I think that the original inspiration for Amelia Bedelia was my aunt would take things literally a lot of times. Not like Amelia Bedelia, not just all the time, but you could see where she could, you know, come up with this character. But it’s funny ‘cause I was down in Manning, South Carolina, her hometown, and I was there, they were dedicating a statue of Amelia Bedelia in bronze that’s outside the library.
And I was talking with one of her cousins, and this man was very close to her. They were almost the same age. And so they grew up together, knew each other very well. And he used to go over to have Sunday dinner at the Rogers house. There really were a Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. They were the grandparents, my aunt’s grandparents. So they would go over to the Rogers house and this would be like 20, 25 people every Sunday for dinner.
And Mrs. Rogers had a lot of help. She had a cook, a full-time cook, full-time housekeeper. And he told me that there was a younger housekeeper who was really good with children. She would set up baseball games after dinner and she was terrific, really a lot of fun, but she was hopeless when it came to housework. He said that one time Mrs. Rogers told her to sweep around the room and so how she did it was she swept just the perimeter of the room. All the dirt and dust in the middle, she did not touch that because she hadn’t been told to clean up the middle of the room.
Of course you don’t think you’d have to say that of course. And so I think that that was really, you know, the inspiration for it. I asked him, I said, “Well, did you ever point this out to Peggy?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, I pointed this out to her.” And I said, “Well, what did she say?” And he said, “She just — she just looked at me and smiled and there was this smile of like well, you know darn well that’s where I got the idea, but I’m not going to tell you that.” So, I really think that that was an inspiration, seeing that as a young girl.
