Original subtitles

[narrator] Abandoned structures hold the secrets

of America's past.

A ghost town that fed the nation's war machine.

[Jean] The sinkhole out by the school swallowed like three or four houses.

That made big news.

But it certainly hasn't kept me away.

[narrator reading] A factory born out of history's most deadly global pandemic.

[man] The giant cup was like a beacon.

It's like the thing which was most synonymous

with people that lived here.

[narrator] And a family-run hotel

reveals the truth behind the origins of rock and roll.

[Zelena] I would come down here

with my mom or my dad.

And my grandmama always would be sitting out front

greeting everyone.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States

are abandoned structures

and those who know their stories.

These forgotten ruins reveal the past of this land

and its people.

These are the secrets

of Hidden America.

In Tornado Alley,

a town that answered America's call for war

is paying the ultimate price.

[Dr. Corina] We're near the border between Kansas and Oklahoma.

This is a place more associated with corn fields and cowboys.

But we're very close to Interstate 69

which used to be the legendary Route 66.

You can't get more Americana than that.

[Dr. Sascha] In the middle of the fields,

there's a very strange town.

There are a few buildings,

but what really stands out

is row after row of empty foundations.

[narrator] Trees and grass sprout among the splintered concrete.

[Dr. Greg] Though nature is trying to take back this town,

the plants look sickly and awful.

You've got bark that looks like it's rusting.

It's almost like this town has a veil of death over it.

[narrator] One clue might lie in the surrounding landscape.

There's these white mountains everywhere.

[Dr. Sascha] Perhaps the most sinister thing

is that these mounds are completely lifeless.

[Jean] They condemned that place

but the children used to sled down them.

We took car hoods

and that's what you slid in.

[narrator] Once, this town fed America's war factories.

[Summer] Pretty much every battle American soldiers fought

in World War I and World War II

used resources from here.

[narrator] But what caused it to thrive,

eventually drove the people away.

[Dr. Sascha] This place became known

as "the most polluted town in America."

[Jean] It is sad to see it like it is now,

because this is home.

This is where my heart is

and will always be.

[narrator] Jean Ann Ellick is returning to the place

she lived for over 40 years.

[Jean] This is the road

my childhood home is on.

This is where we suntanned right here.

All of us.

All the girls.

I'll always be that girl.

[narrator] For Jean Ann,

these empty plots and crumbling walls

aren't just relics of childhood memories.

They're a ghostly reminder of America's golden age.

[Jean] In the heydays,

there were three movie theatres, two skating rinks,

JCPenney's was in town.

It was a good place to live in.

It was a good place to rase your kids.

You didn't... you didn't worry about anything.

Everybody knew everybody.

[narrator] Long before Jean Ann lived here,

in the early 19th century,

this land was populated by the Quapaw nation.

Henry Ellick is a member.

[Henry] The Quapaw people relocated

and this is where we were put.

[narrator] But just a century later,

they found their land in demand.

[Dr. Sascha] In the early 20th century,

huge deposits of zinc and lead

were found in this locale.

Almost overnight, corporations were pouring in, wanting a piece of the pie.

[narrator] The Quapaw were pushed aside

and mining companies began pillaging the land

for lead and zinc,

all backed by Washington.

They were so successful that in 1913,

a town was built to support the budding industry.

This is Picher.

This is where my house used to be.

It was a ranch-style house,

had, uh, three bedrooms,

a living room, a kitchen

and dining room combination.

This was the stairs and, uh,

that was the garage.

[narrator] Within a decade of being founded,

the town's population swelled to over 10,000,

with nearly all the men working in the mines.

[Jean] I'm proud that they were miners.

They died young, you know?

My... my mother's dad died at 32

and my... my dad's died,

I think about when he was 36.

That's not very old.

[narrator] But the early deaths didn't stop the greed of the corporations.

At its peak, the town had over 200 mills,

processing 10 million pounds of ore a day.

It provided the raw resources

for America to swing the balance of both World Wars.

[Dr. Corina] During World War I, zinc and lead were crucial for making bullets

and building trucks and tanks.

[Dr. Greg] Some would say that without Picher's mines,

the entirety of the 20th century

would have worked out differently for America.

[Dr. Sascha] It's estimated that 50% all the bullets fired

by American soldiers in the first and second World Wars

were made with metal from these mines.

