THE UNIVERSITY OP NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM. Carolina Piedmont Project. Interview. with EVELYN COSNELL HARVSLL

Transcription

1 THE UNIVERSITY OP NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Carolina Piedmont Project Interview with EVELYN COSNELL HARVSLL May 27, 1980 Greenville, South Carolina By Allen Tullos Transcribed by Jean Houston Original transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection Louis Round Wilson Library

2 EVELYN GOSNBLL HARVELLi... lived, on a farm in Tygerville, and all the families would go there on weekends. We'd have big dinners and enjoy one another, the cousins and all get together. I remember my grandmother had a long table on the front porch. They would cook food; any kind of food you wanted, we would have. AT$ That's your Grandmother Gosnell? HARVELLi Grandmother Case. And we enjoyed it, had a good time, and we'd leave on Sunday and come back home. ATi That was up in North Carolina. HARVELLi No, this was after they moved to South Carolina. My mother moved to South Carolina when she was twelve years old with her family. They had wagons back in those days, and she would tell us about moving. They had three wagons. She said they had covered wagons. I don't remember that. She said they had two or three cows, and it taken them two weeks to come from North Carolina to South Carolina. AT* So they moved, to a new farm. HARVELLi Yes, they bought a farm in Tygerville, North Greenville up here. ATi And you say all the families would go out there. HARVELLi Yes, when they grew up. We'd all meet there on Saturday. ATi All of the children. HARVELLi All of Grandmother Case's, yes. ATi Did they kind of retire or stay on the farm? HARVELLi My granddaddy died on the farm, and my grandmother then came to Greenville to live with the baby daughter until she died. was sold. And. then the farm ATi What about your own memories when you were a little girl? were you living when you first remember? Where HARVELLi I was living at Dunean out on Blake Street. I remember going

3 HARVELL 2 to kindergarten, and we had a playground down here, and I remember playing and enjoying myself. We played hopscotch, jackstraws, and things like that back then. ATi So you went to kindergarten here. HARVELLi Yes, they had a nursery and a kindergarten at Dunean here. We had a gym, and we had all kind of recreation when I was a child. AT* Who ran that kindergarten, or who kept it up? HARVELLi The company, I think, kept it up. They furnished the kindergarten for the employees. We had a YMCA when I grew up, and I went to the Y and played games. AT i Did both of your parents work at Dunean? HARVELLi Yes, when I was little they did. We had a farm above Travellers Rest. ATi In the mill, what did they do? HARVELLi My mother and daddy were weavers. ATi Do you know how they learned to do that? HARVELLi No. This place was owned by Haynesworth, and it was new, and they moved, here to help them out. ATi Did they know how to weave when they first moved here? HARVELLi I don't think so. I don't remember hearing them talk about it. But they enjoyed it. And then they bought this farm, and we'd go to the farm in the summer a lot of times and stay a week or two and then go on weekends. ATi Would you all raise crops up there? HARVELLi No. We had somebody to... ATi Rented it. AT i But you did have a house on it that you could stay at. ATi That was pretty unusual, wasn't it, to hajve a place like that?

4 HARVELL 3 AT*" Can you account for the fact that your family had this farm? HARVELLi My daddy's daddy owned it, and then when he passed on my daddy got it. AT* That's the Gosnells. And we enjoyed that very much. ATi Was your father the oldest child, to get the farm? HARVELLi He was the oldest child. he bought their shares. I think it belonged to all, and then AT* But you don't know how it was that he learned to weave. HARVELLi No, I don't know that much about it. AT* Your grandfather and grandmother on the Gosnell side had moved in to work in the mills earlier? When they married, they wanted to work. These places were new then, and they learned to work. My mother just loved to weave. ATi Did your grandparents sell their Spartanburg County farm when they came in to... HARVELLi I really don't know. My grandfather died before my mother married. I never seen a picture of him, and I never did know him. But I have lived on the village all my life, I guess. AT i Do you remember starting school? HARVELLi Yes, I remember starting school* I was just about six. And then I had some kind of infection got my leg hurt some way or another and I didn't get to go to school for three years, I think it was. I couldn't walk. AT i What did. you do during those years? HARVELLi I'd just sit in chairs, and then they would help me to get around. Back then they didn't have what they've got now for crippled people.

