Holly Marlow Hall - Child of Erwin Mill Village

The company committed to take care of her employees by providing them basically everything they needed in order to work in her mill. The families all lived within blocks of each other, in homes that were subsidized by the mill. All of the houses were within walking distance of the mill. This was due to the fact that no one could afford a car. Even, at this rate, the mill village had its own little social hierarchy. You see, the title you held in the mill decided the location, size and type of house you were given the opportunity to rent. I learned about this form of society at the young age of 13. Before, I travel down that road, let me start with the early childhood memories I have.

My grandmother, was Ruth Malone Clayton. She lived at 1012 Alabama Avenue. She worked in the spinning room at the mill. I am not sure what she did, but I do remember that when would come home, take off her shoes, the grandchildren would love to pull out of the soles of her tennis shoes these little half moon shaped metal pieces, called travelers. She would have cotton lint all over herself and was always very tried. We use to walk to Jesse´s Marrow little neighborhood store in the split at Alabama and Knox. Mr. Marrow would give us kids ice cream sometimes for free.

A few blocks over were my father´s parents, Frank and Nola Marlow. (William F. Marlow) Frank was the one that worked in the mill. They lived on what use to be 13th Street but today I believe is called Bolton Avenue. 13th is a half circle street. One end starts near Hillsboro Road and the other end at 14th Street (present-day Rutherford Street). I have more memories of this area since Nola was the one I stayed with during the day when my mom and dad got jobs in the mill.

Frank was a loom fixer - a mechanic by today´s standard. As a young couple, Frank and Nola Marlow moved from Selma/Smithfield area of N.C. to come to the big city of Durham. Job opportunities were greater in the city and they did not want to farm any longer. The options were Liggett & Meyers, American Tobacco Co. and Erwin Cotton Mills. My grandmother Nola had seven siblings - four of whom went to "the Mill."

A couple others went to "the factory". During my preschool years, both my parents were working the second shift. The hours were from 2:30 PM until 10:30 PM. During this time, I stayed at the Marlow´s on 13th Street. My grandfather worked 1st shift. He went to work each morning around 6:00 AM and worked until 2:00 PM. I can still see his grey thermos and lunch box he would take with him every day as he walked down to the end of the street to the big Grey gate.

Pa´s backyard was fenced in on three sides. Not however, by choice. It was the mill fence. This property backs up the mill. Sometimes if Pa forgot his lunch, he would walk either to the big Grey gate and I would take it to him, or he would come to the back fence and I would run to the end of the back yard the throw him a snack over the fence. I would always run to the gate when I would see the "lights flash" (employees were very well disciplined) This meant the first shift had ended. I would wait, like a little faithful puppy, for Pa to come through the gate. The fun was waiting to see him come around the building. It was the same thing every day, but it never, never stopped being exciting and fun.

Everyday was like seeing him for the very first time. He wore "overalls" to work on the looms in the mill. I don´t know if the mill brought them or not. It is possible. Not being tall enough to reach his corner right top pocket, I could always see the corner of something sticking out. Every day without fail there was some type of candy or gum in that pocket. Maybe that was the fun and excitement in the anticipation of wanting to see him, but somehow I think it was just that good OLE grandpa love.

The sense of family. This was the glue the stuck the mill people together. Families stayed together and lived together. Not necessarily because they wanted to, but because they had to. It was survival but some how we not only lived through it; we were strong people because of it.

In the early 1960´s a new bleachery was built directly behind my grandparent´s house. I remember how dusty and dirty it was during the construction of the new building. My grandmother, Nola (Mammie to my brother and me) was a homemaker and seamstress by profession, fussed about the mess. For she hung the laundry on the close line each Monday morning. Many days, they would have to be re-washed.

The mill management decided that the mill yard was too big to cut the grass all summer long. 15-20 head of sheep were brought to keep the grass down. That made my entire summer. Every afternoon after supper, I went to the fence and feed these sheep the leftovers of Mammies home-made from scratch biscuits. I bet these were the fattest sheep on earth. But the sheep could tell supper time. If I were late, they would come to the fence and bleat.

Nola´s job was the keep the house they lived in clean and meals on the table. And that she did. I remember her telling me that when they first moved into the four-room house on 13th Street, the rent was $6 a week. She was wondering how they were going to pay rent. Frank only made $12 a week. The house was always immaculate. You could always eat off the floors, they were so clean.

