Swapping stories about Milledgeville

A new tradition, community members as well as Georgia College faculty share tales of their favorite local memories

Over 100 people came out April 8, to the Black Box Theatre for the start of a new annual tradition, Storytelling in Milledgeville.

The idea began when Nathalie Goodrich wanted to revitalize a previous storytelling group, Tales from the Back Stoop, and get the citizens of Milledgeville to come out for a night to share their favorite stories about the town. She met with President Leland to see if the Department of Theatre would help with the event and they willingly accepted. Karen Berman, chair of the Department of Theatre helped created a committee of community members to organize the entire night. The target audience was for both college students and the Milledgeville community.

Georgia College rhetoric professor Scott Dillard started off the night with so much enthusiasm in his opening speech that he had the whole audience nodding in agreement. He introduced the first speaker of the night as Bob Wilson, a history professor and the official Georgia College historian. Wilson began with a fun fact that the Black Box Theatre had once been a confederate soldier’s tavern. Then he told his story, “The Ghost Stalker,” about his infatuation with the local ghost of Mary Virginia Harrison.

In 2001,Wilson was setting up his office in an old bedroom in the Harrison House when he encountered the ghost of Mary Virginia.

“I was putting my books on a shelf around 11 p.m. when all three doors of the room shut at the same time,” Wilson said. “I looked to the window to see if a breeze was the cause but the windows weren’t open, so I introduced myself.”

He had no further encounters until the day he was moving his office to the Humber-White House, which Harrison had also owned. As he was packing up, a strong perfume engulfed the room but no one else was in the house. Wilson later found out that Mary Virginia was known for her infatuation with fine perfumes. He later smelled the same scent in his new office at the Humber-White House.

The second speaker was Judah Buckeridge who told his story, “Finding Jamaica in Milledgeville.” Buckeridge is a reggae singer that moved to Milledgeville five years ago from Jamaica. He told of how the Georgia climate, vultures, lizards and food helped him find his, “little bit of Jamaica in Milledgeville.”

Following Judah was rhetoric professor Amy Burt. She enhanced the storytelling atmosphere by knitting while telling her story, “Southern as a Foreign Language.” At one moment she even brought the whole crowd in for a group song. Her story was about how difficult it was moving to the South from Wisconsin, particularly her difficulties understanding the southern accent. She explains that she has “Helen Keller moments” all of the time when she figures out a saying such as “its fixen’ to rain.” She brought the crowed to a wave of laughter when she said her personal favorite was at the supermarket when an attendant asked, “would you like a buggy?” and she replied comically, “No, I drove my horseless carriage today thank you.”

The third story was of Joyce Minckler and Louise Sallstrom titled, “Speaking My Mind.” These two ladies have been friends for over 30 years and are known as the “Dynamic Duo” as Janette Wydell explained. Their story was about how they taught each other to stand up for injustices in the community and how they learned from each other how to speak their minds when they felt like they lost their voice.

The final speaker of the night was Floyd Anderson with, “Baskets full of Wisdom” about his friendship with a local sharecropper, Joe Dennis. Dennis was the son of a slave and did not marry until he was in his late 70s when his mother died because she was his first priority. One day Dennis was making handmade baskets and a woman named Maybell stopped by looking to buy a hog. He immediately asked her to marry him so people always say, “Maybell came in looking for hogs and left with Joe.”

Anderson was intrigued by Dennis’s baskets and asked if he would teach him how to make them. He studied under Dennis for 17 years until he died in 1982 at the age of 100 and 10 months.

Anderson still has his first basket that Dennis ever taught him to make and claimed, “it’s hideous, but you don’t have enough money to buy it.”

The night was a huge success and ended with mingling and talking to the storytellers.

“The long-range goal is to create a story telling club or a guild that would host storytelling events,” said Karen Berman, co-chair of the project.