![]() Putting her lunch aside, Susan told us her story. Stout, colored threads then wrap around the wire concealing it. I introduced myself to the Broom Lady as I walked up to where three finished brooms were propped against a complicated piece of machinery, a 144-year old broom winder that binds straw to the handle with steel wire. Eye-catching brooms result, and so does a nickname.įolks in these parts refer to Susan as the Broom Lady. Bound bunches of colored straw lay across a table waiting its turn. She dyes the wheat-colored straw in rainbow colors. Her steady hands unite straw from Texas, wire from who knows where, and wooden handles, along with colorful thread and yarn and handsome brooms result. Susan’s work area is a place where things happen. Handsome dark broom handles stand in two black metal garbage cans, paint flecked and dented from use. ![]() The round bales are pretty in and of themselves. Surrounded by the sweet smell of straw Susan uses vintage 1800’s equipment to make brooms the old-fashioned way and what brooms they are. Broomstraw littered the floor bringing to mind a barn where some animal dines on a meal of hay. I walked into the house (1740) in this community on the National Register of Historic Places. The owner and broom maker, Susan Simpson, sat just beyond an open window, sipping a Pepsi and eating a mid-afternoon lunch, an inviting sandwich. I pulled into a sandy parking lot and a sign on an obviously old building said, Hand-Made Brooms. That’s when an amazing coincidence took place. I detoured through the hamlet of Boykin to see the gristmill there. I was preparing for a two-day trip to Pawleys Island for book-signing events. I don’t know that anyone would have paid for such a broom, but it met a real need and it didn’t come from China.īy Wednesday I’d forgotten about hand-made brooms. She’d grab a broom and a few whisks would send unwanted material out the door. That’s all it took, along with passed-down know-how. I bet it’s been a while (never for some), since you saw one of those hand-made brooms in this era of mass-manufactured nylon brooms. They were attractive in a rustic way, amber shocks of broomstraw bunched tightly in place by inner tube strips. I’d go to her home in and over in a corner would be a handmade broom about a yard long. Then I remembered the brooms my Grandmother Poland made. ![]() Name one person you know who can make an ordinary, useful thing. The political debater’s words came to me. I had to step back in time to recall people who made useful things by hand.Īs faces appeared in my mind, I saw artists, photographers, and sculptors. I thought of a potter too but they are the only people I know personally who make things as individuals. Right off I thought of my brother-in-law who makes beautiful, useful things from wood. Just name me one person and one thing they make. He challenged his fellow debaters, saying, Name one person you know who makes an ordinary, useful thing. He went on to say that the Chinese and big companies manufacture way too many things people used to make themselves. We got folks sitting around doing nothing. The economy and jobless rate came up, of course, and one fellow commented, Americans themselves, as individuals, he added emphatically, don’t make useful stuff anymore. ![]() Some folks were talking presidential politics last week.
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