"Smells Like Money" or "It'll Take The Paint Off Your House!"

Former Rock Hill Mayor John Hardin was a very entertaining person. He collected some of his more interesting stories into a book, It's Been GRAND! The Life and Times of John Anderson Hardin. It's a great read, even if you don't know the characters or the area. He has several stories about Bowater moving to the area. My favorite is below - read the book for the others.

The big Bowater newsprint plant announced they were coming to Rock Hill. It's one of our biggest plants now, on the Catawba River outside of Rock Hill. It makes newsprint, you know, for newspapers. Well, we were all excited about them coming to town. The Bowater Company flew a group of us from Rock Hill over to Tennessee where they took us to the plant in this big bus. All of a sudden this odor hits us. We said, "Guink! What is that?" Paper mills, you know, give off a rather disturbing odor and we thought that when we got back to Rock Hill, we would get run out of town. But it was such a big plant and such a big occasion, we thought that might offset the odor.


Well, we got back to Rock Hill and Connie Morton, my friend who had been on that Tennessee trip, had me at the radio station and we would make calls to people in Tennessee. We would call the head of the bank, the Chamber of Commerce, and I'd talk. I'd say, "Our people in Rock Hill want to know about this plant. I understand there may be some little odor connected with it." Each and every one said, "Well, there may be, but it smells like money." Well that was fine. Then we called the sheriff and had the same little talk. At the end of the conversation--we were on live radio--I said, "Sheriff, I understand there may be a little odor connected with it." He said, "Odor! It'll take the paint off your house!" And I said, "Thank you, Sheriff," and I hung up.


The Bowater plant (now AbitibiBowater) celebrated their 50th year in production in 2009 and no longer produce newsprint - a sign of the changing times.