I’m going to repeat the first two paragraphs from a previous essay, so if you think this sounds familiar, it will be.  I apologize, but the reader will need this information if they didn’t read the other article.

 

Back in the early to mid 1950’s, there were myriad cotton mills in North Carolina especially in the Rockingham area.  The prototype of these was the old Great Fall Mill that was destroyed by General Sherman’s troops just prior to the end of the US Civil War.  This was only a few days before General Joseph Johnston surrendered the southern portion of the Confederate Army to General  Sherman at Durham Station, N. C. on April 17, 1865.  I can imagine how this must have “endeared” some of the local residents to General Sherman, especially that close to the end of the war.  By the way, most of General Johnson’s troops were from Georgia and South Carolina or points west as they had stayed in front of General Sherman’s Army all the way from Savannah, but were outnumbered at least two to one.  Most of the North Carolina men were in Virginia with General Lee, who had surrendered to General Grant about a week before General Johnson surrendered.  This Mill was later rebuilt, but was abandoned by the time I came on the scene.

 

From where I lived on Sand Hill Road (now Caroline Street), you could go down the hill, cross the bridge over Falling Creek, turn left at the railroad station, and continue down the tracks across the trestle, and then you had a bird’s eye view of the old Mill.  At that time Falling Creek had been dammed to form a pond.  The dam could have been used to provide power to the Mill, but it was no longer being used that way.  This was about a quarter mile from my house, maybe a little more.  I imagine that since General Sherman’s troops were coming from South Carolina (on their way to Raleigh and the Battle at Bentonville, N. C. which occurred on March 19-21, 1865), they must have passed directly in front of where our house was later built, went down the same hill I did, walked down the same railroad tracks I did, and then they did their mischief. Actually we were lucky they didn’t burn the towns in North Carolina like they did in South Carolina, especially Columbia. They had a particular vendetta against South Carolina because it was Fort Sumter in April 1861 that started the shooting War.

 

There is a saying: “If you ever saw them make sausage, you would never eat it again”.  I don’t think the slaughterhouses discard anything.  At the Curtis Packing Company here in Greensboro, they even have tanker trucks hauling away liquid by-products; I assume to be used in manufacturing animal feed.  I’m not sure if there is a saying like this about young boys, but there should be.  “If mothers and fathers had even the slightest idea of some of the dangerous things their ten year old sons did when no one is looking, they would never allow them out of the house.”   

 

In the early 1950’s, this Mill was only used for storing bales of cotton.  All the machinery except for scattered junk had long since been removed.  The Mill had a lock on the front door, but that didn’t deter me.  It was a chain connected through holes in the door and the wall, with a lock to fasten the chain.  They don’t put ten year old boys in jail for breaking and entering, do they?  I wouldn’t have done that, not even back then.  What I did do was to go around to the north side and go down to the basement level.  There the door was so old and decayed it couldn’t be closed never mind locked.  That was my entry point.  Now the charge can be reduced to trespassing.

 

This was about the time they were building the [old] US 74 bypass around Rockingham.  It is now called Business 74 or Broad Avenue.  There was a small obscure dirt service road leading to the Mill from Washington Street back then.  The construction had more or less obliterated any trace of it, but if you knew it was there, it was just barely passable.  I didn’t go that way, but I did come back that way, as I found it was much easier.  To go, I went down the hill from my house, across Falling Creek and down the railroad tracks.  Then I had to cross the trestle.  Do you remember the scene from the movie “Stand by Me” where the boys were crossing the trestle?  They could hear nothing as they started across, but had to run like mad to outrace the train at the end.  The trestle was at least a hundred feet long and was spanning fairly deep water.  One problem, I didn’t know how to swim at that time.  So if a train starting coming, I had two choices.  One was to continue across to beat the train; the other was to retrace my steps, that is, go back.  Jumping into the water wasn’t an alternative. Well, I keep my ears wide open, but no train ever came.  I crossed the trestle. 

 

Then, I had a new problem.  I was on the wrong side of Falling Creek although I was below the dam.  On previous occasions, I had noticed fishermen at the bottom of the dam, but there were none that day.  There was a fair volume of water coming over the dam, but there were enough rocks and brick pillars from the damage to the Mill, that an adult might just be able to maneuver there, but not so young boys.  The water was black (as in pollution).  About a hundred feet below the dam, the creek had managed to reorganize itself in to a strong current I would guess was ten feet across and four or five feet deep.  If I were to fall into those currents, they’d been looking for my body all the way to where Falling Creek merges with Hitchcock Creek or maybe all the way to the mighty Pee Dee River.

 

I noticed that a pine tree had recently fallen across these rapids and if I were brave, I could scoot across the rapids on that tree and then be on the right side of the creek.  I thought about that for about five minutes, and I decided I had to do it or forever be a coward.  So I did, mostly crawling across on my stomach and holding on with all four.  When I got to the other side I decided very quickly that I would never do that again.  But I was now on the correct side of the creek.  I don’t remember how I got to the main door, which faced east.  But it was locked; so I went to the north side and downward where a basement had an unlocked entry.   I think the building had four floors plus a basement.  The interior was mostly wood –old wood that creaked and gave a little as I walked.   I didn’t spend more than fifteen minutes exploring the premises.  The staircases were old with some stairs missing.  There were many bales of cotton stored on the first floor, but I don’t remember if they were stored on the upper floors or not. It seems hard to believe it could have supported that much weight.  I would image a bale of cotton weights at least two or three hundred pounds.

 

There were remnants of some gears or maybe I should say belt drives hanging from the ceiling.  Electricity wasn’t commonplace until well into the twentieth century.  The original Mill would have had to been powered with mechanical power from a  paddlewheel.  Based on the location of the Mill in relation to the dam, I would think they would have channeled water from the dam by a wooded conduit to drive a paddlewheel located very near if not attached to the side of the mill.  [About ten years ago, I saw an example of this in a working gristmill located in Guilford County near Oak Ridge].  All evidence of this had vanished by my time.  Supporting this theory, on the third or fourth floor on the south side (dam side) was what appeared to be an opening in the wall, which was closed off with what appeared to be makeshift doors that were by no means securely attached.  Stupid me, I kicked this door.  It raddled, but it did not break.  I quickly determined that was not a good idea since I was at least seventy five feet above the bottom of the dam, and if that door had failed, I’d be headed down to all those rocks & brick pillars I was talking about earlier.  If the fall hadn’t killed me, I would probably have bled to death, as no one knew I was there.

 

On the way out, I noticed there was a room near the exit in the basement that appeared to be a guardhouse or something of that nature.  All of a sudden, I heard a noise from that area.  So I quickly made my departure.

 

Now I reason that this was probably a transient who was as interested in getting away from me as I was from him.  A guard would have at least yelled at me.  I never went back.  

 

I can imagine that night about bedtime, my mother asking me: “How did your day go, son?  Did you do anything exciting?”  Of course my reply would have been: “Oh, nothing much.