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A DAT ON FACTORY HILL
"You'd like to know what a day in my life is like? Well,
taint no trouble stall fer me to tell you because every one
is so much like the other I've learned the pattern by heart
long ago.
"Pink goes to work at seven. 1„, 3et up at half past five
to get his breakfast sots not to be rushed and sots we can
have a few minutes for talkint before he leaves.
"Every mornint I cook oats for the younguns. They like it
and hit's cheap. Ye and him eats it too, but now and agin
we let a little bacon meat. A body just seems to want a
little bacon meat once or twiee a week. The children aint
learned to crave it yet. They get up when they hear the
dishes rattlint, and we're done with breakfast a little
after six. Sometimes they aint much to talk about and we
jest set.
"After hes gone I help the younguns dress and then start
cleanin's in I git the dishes done, the beds made, and tho
floors swept, its nine o'clock and almost time to start
eleanint agin. You see, them all beint girls except the baby,
I have to keep 'am in the house most of the time because the
boys around here play so rough, i'm afraid my girls'll it
hurt if they play with them. Then, too, they's no plaoe for
children to play but the road out there and hit's full of
black cinders put there to keep the road from washin' worse
than it is.
"Most days around half past nine I start fixint rink's
dinner. I leave here at half past eleven to take it to him.
He works in the dye room and the kitties has to be kept
boiling all the time. He caint take no time off, and he eats
scatterinl-like when they's a slack in his work,
"When I it back from the mill me and the younguns eat.
tost days it's biseuit-breed, potatoes, and beans of one kind
or another. After I'm done with the dishes, I wash or iron or maybe sewntien they's anything to sew on. The other day
I boc;ht a quarter's worth of cloth and I've just finished
makinf a dress apiece out of it for them two least ones. I
usually look at a pieture in a catalogue and out me a paper
pattern from it. post times they fit right well.
"Two eveninls a week I wash, and even then I alt able to
keep my children noways like clean. I don't reckin they's a
dirtier place in the world to live than here. It takes two
evenings, too, for ironinl.
"At four o'clock Pink comes home from the mill. In a
little while I start ;ettin, supper. We lently eat before
half past five. When I'm done with the dishes me and him
sets in the swing and watches the younguns play. A body
don't even visit their neighbors because they'd feil foolish
doin, it We are that jammed up togPther we see one another
too much anyway. Hardly a day passes that every one of us
don't see the other run out and grab her younguns out of a
fight. Like as not we'll meet one another emptying trash in
them big 3arbage cans put out there by the mill. No they's
no reason much for visitin' in the eveninl.
"Around half past seven or eight I put the children to bed
and me and him sets on till about half past et_17ht or nine.
Eels sleepinl this summer on the single bed in the front
room. Usually he sleeps with them two bilgest ones and I
sleep with the two least ones, but they's so frenzy -like
durinl hot weather, hit keeps him from sleepin' as much as
he oughter and him workint.
"Next day starts like the one brore and ends about the
same. Of course, on Fridays and Saturdays hits a little dif-
ferent. Both of us enjoys westerns and we gently go once a
week to the picture show. I go on Friday night while he stays
with the children and than he goes on 'aturday. They's
always a bunch of women 3oint on Friday and I o along with
them. Hit'd be nice if no and him could go together some-
times but they's nobody to leave the children with. If it
wasn't for that movie I don' know what I'd do. Course, we
aint really able to spend the l5O apiece for foolishness when
he's just makint nine dollars and sixty cents a week, but a
body caint stand it if he don't have a little pleasure some-
times.
"Pink just gets three days a week in the mill now, but we
get up at the same time on the days he don't work. Hes so
tired since they put on the streteh-out that he lays around
the house and rests a good bit when he's off. Sometimes he
goes down to tiv store and sets and talks with other men from
the Hill. The past spring he made them two swining boxes out
of old oar tanks and got him some red paint from the ten -cent
store to paint 'en with. They make good boxes for petunias.
He hauled me dirt from west Asheville to make them two flower
beds by the doorsteps. That's his truck settle out there
but we don't use it 71uch since they's no money for as. Hit
used to be a car but he fixed a body on to it. I put out a
siht of ding makin' beds for them petunias and phlox but
no place seams like lime without a few flowers.
°The year goes round bringinl very little change but the
weather. ;'oor folks don't have no vacation, you know, when
they's title off from cooking, and washin,g, and worrying about
the ;r*ocery bill. The only money T've spent for pleasure
this year went for the picture show and for them flowers.
I'm glad my flowers done so well. Rit's nicer settin, on the
porch when they's somethint to look at besides a red, ugly
hill."