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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
H-0250, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Evelyn Gosnell Harvell grew up on a farm owned by her father in Tygerville, SC. In this interview, she recalls her family's life in Tygerville and more than three decades of mill work as a weaver. Harvell shares a number of characteristics with other mill workers interviewed in this collection: she enjoyed a rewarding childhood, she liked the work she did at the mill, and she was suspicious of unions. Harvell's brief answers to the interviewer's questions—and the interviewer's frequent use of yes-or-no questions—makes this interview more useful for gathering information than gaining a sense of life in the early 20th-century rural South.
Evelyn Gosnell Harvell recalls growing up on a South Carolina farm and the more than three decades she spent as a weaver in a textile mill.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… lived on a farm in Tygerville, and all the families would go there on weekends. We'd have big dinners and enjoy one another, the cousins and all get together. I remember my grandmother had a long table on the front porch. They would cook food; any kind of food you wanted, we would have.
That's your Grandmother Gosnell?
Grandmother Case. And we enjoyed it, had a good time, and we'd leave on Sunday and come back home.
That was up in North Carolina.
No, this was after they moved to South Carolina. My mother moved to South Carolina when she was twelve years old with her family. They had wagons back in those days, and she would tell us about moving. They had three wagons. She said they had covered wagons. I don't remember that. She said they had two or three cows, and it taken them two weeks to come from North Carolina to South Carolina.
So they moved to a new farm.
Yes, they bought a farm in Tygerville, North Greenville up here.
And you say all the families would go out there.
Yes, when they grew up. We'd all meet there on Saturday.
All of the children.
All of Grandmother Case's, yes.
Did they kind of retire or stay on the farm?
My granddaddy died on the farm, and my grandmother then came to Greenville to live with the baby daughter until she died. And then the farm was sold.
What about your own memories when you were a little girl? Where were you living when you first remember?
I was living at Dunean out on Blake Street. I remember going
So you went to kindergarten here.
Yes, they had a nursery and a kindergarten at Dunean here. We had a gym, and we had all kind of recreation when I was a child.
Who ran that kindergarten, or who kept it up?
The company, I think, kept it up. They furnished the kindergarten for the employees. We had a YMCA when I grew up, and I went to the Y and played games.
Did both of your parents work at Dunean?
Yes, when I was little they did. We had a farm above Travellers Rest.
In the mill, what did they do?
My mother and daddy were weavers.
Do you know how they learned to do that?
No. This place was owned by Haynesworth, and it was new, and they moved here to help them out.
Did they know how to weave when they first moved here?
I don't think so. I don't remember hearing them talk about it. But they enjoyed it. And then they bought this farm, and we'd go to the farm in the summer a lot of times and stay a week or two and then go on weekends.
Would you all raise crops up there?
No. We had somebody to …
Rented it.
Yes.
But you did have a house on it that you could stay at.
Yes.
That was pretty unusual, wasn't it, to have a place like that?
Yes.
Can you account for the fact that your family had this farm?
My daddy's daddy owned it, and then when he passed on my daddy got it.
That's the Gosnells.
Yes. And we enjoyed that very much.
Was your father the oldest child, to get the farm?
He was the oldest child. I think it belonged to all, and then he bought their shares.
But you don't know how it was that he learned to weave.
No, I don't know that much about it.
Your grandfather and grandmother on the Gosnell side had moved in to work in the mills earlier?
Yes. When they married, they wanted to work. These places were new then, and they learned to work. My mother just loved to weave.
Did your grandparents sell their Spartanburg County farm when they came in to …
I really don't know. My grandfather died before my mother married. I never seen a picture of him, and I never did know him. But I have lived on the village all my life, I guess.
Do you remember starting school?
Yes, I remember starting school. I was just about six. And then I had some kind of infection—got my leg hurt some way or another—and I didn't get to go to school for three years, I think it was. I couldn't walk.
What did you do during those years?
I'd just sit in chairs, and then they would help me to get
around. Back then they didn't have what they've
got now for crippled people.
This would have been when you were how old?
I was about six or seven, and it was about three years I didn't walk.
You had, you say, cousins who lived in …
They lived close
That would be on your mother's side.
Yes.
There were a number of Gosnells working in the Dunean Mill?
One of my mother's sisters married a Holcomb, and one of them married… Her brothers lived here, and they were the Cases. Cousins back then loved one another, but they're not close now.
