Gulistan - the 'Garden of Roses' Has Faded Away

 

Pictured is the Gulistan yarn department, before it closed. 

A collage of photos from "better days" at Gulistan.  

"Gulistan" means "garden of roses" in Armenian. I had planned to retire from Gulistan Carpet on March 31, a few weeks after my expected 66th birthday, but my "rose garden" experience ended on Jan. 11.

I feel blessed to have finished near my goal, but most Gulistan employees will have to find new jobs. Gulistan is now selling its remaining inventory and is in the process of closing.

The company manufactured 12-foot-wide, medium- to high-end carpets in its plant on N.C. 5 in Aberdeen and, until recently, employed nearly 400 people. Gulistan filed for bankruptcy on Monday, Jan. 8.

"The voluntary petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of North Carolina," The Pilot reported.

Sensing that Jan. 11 would be my last day at Gulistan, I swiped my company ID card through a "time device" located at the Aberdeen plant at around 7:45 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 10. At my desk in Product Development, I checked laptop messages and then drove 26 miles to Gulistan's dyeing facility in Wagram.

I had worked many hours in developing carpet colors at the Wagram plant and wanted to say goodbye to my co-workers at that location.

The "dye house" was located on the backside of a huge plant that had once housed a J.P. Stevens towel manufacturing and dyeing operation. Gulistan leased a small portion of that mostly empty plant to use for dyeing carpet. Not long ago, 38 employees worked at Gulistan's Wagram plant. Nowhere near that many worked there when I visited the plant on Jan. 10.

I spoke with a 55-year-old laboratory technician who had dyed thousands of small carpet swatches over the almost 24 years I worked with Gulistan. I used many of those swatches to create "color lines" for styles reviewed for introductions.

"What are you going to do?" I asked her.

"I don't know," she said.

I spoke to another lab tech who hired on at Gulistan after a Laurinburg branch of Abbott Laboratories closed in 2002. She wasn't sure what she'd do after Wagram closed.

I visited Range Two, a "fluid-dye range" that applied color to the majority of Gulistan carpets. Range One dyed some carpets, and some goods were "hue infused" in "becks" (large vats), but Range Two was high-speed and served as Gulistan's dyeing workhorse.

The Range Two manager said he was uncertain about where he'd find employment. He's in his 50s.

His assistant told me about anticipated "screening tests" causing concern among soon-to-be-let-go employees. She said that a large soup-processing plant near Wagram requires job applicants to take several tests.

"They cost you 10 dollars apiece, and they're not easy," she said.

One woman I spoke with worked at Range Two "roll-up," where just-dyed carpets were still being inspected during my visit and rolled onto cardboard core tubes. The goods were slated to ship to the Aberdeen plant, where they'd be "back-coated" with latex, sheared and given a final inspection.

"I hate to see our plant close," that woman said.

A lift-truck driver told me that he was "already on Social Security" and planned to farm his land.

"I hate it for the other folks here," he said.

Another lift driver who spent workdays motoring around the plant with huge rolls of carpet impaled one at a time on a long steel rod located on the front of his lift-truck expressed concern. In his 40s, he worried about "those screening tests."

A young man sitting at a table in the Wagram break room said he planned to "go back to school."

I talked with more employees and walked past rolls of undyed goods on my way out of the plant. Colors would soon flow onto those carpets, and the dye house would close. I envisioned the plant sitting someday as a dark, lonely, cavernous hull - another empty textile mill dotting the North Carolina landscape and serving as a symbol of a bygone era.

On Friday afternoon, Jan. 11, my job ended. I said "so long" to my Aberdeen co-workers and took personal belongings to my truck. Leaving hardly seemed real.

Near the company gatehouse, I turned right on N.C. 5 and drove past the Gulistan sign standing in front of the main manufacturing plant and headed for home.

How sad.