Sayings from the Spindle
Photo by Isaac Cropsey (isaaccropsey.com)
One fascinating part of Mill Village life is its vocabulary. The West Side has a long history of unique words and phrases that come from our textile heritage. You could fill a dictionary with each neighborhood’s distinct language.
We, at Saltbox, started studying these nicknames and idioms, tracking down their uses, and verifying their authenticity. Here are a few we got a hold of this quarter with help from our friends in the F.W. Poe Textile Heritage Society Facebook group.
Mill Hill: This was a general term used for the neighborhood surrounding a mill. It didn’t matter if it was on a hill or not. Mill villages could be laid on completely flat ground. They were still called Mill Hills.
Looper Room: This was where workers, usually women, sat to sew the toes of socks—just the toe part. It was repetitive and boring, but it was steady work. You could talk with your co-workers all day (which wasn’t as easy in other parts of the mill due to noisy machinery), so it’s assumed a lot of mill village news was passed along in the looper rooms.
Water House: This was what they called the restrooms. Some say mill workers were not given almost any work breaks by their employers, so they took unofficial breaks by saying they were going to the water house, when really they’d be having a snack or just catching their breath. This loitering around the water house became known as “water house squatting” and was apparently quite prevalent.
Linthead: A nickname—sometimes affectionate, sometimes not—for someone who worked in the mill. Mill employees often had lint stuck to their hair and clothes after work which made them easily noticeable amongst the general population. Most mill workers considered the term a badge of honor.
Operative: This is what management called mill workers who ran looms and other textile machines. It’s a prestigious step forward from “linthead.”
Dope Wagon: Not what it sounds like! In the early days of Mill Village life, "dope" was slang for soda. So a dope wagon referred to a snack cart that would drive around the neighborhood selling sodas and sandwiches—almost like today’s food trucks. One historian tipped us off to the fact that Eugenia Duke, of the famous Duke Sandwich Company, served sandwiches out of these carts in the very early days of the company when she was just getting started. We still have a Duke Sandwich Company serving Eugenia’s incredible recipes right outside of Poe Mill on Poinsett Highway!
Saltbox: We can’t not include this one. This refers to standard mill village homes with slanted roofs. Hundreds were built beside each mill in the Textile Crescent. These houses were specifically chosen for their structure, which proved to be especially long-lasting, persevering, and sturdy. The people who inhabit these houses embody those same good qualities.
