Kelly Plow a Scary Place for a Kid

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I drive through downtown Longview most every weekday, headed to my day job on the south side. I almost always get stopped at the light at the intersection of High and Cotton streets either coming or going to work, sometimes both. On the northeast corner is a city-owned parking lot where the popular Farmer’s Market is held during late spring and summer. On that site once stood the scariest business establishments I encountered as a kid: Kelly Plow Company. In the late 1960s, when I began selling newspapers downtown at 13, one of my stops was this factory, built in 1907.

Kelly Plow came into existence near Marshall in 1843 in what became Kellyville, and then moved to Jefferson, about five miles away. During the Civil War, the company supplied cast-iron cannonballs for the Confederacy. When the war ended, the company began producing plows in earnest, the only full-time plow factory in the Southwest, according to the Handbook of Texas. After a fire, owner George Kelly moved what remained of his plant to Longview in 1882. More than 85 years later, I gingerly walked through the plant, hawking copies of the Longview Daily News.

At 13, Kelly Plow was what I imagined hell would be like. Furnaces were fed shovelfuls of coal, flames licking at the open doors as the fuel was deposited. Dirty, sweaty and generally grouchy men fed those flames, while others pounded molten iron into plowshares. The plant was smoky, dirty and smelled like burning sulfur. Like Hades, in my Catholic-raised mind.
It is not clear, from my research, if Kelly Plow still manufactured plows by the time I wandered through there, selling an occasional paper. Clearly the plant was creating something out of iron. Perhaps there was still a market for plows pulled by mule or man. I don’t know. I just recall this feeling of trepidation every time I stepped inside Kelly Plow, the din and dust, the sense of danger. That was a hard-earned quarter for the five or so papers I would sell each day. (I got half of each dime charged.)

For years, my mother kept a Kelly plow in her cactus-and-rock garden, in front of their home on South Twelfth Street. I do not know why she thought the combination of cactus, white rocks, a large cast-iron stewpot and this plow made aesthetic sense, but that was my mom, rest her soul. I inherited the plow, which sits in my backyard against the fence, along with several old English wrought-iron gates I bought at an auction. They once served as a fence in a small backyard. And a concrete rooster. I guess my taste in yard art was inherited from my mom.
The thing is, I am not sure this is an actual Kelly Plow in my backyard. There are no markings, and the handles have rotted off. I keep threatening to build new handles out of oak, but I threaten to do a lot of things that have not transpired. Building plow handles is pretty low on the list.
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I don’t have to pass by this building every day, also downtown, but the Glover-Crim Building in the late 1960s was another scary stop on my route. It was nearly empty, since this was long before it was restored. The six-story structure was built in 1933 on top of what was Bodie Park. Inside, the cage-style elevator had an attendant who appeared to be 123 years old, possibly a Civil War veteran.

I sold a few papers on one floor to a couple lawyers, maybe a tapped-out wildcatter or two. Again, the smell, the clanging of the elevator cage, the flickering lights gave me the willies at 13. I have had nightmares about both of those places for nearly 50 years.

I am sure you have your own childhood nightmare locations as well. It is part of life, I guess. But I might just sell that plow at the next garage sale. One less scary memory, the way I figure it.

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