My father was a Linthead. In the 50’s the textile mills still had life in the South, and people who worked in the “Cotton Mills” were called Lintheads because the constant drifting cotton would stick in their hair. My father, his dad and brothers and most of my relatives, all worked in a cotton mill. My grandfather worked an opposite shift from my father so they would share the same work shoes. They lived on a “Mill Hill” which was basically a neighborhood of clapboard houses that were owned by the Mill and leased to the workers. The houses were identical and were lined up side by side. My father lived in the same Mill house his entire childhood and I remember visiting there when my Grandparents were still alive. There was a screened-in front porch that had steps that went directly to the street. Recently I was thinking about a story my father would tell : On the Mill Hill the school was always within walking distance. My father was a skinny small kid...but he had a friend named Billy Quick who was very big, in a country boy kind of way. He wore overalls to school and hardly ever talked, but he was a friend and protector of my father. Every morning before school my father would wait for Billy at the bottom step in front of his house. When Billy walked by, my father would jump on his back and ride him to school. Some days when Billy got to my father’s house, and he wasn’t standing on the bottom step, Billy would stand waiting for the slamming screen door... my father would come running out of the house and hop on his back. In a way, it seemed Billy enjoyed giving my father a lift as much as my father enjoyed the ride.
Billy Quick was a simple kid, with no future to speak of. He had aspirations of working at the mill and someday making it to the “weaving room” at the cotton mill. The weaving room was a sought after job for some reason…there was a little more pay...and maybe there was less flying lint....I don't know. My grandmother worked in the weaving room for many hard years. Billy Quick would, like my father, quit school early to go to work to help support his family. He would later find a wife and live the rest of his life in abject poverty. The Mill would close down, the textile industry would move overseas and the town would dry up to become one of many such ghost towns in the South. Billy Quick never made it to the weaving room where he could make the “real money”. Billy moved through the rest of his life working odd blue-collar jobs, searching for happiness and contentment. Billy may have never realized that his life had value. No one probably ever told him it did. He never knew that the simple kind gesture of carrying my father on his back to school every day would, in a small way, help carry my father through a hard life. It would help mold my father’s personality and outlook, ultimately influencing my life as well. In his life, my father would grow to over-come many obstacles and hardships. He would have four successful and healthy sons, travel, and eventually maintain a comfortable adulthood.
Billy thought he was carrying a snot-nosed 60 pound little boy to school, but Billy did more than that. He carried my father ...
