WEARS VALLEY — A Sevier County highway crew breaking out the east abutment of a creek bridge off Wears Valley Road found a Prince Albert tobacco tin in the concrete Monday morning, and in the tin a lunch tally kept by a WPA crew in the spring of 1937.
The tally is a sheet of ledger paper folded in quarters, with nine names down the left side and a column for each day’s lunch. Every line has been crossed through but one. It reads “Tues. ham sandw. 11 cts. R. Whaley, owed Mr. Cates,” and Cates was the foreman.
“Everybody else has a line through them,” said crew leader Terry Maples, 54. “He doesn’t. I don’t know if he was out sick or what. I’d want it settled if it was my name on there, is all.”
Maples’ mother knew a Whaley from church, and by Tuesday afternoon the crew had reached Dean Whaley, 78, of Pigeon Forge, a retired state bridge inspector and R. Whaley’s grandson. Whaley drove out to the site in a truck that still has the county’s parking decal from when he worked there. He looked at the sheet for a while and said his grandfather was good for it.
“Papaw would’ve paid that the next Friday, he always got paid Fridays. Something came up. I told Terry I’d take care of it, and he said nobody had found any of Cates’s family, and I said well, put it in with the paper then, and we’ll know where it is.”
Whaley put a dime and a penny in the tin. Maples wrote the date on the back of the sheet, and the crew set the tin back into the form before the pour Wednesday morning.