Chapter 9, Valley folks and Hill toppers - rewrite

"They want to do what?" Theresa asked as she dropped the pan back into the dishwater."

"Petro-Chem wants a motel here to put up visitors and temporary workers, they'll underwrite the loan, but we get first call on it if we want to own and run it. Thought, well, you know, you might want to own and run it," Benton stated.

"So you think that's what will fix me?" Theresa replied.

"What?"

"You think this will fix me, don't you. Is this another of George's ideas?"

"No, the company is suggesting it, George is just passing this on to us is all," Benton figited.

"Like I said, another of George's grand schemes to rope you and me into something else!"

"No, it isn't like that at all!" Benton pleaded. "Honestly, I don't see why you're so suspicious."

"And you probably never will."


"Would you just take five minutes and consider it? You said you wanted to do something else after we sold the flowershop. Why not this?"

"I don't know the first thing about running motels! And last time I checked, neither do you!"

"You didn't know anything about running a flower shop either, but you learned, how's this any different?"

"It's different because it was what I wanted to do, not something George wants me to do!" Theresa threw the sponge into the sink causing a guyser of foam and water to spout high in the air.

"Well, then don't do it, it's just an offer before Petro-Chem opens it up to some other company to come in and do it. I just thought you might like to sink your teeth into something," Benton sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"And it would be just one more thing we'd be in hock to George over. It's not enough that he owns us over the realty company, he'd have that much more control over us if we did."

"Is that how you see all of this? George doesn't own us!" Benton ran his hand through his hair and exhaled slowly. But for the snow outside he would scarcely believe that it was Christmas time; the good cheer and merriment being absent.

"George has owned us since you bought into all of this two years ago, you're just too blindsided to see it."

"So that's what all of this has been about? You're mad that George supposedly owns us? You've been mooning about for weeks now all because you don't like that I may owe George a debt of gratitude?" Benton sputtered.

"No, that you drug us out here and into this cold lonely house to this cold and lonely area full of hatefull people."

"What, what hatefull people?"

"You don't see it?" Theresa turned and looked at Benton. "You don't see the way that the locals here look at you? You can't see the loathing in thier eyes when they see you pass by?"

"They're just suspicious people is all, they aren't hatefull," Benton protested.

"When's the last time you tried to say hello to a local? They don't even respond. And when they can be moved to respond they just grunt at you and scowl," Theresa rested her hands on her hips and stared hard at Benton. "I don't think you have tried to talk to any of them, you're too busy at work dealing with the others that Petro-Chem has brought down here."

"You're over reacting to a few of the bad apples here. I've talked several times to the Hilcocks and not gotten any of that from them."

"You want to know what's wrong with me? I don't like it here. I don't like living someplace where everyone wants me gone. I don't like this house, I don't like this place and I don't like it that George owns us!"

"Well, that's a real reasonable attitude to take," Benton stood and put his palms on the table top and leaned leaning forward. "Why wait this long to tell me this?"

"Because it wouldn't have made a damn bit of good! You were set on the job, this place, the realty, and all of your dreams of advancing. You were too busy preparing to leave Raliegh even before we sold my flowershop last year. You've been planning all of this for two years without a discussion or an opportunity to give my opinion about it."

"We had plenty of discussions about it and you never once said anything to the contrary," Benton turned from his wife and glared at the table top.

"See, even if I had said anything you would have just placated me with more of George's pie-in-the-sky promises."

"I really don't see what you mistrust about him, I really don't. Look, we can take or leave it. I say we take it and have you run it. If you don't want to, then just tell me and we'll drop it right here. As far as these other things, it hardly does any good to complain about them now. We moved, we're here, and it is all water under the bridge," Benton stood and walked out of the kitchen. Angered at the blind side attack upon everything he had planned and executed, he nervously paced about the living room, his shadow distorted by the flames dancing in the fire place. Mumbling to himself, he went over and over the argument, constructing new insights and reconstructing what he should have said. If there had been a bar, he would have gone for a drink.

****
Petro-Chem opened it's newest processing plant on time, official day of buisness commencing at seven am Janurary 15th, 1960 to little fanfare and notice by the residents of Happy Valley. The work rosters where full to thier minimum needed to open and the remainder of the workers transported down from Charleston as planned. The office went from silence to frenetic activity overnight and the parking lot began to fill as the buisness of getting to buisness picked up its stride. Meetings where held on the shop floor on opening day to get everyone aquainted with thier new bosses and equipment; those in the offices got used to the sudden jump in responsibility. Even George, who had maintained a level of activity before the plant opened was surprised at what the job really entailed once everyone was on site. He was responsible for the petty and the important.

It seemed to him that he had spent the entire day on the telephone, punctuated occasionally by a quick conference in his office with one of his department heads and then back on the telephone. He was the first one in that morning and the last to leave that night. His day started and ended in silence. The day had brought many new things: new problems that accompanied the new personell, issues with the equipment as it went through a full day of shakedown, issues with the controling hand of the corporate entities that he was beholden to, and a myriad of complications unforseen. He was in the his element and if the first day was any indication of those to follow, he had bitten off a slice of life that he would both savor and regret.

