Fired from the First Job He Ever Had

Tom: I was born in Hawkinsville, Georgia. It’s south of Macon. And when my dad went down he worked for Asa Candler, and before I was born he ran what was called the Mileybright Farm, the dairy farm, and they furnished milk to Emory. And that’s because Candler was a big Emory man.

We were close to the river, and he got malaria and died. So she just wanted to get out of there, and they did. And so they came back to Avondale where they previously had run this 400-acre farm.

The first thing I remember is when they started Avondale. I was about 8 years old, I guess. My dad was in charge of the construction of Avondale with G. F. Willis, who owned it.

So when he came back, the Mileybright Farm was no longer in existence. So they started Avondale and G. F. Willis hired him as general manager, so he was in charge of building everything that was done there, and he let me one day be the water boy, when they were building the lake.

To build the lake, there was a drag pan and a mule, and they would get one scoop and they’d have to haul it out. They had about a dozen mules and drag pans, and he let me be the water boy. I was so little I couldn’t carry that two-gallon bucket in one hand, so I took a gallon bucket in each hand to balance myself, and I made about three or four trips and I was just worn out. I went back to the spring, and I sat down to rest, and went to sleep. When I woke up all I could hear was “…water boy! water boy!” Well, that was my last day at work — they fired me.

I got fired from the first job I ever had.