A Buckhead Boy

A Buckhead Boy

     He was a man in full. Kinda low-key though. In a cardigan sweater. He was a doctor but he’d be the first to tell you that he couldn’t cure a damn thing. And he had an affection for V.W.s—Karmann Ghias especially. Old cars. Used cars. The kind professors could afford. I found him one once. At Jimmy’s V.W. Service in Hartsville and it was an old British racing green one. All original…intact and patinated. Like him. I picked up my bug at Jimmy’s and saw it for sale. I told his son, my little brother in the fratty and Doctor Jim snatched it up fast. And then my little brother in the fratty—his son—totalled it within months.

     Doctor Jim and his wife reminded me of old Atlanta…now long gone…paved over like most everything else these days. He was a Georgia boy. Kinda. His rare surname is still found in Loudon County Virginia but his people more precisely were from Lovettsville back when it was the country. Now Loudon County and little Lovettsville, Virginia—like old Atlanta and even precious Buckhead—are paved over. Like most everything else these days.

     He wasn’t exactly a Buckhead boy. He graduated from Grady High School and then West Georgia College and the University of Georgia before heading north to Maryland for his doctorate. He was Southern but there was no false gentility, no treacle about him. 

     And there was married student housing. Or at least I’ve conjured it from the stories here and there that his oldest son, one of my best buddies in the whole world, used to tell. Seems like the oldest of the five children remember the modest times when Doctor Jim was finishing his doctorate at Maryland. Unlike the youngest of the five who, when the sprinklers came to life on the golf course at the Florence Country Club, found himself suddenly soaked and went over to the tennis pro shop and charged himself a dry outfit to Doctor Jim’s tab. But only once.

     Surely there are a thousand teachers today who would say that at minimum, Doctor Jim., as Chairman of the Department of Education at Francis Marion College, influenced their journey. And I bet there are some who would credit him as the primary influence on their decision to become a teacher. But I don’t care so much about that as much as I do about his toy soldiers.

     Doctor Jim loved casting little lead soldiers and painting them and enjoying the fellowship of other toy soldier makers and collectors. I remember the first time I ever saw his little tucked away work space. And I always wondered how a busy professor with five kids found the time to painstakingly pour hot lead into molds and then paint the damn things so nicely. He made a Mess Dress WarGame set for me. I’ve always treasured it but now that Doctor Jim is gone I treasure it even more.

     So Doctor Jim’s oldest boy is like a blood brother to me. It’s a love-hate brotherly thing like all of those kinda connections are. Maybe not with you but they all are with me. I’m an easy acquaintance. I’m an uneasy friend. And that same boy, that oldest boy predicted my divorce while at my wedding. Butcept he never told me. Till after my divorce. Peckerhead.

     And Doctor Jim’s daughter…the only sister of the five was my almost-every-song dance partner at Cotillion for the entire season. Not because she liked me. It was more of an understanding, you see. We both had to get through it so we might as well get through it together.

     My thinking is that Doctor Jim didn’t govern himself day-to-day in ways that focused on what kind of legacy he’d eventually leave. He just didn’t seem wired that way. Husband, father, grandfather, teacher. Boy Scouts and the Braves and toy soldiers and Pawley’s Island…these things all rolled up…are his legacy.

Onward.

ADG II … Florence Boy