That lonely little strip of road once barren was dotted with buildings that ranged up and down both sides of State214. Another service station, this one a Gulf opened its pumps a week earlier and a diner opened right next to it a few days later and boasted the best biscuits this side of the Apillachians. If the residents were asked what they thought was the best thing to come of State214 project and all of the changes in turn: the hardware store would be thier answer. Huebener's Hardware opened on a blustery day a week after the plant started operations. Built by an entrepeneure from Ohio, a Steven Huebner, the store soon became the new hangout for the locals when Applewood's grocery was too crowded with the "outsiders" as some where none-to-discreet in calling anyone who recently moved to the area. If the locals had chance to elect or vote someone an honorary "local citizenship", it would have been Huebner. Replacement parts where now not weeks away nor a four hour round trip to Charleston but just a short drive up the road.

With the influx of new blood there developed something of a local conscienceness beyond what any of the original residents would have hitherto claimed. It was no longer the thought of living in Happy Valley, but of belonging to a community. It was only on the surface at first as each new resident took up shop and built a house or built quarters adjacent to thier buisness as most chose to do, but also a desire to be named. This naturally came from the newcomers more than from the valley folks as the local farmers came to be called. They had thier affiliation with the valley and thier solitary farmstead seperated then from everyone else.

George, once the hectic pace of the first week of buisness at the plant finally became a regulated rythm, made an office for himself in his home to conduct buisess for the realty company and took a hard look at the prospects for future development. He had conducted this previously in little snippets of time, but feeling guilty about doing personal buisness from his company phone he carved a niche out of a walk in closet and corner of the living room where he could have guests feel at home while they talked buisness. Hanging a map of Happy Valley Road/State214 on the wall he marked with pencil the locations of the land plots the company had aquired and carved out half acre sections. Enough money in rents and in sales had come in to start paying into the debts acrued in the venture startup so that the enterprise could begin feeding itself. Benton would get a portion of the monthly proceeds for his part, but the show was really all George.

"So, buddy, you two going to start that motel?" George asked Benton one evening. He invited Benton and Theresa over for dinner and as the two of them retreated to the living room away from the chatter of thier wives, he stood in front of the large map sipping coffee.

"I think we are, though I think we'd rather float the bill as much on our own as we can. No offense to the powers that be up at corporate, but it would ease our own minds if we controlled the interest in the operation and not some outside influence if you know what I'm getting at," Benton replied as he too stared at the map.

"Capital!" George exclaimed. "Where you thinking of? You'll still have to carve out a portion of the realty owned property for it, but the purchase or lease will be less for a partner than for an outsider."

"Not sure we've gotten that far in planning yet, I think we just barely decided to do it, honestly."

"Well, no time like the present, eh? No one seems to be interested in this two acre section here," George pointed to a spot close to the intersection between State214 and State3 and down from Applewood's grocery. "how about right here?"

"Seems as good as any place to build," Benton replied. "Speaking of realty, what else we got coming in?"

"A lot of little stuff, to the point where I'm wondering if the company shouldn't find some construction outfit to partner with, keep our costs down by having someone local who can do the construction cheaper than bringing the groups down from somewheres else."

"We'll have a village here pretty soon, don't you think?"

"Close to it now," George folded his arms. "We'd need more land though to really move from just a cross roads to a village. Right now we've only got this strip of land to play with, but we'd need more if we encorporate, a lot more."

"That won't sit to well with the valley folks. Other than at Huebners Hardware, I don't see any of them even venturing down passed that point and the grocery. It's like they purposefully won't recognize anything else that has gone up around them," Benton surmized.

"Who knows with some of these folks, but you're right, they won't surrender more land willingly. It'll take the county or the state to bring that about probably," George said as he tapped the pencil on his lower lip. The map displayed an oasis of progress surrounded by a desert of stagnation and blankness. The oasis begged to be widedend, expanded, released from its enclosures. "We'd have to get at least twenty five to thirty acres from either side of the road to allow for the encorporated services that we'd need before the county would recognize another municipality."

"That's quite a bit of land to grab, I don't see it happening quietly," Benton added. "We own, or rather the realty owns all of this," he waved his hand over the road on the map. "We fill this with buisnesses, those people are going to need some place to live, perhaps that's why we haven't filled all of this in as quickly since there isn't much out here other than the road traffic to draw buisnesses."

"Yeah, we've gotten by but it won't grow unless we allow for more services like electricity and gas and water," George replied.

"It'll have to happen sometime and the valley folks here will have to get used to the idea that times have changed," George said. "I think our first step is to start gathering the buisness owners together and start generating support for encorporating, I think if we show the county that we have enough people here wanting to form a village, they will have to force someway of getting more land."

"I suppose we could ask the valley folks about it first, no sense in starting a land war if someone is willing to cede more before hand," Benton said and rested his hands on his hips.

"That would certainly be easier for sure. I wouldn't hold much out for it though. These people do not seem to be very open to anything, let alone the idea of cedeing more land to something they don't like."

"Still, it would be the thing to do first," Benton stated.

"Well, we've done this sort of thing before. I'll work up a plan and a map for what we would propose to everyone. We'll have to meet at the county high school again, but I'll see if I can get someone from the county seat to come down to answer questions on encorporating. Maybe someone will see that there's more benefit to progress than there is to stagnation and go along with it," George shrugged.