[narrator] Yet Picher didn't just come to America's aid

during times of war.

[Dr. Greg] Lead and zinc mined from Picher

helped in the late 20th century in the great industrial boom

that allowed for affordable housing and expansion.

[narrator] As the town grew,

white mountains began to appear

across the flat Oklahoma skyline,

made up of the remains from the mine,

also known as chat.

[Summer] The chat was left on the surface

at the request of the Federal government.

They just thought it would be able to be used for driveways and roads

and... and to be able to be sold as a gravel.

[Jean] The chat piles were a gathering place for people in Picher.

All of our Fourth of Julies were spent on the chat piles,

because that's where we lit our firecrackers and roast weenies.

Right here, my kids just waked across the street

and they were at a chat pile.

This was their playground.

[narrator] No one suspected that this boom town

was about to go bust.

In 1967,

the metal ore ran out

and the mines shut for good.

[Summer] When the mining companies left,

it looked like a moonscape.

Approximately 500 million tons of chat was left on the surface.

The tallest one was several hundred feet tall.

Everyone thought it was safe.

[narrator] Unknown to the townsfolk,

around these chat piles where children played

a catalog of disasters was lurking.

[narrator] In 1970,

the boom town of Picher, Oklahoma had gone bust.

All that was left from mining operations

was millions of tons of tailings,

piled up in white mountains.

And soon the horrors hidden inside would escape.

[Dr. Sascha] In 1973,

it becomes apparent that the toxins from the chat piles

are leeching into the groundwater.

[Jean] I think the first thing that... that got us

was once the water turned orange.

You know we had rust in our water, in our drinking water

We drank a lot of pop.

[laughing]

[narrator] Yet pollution in the drinking water was just the beginning.

The town was also smothered in a cloud of deadly dust,

blown from the chat piles.

[Jean] Well, it was a concern,

the wind brining in the lead.

At that time there wasn't much we could do about it.

[Jean] My kids took two or three baths a day.

[narrator] Things got so bad

that a decade after the pollution was first discovered,

the environmental agency stepped in.

They declared the town a Superfund site.

[Dr. Greg] A Superfund site

is when companies make an absolute mess of the environment

and then the government is left to clean up the wreck.

[Dr. Corina] Well, the bizarre thing is that this area was called a Superfund site

while people were living here.

[Henry] I didn't know how to take that.

We've always lived here.

We didn't see a lot of change, you know?

And when that became a Superfund site,

we were bewildered with it actually.

[narrator] But the environmental agency was too late.

In 1996,

the town's worst nightmares came true

as 40% of Picher's children

tested positive for lead poisoning.

[Dr. Greg] Lead poisoning is especially bad for children

because it affects the entire central nervous system

and all of its development,

and it can lead to much lower IQ,

it can lead to behavioral issues,

even coma and death.

[Dr. Sascha] In just a few decades,

the town of Picher had gone from epitomizing the American Dream

to an environmental nightmare.

[narrator] Despite poisoned groundwater

and toxic dust,

the majority of Picher's residents

still wouldn't leave.

This is where you live, this is where your home is.

And if you don't have very much money,

you can't go anywhere else.

[narrator] But underneath their feet,

yet another horror was brewing.

Something witnessed firsthand

by environmental scientist Summer King.

[Summer] This is a sinkhole.

It's about a hundred feet across,

and about a hundred or hundred and fifty feet deep.

A sinkhole is... is simply a hole

where the rough of the mine

couldn't hold itself up.

[narrator] The mining companies left around 14,000 empty shafts

below the town.

They totaled three and a half billion cubic feet,

the equivalent volume of 40,000 Olympic swimming pools.

No one was safe.

The sinkholes did, uh, swallow up several houses.

One was completely sunk, probably 40 or 50 feet.

[Jean] It was really scary, you know?

We... we worried about it.

But, I... to tell you the truth,

I don't know that I lost any sleep.

But those people that were asleep there

and woke up and went outside

and they were, you know,

20 feet deeper.

I'm sure

they were pretty upset.

[narrator] However, these sinkholes were only the beginning

of the terror beneath the town.

In the early 2000s, the US Army Corp of engineers came in and did a study

and found that the entire town of Picher could collapse at any moment.