5 HARVELL 4 They put me in one of these little push-baby things, and my cousins would push me around, the block. missed it by a long shot. The doctor said I would never walk, but he But I've made it good. AT i This would have been when you were how old? HARVELLi I was about six or seven, and it was about three years I didn't walk. ATt You had, you say, cousins who lived in.. HARVELLi They lived close, yes. ATi That would be on your mother's side. AT i There were a number of Gosnells working in the Dunean Mill? HARVELLi One of my mother's sisters married a Holcomb, and one of them married.... Her brothers lived here, and they were the Cases. Cousins back then loved one another, but they're not close now. AT i So you all had lots of kinfolks. HARVELLi Yes, we had a lot of kinfolk. And they would help me, and finally I could walk. Been walking ever since. AT* Where did you come in among these four brothers and two sisters? HARVELLi I'm the middle child. ATi Could you name them off in order of birth? HARVELLi Ernest is seventy-seven; David is seventy-five; Hardy is seventy-two, I believe; I am seventy. AT i Who comes next? HARVELLi Nellie is sixty-eight. Then I've got a brother James that lives in Orlando, Florida; he is sixty-four. And I've got another sister Dot, fifty-seven. ATi You say your mother worked as a weaver for a while and then stopped, She didn't work all the time. She just worked part-time.

6 HARVELL 5 ATi Would she be working when Ernest or David was born, some of these older brothers? HARVELLi No, she wouldn't work then. ATi She would have stopped before then? ATi I know sometimes women used to work in the mill up until HARVELLi I don't know about that. I just don't remember too much about that, but she did not work all the time. But she loved to work. And then when they were born she would go back to work and work a while. She didn't work all the time; she'd just quit and work when she wanted to. ATi They would hire her back, and she could come and go. HARVELLi Oh, yes. ATi I guess you would have been about eight or nine years old when the flu epidemic came along in 1919* HARVELLi I remember that. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember when so many people died. I was just a child. ATi What kind of a feeling or memory do you have, looking back on that now? HARVELLi Well, it never did bother me. ATiDoes it frighten you to think back about that time? HARVELL* It would now, but then it didn't. Didn't any of us get sick, and we didn't have any trouble. Didn't any of them bother with it. AT* Did you know anyone who died during that? HARVELL* No, I didn't. I don't remember anybody. AT* Lots of people had it around here, I know. That's one of the things that people will always remember, is that flu epidemic. HARVELL* Yes. I remember that, remember so many people dying, but I

7 HARVELL 6 don't remember any of them close to us dying. AT* In all these children, was there any one of your brothers and sisters that was a favored child? HARVELLi We always felt like the oldest one was favored, more. I think everybody has a pick. We always felt like my oldest brother had the favors, but we really don't know that. I think she loved us all the same. ATi Is there any reason, anything you could think back on that would make you say that? HARVELLi It seemed like he got everything he wanted quicker than the rest of us. J Laughteri We thought that I don't guess it's true. I guess it's just a think. It seemed like she loved him better. Not my daddy; he was no favorite to him. AT i Did you have any thoughts about what you wanted to do when you were a child? HARVELLi Oh, yes, you have a lot of thoughts. You want to be a lot of things. AT* Can you remember... HARVELL* I don't remember too much. I always liked to be a housewife. I always wanted to be. I love to cook. I always liked to cook, and I liked to cook good things and different things. AT* Did you all have a garden? HARVELL* Oh, yes. AT* Who looked after that? HARVELLi My mother always had a garden. had a garden. Now me and my husband never have ATi It was your mother's responsibility to kind of look after.. HARVELL (And my daddy. He was a good gardener, and my mother, too. And

