Published: December 30, 2008 07:24 am      

Meet your Neighbor - Bisbee Thompkins

Live Oak man has been on the job - the same job - for 51 years

vanessa.fultz@gaflnews.com



Bisbee Thompkins has been a hard worker all his life. And a steady one. He's worked at the same job for more than half a century. At 73, he's still going strong.

Thompkins has worked at Howland Feed Mill in Live Oak for more than 51 years. John Howland, who now owns the feed mill, said not only is Thompkins his longest serving employee, Thompkins preceded him there.

"I used to stay in the way," said Howland of his adventures around the feed mill as a boy. His grandparents, John P. and Quintilla, opened the mill in the 1920s.

After his grandfather died his grandmother ran the mill. She hired Thompkins when he was about 21 years old.

"I started there in September of '57," Thompkins said. "I started hauling feed and bagging it on the trucks and after that they put me in maintenance."

Howland remembers "Red," as Thompkins was called, from when he was 6 years old.

"Some of my earliest memories of 'Red' is how strong he was," Howland said. "He could carry a 100 pound bag of feed in each arm to load into the truck. He was quite a man."

Those were the days when the job was much more labor intensive. Thompkins remembers having to bag feed by hand and sew the bags up with a needle and thread. Bags are now filled and stitched by machine.

Howland said over the years he has relied on Thompkins to repair equipment that fails.

"He is extremely intelligent and mechanically inclined," Howland said.

Thompkins has been working hard since he was a boy. He quit school to work at Hatch Dairy in Live Oak to support his family.

"I dropped out in the fifth grade," Thompkins said. "I had to. Back in those days money was tight."

Among the tasks he had was bottling milk (which was raw at the time, he said), loading it into a cooler, and delivering it to local folks.

"I'd get them off the trucks and carry them in quart bottles from house to house," he said.

The face of the town was quite different than it is today. Thompkins said the dairy was located off US 129 South near where Save A Lot grocery currently sits. He said the Hatches lived in a two-story house where Walgreens is now located and he lived with his parents, Rufus and Rosa Thompkins, in a house owned by the Hatches that sat where Cheek and Scott is located.

Thompkins remembers 129 being only partially paved.

"It had rocks sticking up on it," he said. "You could hardly walk on it barefooted."

Thompkins' wife is Lee Anna. They have five children and numerous grand children. He met Lee Anna when they were both teens.

"Her mother and my mother liked to play cards together," he said, adding what they most played was a game called "whiz."

Though Thompkins has worked long and hard he doesn't plan on quitting his job anytime soon.