[narrator] With Picher on the brink of disaster,

the government offered to but out the residents.

We moved in September of 2007.

They gave 55 dollars a square foot.

[narrator] But for those slow to leave,

Mother Nature was about to run riot.

[narrator] The town of Picher had provided America with the raw resources

to win two World Wars.

And the scars of mining

had sent most of the residents fleeing.

But for those left, things were about to get worse.

In 2008, an EF4 level tornado struck the town.

[narrator] The tornado ripped through Picher,

destroying over one hundred homes and killing seven.

It looks like an atomic bomb went off.

[Jean] The tornado was horrible.

It was absolutely horrible.

I mean, that pretty much decimated the town.

It was just a mess.

[narrator] In the aftermath, the final residents left.

And on September 1st 2009,

the town that had given America so much, officially, ceased to exist.

Despite still being dubbed America's most polluted town,

today there is hope for Picher.

As control of the poisoned land

has been returned to the original landowners to clean up.

[Summer] Quapaw Nation has remediated

more than five and a half million tons of chat

off of approximately 500 acres.

I would ballpark us at approximately 10% through the clean-up.

[narrator] While the process is still decades from completion,

there is optimism that one day this will be fertile land again.

Picher will never be able to be residential

but Quapaw Nation has plans for this area.

[narrator] The tribe are hoping to return Picher

to pastureland for their cattle

and create a wildlife refuge.

[Henry] I'm proud of what Quapaw people have established and created,

an ongoing renovating the area and making it safe.

And it is a great accomplishment.

[narrator] Despite the cleanup,

today the story of Picher has become

infamously connected with corporate greed.

[Dr. Sascha] Picher has served to deliver a really important lesson.

We should hold corporations responsible for the damage they do to the environment,

the damages they do to our communities.

[Dr. Greg] The poorest are always going to suffer.

There has to come a time when we can regulate things

before it gets to this point.

[narrator] Although all that's left is a handful of crumbling buildings,

and rows of concrete foundations,

some won't let Picher die.

[Jean] It makes me sad that the mining companies

didn't hold up their end of the bargain and clean up their mess before they left.

I still go to Picher two or three times a week, drive around.

Yeah. Picher... Picher has my heart.

[narrator] In the deep South,

a building that offered a safe haven to America's downtrodden,

changed the course of music history.

[Dr. Kyle] We're in Clarksdale, Mississippi

right next to the Great River Road.

A roadway that runs from the Southern United States

all the way to it's very Northern tip.

Thousands of people drive by here everyday without knowing its story.

There's a lot of history here in Clarksdale.

A lot of people don't take it to heed.

And I think that

of all the things, we should not let it go.

Because once we lose our history, our past,

we don't know our future.

[Dr. Kenya] On almost every street,

there's an abandoned building.

[Linda] There's this big old abandoned school.

There's a movie theatre that looks like it's closed some time ago.

There are even rusting train cars on the tracks.

[narrator] Among the disrepair,

one structure's story stands out.

[Dr. Kyle] This place seems to fit in with the rest of the buildings around town.

It's dilapidated. It certainly seems like it's seen better days.

[narrator] It's where one woman nurtured multiple revolutions.

My grandmama understood during that time it wasn't easy.

She was recognized as being the mother of blues.

[narrator] In Clarksdale, Mississippi,

one building lies quiet and almost forgotten.

But not to Zelena Ratliff,

she is keeping its traditions alive.

[Zelena] When you come into this building...

you're walking on the footprints

and the history of the great legends.

[narrator] The structure's humble beginnings

date back to the dark days of Jim Crow,

the age on segregation.

[Zelena] This building was the only Black hospital

that was located here in the Delta.

It was built in 1914.

[narrator] Despite Mississippi having a Black majority,

racism in healthcare was rife and most hospitals turned away Black patients.

The Black Hospital,

was all that we as Black people, had to go.

It might seem very small but it decent enough.

[narrator] Although this building only had eight rooms,

in 1937, events here would hit national news

when musical royalty turned to this hospital in her time of need.

♪ That man got a heart... ♪

[Zelena] Bessie Smith was the Empress of the Blues.

She had a bad car accident between Memphis and coming to Clarksdale.

So, of course they brought her here.

She had lost a lot of blood

and she'd nearly severed her entire arm.

