits. It's just not really anything here. DUDE CONWAY It's, ah, it's rough. |
SCENE II: THE MANUFACTURERS