75 years of TVA: A new start

It didn't matter whether it was raining, cold or if they had shoes when spring arrived.

Donald Wallace and his brother would crawl out of bed around daybreak, quickly put on their homemade clothes and begin the nearly 6-mile walk to Lovelace School in western Lauderdale County.

"We were as poor as it gets," said Wallace, a Florence resident who is nearing his 88th birthday. "We never went hungry because we were sharecroppers, but I can remember the house we lived in leaking all the time and we didn't have money to fix it. I can remember we didn't go to school one year because we didn't have shoes or proper clothing.

"In those days, it's just the way it was for us folks in the west end of (Lauderdale County)."

The same could be said for most people living in rural northwest Alabama during the late 1920s and early 1930s as the Great Depression gripped the South.

Their plight began to change 75 years ago today when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, a cornerstone in his New Deal initiative to bring America out of desperate economic times.

TVA became a ground-breaking experimental public utility that spanned seven states and brought river flood control, power generation, navigation and economic development into a single entity.

In its early days, TVA brought hope to the Wallace family and hundreds of other Shoals residents who were desperate for any good news after living for years solely from the crops produced on their land.

TVA quickly brought jobs, spawning a better way of life for thousands and prosperity that had never been witnessed in most of the region.

Soon, TVA would bring electricity to rural regions where Shoals residents had relied on candles and firewood to illuminate the night or to heat their water.

TVA now provides some of the country's cheapest electricity to 8.8 million customers in the Tennessee Valley through 29 hydroelectric dams, 11 coal-fired plants and six nuclear power plants.

The agency also manages a 650-mile navigable route of the Tennessee River for boats and barges. All this has blossomed from TVA's beginnings in Muscle Shoals - the site Congress designated as the utility's headquarters.

That history will be commemorated in local ceremonies this week as TVA celebrates its 75th anniversary. And most people with ties to the Shoals say it's a story worthy of celebration.

He knew two people in the west end of Lauderdale County who had money, and even they didn't have electricity, Wallace said. "Everyone was poor. This area would have never gotten over being poor had TVA not come here."

Most people share that sentiment, even those critical of TVA and others who suggest the agency should become private to level the playing field for all power producers nationwide.

"Historically, TVA is responsible for so many things in our area that's made us economically strong; stronger than we would have been without TVA," said U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, who represents north Alabama and co-chairs the TVA Caucus, a consortium of valley congressmen.

Before TVA was launched in 1933, the Shoals, like much of the Tennessee Valley, suffered from years of depleted farmland, poverty, unemployment and an absence of electricity in rural areas.

TVA historian Pat Ezell said the entire nation was suffering, but conditions in the Tennessee Valley were especially difficult. The average annual income throughout the region was a paltry $168 - $2,759 in today's dollars. Illiteracy levels were high, residents suffered from malnutrition and malaria was rampant.

Natural resources were exhausted, and nutrient-depleting crops in summer and top soil runoff in winter left half of the valley's farmland eroded or abandoned, Ezell said.

In 1930, only 38 percent of Alabama residents were employed, according to U.S. Census data. In the Shoals, the fortunate few worked for the railroad, city government, the post office or at the iron and saw mills.

Those less fortunate - the majority of residents - either took handouts, grew their own food or became migrant workers who would hitch train rides and send money back home from wages they earned at the Detroit automobile factories, the New York City skyscraper construction sites or the Hollywood studios, all new industries under development at the time.

Carroll Crouch, an 87-year-old Florence resident who is working on his memoirs, witnessed the birth of modern industrial life. Ice blocks being cut for sale, blacksmiths shaping horseshoes and other rural necessities gave way to advertising airplanes that dropped Baby Ruth candy bars onto a field near his Royal Avenue residence.

Crouch's family, burdened with a home-improvement mortgage, city improvement taxes of $1,900 - $24,293 adjusted in today's dollars - and a sick father who couldn't work, had to sell their home and property to pay debts.

The few Model T's in the area - at that time a symbol of financial stature - were chopped up into two-wheeled, horse-pulled carts called "Hoover buggies," which was a jab at the president many blamed for the economic hardships.

Town gossip was filled with hard-luck stories.

A farmer who lost his life savings because the bank shut its doors became so distraught he gathered his family together, took a shotgun to his head and turned his children into orphans.

A fuel deliverer asked the banker if rumors of the bank's closure were true, and he was told "no," only to find out that after returning from his delivery route the bank had, in fact, closed. The delivery man returned with a shotgun and waited for the defunct banker, who was forewarned and avoided the ambush.

The Wallace family had $10,000 in savings with plans of buying a house and dozens of acres as soon as the cotton crop was harvested. But the banks closed the next week and the money and all their plans were washed away.

Instead of happy times, Wallace said the only luxury they knew was the quarter his father gave him and his brother each Saturday. They would walk, often barefooted, from near Cloverdale to downtown Florence.

"We'd go to Mike's Cafe, and for 15 cents you could get this big hamburger and a big Coca-Cola," Wallace said. "Then we'd go next door to the Majestic Theater where it cost a dime to see a movie. We sat in there and watched the movie all day long and then walked back home.

"We just didn't have those things out in the cornfields. We worked hard all week for Saturday."

Little currency flowed from either city folk or farmers, but there were some who at least were able to have a meal. Helen Weir, an 84-year-old resident of Weeden Heights in Florence, remembers that even with little money, her family ate fresh and home-canned vegetables because her father was an expert gardener.

