03/11/2026
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THE WOMAN WHO WAVED FOR 90 MINUTES
Rural Georgia, March 1932Nellie Griggs was sixty-seven years old, a widow farming alone outside Macon Georgia, and on a muddy March morning she was walking the railroad tracks near her property because the rails were easier than the rutted roads in mud season. She saw the trestle bridge ahead and she saw that its center section had collapsed into Tobesofkee Creek below. She did not know when the next train was coming. She had no telephone. She had no watch. She had no way to warn anyone except her own two arms and whatever she was wearing.She took off her red flannel petticoat right there on the tracks. She climbed to the highest rock she could find beside the damaged trestle. She began waving with both arms as hard as she could. She did not know if a train would come in five minutes or five hours. She waved anyway. When her arms gave out completely she switched to the other arm and kept waving. She stood on that rock for ninety minutes in her farm dress without her petticoat in the cold March Georgia air and she did not get down. Not once. Not for one minute.The Central of Georgia train came around the bend. The engineer saw the red flannel from half a mile away. He applied the emergency brakes. The train stopped fourteen feet from the edge of the collapsed trestle. Two hundred and twenty passengers sat inside not knowing that a sixty-seven year old woman had been standing on a rock waving a petticoat since before they had finished their morning coffee.The engineer climbed down from his cab. He walked to the trestle. He looked at the collapsed center over the creek below. He looked at Nellie still standing on her rock still holding the red flannel. He said quietly: "Ma'am how long have you been standing there." She looked at him. She said: "Long enough." Two hundred and twenty people went home that night because a widow in rural Georgia took off her petticoat and decided that long enough meant however long it took.
