Bringing back smells of lint, sweat

Cooleemee, N.C., is a quiet little town where the Yadkin River stumbles across the Fall Line with enough force to drive a cotton mill.

More than 50 years after William Gregg established his mill in Graniteville in 1847, the Duke family invested in the Cooleemee mill to tap into the growing Southern textile industry. Cooleemee became part of a Southwide culture that centered on the textile mill. It's a culture I shared from growing up on the mill villages of Aiken County's Horse Creek Valley. Today, the North Carolina town is the center of an effort to memorialize that culture and celebrate its positive aspects.

The mill at Cooleemee operated from around 1900 until 1969. The mill and its village enjoyed a close relationship during those years, as did the villages of Vaucluse, Graniteville, Warrenville, Langley, Bath and Clearwater in Aiken's backyard.

The mill villages across the South were the magnets that drew a massive immigration of people forsaking annual harvests on their farms for weekly paychecks at the mill. By the time the Cooleemee mill closed, the textile industry was on the decline in the South. Newer industries with higher paying jobs were siphoning off the workers and low-wage foreign competition was winning out in the marketplace in much the same way the South, with its cheaper labor, drove New England mills out of business.

The exodus of textile jobs had its impact on the Cooleemee culture. In 1990, about 70 percent of the town's population had textile roots. That percentage has been severely diluted since then, but Jim and Lynn Rumley are doing their best to preserve the memory and spirit of the mill town.

"The kids growing up in Cooleemee didn't know where they lived," Jim told me.

The Rumleys have been trying to correct that situation through the Textile Heritage Center, with headquarters in the Zachary House, once the home of the mill's plant manager. The center strengthens the cultural ties between the old mill and the new population through three-day programs for school children. They capture the flavor of mill-village life by slopping hogs, washing clothes in black iron wash pots and engaging in archaeological digs.

They can also get a glimpse of what it was like to live in a mill house. The Heritage Center includes a restored mill house, with furnishings typical of those in the houses of the '30s and '40s.

Jim took me into the "big room," furnished with a double bed, a bureau, a chifforobe, a Singer sewing machine with foot-operated treadle, and a shallow fireplace designed for coal fires. There was a "Grandma's room" with a rocking chair, chest of drawers and a bed with a thin spread. A third room included a wooden bedstead with rope springs, a metal bedstead with metal springs and three children's chairs.

The kitchen included a table, an ironing board and a wood cook stove.

As I've written about the mill culture, I've received a raft of mail from people who grew up close to the textile mills. Among them was Brent Caldwell of Aiken, an amateur historian and genealogist who said the account "opened my eyes to an area of American history that many of us have not experienced."

Lionel V. Smith of Lionel Smith Ltd. in Aiken, wrote: "We have many customers from Graniteville, most of whom were employed by Graniteville Company. What a wonderful group of people they are and were."

A.G. Blackmon of Warrenville worked with King Mill in Augusta before becoming quality-standards supervisor for the Graniteville Company in 1965. Before earning his place in management, he worked with Graniteville Company from 1942 until 1943, when he went off to war.

"After coming out of service in 1945, I lived in the mill village at Warrenville and walked to work along with many others during those days of limited transportation and rationed gas. I know what it is to see the lights go on in the mornings, hear the bells ring and see the workers gather in groups as they walked to work on the third shift," he said.

Louie Allison of Kingsport, Tenn., remembers two distinct groups at the mill.

"Most of the workers and their families had lived in the mill village for many years. ... These people were stable, honest, hard-working, God-fearing, good-hearted people. Then there was another small group, a minority who might be called vagrants. They had learned to be skilled operators, fixers, etc. and could always get a job at just about any mill in the South. This restless, sometimes undesirable group never seemed to stay in one place very long," she said.

The mill houses tended to go to the long-term loyal workers, but not all who lived outside the villages were vagrants. Many mill workers lived in the countryside on small farms. They worked their land, raised hogs and cows and still put in 40-hour weeks at the mill. During the Depression, when many mills either closed or curtailed operations to a minimum, my grandfather - with 14 kids to support - would travel the state looking for work and would return home on weekends with enough money to buy staples. My mother remembers that the family often subsisted on cornmeal mush during the week. Her younger brother, Tom, would say, "I'll be glad when Daddy comes home, and we can have rice."

A visit to Cooleemee will put the smell of sweat and cotton lint back in the nostrils of memory. Jim Rumley has written a book, "Cooleemee, The Life and Times of a Mill Town" which captures a lot of history and flavor. If you get a chance to visit him at the Zachary House, tell him Gene sent you.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson, SC 29625 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.

Gene Owens is a retired newspaper editor and columnist who graduated from Graniteville High School and now lives in Anderson.