Naomi Trammel explains how workers got lunch without having a lunch break.

Audio Transcript

Allen Tullos

And what did you do when it came lunchtime?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Well, we didn’t have no lunch time.

Allen Tullos

You’d just work right on through?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Just worked on. We’d go to store and get things, if we wanted it. They’d let us go to store. We’d have like one spinner run my side then her side, and me and another girl’d go to store. And when we come back, and got us something to eat, well, we’d run theirs and let them go. So they wouldn’t say nothing about it. But we didn’t go home where we were boarding, where I boarded. We’d go to store, get us something to eat. And wasn’t one thing said about it, they didn’t care.

Allen Tullos

How long could you take off for lunch like that?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Oh, it was pretty good little piece to the store. Just we’d go up there and get what we wanted, come on back, and eat it. Just so our side was going, they wouldn’t say nothing.

Allen Tullos

Could you never go outside and play, and let somebody run your

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

 

Allen Tullos

Well, we didn’t while we’s spinning, but after I got to working in the cloth room we did. When we used to work for Harold Moseley, he was the first boss I worked for in the cloth room, and the cloth room was down on the bottom floor. And come a big snow, we’d go out and snowball while he’d gone to breakfast. And we’d hear that door in the weave room, it makes a big noise, you know. And when we’d hear that door, we had a good little piece to go down before we got into the cloth room. Boy, we’d run back in there and go to our work just like there wasn’t nothing ever happen, and he’d never know it. He wouldn’t cared if he had. [laughter]