Cotton Dreams

Fourteen years ago this coming Thursday, my father passed. My mom and I were at his side. He had Alzheimer’s and his long, slow march to death ended peacefully late that night. Just today, I received a gift from my cousin Brian. His dad was my dad’s brother, Uncle Eddy. I have strong memories of Uncle Eddy and will always remember him playing the piano, and the deep resonant sound of his slightly New York tinged voice. Brian sent to me a picture of the South Carolina Cotton Mill (as well as presenting same to each of my siblings).

As background, our paternal grandparents were Palestinian immigrants from Bethlehem to the United States. The family owned several businesses in the US with the textile business being run by our grandfather. The sales office for SCCM was in New York City and the mill was in Orangeburg, SC. Our grandparents settle in Brooklyn, and to them two male children were born. Uncle Eddy first, followed by Dad. Dad loved Eddy and was never shy about saying it or showing it. As adults the business fully passed to them at the untimely death of our Grandfather while he was on a cruise to Japan before any of us were born (a story I know so little about). By that time, Dad was entrenched in Orangeburg managing the Mill, and Uncle Eddy was settled in Yankee climes to handle the sales end of the mill.

The mill was a fixture for me growing up. Within my spotty childhood memories, I find images and vignettes associated with the Mill that make me smile in that distant and pleasant way people reminiscing often have. The smell of cotton bolls and burlap are as familiar to me as the fecund smells of pluff mud, or the sweet cloying scent that accompanies kudzu. I recall times that Dad would gather his offspring and take us into his offices when he had to do some work on a Saturday. He would set us about a well-worn conference table with crayons, water colors, and scrap paper and set us loose to our imaginations. That table later ended it up in the children’s play room at home as an activity table for the five eager and vital minds my parents had unleashed on the world (I miss that table). When I was older, Dad would sometimes take me in on these work weekends and set me to doing thread counts on samples of cloth. I don’t know if it was simply busy work, actual work, or a learning experience, I simply remember being hunched over a magnifying lens mounted on a traveler with a thumb counter to aid in manually determining the number of threads per inch. I was never paid for this (and I did not care) as Dad was not a believer in nepotism (this belief did not transfer down to me as I have employed my grandson from time to time to help with work projects, and my wife always had the kids involved in her floral business).

One particular Saturday, Dad took me to the mill to get some work done and upon arrival discovered that he had forgotten the office keys. Rather than go back, we found a window that was unlatched, opened it, and Dad helped me through. That day he dubbed me “the cat burglar,” a nickname used from time to time after that. He did tell me not to embrace it as an actual profession and knew for a fact that at least at his alma mater there was no professional degree in such. Words to live by.

Another memory that surfaces was talking to mom years later and at a time after Dad’s death. We were talking about Dad and the irony that he was a “health nut” and yet nothing he did could or would have staved off the Alzheimer’s. We talked of his love of cycling. It was (as was running) a craze for him long before catching fire in America. Dad was so adamant about it, that he even continued to bike to work past Claflin and South Carolina State colleges in the aftermath of the Orangeburg Massacre. This was a terrible racial flare up that resulted from young African American college students being thrown out of the local bowling alley for the color of their skin. Protests from the campus erupted and several students were shot and killed by law enforcement in the racially charged atmosphere. Exact accounts vary, but it was a sad time in Orangeburg’s history and lives as a poorly hidden dark stain on the integrity and values of the town I loved and grew up in.

Until it closed in the seventies due to the influx of cheaper textile imports and other factors that were unfavorable to the small family owned mill, SCCM was part and parcel to my childhood and the memories and moments shared with my Dad. It was the topic of many conversations while growing up, and it was where I learned from talking to Dad that if you were a good employer and treated your employees well you didn’t need a union. That being a boss bore with it responsibility not only to customers but to the family of workers that supplied the blood and muscle that drove the business. I talked to Dad as often as I could. I annoyed him as a small boy from outside the water closet door that was closed between us, I sat with him as often as I could in one of the reading chairs in his bedroom, I loved talking to him in the car, I loved just talking to him. I blame my lack of a Southern Accent on him, because perhaps unconsciously I wished to mimic the neutral accent with which he himself had been raised. I get my love of reading from him and get my love of writing from him.

Thank you, cousin Brian, for bringing these and so many memories forward especially at this time when they mean so much more. I get to smile a lot this week thinking of Dad because of your kindness. Blood is very strong.