So you all had lots of kinfolks.
Yes, we had a lot of kinfolk. And they would help me, and finally I could walk. Been walking ever since.
Where did you come in among these four brothers and two sisters?
I'm the middle child.
Could you name them off in order of birth?
Ernest is seventy-seven; David is seventy-five; Hardy is seventy-two, I believe; I am seventy.
Who comes next?
Nellie is sixty-eight. Then I've got a brother James that lives in Orlando, Florida; he is sixty-four. And I've got another sister Dot, fifty-seven.
You say your mother worked as a weaver for a while and then stopped.
Yes. She didn't work all the time. She just worked part-time.
Would she be working when Ernest or David was born, some of these older brothers?
No, she wouldn't work then.
She would have stopped before then?
Yes.
I know sometimes women used to work in the mill up until …
I don't know about that. I just don't remember too much about that, but she did not work all the time. But she loved to work. And then when they were born she would go back to work and work a while. She didn't work all the time; she'd just quit and work when she wanted to.
They would hire her back, and she could come and go.
Oh, yes.
I guess you would have been about eight or nine years old when the flu epidemic came along in 1919.
I remember that. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember when so many people died. I was just a child.
What kind of a feeling or memory do you have, looking back on that now?
Well, it never did bother me.
Does it frighten you to think back about that time?
It would now, but then it didn't. Didn't any of us get sick, and we didn't have any trouble. Didn't any of them bother with it.
Did you know anyone who died during that?
No, I didn't. I don't remember anybody.
Lots of people had it around here, I know. That's one of the things that people will always remember, is that flu epidemic.
Yes. I remember that, remember so many people dying, but I
In all these children, was there any one of your brothers and sisters that was a favored child?
We always felt like the oldest one was favored more. I think everybody has a pick. We always felt like my oldest brother had the favors, but we really don't know that. I think she loved us all the same.
Is there any reason, anything you could think back on that would make you say that?
It seemed like he got everything he wanted quicker than the rest of us.
We thought that
Did you have any thoughts about what you wanted to do when you were a child?
Oh, yes, you have a lot of thoughts. You want to be a lot of things.
Can you remember …
I don't remember too much. I always liked to be a housewife. I always wanted to be. I love to cook. I always liked to cook, and I liked to cook good things and different things.
Did you all have a garden?
Oh, yes.
Who looked after that?
My mother always had a garden. Now me and my husband never have had a garden.
It was your mother's responsibility to kind of look after …
And my daddy. He was a good gardener, and my mother, too. And
Did you help in the garden?
No, I don't like garden work.
What about when you were putting up food? Did you help do that at all?
Yes, I would help her can some, peel apples or something like that, but I'm not too much for a garden at all.
But you like to cook.
I love to cook.
You just didn't like to garden or put it up or can it.
I like to can pretty well now, but when I was a child I didn't care anything about it. I wanted to play.
Would some of the children be drafted into helping with the garden or with the canning?
She would tell us what to do and we did it, but she didn't work us to death at all.
Did she ever have anyone to come in to cook or keep house?
Yes, we had a colored woman to cook.
Was there one or two particular ones that stayed with you a long time?
Oh, yes, we kept one a good while.
What was her name?
I don't remember now. I think her name was Zena
And she was from here in Greenville?
Yes.
Whereabouts did she live?
I believe she lived back over close to town somewhere. I think she lived in the city limit.
Did she have a family of her own?
She had a family of her own.
Husband and children?
No, her husband was dead.
Would she come in the daytime and go home at night?
Yes.
What would she do?
Oh, she did housework.
Would she wash the clothes?
Yes.
Would she cook?
Yes, she was a good cook.
Would your mother be working some in the mill during this period?
Yes, she would be working. But they didn't have washing machines back then; they had to rub them out with their hands.
In a big washpot?
A big washpot and a rub-board.
What about your brothers Ernest and David and these older brothers? Did they go to kindergarten and go to school?
Yes, they all went to school.
How long did they get to go?
I really don't know.
Did any of them go any further than you did?
Oh, yes. I have one brother that teaches school in Florida now.
Which one is that?
James.
He must have graduated from high school and college?
Yes.
Did any of the others?
Yes, Dot graduated from high school.
Where did she go?
I think she went to Parker.
That was a pretty well known high school.
Yes, back then that was new. They were building that when I was just a teenager. I remember that.
Where did you go to elementary school and up to the eighth grade?
