A Library Patron Remembers Brandon Mill…

Steve Allen, (pictured third from right, middle row) local business owner and former Brandon Mill football team player.

At the age of 15, Steve Allen became one of the fourth generation of cotton mill workers in his family when he began working for Brandon Mill in Greenville, SC. The mill, constructed in 1901, was well past its heyday, and just eight years away from closing its doors when Allen started as a spare hand. “I did a little bit of everything. I daubed cloth, worked in the spinning room, worked in the warper room,” he remembers.

Brandon Mill, for which Steve Allen played football from 1969 to 1971, is forever intertwined with the legacy of Greenville-born Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless" Joe Jackson who honed his skills playing baseball here during his formative years. Shoeless Joe Jackson went on to fame, and then, notoriety, playing first for the Philadelphia A's and later, for the Chicago White Sox.

"Shoeless" Joe Jackson

While Shoeless Joe reported (in 1949) that he’d earned his moniker while playing barefoot on a field due to blisters gained from a pair of shoes that had not been broken in, play without shoes was not an uncommon situation for young boys on textile mill teams in the south. “Didn’t have shoes… we only had school shoes and church shoes. Didn’t have any play… shoes.” Allen recalls the experience of his first football game for Brandon Mill, adding that he only played that one game without them, but that he was not alone among the shoeless boys.

"I learned how to push the limits of what I thought I could do."

Though Jackson passed away over a decade before Allen began playing for Brandon Mill, community pride for having been the home of the great Joe Jackson means that shared anecdotes still linger many years later. “They said his brother could hit a baseball further than he could. But a shuttle come out of a loom and broke his arm and he never got it fixed right so he never got to play.” Allen’s hearsay may be rooted in some truth as Joe Jackson's younger brother reported during his registration for the WWI Draft that his "arm has been broken and is crooked."

Many years later, Allen affirms that his time playing for the mill football team taught him “how to push the limits of what I thought I could do. I learned to challenge myself to do better on things.” Today, Allen roots for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Clemson Tigers.