A child loses his finger in a textile mill machine
In this macabre passage, Trammel remembers a child losing his finger in a textile mill machine.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Naomi Sizemore Trammel, March 25, 1980. Interview H-0258. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
When you first came in there, how did the bosses treat you?
- NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
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Well, they didn't bother us at all. We run on our sides, and
that's all there was to it. I never had no trouble in my life
with no boss.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Would they ever holler at the children, or try to push them around,
anything?
- NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
-
Why, no. No. They sure didn't. The one time a man brought a
little boy up there, and I don't know, I didn't
know what "retarded" meant, but I always believed that
child was 'tarded. Well, you know up there where the thing
that runs the machine, it's got a cap over it where you can
raise that cap up and look under there. Well that little boy a standing
there, and he raised that cup up, and stuck his finger in there, and cut
it off. And that little boy, he didn't know what
he's doing or nothing. And since I didn't know
what "retarded" meant at that time, but since
I've got grown, I know that child was retarded. And they put
him in the mill, his daddy did. That was awful. I thought about that
little boy so much—just whacked his finger off.
