GOOD PAY IN GEORGIA

Story told by Pop about leaving home at age 15 to work in the shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia.

While I was still in high school, I started living in an old house that belonged to the state.  I stayed with Luther Glen.  He was a bachelor and he was a state dairyman.  The state gave me a hundred percent maintenance plus I think it was $25 a month or something like that - which was big money then.  And it was great to even have a job.

Things went to changing.  The war came on, and that put everything to moving.  The farm superintendent at the blind institution, Mr. Boone, lived next door to me.  One of his sons, Roy Boone, had gone to Brunswick, Georgia, to go to work with J. Jones Construction Company, which was building Liberty ships on the river there that came into Brunswick.  He came home one Christmas talking about the opportunities that were down there and how much money they were paying and all that.  He and his wife were going back after Christmas.

There was a big demand for people.  I was small, you know.  At that time I weighed about 118 or 120 pounds, real slim and trim.  And there was a big demand for welders working on ships because they had a tremendous amount of close places to get that bigger people just could not get.  And you had to have a whole lot of skill at the same time.

I didn't put any significance on being the assistant dairyman for the state.  So I asked him, I said, "I'll just go back down there with you."

He said, "You'd be a natural.  They've got a welding school down there."

I told him, "I don't know how to get down there or nothing."

He said, "You can go back with me."  He and his wife had an apartment down there.

So I went home and told Mamma just right off the bat from one day to the next that I was going to Brunswick, Georgia.  She had a pure damn conniption and said I wasn't going.  I said, "Well, I am going."

So I rode back down there with Roy.  In fact, I drove down there.  I drove the whole way.  That was part of the deal.  And the furthest I had ever been away from home was the distance I could ride on a bicycle.  Other than going to Wake Forest to visit my aunt and uncle.  And once I rode with my cousin's husband Jeff to Greensboro.

Lord, I thought I'd gone slam to the other side of the world.  Wrote Mamma a letter trying to remember all the towns we'd been through.  I thought it was something great.  There was umpteen of them or more, and I finally gave up on that part of it.