It can't be said, however, that Long-Bell did not actively encourage its employees to save their money. The promotion of United States savings bonds received considerable space in The Log of Long-Bell, the company magazine, especially during World War II. While the war bond effort of Ryderwood residents probably is not statistically documented, some of their other wartime contributions are.
Almost every draft-age young man in town served in the war, and three of them did not live to return to their hometown. The men who stayed and worked in Ryderwood during the war earned the coveted Army-Navy Excellency Award for their lumbering contribution. Even Ryderwood's youngsters participated in the war effort by collecting scrap metal and by buying stamps that could be applied toward the purchase of a savings bond. When the war ended in 1945, the Merchant children donated their bonds to Roy and Ruth so that they could buy the family's first car.
World War II played a big part in the diversification of Ryderwood demographics, contributing to some of the town's best entertainment ever. First of all, with so many of the young men overseas at a time of increased production demand, Long-Bell found itself short of workers. The company sent one of its loggers, North Carolina native "Boss" Cothren, back to his home state to recruit men to work in the Ryderwood forests. Many men in the hills of the Carolinas hadn't been drafted due to their illiteracy, and Long-Bell took advantage of these able bodies that Uncle Sam had passed over.
With them, the "Tarheels" brought to Ryderwood a funny way of talking, down-home dancing and singing . . . and moonshine. Most of all, they gave the locals something new and different to talk about. Everyone who lived in Ryderwood at the time of the Tarheel immigration has a story or joke to tell about them. Playing off a few Oklahomans who sought work in Ryderwood during the dustbowl, Luther recalls the common joke about being able to tell a Tarheel from an Okie: "An Okie always had two mattresses tied on his car"; a Tarheel had only one.
The second wartime event that seems to have provided everyone in Ryderwood with a story was the inundation of the town by Army fire fighters in August 1945. With many spots of the woods ablaze from lightning fires, these special forces were called in for several weeks, much to the delight of the town's young women. Life in this dead-end town suddenly quickened. For the first time, movies were projected out of doors on the side of a building to entertain the fire fighters and townspeople. The women prepared large, picnic-style dinners for the soldiers. When not on the fire line, the troops performed their drills in the field behind the tree nursery just out of town where the Merchant family then lived.
Patsy recalls that one of them ventured in to visit her mother as a "peeping Tom" while father Roy was on nighttime fire duty. A few of Ryderwood's young women even ended up marrying the soldiers they had met that summer. But the main reason why the soldiers' stay in Ryderwood became such a memorable event was that the war ended while they were in town. Just imagine--Ryderwood, guest to 250 Army men, as V-J Day is declared!
Nola Blanes, twelve years old at the time, remembers that day as "the first time as a child I ever wanted to be an adult." As someone who had been "playing war" since the age of eight, Nola realized the depressing nature of the world war finally had been lifted, and she wanted to celebrate this with the soldiers, adult-style.