8 HARVELL 7 they had a cow, and they had hogs and things. But she always seen after the g&rdea. She loved to garden. AT* Did you help in the garden? HARVELLi No, I don't like garden work. AT i What about when you were putting up food? Did you help do that at all? HARVELLi Yes, I would help her can some, peel apples or something like that, but I'm not too much for a garden at all. ATi But you like to cook. HARVELLi I love to cook. ATi You just didn't like to garden or put it up or can it. HARVELLi I like to can pretty well now, but when I was a child I didn't care anything about it. I wanted to play. ATi Would some of the children be drafted into helping with the garden or with the canning? HARVELLi She would tell us what to do and we did it, but she didn't work us to death at all. AT i Did she ever have anyone to come in to cook or keep house? HARVELLi Yes, we had a colored woman to cook. AT i Was there one or two particular ones that stayed with you a long time? HARVELLi Oh, yes, we kept one a good while. AT* What was her name? HARVELL* I don't remember now. I think her name was Zena(?), it seemed like. AT i And she was from here in Greenville?

9 HARVELL 8 ATi Whereabouts did she live? HARVELLi I believe she lived back over close to town somewhere. I think she lived in the city limit. ATi Did she have a family of her own? HARVELLi She had a family of her own. ATi Husband and children? HARVELLi No, her husband was dead. AT i Would she come in the daytime and go home at night? AT i What would she do? HARVELLi Oh, she did housework. AT i Would she wash the clothes? AT* Would she cook? HARVELLi Yes, she was a good cook. ATi Would your mother be working some in the mill during this period? HARVELLi Yes, she would be working. But they didn't have washing machines back then; they had to rub them out with their hands. ATi In a big washpot? HARVELL* A big washpot and a rub-board. AT* What about your brothers Ernest and David and these older brothers? Did they go to kindergarten and go to school? HARVELLi Yes, they all went to school. ATi How long did they get to go? HARVELLi I really don't know. ATi Did any of them go any further than you did? HARVELLi Oh, yes. I have one brother that teaches school in Florida now. AT i Which one is that?

10 HARVELL 9 HARVELLi James. AT i He must have graduated from high school and. college? AT i Did any of the others? HARVELLi Yes, Dot graduated from high school. ATi Where did she go? HARVELLi I think she went to Parker. ATi That was a pretty well known high school. HARVELLi Yes, back then that was new. They were building that when I was just a teenager. I remember that. AT i Where did you go to elementary school and up to the eighth grade? HARVELLi I went to the Mills Mill School. That was before Dunean built a school, and they paid Mills Mill so much money to let the children go over there. ATi Did your older brothers all go to work at first in the mill a while? HARVELLi Yes, they did a while, and then the oldest one went into store business. His own business. Well, the two oldest ones did. Then Hardy, the one just older than me, stayed in; he retired in the mill. Monaghan. He was an overseer over there a long time at Monaghan. ATi In which department? HARVELLi Weave room. AT* What about the other two brothers, Ernest and David? HARVELL* They went in the store business. ATi Do you know how they worked their way up? HARVELLi They started in the mill. ATi What kind of of a store did they... HARVELLi The oldest one ran a grocery store up on Highway 25 for years, and David run a cafe. And Nellie went into her own restaurant business.

11 HARVELL 10 business. ATi That was pretty unusual, for a woman to start up a restaurant HARVELLi It's just her and her husband. She had no children. And they had a filling station and a restaurant. And she sold it about five years ago. ATi You told me about James. He went on to college? ATi Where did he go? HARVELLi The University of Tennessee. ATi And he's teaching school. HARVELLi He's teaching at Evans High School in Orlando, Florida. AT i And then your sister Dot. HARVELLi She was sick all her life, and she worked in a store. She worked at Big Star(?). She was a manager of a store for a while, and then they went out of business. And then she clerks in a store. ATi You stayed on in school through the eighth grade. ATi Did you want to go on some more? HARVELLi NO, I didn't, [chucklej I wanted to go to work. I think when you were back then at that age, you wanted to.... I wish I had went on, though. So I went to work, and I went down here and learned to weave, and I just loved, it. ATi How did. you get your first job? HARVELLi My mother worked, and I went in there and stayed with her.you'd go in when you wanted to and. come out when you wanted to, and after school I'd go in and learn. She taught me. ATi Was it hard for you to learn that? HARVELLi No.

