Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you see any differences in the way different companies treat their hands?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Yes. It's a northern bunch that bought out this other place, and I'd a lot rather work for local people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why is that?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

I don't know. Naturally, when you work for a bigger place, you've got to be more particular. They just like things different and everything. Up here, we're just one big family.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Which was run by northern …

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

They bought the Newton Glove. The bigger the place is, the more… I don't know whether it's all that different. There's still some of them works up there, a lot of them, that I did work with. Some's retired. But it's not many of them that's got machines at home. But after I got my machine at home, I just hung onto it; it's good.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So it was when your husband got sick that the company gave you a machine?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you ask them to do that?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

I told them I was going to have to quit, because my children were in school and I just couldn't get out and leave them and be there every day like maybe I would if he hadn't been sick. They asked me if I would consider taking a machine at home, and I told them I didn't know. So I talked it over with him, and he said, "Whatever you want to do." So I did; I took it. He left it up to me to do whatever I wanted to, so I took it, and I've had it ever since. I've got it in the back of the kitchen. I put it out on the back porch in the summertime.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why don't many people have machines at home?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

I don't know. I reckon they felt like I was a good hand. They'd let me make some of the samples, anyway. [laughter] They used to laugh, said, "Let Nell and Myrtle make the samples, and the rest of us fill the orders." [laughter] So I said, "Yeah, that's the way to do it." [laughter] So I have to laugh Myrtle and me did make pretty gloves, and we made all good gloves, and I reckon that's why they always said that. "Let Nell and Myrtle make the samples, and us fill the orders." [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

The other girls said that?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were they teasing you? Were they kind of jealous?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

They was teasing. They knew it was the truth, though. [laughter] We always did make pretty gloves.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the other girls a little bit jealous, do you think?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Well, they might have been. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is Myrtle a friend of yours?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Yes. Myrtle Bolick. She was a friend of mine. She's retired. She's older than I am. Her husband's dead, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did it take to make a pretty glove? What did you have to do?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

It's just got to be neat, and the seams have got to be so neat and even. Naturally, you get up on it, you were naturally going to make a pretty glove. Of course, some of them would run off, then have to sew over it, and different.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you very fast?

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

Yes, I was. But I've slowed down now. I guess I could make a hundred dollars a week, but I don't. I usually make about sixty. I don't want to make more than what I'm supposed to, because I'm on my husband's Social Security. And really, I worked hard all my life, and I think I deserve a break.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I should say.

NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:

And I said I had raised my children, and we give them both a good education. And I've waited on my husband and buried him. And I don't know, I think I've been a good wife and a good mother to my family, and I think I deserve a break.