linthead
n.— «Almost always it features early on the fact that his mother’s family worked in Revolution Mill in Greensboro, that because of his grandmother’s asthma his family moved into the McAdoo Heights neighborhood and his mother switched from the mill school to the city school system. There, he recounts, she was teased as a “linthead,” a derogatory term for mill workers.» —“Neal takes campaign one voter at a time” by Mark Binker News & Record (Greensboro, North Carolina) Mar. 30, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Aubrey in Waco, Texas, says her mother used to warn the kids against contracting honkus of the bonkus, a fanciful name for a contagious disease. This colloquial term probably comes from the words bonk and konk, meaning “to hit” or...
Lucy in Louisa, Virginia, recalls that if her mother was exasperated when the kids were misbehaving, she’d announce I’m going to put you both in a wet paper bag and see who falls out first! This is part of a complete episode.
Related
I grew up in nearby Burlington, NC and mill workers were called “lint dodgers”. Depending on who said it to whom, it was either an inside joke type of thing or a derogarty thing.
I grew up and still live in Kannapolis, NC, a former mill town. I heard the term “linthead” from my father and other former mill workers, and it was mostly considered a derogatory term – or, as Jeff mentions above, an inside sort of joke.