Baldwin: Kettles and dippers
Handley Mill workers often remained in the same department they started in from their first day of employment until their last day of employment. They learned the job, liked it, enjoyed the people they worked with, and just didn’t see a reason to change. This often led to a sense of isolation in relation to the entirety of the whole mill process. Workers viewed themselves as having only a small part of the production and rarely ever saw the finished product. Whereas, workers who moved about from job to job, felt more engaged in the full production and felt they were a part of something much bigger than just woven cloth.
When younger generations were hired, if they had a choice, they would often choose the department their mother or father worked in. It became a family tradition. For instance, the Robinson boys—Junior, Buck and Chess—all chose to work in the weave room because their father, Coy Robinson, worked there. All three of the Robinson girls—Pauline, Sue, and Betty—also chose the weave room. Their mother, Mrs. Bula May Browning Robinson, worked in the spinning department. All of Coy’s brothers also worked in the mill, but they were loom fixers. Second and third generation workers took great pride in remarking, “My daddy worked in that department for 40 years!”
Moving to Lowell meant women no longer walked across the back yard with a bucket to draw water from a well or to a nearby creek or spring. Mill owners had city wells dug and hired a tank wagon to deliver bulk water to storage barrels near each worker’s household. Within the first quarter of the century, the Lowell community constructed reservoirs to dispatch water by gravity through iron pipes. The water tower was the community’s tallest structure. It was located between Commerce and Randolph Streets. A red brick filter plant was built on the north side of Piedmont Street with several wells drilled behind the plant. An additional filter was a few yards north of Knight-Enloe School. Water was pumped from the wells through the filter plant and to the water tank. The towering tank allowed enough pressure to build up with filtered water before being dispersed to the factory houses of Lowell. A decorative brick tower was also built on the front of the mill, which originally housed an enclosed water tank in case fire broke out in the mill.
With the iron pipes running water parallel to the streets, spigots (spickets) were placed between every other house by the mid-1930s. Two houses shared one spigot. Women took their buckets to the nearby spigot to furnish water for cooking and bathing inside the house. When garden hoses were made plentiful, women concocted a system of delivery into a side window near the kitchen basin or through the back door. It wasn’t until 1952, that water pipes were run inside the mill village homes. Along with the sewer and water project, a small structural addition had to be built onto the back of every home to accommodate a bathroom. Inside, a toilet, a small sink, and a porcelain claw- footed tub were added. For women who moved from the country where they took a bath in a washtub after heating the water on a wood stove or near the fireplace, the move to Lowell wasn’t much different until the accommodating spigot arrived. The Lowell community slowly progressed and modernized as they gained access to a yard spigot, then saw the advancement of having a toilet, sink, tub and running water. Having these conveniences under the same roof where they slept must have been quite an exciting and enjoyable luxury.
Some of the changes were unexpected but very much welcomed. Unfortunately, they came slowly. The city of Roanoke gained running water into the homes much earlier than Lowell. Mill people were still heating water on wood stoves, bathing in washtubs, and cleaning clothes and dishes from heated water into the early 1950s. Once the mill owners had running water installed in the company houses, it was still up to the renters to purchase and install a hot water heater. When they moved from one house to another, they either sold their water heater to the next renter or they took it with them.
Families brought their cast iron black kettles with them from the country. The kettle’s most important contribution was heating water. Flat-bottomed kettles were used most often except in the case of cooking in or over a fireplace, in which case, kettles with three short stubby legs were used. With coal-burning fireplaces in the mill village homes, the flat-bottom kettle was used most often on the wood stove. As generations evolved and heirlooms were distributed, the kettle was a much sought-after item by descendants. Not so much for future use, but the kettle held up a testament to the hard work and sacrifice of “mama’s hands.” The handed-down (no longer used) kettle is often placed on the side of a hearth like a family “trophy.” It points back to the days of hardship and overcoming cold winters and to the lack of conveniences that would have made life simpler for the woman and her household chores.
By the mid 1950s, electric outlets were installed in mill houses and electric refrigerators and stoves were bought by mill families, which ushered them into a new era of progress. Betty Robinson Parmer, who has lived on the same block of the Lowell Mill Village for over 70 years, purchased a brand new stove and refrigerator in 1966. She stills uses both of them, and they are as clean as the day she bought them!
The first kitchen sinks installed had no metal skirting around the bottom with cabinet doors or drawers. They were just single crude contraptions with a large metal or cast-iron basin attached to the wall. The pipes, also attached to the wall, were visible underneath. A pipe extended out over the top of the basin for water release by turning a single knob. Since hot water heaters were not installed when the running water was, only cold water poured from the fountain. Family members still heated the water in a kettle on a wood stove until they could afford to purchase a hot water heater.
A thick, homemade potholder was used to transfer the kettle of boiling water to the sink. Women began teaching their daughters at an early age to sew and to knit together potholders. They bought large rubber “stoppers” to place in the hole in the bottom of the sink in order to hold the water. Joe Brittain’s store supplied the town with kettles, washtubs, stoppers and dippers. The sink was located in one corner, usually beside the one window of the kitchen. Beside the sink, a metal dipper hung on a nail or sometimes on the metal curtain rod over the window. In an age without plentiful paper cups or plastic water bottles, the dipper was useful and handy for getting a quick drink of water. The entire household used the same dipper. It was also used to pour rinse water over soapy, cleaned dishes. Dippers, like kettles, are prized possessions to gain as a bit of inheritance. Both flood the memory of younger generations with nostalgia. Some say, “The coolest, best-tasting water I ever had came from that dipper in mama’s kitchen!”
(to be continued)