[narrator] On September 26th, 1937,

Bessie Smith died here.

And shortly after, the hospital closed its doors for good.

But no one could predict what would happen next,

as the building fell into the hands of a woman ahead of her time,

Mrs. Z. L. Hill.

[Zelena] She was a lady that was determined not to work for the White man.

She was determined to own her own.

She walked in the door with my daddy. At that time, I was four years old.

And grandmother said, "This could be something special."

[narrator] Mrs. Z. L. Hill added 20 rooms

and in 1944 with construction completed,

the building opened it's doors again.

This is the Riverside Hotel.

[Zelena] This hotel opened up for Black people who were travelling

and they could come here and be safe.

[Linda] One of the biggest challenges that faced

Black travelers was finding accommodation.

Not only did many hotels refuse them service,

but there was also an estimated 10,000 sundown towns

scattered across the country where all non-White people

had to leave town by sunset.

[Dr. Kenya] If an African American found themselves in a inhospitable space,

they could be assaulted or even killed.

[narrator] Yet it wasn't until the groundbreaking guidebook

brought Black travelers straight to the hotel's door

that the business really boomed.

[Linda] The Green Book was a famous guide for Black American travelers

detailing, cataloging safe places to sleep, eat, get gas across the country.

The Riverside Hotel was one of the very few places in Mississippi

that was listed in this book.

[Zelena] So while you're travelling, you get the Green Book

and then you'll say,

"Okay, if I'm going down to Clarksdale where can I stay?

Oh! They've got a Riverside Hotel, well, let's just stay there.

[narrator] Despite the Green Book bringing patrons

from all across the country,

a revolution that began in Clarksdale

would firmly write this hotel into American Folklore.

[Linda] Clarksdale is said to be the birth place of the blues.

This artform originated in the plantations around this area.

[Dr. Kyle] It's the place where Robert Johnson

came and met the devil at a crossroads and sold his soul

to become the greatest guitarist of a generation.

[narrator] The Riverside Hotel became a heaven for visiting blues musicians

as the owner offered them so much more

than just a place to lay their heads.

[Zelena] My grandmama was the type of woman who understood

the struggle of that blues guy.

And then by having them she became a part of their family

and they all called her mom.

[narrator] Some of the industry's greatest legends,

like, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Howlin' Wolf

all called this place home.

[Zelena] This is John Lee Hooker room.

John Lee Hooker used to love playing for my grandmama out front.

And she'd say, "Johnny, aren't you tired yet?"

And you know what he'd say?

Mom, I love playing for you.

So, you see the love was here.

[narrator] But these walls did far more than just sing the blues.

In 1951, the Riverside Hotel, shook the world.

[Zelena] We gonna walk into the room in which Ike Turner stayed.

[Linda] Ike Turner had had a long standing relationship with this hotel.

Living there kind of off and on from the 1940s.

One day he and Jackie Brenston was jamming on the front porch of the hotel

when they came up with a revolutionary new sound.

[narrator] According to legend,

a broken amp had created a distorted buzz.

A sound that the world had never heard before.

[Zelena] They came running down.

They said, "We got something here.

We finna go downstairs and get it together."

And guess what? That was "Rocket 88".

[narrator] It was the moment that the world was introduced to rock-and-roll.

[Dr. Kenya] Ike Turner went on to record "Rocket 88" in Memphis.

So to this day, Memphis claims to be

the birthplace of rock and roll.

But I think it's fair to say

that rock and roll was conceived in the Riverside Hotel.

[rock 'n' roll music playing]

[narrator] But just a few years later,

this hotel would find itself at the heart of another revolution.

One that would split America.

[narrator] The Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi,

changed music with the birth of rock and roll.

But it would also play a part in changing American society.

[Dr. Kenya] In the 1950s and 60s,

African Americans increasingly were using their voice

to call for the end of segregation.

[narrator] During this time Clarksdale attracted

some of the nations greatest civil rights heroes.

[Dr. Kenya] People like Ralph Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth

came to Clarksdale.

And Martin Luther King Jr. came to Clarksdale twice.

So of course when they arrived their followers came in droves

and they needed a place to stay.

[Dr. Kyle] It's incredible to think about the kinds of conversations

that would've happened in these rooms

amongst those involved in the civil rights movement.

