Full Text of the Excerpt

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

When your father started work down there, your uncle was not superintendent.

FRANK DURHAM:

No. The Bynums were in there. No, Uncle Edgar was farming at that time, I reckon. He hadn't even come here when Papa went to work. It was later on. I don't know who was super. Somebody from South Carolina. About all the overseers and everything come out of South Carolina, I think.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Did any of them stay around here?

FRANK DURHAM:

Theyhouses. Yes, they moved in the superintendent's house, I guess. But I'll tell you, I don't remember none of them. I've heard them spoke about them a lot. A fellow hears something, different folks, but I've forgotten their names. Some of them they despised, almost. They was mighty rough to the folks.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

They were hard on them.

FRANK DURHAM:

Yes. Some of them, one or two of them they liked. But they had a lot of children to deal with. A whole lot of children worked in the mill. And they were aggravating: you couldn't get much out of them; you couldn't do much with them. About the only way you could do it was fear, I reckon. Some of them hated them. Some of them young'uns would have half killed them if they could, I reckon. [Laughter] I've heard it said, you know-I don't know-that they'd send away for their daddy or send the person home to them and stuff like that, about like a schoolteacher, you know. If they couldn't get nothing out of him, they'd send him home. Then his daddy was liable to whip him and send him back. I don't know, but I just imagine. [Laughter] That's been so long ago. This mill started, I think, in '74, '72 or '4.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

I bet a lot of the pranks and things were played by those young children?

FRANK DURHAM:

Yes.