I went to the Mills Mill School. That was before Dunean built a school, and they paid Mills Mill so much money to let the children go over there.
Did your older brothers all go to work at first in the mill a while?
Yes, they did a while, and then the oldest one went into store business. His own business. Well, the two oldest ones did. Then Hardy, the one just older than me, stayed in; he retired in the mill. Monaghan. He was an overseer over there a long time at Monaghan.
In which department?
Weave room.
What about the other two brothers, Ernest and David?
They went in the store business.
Do you know how they worked their way up?
They started in the mill.
What kind of of a store did they …
The oldest one ran a grocery store up on Highway 25 for years, and David run a cafe. And Nellie went into her own restaurant business.
That was pretty unusual, for a woman to start up a restaurant business.
It's just her and her husband. She had no children. And they had a filling station and a restaurant. And she sold it about five years ago.
You told me about James. He went on to college?
Yes.
Where did he go?
The University of Tennessee.
And he's teaching school.
He's teaching at Evans High School in Orlando, Florida.
And then your sister Dot.
She was sick all her life, and she worked in a store. She worked at Big
Star
You stayed on in school through the eighth grade.
Yes.
Did you want to go on some more?
No, I didn't.
How did you get your first job?
My mother worked, and I went in there and stayed with her. You'd go in when you wanted to and come out when you wanted to, and after school I'd go in and learn. She taught me.
Was it hard for you to learn that?
No.
Was she a pretty good teacher?
Oh, she was a good weaver. Real good.
What does it take to be a good weaver?
Be interested in your job.
Do you have to have any kind of special skills or abilities with your hands or eyes, or move fast?
Oh, yes. You weave with your eyes and your hands and your feet and
What are some things that weavers can do to keep themselves out of getting in trouble with their looms and their cloth coming through? Can you kind of keep an eye ahead on them?
Oh, yes, you can work ahead of your job.
Could you talk a little bit about how you do that?
Keep your mind on your work. Know your job; know your looms.
How many looms was your mother running?
I think she had eight.
What kind were those?
I don't remember just what it was.
Were those the box looms?
No, she was on plain Drapers.
Did it have an automatic bobbin-changing machine?
Yes.
And someone would come by and fill up the …
Fill up the batteries. Had batteries, and it would put the filling in the
shuttle. Of course, that went out of date. They put in magazines.
That was the kind of looms that you learned first to operate,
Yes.
How long did it take you before they gave you looms of your own, after you had started?
About a month or two, probably.
How many would they give you to run?
Some were four, and some were eight. It depends on the styles that you have.
What were you all making when you started?
I wasn't making very much. I think it was just maybe eight or nine dollars or ten.
What kind of cloth?
We was making just plain cloth.
Do you know what it would be used for?
It would be used for sheets and pillowcases, I think, back then. Unbleached cloth, they'd call it.
Did you have other members of your family besides your mother working there at the same time that you were?
Yes. I had a brother that worked. Then Nell went to work when she got… I didn't go to work till I was about sixteen.
That would have been about '26?
Yes.
There were lots of different mills in Greenville at that time. Did people say that working at one was more preferable than working at another one?
Lots of people would go from one to the other, but I don't
What about the women who were weavers? Was there any difference in the kind of jobs they would be running and the kind that the men weavers would be working back then? Say, the difference between the kind of weaving your mother might be doing and that your father would be?
No, they could weave the same materials. But a lot of men fixed looms, and women didn't do that.
Did they have someone coming along, when your mother was working, that doffed the cloth off her loom?
Yes.
She didn't have to do that herself.
No.
Tell me a little bit about what your day would be like. Say, back in the 1920's, what time would you get up? Would they blow a whistle to start the day?
Yes, they'd blow a whistle to wake you at five o'clock or five-thirty. That was the wake-up whistle, and then they would blow another whistle at… It seemed like we went to work at seven o'clock. And we'd get an hour for dinner. We'd go home for dinner, and then go back and work till six. I think that's the way we worked.
So there was one shift.
Yes.
One was all they were running at that time.
Yes.
You would come home for dinner, and you would have dinner with your family?
Yes, the dinner would be on the table. We'd all have dinner
together. We just had an hour. Of course, we didn't live far.
We had
What about the pace of work back then? I know that that may have changed some over the years, but what was it like back in the twenties, about how fast you had to work, or how many looms you had to run?
