Collene Riggsbee Rogers - Why he liked the work (clip)
Interviewed by Kathryn Wall on March 11, 2023
Kathryn Wall: Your said plumbing was his passion. Do you know why he liked that better than the other….?
Collene Riggsbee Rogers: I really don’t. I don’t. Because I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t know. I guess maybe it was just something that he knew that people needed more and that’s what he focused on and he continued to do it. Plus he had a lot of other people - his cousins down there that he taught how to do it so that they could service and help the people in the community, so he did that. But I don’t know. I guess he didn’t consider himself a builder and not even an electrician but he used to take everybody’s irons and electrical stuff they had that broken down and told them rather than they have to go and buy another one, just repair it.
KW: Did people pay him to do that or did he just do it?
CRR: They paid him. You know some, if they didn’t have the money he didn’t say, “Well, I’m not going to do it,” you know. And eventually they did. And I used to always say, “Well, they’re not paying you, why are you doing it?” He said, “Well, they need it” or “they need water so they can go to work” and stuff like that but he said, “If they don’t pay me, they know they’re not going to call me again,” and so I guess maybe that’s how they had his trust that they knew that they were going to call him, so they would have to pay him in order to do it.
