I could not resist breaking out the camera when I looked at the park this morning. As I stood there in the quiet of the snow and the stillness of the park building I could almost hear the sounds I used to hear, peering in the windows there, the Clack-Clack-Clack of the looms of Mercer Textile, and the Clickity-Clickity-Clack-Clack of the winding and coning machines of Anchor Thread, two very different sounds.
Standing in the park, alone, in the quiet of a new snow fall, you could imagine all the sights and sounds that we heard growing up around the mill, it was almost eerie. Just standing there alone you could picture the people that worked there, the ones that I remember, my Aunt Edith Jones, Ed and Howard Jones, Eddie and Bertha Klink, Vince Symczyk, Roy “Smut “ Champion, “Dutchy” Cubberley these are just a few that come to mind.
The site of the Anchor Thread Company and the Mercer Textile Company, once the bustling manufacturing center of Groveville, working three shifts to produce goods and keep the people of Groveville working and prosperous, now the scene of a quite tranquil park.
In early times coal came to the mills by barge and goods left by barge, in later years by tractor trailer. I remember seeing those large red and white tractor-trailers from Avondale Mills, in Alabama, as a kid I was amazed that trucks would come that far to Groveville.
The buildings and pieces of building that are left as a monument and a tribute to the men and women that made these companies work for well over 100 years.
Standing in the park, alone, in the quiet of a new snow fall, you could imagine all the sights and sounds that we heard growing up around the mill, it was almost eerie. Just standing there alone you could picture the people that worked there, the ones that I remember, my Aunt Edith Jones, Ed and Howard Jones, Eddie and Bertha Klink, Vince Symczyk, Roy “Smut “ Champion, “Dutchy” Cubberley these are just a few that come to mind.
The site of the Anchor Thread Company and the Mercer Textile Company, once the bustling manufacturing center of Groveville, working three shifts to produce goods and keep the people of Groveville working and prosperous, now the scene of a quite tranquil park.
In early times coal came to the mills by barge and goods left by barge, in later years by tractor trailer. I remember seeing those large red and white tractor-trailers from Avondale Mills, in Alabama, as a kid I was amazed that trucks would come that far to Groveville.
The buildings and pieces of building that are left as a monument and a tribute to the men and women that made these companies work for well over 100 years.
3 comments:
Cool pics!
I grew up in Groveville and worked at Anchor Thread as a teenager in the late 1970s. It was freezing in winter and stifling hot in summer. We dyed large steel spools of thread in huge vats of boiling chemicals. The dye often permeated our skin, and we had many blisters on our arms from handling the still boiling spools. During this period at least, these were unpleasant, somewhat dangerous, low-skill, low-wage jobs. Not the end of the world, certainly, but the company hardly brought prosperity to Groveville. This was a struggling village with many single parents working two and three jobs to make ends meets. And there was a huge drug problem among the kids. These are one person's memories, at least.
My name is David Alan I also worked at anchor thread and true Ville in the early 80s when I graduate when it before I graduated Hamilton West Allis into working program and anchor thread was one of my first jobs I actually worked at the building that still stands it was known as the shop we had all the pipe and everything upstairs the well pump for all the water was in back of the building we still hang fishing poles and sticks and everything out the back window to catch carp little building to the right we used to keep two large tanks of chlorine and gas chlorine and that would purify the water my mother worked at the building across the street and at the cloning facility would put all the labels on the cones her name was Shirley Allen still remember that place definitely low-wage but it was work and I work with some good people one of them being a guy named George densen which was the head of Maintenance and a very wonderful man named Michael free that I think still live across the street and a house below the bridge
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