Lynn Dugger lives in the woods outside Haddock, and he uses the privacy of the trees there to stay busy with wood from trees cut elsewhere.
Dugger is a professional woodworker, escalating from part-time when he retired from Grumman Aerospace in Milledgeville seven years ago. He is not a Jones County — or Georgia — native, however.
Dugger, 65, grew up in Bluff City, Tennessee, about three-eighths of a mile from Bristol Motor Speedway.
“We weren’t huge NASCAR fans, but we still ended up meeting a lot of people through the track,” he recalled. ”As the track expanded, we ended up parking cars and campers in my mom and dad’s yard. “
Following high school graduation, Dugger attended East Tennessee State University and planned to major in industrial arts.
“I thought I wanted to be an industrial arts teacher in school,” he smiled. “My mom was a high school typing teacher, and she told me ‘You’re not going to make any money as a school teacher. You need to do something else.’” Dugger took her advice and obtained a degree in manufacturing engineering in 1982. He interviewed unsuccessfully with Grumman and took another job. About eight months later he was at home sick when he got a call from East Tennessee’s placement officer advising him Grumman was interviewing again.
He contacted the human resources officer.
“I told him, ’I don’t know if you remember me or not from those previous interviews.’ He said, ‘yeah, you were the bald guy that played the banjo.’“ Dugger was instructed to come to Milledgeville to talk.
“I came down, did an interview, and two weeks later I was living in the Holiday Inn in Milledgeville,’” he stated. His first day on the job was Feb. 6, 1984.
Dugger was a liaison engineer his entire career with Grumman, responsible for assessing any defective parts, deciding whether to repair or discard them. “We had to stay in touch with the customer in case we needed a design change to work out problems. So we were heavily involved with the customer.”
Dugger did not start a family as young as some men. About seven years after starting with Grumman, he met his future wife, Rachel Grubbs. “We met at Hardwick Christian Church in Sunday School class,” he said. “We dated for about two years and married in 1983 … I was 33.”
The Duggers, who still attend the same church, now known as Northridge Christian Church, have two children, Abigail, 24, and Grayson, 21.
Rachel was teaching in Baldwin County when a job came open in Jones County. She accepted it and commuted daily.
“We decided, if she got over here and liked it, that we’d just try to get closer,” Dugger said. He was aware of some lots for sale on Bowen Hill Road. “We came out and looked and made an offer on this piece of property.
We have 15 ½ half acres.
We bought it, put a house on it and been here ever since, about 20 years.”
Dugger left his fulltime job at the young age of 58.
“I retired in December of 2018,” he said. “And it actually was unexpected. They were trying to get the company ready to sell. So they offered an incentive. I just completely wasn’t expecting that. Retirement wasn’t in my near plans.
“They took us back in the classroom and put all the information up on the board. I knew I met all the qualifications, and I knew my wife was teaching school and had insurance. I said, ‘You know what? I can do this.’ “I mean, I liked my job and didn’t dread going to work or any of that, but I just considered it a gift from God that I could retire while I was healthy.”
That good health has enabled Dugger to continue doing what he started many years ago.
Sitting in his 24 x 40 shop, it is obvious he is a woodworker.
“My granddad had a shop, a wood shop, in his basement of his house,” Dugger recalled. “Probably when I was five years old, I used to go in his shop with him. I’d get me a scrap piece of wood, and I’d write my name in glue. I’d put sawdust on that, and we’d set it aside and come back down the next day. I’d shake the loose sawdust off, and there was my name, all fuzzy.
It had the sawdust stuck to it. Man, I just thought that was the biggest deal in the world. And, he never fussed at me for wasting his glue.
“I spent a lot of time with my granddad, Ernest Banner. We made birdhouses, cutting boards, roll-top breadboxes, all kinds of stuff.
I learned a lot from him about woodworking. I think about him every time I walk out here. I mean, that too has been a gift and a blessing to be able to come out here and do this.”
Dugger’s shop is full of hundreds of tools, many of them antiques, used maybe sparingly or not at all. He pointed at one.
“That was my granddad’s.
And, there,” he motioned, “That was my great-great grandfather’s. He was a woodworker. My sister still has a bed that he made, very interesting, and you can tell it was it made with hand tools. It’s really neat.”
Dugger swept his hands around the workspace, showing several draw knives, different hammers, chisels, and aged hand saws. “I go to a lot of yard sales and estate sales … I’ve been buying tools for years.”
The retiree’s work is not a hobby. He is in business to sell his wares.
“I call my business Georgia Clucker Wood Products,” Dugger declared. “And everybody always asks, ‘Well, where did the Clucker come from?’ I started making turkey calls years ago.
Probably 30 plus years ago, a buddy of mine at work turkey hunted and got me to make wood box calls. So, that year we sold about 250 of those calls.
And I made a few along and sold them.”
Dugger said turkey calls are not his focus.
“But I wanted to hang on to that name because people find the cluck kind of interesting and they’re always asking, and I want them to ask, ‘why did you choose that name?.’” Dugger does have a focus, however.
“I make cutting boards and charcuterie boards and serving boards,” he shared. “And we do shows with that. We’ll do craft markets and art markets. We do a lot of shows around Atlanta. We just did the Jekyll Island Shrimp and Grits Festival last weekend. This is our fourth year of doing that.”
In response to an inquiry of who works in the business, Dugger explained, “the ‘we’ is me and my wife, Rachel. We go to shows together, and we do shows together. She’s very key on setting the booth up, getting everything out, and having it arranged, and all that.
“We like this as kind of a supplement, not so much monetarily, but we get to go some different places that we probably wouldn’t otherwise be going.”
The craftsman showed his visitor several of the boards he was preparing for sale. He identified different types with different price ranges. He noted he is not like many woodworkers who make several boards of the same type.
“I don’t do that,” he declared. “Every board I make is different. And I do that just because I don’t want to get in a routine of making a production board. I want to be able to use what wood I want to use and combine it with other woods to get a good artistic look. I have people tell me all the time, ‘Your boards are really art.’ And, you know, that’s the way I want it to be.”
Dugger acknowledged his enjoyment with the process and final product.
“Those things really come to life when you when you put the oil on them. It’s just incredible. This board, I’ll run it through my thickness planer, and when it comes out that other end, all finished and smooth, I’m just like a kid in the candy store.”
While he wasn’t a ‘kid’ at the time, Dugger developed another interest as a youngster that he has continued over the years.
“I’ve played banjo since I was 13 years old,” he said. “Fifty-two years.
“There was a lot of bluegrass music in East Tennessee,” Dugger recalled. “So, I was around it quite a bit. There was a guy at my church that played. I took lessons from him when I was 13 years old. I took for two winters. At the end of that second winter, he told my dad, ‘I can’t teach him anymore. He just needs to get out and play with other people.’” Dugger has done that over the years. He, Aubrey Nelson, and Andy Adams, a pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville, had a band, Heart Pine. “We played a gig here recently at the Methodist Church in Milledgeville, so we’ve kind of hung on to that name.
“We don’t play as much as we used to,” Dugger acknowledged, “but I play banjo in the praise band at Northridge Christian Church in Milledgeville. Even though we do contemporary, Christian music, I can still get up there and play with them from time to time. It’s pretty different than anything I’ve ever done, but I’m glad to be able to get up and do that.”
Dugger is also glad he’s retired.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I come out here and work just a little bit every day, and I love it. I mean, I look forward to it every day.”
