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VALLEY — Almost five years ago, during the Covid shutdown, Lanny Bledsoe began writing a novel. It would be a work of fiction loosely based on stories about the local area he had heard in his youth. The book was entitled “Shoal Creek” and gained such widespread popularity it spawned a Shoal Creek saga. He later went on to write five more books in that saga– “Rep’s Return,” “Rocky Shoals,” “Storm Rising,” “Huntin’ Shoal Creek,” and “Shoal Creek Feud.” He also published three other novels in the same time period: “The Injun,” “South From Appomattox” and “Officer Candidate.”

A year ago, he thought he’d finish his writing career with that ninth book, but family members persuaded him to keep writing. Thanks to their efforts, he now has a tenth book in print. It’s called “Memoirs of a Company Town” and is now available on Amazon.

“My sons, Tommy, Jeb and Jim, encouraged me to write this book,” Bledsoe told The Valley Times-News. “They wanted a history of me growing up in River View and the people who were living there at the time. I was born in 1936. There aren’t many people still living who grew up with me and knew those people and how special it was to have lived through that time period.”

River View was one of five textile villages bordering the Chattahoochee River on the Alabama side. River View, Fairfax, Langdale, Shawmut and Lanett were company towns of the West Point Manufacturing Company, whose corporate office was across the state line in West Point, Georgia.

During the company’s heyday, everyone in those mill villages had a family member working in one of the company’s cotton mills. The mill company owned the houses they lived in, almost all other buildings and nearly every acre of land.

It was a good life for those who stayed out of trouble. The company not only provided places to live for their workers, they also built store buildings, schools, churches, theaters and recreational facilities. These places were easily accessible by foot and were freely available to families who had someone working for the company.

They were honest, hardworking people. No one expected to get rich, The average pay in 1936 was twenty cents an hour.

“I really enjoyed writing this book,” Bledsoe said. “It was good to look back and remember those times. I know it’s kind of helter-skelter in the way it reads, but it’s about real places and real people I knew. Everything in it is about something I witnessed or things people I knew told me about. Almost everyone I write about in the book is gone now. There’s some humorous stuff in the book and some serious stuff, too. It’s all about River View, its people, the places and the nearby river.”

Bledsoe was five years old when the U.S. got involved in World War II. “It was a long time ago now, but I have clear memories of that time,” he said. “All the men were gone. They were in military service, and it seemed like every family had husbands, fathers or brothers they worried about. What was at stake in this big war had a big effect on me, even though I was a small boy at the time.”

The book is all about River View, but anyone with a family history in the Valley outside River View can understand it as well. Each mill village was only a few miles away from the other ones. Each town had a mill league baseball team, and the sports rivalries between each town could be pretty fierce, but everyone did share a common heritage, and there were family ties and friendships from one end of the Valley to the other.

“When I was growing up, the people of River View were so interesting,” Bledsoe said. “Remembering them, the kind of people they were and the things they would do was such a good experience for me as I was writing this book. It reminded me of how lucky I had been to have known them. The time we lived through those years is gone now, and so are most of those people. It’s good to have a written record of them and the time period. This world will never see such again.”

Bledsoe’s books remain popular, not just in the local area but worldwide. “I’ve been contacted by people from England, Canada and Australia about my books,” he said. “People from all over have told me they have read them and liked my stories. Many people rent them on Kindle. There’s a system where you pay for it by the page you read. Amazon keeps up with the pages that have been read. It’s an amazing system. I checked on it this week and saw that over 4,000 pages from my books have been read this week on kindle.”

It’s the equivalent of having read 12 books in a week.

“It pleases me that people are still reading my books,” Bledsoe said. “I had no idea I would have gotten this kind of response when I started writing five years ago. It’s kind of funny. A lot of people would ask me questions about the people in the Shoal Creek series as if they were real people. A novel is a work of fiction, but if the characters seem real to them, it must be good writing to them.”

Local people especially like his books. “They’re always telling me they’ve known the people I’m writing about,” he said. “I’m just glad they like the books. It’s okay if the characters remind them of people they have known, just as long as they realize I wasn’t writing about real people in my novels.”

“Memoirs of a Company Town” is different. It’s about a real town and real people.

“I think people will enjoy reading it,” Bledsoe said. “I hope so.”