12 HARVELL 11 AT i Was she a pretty good teacher? HARVELLi Oh, she was a good weaver. Real good. ATi What does it take to be a good weaver? HARVELLi Be interested in your job. AT i Do you have to have any kind of special skills or abilities with your hands or eyes, or move fast? HARVELLi Oh, yes. You weave with your eyes and your hands and your feet and [chuckle] your whole body, yes. AT i What are some things that weavers can do to keep themselves out of getting in trouble with their looms and. their cloth coming through? Can you kind of keep an eye ahead on them? HARVELLi Oh, yes, you can work ahead of your job. AT i Could you talk a little bit about how you do that? HARVELLi Keep your mind, on your work. Know your job; know your looms. ATi How many looms was your mother running? HARVELLi I think she had eight. ATi What kind were those? HARVELLi I don't remember just what it was. ATi Were those the box looms? HARVELLi NO, she was on plain Drapers. ATi Did it have an automatic bobbin-changing machine? AT i And someone would come by and fill up the... HARVELLi Fill up the batteries. Had. batteries, and it would put the filling in the shuttle. Of course, that went out of date. They put in magazines. [Interruption]

13 HARVELL 12 ATi That was the kind of looms that you learned first to operate, ATi How long did it take you before they gave you looms of your own, after you had started? HARVELLi About a month or two, probably. ATi How many would they give you to run? HARVELLi Some were four, and some were eight. It depends on the styles that you have. AT i What were you all making when you started? HARVELLi I wasn't making very much. I think it was just maybe eight or nine dollars or ten. AT i What kind, of cloth? HARVELLi We was making just plain cloth. AT* Do you know what it would be used for? HARVELLi It would be used for sheets and pillowcases, I think, back then. Unbleached cloth, they'd call it. AT i Did you have other members of your family besides your mother working there at the same time that you were? I had a brother that worked. Then Nell went to work when she got.... I didn't go to work till I was about sixteen. ATi That would have been about '26? ATiThere were lots of different mills in Greenville at that time. Did people say that working at one was more preferable than working at another one? HARVELLi Lots of people would go from one to the other, but I don't

14 HARVELL 13 know that much about the others. ATi What about the women who were weavers? Was there any difference in the kind of jobs they would be running and the kind that the men weavers would be working back then? Say, the difference between the kind of weaving your mother might be doing and that your father would be? HARVELLi No, they could weave the same materials. But a lot of men fixed looms, and women didn't do that. ATi Did they have someone coming along, when your mother was working, that doffed the cloth off her loom? ATi She didn't have to do that herself. HARVELLi No. ATi Tell me a little bit about what your day would be like. Say, back in the 1920's, what time would you get up? Would, they blow a whistle to start the day? HARVELLi Yes, they'd blow a whistle to wake you at five o'clock or five-thirty. That was the wake-up whistle, and then they would blow another whistle at.... It seemed like we went to work at seven o'clock. And we'd get an hour for dinner. We'd go home for dinner, and then go back and work till six. I think that's the way we worked. AT1 So there was one shift. AT 1 One was all they were running at that time. AT 1 You would come home for dinner, and you would have dinner with your family? HARVELLi Yes, the dinner would be on the table. We'd all have dinner together. We just had an hour. Of course, we didn't live far. We had

