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GREENSBORO — Barbara Presnell used to walk among the rows of sewing machines and hear the women say, “Is this your little girl, Bill?”

That happened always on Saturdays. She’d be there, in Stedman Manufacturing in Asheboro, trailing her plant-manager daddy and watching the women make underwear before scooting to the break room to down a Dr Pepper.

It was hot. It was noisy. And Presnell remembers it all.

That’s a good thing.

Back in 2002, after a dare from a friend, she started writing poems about her dad’s old textile mill in Asheboro. She figured she’d get one, maybe two. But after visiting the plant and talking to workers, she ended up with more than 75.

She filled two unlined artist’s sketchbooks, put them together for “Piece Work,’’ a book published two years ago, and nailed the textile South — a South that seems to be slipping through our fingers, like sand scooped from a beach.

You’ll find that South in the 71 pages of “Piece Work”: the prose of workers like Charlie and Pauline, telling stories in the vernacular of the rural South, of “ain’t’’ and “growed,’’ of “tells ’em’’ and “How you say?’’

Yes, how you say.

It all rings true. It’s so true people have stopped Presnell where she lives in Lexington and shared their stories. Or they simply stood up after one of her readings somewhere in North Carolina and cut to the chase.

“You got it right.’’

Well, the poems of “Piece Work’’ now have become a play by the same title.

The Touring Theatre Ensemble of North Carolina will present “Piece Work’’ this weekend at the Greensboro Historical Museum. And there, you’ll see the prose of “Piece Work’’ take shape and sing.

Presnell will be there, too. After each performance, she will lead a discussion and ask audience members to tell their own stories about the mill floor. And everywhere she goes, those personal stories come.

We all know — or should — the bones of the bigger story. Textile mills, once the South’s economic backbone, shut down to find cheap labor and lower production costs overseas. Or they simply closed, clocked by competition.

But flesh it out and give it skin and you hear about a lifestyle snuffed out, the anger, sadness and disappointment of seeing machines unbolted and jobs thrown away.

That happened to Stedman Manufacturing a few years back after Sara Lee closed the plant and sent everything to Mexico.

When that happened, Presnell got a note. It came from the woman who gave her the tour back in 2002: “Thank you for keeping the story alive. Our heritage of hard work and innovation seems to erode more each year.”

Textile workers just wanted some closure. So did Presnell.

She’s 55, a mother, wife and UNCG grad who teaches writing at UNC-Charlotte. But forever in her memory, she’s still the little girl tailing her dad through rows and rows and rows of sewing machines.

Her dad died in 1969 at age 53. He smoked, ate poorly and drank Maalox to coat his chronic ulcer. He worked his way up to plant manager, with no degree, and worked hard to keep his job.

Maybe, too hard. At least Presnell thinks so. So do her older brother and sister.

But they never really talked about it. They never asked about the stress that saddled their dad — of living in hotel rooms, crisscrossing the state and opening up enough plants to make enough underwear for soldiers going to Vietnam.

That is, until “Piece Work.’’

Closure came for them, too.

“It’s a time I’ve always been curious about because it was unfinished, and I didn’t know why, and I was the youngest, and I needed to figure that out,’’ she says. “I wanted to deal with that elephant in the room.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com