[narrator] In 1964, the voice of those who stayed here

was finally heard.

[Kenya] Congress passed the Civil Rights Act

which made it illegal to segregate any public space.

[narrator] But in an ironic twist of fate

desegregation slowed business for the hotel

as Black travelers had more choice of where to stay.

Until a decade later when some unexpected visitors breathed new life into the hotel.

[Linda] In the 1970's the Riverside Hotel

began drawing tourists from faraway places like Japan and China.

[Zelena] These people back then were searching for the blues.

And if you're searching for the blues, you gotta come to Clarksdale.

And then whilst you come to Clarksdale, who do you need to see?

My grandmother.

[narrator] But the good times wouldn't last.

In 1997, tragedy struck

as Zelena's grandmother died aged 88.

[Zelena] My dad told me

one day we were sitting in the office

and he said,

"You know, your grandmama, she did it her way."

[narrator] Over the following decades the family fought to keep the business alive.

But in April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic,

the hotel shut its doors for good.

Today there is hope this hotel will open once more.

[Linda] The Riverside Hotel is currently crowdfunding to restore and preserve it

and it's even received a few historic preservation grants.

[Zelena] The day that The Riverside Hotel will reopen,

and I'm using that as a plus because it will reopen one day,

will be the best feeling in the world to me.

There's so much beautiful history that is laid upon this place.

And I want other people to take part and feel it.

[narrator] On the edge of the Rust Belt,

there's a relic of an American icon

which transformed public health and saved countless lives.

[Bill] Coming back here was like seeing an old friend.

I missed this place.

I really honestly did.

'Cause everybody loved working here.

This was our bread and butter, this was everything, y'know?

We're in Easton, in the heart of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.

This used to be one of America's biggest economic hubs.

And traces of its former glory are dotted all around the area.

[narrator] Among the remains of heavy industry

one derelict structure catches the eye.

Interesting things happened here that are historic

in the United States and around the world,

manufacturing of a critically important product.

[Jim] This is a classic early 20th century industrial building.

High ceilings, enormous floors,

everything held up by massive concrete columns.

But there aren't a lot of clues as to exactly what was made here.

[narrator] Yet on the roof

there's a remnant of the building's past.

Could be the largest cup in the world and this cup literally saved lives.

[narrator] Today this building is cold and empty,

but when Bill Adams first came here aged eleven,

to him it was more like a Willy Wonka wonderland.

[Bill] First time I walked through this factory

was October 7th 1970.

They had a family night, we walked through the plant.

All I remember was the cups going through the shoots.

Flying everywhere.

For a little boy, yeah, it was magical.

[narrator] Bill was witnessing the manufacturing of an American institution.

[Rob] It's fair to say that if you were alive in America during the mid-20th century

then it's pretty likely you would have drunk out of a cup

made at this factory.

[narrator] At its peak

six million disposable cups a month were made here.

This is the Dixie Cup Factory.

Yet its origins can be traced back to the early 20th century.

A time of death and disease.

[Jim] Throughout human history

people have been getting sick and dying of diseases

without knowing where they came from

especially as people started to collect in big cities.

[Rob] One of the worst things that was happening was the sharing of drinking cups.

Literally hundreds of people would drink from the same glass or metal cup.

On trains, at schools or at outdoor water fountains.

[narrator] To fight this transmission of disease

a Boston lawyer called Laurence Luellen

came up with a revolutionary idea.

[Katherine] He realized that the communal drinking cups

were a heaven for the spread of bacteria

and to eliminate the risk, you should have a disposable form of cup.

[Jim] He tinkered and tinkered with this idea

and he came up with a way to fold a single sheet of wax paper

in order to create a leak proof cup.

[narrator] Luellen Christened his invention the health cup.

But there wasn't a market for it.

Until...

America was in the grips of the world's deadliest global pandemic.

[narrator] In the Lehigh Valley,

this factory was built to save the lives of Americans,

after over half a million died during one of history's greatest health emergencies,

the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

The death toll

brought the newly invented health cup

to the forefront of public consciousness.

Everyone was very concerned about catching the disease

and so the health cup became enormously popular.

[narrator] Yet despite the health cup's success,

its owners didn't want to limit its market to just medical use.

[Jim] In 1919, the company changed the name

and kind of oddly

the name was borrowed from a popular line of dolls.

