Washington Mills

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CONVERSATION WITH DAISY MABE SIMPSON ORE
At her home in Pine Hall, Stokes County, NC on 20 April 2010
Present: Mrs. Daisy Mabe Simpson Ore, Kim Shireman, Bob Carter, Rita Gantt, Dickie Wray and Lou Ann Dalton Adkins

Mrs. Ore was born in Stokes County, NC near Sandy Ridge. Her father was Willie H. Mabe (1890-1922) and her mother was Annie (Nelson) (b. 1896). A tombstone with Mr. Mabe’s birth and death dates and Mrs. Mabe’s birth date is located in the James Cemetery which is on Ralph Joyce Road in Stokes County, NC. Some of her mother’s family lived west of Danbury, near Buck Island Bridge on the Dan River. Her family lived near present day Hanging Rock State Park where her father died 88 years ago (1922). She was only four years old at the time. They then lived with her relatives.

She began to work at Washington Mills in Mayodan on 5 Jul 1933 when she was 16 years old. She and a friend were boarders in a mill house on Cemetery Drive in Mayodan. Rent was $3.00 per week. She only lived there during the workweek and went home to Stokes County on the weekends. At that time, Mayodan had outhouses and dirt streets.

She learned to drive a 1929 Model A Ford in 1934 by driving in the yard of their home. Her first driving license at the time cost 25 cents. Her brother used to carry her back to Mayodan from Stokes County for the workweek.

While working at Washington Mills, she had various jobs. She worked in the pressing room. The employees had no breaks the first years she worked, but did have an hour for lunch. They would eat outside during the summer months and waded in the Mayo River to cool off. Most of the time Mrs. Ore brought her lunch from home. The women were required to dress nicely and in most cases wore dresses to work. There were restrooms on the second floor of the mill where there were a number of seated-holes in a row over a trough of continuously running water.

At one time she folded underwear and placed different colors of garments in boxes. During World War II she stamped wool drawers (long johns). At this time she worked with Frances Barham. She worked in several areas of the mill but she never worked in the cutting room. When she began work at the mill there was no air conditioning in the building. Bill Hensdale had a bus that picked up Washington Mill employees to ride to work in the 1950s and 1960s. Sometimes she rode the bus, but not often because it cost $3.00 a week to ride.

She retired from Washington Mills in 1967. For sixteen years a small group of Washington Mills retirees have been meeting for lunch on the first Monday of each month. Currently they eat at Mountain Side Restaurant in Mayodan, NC. During the early years of the Washington Mill employees meetings they ate at Priddy’s Restaurant on Washington Street in Mayodan.

THE BOILER ROOM by Donnie Tilley
Written and donated in 2016

I likened the boiler room to a medieval castle dungeon with regards to the constant smoke, the creaking pipes and the constant fire roaring in the space. One would assume the space would be cozy but that was not the case. When it was hot outside it made the boiler room almost unbearable. The darkness engulfed everything unless a spotlight was pointed directly at whatever needed to be seen.

If the smoke sneaking from small cracks in the fire box door was not bad enough, the operators would unleash a couple hundred psi from a normally neatly coiled air hose in an effort to remove cigarette butts, accumulated coal dust and ash from the prior eight hour shift. All would be well within a few minutes, as the boiler fireman would settle into a patched up rocking chair to have a smoke and a cup of coffee.

As uninviting as this hole seemed to be, it was a popular gathering place to take a smoke or pop break, tell fish tales, discuss the tobacco crops and listen to great stories from good times and bad alike. The boiler fireman for the most part had an uneventful job, until an accidental rock was transported from the coal mines and delivered to the screw drives pushing coal to the fire, which was never extinguished until the July 4th shut down or a rare slow goods sales session during the summer.

The steam pressure was essential to the production of the Washington Mills brand from the raw cotton to the finished garments. The place was noisy to the point of the train horn, only a few hundred feet up the hill, would just blend in to form a symphony of eardrum splitting, weapons grade noise and yet I listened to great stories and had great conversations with gentlemen with a treasure vault of information containing farming tips, raising a family tips, and what not to do while serving ones life sentence on the 3rd rock.

I played my first game of solitaire and blackjack during my breaks and downtime from my job while sitting in front of the boiler containing enough steam pressure to give anyone within eyesight a very bad day should a weld or pipe fitting break free. The knowledge of this little prospect of danger, along with the music the warm drive and fans produced, gave me the feeling of living on the edge while at the ripe old age of 18 and having gained the confidence I could help with anything this old coal eating black smoke puffing dragon could dish out.

I would discover the uneventful evenings spent in the company of good people around that old boiler came with a price such as when the music produced from the warm drive stopped and someone had to jump into action and get the coal moving into the fire grates as quickly as possible. Jessy never asked for help, or expected any, as the storytellers and solitaire players decided they should check on the wellbeing of their knitting machines or whatever process they were responsible for. I witnessed Jessy moving a couple of tons of coal with only a shovel while hunting for the rock, scrap metal, brick or whatever was too hard or big for the screw drive to move on down the line. Most coal movement stoppage was due to a dumb rock. Never a Hope Diamond or twenty pound gold nugget.

A few months prior to my graduating high school and moving on to my present job, the heart stopping news of the old coal fired boiler being replaced with a mechanized oil drinking beast was released. The atmosphere was that of a funeral for a life long friend. Three good men would either retire or hope to be placed in another position. The maintenance department would surely lose a couple of positions and there would be no conversations with old gentlemen speaking over the music produced from the century old technology of a cotton mill boiler room.

Folks wearing Mayo Spruce underwear had no idea of the processes, machinery and people living on the edge of disaster it took to put this world famous brand into their pants. Folks not growing up in the time and place as I cannot understand why I consider my teenage years employed at Washington Mills a privilege. I learned life lessons while working in that old cotton mill and I get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach each time I pass the junk pile that once was _________. We that know the life inside a cotton mill can fill in the blank.

THE SMELL OF A COTTON MILL by Donnie Tilley
Written and donated in 2016

A cotton mill has an aroma unlike any found elsewhere. Not that this smell is unpleasant, it’s just earthy and the electric motors along with the oil products used to lubricate the machines along with those used in the production of the yarn products give this industry a unique smell. Newcomers to the mill would ask, “What is that smell?” to which some folks would offer too much information. I remember one old guy simply stating, “That’s the smell of money.” Granted, this occupation did not pay as well as educated trained professions, but common good folks raised their families, built their homes and supported a pretty good economy within a thirty mile or so radius around Mayodan. Before the politicians shafted the American workers with NAFTA, one could find a textile job by walking or driving in any direction from this old mill town.

I was happy to find part-time employment in the packing room with hours from 4pm to 7pm, sometimes a little later, and usually 8 hours on Saturday. As with any industry when the days grew shorter and colder and folks shifted their money from buying textile products to paying for fuel oil, coal or gas, Mr. Marian Netherly, or "The Man" as my buddy Jerry referred to him, passed along the news of a layoff and short time for those allowed to remain employed during the hardest months of the year and usually just in time to cause stress as Christmas was near. I felt a little stress myself as one of the oldest kids in the ninth grade. I had gained a little status as being one of the first in my class to be employed and with a driver’s license. I had prospered though as my front teeth were filled and I could smile without having to cover my mouth and my feet were covered with new wing tip loafers. I reverted to being a young school kid until sales picked up, usually after New Years, and I then waited for a call every afternoon to return to work. I remember the smell of cotton and machine oil as I ride by the piles of heavy debris which used to be Washington Mills which in my opinion should have been removed long ago. Today I noticed half of the cotton warehouse is being demolished while NAFTA is writing another chapter in the destruction of a mill town.