Sounds like something out of Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories Collection. They made a PBS film out of the title story and called it Phantom of The Open Hearth Furnace.
Jean Shepard wrote in parenthetical statements often where a character speaks and then their thoughts are expressed. One of my favorite of his lines is relative to a post-prom gathering at a local watering hole. I ordered a bourbon I said "Make it a triple" I had heard the old man order this I thought it was a brand name.