However, I don´t think it was that good in the beginning. I remember being told that before they remodeled, the house had no under-pinning, and the cracks were so wide in the floors, that when she swept the floor, she would sweep the dirt thru the cracks in the floor. So, you can image what the winters must have been like. Everyone heated with coal (the furnace came with the remodeling).

The remodeling came when the mill decided it was not financial beneficial for them to own these houses. They gave the employees the opportunity to buy them. I believe this was after the Burlington Industries bought the old Erwin Cotton Mills. I can only speak to the "remodeled" house. It had four rooms. A large kitchen, large living room, a large bedroom and small bathroom and a tiny back porch. The bedroom and living room had hardwood floors. The rest was tile.

The windows stand out in my memory the best. They were ceiling to floor windows. No wonder Mammy always made her curtains. Of course, Mammy made everything. She sewed all of her clothes, mine, and a lot of my mothers. In later years I learned to appreciate having all of the clothes hand-tailored made.

Nola brought all of her fabric or material as she called it for making her "frocks" from Ms. Pearl Dean on Ninth Street. The Remnant Shop was the name of the 9th Street Store. But to our family it was simply known as "Pearl Dean´s." Part of the East-West Express way was name after her husband, "Buck" Dean.

Sometimes I would spend Saturday night with Mammy and Pa. That was the most fun. I can't explain how clean and fresh the boaster pillow smelled (today we call them body pillows, but they have been around a long, long time).

I remember in the summer time laying in the bedroom, with the lights from the bleachery lighting up the room like day time. The wooden back door, wide open. The screen door, most of the time, would not even have the latch locked. There was a gentle humming from the mill. That was her way of singing her children to sleep at night, a lullaby for a hard week´s work. The next day would be Sunday. For most all mill people, that meant church. For us it was Greystone Baptist Church. With a young Malbert Smith. My grandparent´s were very activate in the church and continued to be so until they died.

Sunday would not be complete without a stop at the drug store. The only drug store in this area of town was Bill Holmes´s Ideal Sundry. Mr. Bill Holmes not only had the best lemonade in the county, but he also carried our family from one Christmas to the next. Bill sold a variety of products. More like hardware, drug store, with lots of toys in the back of the store.

Later, he built an entire section just for toys (I believe this is now a typewriter store on Hillsboro Road). For you see, during this time the only toys we ever saw in person were at Bill Holmes, Sawyer Moore (on Main Street) or in the window at Sears during Christmas time. However, Bill had a great advantage over the other two. We had a charge account there. I often wonder how much money Bill wrote off every year for people that could not afford to pay their bills. I am sure it was more than anyone could guess.

There was another favorite place that my Dad and I used to get Saturday lunch. Across the street from Bills Holme´s (across the street from Greystone Church) was a small grill. Again, who knows what the original name was but we called it Fent´s Place. Fent Garrard made the best-minced pork sandwiches ever. He did pretty well with hamburgers and hotdogs too. I remember very sweet, chocolate pie. We use to get minced pork sandwiches almost every Saturday. I didn't realize until I was grown that that was actually chop barbecue.

The next street over from Mammie's and Pa's is Rutherford St. I believe it was 14th Street at the time. 15th Street is the street Greystone Baptist Church is currently on. On 14th Street, Mammy´s brother lived with his family, Oscar and Eula Thompson. They had a large two-story house, almost directly in front of one end of 15th (where Bolton ended).

Uncle Oscar worked in the mill. Uncle Oscar and my dad worked together for a while. Every Sunday, we made the weekly Sunday trips to both of my grandparents houses (even though we had seen them several times during the week). On the way, we would stop at Uncle Oscar´s. But only if we saw some of them outside on the porch or in the yard. And never would we stop if Mom thought they "had company." It just simply would not be the polite thing to do.

Up Rutherford Street, by the railroad tracks, we can now go a couple of ways. Let´s turn right. This will take us to Pettigrew Street. Pettigrew is most interesting. I can see a very, very large railroad embankment. Very steep. We were never, never allowed to go up to the train tracks. That was certain doom.

However, if we were careful, we could pick wild blackberries, and raspberries that grew wild on the banks of the railroad track. There was also a lot of wild honeysuckle. You can't image the fragrance of a hot summer night, with all of the windows and doors open and the wind picks up the honeysuckle and brings it into the house. I guess that´s why we never had air fresher. She provided that for us too.

Of course, we knew all of the people on Pettigrew Street. But again, two of these house were relatives. The old home place, for Mammy Marlow was on Pettigrew. Remember back, I told you that Nola had seven brothers and sisters. In the beginning, they all lived with their mamma, Grandma Thompson, her husband, and from time to time Grandma Thompson´s two sisters, in this one house.