You didn't have many. They didn't run many looms back then. And then when time went on, they… Of course, different styles, you'd run different. Some styles run better than others; you could run more.
So it began to kind of pick up speed later on.
Yes, they began to speed them up and get new looms. Then after I married
I didn't work too much for a long time, and then I went back
to work. Then I run one set of looms thirty-two years. I felt like I
owned it.
What kind of looms were those?
They was that Crompton-Knowles. It was a big loom, and you didn't run cotton. It was all rayon here at Dunean. I don't know about cotton.
So this would be after World War II.
Yes.
When you went back?
I was working here when the War was going on. I changed shifts, and then I went on this set of looms. They were satin.
Real satin.
Yes, real satin. And we run that parachute cloth. It's real thin nylon. And I run that. And I've run casket linings. Beautiful material. And I retired then when I was sixty-five, and I regretted that. I could go back and work again.
You liked it.
Oh, I loved it. I just loved it. You got paid by production, and I loved to go up and down the alleys looking at those clocks turn, know you're making money. And I enjoyed it very much.
When you first went in to work, were you paid by production?
Not back then.
How would they pay you?
Paid by the cut. The cloth that you took off had so many yards in it.
Were there so many yards to a cut?
To a cut.
Was that a standard number of yards?
Yes.
How many?
I don't remember that much about it. They had cut marks they had on it. From cut mark to cut mark was so many yards. And they'd pay you by that. By the weekend, you'd know how many cuts that you had taken off, and then you got paid by them.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
I didn't. I worked till I was sixty-five. And then I started three or four times to go back. I could go back. They told me when I left, any time I wanted to come back. I could go back now and work, if I wanted to. They're real nice.
When did they change over from paying you by the cut to putting the pick-clocks on and paying by the pick?
Oh, I don't remember when what was. My husband knows more
about
Do you remember what some people talked about as the "stretchout"?
I remember them talking about the stretchout, but I really never did know too much about it. If they changed styles and put a style on with good material and all, you could run more of it, they give you one or two more looms, but I don't know as that was the stretchout.
What was it like at the mill during the Depression years?
I didn't work during the Depression. My husband worked. We got married in '29, and the Depression was right after that.
Did you stop working as soon as you got married?
No, I worked a while after I got married, and then I had my oldest child. She was born in 1930. And then I didn't work any more for a good while, till after the second one, I believe, was born. But there wasn't any work during the Depression. It closed down.
Dunean closed down.
For one month. And then they just worked a little bit. But that didn't bother us. We went to the farm, my daddy's place.
Did you raise some food out there, or just move out there?
We just went there and stayed while the …
While it was closed.
Closed, and all of us together. We just had a big time. As far as the Depression, it didn't bother us like it did some people. Some people didn't have much, but we had plenty.
Were there some people who would come to work back then in the mill who would try it for a while and decide they didn't want to work in the mill for one reason or another, and leave? Were there a lot of those people, for instance, people that tried to learn how to weave and either they didn't like it or they couldn't do it well, and they left after a little while?
I think it's both. Some of them couldn't do it, and
some of them
When you were growing up, did your parents ever tell you, trying to bring you up, about work or about the importance of work?
Oh, yes, they would teach us that you're supposed to work.
Well, they didn't teach the girls too much about that
In other words, there would be a little different thing that they would have told the boys from the daughters.
Yes.
What did they say to the daughters?
They wanted us to choose our own life. In the meantime, they didn't push us to work in the mill. We didn't have to if we didn't want to, but I wanted to.
You had lots of your friends who went to work about the same time you did.
Yes. I liked it.
What about religion in the family? Would your parents put an importance upon going to a particular church?
To church, yes. We could choose the church we wanted. It was always Baptist.
Did your mother and father go with you?
Yes, they went. When we were little, I remember my daddy carrying us to church in his arms.
Would you all go every Sunday?
Every Sunday, yes.
Were he or your mother ever officers in the Sunday school, or deacons, or lead singing, or anything like that?
No. They liked to sing, but I don't know as they ever had a part in it like that.
Tell me a little bit about how you met your husband, how long you all courted before you got married.
We dated three years. I met him at a basketball game.
Was he in the crowd?
He was in the crowd. They were playing a tournament at Greenville Textile Hall, when it was uptown. He came down here after that and worked.
What kind of things would you all do for entertainment back then?
Parties and basketball games and baseball games and oh, just everything.
