Annelore Harrell

As anyone who has been raised in the Lowcountry will tell you, we do know about paper bags. We make ’em. There’s a reason we grow so many pine trees. If students in Hawaii worked at the Dole Pineapple Factory in the summertime, then Savannah teens headed to the bag plant for jobs as soon as school let out in the spring. The pay was good, but the work hard. …we recognized the bag plant from afar. It stunk. Depending on which way the wind was blowing, you got a snoot full. For years, the chimneys spewed out stinky smoke. The “smell of money,” we said. …On Sunday, Oct. 7, 1945, Union Camp paper bags became part of a murder when Jesse R. McKethan, who worked at the plant, strangled George Luther Aids, chopped up his body and used paper bags he had brought home to carry the pieces, which he proceeded to distribute around his neighborhood in vacant lots…