Last summer I took my mother to a hospital in Rome, Georgia to visit my Aunt Ida, age 86, who was a patient there

Sally Wheeler, Associate Professor at GPC

Poss Wardlaw

Last summer I took my mother to visit my Aunt Ida, age 86, who was a patient in a hospital in Rome, Georgia. Aunt Ida had a case of shingles so painful that she had to be hospitalized and given large amounts of pain medicine. She was still miserable, but she was finally about well enough to be sent home.

We entered the beige hospital room and greeted Aunt Ida who seemed tiny and defeated as she lay in the wrinkled bed. Mother walked around the bed, took my aunt's hand and asked, "How are you, Ida." To my immense surprise, my elderly aunt, whom I had never heard say "darn" even if she banged a toe, said, "About like Ragged Ass Poss Wardlaw!"

Now this little old spinster lady had been an elementary school teacher and principal at City Park Elementary School in Dalton for most of her life. I might say something brash like this, but not Aunt Ida. "What?" I squealed. "What do you mean."

And like all folks of an older generation will do, Mother and Aunt Ida in unison said, "Oh, Sally, I know you have heard that story a thousand times."Well, I know I had never heard this one before."Ragged Ass Poss Wardlaw!"Here is the story of "Ragged Ass Poss Wardlaw" that Mother and Aunt Ida told together, taking turns, doubling back, correcting memories and possibly embellishing:

In the late 1930's in the depths of the depression, Papa was trying to get his crops in. He was in a bind because his sons were off working on the CCC desperately trying to make a bit of cash money to keep the family afloat. That left Papa and a house full of females back on the farm.One unusually hot day, Papa was out in the field plowing which meant he was yelling, "Come on, you ole fool!" at Long Legs, his elderly mule. Papa straightened up at the end of a row and, as he wiped the sweat he saw a dirty, ragged man approaching. The man was thin, wirey, and deeply tanned. He had on an old nasty straw hat nearly rotted from sweat and filthy, dusty, worn out overalls.

Papa was so startled to see the man walking across the plowed field towards him that he said, "Who in the world are you?"The man walked up right in front of Papa, took off straw hat revealing stringy, dirty thinning hair, and said, "Just call me Ragged Ass Poss Wardlaw!"The man desperately needed work and Papa desperately needed help. Papa hired him on the spot and the man began plowing right then and there. Later he cleaned up best he could, ate some of Mama's good cooking, and moved into an attic room in the house.Poss Wardlaw worked hard but didn't mingle with the family. He refused to eat at the table, he kept to himself and he offered no further information about himself.

One day in the late summer he came to Papa and said he was quitting. Very surprised, Papa asked why. Poss Wardlaw said, "I can't get a lick of sleep what with all those girls giggling below me ever night." With that, Poss Wardlaw walked off across the field and we never heard tell of him again. All these decades later, Mother and Aunt Ida still remember "Ragged Ass" Poss Wardlaw who gave up food and shelter to get away from those giggling girls.