It would now be known as the Dixie Cup.

They were trying to make the cup seem like something

sort of fun and innocuous.

[narrator] Demand boomed

and in 1921,

production moved to this 80,000 square ft. factory in the Lehigh Valley.

Following on from his father's footsteps,

Bill began working here six decades later

aged twenty one.

I needed a job so my dad said,

"Go over to Dixie, they'll hire you."

Then I went and started on night shift.

[narrator] But when Bill was working here

the factory had become famous for far more than just drinking cups,

as the company had taken advantage

of one of America's favorite foods.

[Katherine] During the 1920's America had a new love affair, and that was with ice-cream.

In fact sales of ice-cream went up 40% between 1920 and 1929,

and Dixie Cup wanted to get a slice of this action.

[Jim] When you look at a Dixie Cup

it seems like the simplest thing

but the company realized if that they made a slightly

shorter version of their cup design

you could fill that little cup with ice-cream.

[narrator] These one portion ice-cream cups

took America by storm

thanks to a revolution being kindled in the offices here.

[Joseph] This is the fourth floor of the first wing.

When Dixie had it here these were their offices.

The executives always had wooden paneled offices.

[narrator] These walls gave birth to some of the greatest marketing campaigns

in American history.

[man on commercial] With a little imagination

you can use a Dixie Cup for practically anything.

A leftovers cup.

[Jim] These guys were geniuses at marketing

they pioneered a lot of things that we think are common today.

[man on commercial] A borrow a cup of sugar cup.

There are so many things you can do with disposable Dixie Cups,

you might not have any left to drink out of.

[narrator] Yet perhaps the real marketing genius

was what was printed on the cups.

♪ Living Dixie style ♪

They featured Hollywood stars, sports heroes,

and made children excited to purchase them.

[Bill] When I started

you could stand down there

you could look up here

and you saw nothing but Star Wars cups being made.

I'll never forget that.

[narrator] These marketing campaigns dreamt up here

made the Dixie Cup an American institution.

[Jim] It's one of the only examples

where the product became famous

not for the product, but for the container it came in.

The Dixie Cup.

[narrator] Despite the success

perhaps the most iconic advertising idea was on the factory itself.

[Jim] On the roof of this building

where you would normally see a large water tank.

You see a massive replica of a paper cup.

[Bill] The giant cup was like a beacon.

The thing with the cup which was most

synonymous with people that lived here, even if you didn't work here

you knew it, when you came down a highway

and you saw that bright cup on top of this building,

they knew that was home.

[narrator] But no one

could have predicted how the giant cup

would become the town's savior.

[Rob] In 1955 Hurricane Diane hit the east coast hard.

It caused more than a billion dollars worth of damage.

I remember cars being flooded and submerged.

Seeing a house coming down the river.

[narrator] The category three hurricane leaves much of the east coast

without power and fresh water.

For survival

the town of Easton turned to the Dixie Cup Factory.

[Jim] Here was that water tank on top of the Dixie Cup Factory

that contained 50,000 gallons of clean water

and that was a real resource for the community over the next couple of days.

[Rob] It's kind of ironic that this giant replica Dixie Cup

ended up doing exactly what the original Dixie Cups were intended to do.

Provide fresh drinking water.

[narrator] Over the following decades

this much loved building

went from strength to strength.

But near the end of the 20th century

everything changed

with the emergence of plastic cups.

Well they couldn't bring the plastic machines in here

because the ceilings aren't high enough.

So they decided to move the stuff to the plastic

plant up in Forks Township.

[narrator] In 1982

this factory produced what would be

it's final Dixie Cup.

Today

all that remains of this mecca of manufactory

are its concrete columns and floors.

But these industrial features are giving Joseph Readman

a chance to bring it back to life.

[Joseph] The future plans of the building

are to create a multi-family apartment complex.

It could be 450 apartments.

Every unit

would have ten or eight foot windows.

The hallways

would be defined by the columns.

[Rob] The renovation of the Dixie Cup factory is an example

of how Lehigh Valley is becoming an ideal commuter town

for booming Philadelphia.

[narrator] Perhaps, after the renovation

the building will once again

become the heart of a community.

[Bill] We knew everybody.

We played football together, we did everything together

back in the day.

The factory was like the lifeblood of this area.