Did you go to the movies?
Yes, movies. Carnivals and things like that.
What would have been, up to about the time you got married, the longest trip you might have taken somewhere?
I guess it would be to North Carolina.
Up to one of the farms?
No, Asheville. I had some people lived in Asheville. I may have went somewhere else; I don't remember it if I did. I think that was about the farthest, but I have been everywhere now.
Did your mother and father have an automobile?
Yes, they had a T-model.
Do you remember when they bought that?
I imagine that was about 1923 or '24, because it was a long time before I married. They hadn't been out too long back then when they bought it.
Tell me a little bit more about your husband and what he did. You stopped working in the mill during those Depression years. Did he keep on working at Dunean?
No, he quit and moved. He played base ball, and Mr. Jim Bailey, the manager of Slater, wanted him to come up there and play, and we moved up there. We didn't stay too long. Then we moved back to Dunean.
He was a pretty good ballplayer then.
Back then, yes.
And that was sort of
Baseball games together. And we enjoyed that very much back then.
And he was offered a job up there because he was a good ballplayer?
Ballplayer.
What position did he play?
Center field.
He must have been a pretty good batter.
I think so. I don't know. I don't remember
Did he ever want to go on into the big leagues or think about taking up base ball like that?
I really don't know. I guess he did, because his brother did go on to another league.
I've heard of this Joe Jackson, who used to play here in Greenville.
Yes, they remember him real well.
Then you knew him. Was he a little bit before them?
He was a little bit before them.
What were some of the teams that your husband played on?
He played with Dunean, and he played with the Judson Redcoats, they called them back then, and played with Slater. Three teams that he played with. Then we did go up to Lowell, North Carolina, and he played up there one year.
What was he doing in the mill at that time?
I believe he was a weaver back then, but he did work on up.
Could you talk just a little bit about first what he did and how he worked up? You mentioned some about he was a weaver, and then …
He was a weaver, and then he learned to fix looms during the War.
World War II.
Yes. Our children were little. He learned to fix looms, and then he went on to supervisor.
Where was he the supervisor?
Dunean.
That was in a particular, like in the weave …
Weave room. He stayed with that until he retired.
Did you all ever say anything to your children about whether you wanted them to work in the mill, or any particular kind of work you wanted them to do or not to do?
We wanted them to go to school and get a good education and do whatever
they wanted to do. I had one daughter who didn't want to work
at all; she wanted to be a housewife. And that's what she is.
She married a dentist, and she's never worked. And the other
one wanted to work. She went on to school. One went to Winthrop. The
other took a business course and was
Where did he get a job?
At Dunean in the cloth room, and he worked himself up, and he's got a real good job now. He's I guess you'd call it troubleshooter. Travels. If they get a complaint on cloth, he has to fly to that place and inspect that cloth and tell them what they'll do about it. But he;s on the road a lot, and he loves it. He just loves it. Above all we wanted him to finish college, but he didn't want it.
Let me go back a little bit more in your childhood days and ask you something I sometimes ask but I forgot about. Could you describe a little bit about day-to-day life? Did your mother make the clothes for you, or did you buy clothes from a catalog, or did you go to the store and get your clothes?
She would make some clothes, and she would go to town and buy some clothes. You didn't have too many clothes, nobody, so you didn't feel bad.
Did you and your sisters learn to make your own?
Yes, we could sew. We learned to sew.
Did you make some of your own clothes?
Sometimes. Not too much.
Did you ever order anything from the different mail order catalogs?
I remember my mother and daddy used to order dishes from catalogs. Now
where, I don't know. They'd come in barrels back
then, packed with straw.
Did you all have any kind of musical instruments in your family?
Yes, we had a self-playing piano, and we had an old-timey organ. I remember my daddy used to pedal.
Your father could play the organ.
Well, I guess. I didn't know whether it was right or not.
Did your mother play?
My mother played some, yes. When her sisters would come, they would sing and play.
What kind of songs would you all …
Out of church song books. "Old Time Religion" and "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder". I remember those songs I used to sing. And they enjoyed it back then.
Did you all have one of the old phonograph machines?
Yes, we had one of those.
Do you remember any of the records that you might have bought, what kind of music it would have played?
No, I don't remember the records that they'd buy. Seemed like I remember my daddy buying one of "Whispering Hope". You ever heard of that?
Yes.
That's an old-timey song.
