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‘Thankfully, I don’t make ’em,’ longtime Dale’ employee says |
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Tuesday, 02 September 2008 |
By all accounts, Peggy Hendrix is an extremely popular employee at Dale’s Donut Shop in Benton — except in one regard.
“You wouldn’t want to eat any doughnuts I’ve made,” Hendrix, who turns 80 today on Labor Day, said with a laugh.
Thankfully, she said, it’s not her job to cook the doughnuts. Hendrix has been the clerk at Dale’s for 19 years.
Hendrix starts her weekdays by getting up “a little after 4 a.m.” She arrives at Dale’s about 20 minutes after 5.
“I think attitude has something to do with it,” Hendrix said of maintaining a schedule that would be physically grueling to others. “I enjoy people.”
Hendrix is not a stranger to the food business. She and her husband owned Hendrix Grocery in Bauxite in the 1970s. She said she now sees people come into Dale’s Doughnuts who used to come into her grocery shop as teenagers — and now they are gray-haired.
“People are going to ask me, ‘Peggy what do you mean by this gray hair?’” she said, laughing.
Hendrix was hired at Dale’s by owner Dale Atchley after his daughter, Rhonda, suggested Hendrix to him. Rhonda Atchley knew Hendrix when she used to go to Hendrix Grocery.
Hendrix knew the owner because she and her husband used to get coffee and doughnuts from Dale’s for their church, Our Lady of Fatima. Hendrix said it started out as two days a week and soon became five.
Nowadays, she spends so much time at the shop that she says she barely recognizes the aroma of doughnuts that fills the air inside the shop and wafts outside the building.
“I think my smeller’s going,” she said, sniffing the sugary air around her at Dale’s.
Hendrix said that in the mornings, the shop has regular coffee drinkers who frequent the shop, “all gentlemen.”
“You get to know what kind of coffee they want, what kind of doughnut,” she said.
Though it would seem Hendrix has become a fixture for many Dale’s customers, her roots are not in Benton.
Hendrix was born in Shreveport, La., and moved to Bauxite when she was 9.
She married young, at 18.
“That was a story,” she said. “Dad was being sent to South America with the aluminum company. He said, ‘Peggy, please wait until you’re 18 to get married.’ I waited 22 days,” she said, almost gleefully.
She started dating her soon-to-be-husband, “Putty,” her senior year of high school.
“Anybody who knows us, that’s his name,” she said of her husband’s nickname. “That’s what’s on his tombstone.”
The couple had two children, Tim and Bridget, and have five granddaughters: Laura, Sarah, Emily, Denni and Amanda, who died in a car accident eight years ago. Hendrix has one grandson, Chris, and one great-grandson, Ronald Wayne III.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Hendrix said of her birthday plans today. Her family is coming, so she thinks maybe they’ll go out to eat.
Hendrix’s son-in-law, Ronnie, is in the military and might be called to go help with Hurricane Gustav evacuees, she explained.
“He spent three months in the Superdome when Hurricane Katrina hit,” Hendrix said.
“He might not be able to come this weekend.”
When asked to describe herself, Hendrix, without skipping a beat, replied, “Ornery.” Then she laughed.
“I hope I am pleasant,” Hendrix said. “My son said ‘Peggy, you ask too many questions.’ I told him, ‘How are you going to get to know people if you don’t ask questions?’”
One of her favorite things to do is gamble. Her eyes light up when she says her favorite casino is “any one that I am in.”
“I have a reputation,” she said. “People will come in on Monday and ask if I went gambling.”
Hendrix said that she enjoys working for the owners of Dale’s Donut Shop and with her other co-workers.
“I’m going to stay till Joel [Atchley, the owner] fires me,” said Hendrix.
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