Ladies of the Draw-In Room: Ten Stories Weaving a Common Thread

By Sue Ellen Frye

Cotton mills and the villages
they spawned are rapidly disappearing from the landscape of the South. Like a
time capsule, Ladies of the Draw-In Room
captures the lives and times of ten women living in the mill town of Concord,
N.C., in 1953. Each story takes place during the same hot July weekend and
follows a different woman who works in the Draw-In Room of the mill. Working in
vegetable gardens, canning tomatoes, attending Sunday preaching, shopping at
Belks and going to Carolina Beach
are activities planned by the characters. As the weekend unfolds, unexpected
events take control of their lives. A wife discovers her husband has been
unfaithful, a widow has a heart attack, a daughter shoots her abusive father,
and a mother is forced to tell her son about his dead fathers past. By the
time the weekend is over each woman is able to show her remarkable ability to
adapt to change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 19, 2004
• ISBN: 9781414039992

Sue Ellen Frye

Sue Ellen Frye grew up in Concord, North Carolina where she went to church Homecoming Sundays. She attended St. Andrews Presbyterian College and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After years of teaching in the public schools of Maryland and North Carolina, she retired. Her first novel Ladies of the Draw-In Room was published in 2004 and received critical acclaim for its portrait of cotton mill women like the ones the author knew during her childhood. She lives in Hickory, North Carolina. Praise for Ladies of the Draw-In Room These are stories you will want to read and reread because they so aptly capture the time and place of a cotton mill town in 1953. Jim Rumley Bobbin and Shuttle Magazine

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© 2004 by Sue Ellen Frye. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4140-3999-9 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4140-3998-0 (Paperback)

ISBN13: 978-1-4140-3999-2 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003098499

Cover © 2003 Christopher Brooks Frye

1stBooks-rev. 02/19/04

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE

IRIS LEE

RHONDA

WILMA

FAYE

MARLENE

IDA

ETHEL

MARGARET

ERNESTINE

BLANCHE

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe immeasurable gratitude to my husband Michael. You read and reread countless times while remaining a bulwark of positive support.

Christopher, my designing son, thanks for giving my cover the heart and soul I only dreamed it might have.

Elizabeth, thanks for being a daughter who loves to write and share. You keep me motivated.

Special thanks go to Marilyn and Nancy, fellow writers, who provided faithful support and needed criticism.

Tim Clapp, your patience in explaining every step of textile production was invaluable.

Thanks most of all to my sister Jewel Deane Love Suddath. Twenty years ago when I started these stories, you became my writing mentor. You remain my best editor and coach.

For my mother Margie Love, a hander who prepared the warps,

and for my father Doc Love, a weaver whose looms made the cloth.

Your example of hard work, patience, and love remain a part of my life’s fabric.

FOREWORD

During the twentieth century, Southern textile mills saw increased mechanization in the workplace. For the first half of the century, however, the Draw-In (or Drawing-In) Rooms remained an area that required highly skilled hand labor. The Draw-In Room women prepared the warp (or lengthwise) threads for the looms.

The warp apparatus consisted of a cylindrical wooden beam holding thread, drop wires, two or more harnesses of heddles, and a beater bar of reeds. The drop wires stopped the loom if a thread broke. The heddles raised and lowered threads on the warp so the loom could weave cross threads or filling between the lengthwise warp threads. The reeds of the beater bar pushed each cross thread firmly into place to make the fabric weave tight. The warp beam contained thousands of separate thread ends. Before a warp could be placed on a loom to weave cloth, a worker had to insert each thread through slots in the drop wires, through tiny eyes in the metal heddles hanging in the harness frame, and through the narrow spaces between the parallel metal reeds.

The women working in the Draw-In Rooms worked in pairs. One was a draw-in hand and the other a hander. They sat facing each other with the warp between them. The draw-in hand used a tool called a reed hook. It was approximately ten inches long with a cylindrical handle. Attached to the handle was a thin strip of metal ending in a hook. At the end of the hook was a slit that could catch a single thread. Following a diagram for the fabric’s design, the draw-in hand inserted the reed hook through a space in the reed, through the eye of the heddle, and lastly through a drop wire opening. The hander picked up a single piece of thread and placed it in the hook’s slit. The draw-in hand then pulled the thread back through the drop wire, heddle, and reed to her side of the warp. After all the ends were threaded, the final step was to tie the thread ends together in groups to prevent them from becoming untied when the warp apparatus with its harnesses and beam were moved to the Weave Room to be placed on the loom.

Threading the harnesses in the Draw-In Room was tedious, meticulous work. The pairs of women in the Draw-In Room needed skill and patience to insert thousands of threads into the harness in precisely the right places according to the fabric diagram. One thread out of place meant the warp had to be rethreaded. Since the mill paid Draw-In workers by the number of warps they completed, mistakes meant not only lost time but also lost pay.

Michael Frye

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PROLOGUE

The brick two-story building loomed over the surrounding white frame mill houses. Daily its towering smokestack sent coal cinders into the neighborhood air. Sparrows sat on the electrical lines above the mill and watched the scene below. Every day around 2:30 PM a magnetic force seemed to draw the second-shift workers into Plant Six of Cannon Mills. Some workers arrived in cars and buses and others walked. All hurried toward the mill gate and waited for the keeper’s signal to enter on the quarter hour.

