Don't Sing at the Table by Adriana Trigiani

the key to long-term success was to build a reliable and excellent team, so she put the word out through her known channels in Martins Creek that she and my grandfather were to soon open a mill. The applications poured in as they readied the physical plant.
    Own Your Own Business
    The entrance to the mill was strictly utilitarian. A set of rough-hewn steps and a potchkied landing made of wide wooden planks with gap-toothed spaces led to a glass door. Inside the door was the clock punch, and off to one side, the office.
    Over that entrance, in catchy red and white, was the name of the company: “The Yolanda Manufacturing Company.” And more to the point, the name of the co-owner, my grandmother. The power of that name, and what that meant in the world, was not lost on the buyers, middlemen, suppliers, or machine operators, or on our family. Viola’s given name, Yolanda, defined the endeavor. Viola may have had a maiden name that sounded English, Perin (most Venetian names don’t end in vowels), but there was no hiding behind the Anglican sound for her. She was upfront and proud to be Italian American, the daughter of immigrants, from the Veneto.
    There was a dividing line between the Italians who changed their names to assimilate in business or fit in socially and the ones who did not. Viola didn’t have any patience with faking it. She always felt badly for the Italians who, upon entrance to the United States, had their surnames changed or misspelled by a processing agent.
    However, when it came time to put her name on the business, there was no way it would be the Viola Company. The name was my grandfather’s idea, and it was, perhaps, the best gift he had ever given his wife. She was proud to give the company the name her immigrant parents had given to her. Viola was also eager, at long last, after years of working for others, to stand behind her brand, determined to deliver a product close to perfect and assume the role of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla to ensure quality control. They opened the mill shortly before Viola’s thirty-sixth birthday, in 1943.
    Made in the USA
    A blouse begins with a sketch that is broken down by piece and via size by measurement. The fabric is purchased by the mill (the price is negotiated), along with the extras: buttons, zippers, piping, specialty collars, embellishments or embroidered insets. All these elements were purchased from salesmen who become an ongoing and important part of the process of manufacturing, an extended family of suppliers, purveyors, and salesmen as familiar to my grandparents as the workers on the plant floor.
    The cutting room was on the ground floor of the factory, and the machines, office, finishing, and shipping were on the first floor. The five-foot bolts of fabric were delivered, sealed in plain brown paper casing. The fabric bolt is mounted onto a roller at one end of the table, and then pulled along the length of the table, then rolled out, back and forth, with thin sheets of paper applied between the layers. On top of this layer cake of fabric, thin pattern paper printed in midnight blue ink with the dimensions and parts of a blouse is placed, carefully, to use every inch of fabric and avoid waste. You had to be a bit of an architect when looking at the pattern paper. Sometimes I could make out collars, or a placket or a sleeve, but most of the time, this massive pattern looked like a map of a world I didn’t know.
    Over the table, a stainless steel saw with a very thin blade and a cover was pulled down from the ceiling and operated by the cutter. He artfully handled the blade, slicing through the layers of material, following the pattern exactly. The cutter had to be physically strong, have a good sense of concentration, and wield the blade precisely.
    Two men called graders would assist him, removing the pieces as they went. This is not a scientific observation, just my own, but I never saw a short man in the job of cutter.