MY MILL WORK IN THE BUCKET

WOULD YOU GIVE THIS GIRL A  JOB IN A MILL?

 I usually write about childhood experience; I have often described the  way my parents and my aunts experienced their lives in the  Mills. I have not told of my own mill work and in fact I rarely think about it.
But yesterday I was driving on Cottage Street and there was a block  in the traffic and so I turned  and took a  left right past the Glencairn Manufacturing Company.  It is still in operation and I worked there one summer while I was on  vacation from college.  I wondered what do they make there now. I  googled it and saw pictures of various  treats coming out of an oven. DO they make  food there now?
I don't know--another unsolved mystery in the BUCKET.

But I do know what they made when I worked there in the early sixties.
.They made shoe laces.
And my job was to inspect them and  put them in the clear plastic  blisters that they were sold in. If they were dirty or tangled, I was to remove them.  At first I removed any that had even a speck on them--this took a toll on the white laces. Then they told me if possible to turn the offending laces over so the speck was hidden and not to be so fussy. I followed orders, and  there were no more complaints.
I liked the job but my mother felt a little disgruntled and showed it in two ways.

First she did not want me to work in a  mill.  That was not her hope for me. She was afraid that I would like it and settle for it. The summer before the Glencairn job  she had gotten me a job  where she was working Darlington Fabrics. We were not on the same shift and I did not get anywhere near the knitting machines that she doffed every night.
No, I was  busy  making endless boxes  to pack the finished rubber covered  yarns for shipping.  I would  go in and stand at a table with a mountain of flat boxes at my back and my job was to fold and tape them in a certain  fixed way so they became sturdy boxes.  Not difficult but quite monotonous.

My mother's second objection to my work habits came  midway through the summer. My sisters were going  to summer day camp for two weeks and in the flurry of dressing and getting them ready she  broke the shoe laces on my sisters sneakers.
 She called out to me:
"Norma, we need a shoelace. Brown if  you've got one. "
I answered back--"What makes you think I have  a shoelace?"
My mother "There's no hope for you, Norma. Working in a shoelace factory for  six weeks and you haven't a shoe lace to show for it?"

She told that story to any who would listen.  I did not understand the perks of my job obviously.
  
END OF MILL WORK FOR ME