I am dictating these lines on the afternoon of February 14, which of course is St. Valentine’s Day.  The object of this essay is to pay tribute to a lovely woman who has been my friend for perhaps 30 years.  This essay has nothing to do with the state of Georgia in this country or the breakaway region in the Caucasus which has caused Russia so much trouble.  Again, this being St. Valentine’s Day, it is fitting that a tribute be paid to my great and good friend Georgia Coney.
I called Georgia on the telephone last week and after our conversation, which was joined by Miss Chicka, I tried to reconstruct how long Georgia and I have been friends. My guess is at least 30 years.  I have dated it to the time when grocery stores did not accept credit cards.  At that time, Georgia was my auxiliary bank.  I shopped twice a week and if I needed some cash I would simply add an amount to the check and Georgia would cheerfully cash it and give me the receipts.  Today, however, I suspect that 95% of the transactions that take place in grocery stores are charged to a credit card.
As you can probably deduce at this point, Georgia was a cashier or a checkout person at one of our large supermarkets called King’s.  When I appeared with groceries to be checked out and Georgia’s line was occupied, the checkout supervisor named Sue Catlett would find a way to occupy my time until Georgia was available to check me out.  During most all of these years, Georgia had a second job.  She worked for King’s during the daylight hours and when evening came, she reported for work at the UPS center where the package sorting took place, and I suppose she stayed on that job until nearly midnight.  As you can see, Georgia was a hard-working person and I suppose that a good part of her wages went toward keeping a roof over her head.  For all of those years that I dealt with Georgia she was always cheerful, and when she had something on her mind, she would often tell me what troubled her.  Georgia was a kind of a second mother to the other checkout persons who were at King’s.  Another of my long-time friends, named Dale Ash, has told me on several occasions that he considered Georgia as his second mother.
When I met Georgia, she was no spring chicken.  But the intervening years have been kind to Georgia, and she remains an attractive woman even after she retired from both of her jobs.  Georgia was a cashier in the daytime and a UPS worker in the evenings.  Not long ago, time caught up with Georgia and she retired from both jobs.  Several of her former co-workers keep up with Georgia and have reported to me how Georgia is getting along.  From time to time, Judy and I call Georgia to make certain that things are all right.
The most recent development is that Georgia has assumed the care of her 96-year-old mother who, unfortunately, has a case of either dementia or early Alzheimer’s Disease.  Georgia told me in our most recent conversation that there are times when her mother speaks rationally.
However, as time has gone on, it appears that the Alzheimer’s or dementia has continued to creep up on her mother.  Georgia has taken care of her mother for several months now.  She relieved her sister of this obligation some time ago.  In any event, now it is time that we turn to the philosophy of Georgia.
The philosophical point that is to be made here has to do with Georgia and her siblings.  Her family lived on a farm near Albany, Georgia and on more than one occasion Georgia has told me, “None of us ever went to bed hungry.”   That was a tall order because there were 11 people involved here.  In point of fact, there were nine children.  Georgia was the fourth child in this order.  In our conversation with Georgia last week, she observed without rancor that her mother could take care of nine children but now those nine children can’t take of their mother.  Mind you, all of this was said without a trace of rancor.  It was simply a fact and Georgia has always been a practical person dealing in facts.
So there you have my tribute this Valentine’s Day to my old friend Georgia Coney.  You may recall that in essays over the years I have recounted the philosophy of an American corporal who told me, “Soldier, you don’t get paid for thinking.  You get paid to do what you are told.”  I believe that it is fair to say that the philosophy of the corporal stands with the unparalleled logic of Georgia when she says, “My mother could care for nine children but now those nine children can’t care for their mother.”  It isn’t every day that you encounter philosophical statements as convincing and as logical as the ones coming from Georgia Coney.
 
E. E. CARR
February 14, 2011
Essay 550
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Kevin’s commentary:Dang, for a second there I thought I was going to get another essay about Judy of which there seems to be somewhat of a paucity, but no such luck. Georgia sounds like a great person, though. I’ve heard on many occasions that one can determine a lot about someone’s character by how he or she interacts with service people. This is a philosophy to which I would happily subscribe fully (Pop certainly does well by it) except that my father is sometimes a jerk to service people but he is a pretty great guy too. Unless you mess up his food, in which case he’ll call you an idiot to your face. One time he was so mean to a service guy that airport security was called on him, who he informed that since it “wasn’t illegal to be rude,” he was doing nothing wrong.
 
Oooh well.