That's a gospel song.
Yes. He bought that. That's about the only record I remember. If he hadn't liked it so well, I wouldn't remember that one.
Did he sing himself?
Yes, he loved to sing.
What kind of things would he sing, religious songs?
Religious songs.
They used to have what they called the Sacred Heart Song Book.
Yes, he had one of those autoharp things that's kind of built funny. It had a lot of strings on it.
Hold it up and strum it?
Yes. It had a lot of strings on it, and it was shaped funny. And they had guitars, and they had …
Fiddles?
He loved to fiddle. And they had French harps. But he was crazy about the fiddle, because he loved square dancing.
What about your mother?
No, she didn't like it.
Did they go out to some dances ever?
No. My mother wouldn't go.
Why not?
She just didn't like it. But my daddy liked it. They used to have street dances in Spartanburg, and he loved it.
That's that old string band music.
Yes. He loved it, and he liked the fiddles.
Did he play a fiddle?
I don't think he did. He had one, but I don't know whether he could play it or not.
There were lots of really good string bands in this part of the country back then.
Yes, there were.
There were some real well-known musicians that later went on to
Yes. He used to go to Asheville and Hendersonville to the square dances, and he loved square dancing. Now I don't care for square dancing.
About the time you got married, they had some of these strikes and things here in the mills, the unions and the …
I remember that, but I wasn't in that in any way. I don't …
What do you remember, just pictures and things that you heard from that time?
I thought it was terrible. I was scared. No, I didn't have anything to do with that. I don't know much about the strikes. I don't fool with that union, either. I'm scared of it.
Do you remember any people trying to come around and get people to join the union?
Yes, they'd stand at the gate down there and hand you cards out.
Do you remember the National Guard coming in any time?
I wasn't working during that time, but I remember when it happened and all, yes.
Did your father and mother ever say anything about unions?
No, back in them days there wasn't any union that I know anything about. No, they never said anything about unions. All this happened after they had left.
When you first started to work there at the mill, do you know who owned the Dunean Mill then?
It wasn't Stevens, but I don't remember who it was.
Who would you have known or seen or heard of as the superintendent of the mill?
Harold Turner.
Did he come around to the different departments a lot?
Oh, yes, he was real nice.
But you would have seen him and probably not anyone up above him.
There would be stockholders come through. They've always done that. There used to be a Mr. Franks down here. He was one time over it. Different people. Mr. Tidwell. And they were all very nice.
Did you ever hear of this Ellison Smyth?
No. Where was he at?
He's one of the people that named this mill. He named it after a town in Ireland that his relatives were from. Dunean is an Irish name, and he owned a number of mills and he had lots of stock in some of the mills back then. In fact, there's a street right up here that's named Smyth Street.
That's the next street. Yes, I know about it. All these streets is named after someone. But I don't remember him.
That would have been way back, twenty years even further back than we're talking about.
Oh, yes. Now my mother probably would have known him, but I did not
… important for you to know about the pattern chain on these box looms if you were just running a weaving part of it.
Well, that was weaving. The pattern chain was weaving, because that was making the pattern in the cloth. If there was a flower made in the cloth, that pattern on that chain would make it when it come around.
They had someone in another part of the mill to kind of punch out …
Build the chain. Designers to build the chain.
If something went wrong in the pattern, would you know how to go to the pattern chain and put in a …
Yes.
You would have pegs in it then?
Pegs in it.
You would know where a peg was out and how to fix it.
If a peg was missing, you would know it. It would show up in that pattern in the cloth.
And you would know how to identify that and where to put the peg in.
Yes. You'd know where to go with that chain to get it.
How would your box loom break down, or what would be the most common problem you'd have with it on a day-to-day basis? If it were to stop, what would be the cause of it, usually?
The filling would break. It would stop if the filling broke. An end would break in the warp; then it would stop. The stop motion would stop it.
And what would you do then?
If it was an end broke, I'd go behind it and tie it and pull it through. Take a reed hook and draw it in through the eye and into the reed. Then hold it down and start the loom and it'll go right on. And then clip it off after it's… And it wouldn't ever know. It's interesting to weave, to see that cloth get made. Go to buy a piece of cloth now, you can't find none half made. The material is not as good as it used to be. They used to be real particular with it and make good cloth. I don't think they do that anymore. I think they're more after production now than they used to be. But I really enjoyed weaving.
END OF INTERVIEW