15 HARVELL 14 plenty of time;. AT i What about the pace of work back then? I know that that may have changed some over the years, but what was it like back in the twenties, about how fast you had to work, or how many looms you had to run? HARVELLi YOU didn't have many. They didn't run many looms back then. And then when time went on, they.... Of course, different styles, you'd run different. Some styles run better than others; you could run more. ATi So it began to kind of pick up speed later on. HARVELLi Yes, they began to speed them up and get new looms. Then after I married I didn't work too much for a long time, and then I went back to work. Then I run one set of looms thirty-two years. I felt like I owned it. [Chucklel ATi What kind of looms were those? HARVELLi They was that Crompton-Knowles. It was a big loom, and you didn't run cotton. It was all rayon here at Dunean. I don't know about cotton. AT i So this would be after World War II. ATi When you went back? HARVELLi I was working here when the War was going on. I changed shifts, and then I went on this set of looms. They were satin. ATi Real satin. HARVELLi Yes, real satin. And we run that parachute cloth. It's real thin nylon. And I run that. And I've run casket linings. Beautiful material. And I retired, then when I was sixty-five, and I regretted, that. I could go back and work again. ATi You liked it.

16 HARVELL 15 HARVELLi Oh, I loved it. I just loved it. You got paid by production, and I loved to go up and down the alleys looking at those clocks turn, know you're making money. And I enjoyed it very much. ATi When you first went in to work, were you paid by production? HARVELLi Not back then. ATi How would they pay you? HARVELLi Paid by the cut. The cloth that you took off had so many yards in it. AT* Were there so many yards to a cut? MARVSLL* To a cut. AT* Was that a standard number of yards? HARVELL* Yes. AT* How many? H&RVELL* I don't remember that much about it. They had cut marks they had on it. From cut mark to cut mark was so many yards. And they'd pay you by that. By the weekend, you'd know how many cuts that you had taken off, and then you got paid by them. BEGIN TAPE I SIDE II HARVELL* I didn't. I worked till I was sixty-five. And then I started three or four times to go back. I could go back. They told me when I left, any time I wanted to come back. I could go back now and. work, if I wanted to. They're real nice. AT: When did they change over from paying you by the cut to putting the pick-clocks on and. paying by the pick? HARVELL* Oh, I don't remember when that was. My husband knows more about

17 HARVELL 16 that than I do. AT* Do you remember what some people talked about as the "stretchout"? HARVELL* I remember them talking about the stretchout, but I really never did know too much about it. If they changed styles and put a style on with good material and all, you could run more of it, they give you one or two more looms, but I don't know as that was the stretchout. AT* What was it like at the mill during the Depression years? HARVELL* I didn't work during the Depression. My husband worked. We got married in '29, and the Depression was right after that. AT* Did you stop working as soon as you got married? HARVELL* No, I worked a while after I got married, and then I had my oldest child. She was born in And then I didn't work any more for a good while, till after the second one, I believe, was born. But there wasn't any work during the Depression, It closed down. AT* Dunean closed down. HARVELL* For one month. And. then they just worked a little bit. But that didn't bother us. We went to the farm, my daddy's place. AT* Did you raise some food out there, or just move out there? HARVELLi We just went there and. stayed while the... ATi While it was closed. HARVELLi Closed, and all of us together. We just had a big time. As far as the Depression, it didn't bother us like it did some people. Some people didn't have much, but we had plenty. AT* Were there some people who would come to work back then in the mill who would try it for a while and decide they didn't want to work in the mill for one reason or another, and leave? Were there a lot of those people, for instance, people that tried to learn how to weave and either they didn't like it or they couldn't do it well, and they left after a little while? Interview number H-0250 HARVELLi in the I Southern think it's Oral History both. Program Some Collection of them (#4007) couldn't at The do Southern it, and Historical some of Collection, them

