Inktober 4: #Dodge

There and back again. And back again

When World War II broke out, my father’s father Uel Rogers was a farmer working rented land in Dodge County, Georgia. He heard about the Air Force base that had opened forty miles away, and the brand-new town that had sprung up beside it, called Warner Robins. A good many of his neighbors had made the move. So the Rogers family pulled up stakes and moved to the Ziegler Apartments in Warner Robins and got running water and electricity for the first time in their lives. 

When the war ended, my grandfather Uel was eager to quit the city and go back to the country. He said he thought they’d be closing the base now that the war was over—but mostly, I think, he just wanted to get back to what he knew.

My grandmother Hazel, on the other hand—she LIKED having electricity and running water. She liked her appliances. When Uel carried her back to Dodge County, she brought her refrigerator and her washing machine and had them deposited on the front porch of their rental house, which still had neither electricity nor running water. And there the refrigerator and the washing machine sat, a silent protest and a rebuke, until Uel finally gave in a few years later and moved her—and her appliances—back to Warner Robins.

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