Page 109 - Tattnall County

Kenneth built his wife a sewing room on the back of the house where she put her sewing machine, a few chairs, a cutting table, and a cedar chest for all her patterns. She was soon sewing for just about everyone in Glennville. Marjorie didn’t like being cheated. A couple of years after she and Kenneth were married, she told her husband not to dare hire someone to pick the cotton that year. “The year before I had to scrape over that whole feld,” she said. “So he opened the rows and I planted the cotton. Then I picked that whole feld of cotton in front of my house right by myself.” After they picked out the seeds, they bailed it and took it by mule and wagon to the cotton gin in Glennville.

Not long after they married Marjorie and her husband got a pick-up truck and she learned to drive. After her daughter graduated from high school, Marjorie went to work at the hatchery in town. After seven years, she went to work at Freddie Thains, a fve and dime store in town. After two years, Marjorie went to work at Piggly Wiggly. Terry Waters, manager at Piggly Wiggly, was a good friend and the reason Marjorie went to work at “America's frst true self-service grocery store grocery,” (www. pigglywiggly.com). She had known Mr. Waters for years as a kind hard-working man. Marjorie made doughnuts for a long time and did a little of everything else in the store as well.

She was working at Piggly Wiggly when she got a call from one of the family. “I ran out. I didn’t even clock out,” said Marjorie. Her seventy-year-old mother had just hung

four chickens on the line and cut their throats. When she started back to the house to get a pot of boiling water, she fell out in the yard just before she made it to the back steps.

An ambulance came and Marjorie climbed in beside her mother. “We got to the county line between here and Claxton and she caught her last breath.” I said, “Robert you just as well turn around and go back. She’s caught her last breath.”

“No,” the ambulance driver told her. “Dr. Drakes not in town. We gotta go and get a doctor to pronounce her dead.” They went on to the hospital in Claxton where her mother was offcially declared dead. After her mama’s death Marjorie told her daddy he could move in with them. He stayed by himself for a month before he told her, “Well girl, if you’re ready to move me, I’m ready to go cause you can’t keep up with two jobs and take care of me and everything else.” He lived only three months longer. Marjorie found her father dead in his bed with his handkerchief in his hand across his chest.

Times continued to change in exponential ways. Marjorie left Piggly Wiggly after twenty-one years and decided she wanted to travel. Kenneth didn’t care so much for traveling so she went with those who did. She and her sister, Dorothy Woodcock, and frst cousin, Naomi Stanfeld, few out to Washington and Oregon and visited her daddy’s sister, Mammie Rolly. Aunt Mammie was ninety-seven at the time and lived for two more years. Marjorie went on several bus trips with the Tattnall County