As the girls and boys would get married, the new husband or wife would move into the house on Pettigrew Street, at least until they could make it on their own. More times than not, some stayed and had their own children there. My grandmother is an example of that.

I remember Nola (Mammy) telling me that when they all lived on Pettigrew Street, the girls used to sleep head to toe, so they could make more room in the bed for more children. It was very important to have plenty of quilts make from old worn out clothes. There was no heat in the upstairs where the bedroom was.

Naturally not every one could eat at the same time. First to eat were any men that had worked that day, then other grown-ups, and last the children. I think this is where "take a cold biscuit and wait" came from.

The table was no place for conversation and foolishness. I remember my Dad and Nola saying that Grandpa Thompson would not put up with any large amounts of conversation or absolutely no laughing. You would be sent away without finishing your food.

This house was huge. Five bedrooms upstairs, and very large rooms downstairs. Any maintenance that you needed on your house the mill provided. The houses were always given a fresh coat of paint, inside and out whenever needed, by the mill. There was no under-pinning. Most of these houses were set on cinder blocks. Underneath the house made an excellent place for the kids to play, especially in the summer. It was shady and cool.

A few houses down from "the old home place" was the house that Nola´s sister moved into. Ila (Thompson-Wallace) Fields live there. It was only one house away from Southside School. This is where all of the neighborhood kids went to school. My Dad went to school there when it was 1-12th grade. However, when my brother and me went, it was 1-7th.

My parents were married on September 18, 1946. At, where else, Greystone Baptist church. My father was William E. Marlow aka: Billy, Bill, William Earl, and Whitey. My mom always called him Whitey (due to his blonde hair in his earlier years). His mom, Nola, called him Billy or William Earl. His father, Frank usually called him Son, when talking to him directly and "your daddy" when talking to us.

Whitey, started working in the mill, right out of high school. There weren´t that many people that actually finished high school then. He went to E.K. Powe School and was on the football team with Pete Riananld, (who later brought Kentucky Fried Chicken to Durham) and Nick Galifianakis (member of the Congress).

He met my mom at school and it was all over (this is one of the greatest love stories ever told). I remember my mom saying for Christmas one year the only thing your Dad got was a pen and pencil set. And how very proud he was to have that. He brought it over and showed it to her.

Now, my mom, Pansy Ruth Clayton lived on Broad Street across from what is now the Duke's East Campus. She has told me how she and her sister, Mary, used to swing in the tops of the big trees that grew on Broad Street, where the present-day tennis courts are on East Campus. She too had a corner store -- Ralph Rickets. It was on the corner of Broad and Markham. It is now a music store.

Christmas time in the mill village. Oh my... You´ve not lived until you´ve experienced that. She looked after her children of the mill village. Every Christmas the families always received a large basket of fresh fruit and nuts. You know I am not sure why, probably because we couldn´t afford it, but we never had fresh fruit or nuts in our house except for around the Christmas holiday. It was a real treat. And it came from the mill.

There were a few years during the end of the 50´s and early 60´s that the Mill gave all of the families with children bags of toys. Depending on the age of the child and the gender depended on the type of toys you got in your brown grocery bag. Looking back these must have been incredible lucrative years for the mill. This was most expensive and was probably in lieu of profit sharing. Santa Claus was always there handing out these presents.

I don´t remember living on Yearby Avenue (off of Anderson Street), but I do have pictures. My earliest years are on 2006 Acme Street. We did not moved from there until I was 13.

My dad started in the mill as a fixer, like his father before him. However, with a high school education and a little college, Dad moved up fairly quickly to supervisor and then to overseer. Familiar names he worked with were: Jesse Boyce, Ralph Carrington, and Red Smith, others that I can´t remember.

Dad was the overseer in charge of the weave room. The problem this presented was that Dad was now in the management ranks. Mom however worked in the sewing room as a inspector. Quickly we are developing another Norma Rae... The mill would not let Mother join the union due to the fact that Daddy was "management." This was OK with her, she reaped the same benefits without the union dues, but some of her peers were not as happy. Never-the-less, some of her life time friends worked with her in the sewing room and the friendship won out over everything else. They even found out that it was a good thing to have a close friend on the "management" team.

At that time we lived in the house at 2006 Acme Street, it was a typical mill house. No under-pinning. One bath, two bedrooms, a den, a living room, a large kitchen and a small back porch. The back porch was large enough for the washer and refrigerator. We had an eat-in kitchen (always green or yellow) with the red and white block tile.

