Darlington: The way it was, 1922-41
By Bill Shepard
Most all the old men I know, and a few old women, like to reminisce. Since I fit into the first category, I shall begin.
My favorite subject to reminisce about is my childhood years and the memories I have of people, places and events that made a lasting impression on my life in Darlington.
My father moved his young family to the Mill Village in Darlington early in 1922. If the stork had been a little late with its delivery, I might have been born there. As it was, I was a few weeks old when I arrived on the village with my dad, mother and two older brothers. We had come to stay!
My first 18 years were spent on the sprawling village built around the huge old Cotton Mill that gave life to the villagers. More specifically, my life was lived on that part of the village that everyone referred to as Over the Creek.
When someone would ask, “Where do you live, boy?” I would answer, “Over the creek!” And they would know. The little creek moved like a slithering black snake, dividing the village in half. I don’t know why, but I always had the feeling that those who lived on my side of the village were inferior to those on the opposite side.
Maybe that was because everything of importance in our lives lay just over the creek. The big mill, where everyone worked, was there; so was the company-owned store, where most everyone went for their groceries. The YMCA, where all the villagers went for their mail, was there, along with the barber shop, where those who could afford it went for a haircut.
Upstairs, above the YMCA, some of the village children attended school and a mile away, the huge old red brick school house was built, just over the creek! So there should be little wonder that some of us felt that we were a bit inferior. In spite of all of the above, I would not have traded places with any of those on the other side!
Mine was a small world and unique in many ways. My Dad worked at the mill all day and Mom worked inside the small three room house where the family of seven lived. Two girls were added to our family in the years following our arrival on the village.
During those early years, a trip to town on Saturdays was an event to look forward to with much excitement. I heard of places like Lydia, Oates, Monte Clare and Lamar, only because their ball teams would come to Darlington to play against the Milliken Nine, the village team. Milliken was owner of the big cotton mill, known as the Darlington Manufacturing Co.
Of course, the names Florence, Timmonsville and Hartsville were sometimes mentioned, but I thought of those places as foreign countries. My first trip to Florence was by train; what an exciting trip that was! Equal to it was my first visit to Hartsville and that was made in a T-Model Ford, owned by a friend of my Dad.
Houses on the village were of simple design and came in two sizes only. There were three-room houses and four-room houses. To occupy a four-room house, there had to be more than one person who worked at the mill. Sometimes two families lived in a four-room house.
The Shepard family of six lived in a three-room house for 10 years. When an older brother reached the age of working in the mill, we were given a four-room house in which to live. By that time, the Shepard family was complete and numbered seven.
I said that the houses were of simple design and they were. There was no electricity. It was left to the occupant to choose if they had electricity or not. I recall when a man from Carolina Power and Light Co. came to our house and persuaded my Dad to let him install power to our house.
One single light cord, hanging from the ceiling, furnished light for our home. Until that happened we used lamplight. What a change a light in each room brought!
The houses had no running water except that which someone ran to the well and fetched back home. The wells were centrally located on the village. Afterwards, a water line was run to each house and a single faucet was situated on the back porch of each house. That was much improvement over the previous.
Outside “privvies” stood in long rows behind the rows of houses and the waste was hauled away by a black man whose job it was to do so. He drove a little mule, hitched to a dump cart, and made regular rounds through the village.
The waste was deposited in an open field, a ways from the village and left there to be dealt with by the wind, rain and wild animals. It should be of little wonder that there was much sickness among the villagers.
The little cemetery near the village bears testimony to that truth. It was common to walk through the village and read the “Quarantine” signs tacked on the side of the house or on the door lintels — whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever, even Sore Eyes.
In a way, we lived in a world of isolation. There were no telephones, only a few could afford a radio, and you could count on one hand the number of cars on the entire village. I can think of only three cars in 1928. One was an old Chevy owned by Marion Lee, a T-Model owned by Mr. Gainey, and a milk truck owned by Sam Anderson, who operated a dairy near the village.
My Dad left early each morning for work at the mill. A day’s work lasted 10 to 12 hours, until the eight-hour workday was instituted. My mom worked inside the house, washing, cooking, sewing, scrubbing floors and a hundred more things that needed to be done.
One day a week, she washed all the family’s clothing by hand. Washing machines were yet, a way out in our future. In the evenings and during the summer, Mom and Dad would sit on the porch and talk about all the things that parents have to talk about. Sometimes they would be joined by a neighbor.
Children in the village made their own fun things to do. After the chores that had been assigned were done, there would be time for fun. We made our own playthings. We made wagons with wheels and axles from worn-out machinery discarded from the mill. We made marbles with the red clay, dug from the railroad embankment that cut a beeline through the village. We made the kites we sailed on windy days in March, and balls were made from bobbins of thread from the mill.
Saturdays were special days when I was a boy. A trip from the village to the town square made it even more so. From the mill village, I could approach the square by Pearl or Orange streets, but Pearl was more exciting.
The merchants that operated along Pearl would have their merchandise displayed directly in front of their stores. There would be boxes of apples and oranges, beginning in late fall and on into winter. As December and Christmas neared, those items would become more available.
During the summer months, there would be rows of watermelons, cantaloupes and fresh vegetables from nearby farms on display. The watermelons were real eye catchers, and everyone stopped to “thump” the melons to test them for ripeness. In the late fall, there would be bundles of sugar cane (always a favorite of mine), and the merchants could expect to get my last nickel for a stalk. I would chew on it all the way back to the village.
I recall Preston Lee’s Fish Market where Dad would go to purchase fish. Lyles’ Used Furniture Store was on the same side of Pearl; that is where most villagers bought what furniture they could afford. I still own a few pieces of furniture that my Dad purchased there. It qualifies as being antique, since that has been more than enough years ago.
The News & Press was housed on Pearl and as a small boy, I would sometimes go there for pencils and paper to use at school. At the time, I did not know the News & Press was the name of a newspaper. To me, the place was a bookstore where school books were sold.
There were no “free” books in those days. The store sold only new books, so I don’t recall ever buying a book. Mine were always used and purchased from someone that had used them the year before.
On the square itself, there would be small groups of farmers from the countryside, swapping their yarns about what was happening back on the farm. The aroma from the roasting peanuts at Moody’s Market mingled with that from Metropol’s candy cooking and filled the air, giving a sweet smell all about. A cone of ice cream (three dips) sold for a nickel at Metropol, and my favorite was one dip of each, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry! How good!
B.C. Moore’s, on the square was considered the “poor folks” store and was the busiest store there. A good pair of overalls sold for 49 cents and a matching shirt could be had for 29 cents. Coggeshalls and Witcovers appealed to those who could afford the fashions of the times, but mill village folk just did window-shopping at those places.
For this writer, Saturdays were the days when a visit to the Liberty Theater was a must. That was the day that I would watch one of my favorite cowboys beat up, single-handed, a bunch of cattle rustlers. Ah, the thrill that would await me on those days! Hoot Gibson, Bob Steele, Ken Maynard, Tim McCoy and Buck Jones were all my favorites.
After watching the same movie play at least twice, I would be ready for my trek back to the village. If I had a nickel or dime left, I might go by McClellan Dime Store and leave it there in exchange for a sack full of delicious candy of my own choosing.
That’s the way it was when I was a boy. Though time and what some would call progress have changed the Old Town Square, in my memory it’s all still just the way it was.
