For the past week or so there has been a thread on the Mill Village Life, what it was like to live there, the church's, schools, social life, houses, cemeteries, and why the mills were so important to the life-style and support of all that lived in this area of NC. In the early 1880's my great grandfather Nathaniel SMALL with his family, sold their farm in Rockingham County, NC and moved to Haw River to work in the Granite Cotton Mill. This was a time of severe drought in the piedmont section of North Carolina, and farm owners were finding it hard to feed their families. Also in these same years of early 1880's another great-grandfather of mine, Alvis Lindsey ANDREWS with his wife and four daughters left Orange County to work in the mills at Haw River. Years later, Mattie ANDREWS married James A. SMALL and were my grandparents. What I Remember About the Life Style growing up on "Red Slide"....Haw River, NC. The old mill house that I was born in before World War 11, is still standing, having been restored by the present owners, and now has aged much better than I have! In our row of houses, six families got their water from the same well. Also there was a spring between us and the river. We had no indoor plumbing, heat was from fireplaces, and my mother cooked on a kerosene stove. We had a small garden space, big front porch, and a Johnny house with a Lilac Bush planted next to it. For you young folks, a Johnny house was a outside toilet, which often smelled to high heaven unless the ground was frozen! Hence the Lilac Bush, it had a wonderful aroma that helped cover the awful odor! Our toilet was a one seater, but my mother's brother had a three seater. As a child this amazed me that uncle Bud was so "Rich" <BG> Back then the houses were not underpinned. One section under the house was reserved for storing coal, this had a door to keep locked, but I wonder now why we locked the door, if anyone wanted to steal the coal all they had to do was crawl under the house and get it! Our house had three rooms, my Dad worked for Granite Mills which owned this house. Rent was charged by the amount of rooms that you had at 15 cents per week, per room. My Dad paid $.45 per week out of his $7.25 weekly salary to live here. Six houses down from us, in a four room house lived my mother's sister, Gena RAY, her husband Ruffin Ray and their five children, plus my grandmother, a widow, Mattie ANDREWS SMALL. Grandmother died in that house and her body was laid out in the front room. Her funeral was held at HOLTS Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church. I can remember when the Haw River flooded, the water would come up on our front porch which was eight steps high from the ground. We had to stay with relatives when the water came so high. That was fun to me because we would go out to "Pleasant Grove", eight miles away, and stay with my TILLMAN Grandparents on their farm! To be continued...