18 HARVELL 17 couldn't learn, and some of them didn't want to learn, and some of them were too lazy to work. That's what I think. ATi When you were growing up, did your parents ever tell you, trying to bring you up, about work or about the importance of work? HARVELLi Oh, yes, they would teach us that you're supposed to work. Well, they didn't teach the girls too much about that Qhuckle, but they did the boys, thought they supposed to work. But my daddy was always interested in real estate, and he talked more about that. He didn't work all the time in the mill. ATi In other words, there would be a little different thing that they would have told the boys from the daughters. AT i What did they say to the daughters? HARVELLi They wanted us to choose our own life. In the meantime, they didn't push us to work in the mill. We didn't have to if we didn't want to, but I wanted to. you did. AT i You had lots of your friends who went to work about the same time I liked it. ATi What about religion in the family? Would your parents put an importance upon going to a particular church? HARVELLi To church, yes. We could choose the church we wanted. It was always Baptist. ATi Did your mother and father go with you? HARVELLi Yes, they went. When we were little, I remember my daddy carrying us to church in his arms. ATi Would you all go every Sunday?

19 HARVELL 18 HARVELL* Every Sunday, yes. AT* Were he or your mother ever officers in the Sunday school, or deacons, or lead singing, or anything like that? HARVELL* No. They liked to sing, but I don't know as they ever had a part in it like that. AT* Tell me a little bit about how you met your husband, how long you all courted before you got married. HARVELL* We dated three years. I met him at a basketball game. AT* Was he in the crowd? HARVELL* He was in the crowd. They were playing a tournament at Greenville Textile Hall, when it was uptown. He came down here after that and worked. AT* What kind of things would you all do for entertainment back then? HARVELLi Parties and basketball games and baseball games and oh, just everything. AT i Did you go to the movies? HARVELLi Yes, movies. Carnivals and things like that. AT* What would have been, up to about the time you got married, the longest trip you might have taken somewhere? HARVELLi I guess it would be to North Carolina. AT* Up to one of the farms? HARVELLi No, Asheville. I had some people lived in Asheville. I may have went somewhere else; I don't remember it if I did. I think that was about the farthest, but I have been everywhere now. AT: Did your mother and father have an automobile? HARVELL* Yes, they had a T-model. AT* Do you remember when they bought that?

20 HARVELL 19 HARVELL* I imagine that was about 1923 or '24, because it was a long time before I married. They hadn't been out too long back then when they bought it. AT* Tell me a little bit more about your husband and what he did. You stopped working in the mill during those Depression years. Did he keep on working at Dunean? HARVELL* No, he quit and moved. He played baseball, and Mr. Jim Bailey, the manager of Slater, wanted him to come up there and play, and we moved up there. We didn't stay too long. Then we moved back to Dunean. AT* He was a pretty good ballplayer then. HARVELL* Back then, yes. AT* And that was sort of like a semi-pro league or a minor league? The different mills would have... HARVELL* Baseball games together. And we enjoyed that very much back then. AT* And he was offered a job up there because he was a good ballplayer? HARVELL* Ballplayer. AT* What position did he play? HARVELL* Center field. AT* He must have been a pretty good batter. HARVELL* I think so. I don't know. I don't remember We used to have some pictures, but I don't know where they're at now. AT* Did he ever want to go on into the big leagues or think about taking up baseball like that? HARVELL* I really don't know. I guess he did, because his brother did go on to another league. AT* I've heard of this Joe Jackson, who used to play here in Greenville. HARVELL* Yes, they remember him real well.

21 HARVELL 20 AT* Then you knew him. Was he a little bit before them? HARVELL* He was a little bit before them. AT* What were some of the teams that your husband played on? HARVELLi He played with Dunean, and he played with the Judson Redcoats, they called them back then, and played with Slater. Three teams that he played with. Then we did go up to Lowell, North Carolina, and he played up there one year. ATi What was he doing in the mill at that time? HARVELLi I believe he was a weaver back then, but he did work on up. AT i Could you talk just a little bit about first what he did and how he worked up? You mentioned some about he was a weaver, and then. HARVELLi He was a weaver, and then he learned to fix looms during the War. ATi World War II. Our children were little. He learned to fix looms, and then be went on to supervisor. AT i Where was he the supervisor? HARVELLi Dunean. ATi That was in a particular, like in the weave... HARVELLi Weave room. He stayed with that until he retired. AT i Did you all ever say anything to your children about whether you wanted them to work in the mill, or any particular kind of work you wanted them to do or not to do? HARVELLiWe wanted them to go to school and get a good education and. do whatever they wanted to do. I had one daughter who didn't want to work at all; she wanted to be a housewife. And that's what she is. She married a dentist, and she's never worked. And the other one wanted to work. She went on to school. One went to Wlnthrop. The other took a business course and was

