Maxie Mae (McNear) Collins (1911 - 1998)

Maxie attended church as a child. When she was young and in love she eloped one Sunday morning with John Collins. Her Father was sitting in church when his wife whispered to him that she thought Maxie was gone to get married. He jumped up in middle of service and loudly said “Good God I’m going home” and stomped out. That was May 29, 1927. Maxie was a farmer’s wife which had lots of chores but she also worked in a shirt factory for around 40 (?) years. She put cuffs on men’s dress shirts for many years. That came in handy at home because her husband John was a petite man and needed all sleeves shortened. She was a very accomplished seamstress. She said she never spent one dime of her paychecks. She only spent the money she got from carpooling in her car. She won the South Eastern Fair pie contest first place many, many years in a row with her secret ( never revealed to anyone) pecan pie. She made a dozen at a time and froze the other 11. One year she said she needed to give someone else a chance to win and didn’t enter the contest. But unbeknownst to her, her daughter sneaked a frozen pie into the contest and you guessed it, it still won! She was upset but I believe still secretly pleased. Her husband milked a sweet cow every day and she put the milk bucket in the pie safe to separate. She then churned delicious butter which was known by all her neighbors as creamy and delicious. After many years of doing it manually, she finally got an electric churn. She froze most of it and people would come by, go get what they wanted and leave her the money in a jar. She had a series of dogs that were all named “Flossie”. Her great granddaughter April was so excited to see her chihuahua again and was very surprised when a huge black dog also named Flossie appeared instead. She had a rule that if the boys killed an animal they had to eat it. So, we ate every kind of meat you can imagine including snake. It was years before I realized that she didn’t eat that wild meat herself. She loved to fish and ate fish almost daily. She sat on a 5 gallon bucket with water in it to put the fish in. One day she was on a bank fishing and broke her ankle badly. She was horrified that she was dirty and didn’t want a doctor to see her like that so they had to bring her home first for a shower before going to the hospital. She was stern looking a lot and began smiling more and telling about her adventures after she joined the Senior traveling group in town. They went all over in a comfy bus. Her husband being a most contented man didn’t share her love of traveling and now she had friends to go with her. She finally spent some of the money she had saved for so long.