Got the fry-grill blues.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: Up Front - Fast-food restaurants - Column

Working in a weave-room, fighting for my life, Trying to make a living for my kiddies and my wife; Some are needing clothing, some are needing shoes, But I'm getting nothing but the weave-room blues.

I've got the blues, I've got the blues, I've got them awful weave-room blues; I got the blues, the weave-room blues. With your looms a-slamming, shuttles bouncing in the floor, When you flag your fixer, you can see that he is sore; Trying to make a living, but I'm thinking I will lose, For I'm sent a-dying with them weave-room blues.

Dorsey Dixon wrote that song in 1932, five years before he penned The Wreck on the Highway ("There were whiskey and blood mixed together/But I didn't hear nobody pray"), which became a Roy Acuff classic. Dixon, who lived in East Rockingham, was a millworker first, musician second. He went in the mills when he was 12 and lived through some terrible times--strikes, with workers batting scabs and goons, double shifts, short time, stretchouts, layoffs, starvation wages ...

Thank God--and our leaders--that those kind of jobs are gone or being foisted on unsuspecting foreigners. I know there's been a lot of whining, some of it on these pages, about the demise of Tar Heel textiles. But I've decided it's time to follow our president's example and look on the bright side. And right now, I have a vision of American manufacturing's future. I can see it through the drive-through window.

The latest Economic Report of the President poses the question: Why shouldn't fast-food restaurants be reclassified as manufacturers? After all, you have to assemble a Big Mac, which really is no...