About

The following is a “walk through history” from the viewpoint of Calvin Hudson as told to Pam Layman. Mr. Hudson is the oldest of Albert & Audrey Hudson, born August 24, 1926. (Quotation marks are used only to indicate that he was talking, not necessarily verbatim.) Many thanks and appreciation Mr. Hudson!!

My daddy was Albert L. Hudson, he was born June 7, 1899 and died almost 90 years later on February 18, 1989. In 1938 Daddy bought the lot where the mill was built, He partnered up with Benjamin “Ben” Lewis Clements, who was a millwright. But it was their brothers who pretty much got the building and equipment established. Daddy’s brother, Arther, built the building, and Ben’s brother, Elijah, also a millwright, (who owed Ben money), helped Daddy put the machinery and elevators in. Daddy opened the mill for business the first of July, 1940. They decided to call this new mill Exchange Milling because people could bring their wheat and exchange it for flour. A toll was taken out for the grinding. For each 60# bushel of wheat, the farmer would get 32# of flour, 4# of middlings, and 4# of wheat bran. The other 20# was kept by the mill for processing. Although he was partner, Ben Clements didn’t come to work at the mill until 1944 or 1945. (He was busy traveling and building other mills.) Around 1944 or 1945 the mill started doing custom grinding, where farmers could bring their corn and wheat in exchange for feed. I think the grinding fee at this time was 20 cents per 100 pounds. Ben had several boys: William “Bill”, Pete, Lewis, and Charles Clements. Bill worked there when he was 20, but he had asthma and had to wear a respirator. Pete worked there in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. Lewis also worked there in the 1950s, and Charles was the bookkeeper in the 1950s. Daddy & Mama had three children. I was born on August 24, 1926, my sister Hazel, on October 2, 1928, and our little brother Carlton “Lee” Hudson, on April 8, 1938. Lee never worked anywhere but Exchange Milling, and he passed away in 2009. Hazel worked in the office for about 17 years. I worked there off and on. In 1940, when I was about 14, I worked at Martin Barber Shop in town after school and on Saturdays shining shoes. I got 10 cents per pair if they were a single color, and 15 cents if they were two-toned! About this time, Daddy told me I could have the “floor sweepings” from the mill to feed the pigs I was raising. So, I swept the floor and used that to help feed my pigs, which I sold at the market for $60 for all four! When school let out in the summer in 1943, Daddy hired me to do inside work at the mill. He paid me $5/week. At that time, the mill was open Monday-Saturday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Also in 1943, there was a program at school that let you work and go to school, so I did that and worked at the Hub Garage.

Exchange Milling made around $7.00 the first month it was open for business, but the electric bill was a little over $9.00! So, Mama loaned the mill $2.00 and some change from her butter and milk money. (Daddy & Mama had a cow, and she sold butter for .25/lb.) Mama’s best Sunday dress was made from flour sacks from the mill! Exchange Milling started out as a flour mill with flour called “Honest Abe”, but that gave way to the “Snow White” brand. We also had “King of Value” brand flour; it was a darker flour. We had “Log Cabin” cornmeal. We had a patent grade flour and a low-grade flour. In the late 60s, Lester Stevenson, who owned McNeil Milling, down south 220 a ways, sold us his brand of “Honey Bee” cornmeal, so we got rid of “Log Cabin” and just had “Honey Bee”. (He wanted out because it was hard on him when his only child, a teenage son, died while shoveling corn and became smothered in it.) There were four flour packers: the one on the left was for “King of Value”, the one on the right was for “Snow White”, then there was one for mill middlings, which we called the “Super Fat Packer”, and we had a bran packer. Inside the mill was a wooden crane located at the corn-mill that we used to lift the corn-mill rocks apart to sharpen them. The flour mill had maple hardwood flooring. We kept that floor clean! We would put kerosene on a mop and mop the floor to keep the dust down!!

We lived on Herbert Street (near Flora’s Funeral Home) in town. So, Daddy didn’t have far to go to the mill. I was born in that house. On June 19, 1945, I was drafted by the Army and caught the tail end of the war. I was placed in the infantry, went to Greenland for a year, got put into the engineer division, then moved on to the Air Force. I stayed in for 18 months and came out a sergeant! I came home and went back to the Hub Garage (late 1946) and stayed there until the first of April, 1949. I worked at a Cadillac dealership, and then I tried to be a salesman for Daddy, but I didn’t like it. I went to work for Richardson Pontiac in Martinsville. I would work there in the winter, and then leave in the warm weather and build a house to sell. I left there in 1959, and went back to the mill.

Approximately around 1946, Daddy bought a big diesel engine for the mill. I think he paid $650 for it. They brought it in and it was up on blocks in front of the mill near the bridge end. It was barely on mill property. They wanted it to power the flour mill grinding. But anyway, they built a foundation and then built the mill on up around it! Appalachian Power came by and seen it sitting there and wanted to know what they were going to do with it. I guess it was Daddy who told them they were going to put it in the mill to save on the electric bill! Appalachian told them if they would leave it out, then they would reduce the electric bill, but they put it in anyway! We quit using this because it needed water to keep it cool, and one day, Garther, Daddy’s other brother who was a salesman, went to lunch and asked Ben to keep and eye on the engine. Ben got to talking and forgot about it, and when he went to check on it, the engine was HOT and when he poured cold water on it, the head cracked! In 1959, I, (Calvin), took the engine apart and hauled it Roanoke and had it “cold-welded”. We used it some, but it got to leaking again, so we went back to electric motors!” (Author’s Note: This engine is still owned by current owner, Bruce Layman, and former owner Duck Akers, and is on loan to Southwest Antique Farm days, which has it on permanent display at the Recreation Park.)

At the end of 1958, Daddy (Albert) bought out Ben Clements’ part of the mill for $65,000. I think it was 4% interest. Ben was 10 years older than Daddy, and Daddy paid him off in 3 or 4 years. One Saturday when I was working, I found a leak near the chimney, and then I found that Daddy had kept a bunch of papers on the equipment there by the chimney! Some were kind of wet, and I brought them home. Sometime in the 60s we decided it was not justifiable to keep the mill open on Saturdays. Around 1965 or 66 Daddy modernized the flour mill and bought new machinery which came from Germany. It was shipped to Norfolk, and my brother Lee and James Anderson (who worked at the mill) took the big truck from the mill and went to a pier in Norfolk and picked it up. It was a pneumatic system: Daddy installed it and I did all the welding on it. Around 1962, the metal silos went up ring by ring. Each one could hold 6,000 bushels of wheat. Also, in the 1960s, Daddy started selling out as a stock company to us children by giving us equal shares of stock. We installed the first pellet mill in 1969, and the second was almost completely installed when Daddy had his first heart attack in 1971. Lee could run every piece of machinery in the mill, and I could run everything but the pellet mills. If you can’t run your own equipment, you’re being held hostage by your employees! It took Daddy about a year to get over his heart attack which was pretty severe. He came back to work in 1973 and worked until 1982. He finished giving stock to us children in the early 70s after he had his heart attack. We all owned it equally. My wife’s health was failing, so in February of 1985, my brother Lee bough enough of mine and Hazel’s portions that he had controlling interest. Duck Akers and Gary Martin bought in at this point also. Lee later sold and now y’all own the mill. You’ll have to get anything from 1985 till now from Duck!”