By someone you’ve probably passed in the grocery aisle
“Every shirt in your closet passed through my fingers—until they moved the factory to Mexico.”
That’s not an exaggeration. For thirty-two years, I stitched sleeves to shoulders, collars to necklines, and labels to the back where no one ever looked. I was the one who turned piles of cloth into the flannel you wore on fishing trips and the chambray your boy wore to church.
My name’s Irene. I worked at the textile mill down on Route 9, the one with the rust-red water tower and the lunch whistle that blew at noon sharp every day since Eisenhower. Back when America made things. Back when folks like me didn’t feel invisible.
I started at 18, same as Mama. Same as most of the girls in our town. You could hear the sewing machines humming all the way down to the diner, like locusts in summer. That sound meant pride. It meant the lights stayed on.
We weren’t rich, but we didn’t need to be. We had potlucks in the union hall and Friday night bingo. You could raise a family on a mill wage. Buy a house. Pay off your car. Maybe send one of your kids to college if you worked overtime and clipped coupons.
Back then, your work meant something. I could walk down Main Street and recognize my stitches in every shop window. My hands were in every thread.
I met Walt in the breakroom over a pack of peanut butter crackers and a shared hatred for the plant manager’s voice. He proposed by sneaking a ring into my lunch pail between my sandwich and my smokes.
We raised two kids in a little ranch house with yellow siding that peeled in the summer. They used to race to the end of the driveway when the school bus came, bare feet slapping pavement, their giggles louder than the crickets.
But you don’t come here to hear about the good days.
It started quiet, like all bad things do.
A meeting. Then another. Then whispers about “cost-cutting measures” and “foreign investment opportunities.” Next thing we knew, they started shipping machines out in the dead of night. Not even enough decency to do it in daylight.
They called us into the cafeteria one morning—those long plastic tables still sticky from donuts and powdered creamer—and told us the plant was closing.
Thirty-two years, and I got a severance envelope with less than what I made in a month.
I remember the sound of Velma crying. She’d worked beside me since Reagan was in office. Her hands shook so bad she couldn’t even finish her Danish.
Walt was already gone by then. Heart gave out after his third layoff in four years. Stress, the doctor said. Hell, maybe it was the silence. Men like him didn’t do well without purpose.
After the factory shut down, the town followed.
The diner closed first—no one had lunch breaks anymore. Then the shoe store, the gas station, the post office. Now the kids drive 45 minutes just to get groceries at a Walmart built on the bones of another old factory.
People say it’s progress. I say it’s erasure.
I still get up at six out of habit. I still pack a lunch I don’t need.
Some days I volunteer at the library, shelving books no one checks out anymore. I tried applying at the grocery store, but they wanted someone who could “lift up to 50 pounds and navigate digital inventory software.” I can lift. But I never learned computers.
My grandson asked me the other day why I don’t just “do something online.” He meant well. But he doesn’t understand. His world fits in a screen. Mine was built with calluses and factory whistles.
Sometimes I walk past the mill. It’s boarded up now, weeds growing through the cracks in the loading dock. The chain-link fence has holes in it, like a mouth missing teeth.
I remember the hum of machines. The way the windows used to glow in winter when the heaters ran hot and steam curled up like breath.
Now it’s just birds nesting in rafters and graffiti on the bricks.
People think factory work was just stitching or welding or pressing buttons. But it was more than that.
It was birthday cakes on the night shift. It was union meetings where we passed around coffee and hard truth. It was rides home when your car broke down and someone’s wife bringing in soup when you had the flu.
It was a community. A heartbeat.
And now, it’s gone.
I saw a shirt at Target last week with a tag that said Made in Vietnam. The seams were crooked. The buttons were cheap.
I ran my fingers over the stitches, like a ghost touching its old house.
Then I folded it up neat, put it back on the shelf, and walked away.
Because once upon a time in a small American town you’ve probably never heard of,
every shirt you wore passed through my hands.
And I sewed them straight.
