Well, his people was up in here. He was born, and my mother too, in
Gaston county. They was born and raised here. He was a sawmill man too.
He had two sawmills. He had somebody runnin' one, and he took care of
the other one after he quit cotton work. All the rest of them worked in the mill. I had three sisters and two brothers.
They all worked, so I went to work too, and I enjoyed it. I spun out
here for a long time. 1915, then I got married, and I learnt to run
speeders and worked for the card room way after that. But when I
married, my husband was stayin' in Clinton, South Carolina. I went
there, and I run twelve sides there—I made $1.44 a day there—I raised my
wages some. So I spun there, and liked to run frames too. So I run
frames and wherever I'd make the most—in the card room or the spinnin'
room—if I changed jobs, that's where I'd go. I worked at Mooresville and
I spun up there. You made more spinnin' than you did in the card room,
so they'd get me out the spinnin' room to go to the card room to help
them catch up; they'd get behind. But they paid me for spinnin' an' I
loved it because I loved my card room work. So they'd pay me, and I
stayed out here nineteen years.
They had curtains on these winders, and they had big cloths; they'd cover
up the machinery to blow down. They let me come out and stay home two or
three days and sew for 'em and pay me my wages right on. They was awful
good to me out here. They made broadcloth, and they'd give me a lot of
that broadcloth and I'd make shirts out of it. So I loved the mill work.
I've worked alot in Gastonia, Rock Hill, Fort Mill, all around. But I'd
always end up back in Charlotte.