Casual work environment at a textile mill
Trammel describes a casual work environment at a textile mill, where workers had time for pranks and relaxation.
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
- NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
-
[laughter] A peg-legged boy called
Peg-legged Willis, he worked upstairs in the card room. And
he's deviling us girls, you know, he's just a
young boy, but he had a peg leg. We'd set down in circles,
you know, and when when they got the cloth ready for us to work again,
well, our boss man would whistle for us to come in, you know.
He'd let us go out and sit on the grass. And he just
splattered that water all over us. And we run up there, and we run that
Peg leg all over that place up there. Just a-flying. We
couldn't catch him to save our lives. He went in the
men's bathroom to get away from us.
[laughter] But, now, he outrun us, with a peg leg. We had
more fun.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
It sounds like you had a lot of time, more time maybe when you were
working in the cloth room …
- NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
-
Oh, yeah, we could play a lot when we worked in there. And you
couldn't play, you had to work when you's in weave
room. But we played a lot when we worked in the cloth
room—when we catch up, you see. He didn't care us
going out there and sitting down. All we had to do was just run back up
steps and go in, go to work.