Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 17. A HUSTLING LITTLE FELLOW (Pp 28-29) I was single when I worked for
Georgia-Florida Investment Company but I didn't spend much money. I usually made $15.00 a month and gave Papa $5.00 of that. I didn't have to buy very much...a pair of overalls and a shirt once in a while and a pair of shoes about every year and a half and I bought that in the commissary at Traders Hill. That was a big store and had as much stuff on the shelves as the stores in Folkston did. I didn't have a regular payday; just any time I wanted some money I told Jim Gowen, who owned half of
Georgia-Florida, and he'd give it to me. I helped in the construction of the first bridge over the St. Marys River near St. George. Rev. E. F. Dean and his son, Emory, had the contract to build the bridge and I worked for them and boarded with a Burnsed family. Leonard O'Cain was a piledriver on this project. My job was hauling the pilings out of the woods and down to the bridge site and we used a three mule team with a timber cart that had wheels about eight feet high.
The pilings which we pulled from the nearby river swamp were so large we could bring only one at a time. Emory hired Harry Everetts, a boy about eleven years old, to take care of the eight mules which were used on the bridge project. He rented a large barn at St. George for these mules. Nassau County paid one-half the cost of the bridge and Mr. King, who was a Nassau County Commissioner at that time, lived about two miles away. One day Emory and I walked the railroad
trestle into Nassau County and went to see Mr. King about the bridge. When we got to his house, we found that he wasn't home, so we spent the night there so we could talk to him the next day. On the way back to St. George, Emory suddenly remembered little Harry who had been left with nothing to eat. He hurried to the barn and found him asleep in the feed room with a half can of sardines by his side. Harry said he had gone to Mr. Norman's store and told him that he worked
for Emory Dean and was hungry. Mr. Norman had let him have crackers and sardines, which cost five cents a can, on credit. When I was a real young man one of my earliest jobs was working for Walton Vickery, Jesse Vickery's brother, for fifty cents a day and board. Walton was running the canning factory, which was right next door to the Charlton County Herald building. He had an acre of tomatoes next to the factory and that is what he canned. He also furnished the cans and
put up tomatoes for those who grew their own, taking half of them as his pay. Dr. Wright grew some tomatoes one year and brought them to the cannery to put up but got real mad with Walton later. When Walton canned for the public he just mixed everyone's tomatoes all in one batch and canned them. So when Dr. Wright came for his, he didn't like it at all that he didn't get to take home the tomatoes he had brought, for Walton had not kept them separate from the others. Eustace Wainwright, one of my cousins, was running the Herald at that time and printed an article about me working for Walton. One sentence in the article said, "Maddie Gibson is a hustling little fellow." When Papa read that he said, "It would have been a pretty good send-off if only Eustace had gotten the name straight!" | 