"We were better off than most people", she said. "We really didn't have any money."

Before TVA, "The Mighty Tennessee," as the river was known, had two personalities. One was that of a bloated destroyer that flooded whole communities.

The other was of an anemic trickle easily crossed by foot at some points, even in the Shoals. Some historians say, in fact, the Shoals name originates from shoal-like land bars that would jut out of the river during dry seasons.

Nick Hobbs, whose family farm was adjacent to the Tennessee River in Madison County, was one of thousands who were attracted to the Shoals by the jobs TVA promised.

"We had no electricity, of course," he said of the family farm.

Hobbs started his career helping poor cotton farmers in an unlikely way. He traveled around the area to talk to farmers and measured off one-sixth of their fields that was sowed with cotton seeds.

That area would then be plowed down to help drive up commodity prices for the poverty-stricken farmers.

Like many farmers with limited labor skills outside of agriculture, Hobbs was hired by TVA for 45 cents an hour. He worked with a 10-man crew at the Wheeler Dam construction site. His first job was building right-of-way concrete posts 6 inches square and 6 feet high.

"We never knew one week what we would be doing the next week," said Hobbs, who is 94 and lives in Sheffield.

During his 33 years at TVA, Hobbs worked his way from deck hand to riverboat pilot and eventually captain, the job from which he retired in 1979.

"It was a lifesaver for the area," Hobbs said of TVA.

Electricity didn't reach rural areas overnight. In some cases, nearly a decade passed before a farmer could hook on to a power line.

Farmers without telephones or newspapers gathered after church, asking each other if they had electricity yet, said Jesse Bradford, a history enthusiast who lives on one of the remaining farms in Muscle Shoals, an area that was practically covered in cotton fields during the pre-TVA days. Today, Muscle Shoals is among the fastest-growing cities in northwest Alabama.

Bradford said he remembers when, as a young boy, electrical workers came to the cotton farm where he lived to dig holes, put in electrical poles and connect electric wires, gradually connecting farm households to the grid.

The excitement for rural electricity was nearly as high voltage as the lines that began reaching sparsely populated areas.

Agnes Glasscock, 91, grew up in Lexington in the 1920s when shopping trips on the often muddy roads leading to Florence took all day by horse and buggy.

Her family first used electricity for porch lights, a bragging right for the entire neighborhood to see.

"We let our porch light burn all night; didn't have that much money either," she said.

"Let 'em burn," she recalled her father saying.

After TVA electricity reached the farms, "the first thing they seemed to buy was a refrigerator," Bradford said.

Next on the wish list was an electric iron, and when they could afford it, an electric oven, although farmers kept their wood-burning stoves to heat the kitchen and dining areas.

"Most people said electric heating and cooling changed their lives the most," Bradford said.

The modern conveniences, along with tractors that started coming into the region in 1938, helped modernize farm life.

With TVA also came industries. The nitrate factories in Muscle Shoals and Sheffield, built before TVA's formation to support the country's World War I involvement, had remained quiet for nearly two decades. Within months after TVA was formed, those plants began pumping out phosphates and nitrates, which supplied much-needed nutrients to the spent soils.

"FDR said he was going to get them up and running, and he did exactly what he said he would do," Wallace said.

Cheap hydroelectricity, a shipping route on the Tennessee River and available work force began attracting larger industries to the area.

The low cost for electricity continues to attract industry to the Shoals today, as evidenced by recent additions to the manufacturing landscape of the Shoals - SCA Tissue, North American Lighting and the 1,800-employee National Alabama railcar plant.

One of the first major operations to take advantage of the cheap electricity was Reynolds Aluminum Co., with corporate headquarters in Louisville, Ky. The plant was eventually bought by Wise Alloys in 1999 after being a constant in the Shoals for more than 50 years.

Reynolds initially attracted farm laborers who were anxious to trade 12-hour days at 75 cents for eight-hour shifts and the promise of substantial pay.

The increased wages paid at Reynolds and several other smaller, yet productive, industries brought more spending ability.

For the first time for many residents, they were able to buy automobiles, appliances, pre-made clothing and other modern amenities.

Other industry followed, including Union Carbide, Ford Motor Co., Martin Industries, Occidental Chemical Corp. and textiles operations.

TVA became a symbol of security for the economically battered area.

"TVA put this area on the map," Weir said. "We had a teacher - I forget what grade - I thought it was terrible she did this, but she asked everybody in the class where their father worked. When they would say 'TVA,' she said, 'Great, I know you'll get your supplies.' "

Before Roosevelt signed the TVA legislation into law May 18, 1933, he visited Muscle Shoals on Jan. 21 of that year. Some historians argue it was the most important day in Shoals history.

As an 11-year-old, Kathryn Rice, 86, watched Roosevelt arrive by train from her vantage point of her grandfather's office at Sheffield Crossing.

"It was a very exciting day; Roosevelt was very excited about the area," Rice said. "He promised he was going to put this area back on the map.

"At the time, I didn't realize that things were so bad, but I realized things got better after Roosevelt came to town."

Wallace also heard Roosevelt speak.

"My dad and I went to town and heard Roosevelt speak," Wallace said. "He said what he was going to do. We all thought it sounded pretty good, but we didn't think too much about it until he started doing it.

"He made all the difference in the world for a lot of people who were just flat out poor."

Trevor Stokes can be reached at 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@timesdaily.com.