Drucilla Pope, ‘I’m Just a Lightning Rod’

To meet Drucilla Pope is to know exactly why she considers herself a lightning rod, she absorbs energy from all around her and then doles it out to those people and projects that need it.

We sat down on her screened porch one warm July afternoon for an interview. She wanted to know why I would want to know about her life. Drucilla looks at me with her coy smile already knowing what she is going to reveal in our interview. Her life story can never be told completely in this limited space, just some little snippets.

Drucilla, 90 plus years old, was born and raised seven miles outside of Milan, Georgia which is located halfway between Eastman and McRae. Her father was a farmer and also owned a small grocery store. Her earliest memory involved a new Ford automobile her father had bought, she is riding along side of him and her sister.

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Drucilla is two years old. Her father died suddenly from a stroke leaving her mother to raise the girls and keep the farm going. Family lives nearby including her beloved grandfather who she remembers rode a large white horse around his vast farm, checking on crops and workers. She would often hitch a ride with him.

Her mother worked hard to keep their farm going after her fathers death, planting a garden, keeping a cow for milk and raising plenty of chickens for Sunday dinner. Drucilla said that the incubator for the baby chicks was in the sisters bedroom and she woke up many times to the chirping of chicks hatching. Her mother discovered that Drucilla had no fear when it came to wringing a chicken’s neck and dressing it for cooking. For her talent, she was awarded the first piece of chicken and she always chose the chicken breast with the pulley bone. “You know you get your wish granted if you pull off the longest side of the pulley bone. I still only eat the chicken breast.”

When Drucilla was in the eleventh grade, high school graduation was upcoming and with no extra money and no jobs to be had, it looked like she would not be able to get a cap and gown and a senior ring until, their cow produced a sickly calf. She found the calf laying half dead in the corner of the barn, unable to walk or nurse.

Drucilla got the calf’s mothers milk and fed it to the little calf until it was strong enough to get to the mother. The calf continued to grow, eventually roaming around the farm eating the sweet grass, meeting Drucilla when she returned from school every day.

Drucilla’s mother had told her if she could raise the calf, she could sell it and get enough money to pay for her graduation needs. One afternoon the calf did not meet Drucilla and she went to look for it. She found that her uncle who had a farm next door had sold some calves that day and probably her calf in the process. She ran over to her uncles place to confront him and although he never admitted that he sold her calf, he did offer her some money. She still doubts that she got enough for her calf, but she did get her cap and gown and senior ring.

She was always willing to work for what she wanted or in this case what she lost. When she was a teenager, someone, she doesn’t remember who or does she, gave her an ink pen. The first ink pen she ever owned and she was really proud of it, wearing it clipped to her blouse. As she was showing it off to her sisters, they went over to the water well, their only source of water except for a nearby creek, to pull up a bucket of water. As she leaned in to get the bucket, the ink pen fell into the well. A drought gripped the nation at that time, producing the dust bowls of the 30’s and Georgia suffered as well. She was not so concerned about the ink pen, but about the ink in the pen destroying their precious water.

After making her sisters swear that they would never tell her mother, they used a rope to lower a small homemade ladder into the 100 foot deep well. Wells were built with foot and hand holes hollowed out in the side, so someone could go down into the well to clean it out. Drucilla hung on to the rope, managing to stretch her legs to reach the foot holes and the ladder down below, went into the water and found her ink pen. Going down was rough, but coming back up was a greater challenge. After she climbed the ladder, she found that her wet hands and feet could not grasp the hand and foot holes and she stopped to look up at her sisters and into the blue sky and prayed “God if you just let me get out of this well, I’ll never get back down into another one.” She finally made it back to the top. Her mother never found out and Drucilla has never been back down in a well.

“People swept their yards back then, not a blade of grass was allowed to grow, my mother said that kept the chickens from roaming into where they walked. Nasty, but tasty birds.” Many people swept their yards to prevent fires and so they could see snakes nearby.

Drucilla said the fear of fires was what inspired her family to have so many lightning rods attached to their house. She even witnessed the power of lightning one day, when a bolt hit one of their lightning rods, came down the ground wire, going out into the yard digging up the dirt and finally dispersing into the dirt road out front.

Her father was always interested in new things including the Delco-Light, a way to electrify your house or farm before the South was lit by TVA in the 1930’s. The Delco-Light, a product of General Motors, called by some “the lightning plant”, was powered by a battery connected to a motor. Drucilla said they were the first in the area to have electricity in their home.

Naming children after relatives has always been popular and in Drucilla’s case she was named after both of great grandmothers. Drucilla is a Bible name, Acts 24:24 she proudly quotes. Her father had a unique name, George Washington Marchant. The Marchant family originated in France she believes, originally spelled Marchaux.

“Don’t tell me not to do something, because I’m bound to do just that. I was a natural born climber, shimming up a skinny tree, swinging back and forth in the air or in one case a water well.”

Her curiosity, tenaciousness and fearless attitude got her into trouble sometimes. Her grandfather and wheelchair-bound grandmother lived nearby, they had a large house with five bedrooms and a wrap around porch and a tall water tower about 125 feet tall with a walkway around the top. “Many times I tried to climb up that water tower and was stopped by my grandparents, but one moon lit night while everyone slept I did the deed. It was grand. I still remember staring out into the moonlight, stars and being able to see for what seemed like miles.” Her eyes glint in the sunlight and gives that famous Drucilla grin, “It was the first and last trip for me up that water tower.”

So many stories left to tell, a spirit for doing so seems boundless. Born at a time when as she says “you just had to make do with what you had”. She survived to leave the country town, seeking a job, a life in the outskirts of Atlanta, Hapeville. Her first job was as a folder at the Arrow Shirt factory where she earned enough money to buy her mother’s first refrigerator. Drucilla remembers her mother used to love when the ice man delivered their block of ice each week and she would scrape off some little pieces to make her tea cold. The new refrigerator would solve that problem and she could have iced tea anytime. Her next purchase was a new 1939 Ford and she has never wavered in her love of Fords as it is the only kind of car she has ever owned.

A wonderful memory she has is driving her new Ford to downtown Atlanta in 1939, parking about six blocks from Peachtree Street and joining the million people waiting to see the stars of “Gone With the Wind” as they rode by in the parade to the premiere. “I didn’t have enough money to buy me a ticket to the premiere, but the parade was enough seeing Clark Gable.”

On a blind date, she met her “Clark Gable”, Hubert Pope, and it was love at first sight. Well, that part of her life will have to be left for another day. As Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara would say “Tomorrow is another day.”