Village People

 

Shortly after finishing university, I moved into a mill village neighborhood in West Columbia with some friends, most of us recent USC graduates.

Some of our neighbors were long-time residents, some families stretching back to when the Columbia Mill on the canal was up and running.

One neighbor was a tiny widow-woman who reared two sons -- both auto mechanics and as big as oak trees. I'll call her Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith worked in the Horsman Doll factory as a dresser, which is exactly what it sounds like. She put the clothes on the dolls after the plastic had been molded, cooled and painted, the hair woven into the heads and eyes popped into pouty faces.

Eight hours a day. Five days a week.

Mrs. Smith talked about her job with great pride and joy, as, I think, only those of her generation could.

Those who had known scarcity and insecurity and took nothing for granted.

I had moved out of the neighborhood by the time Horsman shuttered the plant in 1986, and I think Mrs. Smith had since retired.

She'd moved out of the village, selling the homestead to eager investors who predicted the area would eventually become a yuppie enclave, filled with people who knew little about Mrs. Smith's pride and joy or of the others who had lived there before.

Much to their loss.