22 HARVELL 21 a real good secretary, and her husband wouldn't let her work. And she wanted to work. She loved secretary work. And he worked at the post office, and he didn't want her to work. So she's never worked neither. And we wanted the son to go to school above all, finish college, and he went one year in college. He didn't like it. And he begged us to let him come home. If we'd just let him come home, that he would go back that fall. Well, we let him come home, and he got him a job down here, and he never did go back. He wouldn't go back. ATi Where did he get a job? HARVELLi At Dunean in the cloth room, and he worked himself up, and he's got a real good job now. He's I guess you'd call it troubleshooter. Travels. If they get a complaint on cloth, he has to fly to that place and inspect that cloth and tell them what they'll do about it. But he's on the road a lot, and he loves it. He just loves it. Above all we wanted him to finish college, but he didn't want it. AT i Let me go back a little bit more in your childhood days and ask you something I sometimes ask but I forgot about. Could you describe a little bit about day-to-day life? Did your mother make the clothes for you, or did you buy clothes from a catalog, or did you go to the store and get your clothes? HARVELL: She would make some clothes, and she would go to town and buy some clothes. You didn't have too many clothes, nobody, so you didn't feel bad. AT: Did you and your sisters learn to make your own? HARVELL: Yes, we could sew. We learned to sew. AT* Did you make some of your own clothes? HARVELL* Somtimes. Not too much. AT* Did you ever order anything from the different mail order catalogs? HARVELL» I remember my mother and daddy used to order dishes from catalogs. Now where, I don't know. They'd come in barrels back then, packed with straw.

23 HARVELL 22 I can just remember that. AT* Did you all have any kind of musical instruments in your family? HARVELL* Yes, we had a self-playing piano, and we had an old-timey organ. I remember my daddy used to pedal. AT* Your father could play the organ. HARVELL* Well, I guess. I didn't know whether it was right or not. [ChuckleJ And then we had pianos. We've always had pianos. And then we had a self-playing piano. ATi Did your mother play? HARVELL* My mother played some, yes. When her sisters would come, they would sing and play. AT* What kind of songs would you all... HARVELL* Out of church song books. "Old Time Religion" and "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder". I remember those songs I used to sing. And they enjoyed it back then. AT* Did you all have one of the old phonograph machines? HARVELLi Yes, we had one of those. AT* Do you remember any of the records that you might have bought, what kind of music it would have played? HARVELL* No, I don't remember the records that they'd buy. Seemed like I remember my daddy buying one of "Whispering Hope". You ever heard of that? AT* Yes. HARVELL* That's an old-timey song. AT* That's a gospel song. HARVELL* Yes. He bought that. That's about the only record I remember. If he hadn't liked it so well, I wouldn't remember that one. AT* Did he sing himself? HARVELL; Yes, he loved to sing.

24 HARVELL 23 ATi What kind of things would he sing, religious songs? HARVELLi Religious songs. ATi They used to have what they called the Sacred Heart Song Book. HARVELLi Yes, he had one of those autoharp things that's kind of built funny. It had a lot of strings on it. AT* Hold it up and strum it? HARVELL* Yes. It had a lot of strings on it, and it was shaped funny. And they had guitars, and they had... AT, Fiddles? HARVELL* He loved to fiddle. And they had French harps. But he was crazy about the fiddle, because he loved square dancing. AT* What about your mother? HARVELLi NO, she didn't like it. ATi Did they go out to some dances ever? HARVELL. No. My mother wouldn't go. ATi Why not? HARVELLi She just didn't like it. But my daddy liked it. They used to have street dances in Spartanburg, and he loved it. ATi That's that old string band music. He loved it, and he liked the fiddles. AT* Did he play a fiddle? HARVELLi I don't think he did. He had one, but I don't know whether he could play it or not. AT i There were lots of really good string bands in this part of the country back then. HARVELLi Yes, there were. AT i There were some real well-known musicians that later went on to

