STRING MILL BLUES BY JOHN MICHAEL HALL The first real job I ever had was in a string mill. I sold my whole summer away that year. Another textile plant was shutting down—job by job—and they needed temp workers, anybody looking for good pay on a short-term basis. That described me pretty well, so when my aunt told me about a job opening, I jumped on it. They hired me the next week and gave me a title, spin floor operator. That sounded important to me when I rolled the words around on my tongue—not bad for my first job. But it didn’t take me long to realize that spin floor operator was something more like a glorified janitor. It was my job to keep the machines going when they blew a thread line. I was also responsible for breaking back the nylon lines and wiping the stations down when it was time for the thread to finish wrapping on a spool, a process known as doffing. Still, I couldn’t complain. It was a good job, and the pay was about the best any teenager would hope to get. I decided to stick it out. I worked twelve-hour swing shifts for nine dollars an hour. That adds up to one hundred and eight dollars a shift before taxes—good enough for a nineteen-year-old. The pay was even better when I worked overtime on the weekends. In no time at all, I had more money in the bank than I ever had before. The physical and mental struggles of working a swing shift went away after I got my first paycheck. I felt like I could do that job for the rest of my life— just as many of my few remaining coworkers had. 22
The company that hired me through the temp service made the nylon for various nylon cloth products, hence the term string mill. The plant itself had seen a total of three owners over its forty-year history, and when I came in, the building had a shared ownership: one company owned the building, another owned the equipment. Each time my shift rolled around, I’d make my way up to the plant from my home thirty minutes away. Depending on the swing of the shift, I would start work at either seven in the morning or seven in the evening. The sun was shining when I went in, unless it was a rainy day, and it was shining when I left. Night did not exist under the phosphorescent glow of the plant—the lights never went off. I saw only one set of windows the entire time I worked there—the clear glass doors at the entrance. Once I stepped into that massive structure, I left the comfort of sunlight and fresh air. These were replaced with the smell of hot polymer and the low roar of machines. Whenever I walked through the front door, I felt like I was treading on forbidden ground— like I didn’t belong there. The main hall of the building was every bit of a quarter mile long, echoing the clang of metal and the beeping of forklifts in the warehouse. My job site was at the very end of this faceless corridor. I carried the weight of the required steel-toed shoes as I dragged them along the endless slab of concrete. By the end of every shift, my feet were so tender that I had to hobble my way back out, wincing all the way. As I made my way in, I passed sectors that had long been