Jim
Rumley has give those who care about remembering the Southern past a rich
tableaux in his thoughtful study of Cooleemee, North Carolina. Rumley's
story is not a fairy tale, though it deals occasionally with the fables
associated with mill work. Rumley is more the crafted tapestry maker than
the mere spinner of yarns. He deftly sorts out fact and fiction, weaving a
weft of local lore into the warp of scholarly insight. The result is a
history that has the roughage of homespun, but the indelible imprint of
industry...Cooleemee's workers maintained the strong ethnic and economic elements of their rural upbringing...this rural heritage, worn but not tattered by the New South, stood Cooleemeeans in good stead as the first workers literally chopped down the trees of an industrial frontier on the banks at the shoals of the South Yadkin River... that same rural spirit, which taught that mill work was one more wilderness successfully conquered, was passed down to subsequent generations that made up the core of the mill's work force. They would respond to external industrial change in the same undaunted, socially responsive manner as had their ancestors.
Dr.
Gary Freeze
Catawba College
Salisbury, North Carolina