25 HARVELL 24 Nashville and places like that. He used to go to Asheville and Hendersonville to the square dances, and he loved square dancing. Now I don't care for square dancing. I Interruption] AT: About the time you got married, they had some of these strikes and things here in the mills, the unions and the... HARVELLi I remember that, but I wasn't in that in any way. I don't... ATi What do you remember, just pictures and things that you heard from that time? HARVELLi I thought it was terrible. I was scared. No, I didn't have anything to do with that. I don't know much about the strikes. I don't fool with that union, either. I'm scared of it. ATi Do you remember any people trying to come around and get people to join the union? HARVELLi Yes, they'd stand at the gate down there and hand you cards out. AT i Do you remember the National Guard coming in any time? HARVELLi I wasn't working during that time, but I remember when it happened, and all, yes. ATi Did. your father and mother ever say anything about unions? HARVELLi NO, back in them days there wasn't any union that I know anything about. No, they never said, anything about unions. All this happened after they had left. AT* When you first started to work there at the mill, do you know who owned the Dunean Mill then? the mill? HARVELLi It wasn't Stevens, but I don't remember who it was. AT i Who would you have known or seen or heard of as the superintendent of HARVELLi Harold Turner.

26 HARVELL 25 ATi Did he come around to the different departments a lot? HARVELLi Oh, yes, he was real nice, AT i But you would have seen him and probably not anyone up above him. HARVELLi There would be stockholders come through. They've always done that. There used to be a Mr. Franks down here. He was one time over it. Different people. Mr. Tidwell. And they were all very nice. AT i Did you ever hear of this Ellison Smyth? HARVELLi No. Where was he at? ATi He's one of the people that named this mill. town in Ireland that his relatives were from. He named it after a Dunean is an Irish name, and he owned a number of mills and he had lots of stock in some of the mills back then. In fact, there's a street right up here that's named Smyth Street. HARVELLi That's the next street. Yes, I know about it. All these streets is named after someone. But I don't remember him. AT i That would have been way back, twenty years even further back than we're talking about. not HARVELLi Oh, yes. [interruption] Now my mother probably would have known him, but I did ATi... important for you to know about the pattern chain on these box looms if you were just running a weaving part of it. HARVELLi Well, that was weaving. that was making the pattern in the cloth. The pattern chain was weaving, because If there was a flower made in the cloth, that pattern on that chain would make it when it come around. AT i They had someone in another part of the mill to kind of punch out... HARVELLi Build the chain. Designers to build the chain. ATi If something went wrong in the pattern, would you know how to go to the pattern chain and put in a...

27 HARVELL 26 AT i You would have pegs in it then? HARVELLi Pegs in it. ATi You would know where a peg was out and how to fix it. HARVELLi If a peg was missing, you would know it. It would show up in that pattern in the cloth. AT i And you would know how to identify that and where to put the peg in. You'd know where to go with that chain to get it. ATi How would your box loom break down, or what would be the most common problem you'd have with it on a day-to-day basis? If it were to stop, what would be the cause of it, usually? HARVELLi The filling would break. It would stop if the filling broke. An end would break in the warp; then it would stop. The stop motion would stop it. ATi And what would you do then? HARVELLi If it was an end broke, I'd go behind, it and tie it and pull it through. Take a reed hook and draw it in through the eye and into the reed. /it'll Then hold, it down and start the loom and'go right on. And then clip it off after it's.... And it wouldn't ever know. It's interesting to weave, to see that cloth get made. Go to buy a piece of cloth now, you can't find none half made. The material is not as good as it used to be. They used to be real particular with it and make good cloth. I don't think they do that anymore. I think they're more after production now than they used to be. But I really enjoyed weaving. End of interviewj