I remember the table and chairs looked like something out of Donna Reed. There was an oil heating stove in the kitchen, but most of the time we would turn on the oven and open the door. The oven heated the kitchen faster than the oil stove. The kitchen is where my brother and I dressed every morning for school. It was also the center and heartbeat of all activities within the house.

There was a long hall way which all of the other room´s led from. The one thing I never understood is why the bathrooms lined up so perfectly even with the front door. It was a straight shot, so the decision to close the door or not was never an option.

The front and back yard was big. On the side of our house, facing the Anderson Street, was a triangle shaped, cement poured goldfish pond. This pond had a beautiful rock garden around it made from quartz rock. We always have orange fan-tailed goldfish. They would freeze in the water during the winter and begin to swim with the first thawing of the spring sunshine.

That is until that one spring, Easter time, when the Easter Bunny brought me a little colored duck. Elmer. Elmer didn´t die immediately like most of the pink, green, and blue little chicks, you would see during the Easter season in the late 50´s. Elmer actually thought he was a dog and would follow me up and down Acme Street during May and June.

At this point he had grown into a full size duck. Unfortunately for Elmer, he decided one day that he was really a duck and not a pet dog. Elmer discovered the fish in the goldfish pond. Mom came outside one morning before going to work to make a discover of her own. The goldfish were floating little fish bones.

Elmer was banished to live on my Aunt Bessie´s farm "out in the country" after that. I am still suspicions of the duck dinner she invited us to the next weekend. Mom turndown the invitation. She said it "just wasn´t right."

Our house on Acme Street had the most beautiful embankment of thrift growing on it -- white, pink and light blue. People would stop on their way up and down Acme Street to look at it. We also had a large sandbox between two trees and a swing set Barry and I always played on. Again, under the house was also a shady, cool place to make roads and have imagination store to sell your mud pies, etc.

A very large and wonderful wisteria vine grew on a similar large trestle, from the ground to the roof of the house, directly outside the kitchen window. Sweetpeas also grew in the backyard, along with the Dogwood tree. This tree grew crooked. Momma said it was because we planted it on Sunday. This is the same poor Dogwood tree my brother kept running over and over again in his homemade go-cart. Of course this is the same go-cart that when Daddy make it, wired the left and right steering backwards, so when you turned left and went right, etc. This was a lot for a six year-old to remember. Poor Dogwood tree.

A lawn mower motor carries a lot of speed when it is wired backwards. (I am still carrying a scar from when I ran the go-cart under the picnic-table. I was banished by my brother from the go-cart after that.)

To say we lived on Acme Street is misleading. The front of the house actually faced Acme Street, so did the front steps that lead to the road on Acme Street. But you couldn´t get there from there. The entrance to these houses was from a back road off of Anderson Street. It wasn´t paved but covered in coal clinkers. This was the little street I first practice my driving abilities at 13 ½. I was allowed to drive the one and only family Rambler station wagon with automatic, push button transmission, slowly, up and down the back road to our house.

One day, after traveling at 4 MPH, I got a little zealous... and you guessed it. The Dogwood tree was wishing the go-cart was back. Not only did I run over the poor tree, but also, smashed the picnic table and ran over a barrel we used to burn stuff. The barrel was a metal 500-gallon thing, which promptly got stuck underneath the car. It was a ugly mess.

This was one of my last memories on Acme Street. We moved to Erwin Road about this same time. The Erwin Road house was my dream come true. I was 13 at the time we moved.

Dad has gotten another promotion, which meant a bigger house. We lived almost at the corner of Anderson and Erwin Road. A huge two-story house with a front porch across the entire front of the house. 32 windows. My mother was very upset. She had no idea where all of the curtains were going to come from.

In true "Mill" tradition, the very large kitchen was an eat-in kitchen and painted green. There was a ½ bath downstairs and a full bath upstairs. Upstairs also had four bedrooms. There was no air conditioning. In the summer it was so hot, we would sleep on the floor in the downstairs living room. The front porch was the favorite place to sit at night.

We would watch the cars go up and down Erwin Road. This was great for me at 13. These cars were mainly on their way to "the Blue Light" on Erwin Road. This was a popular hang out for boys! I was certainly in heaven.

Around 1971 Burlington Industry sold the property to Duke University. This was the same time I got married and moved away from home. The Durham Freeway came thru and the rest is history.

- from the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association website