Printer-friendly page

Naomi Trammel discusses her first job spinning.

Naomi Trammel interviewed by Allen Tullos, Greenville, South Carolina, March 25, 1980. Interview # H-258 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Audio File: 

Naomi Trammel Part 1 by LEARN NC

Duration: 
1:04
Transcript: 

Audio Transcript

Allen Tullos
Well, what do you remember about first going into the mill?
Naomi Sizemore Trammel
Well, I didn’t know, hardly, but I just went in and had to learn it. Really, I had to crawl up on the frame, you know. You’ve seen a spinning frame. Well, I had to crawl up on that to put my—what do you call it?—roping in, you know, because I wasn’t tall enough. ‘Cause I never was much big, you know. Then I a little old spindly thing, and I couldn’t reach up there to put my roping in. And I’d have to crawl up on that frame down there, and put it in. I wasn’t the only one, they’s a whole place like that. And they had mothers and daddies. They wasn’t no better off than I was.
Allen Tullos
There were lots of other children your age.
Naomi Sizemore Trammel
Oh, yeah, a lot of them. It’s a lot of them. ‘Specially in the spinning room, that’s where they put the children. You could run a frame, you know, where you couldn’t run—a child couldn’t run nothing else.
Usage Statement: 

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

This item has a Creative Commons license for re-use.  This Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license means that you may use, remix, tweak, and build upon the work for non-commerical purposes as long as you credit the original creator and as long as you license your new creation using the same license. For more information about Creative Commons licensing and a link to the license, see full details at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.