ABOVE Jack at The Treehouse with his
children. Left to right, Frank, Denise,
daughter-in-law Paula, and Michael.
every day at school if he’d wanted. “Not
many kids had that kind of money,” said
Jack smiling. “Mama made me a box
that would hold 12 one-pound bags of
boiled peanuts or scuppernongs. I’d sell
three boxes full on the street corner in
Nicholls on Saturdays.”
By the time he was twelve, he was
making $2 a week working at his Uncle
Buster’s drug store. When he turned
fourteen, he became the “soda jerk,”
which resulted in an increase of pay to
$3 a week. “The soda fountain was like
a bar except you were serving sodas, ice
cream, milkshakes and floats. Keeping
the soda fountain in shape was a skill
like painting or plumbing or anything
else. There were mechanical things you
had to do to keep the machine tuned
because you didn’t have all the services
you do now. I learned how to run that
little operation, and I thought I was
something,” said Jack.
Jack and his grandmother moved
to Swainsboro to live near his aunt and
uncle, Wilma and CG Mixon, and his
cousin Carlos, Jr., who was his same
age. When Jack took the job as soda
jerk at a drug store in Swainsboro, he
was shocked to receive $18.55 a week
for the same work he’d been paid $3
for in Nicholls. “I decided right then,
I didn’t need an education,” laughed
Jack, although his aunt and uncle
obviously thought otherwise.
After graduating high school in
1949, they sent him to the University of
Georgia, which lasted all of one quarter.
(School only went to the 11th grade
at that time.) “I tell everybody I took
five subjects at UGA and failed seven.”
His eyebrows raised. “I was raised in
Nicholls, Georgia, and at UGA I was
introduced to a life I'd never known
before.”
In 1950, following his enlightening
experience at UGA, Jack worked a year
with his mother’s brother, Uncle Jack.
He and his wife Louis had just opened a
46 TOOMBS COUNTY MAGAZINE