Folks on the mill hill had various ways of keeping warm thru the cold winter months. I can recall vividly and with some cherished memory of that first fall day when you would smell the smoke from the various chimneys. It was usually in late October when that certain chill was in the air and jack-o-lanterns started appearing on the different porches.

People who had hogs where busy fattening them up for thanksgiving only a few weeks away. The folks in the village used a lot of innovation to keep the home fires burning in those days. The more fortunate ones burned fuel oil and some even had that wonderful Sieglar heater that kept their homes nice and toasty throughout every room. But most of us were less fortunate and had to rely on black powdery coal that was kept in a big pile outside the house and it had to be lugged in the house in a heavy ole coal bucket every few hours. At night you would have to double 'em up to make sure you had fuel to keep the fire going thru the night. I can recall seeing that old cast iron coal heater glowing red at the bottom where the coal was concentrated. And you had to adjust your distance from that coal heater - too close and you would splotch your legs - too far away and you wouldn't get the heat. And when you rose up early in the morning to get ready for school, you didn't have to be told to get in there near the heater,you always made a fast dash before your bare feet could stick to those cold plank floors.

Since hardly any of those mill houses where underpinned in those days,that cold winter wind blew under the houses and made the floors freezing cold. I have to say the most innovative folks used the wood burners. They had all kinds of slick ways to get wood....which reminds me, I had one buddy on my street that didn't know his real name 'til he started to Pee Dee School. Up until he started in the first grade he thought his real name was " Gitwood " because that's all that was ever spoken to him. Some would burn reject furniture pieces that they gathered down at the furniture factory. There was one guy who used to tell you if asked that he worked down at Harris Brothers, which was the furniture factory at the bottom of Steel Street. Come to find out, he was partly truthful because he did in fact work at Harris Brothers , but not in the plant. Some greedy guy in the neighborhood was paying him to stay down at the company
scrap wood pile and keep everyone else from getting any of the pieces. He was paid 4 dollars a day .

Then some folks burned logs they cut and brought home to saw up. This one family that I can best remember and is the subject of this story was so innovative as to rig up their own circular saw like the ones used at the saw mill. They couldn't afford a diesel power plant so they rigged up an old model-A rear end with a wide nylon belt that went around the tire on one end and around the pulley on the other end.

I have to hand it to 'em, it was a very impressive set-up and worked to perfection. I mean it would saw them logs up fast. Some of the logs were very long as well as thick. Much too heavy even for lint heads ( cotton mill workers ) to move around. So they solved that problem by borrowing a large draft horse from one of the legitimate saw mill owners. And this also worked well until one fateful day when all hell broke loose. I was just a small kid, and therefore not allowed to get near the saw much less help cut the wood. The big draft horse had dragged the last log for the day. It was a hot afternoon for October but the evening chill was settling in and everything was starting to wind down. The flies where busy mopping up the sweat on the horse and he was steadily swishing them with his tail, and doing a good job keeping them at bay. That is until he swished one time too many and his tail got caught in the belt where it goes around the tire. I remember hearing a loud dull "THUMP" and in an instant the horses' tail was jerked off level with his rump. I mean he looked like a giant bull dog. There was no holding him down, not by any stretch of the imagination. He made a noise like I never heard a horse make. He was snorting out both ends at the same time. And he bucked differently,instead of bucking front and back like horses normally do, this one went up on all four legs at the same time like he was on a pogo stick. A half dozen members of the crew  got in front of him, at their own peril I might add, and he bowled 'em down like so many bowling pins. They where scattered all over the yard like the Clanton's at the OK Corral.

Then he took off like a rocket and that log he was tied to wasn't heavy enough, cause when he went around the barn it slid around leveling anything in the way including a little Datson pick-up. It looked like it had been tee-boned by a Mack Truck.

With that log attached to him that horse cleared a three foot wide path all the way to Davis Lake. Well so much for innovation I guess.