On this Friday in July of 1953, the ninety-five degree temperature baked the brick building and the black asphalt surrounding it. In the distance heat waves snaked heavenward from the railroad tracks beside the mill. As the hour of three o’clock approached, there was a lull in activity. With a fresh shift of workers in place, the mill would soon release those exhausted from the last eight hours of work.

The whistle atop the mill finally blew and inside, where noise prevented it being heard, a release light flashed. Seconds later the red brick mill spewed people from its gates. The first shift was free. The ladies working in the Draw-In Room had waited all day for this moment. Their weekend had begun.

IRIS LEE

Iris Lee Peacock wanted to be the last woman to leave the Draw-In Room. She hated the way her co-workers gathered at the stairway and watched for the flash of a red light bulb to signal the end of their shift. They reminded her of a bunch of chickens waiting to be fed. The women held their purses, squawked about the day’s work, and kept their eyes on the light.

Had she not wanted to talk to the foreman alone, she would have been standing at the back edge of the group. She never was one of the first out the door like her partner Rhonda. Iris Lee always took time to comb the lint out of her hair and check herlipstick. She wasn’t about to go out the door with cotton lint in her hair like Rhonda did every day.

I’ll be glad to get out of this heat, Iris Lee said to Marlene.

I’ll be glad to get out of this mill, Marlene answered through clinched teeth. She glared at Margaret, who stood ahead near the light on a post.

Today after lunch a big argument erupted between Marlene and Margaret over a Hobarton warp. The ladies of the Draw-In Room preferred this warp to others because it was easier to thread and prepare for the looms in the Weave Room. They were less likely to make mistakes that could cause their paychecks to be docked. Iris Lee observed the skirmish at a distance. She decided when the other women were not around, she would set Albert straight about who got the next Hobarton. As the foreman, he assigned warps to the pairs of women. Iris Lee kept up with who received Hobartons. She knew the next one should go to Rhonda and her. Marlene Harris insisted she and her partner should have the one today, but Albert disagreed and gave it to Margaret and Ethel. Iris Lee did not want a blow up next week with Marlene, but she would stand her ground. The next Hobarton was hers.

The light flashed and sent women scurrying on their way. Iris Lee walked in the opposite direction toward Albert. He was busy with paper work. Albert, she said, Rhonda and I get the next Hobarton.

I’ll check on it, Albert said without looking up from the windowsill he used as a desk. He put his stubby index finger on the line of numbers on his notepad and squinted.

Iris Lee was not about to let this bantam rooster of a man brush her aside. She stepped closer to him and said, Albert. Her firm icy tone made him look up. She leveled her steel blue eyes at him and continued. Albert, you know I’m right without checking. You have until the next Hobarton comes in to figure out how to handle Marlene. Iris Lee flashed him a commanding smile and said as she walked away, Have a good weekend. I will. I’m going to Charlotte.

Iris Lee knew that remark could make him squirm. It would remind him of the Saturday night two years ago when they spent a night together in a Charlotte hotel room. Albert, the Superintendent of the Broad Street Methodist Church’s Sunday School, certainly didn’t want anyone in Concord knowing about that evening.

Little did he realize this secret was safe. Iris Lee really didn’t want anyone in Concord to know either. She had worked hard to create a daring romantic figure of herself since returning to North Carolina from California five years ago. When she bragged about the men she met in Charlotte, they were always tall, dark, and handsome. Albert was short and freckled. His face looked like someone had flattened it in a fight.

A district church meeting brought Albert to Charlotte that weekend. He yielded to the temptation of going to see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Carolina Theater. They met by chance in the lobby after the late movie. He was embarrassed to be discovered by Iris Lee. She delighted in it and enticed him to walk her to the hotel. Once there, she lured him into the bar for a drink. The alcohol loosened him up.

As the liquid in Albert’s old fashion glass disappeared, he became a gentleman who preferred this blonde.

Iris Lee thought one night in bed with him would give her an ace up her sleeve. After that weekend, he avoided talking to her for weeks. Eventually his shame wore off, but he was always careful to try to keep on her good side.

Weekends in Charlotte had come to be the bright spots in the dull routine of Iris Lee’s life. In California, when her husband Leonard Peacock never came home from his job at the service station, Iris Lee tried to make ends meet with her waitress wages. After a few months, she left San Diego on a Greyhound bus with bill collectors chasing her like a pack of hounds after a rabbit.

Her parents welcomed Iris Lee home with We told you so looks. They had discouraged her marrying Leonard back in ‘42 when he was on leave from the US Navy. But their sixteen-year-old daughter saw marrying a sailor eight years older than her as a ticket out of Concord. Following him from port to port during the war would be an adventure.

Leonard’s discharge came on the West Coast at the end of World War II. Both Iris Lee and Leonard felt this was a stroke of luck. With their good looks, they just knew Hollywood was waiting for another Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. For three years they worked and waited for a talent scout to discover Iris Lee pouring coffee at the Woolworth’s snack bar or Leonard changing tires at the ESSO station.

Iris Lee sometimes wondered if Leonard left her and went to New York in hopes of getting a break there. Coming back to Concord and moving into her old bedroom had been a hard pill to swallow. But she held her head up high and let her parents and their neighbors know she had been to Florida and California. Most of them had been no further than Charlotte or at the most Carolina Beach.

About a year after coming home Iris Lee